Sharkboy

On our last trip to Disney World, one of the best time we had was rushing to the Toy Story Mania ride and enjoying the amazing new addition to Disney’ Hollywood Studios… It’s tough to describe how great it is as Disney’s Imagineer have really outdone themselves with the themeing and the design of the ride itself… but I’ll try anyway.

It starts with you being shrunk to the size of a toy and entering Andy’s bedroom with all his toys laying around. There is a path that takes you through this mayhem and you get to see anything from the giant ViewMaster to the Monkeys In A Barel, waltsing past Magic Spin Art or giant Crayola crayons or just a interacting with the giant audi-animatronic Mr. Potato Head. He will talk to you and if you’re not sure he’s really talking to you, he’ll identify you by your hat or shirt or hair… scary and funny at the same time.

After the winding toy-lined queue, we are given 3D glasses and shown our way to the cars. Immediate fun begins… you are taken through a series of different arcade style video games where you have to shoot animated darts, or eggs, or baseballs, or cream pies, etc… of course your score accumulates during all the different stations and then at the end you get your final score like this:

The better the score, the bigger the animal you get as a profile… I sucked on my very first turned and was named a Beaver while DR was named a mean Kitty Cat of sorts… Grrrr.. Problem is the game is over way too soon and you have to line up again for a long time to get more practice… Of course, we rush back and do it because it’s that much fun… I think we rode it 5 times in our last trip and still it wasn’t enough practice to become some kind of an expert…

Until now:

Oh yeah!

Of course we bought it as soon as it came out and have been playing quite a few times this weekend. The game on Wii is almost just as much fun as the real one (but not quite) and there are tons of newer games too based on the ones in the ride.. YEH…

The only thing I find weird is at the end of each games they want you to shake the Wii-mote control to get some extra score, the harder you shake, the higher the score… and I really don’t have to tell you what it looks like when 2 grown men hold an eight inch long object in their hands and shake it to the point of breaking sweat… At least they don’t make us shake it to infinity and beyond.

Last night, I probably savoured the most delectable dinner in all my time in Toronto. DR’s family was in town to celebrate his mom’s birthday and as it is the occasion when we get together, we all gather at a restaurant to celebrate. This year’s choice was Lola’s Commissary.

The idea at Lola is to share food with your table mates… We were 11 and this could have been disastrous, but Da made the very wise decision to let Lola bring us her choice from the menu… I think we tried every thing, and every new dish was better than the previous one. It was absolutely amazing, and I was soooooo full. Yet, I couldn’t resist Lola’s chocolaty heaven of a cake. Yu – uuum!

During the course of the night, I had 2 Lolas (tequila, ginger ale & cranberry juice), approximately 8 glasses of water and 1 coffee. And I didn’t go visit the gentleman’s room before leaving for our 30 minutes walk home… I’m stupid, I know.

Leaving the restaurant, walking with the family since we were going in the same direction, my body started giving signs that washrooms would be needed soon… I felt a lot of #1 and a little of #2 building up. Those who know me very well know that #2 is only reserved for the privacy of my own home (now you know too), so I knew I was going to have to wait and take care of both when I got home…

After we said our goodbyes to DR’s family, I gave DR the look he knows means we have to step on it, #2 is on deck, I was starting to have some type of cramp because my bladder was so full. Not a pleasant feeling, especially knowing that we still had another 10 minutes to walk, 7 if we went full speed and walked through red lights… which we did. 5 blocks to go… painful. 4 blocks to go… ayayayayaye… 3 blocks to go and then it happened: I looked behind, no one close, and although I hate this, I had to let one rip. And I did. And it wasn’t one of those little crampy-gassy thing either, it was a really looooooooooooooong one that continued to push out with every quick step I took. I was mortified, it just wouldn’t stop burping from my ass… but as we arrived to the last corner, when I could see our home from across the street, my body took a break from leaking air and all was good. I still ran across the street as the light turned red leaving DR behind and took a 3 minutes lead on him to have my “time alone”.

We always laugh at each other’s farts, I don’t know why men find this so funny, but I have never experienced something so unreal, so long, and so noisy… And thank god the wind was against us.

RIGHT TIME – RIGHT PLACE
Someone at work had asked to switch shift with him yesterday, so instead of my regular 8:30 – 4:30, I did his 9:30 – 5:30 scheduled one. It’s all good, I don’t mind helping out, I’m sure one day I’ll be the one with asking a favour.

At 5:30, I took my same usual path home. While walking eastbound on Gerrard St just past Yonge St, I saw this line-up of people patiently waiting to enter the Ryerson Theatre for their Toronto International Film Festival movie. We see these line-ups all over downtown during the festival so nothing special there, except the closer I got to the entrance of the theatre, the bigger the commotion was. I had my tunes playing, I wasn’t bothered, I was cool.

I continued to walk when all of a sudden, this cop stopped me and the people behind me as well, asking us to wait for a few minutes as cars were just arriving… I had no idea what film was playing but was curious enough as I realized the cars were most likely the star arriving at their red carpet event… This nice white car parked, this big black Hummer followed… I turned to my right and the crowd was going wild, camera flashes were going crazy… I turned to my left and there stood this important looking guy… an older gentleman I didn’t recognized… Then 2 guys who looked alike came out of the other car… didn’t know them either, but the flashes were still going crazy… Without wanting it, I ended up having the best seat in the house for the arrival of the stars… but I didn’t know any of them… I looked behind me, there another limo was arriving…

Should I wait? Will it be another person I won’t recognize?

I decided to leave, the cop let me through and I walked home… Apparently what I missed was this:

(Photo From Zimbio.Com)

Yep, that’s Nicholas Cage signing autographs at the premiere of Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans. And the other people I saw were the director: Werner Herzog and producers Alan & Gabe Polsky…

Cool…

If only I had patience, I would have seen him as close as one can get.

WRONG TIME – WRONG PLACE
Today on my way from work, back on my regular shift, I was walking eastbound, again on Gerrard St, when a woman coming my way, took a puff from her cigarette and then made a face not unlike Maleficient from Sleeping Beauty… and sneezed… hard.

GOOD FUCKING LORD!!!

I don’t know if any of you know what someone looks like when they take a puff from a cigarette and then sneeze, but it’s really hard on the eyes… There was a cloud of smoke all around her, I swear I saw some coming out of her mouth, her nose and possibly her eyes…

I guess my face showed my surprise and she started to laugh…

The weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.

When I was just a little baby, my parents owned a little local restaurant by the beach serving burgers, hot-dogs and french fries. The local youths could also find a jukebox there with all the hits as well as a pool table and some pinball machines. It was a very popular spot all summer long. My parents were the shit.

Over the years, they transformed it into more of a convenient store and kept it open all year round. When I was 7 years old they sold it and we moved into a brand new home a few streets away.

Years later, while I was in my teens, that same convenient store was purchased by my aunt and my parents spent a lot of time helping (read running the place) and making sure the business was a success again. The same customers who used to come when my parents owned the store were still coming by and were happy to see them involved once more. At the same time, the little Summer Town that was kept growing as more companies were moving to the area, which meant more houses being built and more people needing stuff. The more the people, the bigger the chance you’re going to find some majorly stupid ones.

My mom and I definitely share one thing for absolutely sure: A sarcastic sense of humour. (We are also blessed with a fantastic lack of patience, but that’s for another post.)

My mom quickly started to nickname the regulars based on their stupidity, or their buying habits, or their looks… Say for example, if a regular customer had a really large nose, she’d come back to the kitchen after serving him and announced that NOSE had just come by. Or if a customer always bought a strawberry pie everytime he came, he’d then be nicknamed STRAWBERRY PIE for the rest of his buying days. One guy used to buy Mark Ten King Size cigarettes and always asked for it very quickly like the four words were only one, plus unluckily for him he couldn’t pronounce the R and K sounds very well AND he had a lisp, so when he came by, my mom would returned and say that MAR-TEN-KING-SIGE had just dropped buy.

She always made me laugh.

Of course, today, I’m back at a position where I serve people all day long, not unlike a convenient store… and we do see the same people drop buy frequently… After 2 years of seeing some of them, I have developed the same habit as my mom’s had…

No one really laughs with me at work, but I find it fucking funny every time I see SNOTTY NOSE walk through the door, or if HORSE FACE starts filling out his forms, or when I ONLY OWN ONE BEIGE SUIT starts asking about files from the clients he represents. It always brings me back to my teens.

How sweet.

Today was possibly the busiest day I’ve ever seen at our office. At some point, it was standing room only with a line-up that went all the way down the stairs from the 2nd floor to the sidewalk and down the street.

In the midst of all this, someone found a cell phone on the counter and brought it to me. I immediately put a post-it note on it to say it was found on this date, this time at this particular location and put it away until I had a few minutes to bring it to the supervisor’s office for when someone would claim it.

Dring!
Dring!
Driiiiiiiiing!

Yep, that was the cell phone ringing (just add some disco beat to it and you’ll know how tacky the whole thing was. No iPhone for sure!). Of course I had to answer it:

Me: Court Services
Cell Phone Dope Head: Court Services? I’m calling my phone, right?
Me: I assume you are.
Cell Phone Dope Head: So where did I leave it:
Me: Court Services, 2nd floor
Cell Phone Dope Head: Hurghhh… So what now? Can you Purolator it to me?
Me: I can try to see if the Mayor will hand deliver it… Of course not. We don’t Purolator phones. It will be in the Supervisor’s office at this location until someone comes and claim it.
Cell Phone Dope Head: (silence)
Me: Ok then. Have a good day
Cell Phone Dope Head: Do I have to come back today? Will you keep it until tomorrow?
Me: We can keep it until next year, not an issue. Just ask for it when you come by at the Information Desk, they’ll direct you.
Cell Phone Dope Head: Ok. I’ll try to come tomorrow.
Me: Click.

Seriously… she was in that waiting room today for at least one hour, she knows how stupidly busy it was, don’t waste my time with your guilt. By the way, if you lose your cell phone, be happy that someone did not use it to call Japan or Australia to call some foreign psychic’s hot line. Say thank you for keeping it safe and come and get it at your earliest convenience. End of story, goodnight!

I said goodnight!

Yesterday, while walking home after shopping for fun fabric to make yet another coolish new t-shirt, we stopped at a little second hand store at Carlton and Homewood. They pile things up to the ceiling and and fill their tiny space with old-time little gems, you know, the kind of stuff you remember growing up with. They also have a big collection of old movies on video I like to rummage through every once in a while since I’m still looking to get my hands on Song Of The South, the Disney movie never released in its entirety on this side of the Atlantic… I understand there is controversy about the film’s content but since I’ve yet to see it, I can’t say what it really is about… I really like the songs and the animation part of it, so I’d like to see the whole thing once and for all… (Alert to all my bestest of friends in the UK where the full version was released in the past… you name your price!)

Anyway, while I was rummaging in the movie section, I could hear DR talking with the owner:

DR: Is this really $10
Owner: You can have it for $5
DR: Would you take $2 for it
Owner: Sure, sold.

Now, DR never bargains, so the fact that he did this was just amazing and I simply assumed he had just found a toy robot. I didn’t think anything of it at the time as I was buried deep in old Disney movies, looking for the one, no time to investigate what he was buying.

I wasn’t successful yet again this time, so we left. Once on the sidewalk I noticed a Disney box in the bag DR was carrying, I asked what it was and I screamed like a girl when he took this out:

Treasure!!!

Les règles de jeu

YEHHHHHH!!!

Ready for framing

The only pieces left…

A genuine 1960 Parker Bros. Disneyland Monorail Game! Made right here in Toronto too!!!

The box is a bit manky, and a few playing pieces are missing, but that’s not the point, it’s not like we’ll ever play with it, the thing is the board is immaculate, perfect for framing if we wanted to AND it just takes me back to our last trip to Disneyland last Spring… AAAAhhhh Mr. Disney. You make everything good again.

Not so long ago, I bumped into someone I’ve known for a long time, someone I used to be quite close to but haven’t seen a lot of in the last couple of years. You know, one of those things where you turn a corner and just happen to be face to face with someone you’re somewhat happy to see but get the good feeling it’s not the case for them… something’s not quite right in the look they give you… Being in my 40′s and not my Teens, I took the first step and greeted the person the same way I always did between us in the past and came closer to kiss him hello but at the last moment he turned his head and “allowed” me to kiss him on the cheek instead… Ok, not so much a big deal, it had been awhile, but it was clearly uncomfortable for him… After quickly exchanging banalities about how life was, he announced he had to go meet up with friends and left. So I got to hear that he still lives and works at the same place and then he was gone.

I can’t say I was hurt that much, I mean I didn’t really make that grand an effort to keep in touch with him, but then again, the same goes for him. Telephone and emails work both ways. So when I got home, I sent an email to say it had been nice running into each other and we should get together to catch up. I’m still waiting for a reply. Burn.

Not so long after that while walking in the Village, I bumped into another friend and mentioned running into the other person and also sending the email. He looked down at his feet and said: “He won’t write back”. I asked why and was told that it wasn’t for him to say. Apparently, without knowing, I’ve done this “major” thing to cause a friendship to end and although people around me know they won’t tell me.

So be it, it’s all good, I could try harder to find out, go directly to the source, but I realize that I don’t care… enough… about this.

But it made me start thinking about all sorts of people who have come in and out of my life, people I stopped seeing or hanging out with for no particular reasons, just because life takes you through many different paths, some good, some less fun.

Maybe I did something to them as well to stop the calls or emails from coming, or maybe it’s just that the friendship had run its course, or maybe my patience had run its limit with others’ idiosyncrasies. It’s hard to know why, we’re complex creatures, n’est-ce-pas?

Friendships will come and go, there will always be someone around to keep us smiling and when one is gone, another one will come, we have to remain optimistic about it.

Being well married helps too…