Doug Ford, the Conservative Premier of Ontario, is known for many things.
He is the brother of Toronto’s late, fun-loving mayor Rob Ford, is the canny businessman who led Deco Labels, Flexible Packaging and Cannabis Dispensary to a top 12 business ranking in the greater Etobicoke region for three of the last five years, and is an avid hockey fan who coaches a Peewee team in Etobicoke. What follows is the speech Ford gave to his players between periods during a recent game:
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“Great moments are born from great opportunity. And that’s what we have here, today, boys. This game sits before us like an undervalued property waiting to be bought and turned into condos by an alpha businessman! Do we have the necessary capital to make the purchase? You’re damn right we do! Do we have our mortgage rate advantageously negotiated?
I can’t hear you!
I still can’t hear you!!
I. SAID. DO! WE! HAVE! OUR! MORTGAGE! RATE! ADVANTAGEOUSLY! NEGOTIATED!
That’s better.
You’re damn right we do!!
We have the best flipping mortgage rate in the entire city!
We have all the talent and all the character we need to take this game from the Tornadoes, we just need to stop playing like a bunch of goddamn Midwives out there! You’re were playing like little girl witches out there in the first period. Sweeping your sticks about like ladies with brooms instead of chopping with them like they were axes. It’s like we’ve been cleaning up after the Tornadoes, not dominating them, and the Deco Labels, Flexible Packaging and Cannabis Dispensary Devils don’t clean up after nobody!!
Jesus H. Christ.
Defranco, please tell me I did not hear you interrupting me with a stupid question asking what a Midwife was. I will bench your skinny ass. Don’t think I won’t. I would welcome the opportunity. You just try me, Defranco. I dare you.
Yeah.
That’s what I thought.
Not so tough now, are you, you pitiful little puck bunny.
Okay, now that Midwife Defranco got his question out of his system, we can get back to strategy. Boys, I want you to think of the Tornadoes as a greenbelt that we are going to raze in order to develop. We are going to chop those little bastards down. We are going to throw their nests from their trees and shit in their brooks. We are going to show them what it feels like to be developed by the Etobicoke Deco Labels, Flexible Packaging and Cannabis Dispensary Devils! We are going to bring the full might of the free market down upon their socialist heads!
ARE WE OPEN FOR BUSINESS?
YES!
YES, WE ARE GODDAMN WELL OPEN FOR BUSINESS, NOW LET LOOSE THE HOUNDS OF WAR, BOYS, AND TAKE THIS MOMENT AND MAKE IT YOURS!!!
]]>While driving along Bloor he started to talk about how much things had changed. This, a safe conversational starter for men past a certain age.
What used to be there.
What’s there now.
All the things we had known and lived.
And so we shared our wonder at the velocity of the world overtaking us, of all the businesses popping up on the blocks passing by and the real estate prices that had long since soared beyond our reach. Each aspect of this conversation revealed an unresolved bitterness in the man, a sense of having missed out, and then a car cut him off. He slammed his fist on the steering wheel, “DID YOU SEE THAT ASSHOLE?!”, he shouted as he accelerated into traffic. I tried to say something neutral yet supportive in tone, and then in an attempt to distract him from his rising fury, I asked where he’d most like to live if there were absolutely no limitations.
After some struggle, he offered up San Diego, but this only served as an entry point for a long, detailed story about being on a cruise ship with his ex-wife, getting ripped-off at the bar, and the fist fight that ensued. “They didn’t know who they were dealing with,” he said to me, his voice a cold, flat hiss.
And then we came to a red light and stopped. It felt like the barometric pressure had changed, that some destructive potential was either gathering or dispersing inside the car. And so we sat there quietly, lonely now in ways that could not be acknowledged. And beside us at the red light a beautiful young woman idled on her bicycle. When her eyes accidentally fell upon us, she quickly averted her gaze, just as we knew she would.
And then the light turned green.
She stood up on her bike and pedalled confidently away, into the future, I guess, and there was something so sad and beautiful in this, that neither the driver nor I even thought to speak for the rest of the ride.
(Photo credit to the great Lincoln Clarkes)
]]>You might be astonished, as I was, to discover that there is actually quite a bit about baseball, specifically the Toronto Blue Jays and their playoff run, in it. Here are some of the standout passages:
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Song of Solomon 2:9
Marcus Stroman, my beloved, is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look! Here he comes, leaping across the mountains, bounding over the hills!
Mark 14:51
A young man ran out onto the field after the 5th inning wearing nothing but a linen sheet over his naked body; and they seized him. But he pulled free of the linen sheet and escaped naked.
Leviticus 27:20
And after the pitch, which was surely out of the strike zone, was called a strike by the umpire, Josh Donaldson, the great rain maker of the Toronto Blue Jays,
turned to him, “Satan’s servant, if you do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, then in my anger I will be hostile to you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.”
Samuel 23:12
But Edwin took his stand in the midst of the diamond, and Lo, the ball soared deep into the night, and the LORD worked a great victory.
Leviticus 18: 19
Thou shalt not approach unto a woman to uncover her nakedness on game day, nor eat too much honey.
Samuel 15:3
This is what the Lord Almighty says… ‘Now go and strike the Texas Rangers and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey and batboy.”
Kings 2:23
Then he went down to Texas from the suburbs of Toronto to see the mighty Jays bring sorrow to the Rangers; and as he was going into the stadium, some youths came from the street and mocked him, and said to him, “BLUE JAYS SUCK! BLUE JAYS SUCK!” So he turned around and looked at them, and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord. And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.
Revelation 12:7
And there was war in the Roger’s Centre. Joey Bats and his angels fought against Rougned Odor, and the Dragon and his angels fought back.
Isaiah 40:31
But they who are patient at the plate and let pass the false strikes of Ranger serpent Yu Darvish,
the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary.
Song of Solomon 2:3
Like an apple tree among the trees of the forest is Troy Tulowitzki among the young men. I delight to sit in his shade, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.
I don’t believe that this crime was committed by a hacker collective known as The Impact, as has been reported, because The Impact can be nothing other than the name of a (white) B-Boy dance troupe from back in the 80’s.
At any rate, I think that the bloody-minded terrorist group ISIS, who really knows how to tear at the fabric of Western society, was responsible. They want to expose our corrupt ways and force our children to watch us shriek at one another while washing dishes after dinner. But no, no, I am not going to let terror win. When our leaders called upon us to shop in order to fight terror, I shopped, and now, when it is clear that we must continue our adulterous ways in order to stave off terror, I will be adulterous. I am for the troops, and with that in mind, I have just joined Ashley Madison.
This is my profile page:
RaccoonDrumCircleSexMachine
“Renaissance man”
Age: 36 (Leo)
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Height: 6’0″ (183cm)
Weight: 190 lbs (86kg) – Average/medium
Languages Spoken: English
My Limits are: Undecided
Status: Attached Male seeking Females
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: Caucasian (white)
Smoking Habits: Not specified
Tell me more about yourself:
I love puppies and animals in general, although I have never cheated on my wife by using them as sex slaves. By the way, raccoons are my favourite animal, and I am pretty sure they’re my spirit guides. Sometimes, I like to dress up as one for sex.
Besides that I do martial arts; extreme martial arts. And Parkour. I also play the drums, and it’s like I play the drums better than Satan, it’s like I’m having sex with those drums, it’s like a drumgasm! ( LOL!!) I’m also taking some college classes, one on zombies in popular media, because I love zombies and meeting young women who would normally be outside of my sphere. I work as an Uber driver (another great way to meet women and find out where they live) whenever my wife starts screaming at me about whether the forks are clean enough or some other bullshit.
Preferences and encounters I am open to:
I am on a quest– not just for sex with a female partner who is not my wife, but for all things. I will do and try anything. Some people say that I am fearless, as fearless as an urban raccoon. Would somebody who isn’t fearless spend just over a week in the woods searching for Bigfoot? I don’t think so. A person with fear would cringe from that challenge, but not RaccoonDrumCircleSexMachine! I went to the woods. Will you go to the woods with me?
What really turns me on:
Honesty would have to be number one, and a close second would be to see a Bigfoot man and a Bigfoot lady going at it.
What I am looking for:
I like chicks who dig passionate drummers, as well as submissive Goth types who are into role playing, but mostly I just like really hot babes. Here are some examples:
No Asians please.
]]>Every once in awhile a loud, guttural exclamation emerges from the poker table. Everybody looks back at the older men playing cards, trying to see if anything dramatic has happened. A short, stocky man in a satin Twin Dragons Kick Boxing jacket just won a big hand on a bluff.
It’s probably his lucky jacket, the one he wears out for cards, the one that reminds him of his days ascending, a jacket that he imagines still commands respect from all the gathered on this winter night. He’s standing up in victory, like he just knocked somebody down, like he just knocked the entire goddamn table down.
The waitress wears a clinging, striped dress and has short, blonde hair but for a long thin strand at the back that she’s braided. She talks quickly, does everything quickly, in fact, and likes to express herself through the flamboyant use of her body. Her body is the central component of any conversation she’s having, and it is her that the young man has come to see.
They sit together and do a shot, firing the empty glasses across the bar like the cowboys they know themselves to be. Boxing is on the TV, and the fighter the two of them have agreed, “Looks too nice to fight,” gets punched in the head. This repeats in slow motion, his sweat exploding into the air around him like fireworks, beautiful stars now lifting free from gravity.
The young man has his hand on her back, moving it softly, slowly around, and he is so happy, so proud to be the guy going out with her, alive in these days he will one day look back on with a disbelieving, hazy longing, while the man to the other side of them, still in his FedEx uniform, dozes on his stool, his dreams unknown.
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Middle-aged men, guys getting off work and who are still in their FedEx or Hydro uniforms go there. Each night, as part of a promotion, the bar host’s a card came which takes place at the back on one of those poker tables you can buy at Canadian Tire. The other night it was Texas Hold ‘Em they were playing, and although it’s a cashless game, since it’s poker, people felt heavily invested.
As I was sitting at the bar drifting through the sports section, a fight erupted at the back of the bar. It was extraordinary how quickly rage, explosive rage, swept in and over the table. Men, something now ignited within, had pushed back their chairs and were standing. Screaming and swearing, they waved their arms about and stiffened into fighting posture, fists clenched. A woman, who seemed to be at the centre of it all, had a voice that was a black, untranslatable hiss, more the unearthly vocalizations of possession than language. She threw a glass against the wall, her long hair waving in fury, as the men shouted. It seemed the very manifestation of mental illness, that from the collective interiors of these people, a dark, stormy cloud of violence had been summoned.
But the thing that struck me the most was how quickly it all passed, and how everybody seemed to enjoy it. It had been fun for them. What, I wonder, does that say about us? On a frigid, lonely night in February a group of strangers go out looking for something. They find one another at a card table in a bar, and what they needed was this, to wake up and experience that jolt of electricity spiking through their bodies, so that for a moment each one of them was alive in the streaming arteries, heroes on a battlefield, the lion’s roar that answered back to the night.
There was only one person in front of me in my checkout line, and behind her a small pile of groceries on the conveyor belt that I presumed belonged to somebody who had just gone off for a moment to grab a forgotten item. Just as the person in front of me was finishing, a woman came speeding into the line from around the corner. “Excuse me, “ she said, “those are my items there and I just had to run off and grab a few things, can I go ahead?” This is what I expected, and I told her it was okay. She pulled out her phone, made a call and started to unload a shopping cart that tuned out to be completely full. Talking about Vail on her cell, she leaned toward me and said, “ Actually, I have a little more than a few items,” and then she continued on about partying with Goldie and Kate at some resort.
Me: “ Well, you can’t do that.”
Mean Woman in Expensive and Stupid Hat: “You said I could.”
Me: “No, that was for a few items, not an entire cart. You can’t just use a banana and a few pumpkin seeds as a placeholder and then fill up an entire cart. That’s an awful thing to do. It’s immoral.“
Mean Woman in Expensive and Stupid Hat: “Jillian, I’ll have to call you back, there’s a dick here I have to deal with. (And then she hung up her phone and turned sternly toward me) It’s just a few items, lighten up, okay? Jesus, you must be a real pleasure to live with.”
Me: “Damn it, I am a pleasure to live with! I’m whimsical and my wife and I laugh a lot, I’m just not going to tolerate your entitled behaviour, okay?”
Mean Woman in Expensive and Stupid Hat: “Really, you laugh a lot? Sure, I bet you laugh while your wife just rolls her sad eyes, questioning all the crappy decisions that led her to this sorry place in life, as you continue to babble on about your day bullying women at the grocery store. “
Sutapa, the cashier: (Laughs)
Me: “Sutapa? Really? I thought for sure you’d be on my side!”
Sutapa: “I was just laughing at something that happened earlier in the day.”
Me: “You’re lying to me Sutapa, I can tell. “
Woman at the back of the line: “This drama is just making everything take longer, it’s exhausting, and now there’s bad karma all over the place. Will you two please just get it over with!”
Mean Woman in Expensive and Stupid Hat: “Bully.”
Me: First of all, I’m not a bully, expensive hat here is a bully, and doesn’t anybody care about justice? Is this the way you’d want your children to act? We can’t let her win!”
Woman at the back of the line: “Fuck, stop it! Just figure it out!”
Me: (To the woman at the back of the line) That, was a pretty big karma bomb you just dropped. (And then to the mean woman in the expensive and stupid hat) You want to see how much fun I am? How about we decide by Rock, Paper, Scissors?
Surprisingly, the mean woman in the stupid and expensive hat agreed to this. I won, utilizing the paper strategy, and I have to say, it was the smallest, saddest, most lonely victory of my life.
I was accompanying a friend and her two daughters on a little outing to get the girls some fake ID on Yonge Street,
and as it was going to take about 40 minutes to have the cards made we went up the street to the Ban Mi Boys to grab a sandwich. We sat at a table for four, where it appeared somebody had left a shopping bag, and began to eat our lunch.
A man, short, round and about 10 years older than me, told us that it was his table and he’d saved it by placing his bag there.
Aggressor: That’s my table you’re sitting at! I saved it with my bag! You have to leave!
My bossy, stubborn, German friend:
NO!!
Me: Well hold on, perhaps you’d like to pull up a chair and sit with us? That way we can all enjoy our lunch and perhaps learn something about one another, too?
Aggressor: NO!! THIS IS MY TABLE!! I WANT MY TABLE!!
My bossy, stubborn, German friend: No, that’s not the way that it works. You can’t save tables. How were we supposed to know that this bag was some sort of magic placeholder for you? We’re not leaving.
Aggressor: YOU HAVE TO LEAVE! IT’S MINE!!
Daughter #1: I’m scared.
Daughter #2: I’m scared, too. Maybe we should just leave?
Me: No, we’re not going to leave. (Looking at the aggressor firmly) Either you can sit with us or you can find another table, but we’re not getting up from our meal to give you our spot.
Daughter #1: You are so cool, Michael.
Me: It’s not about being cool, it’s about doing the right thing.
Aggressor: I WANT MY TABLE, I WANT MY TABLE, I WANT MY TABLE!!!
Me: It’s not your table.
My bossy, stubborn, German friend: Go fuck yourself, old man.
At this point the man, snarling, swatted at my tray, sending it flying into my chest and lap. I was covered in my own lunch. I stood up to my full height and opened my arms wide, “In my heart and mind I have your troubled soul in my full embrace,” and as he was looking at me all confused, I sprayed him with the little bottle of mace I keep on my keychain.
A father and his two young daughters walked by on the path beside me, and the dad commented to his girls that it was great that there was a baseball game on in the park for everybody. The youngest girl, the one who might have been four, looked at him like he was crazy, “Not really, you know you can only watch them play, right Daddy?”
A skinny woman somewhere in her 50’s jumped about behind home plate encouraging the Leafs. She had spiky, blonde hair and was wearing a two-piece Lycra workout suit that she’d pulled up over her paunchy stomach to the belly button. Her thing, it seemed, which may well have been her workout, was to trot off after the foul balls and return them to the coaches. It was clear that this wasn’t an official position, but rather a chosen one.
Not far from her was a guy in a lawn chair with opinions.
He thought that the strike zone was too big.
He couldn’t believe that a hotdog stand existed without Rob Ford at it.
The second baseman couldn’t catch the flu.
When the spiky-haired woman ran off after another foul ball, he piped up, “I can’t believe they’re so cheap that they make you give the balls back!”
The woman seemed almost insulted by this and turned toward him, her hands on her hips, and in a chippy, defiant voice said, “The game’s for free, they don’t make no money and they’d go broke if they were giving away the balls!”
Lawn chair: That’s crap, you gotta think big, you gotta think marketing! If they gave the balls away this place would be packed and they’d have sponsors all over the place!”
Spiky-haired woman: You just want something for nothing.
Lawn Chair: When I was a kid they gave ‘em out for free!
Spiky-haired woman: Well, this ain’t the 60’s!
Lawn Chair: Jesus, I’m not that old! (But he looked like he was) That just shows you don’t know shit!
Spiky-haired woman: Yeah, you are too that old, and you know what? The reason you’re griping about the balls is because you ain’t got none!
And then the second baseman booted the ball and the guy in the lawn chair used this distraction and started to shout at him, “Goddamn it, can’t you guys do anything right!” and as he yelled the spiky-haired woman kept looking right at him, satisfied that she’d protected her turf.
I nodded my head, “ So what you’re saying is that since you can’t influence the weather, why bother worrying about it, right? Well, I guess that’s a pretty reasonable way to approach life, if you can pull it off. “
“Rain, no rain, who cares?”
We sat in a kind of prickly silence after that.
As he rounded onto Bloor at Spadina, he began to furiously pound on his horn. “Look at this, “ he yelled back at me. “The lady is taking up two lanes while she tries to turn!” As he was saying this he was driving past the SUV, but still honking his horn and sneering at the woman for good measure. Feeling slightly wounded by his response to my rain question, I said, “Ah, you shouldn’t worry about it! You can’t influence how she drives, so why get yourself all tied-up in knots?! “ Adding magnanimously, as if offering him a drink, “And besides, you’re already past her, relax! Traffic, no traffic, who cares?”
The driver exhaled loudly, looked back at me once and then looked back at me again before shaking his head from side to side.
“You think you’re smart guy, eh?” he said.
“Sometimes.”
“You feel smart right now?”
“I feel like a fucking Buddha.”
“You are no fucking Buddha.”
And for the rest of the fare we drove amidst a tense silence, one that was punctuated only by the sound of dispatch in the background.
