The Word Show

Last week, on a whim, two friends, Guy and Evan, and I, decided to randomly fly to Texas for 5 days. Evan is a commercial airline pilot, and he was able to offer us a great deal on tickets to fly virtually anywhere. We decided on Texas, as none of us had really spent any time there, and we all felt we were in need of a “Manly Man” trip, and Texas seemed like the ideal place for it, where we might shoot guns, beat our chests loudly, and eat seriously unhealthy amounts of red meat.

The trip hit a snag before we even left Montreal, as Guy realized, the night before we were supposed to leave, that his passport had expired 2 days earlier. This was not atypical Guy behaviour (and I must admit not atypical Dan behaviour, either), but it seemed like it would be damning news for our trip.

Luckily, Guy was able to get an emergency passport renewal by 9am the next morning. The trip was on. The only catch was that Guy’s friends, whom he had put down as references on his passport application, had to stand by the phone and answer when the passport official would call, sometime before 9am. Sure enough, I got the call, and so I tried to adopt as professional-sounding a voice as my hungover self could muster. Here is the conversation, verbatim:

“Good morning, I’m calling from Passport Canada to confirm you know Guy Georgeson.”

“Yes, we’re friends.”

“And for how long have you known him?”

“I’d say 8 years”

“And what is Guy’s profession?”

“He’s a film and television editor”

“And what does Guy look like?”

PAUSE

“um, I guess he’s about 6 feet tall. Brown hair. Kind of bushy, brown hair. Brown eyes, I think?”

“any other description you can offer?”

At this point, I’m panicking, thinking he’s not convinced that I know Guy. I’m thinking I’ve derailed our Texas adventure, and I’m just not thinking clearly, so I say this:

“Uhhh, I dunno, I guess he just looks like a typical white guy, you know?”

-LONG, 5-SECOND PAUSE-

“Ok, thanks very much.”

CLICK!

I couldn’t imagine a more idiotic description – maybe the one the prostitutes in the movie, “Fargo,” give to the police when they’re asked to ID a suspect (“Oh ya know, he was just funny-lookin.”). But this wasn’t a movie. We wanted to go to Texas, damnit.

As it turns out, there was nothing to fear, as 20 minutes later Guy called to confirm his passport was ready. Yeee-haawwww.

The only thing worth mentioning about the flight into Houston was how we got bumped up to 1st class, and how I almost screwed this up. It turned out Evan’s colleague was piloting the Houston flight, and he told us that since 1st class was half-empty, we could sit there, so long as we didn’t draw attention to ourselves or our otherwise-marked tickets. I did not get this memo. All I heard was Guy whisper quickly to me as we entered the cabin, “Dude, remember, you’re seat 3D.” I was confused.

I parked myself in 3D, and in a fairly loud voice, announced “Hey, I think you’re wrong, my ticket reads ‘18F,’ not ‘3D‘. Are you sure we’re supposed to be here?“ As the rest of the 1st class cabin heard this, Guy and Evan turned and looked over, with a mixture of incredulity and pure rage in their eyes…it was then that I caught on to the plan. Guy then said, in a strained voice, “NO, DAN, CHECK YOUR TICKET AND YOU’LL SEE.” Finally, I‘d caught on.

Anyhow, it worked out well. We stayed in 1st class, and I made sure I asked for extra peanuts with my Bloody Mary, and that I flirted with the stewardess, all to convince my neighbouring passengers that I knew how to handle myself up front in the fancy seats, and belonged there with them.

We got into Houston in the evening and headed straight for a proper steak dinner at 3 Forks Steakhouse. The steaks were fantastic. The service was even better: one of our waiters was an older gentleman who was solely in charge of our bread supply, and he was extremely entertaining. Every time we asked for more bread, he’d chuckle and wink at us, and say something like “I hear that, my brother! More bread is on the way – you keep eatin’ it, I’ll keep bringin’ it!!” It was as if we were involved in a hushed,  illegal transaction, every time the roll basket ran empty – like “bread” was code for something. To be fair, the bread was very good. Maybe there was something in it?

After dinner, we hit a few of the bars in town: The Flying Saucer and then Notsuoh (‘Houston’ backwards). The Saucer was a typical, enormous college bar. There was a ridiculous amount of “collectible” crap on the walls, and they had a lot of interesting beers on tap. A few minutes in there confirmed my theory that the more crap a bar had on its walls, the duller the bar’s atmosphere. So after a quick pint we walked over to Notsuoh, which seemed to beHouston’s hipster dive. It was very cool. There was some good live funk/soul music playing, but we didn’t last long. Guy stopped to chat with the DJ – a nice black guy from New Orleans. As we said goodnight to him, I attempted to give him a fist bump, but he just looked at it and chuckled. Clearly, I was even whiter than I thought I was. He offered me a handshake and I gratefully accepted. All in all, it was an excellent 1st night in Texas.

Stay tuned to Vol. II for tales of spaceships, laser shows, flying dogs, BBQ, and more…

When I was 10-years-old, before I learned the importance of prioritizing “food” and “shelter” in one’s personal fiscal budgeting, this was exactly how I envisioned I would spend the first $1000 I would earn as an adult. Kudos to this chap for living out our shared dream.

You know how sometimes little kids, after opening a nicely wrapped gift given to them, will ignore the actual gift and instead play with the cardboard box it came in, for hours on end? After seeing this on uncrate.com, I totally understand where they’re coming from.

Honestly, The A-team was a great TV show of my youth, but all of the feel-good, retro nostalgia and ironic reverence of Mr. T pales in comparison to how freaking cool this box is. How are you not supposed to make a “VROOM!” sound every time you open this thing? It would be exhausting. But so worth it.

One of the best things about watching the Olympics is seizing the opportunity to become an instant fan of a sport that merits your attention for only 2 days every 4 years. That’s a level of fan commitment that even the most disinterested sports fan (read: me) can get behind. Compare that to baseball fans, for instance, who need to sit through some 162 ass-numbing games per season, and all the sacrifice that goes with that (the junk food intake, the sacrificed human relationships, the mental cataloguing of useless trivia), and suddenly becoming a biathlon or skeleton fan for a couple of days seems very appealing.

But even for the more obscure sports, there exist super-fans, even if they don‘t necessarily wear their passion on their sleeves. Take the guy who sat next to me and my dad during the Vancouver Olympic Women’s Fgure Skating Semi-final. Sporting a ball cap, a Habs jersey, a beard affixed to a leathery face, and a gruff voice bellowing out a fine, Joual accent, he looked and sounded like your typical French Canadian long-haul truck driver.

So with his atypical appearance (at least for a figure skating spectator), it was all the more surprising that this guy proceeded to wax poetic on the beauty of “le patinage artistique” for the better part of 10 minutes, educating us on all the minutiae; from the scoring system, to the estimated cost of the outfits, to why the triple axle was no longer sufficient for medal contention. My dad and I just sat there in total amazement. The guy new literally everything there was to know about figure skating. It was not unlike listening to your flamboyantly gay hairdresser tell you how excited he was to undertake his upcoming weekend project of installing a four barrel Holley carburetor in his classic ‘69 Camaro – you know, so the big-block motor he installed the previous weekend could breathe better.

I can’t say I became a bigger fan of figure skating on that night, but I definitely realized then and there that a Habs jersey can be worn pretty much anywhere.

Do not tell my Jewish grandmother, but I’ve just had  Matzah ball soup, and it was truly the best i’d ever had – by a Brooklyn mile.

The kicker is it was in quite possibly the WASP-iest place on earth: the Brewhouse in Whistler, B.C.

It was as delicious as it was confusing, sort of the gastro-cultural equivalent of perhaps catching this guy here, throwing down a 1080 McTwist in Whistler’s nearby halfpipe.

My Dad invited me to join him for a trip to Vancouver to watch the tail end of the Olympic games. Sure, one might say, that sounds like an amazing opportunity and a splendid father-son trip. Fact is, joining him out West not an easy decision. There was a lot of important work to be done back home in Montreal. Besides my laundry piling up, there was the matter of my hyper-stressful day job, which involves helping rurally located, plus-sized clothing shoppers ensure they are receiving the best possible customer service experience – all I‘m saying is air traffic controllers and hostage negotiators should spend a day in my shoes.

I had also been putting off teaching myself the entire Lynyrd Skynyrd song catalogue on my acoustic guitar, and felt that the time had come to pick up my dusty “axe” and make good on this commitment. Bode Miller might have been lying in agonizing wait for 4 years for his elusive gold medal, but I would not watch him compete until I had mastered the guitar solo on “Free Bird.”

Finally, I had just purchased my first set of cross country skis, and before Pops presented me with the offer to join him in Vancouver, I had every intention of using the days of late February to break in my skis, perfect a decent waxing technique, work on my upper-body form, etc., etc.

Sure, one might argue, cross country skiing is an enjoyable hobby, but it pales in comparison to watching Olympic-level cross country skiers battling out on the world stage. For most people, yeah, I guess so. Not for this guy. So it was with a heavy heart that I begrudgingly accepted the offer to go see the Olympics.

Of course, I’m kidding. The Olympics were incredible. That they were in our home country and in beautiful Vancouver made it a truly unforgettable experience. On top of that, we were invited there as VIP guests of a big Canadian company, who had pulled out all the stops for us, putting us up in a swank hotel, feeding us food and drink at every turn, and affording us special access to meet various athletes, celebrities, luminaries of Canadian business, and, of course, tickets to see the events themselves.

Indeed, what I learned about corporate-sponsored events is this: if viewing a concert given by a c-list Canadian pop star is merely bearable, then viewing said concert whilst downing free cocktails and edible-by-hand lamb chops, all served by pretty waitresses who are forced to banter with you, makes the concert amazing. Really amazing. But more on that later.

The next few days, I’ll be describing to you the highlights of what I saw, who I met, what I ate, and where I went. If at any time you find this dull and not entertaining, feel free to log out and not read anything I write ever again – honestly, I won’t be upset: I saw the Gold medal hockey game and watched Canada win in overtime – I’m not going to be upset about anything for a long, long time.

Stay tuned, amigos.

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.