Deked

On the off-chance that any of this blog’s readership (once rumoured to be in the half-dozens) has stuck around, here’s something novel – a blog entry!

I’m once again a Torontonian. I haven’t been able to claim this since about 1987. My home, a middle unit the colour of cartoon flesh, sits between the Jamaican restaurants of St. Clair West and the ancient shore of glacial Lake Iroquois just above Davenport. It’s a weird house, beyond description. Given its age and lived-in feel, it should be haunted. So far though, nothing has come up. Maybe the shithound wards off ectoplasm.

Awhile back, in a discussion of former classmates, one name came up. The (potentially apocryphal) scoop on this guy is that he’s currently slacking hard, “just bumming around waiting for the end of the world in 2012”.

I’m not well-read on the whole Mayan apocalypse thing and my internet connection is being a major buzzkill right now. So due to my lack of informed-ness, I haven’t lost any sleep over this scenario. Still, just like everybody else I’ve been thinking plenty about every other realistic scenario that could spell the end of life as we know it, to borrow an old cliche. There are too many of us, we’re causing too much harm, and we just can’t keep our shit together as a global civilization. The stakes are high and the scene is ugly.

Anyway, you can throw away most of the above paragraph. Originally I thought I had a point here and it’s possible that I don’t and never did. But I do wonder how close to doomsday we are. How many people have already given up like our old classmate? I’ve never before questioned my negative-Nancy outlook on our existence, and maybe I should. If everyone just said ‘fuck it’ we’d be in worse shape. So, without sounding too idealistic, I say let’s turn this around! Together, we can de-coagulate.

Alright, positivity! The classic logo, colours and identity of the 1977 – 1996 Blue Jays will always chase the blues away. What you see here is clearly a little rough, but for someone with an idiot-savant relationship with the iconic batting helmet and no artistic ability, it’s pretty pleasing to the eye.

I’ve been seen in all of Toronto’s hot spots with this flashy blast from the past. There’s a good chance it fired up and possibly even inspired Cito Gaston, who kind of went apeshit on Roger Clemens, the former legend former Blue Jay who has since been outed as a steroid abusing adulterating horribly douchey excuse for a human being. Ol’ Gaston called Clemens an ‘asshole’, and that if Clemens were ever to confront him, I quote, “One of us would have had an ass whuppin’ that day.”

Not much else to say. Hopefully this blogging thing catches on.

Smitcessorizing, live from Australia

Nathan says:
dan, dan, that's a noun
chilling on back in london town

his face loves balls
so much that they're on his walls


Nathan says:
but he should be aware
that it can make his face look like pubic hair

Nathan says:
hahahahaha

Nathan says:
I crack myself up

Nathan says:
at your expense

Nathan says:
I'm sorry

Nathan says:
How's everything going bro?

Nathan says:
well I gtg, mom needs the net

Nathan says:
adios, cya in a week

A fortnight in the 519

Two weeks ago I gathered a hundred and fifty pounds worth of personal effects, awkwardly shut the door, and left my Vancouver apartment for the last time. I sat at the bus stop for half an hour, taking in the early AM Howe Street scene and puffing a joint. An hour later I was sprawled at the sleepy airport, reading about bonobo hierarchy as the sun started to come up. Seven hours later, high noon on Canada Day, I was back in southwestern Ontario smog. It was good to be back.

Things have been busy. Cruickshank and I trekked down the 401 to reconnect with the Torontonians in our lives. Monopoly was played, apartments were viewed, dating was tripled, parking was searched for, and fake meat was devoured. We came home and ate Thai food.

London still has its charms - from the quirky antics of our lovable police force to the constant lure of 24-hour squash courts, it's all there. I love reconnecting with family and friends, the comfort and space of home, and the feeling of groundedness. Still, it's impossible to discount the time spent away.

Sometimes as I lay in bed in Vancouver I liked to think of the Burrard Inlet, a mile away, and what might be in its waters at that time - freighters from Asia, blue whales, miscellaneous feet - all drifting under the emerald span of the Lions Gate Bridge.

In London, things are less exhilirating. Our water yields no body parts and our bridges suck balls.

Our balls are bigger

To kick off my extremely intense and intensely extreme summer workout regimen, I went on a squash-centric quest with my dad today, coming back with a pair of court shoes and a squash club membership.

My squash strategy typically involves getting angry enough that I feel an adrenaline high, but not so much that my goggles fog up, impairing visibility and encouraging concussions. Clearly this is not going to elevate me to the upper reaches of squash's noble hierarchy, so I dug out an old book.

Who wears short shorts? Ah, I shouldn't kid. Geoff Hunt is going to make me a world champion. He also rocks a sweet pair of Adidas runners and a seriously bad-ass mustache. This alone, not to mention his obvious squash expertise, will no doubt contribute to a future man crush.

What, you think this was today's only acquisition?

(Add thrusting motion here)

Other than a game of catch, I don't think I've let go of it. It sits in my lap right now, like a beautiful, heavily dimpled, CFL-branded child. I'm looking forward to throwing it, catching it, inflating it, and loving it. Every night I'll lovingly place it back in its kicking tee. I could try my hand at kicking, but fuck it. Placekicking is for wimps and soccer players.

This football, this synthetic life augmentation, inspired me to do some research. Like any good Canadian boy, I remember the Canadian Football League's grand marketing efforts in the 90s. First they put some teams in the United States. That failed, so they branded everything - hats, fields, players, fans - as being "Radically Canadian".

Eventually things became more risque and the league claimed that "Our balls are bigger". I unfortunately can't find any online graphics with this slogan, but trust me. After some research I've concluded that the CFL's balls are no larger than those used in the NFL. Lies.

I can deal with this, though. I love the CFL for being a backwoods version of American football, where two teams called the Roughriders can coexist peacefully, where football can flourish in places like Regina and Hamilton, and where transcendental yogi potheads can thrive after being banished from the NFL.

Oh, and another thing. The Toronto Argonauts are North America's oldest professional sports franchise, have the sports world's greatest and classiest colour scheme (Oxford blue and Cambridge blue), and are basically the greatest football team in the world. Go Argos.

Tonight I will play football and perfect my spiral. On Thursday I will consult with the squash club's resident pro and begin my ascent. It's good to be home.

Sea to street

Waiting in North Van's grimy ferry terminal just after midnight on a Monday night, I reflected on my time out here. Despite months of thought and introspection, despite patchy, self-indulgent blog missives, I feel like I've absorbed nothing.

The ferry arrived and I boarded, selecting a seat near the front, facing Vancouver's skyline. The glow from the windows illuminated the choppy water ahead. With a foghorn blast, we were off. The ferry negotiated the harbour, manouvering around a barge and getting back on course. Vancouver loomed ahead, looking fake - like something you'd see on a postcard or a mug. I actually own such a mug.

I tried to view the city as a tourist would - a tourist aboard one of those big Alaska-bound cruise ships, the ones that look like wedding cakes. It was a difficult task. I knew I'd soon be past the glassy facade of skyscrapers, into a dull downtown where someone sleeps in every doorway. But for the time being, while we chugged across the harbour, with the pearly lights of the Lions Gate Bridge on the right and the sleek downtown skyscrapers dead ahead, it looked like a swell place.

The ferry docked, I transferred to the last Skytrain of the night, and took it to the next stop. I ascended to street level and walked the four blocks down Burrard back to my apartment. All around me neglected people slept and scrounged. That late at night, I had no discarded Starbucks sandwiches to offer any of them. Back at home, in my comfortable life, I opened my window to the world outside. I heard arguments and shopping carts.

Fonk to the Future

I just came back from a beautiful day with Heather. It started with a thwarted attempt to obtain a beautiful baseball cap.

I want you, circa 1977-1993 Blue Jays cap. I want you bad, and someday you will be mine, united in sweet congress with my unkempt cranium.

Undeterred by this significant setback, Heat and I boarded a bus, dodged the used needle in the aisle, and sat down. A hop, skip and a transfer later and we were at the oddly unincorporated University Endowment Lands. Intending to hike, we scurried past students, the hippies and the orange, and made for the woods. Taking a trail to the water, we stumbled upon Wreck Beach. Its noise, sunlight, dongs and bosoms were a marked contrast to the cool, sun-dappled trail. We sat in a secluded area and watched prehistoic, graceful herons fish in the shallow water.

We made our way to a path along the waterfront. We saw barges hauling ass to Seattle, planes hauling ass to Asia, and assorted nudes hauling ass to Wreck Beach. It was surreal.

As the sunlight waned, we made our way back into the city, stopping at the Naam Restaurant on West 4th for some candida-friendly food.

Arriving back at my downtown lair, I flipped on the TV, hoping for some trashy Seattle-based goodness, and I was not disappointed. In between innings of a listless Seattle-San Diego baseball game, I was treated to a plethora of commercials that you just don't see in Canada.

Jesus Christ. Get out of my face. I need a DeLorean.

You'd better believe that if I ever own a car and find myself in Seattle or Tacoma, I'll honk when I drive by Fonk.

Losers since 1967

My sister Mandey is due to deliver a little bundle of joy sometime in July. Needless to say, my mom ran through the whole gamut of mom emotions ("What?" "I'm a grandmother?"..."What?"..."The child will need a quilt! Quickly now") and I've gone through the brother emotions ("At last, unclehood"...."Ew, babies"). I've shown my love through spotty communication and lack of interest while my mom has gone all out and knitted a mutha'uckin' quilt.

It was a bit of an emotional image to get in my email. I recognize the swatches from different stages of my life, different garments, and different memories. However, the most notable feature is the logo of the Toronto Maple mutha'uckin' Leafs. My mom is not a hockey fan, but she knows what kind of legacy the Gray family must pass down. She gets it. Here's a quote from an email she sent me awhile back: "Being a Leafs fan has given you so many important life lessons, and helped make you so cynical and bitter at such a young age."

Here's to life, hockey, my sister and my mom (and her circa-1994 power suit).

Round Three

I'm currently in my room at my new apartment, my third home in five months. I'm situated on the fifteenth floor of one of the West End's myriad anonymous highrises.

I still have no camera, so until then Google Earth will have to suffice. See the flat grey highrise in the middle of the screen, swimming in a sea of similar concrete buildings? That's where I am. My view of the mountains is slightly more realistic, and the sky is rarely that blue, but you get the idea.

My room is mid-sized and functional. My decorations (Leafs flag, BC flag, Pink Floyd "back catalogue" poster, Muhammad Ali poster, Leafs calendar) adorn the walls and Ikea adorns everything else. There is a jolly, loud yellow and white bedspread on my low-rise bed, hideous magenta curtains on the window, and a relatively restrained rug on the floor. In an ideal world, the beautiful smoking devices recently gifted to me by the Flavourphiliac's brother would hold a place of honour, but for now they're stashed in a box in the closet. I don't know my roommates too well just yet.

However, I'm sure I will soon. I was recently added as a Facebook friend by one of them, and I'm tremendously nervous. I'm not sure how she found me, as my name is fairly generic and there's no way that we'd have friends in common (in fact, I have only one friend on the Vancouver network), and I can't just ignore the friendship request. I edited the hell out of my profile, restricted a few things, and accepted the request. I can't have the people I'm paying rent to thinking I'm some kind of bearded transient who sneaks tokes out the window, even if this is in fact bang-on. No, to them I'm a respectable young man, a barista, who has moved to the west coast to experience the mountains, not to mention downtown Vancouver's rich tapestry of social ills and cheap sushi.

James just called me and asked about the place, the view. I told him it was pretty good, in that I could see across the harbour to North Van, not to mention the Lions Gate Bridge.

"So you can see ocean?" he asked.

"Well, not really, it's just the harbour."

"But you can see a large mass of salt water from your window?"

"Oh yeah."

"Holy fuck man. I need to come out there. Holy fuck."

It's true, I can see salt water from my window. Holy fuck indeed.

Hey, more hockey

I'm sorry that I talk about hockey so much. I just really like it, that's all.

Recently I got an illegally downloaded version of NHL 08 up and running on my computer, getting a late start on a long-standing tradition: since NHL '94, I've played through at least one season, all eighty-two games, with the Leafs.

This year, looking at the Leafs' roster - full of talentless albino goons, emotionally unsound goaltenders, drunk drivers, chronically concussed defencemen, and God himself - I didn't feel like guiding them to Lord Stanley's Cup. Their team doesn't excite me. It's a bunch of has-beens and never-weres. The only real incentive to be the Leafs in NHL 08 is Vesa Toskala's awesome mask.

Regardless, I can't make a decision as monumental as this based solely on a mask design. So, living in Vancouv', and respecting the Canucks and their revived blue and green colour scheme, I elected to control them. The first thing I did was trade away that useless wrinkled-up old relic, Trevor Linden, for draft picks and a bucket of pucks or something. I don't remember what I got for him - I just wanted him out.

Tonight at Starbucks, as I was preparing a chai tea latte in a for-here mug, Old Man Linden himself came to the bar to collect it. Hoping that he wouldn't detect my treasonous Linden-trading ways, I greeted him: "Trevor Linden!" "Yeah," said he. I needed to say something..."Man, I hated your ass back in '94 when you knocked the Leafs out of the playoffs." He laughed and moved on, less of an asshole than I would have expected an NHLer to be. I still think he's useless and should retire, though.

Odds and ends: The Leafs made some wise moves at the deadline, shipping the aforementioned albino Wade Belak, Chad Kilger and Hal Gill to some random teams for some spare sticks and a Super Nintendo. Mats Sundin elected to retain his no-trade clause and stay in Toronto. I never thought I could love the gargantuan reptilian Swede more, but there you go.

Oh, the humanity

This weekend, seeking amusement and desirous of live hockey action, I quested to a Vancouver Giants game. The Giants play junior 'A' hockey in the WHL, the same tier as the OHL. On this evening, they were playing the Kootenay Ice, who have to win some kind of award for having the most asinine name and logo in history.

Honestly, what the fuck? I instantly disliked this horribly adorned team, despite the fact that the Giants' logo is only arguably better.

It was a pretty boring game, but live hockey is live hockey. Kootenay won. During the second intermission there was an extravaganza of sorts, sponsored by Alaska Airlines and Subway. There was a jolly radio-controlled Alaska Airlines blimp which floated its way around the arena, dropping coupons, treats and prizes onto the fans below. It encountered a hiccup, however, when it gently bumped a corner of the scoreboard at centre ice. It struggled to maintain its former dignity, but the malfunction was obvious - it was leaking. It eventually collapsed, semi-inflated, onto the ice, a micro Hindenburg, where it was taken away by concerned staff.

The second half of said extravaganza was an event in which fans threw foam pucks, purchased for a dollar, onto the ice. The one closest to centre ice was to win a trip for two to Mexico City, and the second-closest took home a $200 Subway gift certificate. Obviously I bought a puck to throw. I love Subway. Many fans had pitiful arms and their pucks didn't even make it over the glass and onto the ice. It was the hockey game intermission extravaganza version of running into the first Goomba on level 1-1. I waited until most of the pucks appeared to have been thrown before tossing mine. I threw my foam disc long and true, watching its graceful arc against the Pacific Coliseum lights. It thudded close to centre ice, and rolled a ways before coming to a stop right next to the centre dot. There were other pucks nearby, but I'm sure mine was the closest.

The Giants' mascot, Jack, came out to judge the distances. He hammed it up for the fans, scratching his giant plush head in an exaggerated fashion before randomly selecting two close pucks as the winners. Mine, the true winner, lay undisturbed right next to the target. I was crushed.

By the next day, I'd sufficiently pulled myself together to make a Value Village mission. On the bus ride back, just after the sketchy portion of Hastings Street, I spotted a ruckus at the Church of Scientology. I'll never shy away from a ruckus, so I got off the bus then and there. Hundreds of protesters wearing Guy Fawkes masks and armed with signs and megaphones, were shouting at the scientologists, who were sitting behind a table on the street, distributing L. Ron's gospel. A little girl with her mother burst into tears at the sight of the masked protesters. Cars honked. It was tremendous free entertainment. I left with literature from both sides of the protest. If I wish, I can get a free e-meter test from the scientologists. The only thing holding me back is the Flavourphiliac's assurance that she will, in fact, dump my ass if I convert. This may be the price one must pay for freeing their inner thetan and discovering Zenu, alien ruler of the Galactic Confederacy.