The Word Show

It’s 4:30pm on Thursday, and I am experiencing severe hunger pangs. Luckily, I planned ahead and brought with me a snack: lentils mixed with rice, courtesy of my Lebanese friends at Amir. I think I’ll go ahead and pat myself on the back for making such a healthy, yet delicious, snack choice. The secret to the tastiness is the fired onions that Amir likes to throw in.

Unluckily, I forgot to pack a utensil to eat this ethnic amuse bouche. After scavenging unsuccessfully for a plastic fork in my desk drawer (I do keep a lot of random junk in there), I have grown desperate, and have resorted to scanning my desktop for something that might, in a pinch, serve as a spoon or a fork. So far my choices are HB pencil (too skinny, eraser tastes bad), pink highlighter (too visible to my co-workers as a non-piece of cutlery), opened stapler (a bit unwieldy, but quite good for scooping), magic marker (same issues as highlighter), and a large-sized paper clip (discreet, but tiny surface area, even in x-large format, and hence not very functional).

Funnily enough, it seems my 1 gig USB thumb drive may be the best candidate – it’s cheap, probably worth only a couple of bucks and therefore fairly disposable, small enough to not be visible to my coworkers, and has a surprisingly broad surface for carrying lentils to my mouth.

If that doesn’t pan out, the “wildcard” would be to just hold the plastic container of lentils over my face and let the tasty chunks just drop in – though I don’t like the lack of professionalism that scene would convey to my coworkers.

I’ve just remembered: when I was 6 years old, I desperately wanted to have a long trunk, like an elephant’s. Good Lord, a trunk would be the perfect utensil indeed. It’s almost as if my 6-year-old self knew that, for all the potential ridicule an elephant’s trunk, grafted onto a human face, would have posed, it would’ve paid off so wonderfully – so deliciously for that human,  nearly a quarter century later. It makes me wonder what other prescient thoughts my 6-year-old self had. God, I’m hungry.

It’s been over a week and I’m still reeling from the news that my childhood tennis idol, Andre “Rebel” Agassi, was using crystal meth during the height of his early career. A true champion – he couldn’t settle for an addiction to prescription pain killers or even cocaine, the celebrity party-drug of choice. No, he had to reach over the top and go for the most dangerous narcotic available, the one that, when ingested, can up your blood pressure and alter your sense of reality to the point that normal people are mistaken for demon-wolves.

Agassi’s meth use does explain his choice of on-court attire; stone-washed jean shorts, fused with bright pink spandex biker shorts. If drug movies and reruns of Cops are any indicator, that’s basically the American speed freak’s uniform of choice, though the typical Tweaker wouldn’t think to actually COMBINE the spandex undershorts with the denim cut-offs – rather he would just wear them as “separates.” Indeed, Agassi was a visionary, both on and off the court.

The meth also explains Agassi’s full-power mullet. The hairdo seemed to scream, “I love Davey Crockett’s racoon skin hat, but I also like to party, and party HARD.” That the mullet was fake just hammered home in what a bad state Andre was.

I’m glad he’s better now.

I attended my first yoga lesson a couple of months ago, with a young lady whom I was seeing at the time. Short of the physical end of things, we didn’t have much in common, but I knew her to be a yoga devotee, so I thought I might impress her with my open-mindedness and willingness to try her class with her.

What ensued instead was her ending our relationship via text message some 6 days after the yoga lesson. Do I blame the “Hot Yoga” class we attended for revealing too many of my physical faults – perhaps too many for her to bear (e.g. I’m not very flexible, I have a low threshold for pain, I still get “wood” at inopportune times, I can perspire more in 60 minutes than most healthy males will over the course of an entire summer)? No, I think we were simply – indeed, laughably -  incompatible.

But please treat mine as a cautionary tale: Downward Dog can lead to a relationship’s downward spiral very quickly indeed – attend a yoga class with your girlfriend/boyfriend at your own peril; because you’re just one audible fart away from relationship death.

There we were, walking down College St., the busy Toronto thoroughfare. It was Halloween, and my friend, Guy, and I were on a mission to procure some red lightbulbs to lend his apartment the appropriate “spooky glow” so integral to a successful Halloween party (spoiler alert: the party was SICK).

It being Halloween, there was a distinctly ominous vibe in the neighborhood. More accurately, I think I was just a bit weirded out, Montrealer that I am, to see so much English signage – or perhaps I was still just feeling the effects of the 6-hour drive down the 401 from MTL. Whatever it was, I was feeling an eerie vibe. I was bracing myself to bear witness to any number of supernatural occurrences – a ghostly apparition, perhaps a UFO sighting, or maybe the audible cry of a lone, howling wolf (“but there aren’t any WOLVES in downtown Toronto!” I would surely exclaim).

So Guy and I make our way down the street; our destination, the Shoppers Drugmart, in sight. We begin to cross the street along a crosswalk when Guy sees something moving towards us. He points at it, and we both freeze. It’s white – a blinding white – almost glowing – and it’s moving with a deliberate rhythm – much faster than we are. But it wasn’t a ghost.

No, my friends, it was far more menacing: it was a mid-1990’s Acura Integra, customized to include an obnoxious “fart can” exhaust. Freshly waxed, the whip’s white paint was like porcelain. But not Ming Dynasty porcelain, more like freshly-cleaned Crane urinal porcelain. Still, it was shiny.

The mid-90’s integra was the kind of car that would usually come, straight from the factory, equipped with a neon-lit undercarriage, and a rear spoiler only slightly smaller than a park bench. I don’t want to stereotype or racially profile the owners of these cars, but I’ll simply say that drivers of tricked-out integras tend to be young, male, reckless drivers…but also extremely good at math. Fine, I’ll say it: they tend to be Asian.

The acura was careening towards the crosswalk, and Guy, projecting all the confidence of a Toronto urbanite, high on lattes (or whatever Torontonians drink – lord knows it isn’t beer) said simply “watch this.”

And then it happened; the Acura, all exhaust backfire bluster, light show, and booming bass, screeched to a halt at the crosswalk in front of us. I was shocked.

I looked at Guy, who turned to me and said “That’s right Dan, in Toronto – EVERYBODY stops at the crosswalk.” I was floored. All these years, I had convinced myself that Torontonians were a cold, soulless tribe; people who were obsessed only with money and status. I was sure the city was simply a bastion of douchebaggery – where people were cutthroat and had little regard for their fellow citizen – that is, unless said citizen played for the Maple Leafs. I was wrong.

What’s more, in Montreal, it’s a positively rare thing to see someone stop at a crosswalk. It’s not done.

So there you have it. Toronto: it’s not so bad!