Woken up bright and early by some highly irritating quasi-”music” on CBC radio. Too tired to roll over and turn it off I left it to play for about 20 minutes before somehow I managed to muster a slapping of the “snooze” button. 9 minutes later and CBC has managed to find something even more annoying than before. I shut it off with rampageous (I made that up) action, and stewed in my dopey sleep juices (ew, forget I said that) for a few minutes and then, just after 9am rolled around, trucked my ass out of bed.
I have an 11:00 meeting with WNoodle, and another deadline to meet.
Through groggy eyes I feebly attempt to edit my Thor’s Comic Column reviews which I wrote in a fit of uninspiration during Mythbusters at midnight the night before. I had another review to write and my brain wasn’t ready for thinking… it wasn’t ready for much, except perhaps more sleep. I ploughed through the review in about an hour (and it’s decent but not great) and popped up to the shower, cleaned myself up and got myself pretty for some Pacific Mall fun.
A quick chat with Emma, whom like so many others, is having massive ragweed reactions right now, and I was out the door. I passed the neighbours briefly, exchanged cordialities before rushing off to the streetcar stop to wait ten minutes. Noods was sitting in his car in front of his apartment, waiting patiently. I was only ten minutes late. We zipped over to Toast and Marmy’s place but first stopped off at a Mac’s for a morning dose of wakeup we call Red Bull (mine was sugar free, Noods went all out).
With Toast and Marmy loaded into the car we jetted (well, Golfed) on up to Fairview, an expansive mall out in ‘burbialand where everything is oh so generic. We waited in Fairview’s awkwardly arranged food court for Metrogeek, and in the process decided feeding our bellies wasn’t a bad idea. I opted for a cranberry MMmmmmuffin, while the power trio opted for 5 Taco Bell tacos for $3, a tremendous bargain which I’m sure their bowels thanked them for later.
Metro showed up in due time, and decided to have an Arby’s snack while we were in Rome. He came back with a surprise on his tray…
Me…
“I didn’t know you were a model,” he says, and I give him a querying look. He nods and looks down, drawing my eyes down to his tray liner…
Witness:
“Holy crap!” I say tactfully, snatching the paper out from under his sammich. Turning it right side up, and it immediately looks nothing like me, but upside down… it’s fuckin’ me!
“I didn’t know I enjoyed curly fries that much.”
“And I don’t think your teeth are that white,” Marmy adds.
But the likeness is outstanding.
photo by photojunkie
I think he’s officially become my Adversary… the Nerd.Inc. to my geek.ent. if you will.
Anywho, the five of us piled up into Metro’s VW and jetta’d on over to Pacific Mall where we (Hail Mary) found a parking spot immediately. We spent the day roaming its aisles looking for, well, very little in particular, except perhaps a quality pirate of Seven Swords which Noods had just seen at the Toronto International Film Festival and said rocked his socks sock-rockin’ style. Well, the only available copy had no English subtitles so we crapped out on that one, but we managed some delectible treats from one of Pacific’s many fine imported confectioners (I got 3 bags of “W Taste” - which is like a Tootsie Roll covered in coffee powder - so I was happy, and I found a copy of Wing Chun with Michelle Yeoh, which made me *very* happy).
From there we went to “All Star Wings” or some such up in Buttonville? (Markham somewhere) Yeah, they have 80 flavours of wings, which really I think is just too many. We ordered 50 (three different flavours) plust 10 extra, which went down waay to fast, so we opted for another 50 and after I gnawed off 28 I was kaput. The flavours were okay, but I’ve still yet to find a place that can top On Deck’s marvelous wings in Thunder Bay. Their cajun wings are the best wings I’ve ever had.
Good company mowing down of piles of deep fried bird parts seems like a nice capper to the day, but nope, we still had to drive back to Fairview and then back into urban life again. I got home about 7:30, just in time to recall that although I had finished my reviews I had yet to send them off. A final scan, and yes, they’re kind of crappy this week, and phoof, not my problem anymore. I had two hours of television time before I needed to head out yet again for the National concert, which I’ve been looking forward to since early this year.
I again made my peace with Emma and forged off into the forbidden lands of Toronto’s night, the glow of the backlight on my iPod my only warmth. I sautered back over to the streetcar stop, the same as this morning, and leaned against the pole and settled in to a nice game of Solitare. So enraptured was I that I completely missed a streetcar which I didn’t notice until it had already taken off. I felt like a dork, but fair is fair, he didn’t tap his horn or ring his bell at all, and my headphones weren’t on very loud. So ten minutes later I was finally on my way.
The National rocked ass.
More on the sideblog later about the band, however, one thing really pissed me off about the gig had nothing at all to do with the band, but rather the two skanks that were in attendance. Yes, I said skanks.
You ever see that movie the Banger Sisters? Me neither, but these two girls did and took it as gospel for how they wanted to live their life. They proceeded to yell loudly at each other during the National’s quieter moments, their conversation pretty much of the effect of “which one do you want to fuck tonight”. I was about one row back from the stage, and halfway through the set these two squawking birds decided to rush the stage and try and get the bands attention. They were total old school skanks.
The clothes, the hair, the makeup… for Christsake they were even drinking “50″. That’s the total skank/old man drink. At one point one of the skanks noticed the object of her affection, the bass player, was drinking Stella and she smacked herself on the head (literally) and said to her skank friend “I should have gotten a Stella.” Because, yeah, then that will give you something in common with the bass player, because, you like totally both like Stella. And it’s not like you have the music in common, because it could have been some shit raggae fusion punk band and you still would have been doing that skank dance that you both do.
And then, when the band was leaving the stage after their set, the girls… and I’m not making this up… jumped up and down flapping their arms waving at the band to try and get their attention. Bloody bikes.
Anyway, the band came back for an encore and the girls wouldn’t shut up as they played one of their most precious, delicate, quietest songs. It was to the point that even the band members were looking at them cross (us bloody hipsters… none of us have it in us to tell the skanks that none of the band will fuck ‘em if they don’t shut the hell up). The band left after the encore and the skanks went a-huntin’ to try and track them down. Then the band came back, a few of us intentionally filled the space in front of the stage to try to keep the skanks at bay, but those skanks are pushy skanks and they even elbowed me saying “we were like here before so…” and I just ignored them.
Skanks should be banned, I swear.
“50″. Sheesh.
The evening ended with a trip on the supway where I scared the piss out of Ms. Luminescent who hasn’t seen me since my hair was, well, like it is in the above picture. Current pictures, were there any, would reveal a mop of hair that, well, resembles a mop. There’s plenty of it. It took about 20 seconds before the seed of recognition set in but Ms. L finally realized I wasn’t just some creepy arse, but in fact a creepy arse she knows! RAH!
We talked on our way to our mutual subway destination, as Ms. L now lives in our area (in fact on a street I once lived on). I came home and decided that, with the amount of Red Bull and W Taste in me (as well as various green tea products consumed throughout the day) that wasting two hours blogging this would be better than the caffinated struggle to get to sleep.
I think I judged wrong on that one… what a boring post.
