The Word Show

This morning, as I was leaving my office’s unisex single bathroom, an attractive female co-worker went in right after me. Catastrophically, the woman closed the bathroom door right before I realized I had left my Blackberry in there. Please, don’t even judge: show me a man who hasn’t netted a high-score on his Blackberry’s Brickbreaker game while sitting on the can, and I’ll show you a liar.

That said, using a cell phone while in the loo is, of course, like so many things, an embarrassing habit that the fairer sex needn’t know about. But in my case, I had no choice. I had to recover my BB, and the only way to do that was to wait patiently outside the bathroom – like a naughty, detention-bound pupil waiting outside the principal’s office – until the woman re-emerged. Sure enough, she did, with my blackberry in hand.

“Looking for this?” she wryly asked.

I quickly weighed the pros and cons of lying: do I fib and sheepishly explain that the device had fallen out of my trousers? Or do I admit that I had indeed been using my BB on the can, and hope that she might be impressed that I straight-up CRUSHED my previous Brickbreaker high score (10,600 points)?

I opted for the former and went on my way, resolving in the future to walk further down the hall and use the men-only bathroom. What would you have done??

Let’s get right to it: I am 30 years old and still go to a pediatric dentist. I have it on good authority that I am Dr. Charles Dixter’s (a.k.a. Chuck D) oldest patient by a good 10 years. Actually, there are a handful of older patients, but their reason for seeing Chuck is that their own kids have started to go as well – so they have convenient alibis, and it isn’t quite the same thing.

I know it’s a little odd. But aside from enduring the ridicule of my friends and family (even my mom jokes about it with her own dentist. Thanks, Mom.), why should it really bother me? The way I see it, there’s nothing better about going to a DFG (Dentist For Grown-ups).

Let’s review: Dr. Dixter’s office has mint AND bubble-gum flavoured fluoride, comic books in the waiting room, dental hygenists who are continually impressed that I’m out of school, living on my own, and holding down a job (what‘s 13 -year-old Zachary accomplished lately? Thought so.), and, best of all, when I strap into the chair and lie back, rather than stare at a depressingly barren ceiling, devoid of any visuals, Chuck D’s ceiling is plastered with photos of kittens and puppies being all cute and playful. That’s about as soothing an image as you can have while the good Doctor D works away on your choppers. I’m not even going to talk about the rad plastic ring I still get at the end of every appointment, because it’ll just sound like bragging.

On the other hand, I have never been to a DFG, so I can’t say with certainty that doing so would be, necessarily, a horrific experience. But I have seen the film Marathon Man. That’s the one where Dustin Hoffman’s character ends up being interrogated and tortured by a sadistic German Nazi dentist – not a pediatric dentist, but a dyed-in-the-wool DFG.

Now, I realize it’s potentially unfair to paint all DFG’s as sadistic Nazis, as I’m sure there are some good ones out there (dentists, not Nazis), but why take the risk? Why bother going out for vinegar-flavoured fluoride or whatever slop the DFG‘s are serving, when you’re already living it up and getting the bubblegum flavor at Chuck D‘s?

For what it’s worth, I did ask Dr. Dixter, at the conclusion of my last visit, if he found it odd or at all disconcerting that I was still his patient, after all these years. Chuck just smiled, passed me a plastic ring that featured a picture of a gopher (it read “I go-pher brushing!“), and assured me that I was still more than welcomed through his hallowed halls, so long as I, quote, “promised to keep up with the flossing.” I sure will, Chuck D, I sure will.

Without too much hassle, I could switch from commuting to work by car to doing so via public transit, and it would tack on maybe 15 extra minutes to my journey. For sure,  it would be the virtuous and environmentally responsible thing to do: ditch the car, decrease my Shaq-sized carbon footprint; be more ‘green.’

But every extra minute in  the morning is, for me, a precious commodity – and the 15 extra minutes that driving to work affords me is like winning the lottery – albeit a very lame lottery. Still, it’s nice to be a winner.

Actually, the main reason I like driving into work is I get to catch a few minutes of  National Public Radio. I don’t know anyone else my age who listens to NPR, the typical listener being a 50+ year-old Liberal Vermonter, who grows his own vegetables, has an equal distrust of Big Government and Big Business, and is more interested in L.L. Bean  than L.L. Cool J.

But I like NPR a lot. I like that their news reporting is intelligent and relatively objective, and that commentator Garrison Keillor has the most soothing voice this side of Barry White – but instead of a disco crooner’s sexy-talk, Keillor waxes about quaint topics like basket weaving and Minnesota winters. So he’s not Barry White, then, although rumour has it Mr. Keillor actually pulls a lot of tail in his day.

The NPR radio signal floats in from Burlington, Vermont, and by the time it gets to Montreal, it‘s pretty weak, but my trusty Subaru’s radio does an admirable job of picking up it up. This would normally be an opportunity to write something about the superiority of Japanese radios, but I don’t want to sound racist – it wouldn’t be becoming of an NPR listener.

But at least once a day, as I slowly progress through the morning gridlock, often right in the middle of Garrison The Lady-Killer Keillor’s random musing about the beauty of ice fishing or Flemish poetry, my zen state is violently thrown out of whack by a passing car’s intercepting radio. That’s right, I get iPoached.

It’s a term I’ve coined for the phenomenon that occurs when a nearby car, with an iPod playing via an FM transmitter, poaches – nay – HIJACKS the radio signal in my car, and it normally sounds like this:

Cue Garrison Keillor‘s velvet delivery: “Today in poetry history, T.S. Eliot, author of notable works such as The Wasteland, was born in Oshkosh, WisconPSHSHSHH #@$#@%$#@$%$#@“WITH THA GANGSTA SHIT THAT KEEPS YA HANGIN  – HOW MANY HO’S IN ‘94 WILL I BE BANGIN?!!!”

Yup, Garrison’s butter-smooth voice gets cut out by hip-hop’s Original Gangsta, Snoop Dog, playing on a passing car‘s iPod. It only lasts a few seconds, but it’s enough to destroy my meditative session. Indeed, the solitary morning car commute, once viewed as the sole remaining fortress of solitude for the urban worker bee, has been compromised.

That said, the interruption gives me some food for thought, as I’ve wondered how many “ho’s” Garrison Keillor, with his ability to quote random poetry and recount enchanting stories about small-town America,  has managed to “bang.” What’s more, how long before Snoop D-O-to-the-Gizzle makes it over to NPR? Don’t laugh. He’s already got a smooth, public radio-friendly voice of his own, he’s got serious charisma, and, perhaps most importantly, like most NPR listeners, he’s an avid horticulturalist. I say we get that thug headset, a mug, and a comfy wool sweater.

A new relationship is an exciting thing. There’s the initial thrill of meeting someone you like and, if it goes well and she likes you back, then maybe there’s a 2nd date, which soon begets the 3rd and 4th date and, pretty soon, if you haven’t made a mess of things up until that point, you are in a full-blown relationship.

Or are you? How do you know? When is a relationship sealed and made official? Certainly not after the first sleepover – the prevalence of casual sex in our culture has taken care of that. And though many people have their own, personal criteria for measuring such things, there has never been a set, universally agreed-upon marker to demarcate when a relationship has begun.

Well, that’s not exactly right. There’s always been that one milestone, but it was always too dirty – too grizzly – an event to be the socially acceptable measure. Indeed, the passing – and that verb is very appropriate – of this milestone says: “Let us walk, m’lady, from this day forth, arm in arm, through the desert, across the frozen tundra, and, if there is time, through the hanging gardens of Babylon, as a couple.” This milestone to which I refer is, of course, the first time you have a poo while she’s over.

That really is the first time you realize things are getting serious. Up until that point, avoiding a BM in front of the new girl is a necessary dance we must endure. Even after a night of hard drinking, where such a release would be sweet relief in your hungover, bloated state, you must grin and bear it, pretending that a liberating waste deposit is the last thing you would want. Nope, definitely don’t need to pinch a loaf – you’d much rather listen to some Miles on your vintage phonograph and maybe pour you and your sweetheart a mimosa. Uh-huh.

And when the day does come that you decide the charade must end, it starts off innocently enough: maybe it’s the morning after date #5, and maybe you suggest that, for a change, it being the 5th or so sleepover, perhaps in lieu of going out for brunch, you can just rustle up some of your famous scrambies, home-brewed coffee, and family recipe bran muffins. How cozy!

But then nature, invariably, runs its course, and you very quickly realize why young couples enjoy going out for brunch. Hint: it’s not because omelettes are difficult to cook -that only the best, most hirsute, grumpiest, most hungover short-order cook in all the land could be trusted to pour eggbeaters into a frying pan.

No, that is not why young couples enjoy brunch. They enjoy it because where there’s brunch, there is a public restroom. And where there’s a public lav, there’s a throne built expressly for that anonymous, noxious deposit.

But enough of that. You made your choice, hotshot. You’ve had your home-brewed coffee, your homemade bran and, perhaps, feeling all European and sophisticated, your cigarette. The damsel you are courting is suitably impressed. But now, it is very much “go” time; the digestive witching hour, and it’s time to make your bathroom smell like the aftermath of a Viking invasion – that is, if the Vikings had invaded Mexico and claimed the burrito as their own. It’s ok, though. Better she know early on what you’re capable of. Who knows? She may even be impressed.

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!

As I sit here at my desk, neck-deep in “Twilight”-themed plus-sized merchandise (Vampires are very big with the kids, especially the very big kids), I’m thinking about Halloween. Specifically, I’m hoping my costume this year will offer a positive return on the time I invested in producing it.

I will be going as a “Douche.” The key elements of my costume will be a life-sized, homemade label for Summer’s Eve Feminine Personal Douche (to tackle the literal end of things), complemented by a bevy of douchey accoutrements: liberally-applied self-tanner, baseball cap with oversized ‘BMW’ logo, Bluetooth wireless earpiece, aviator sunglasses, golf shirt with popped collar, and a tribal arm band tattoo.

My return on investment, or “R.O.I.” in douche parlance, will hopefully come in the form of hearty laughs and some safe, no-strings-attached heterosexual intercourse which, now that I think of it, is itself a fairly douchey aspiration. Luckily, douchebaggery is an irony-free pursuit.

So this past Saturday, I may have hit a new low point whilst playing every modern drunkard’s favourite existential word game, “Would you rather…” This is a game where you’re asked which of two fates you would prefer to face. Some examples are; what animal would you rather have to fight to the death; a lion or a grizzly bear? Which would you rather be; the coolest retard, or the most retarded cool person? What looks gayer on a man; tight pants and a puffy shirt, or puffy pants and a tight shirt? You hopefully get the idea.

And so on Saturday night, we arrived at our latest scenario to ponder. 6 pints deep into intellectual discourse, we came up with this: would you rather have cancer of the aids, or aids of the cancer?

You’re welcome.