Taking Stock

I was going to mark the first(ish) anniversary of my blog (I actually began it last November) with a makeover, but I tried all the other templates available on blogger and I don't care for any of them. Instead, I've added a "links" list which is now a little empty but which will eventually be chockfull of good stuff.

My blog entries have been rather spotty, I'll admit, since I began my period of indentured servitude, but I've kept it up relatively regularly for a year and that's pretty impressive by my standards. (Insert your own joke about my standards here.) I was accused of blogging negligence the other evening, but I get accused of so many things (eating catfood, keeping an Easy-Bake Oven on my bedside table, hating homosexuals) that I find I just don't care.


I could make a New Year's resolution to blog more often, but instead of making New Year's resolutions, I'm thinking of using these last few days of the old year to tie up loose ends. For instance, I was talking to a friend last night who used the word "deleterious" in conversation, and I realized it was the first time all year I'd heard it used and I told him I was really glad he'd managed to work it in before the year was out. So, I'm going to try and work in some words I haven't had opportunity to use in 2006 ("exegesis," "crepuscular," "orotund"), wear all the clothes I forgot I had (this might require some layering, but layering is good in winter), and use up all my "best-before-the-end-of-2006" foodstuffs. The added benefit of this plan is that spending the last few days of 2006 in such a lameass way will ensure 2007 is a better year.

HO HO HO

I'm having a Christmas party tonight, which means that any minute now I have to leap into action and start cleaning my house (my to-do list includes sweeping up the dirt under the kitchen table from the plant the cats knocked over sometime during the early hours of Wednesday morning, and mopping up the cooking oil they spilled last night -- no, they weren't cooking, at least, I don't think they were cooking. I was cooking -- stove-top microwave popcorn, one of my specialties. Apparently I left the lid off the cooking oil bottle and the cats did the rest.)

Last night a friend and I took our annual stroll through the Christmas market in Old Town Square, drinking mulled wine, pricing ceramic beer mug/can of Krusovice gift packs, listening to the ethereal voice of the boy onstage (or "the eunuch" as we preferred to think of him), wondering if it was worth climbing up on the wooden platform in the center to view the whole magical scene from a vantage point roughly 10 feet off the ground -- deciding it wasn't. We had just concluded, for the second year in a row, that "nothing says Christmas like being ankle-deep in Japanese tourists," when we received a phone call from yet another friend who informed us we were "retarded" that the whole Old Town Square scene was "icky" and that we had better join her in a smoky bar instead.

So we did.

We sat for three hours in a room so full of cigarette smoke I felt like I'd been cured -- in the bacon sense, not the healed sense. Beer was drunk, politics discussed, fusball ensued. I got home sometime around midnight and whipped up that stove-top microwave popcorn I mentioned earlier.

The party is predicated on my roommate's acquisition of 100 bottles of beer from a Sikh friend who bought a beer gallery and is turning it into an internet cafe. He gave us a good deal on the beer (which I haven't actually seen yet, but which I'm told will be arriving sometime this afternoon) but the idea of having 100 bottles of beer in our house scared us both, so we decided to have a party and share the wealth.

The guest list apparently includes "some Hungarian guy, a guy from Madrid, and that weird guy," so it should be quite a time.

Okay, I suppose I should start cleaning...

Can You Dig It?

I'd have written sooner, but I've been busy tunneling my way out of my new office. I've started digging through the floor under my desk with a coffee spoon from the kitchenette. (I return it each night because I'm sure the spoons have all been counted. It goes back looking a little less like a spoon and a little more like one of those miniature shovels 18th English squires used to use for snuff, but i've bought some snuff, and if I have to, I'll start taking it. It would be a good excuse to get away from my desk, too. I could go hang out with the smokers in front of the building on my snuff breaks.)

I've taken my cue from Clint Eastwood in "Escape from Alcatraz" and ordered an accordion to cover the growing hole. My only fear is that I'll be called upon to play it at some company function and be exposed as a fraud. On the other hand, I may just be exposed as a really bad accordion player, and rather than becoming suspicious, people will just pity me and applaud and buy my CD.

If I make it through my floor, of course, it will only get me to the floor below, and I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to dig a hole under somebody else's desk, but I figure I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

In the meantime, I have to attend a seminar on how to talk about my company in my free time. Apparently, bitching about being overworked and underpaid, speculating about how much each of your colleague's makes, and quoting promotional materials and laughing and laughing and laughing JUST ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH. I'm rusty, I worked for the People's News Agency for six years and they were so unconcerned about their corporate image, they let a retarded guy from a Communist weekly appear at press conferences all over Prague wearing a shoulderbag emblazoned with the People's News Agency logo.

Anyway, if I sound all gungho about my job the next time I write here it will either mean the pod people have got me... or I've been fired.

Care to lay any bets?

9:46 And I'm Outta Here

The pie is done. I think it will be edible, but the crust will not be the best. The freezer is almost usable (it had literally drifted in) and the bathtub is filled with snow we're considering forming into balls and throwing at the passers-by. (May have to pop back online to blog that, if it really happens).

I've turned off the BBC in favor of watching The Kids in the Hall, but the U.S. elections won't really be decided until dawn anyway, and what am I? The OECD? You want some election results? Daniel Ortega won in what the plummy-toned BBC announcers insist on calling "NicaragYOUah" (the capital of which is, apparently, "ManagYOUah.") It's like when George Forman won the world heavyweight title again in 2004 or whenever it was and I felt like I had actually traveled back in time...

Speaking of time, it's 9:53, and did I mention? I'M OUTTA HERE!

8:51 and All's as Well as Can Be Expected

I bought the wrong kind of flour. This is a terrible faux pas for a self-styled pie expert (putting the "I" in PIE!). I've gone ahead and made it anyway (it entered the oven at 8:48, I used the ensuing three minutes to double check the cooking time - 45 minutes - and make sure my ipod cable was free of telltale toothmarks - it was, in fact, the ipod is charged and I can get back to rendering myself prematurely hard-of-hearing tomorrow).

My eye in Okmulgee spotted my opening post and supplied a handy link for following the election returns: http://www.swingstateproject.com/frontPage.do. This is good, because the BBC has reverted to its usual programming and I've been listening to the Persian poets of Manchester (Birmingham? Damn, neither, actually, the city where they had the race riots five years ago. I'm clearly not at the top of my monitoring form tonight. I think it's the multitasking, I still have to clean the kitchen and the fridge defrosting is not exactly proceeding apace, although I believe I've discovered one of those frozen corpses left over from the Franklin Expedition

More to follow...

Live From the Home Office...

Greetings! I'm back! I stepped out for smokes and was gone for almost two months! Crazy, that, especially given that I don't smoke. Or perhaps not so crazy...

But enough of explanations! Tonight is not about explaining things. Tonight is about doing things. Many things. And live blogging the whole shebang.

Things I am doing tonight include:

Making a strawberry-apple pie. Never heard of one? Me either. But the rhubarb I froze last summer has come down with terminal frostbite and I wouldn't feed it to a pig, let alone my good friend John Lowe for whom the pie is being made. (You'll note I've made no effort to disguise his identity. That's because he only uses his computer to admire his own new site -- plonk.cz -- and he'll never see this. But just in case he does, JOHN I'M KIDDING! The site is actually vineyards.cz and it's where you should all go to buy wine. He'll deliver. He might even bring you smokes, which, I gotta tell ya, would have saved me some heartache.)

But anyway, besides making this pie, I am defrosting the refrigerator and recharging my ipod nano (which does require a certain amount of human intervention -- I have to keep the cats from chewing through my STEVE JOBS YOU OWE ME SIX HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FIVE FREAKIN' CROWNS USB cable -- pictured above in all its deceptive simplicity) and monitoring the U.S. mid-term elections (via the BBC World Service) and cleaning the kitchen.

To find out how it all ends (I'm betting tears!) ... stay tuned!

Harvey's makes a hamburger...a beautiful thing

Week two of gainful employment is now history and the question that suggests itself is "HAVE i ever had a worse job?"

And the answer is, "Yes, that time you tried to learn French by working the late shift in an all-night hamburger joint in Montreal's red light district."

I'm not sure what possessed me, I guess I really did think I was going to enrich my French word power by serving "patates frites" to the Wild Billy's Circus Story of freaks and weirdos who constituted the late night clientele at a Harvey's on St. Catherine.

I knew I was in trouble the night five cops hustled a guy out into the snow and the 16-year-old Quebecois guy on the hamburger grill turned to me with shining eyes and said, "Five police for one guy, dat's not bad, but da record here is EIGHT! EIGHT POLICE FOR ONE GUY!"

I'd just finished four years of university followed by a year of French immersion and the 16-year-olds on the staff were worried about me. They didn't think there was any potential for personal growth for me at Harvey's (it's a Canadian hamburger chain, for those who don't know it). The two of them -- Luc and William -- took me aside one night and earnestly advised me to consider applying at McDonalds where there were "better benefits."

All the hookers who worked our corner (and ALL the hookers worked our corner) would hang out in Harvey's eating the food they'd bought across the street at Burger King. (One of them explained it to me one night, "I don't like the food here but they won't let me sit down in Burger King.") One of my duties as cashier was to regulate access to the bathroom. I had a button under the counter I could press to open the door. One night, I let a very drunk hooker into the bathroom then forgot about her. About 20 minutes later, I buzzed somebody else in and there was an ear-splitting scream and the hooker came storming up to the counter to inform me that she'd been "counting her money" and she didn't appreciate being interrupted and the last cashier that had worked here used to do that to her and she had had to "mess with that girl."

Having no desire to be "messed" with, I promised her it would never happen again. I was ready to promise never to let anyone else into the bathroom. I was ready to let her pee all over the restaurant. I just didn't want my attempt to improve my French to end in a fire-engine-red stiletto heel through my heart.

So yes, I have had worse jobs.

Let's Not Go!

sylvainsylvain's request for "more fucked-up travelogs" has been duly noted, but as I haven't gone anywhere other than work lately, there's not much to write about. This may change now that I have my new 3,200 kc passport (seriously, it SHOULD have some sort of special features - and being "machine-readable" doesn't count - it should be able to play MP3's or make julienne fries or help me lose weight while I sleep) but in the meantime, I have a great travel-related idea to share with you all: the "Let's Not Go!" guides.

Brilliant, no? The sort of brilliance found at the bottom of your fourth pint of Riegrovy sady beer (where I find most of my brilliance).

The idea is to write about places you'd never advise anyone to go. My first article will be "Let's Not Go Sackville, New Brunswick!"
I know, as if anyone needs to be warned against a town named "Sackville," but I've thought of my opening line and I can't bear not to write it: "There are worse things a person could do than go to Sackville, New Brunswick - crapping one's pants in public comes to mind."

Now all I have to do is set up a "wiki" (it sounds like a type of small tent, doesn't it? So how hard could it be to set up?), let everyone in the world know about it, post my opening article on Sackville, then sit back and let the thing write itself.

Dudes, it's as good as done.

Faithful readers!

Gainful employment has me to the mat and is twisting my arm.

I'd tell you about my new job, but my new job is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO boring I'd put you to sleep just telling you what I do between 9 a.m. and 9:07 a.m.. In fact, what I do between 9 a.m. and 9:07 a.m. puts me to sleep every morning but the THWACK of my forehead hitting the keyboard never fails to wake me up.

So enough about my new job. Let me tell you about my new passport: it cost me 3,200 kc. I could probably have got two Uzbeki passports and a couple from Albania for that price. A passport variety pack. At the very least, you'd think a 3,200 kc passport would entitle me to some special privileges (free admission to Bryan Adams concerts) or come with some free gift (a hockey stick or a Loverboy toque) but NOOOOOOOOOO 3,200 kc just buys you a garden-variety Canadian passport. Mine with a particularly grim photo, at least, I hope it's particularly grim, because if that's what I look like, I probably shouldn't ever go back home anyway.(Below right: my new passport photo.)


On the other hand, the ASP (that's "average street price" for the uninitiated -- one of the many, many perks of my GREAT new job is that I'll be talking like this from now on) of a Canadian passport worth 3,200 freakin' kc is probably pretty high. But I should sell soon, before our new prime minister drives the value down.

Summertime...

I can't believe almost a full month has gone by since that last post. True, I was traumatized at being replaced by my own family, and it was some weeks before I could sit up and take nourishment (let alone hold a pen), so that explains some of the delay, but mostly, I've been on vacation (a fact I've chosen to illustrate with sand beaches and palm trees, although the closest I got to this was the riverbank at Branik with the old guys and women with the mahogany tans).

Vaca-SHONE, as the BBC announcer from Trinidad would say.

I've accomplished nothing of note in the past four weeks, unless you consider burning CD's and teaching the cat to fetch noteworthy and I can tell by your faces you do not.

My days of sloth are numbered, however: gainful employment is breathing down my neck.
(PICTURED: artist's rendition of gainful employment, note the malevolent stare and wingtip shoes and I admit, he does owe something to Grimace.) I start a real job on September 1. Yes, a real job, in an office setting (with luck, not a cubicle, but I don't know for sure). September is a good time for new starts and I'm really tempted to go out and buy a pencil case and some new shoes but I doubt I'll be editing technical documents in pencil and I own more shoes than God so that plan must be abandoned.

For now, though, I intend to enjoy my last few days of freedom i.e. DRINK!

Having a great time, wish you were here!

How I Didn't Spend My Summer



I usually go home to see my family in summer but this year I didn't make it and they've replaced me. They sent me this photo with the caption "Siblings." That's me, second from left, with my sisters and my brother. Apparently, all you have to do to imitate me is crouch down and hold a beer bottle in front of your face. Come to think of it, the resemblance IS eerie.

How I Spent My Weekend


If we had been two dogs and a cat traveling 200 miles to return home, our Friday journey to Uherske Hradiste could not have been more incredible. (I've polished this analogy a bit, in my first version, I had a cat, a dog, and a rooster, but then I realized I was mixing up "The Incredible Journey" with "The Bremen Town Musicians. " As you do.)

It all began last Friday at 5 p.m. when three of us -- myself and my good friends "Bike" and "Marsha" -- set off in Marsha's trusty Mazda for the Summer Film School/Festival in the aforementioned Uherske Hradiste.

There was a quick gas station stop for a highway sticker because there were cops everywhere and Marsha didn't believe Bike's assertion that today's name day was "Mazda" and she needn't worry. (It actually turned out that it was Marsha's name day, and oh what a name day it was.)

All went swimmingly until about an hour outside Brno where we were to meet up with another friend -- Tyrol -- who was coming by train from Budapest. Suddenly, the engine seized, the car died, and we found ourselves on the side of the road considering our options and fortifying ourselves with banana bread.

We called a tow truck and a man with a very large belly and pants that threatened to go south at any moment (but never actually did) arrived within about half an hour. He loaded us and the car up and took us to the nearest town where a mechanic declared the car DOA. In a splendid display of good-trouperism, Marsha, rather than worrying about her car, began trying to figure out how to get us to Brno.

The solution was to have the tow truck guy drop the car off in a parking lot in the town (he said he drove by it five times a day and would keep an eye on it) then drop us off at the gas station/McDonald's on the highway where, within 10 minutes, Bike and Marsha had caged us a ride to Brno with a man in a van.

He took a somewhat roundabout route to avoid a big bridge he was afraid of, but delivered us to Brno safe and sound, dropping us in the center.

We walked to the train station, met Tyrol (who had been waiting there for three hours), found out there were no more trains that night so decided to check our luggage (in an area that would be closed from 11 to 4 a.m.) and catch the first train out the next morning (at 4:30 or thereabouts). In the meantime, we would just drink all night in Brno. As I said, why go to the trouble of developing these skills if you don't use them when you need them?

We had a good meal, and as we were finishing, Marsha, through the wonders of modern technology, used her phone to check the bus schedule and found out there was one to Uherske Hradiste at 1:20. Joy! We'd grab our luggage...but no, our luggage was locked in the train station.

We went to the train station to check it out, and sure enough, found it locked. But we figured there had to be another way in and as we were looking a man in chain mail walked by (this is a matter of some dispute, I say full chain mail, mostly because I believe it makes for a better story, but Tyrol, who seems more wedded to the truth than I am, says it was mail of some lightweight material, not chain. We agreed on "summer-weight chain mail.") At any rate, he was also carrying a shield, so I said, half jokingly, "Maybe we should ask this knight." He immediately turned and asked us what was wrong. We explained the situation and he advised us to use the underground passage, accesible in front of the station. We thanked him and followed his advice. (At right: Gladys Knight and the Pips, who didn't help us out in Brno, but would have if they'd been there).


We made our way through an underground passage lined with stores (all closed for the night) doing our best spy imitations, snuck up into the train station, rescued our luggage, then trotted over to the bus station. The first bus arrived, but was full. A second bus arrived, but was full. A guy in the line told us there was a train to Uherske Hradiste in an hour, so we decided to have a beer, kill an hour, then get the train. We had the beer in The. Fanciest. Herna Bar. Ever. (dudes, it was all art deco) with the guy who'd given us the train tip. He was pleasant but dull, according to Bike, who did most of the talking with him ("He kept mentioning 'open source' then laughing like he'd said something funny.")

We went to the train station in plenty of time for our 2:30 train, especially since our train (whose ultimate destination was Bucharest) was a half hour late. We stood on the platform where Bike led us in adapting the lyrics of Elton John songs to reflect the crisis in Lebanon, as you do. I can't repeat most of them here, but "Rocket Land" will give you the idea.

Our train came but it turned out that we would have to switch TWICE to reach our destination. This actually seemed about right, given the rest of the trip, and we took it in stride. It helped that we shared the car with a Czech guy who'd flown in from Copenhagen that morning and had been traveling from Prague since 9 a.m.

Three trains later, we were in Uherske Hradiste. It was 5:30 in the morning and the place was still happening -- people in the streets drinking beer or sitting at outdoor cafes, music still coming from some of the festival venues.

We took a cab two blocks to our hotel (it cost us 40 kc) then crashed.

I got up two hours later to see the new Leonard Cohen documentary, "I'm Your Man," but that's another story.

Escape from Reality TV

My exposure to reality TV has been limited; just enough, really, to have allowed me to conclude that I despise everyone who ever has or ever will appear on a reality TV show. In fact, I once concocted a plan to cull all such people from the population by placing an ad for a fake reality show in Variety (that's where they put these things, right? I mean, Annonce if you're trying to sell your '82 Skoda, Variety if you're casting a reality tv show. I didn't spend four years in journalism school for nothing). Anyone who answered the ad would be transported to an island with fake television cameras in all the trees (red lights on) and left there to die.

But that was before some friends and I came up with a brilliant idea for a reality TV show of our own. If you'll permit me, I'm going to practice the pitch I'll be giving NBC (that's who you pitch these things to, right? TV Nova if you have an idea for a naked traffic girl, NBC if you're pitching a new reality show. I haven't lived in the Czech Republic for 10 years for nothing.)

Our show was inspired by (is, in fact, derivative of) a real reality show we watched last night in which this chick had to live for a week each with three different guys and then decide which one she wanted to marrry or date or learn the last name of or something (it's blurry, I blame the saki).

The show was, as you can imagine, AMAZING. The girl was a gym queen with a head of artfully highlighted* and permed hair which she kept STRAIGHTENING. She had a gorgeous Manhattan apartment (or had been loaned one for the show) and a chihuahua named Mooky. (This, according to one friend -- the friend who owns a chihuahua and who admitted she'd watch an all-chihuahua reality show, if one existed -- made her "cool.")

I could go into far too much detail about the three guys and the hijinx that ensued, but suffice to say, the show followed most of the conventions of reality shows including that of having participants talk directly to the camera about what they're thinking.

There's also a crazy-ass panel of relationship "experts" who advise everyone and do colour-commentary on the proceedings.

At some point, fed up with the inanity of the dialogue (and the people, for that matter) we hatched a plan for our own, pseudo-intellectual reality show: "Who Wants to Date Noam Chomsky?"

The premise would be similar to that of the show we watched -- three women would each live with Noam for a week, after which, he'd decide...actually, I don't know if he would decide anything, because I think he's married. The big thing would just be his interaction with the contestants, all of whom would, of course, be airheads. We could imagine him sitting in his bedroom at the end of the day telling the camera bemusedly, "I just couldn't believe the way she'd watch television so...uncritically."

Noam's wife, we decided, would be on the panel (and possibly having the time of her life).

It strikes me now that it has the most important quality for a successful reality TV show -- it could translate across cultures. I can already imagine the Czech version, "Who Wants to Date Jiri Dientsbier?" And the Canadian version, "Who Wants to Date John Kenneth Galbraith?" only he's dead, so recruiting contestants might be more of a challenge. But wait, the generic, "Who Wants to Date a Dead Guy?" might be the most brilliant idea of all.

Does anybody have a number for NBC?


*Whenever I think of highlights, I think of Ukrainian figure skater Oksana Baiul who told reporters she'd gotten "headlights" in her hair. I thought at first it was as an aid to night skating, but it turned out to be a malapropism -- she'd actually been to see Miss Clairol.**


**"Been to see Miss Clairol" is a euphemism I've coined for dying one's hair. It could catch on, except that there's really no need for a euphemism for dying one's hair -- it's like coming up with a euphemism for taking a short stroll, or eating a small meal (both of which, come to think of it, sound like euphemisms in their own right).

Munich


I went to see "Munich" at the open-air theatre on the island last night expecting a documentary about the city and its famous October beer festival.

I kid, I kid. I knew it was a movie about the attack on the Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics and that image of the Palestinian kidnapper in his balaclava is one I may even remember from the time. (Yes, I'm THAT old).

What I didn't know was that it was also a movie about plastic explosives, and even more plastic dialogue, and phoney accents of every description, and (inexplicably, to me) elaborate dinners (accompanied by wine, not beer).

I also didn't know it was two-and-a-half fricken hours long (two hours for me, I amputated the last half hour in favor of sitting on a bench, drinking beer, and gazing across the river at the bright lights of the Karlovy lazne night club, listening to the mating calls of the Italian tourists).

I've been reading reviews this morning, trying to piece together just exactly what Spielberg thought he was doing, since simply telling the truth obviously wasn't it. If you want the "facts" about Munich, you should go elsewhere, apparently.

I can't believe the reviewers I've read watched the same movie, "somberly heartfelt, "an audacious political statement, "a brave attempt to wrestle with the impossible, "a film of uncommon depth, intelligence, and sensitivity."

All I could think as I sat on my bench with my beer willing the thing to be over was "I wonder what that movie would have been like if somebody SMART had made it?"

Where is my mind?

I saw the Pixies at Akropolis last night.

If you don't know Akropolis, you won't appreciate what a coup this was -- it's a concert venue with an official capacity of 600 and last night they sold 800 tickets (that's what I heard, anyway, and I always believe the stuff I hear from random people in the crowd at concerts, that's how I found out Elvis was not only still alive he was opening for the Strokes).

If you don't know the Pixies, you're probably Amish and the only music you were allowed to listen to growing up was the stuff you made yourself with your spoons, and god love you.

If you know both Akropolis and the Pixies, then you've just turned bright green with envy and I don't blame you -- I'd be envious of myself too, if I hadn't gone. (No wait, if I hadn't gone I wouldn't have been envious of me, I would have felt sorry for me; if I had gone, I would have envied me. But I did go, so I guess I am envious of myself. This is like one of those puzzles where you're locked in a room with two doors and a guard at each door and one tells the truth all the time and one lies, and you get to ask one question to figure out how to get out. Except my version would be you're locked in a room with me and I don't make any sense whatsoever and you can't get out and you go insane.)

But I digress.

We were packed into Akropolis like tuna in its own oil (I'm trying a new take on an old fish simile, you were expecting "like sardines in a can," no?). The sound check took so long I was beginning to think the guitar-tuning guy was actually a homicidal maniac who'd killed the Pixies in their tour bus so he could steal their audience and force us to listen to his three-chord rock stylings ALL NIGHT LONG.

But then the Pixies came on and my fears were washed away on a wave of mutilation.

We sang, we danced, we sweat. Boy did we sweat -- I could have filled my plastic beer cup with water wrung from my own clothing. Not that I did, that would have been kind of gross, but I could have.

Afterwards, we wanted to drink beer outside, but the outside part (oh, give it a name, call it a "deck" or a "patio") at U Sadu was just closing so we did the next best thing -- we bought cans of beer and stood under the Zizkov tower drinking, doing the post-mortem on the show (Kim Deal looked really happy and surprised by the warmth of the reception and she smokes a lot), and tried to develop "signature dances" in the unlikely case that one of us should become a rock star.

I'm listening to the Pixies right now and I think I'll continue to do so for the rest of the day, grateful that the Pixies got back together, grateful that I attended the show (I got a ticket at the last minute because my friends rock), and grateful that I'm not Amish, forced to relive my concert experience by playing Pixies songs on my spoons.

Useless Information

The average large elm tree has eight million leaves. I don't know what constitutes an "average" or a "large" elm tree (I'm not even sure I'd know an elm tree if one fell on me, crushing me with the weight of its eight million leaves, not to mention its sturdy trunk) but I'm impressed by this statistic. I've been carrying it around with me for several weeks now, trying to slip it seamlessly into conversation, but to no avail. The subject of elm trees just doesn't arise that often in my circles.

Nor does the subject of locusts, meaning I can only share my knowledge that locusts are in fact just angry grasshoppers if I say, "Hey guys, did you know locusts are just angry grasshoppers?" which gets the information out, but so inelegantly. (And I am nothing if not elegant, as my present attire of baggy cotton tank top, shapeless blue trousers of some indeterminate, possibly petroleum-based, material, and house slippers will attest.)

And what of Renaissance astronomy? Did you know the great astronomer Tycho Brae had a gold nose? He lost the original, flesh version to syphillis. Fascinating, no? But waiting for people to stop talking about the World Cup and start talking about the Renaissance, or astonomy, or syphillis is like waiting for the Vltava to start flowing north. Or south. Or whatever way it doesn't normally flow.

I've read that the invention of the telegraph marked the birth of trivia: suddenly, facts - like the temperature in Boston - could be lifted completely out of context and sent whizzing across the country to places (say, San Diego) where they could be of interest, but little use. The result was the invention of the crossword puzzle and the cocktail party - two outlets for otherwise useless information.

So, what I should do is attend a cocktail party, where my store of facts should make me a hit. Failing that (and, as a plan, it seems likely to fail because I never get invited to cocktail parties) I should just drink.

Requiem for a Restaurant

The Georgian restaurant behind my house has DISAPPEARED! Gone like an Argentinian political activist (of years past, of course, Argentina isn't like that no more times, no sir.)

Tamada (the actual name of "The Georgian Restaurant Behind My House") was a neighborhood TREASURE. And that's a term I apply sparingly, the other treasures in my neighborhood being Frank Gehry's Dancing Building and my own bad self.

Now, instead of dadianska chacapuri and kutaisi salad (and the chance to pretend we speak Georgian), we have yet another place for gulas and svickova. And BUDVAR. The beer that prides itself on its high exports, and I wish they'd export all of it.

Below: A bunch of us hanging out at the Georgian place.


There've been many changes in this neighborhood in the past four years, some good, some bad. Lemon Leaf was an improvement on whatever used to be there, chiefly because I don't even remember what used to be there so how could it have been any good? The Colombian restaurant was a nice, if pricey, addition (although I was a bit disappointed to discover that the white stuff in the salt shakers was actually salt; please don't ask me how I discovered this). 02, as far as I'm concerned, is more fun than the public toilet it used to be (in fact, "more fun than a public toilet" is its slogan), and the renos at U Bubenicku were an unalloyed success because, really, can you HAVE too many pictures of big-boobed women around you while you eat? Ich Bin Ibin Ben Carculla (am I close?) is every bit as good as Troll Bar (I'd go so far as to say BETTER) especially since they kept the elvish inscriptions on the walls and we can keep calling it "Troll Bar."

Some changes were neutral: Fajn bar went from gay bar to gay herna bar, a transition that involved the addition of some slot machines and climbing plants, and nobody seemed to notice.

On the "bad" side, Red Room (which I didn't fully appreciate even as I was spending entire weekends there) turned orange overnight and became "Empty Room" (they should have called it "Vacancy"). Yukon closed, meaning the loss of a non-stop that alway had toilet paper in the washrooms. (C'mon, in late-night terms, that's CLASS.)

And to this list I must now add the transformation of "Tamada" into "Czech Restaurant."

Tamada started life as a combination restaurant/shooting club/bluegrass venue with the air of a hunting lodge in northern Quebec, complete with ratty pelts and guns. Over time, the pelts and guns disappeared and the bluegrass occasionally morphed into the kind of stuff Barry Manilow would have played if he were Czech, but the food got better and better.

And now it's gone. And, as you can see from the photo, I am officially in mourning:

"She was always beautifully dressed."

As you've probably heard by now, 17 men...no, wait, make that 12 men and 5 youths, have been arrested in Toronto on suspicion of participating in a terrorist group that planned to blow up parliament and cut off Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's head.

But get this guys -- one of the terrorists is married to a woman from CAPE BRETON! WHERE I'M FROM! How cool I mean shocking is that?!

Apparently, she was just a normal Cape Breton girl named Cheryl, interested in all the normal Cape Breton girl things -- the highland fling, the Gaelic language, singing, crafts, jihad.

(Photo: The new face of terrorism?)

Then she met and married "a muslim prayer leader and factory worker" and "went that way," as one of her uncles put it in the Globe and Mail, changing her name to the ancient Islamic "Cheryfa."

"Staff at the Gaelic College of Celtic Arts and Crafts, which is nestled in the steep Cape Breton highlands, remember her in her dance kilt, a pretty girl with light brown hair..."

Nobody comes right out and says it, but the underlying message is clear -- you can't do the highland fling in no burkha.

"She was always beautifully dressed," said a former staff member who didn't want her name used. (I assume she didn't want to be quoted saying something complimentary about a woman has since gone "that way.")

Elsewhere in the Globe and Mail, neighbors of Cheryfa and her husband Qayyum Abdul Jamal, said Jamal rarely smiled and his wife "wasn't much of a talker, either."

"One thing I can tell you for sure -- this guy was weird," said Jerry Tavares, a neighbour. "There was one time I said, 'Hi,' and he just looked at me. That was it."

Now this strikes me as...MY GOD! IT'S JUST HIT ME! MY APARTMENT BUILDING IS FULL OF TERRORISTS!

They ALL just look at me when I say "hi" and that little old lady who was having such trouble getting her wheeled bag up to the third floor yesterday probably had it packed full of fertilizer.

Because if terrorism can touch Cape Breton, it can touch YOU. Or more to the point, ME.

World Cup Fever...

...has hit Rasinovo Nabrezi 76. And how. I've even designed a special "World Cup" logo to mark the no doubt endless comments I'll be making on the subject.

Today, some introductory remarks: everything you need to know to discuss the World Cup knowledgably over a wine spritzer at a po-mo literature conference.

The World Cup is a giant fooball tournament (that's soccer, for you moms in suburban North America, that thing you drive your children to after their Japanese lessons and before you hide in the laundry room and drink the cooking sherry*).

This time around, for reasons no one has explained to my satisfaction, it's being hosted by Germany.

Many, many countries will participate, even Switzerland.

Teams will play until a winner emerges. If there is no clear winner, the German President will call on the side with the most shots on goal to form a winning team, which it may do with support from another team, but not from the Communists. Or the Nazis.

The winning team gets a trophy that looks like an arthritic hand clutching a doorknob.

The competition is only held every four years because it takes approximately that long to get through the preliminary rounds.

Canada has not qualified.

*Author's note: My impressions of typical suburban North American life are mostly based on John Cheever short stories, "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan," and (I've just realized) a childhood spent watching endless "Flintstones" reruns. And don't try to tell me Bedrock was a city. 

Rumbo

I've taken to listening to the BBC at night as I drift off. I find the sportscasts highly soporific. Just say the word "cricket" and I drop off.

The problem is that sometimes they follow the sportscast with something interesting and I snap awake.

The other night, for instance, I was all but asleep when I heard that Donald Rumsfeld had gone to Vietnam. It was just a recap of the day's top stories, so I didn't hear why Donald Rumsfeld had gone to Vietnam, and I lay there puzzling it out instead of sleeping.

My first thought was that he'd succumbed to dementia and forgotten what war he was fighting.

Then it came to me -- he'd gone back to finish things up, Rambo-style. (If I had photoshop, I would cleverly blend these two photos together, creating a "Rumbo" figure. Sadly, I do not have photoshop and I know the limits of Paintbox too well to attempt anything so advanced, so I've opted to simply give you the two photos. If you cross your eyes a bit while looking at them, they'll sort of blend. The only other option was a pic of Rummy as the main character in the Matrix, which was cool, but which really has nothing to do with this post.)

What brilliance! How better to distract attention from Iraq than to go refight Vietnam? Singlehandedly no less!

Having sorted this all out to my satisfaction, I went to sleep, only to find out the next day I had it all WRONG.

Rumsfeld went to Vietnam to "increase military contacts," not to draw first blood (part II). As far as I can tell (and I admit, I've only skimmed the press coverage) he didn't kill anyone, or rescue anyone, or fire a single exploding arrow.

On the other hand, the cricket scores I heard WERE correct, so pip pip and all that.