Ashley was the girl working the little cafeteria on the boat. She had pale skin, thin red hair and a hole just beneath her lower lip where she would normally house the piercing her boss makes her take out for work. I asked if the chilli was a good choice and she looked at me blankly, paused for an unblinking moment or two, and then as unadorned and blunt as wood, said, “It’s okay, I guess.”
Our destination was Sheet Harbour, a community of about 800 people. The road we drove on felt like little more than a paved trail. We passed one other vehicle on the journey and overgrowth obscured road signs, giving us the feeling of moving toward a place that existed between points, a place free of time.
In the town we heard stories of Hurricane Juan. It tore the town up in 2003 and people were without power for weeks, but when three massive trees went down in the small, densely populated cemetery not a single tombstone was touched. What do you make of that, eh? You could get a good meal at the hospital cafeteria for $5, but the doctor was a drinker. Every home we passed seemed to carry with it a story involving the tragic death of children, of some tipping point when things began to fall apart.
Sandra wanted to travel to Nashville, Tennessee. “I’ve always loved Elvis and would just like to be able to look around his home. That would be a dream to me, but the truth is that anywhere would be nice, just to go on a trip and see something different. I’ve never been anywhere.”
Later, at the one local pub, the one open in the summer for tourists, we talked about tattoos with a young waitress. She had three of them, each one, she proudly told us, acquired in Oshawa– one of a Canadian flag, another a silhouette of a girl and a moon and the last one the word Serenity, which she had on her foot. She was going to be starting at Guelph University in the fall. “ I can’t wait,” she said, practically bouncing up and down, “It’s going to be so exciting to leave here, you just have no idea, it’s just going to be great.”
]]>It’s a great space. Cool and sophisticated, it was an effortlessly busy spot full of confident looking people undaunted by the presence of beauty. It emitted a really charismatic, downtown vibe. Waxed mustaches, iPhones and carefully considered lighting were all around us. The chefs working in the open kitchen at the back were illuminated as if actors on a stage, coming across more like artists than cooks, so theatrical and precise were they in the execution of their tasks.
The food was great, arriving like sculpture on plates, each one a conversation piece to photograph and post on Instagram. It was a little bit precious and eating the food almost felt secondary, as if it was the destructive, privileged indulgence of ruining somebody else’s creation (think of a bullying child knocking over a sand castle) rather than a simple act of physical restoration.
Much of this feeling arose from the comically small portions that are served at Ursa. It was as if a parody, with the experience of dining in a restaurant having virtually nothing to do with actually getting fed. Our main course, that cost $26, was artfully arranged, but it had less than three ounces of beef in it. My appetizer, one piece of tofu that was embellished by a broth poured at the table, $12, and Rachelle’s beet salad, which I think contained one beet, was in the same ballpark. You weren’t being fed, you were being fluffed, and walking out of the restaurant– now hipster laden and cocktail shaken– we had to figure out where to go to eat. Seriously. It was as if the theatrics had been done with– as well as a good chunk of money– and now it was off to get something less “arranged,” but more sustaining.
By definition the foodie culture is judgmental. It’s implied that you need a certain level of education to appreciate what’s in front of you, but unlike other art forms, the consumption of the food does nothing to elevate you. It doesn’t make you a better, more empathetic person or lift you up and out of yourself, but simply moves you into a class above others. It’s the surface taste of things, and the love and nourishment we imagine present in meals is oddly displaced, with each trip to a restaurant more like a visit to a museum than a participatory, reciprocal expression of something shared and humble. Taste, as they say, is not a moral virtue, but a privileged acquisition that has more to do with “belonging” than the content of any given individual.
]]>These are some excerpts from his journal:
It’s just like the Hunger Games. I’m in the woods with a bow and arrow and rock and it’s either kill or be killed. A bureaucrat shows up and asks me a bunch of questions about expenditures and I’m going to shoot her but my bow and arrow thing doesn’t work, so I start to hit her in the face with my big rock. When I wake up I feel completely awesome, like I had just recovered a fumble.
I’m in Chicago on my trade mission vacation and I’m standing in front of that bean cloud sculpture thing in the midst of a big media scrum. Tough questions, man. 
And then I see my reflection in the bean cloud thing. It’s like it’s me but it’s not me, and I can see that Bean Cloud Rob is trying to say something to me and that it’s important, like the winning play for my football team or the answer to one of the questions I’m getting asked, but something is preventing the message from getting across. It was creepy, like Bean Cloud Rob was a ghost, and so I got mad and started to push and shake the Bean Cloud, but nothing happened. Woke up fucking furious.
In my dream the NHL season is about to be lost. Everybody is sad and angry. I drive up in my Escalade and get out and stride into the boardroom where the reps for the owners and players are meeting. “Guys, it’s like this: 50% for the owners, 50% for the players and 100% for the fans! You got it, damn it, or do I have to tell you again?!” And everybody is completely thrilled with my plan and the Boyz n the Bright White Sports Car by Trooper starts to blast and we party like it’s 1999! And then a chick peels off her top and it’s even more awesome.
This one is friggin’ weird, but I’m a peanut that’s trapped in its shell. I’m at a ballgame and I know I don’t have long. I can hear some guy reaching into a bag and grabbing a handful of nuts, breaking the shells open and then chomping down on ‘em. It’s like goddamn thunder, it’s like I can hear ‘em screming! I know I have to escape but I don’t know how. I’m banging my peanut fists against the shell and hollering, but nothing’s happening and then I wake up really frustrated and mad.
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R: Oh Pickle, I just saw the worst thing!!
R: A man jumped from the Lawrence overpass onto the Don Valley Parkway and I saw his body, pinned underneath a pick-up truck. Just horrifying.
R: Sorry?
R: Oh, I see, your lunch was horrifying.
R: How sad for you that you had to eat the leftover lasagna I made the other night.
R: You’re very brave to endure such brutality.
R: You’re right, I should call it Pink Slimeasagna.
R: Regardless, imagine being behind the wheel of that truck, seeing a man jump and then running over him? Good God, that person will never be the same.
R: No, I don’t mean the person who jumped.
R: The driver.
R: No, I am NOT taking video of it!!
R: It would be awful for the driver to live with that, it would be a life-altering event.
R: Ha-ha. Yes, I’m sure that my leftover Pink Slimeasagna was a life-altering event, too. You’re very funny today, dear.
R: You had a coffee, didn’t you?
R: Sorry?
R: Well, I had never thought about it until now.
R: I suppose driving over a person who had just committed suicide would be more traumatic than seeing a UFO abducting a cow for probing.
R: How would you know?
R: Oh, that’s right, you have lucid dreams!
R: And in these lucid dreams you see UFO’s and drive over suicides?
R: I see.
R: Right, right, Night Time is Mike Time.
R: Did you really have that printed on a T-shirt in high school?
R: Very cool, I bet you were very popular with the ladies.
R: Sure.
R: Yes, I know, you were good at sports, too.
R: Now tell me, back in high school when Night Time was Mike Time, did you wear a Breathe-Rite strip to bed?
R: A Lucid Dreaming sleep mask.
R: It all makes sense now, you know.
R: Me?
R: I could dunk a basketball in high school.
R: And I had many lovers, some of them black, black as the night, Pickle.
R: I’m not being racist. I’m just stating a fact.
R: I never told you this, but I had a baby, a black baby.
R: Because I gave her up for adoption.
R: I was young, that’s why.
R: Her name is Jada.
R: Her father?
R: We haven’t seen one another in months, but we’re Facebook friends.
R: I think he knows about you.
R: Yeah, I think so. Maybe.
R: Not sure.
R: What does he do?
R: Well, he won Survivor: Fiji, but he’s really an entrepreneur, philanthropist, producer and advertising executive.
R: He looks a bit like Marvin Gaye.
R: But that’s all in the past!
R: You wrote a letter to Erin Collins from Survivor: Thailand?
R: You admired her grit?
R: Did she ever write back?
R: Oh, that’s too bad, Pickle.
R: Tell me about some of your high school sweethearts!
R: Oh, well I’m sure playing the field was a very good strategy for you.
R: Yeah, keep your options open.
R: What was high school like in the 50’s, anyway?
R: Okay, see you soon, xox
]]>Table Tennis reminds me of a Wes Anderson film and I like to watch it wearing shorts and drinking coke. It makes me feel like a boy, a boy with an unlimited future where anything is possible including an Olympic gold medal in a child’s sport, instead of the middle-aged man who keeps getting ads for Gout medication popping up in his Facebook feed.
Sailing is a sport I like to watch while drinking gin and tonics. I usually dress for this event, in the sort of outfit that would get you beat-up on buses or in certain towns. Actually, I should tell the truth here, I don’t really watch sailing, but fall into a kind of glamour stupor with sailing as the backdrop. I dream, and yes, these dreams include supermodels in bikinis and helicopter pads and then supermodels not in bikinis. Long live the one percent!
Perhaps my favourite part of the Triathlon is the name. It sounds like a Japanese monster that took on Godzilla. Beyond that though, I find myself drawn to the hopeless masochism of it and the strange psychology that propels people through it. “No, I do not want to do one thing well, I want to dedicate myself only partially to three different things!” I can relate to that. It’s an event for the ADD age, celebrating the doomed scattering of ambition rather than the focused of achievement of excellence in one field. It’s what people who don’t expect to win a marathon, bike race or swim meet do, it’s a hedge. I drink chocolate milk when I watch, as well as play video games, surf the net for good Groupon deals and unload the dishwasher.
Beach Volleyball has finally been saved. I couldn’t watch it before as I found it demeaning to women. I mean, why did they have to wear bikinis? And why weren’t their bodies more like, you know, women’s bodies? They all looked like a tall, thin and often leathery species from outer space. Nobody needs that kind of objectification. Now, in sensitivity to nations where the female body is rightly feared, especially if it’s revealed to look like it came from outer space, participants will be allowed to wear more traditional Burqas or clogs or whatever flies in your country, religion, etcetera. This year Beach Volleyball will be a learning experience, and I will treat it with the solemnity it deserves, watching it while sipping tea in my library.
* PS: This was recently published in and written for Ottawa Magazine.
]]>
They’re just not his bag.
I think that they make him squirmy.
You know, eww!
At any rate, Toronto is full of the gays and each year there is a massive Pride Parade, one of the largest in the world, and typically the Mayor of Toronto attends, regardless of how uncomfortable he may look amongst the Go-Go boys, atomic water guns and piercings.
Not Rob Ford. He goes to the family cottage every July 1st weekend and will not bow to the moral or political pressure to attend. He’s his own man, and if he wants to be drinking beer while floating about a lake in an inner tube, then that’s where he’ll be, damn it!
That is where he’s going to be this year.
You should know that I used to drink with Rob Ford back when he was a student at Carleton University and was known as The Slobber. 
We were both last call regulars at a local bar and we became friendly in the way that only barflies can. Even though we never had a sober conversation, we became buddies, and in spite of the fact we haven’t seen one another in over 15 years, we still message one another when drinking alone.
At 1:18 in the morning yesterday I got this message.
Rob: Mur, you see what they do to the Oreo!?
Me: Slobber!!!
Rob: They dressed it up like it was a fairy!
Me: The Homoreo.
Rob: I don’t want my kids eating Homoreos!
Me: You won’t even believe what they’re thinking of doing to Cheerios!
Rob: An Oreo is an Oreo. White between black. You don’t tamper with that. It’s unnatural.
Me: You can’t play God with an oreo! But what about the free market? Shouldn’t the free market decide what’s right?
Rob: WE’RE TALKING ABOUT FUCKEN OREOS!
Me: Has the Cookie Monster come out on this yet?
Rob: HAHAAHA.
Me: Seriously, the Cookie Monster and Kermit have long been suspected of being gay. They might be behind this.
Rob: Yer fucken with me.
Me: Yeah.
Rob: If I was there I’d punch ya in the head! Hey, you remember Jennifer?
Me: The waitress?
Rob: Yeah, Jennifer the ass waitress, not Jennifer the tits waitress.
Me: She used to let us order two for last call.
Rob: I think about her, you know. Can’t find her on Facebook.
Me: Can you make trades for the Maple Leafs, you know, being the Mayor and all?
Rob: If I could, I’d make Jennifer my wife. Fuck she was hot. She was my favourite chicken wing.
Me: Are you sad, Slobber?
Rob: Yeah, it’s wrong what they did to the Oreo. The world’s changing around us, Mur, it’s changing fast—outta ice, be back in 2!
]]>
Passing a variety of irritable and dehydrated looking people, I took the dog for a short walk and popped into a local take out place to order a sandwich. It was empty and the guy working the counter looked sad and drained, like he had just been defeated in a five set tennis match. 
There was a large fan on the floor blowing hot air and dust all over the place, and a small AC unit in the window up by the ceiling that was chugging away. The interior temperature on the air conditioner read 91.
Me: “Hey, how’re you doing?”
Counter Guy: “I’m hot.”
Me: “ You’re doing great! You’re not covered in sweat, your breathing seems to be fine– you’re a champion!”
Counter Guy: (Employing heavy sarcasm) Thanks for the shot in the arm, Mister Motivation! And what are you doing taking your dog out in this weather? It’s high noon, her tongue’s hanging out and she’s completely exhausted!”
Me: “ You’re projecting. My dog is fine.”
Counter Guy: “ I bet she has a different opinion on that.”
I gave him a hard look.
Me: “You don’t know what my dog thinks,” I hissed.
Counter Guy: “Right. Fine. Just tell me what you want.”
As I was talking through my options and trying to decide what to have, a family of miserable European tourists, all wearing khaki shorts and money belts, entered into the place. The two parents, both covered in sweat, had clearly been fighting and were exhausted. Their two children looked sullen and limp.
The wife, standing with her hands on her hips while her husband and two kids sat slumping on stools, immediately took charge.
Woman: (In perfect English) “I need to feed my children now. Give me something with chicken, something else with ham and two Cokes.”
Me: “I think I was here first.”
At this point the husband, speaking in some language that for some reason I took to be Danish, began to argue with his wife. 
This lasted for about 30 intense seconds. The woman put her hand up to shush her husband and then turned and fixed me a look.
Woman: “Look, who cares that you were here first? You were just standing there, idling.”
Me: “I was making up my mind,” I stuttered, “and anyway, it’s the rule of law here, first come, first serve, okay?”
Woman: “You’ve never had kids, have you?”
Me: “I have a dog.”
When I said this, the husband bolted upright. Noticing Heidi, our Miniature Dachshund, sitting at my feet, he abruptly got up and pointed at me.
Man: “Dogs aren’t allowed in here, this is an eating establishment!! Your animal is dirty and bringing it in is no better than bringing in a rat. And do you ever think about other people, whether they might be allergic or scared of the creatures? No, of course not, you North Americans, you all make babies of animals, you disgust me!”
And then he gathered up his kids and stormed out of the place leaving his wife standing alone at the counter. She breathed very deeply and very slowly, and then after about five seconds she looked me square in the eyes.
Woman: “My marriage is hanging on by a goddamn thread, and you, you have not helped matters.”
And then she flicked me on the chest and hurried out after her family.
I sighed and looked up.
The AC now registered 93 degrees.
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Heidi never have resume. Always rely on looks, reputation and friends to get Heidi job, but world change! Now must be Linkedin and able to navigate social media! Heidi decide it time to make resume!
Heidi Resume
_______________________________________
Heidi.
Heidi good dog.
Very, very good dog.
Heidi very fast dog with excellent fetch skills. Can chase ball, cat, squirrel or flying two-leg cheat animal. When Heidi catch, Heidi show no mercy! Heidi kill and tear, Heidi Alpha! But in right situation, Heidi work well with pack, no have to be Alpha even though Alpha. Heidi facilitator, ambassador of self-esteem who always make pack stronger! Heidi versatile.
Heidi great at digging!
Heidi almost six and in her prime.
Heidi fixed.
Heidi good dog.
Very, very good dog.
Important for employer to understand Heidi barking skills. Heidi bark like war bomb explosion! Heidi bark like dinner bowl falling from great height! Heidi never stop! Heidi provide first-rate security for all employment needs! Heidi smell and hear anything, then barkbarkbarkbark!! Heidi fierce, mother of dragons!
Heidi hate cats. No work with cats. Cats deal breaker for Heidi.
Heidi have good appetite. Try anything! Be very good food critic. Here sample of Heidi work:
“Meat lasagna good! Heidi eat fast and lick plate! Four star!”
“French fry limp and without texture. Hit all wrong notes for Heidi. Where meat?!”
(More samples available upon request.)
Heidi very committed to all projects she start and always see it through. Heidi once chase moth in den of two-leggers for three days until Heidi kill and eat moth. Heidi extraordinary bug hunter. Talk of reality TV show, Heidi: Bug Hunter!! but fell through because Heidi agent stupid two-leg with ugly face!!
Special Achievements:
Heidi won New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest and was featured on Cute Overload. Heidi capture and kill bat.
Hobbies and Interests:
Squeak toys, scavenging, religion, bugs and conspiracy theories.
References:
Rusty.
Banjo.
Rex.
Heidi not all bark no bite.
Heid bite and bark.
Heidi real deal.
You be crazy not to hire Heidi.
Heidi make your tail wag!
]]>