Kyle and Callie got married.
Josh watched.
Now, a week later the three of them talk about everything that went into planning and executing the greatest wedding of all time.
(P.S. A nasty cold has been going around and Callie’s mic cable kept falling out, so please excuse all the coughs, sniffles and intermittent fuzzy audio)
In anticipation of The Hobbit 3, we present a blast from the past.
The first ever podcast that Kyle and Josh ever recorded!
A comprehensive review from over a year ago plus Kyle’s inside celebrity gossip about Alison Brie and Colin Hanks straight from the set of No Stranger Than Love
New podcast means more bullshit from Kyle and Josh.
Today’s topics: strippers, iPhones and comic book heroes.
Kyle, Callie and I play the German, bean based, economics simulating, card game Bohnanza.
Something about hoes? I’m too hungry to write jokes.
If you hate your liver take a shot any time somebody says “bean”.
Also Kyle’s brain is tested when Josh asks him the following hypothetical questions?
1) Would you take $10M if it meant you had to transform into a Disney character everytime you ejaculated? SUBQUESTION: Which Disney character would you choose?
2) How would you take advantage of the seemingly worthless superpower of being able to see through your eyelids?
3) Would you blow a wild rhino for a rockin’ Dolph Lundgren body?
4) If you could send your consciousness back in time to inhabit the body of any 80’s superstar, who is broke and washed up by 2014, who would it be?
Which of these two dudes does Kyle secretly want to be?
I just watched Gotham on Fox.
After an hour on Twitter, discussing everything I liked (and hated) about the premiere with a buncha strangers I decided to come here, stand on my soapbox and rant a bit.
What the fuck, Fox?
Seriously?
The original logline for the show, the basic premise that intrigued me, AND THE WHOLE INTERNET, was: Gotham City before Batman. A police procedural set in the seediest, most corrupt, crime infested city.
The idea was intriguing. “But who would watch a Batman show without Batman?” I heard a ton of people who weren’t hardcore fans of the universe ask.
Smart people. That’s who.
I wanted to see a few good cops trying to go up against a corrupt system, just trying their best when even the highest ranking officials in the city are on the mob’s payroll. I wanted to see characters only tangentially related to Batman because Gotham City itself should’ve been the main character.
I’ll argue that Gotham City is Batman’s true nemesis, more so than any of the Rogue’s Gallery. Gotham killed his parents and Gotham never changes despite all his efforts to clean it up.
Having a dark, gritty series that showcases just how fucked up a place Gotham is would have given us a better appreciation for everything Batman does in his Sisyphean quest for justice.
“But Josh, you foolish asshole,” I hear you screaming. “How do you make that interesting to the average viewer?”.
The same way that DC Comics has been doing it for almost 80 years! Good writing and interesting characters.
They have so much lore to borrow from. They could’ve stolen from the best and it would’ve been completely within their rights. Take a bit from Grant Morrison, a huge chunk of Geoff Johns’ Earth One, add a dash of Scott Snyder for flavour and the makings of an awesome show are apparent right from the start.
Make Thomas and Martha Wayne THE MAIN CHARACTERS.
At least for Season 1. You make Tom an idealistic physician with political aspirations. Everyday when he drives past the Solomon Wayne Court House on his way to work at the Alan Wayne Memorial Hospital he can’t help but feel like the city that his ancestors built is going to hell and he’s doing nothing to stop it. So he runs for mayor hoping to right some wrongs.
Meanwhile Martha Wayne (who in this version was born Martha Arkham) struggles with mental illness. It’s a Gotham urban legend that her father went insane and murdered her mother when she was a girl so the people of Gotham all gossip in hushed tones about how all members of the Arkham family are crazy. Going all the way back to when Jeremiah Arkham built the famed Arkham Asylum for his insane daughter, mental illness is suspected to be heredity in the Arkham bloodline.
Martha’s dependance on Lithium and her dangerous bouts of manic depression are a huge scoop for the gossip magazines and threaten to derail Tom’s mayoral campaign. So she puts on a happy facade and plays the doting wife all the while she’s terrified that her genes have poisoned the mind of her young son who is already displaying sociopathic tendencies that she hides from her husband. She doesn’t want him to see any doctors because if is is diagnosed then she can’t keep living in denial that he’s a normal little boy.
The whole season is about the campaign leading up to election. The mob wants the incumbent Mayor to win and the throughline of the show is a plot to murder Thomas if he wins, but to leave him and his family alone if they can force him to drop out of the race through intimidation, or just steal the election all together.
Jim Gordon, who is still a uniformed cop, is assigned to protection detail. He’s one of many body guards for Thomas and Martha Wayne but most importantly he’s not a boy scout. He’s a bent cop, “on the take”. That’s the way it works in Gotham. He’s not a bad guy, he’s just pragmatic and accepts that he can still do a modicum of good as a member of the police force, but to survive he has to occasionally turn a blind eye on some shady dealings. He spends a lot of time with the family and bonds with Bruce.
Jim and Tom become good friends. They spend a year getting to know each other, BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, the audience gets to know him. And Martha.
That way when they’re killed after he wins the election AT THE END OF THE FIRST SEASON we give a shit about it. We’re not just sad because the TV is telling us to be sad and sad music is playing on a close up of a kid with a sad face.
We’ve lost characters we care about.
THEN in the second season Gordon is a detective, he’s personally invested in the case. He DOESN’T WANT to turn a blind eye anymore. He’s gonna solve the murder BY THE BOOK.
This is called character development. Growth.
He’s not just a cookie cutter good guy. He knows that by seeking justice he might even implicate himself, but his guilt just won’t allow him to just let it go.
Now little Bruce’s problems seem to come from the trauma of losing his parents and not inherent mental instability so he continues to go undiagnosed and without the medication and therapy that he needs. His obsession with revenge starts and we see his quest for justice as more of a poor kids delusion and we sympathize with him.
There’s so much potential story and character study here. It’s like ripe fruit begging to be picked and instead we get the exact same origin we’ve seen in film and TV a million times. We get Catwoman witnessing the Wayne’s murder, The Riddler working for GCPD, The Penguin ratting out the mob to Jim Gordon and Poison Ivy namechecked FOR NO FUCKING REASON.
We all love Batman and I guess the guys who created this show thought we’d like the show more if they crammed a whole bunch of nods and references to Batman in THE FIRST GODDAMNED EPISODE.
Remember how much we all LOOOOOOVED it when Anakin Skywalker built Threepio?
What makes Batman so interesting, at least to me, is how ineffectual he is.
He could probably fix the city with his mind and his money, instead he puts on a mask and beats people up. The truth is he creates the villains he fights. If not directly (like Two Face) then by just appealing to the crazies sense of the dramatic. When a psycho criminal sees a guy dressed as a bat, he decides to wear clown make up.
This was my main issue with all the recognizable villains that popped up in the premiere. They shouldn’t exist without Batman.
Last winter Kevin Smith and Paul Dini recorded an episode of one of my favorite podcasts ever: Fatman on Batman. They discussed a dream project of theirs, a TV show (like Smallville), that took place during Bruce Wayne’s youth.
The zeal and pure enthusiasm with which these two dreamers talked about this TV show that would never be, got me really excited. I can’t help but feel that the creative team either heard the show, or the massive fan response on Twitter, and at the last minute scrambled to include as many of those ideas into Gotham as they could.
I was hoping for a more subtle approach.
The show is called Gotham.
Instead they gave us the prequel to Batman Begins: Batman Before.
I’m gonna keep watching because I really want to love this show.
It’s just that so far, there’s seems to be too much Batman in a show that was supposed to be about Gotham City without Batman.
Kyle says he’s “not surprised” that Jennifer Lawrence took a buncha nude selfies. Josh is still crossing his fingers that Meryl Streep’s pics get leaked.
Can you believe there are 19 episodes of this bullshit show?
Kyle wants to talk about music… Josh keeps trying to steer the conversation towards “jackin’ off”.
An epic struggle.
Apologies for the inconsistent audio quality. The middle third sounds better than anything we’ve recorded, but the beginning and end sound like we’re in a cave… underwater.
Beat the Geeks
Rock & Roll Jeopardy
1D
Burgess Meredith
Taylor Dane
Blackstreet
Pitch Perfect No Diggity
MAGIC! – Rude
Ashley MacIsaac
Great Big Sea
Informer
Joy in Small Places
Legal
Lady Marmalade
Dirrty
Memoirs of an Invisible Man
Scrambled porn
GOB
I Hear You Calling
Sam Roberts
Bedouin Soundclash
OLP
Dean Blundell
Sault Ste Marie
Joy Drop
Trebler Charger
Jonovision
Sum 41
Smirnoff Ice
Staind
Joan Osbourne
On a Day Like Today
Dishwalla
David Copperfield
The Fugees
Josie and the Pussycats
KIDS
Butt Selfies
Degrassi
Six Flags Ads
S Club Party
Agent Cody Banks 2
Sex and the City
Girls
Shiri Appleby
Pirates
Backroom Casting Couch
Beautiful Agony
We get real in this episode. It was never meant to come out so we spoke more candidly than normal. You’ll hear LOTS of bleeps to hide names of people or other possibly incriminating details and lots of interruptions midsentence because huge sections have been cut out.
So if you’re a devoted listener you probably heard Kyle, Callie and I sitting at The Duke of York for our weekly trivia night when the lights went out. The blackout last April affected a pretty substantial part of the west end of Toronto.
The subway wasn’t even working so I couldn’t get home.
I take prescription medication for anxiety and my intense, irrational, fear that the power will never come back made me take more than I should have. You’ll notice I talk super fast and you can tell by how I talk that I’m riding an intense high.
Kyle and Callie, (heretofore to be known as Kylie) being proud “Eastenders” where pretty sure their building would have power.
In Part 1 of The Blackout we walked to Kylie’s and the episode ended right before we got into one of our famous 6 hour conversations since I figured nobody would want to hear it.
I managed to chop it into just under an hour of interesting conversation.
In this episode I try to convince Kyle to watch One Direction: This is Us on Blu-Ray and since he vehemently refuses we end up talking about the poor business decisions that caused BlockBuster Video to go out of business, my rampant alcoholism, the possibility of having a child and being a good parent and all the reasons why, after taking a crazy ride on the pussy train and having a revolving door of meaningless sexual relationships, I don’t want to date…
ever again.
The intro song is Gold Rush by Ed Sheeran.
Buy his album.
Sane people, I’m told, regularly have cravings for certain foods.
Most of the time when I experience that feeling most aptly described as “craving” it’s for experiences. Sometimes I’ll restlessly get out of bed because I crave a late night walk through deserted streets. Other times I can’t sleep because of an addition-like “jonesing” to watch Gremlins or Jurassic Park.
Today I have this itch… this craving to make a blog post.
I don’t even have anything interesting to write about.
OK, let’s see, let’s see. What can I write about today?
I got nothin’ .
That was wildly unsatisfying.
A few weeks ago there was a pretty big blackout that affected some parts of downtown Toronto. I was at The Duke of York for Tuesday Night Pub Stumpers Trivia so I took out my iTelephone and began recording the shenanigans.
On this special edition Kyle, Callie and I are joined by two of our trivia team members, Eric and Rowena, as we navigate a dark pub and the apocalyptic streets of T.O.
Find out what happens when we Kill The Lights
Kyle will be gone for the next 6 weeks and so in order to pass time I’ve been listening to recordings of his voice to fill the empty void in my soul. It only worries me when I start trying to have a conversation with these recordings.
To stop myself from becoming the kind of crazy person who talks to himself, I’m gonna try to actually get some use out of the recordings we never intended to release to the public.
Also, we’re finally on the iTunes click here to subscribe and while you’re there downloading our podcast FOR FREE, buy some of David Usher’s songs. He’s my number one favourite recording artist of all time and it’s always good to support Canadian Arts.
Kill the Lights (Accoustic Ver.)
Duke of York
Toronto to Barrie
Wentworth Miller comes out
CHUD
Skittle Bru
Magic: The Gathering
Joe Flaherty
Jim Flaherty Dies
Rock Death Hoax
Ultimate Warrior Dies
John Pinette Dies
Mickey Rooney Dies
Canada Gun Ownership
Our friend Brian’s Uncle Fred
Kill the Lights
I’ve seen a lot of movies in my day. Most have been good, some have been bad, but never did I dream of watching a movie so transcendentally bad that, like Alexander, I wept because “there were no more worlds to conquer”
Of course the movie I’m describing is Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 masterpiece The Room.
OH, HAI!
After being told by almost everyone how great this movie is, I finally sat down and watched it with my friends Kyle and Callie. This movie is 11 years old. You could say I’m a little late to the party.
Here’s our special commentary track for you to enjoy.
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with me will know that I often throw myself, enthusiastically, into multiple projects that we all know I’ll never follow through with.
Here’s yet another!
Bored Games.
A chronicle of the insane (and/or inane) conversations that spring up when playing board games with my friends. We’ve already recorded 4 of these so it’ll be a true testament to my laziness if this is the only one that ever comes out.
On today’s installment: Lord of The Rings Risk!!! The game of global domination with a Middle Earth twist.
“Six sided dice are for PUSSIES!”- Gary Gygax, 1979
Join my friends Kyle, Callie and me as we discuss every bodily function in sweet, intimate detail as well as pop culture, the acceptability of slur words and all the matters of the heart.
If we make more I’ll put ’em on iTunes. For now click here to download or use the built in player above to stream
For 2014 I didn’t want to engage in anything even resembling romance until after Valentine’s Day.
There’s no logical reason as to why, it was just one of the random, inflexible decisions I make. It’s like how I’m always hatin’ on “Whovians”, how I never trust people with blonde hair or my instant disdain towards anyone who uses “club” as a verb.
Despite my resolution I ended up meeting with a lovely young lady almost two weeks ago and we spent the evening watching a movie and getting to know one another.
With the idea of avoiding romance still in my head, I said my goodnights and left for home pretty early but not before sharing a chaste, yet strangely intense kiss.
I was in a bit of a post-date daze on my way home but this sort of pessimistic pall fell over me. I started thinking the whole evening was a mistake. After last year, I really don’t need the added complications that dating would bring to my life.
I thought to myself, “This girl is sweet and all but there’s nothing there, bruce.”
I guess I should mention I’ve been spearheading a campaign to replace “dude” with “bruce” in everyday conversation and I even use it when talking to myself.
I started to feel a bit blue so I put on my headphones and maxed out the volume on one of the many Kevin Smith podcasts on my iPhone. That’s when I felt someone poke me in the ribs.
I was standing on a pretty crowded subway platform and my initial urge to pivot like a prizefighter and throw a jab to the nose, fizzled away when I turned to face her.
Her lips moved and she smiled but I had no idea what she said, the master of SMod was jabbering too loudly in my ears. I lowered the volume and gave her my most charming “huh?”
She told me she liked my bag.
I’ve never understood when people use the word “plain” as if it’s a bad thing. I have a very nondescript personal style. I never wear anything with a corporate logo on it and if I wanna buy a piece of licensed merchandise I’ll only do it if it doesn’t have the name of the IP on it. It’s the reason I didn’t buy this awesome limited edition House Martell T-Shirt I saw on the HBO store. I loved the sigil but hated that it said “Game of Thrones”. I feel like those who appreciate it would be the ones who don’t need to be told what it is.
This is why the bag in question is one of my favourite possessions.
It’s just a plain black messenger bag except that it has the N7 logo on it and, the Bioware online store assures me, it’s made of ballistic nylon.
I watch a lot of Mythbusters and I’ve chosen to believe that means it’s bulletproof.
When she told me she liked my bag what I heard was “I know what N7 means. I’m cool! Let’s be friends.”
The next 20 minutes were the most pleasant I’ve shared with a complete stranger.
Eventually she had to get off the train but not before turning to me on her way out and saying “It was nice meeting you… find me on Craigslist!”
And with that she was gone.
The second I got above ground I went online and posted a Missed Connection on Craigslist. It was the first time I’ve ever done anything like that.
I don’t know exactly what my intention was. More than anything I feel excited about the prospect of making a new friend. It doesn’t hurt that she’s also super cute!
She responded to my missed connection and it got me more excited than I’m comfortable admitting.
Hopefully she’ll continue responding.
Nouns of Assembly.
What the hell are those?
I didn’t know, or at least I didn’t know that I knew, until I played a rather rowdy game of Anomia with my good friend Ryan, my bro Jaron and his lovely girlfriend Paige.
[*on a side note everyone should go out and play some Anomia RFN! Adults in general should make a point to play more boardgames*]
Nouns of assembly are special words used to describe a collective mass of any one particular thing. Most commonly in English they’re used to give different names to groups of animals. Everyone has probably heard of a herd of cows or maybe even a Flock of Seagulls but some of the more obscure ones are pretty fun.
Here are my favourites:
An army of ants.
A group of bears is called a sleuth.
Boars come in a sounder.
A caravan of camels.
If you were a kid in the 90’s Simba and Nala probably taught you that a group of lions is called a pride. Domestic cats come in a clowder but a group of wildcats is called a destruction! How cool is that?
A murder of crows, a convocation of eagles, a wake of buzzards, a parliament of owls and a pandemonium of parrots. A sedge of cranes, piteousness of doves, a paddling of ducks. When geese are on the ground they’re called a gaggle but in flight they’re a skein. A charm of finches, a kettle of hawks and an ostentation of peacocks. So many different names for so many different birds.
A group of giraffes is a tower, hyenas are a cackle and gorillas come in whoops. Africa… gotta love it.
A business of ferrets, family of beavers and a mess of iguanas but my absolute favourite is mice.
A group of mice is called a mischief.
My number one favourite word in the English language is mischief and I feel like it fits so well with mice. They’re such mischievous little mischief makers.
My birthday is only about 2 weeks from now.
Maybe I should get myself a pet mouse. I’ll name him something cool like Oliver or Nacho.
I’m about to show everyone the depths of my insanity.
Admittedly I usually am the type to dramatically overreact but let that not allow you to discount the SCIENCE I’m about to drop on your face, INTERNET!
I am a dreamer. Unlike Mötley Crüe, however, I am about to make it evidently clear that my heart is not o’ gold as I switch settings from normal (for Josh at least) to BATSHIT VEHEMENCE.
As a Champion for Imagination I have to speak up.
Ben Stiller’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is the worst fucking thing to happen to storytelling and should be seen as nothing less than a personal attack, A HATE CRIME EVEN, against storytellers or anyone with enough whimsy to see the inherent value in daydreaming.
Pictured: Hate Crime
In the past I’ve railed against people who “judge books by their covers” and who, in general, form opinions before collecting all the facts. It’s the reason why I’ve suffered through every single goddamned episode of The Big Bang Theory. I feel that it’s the only way to speak with authority when I say that it is THE WORST MOTHERFUCKING SHOW IN HUMAN HISTORY. It’s a right that I have earned through hours of torture at the hands of Chuck “Fuck-me-in-the-eye-hole” Lorre.
Pictured: Hate Crime
But when it comes to the new hashtag@mittymoviedotcom the trailer and the short clip I saw on Ellen today are enough for me to risk absurdity by declaring, sight unseen, that this movie is the slimy afterbirth of a bloody abortion of cinema.
I know you must be thinking, “Tell us how you really feel, Joshie!” and I’ll concede that it may not be completely out of line to call the Hyperbole Police on me, but there is some truth fueling my rage.
The tagline is “A life discovered is better than a life imagined.”
FUCK YOU 20TH CENTURY FOX! FUCK YOU RIGHT IN YOUR FUCKING DRUMS AND SPOTLIGHTS! YOUR FANFARE WILL NEVER AGAIN PRECEDE A STAR WARS MOVIE AND SO I NO LONGER OWE YOU ANY LOYALTY. FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU,
FUCK YOU!
Earlier this year Brad Pitt took my favourite book, tore it to shreds and wiped his ass with the scraps. Whether or not World War Z was a “good” movie is not the issue. He took a ground breaking, genre bending, cerebral and emotionally jarring, global scale masterpiece and churned out a generic ‘spolsion heavy action hero movie.
I don’t care that the plot deviated, my teeth gnash because the “creative minds” behind WWZ completely missed the point of the source material.
I’ve said numerous times that World War Z is not about zombies and these movie producers proved me right.
They took a story about the unpreparedness of world governments when dealing with disaster and the necessity of global cooperation and they turned it into a story about zombies.
More specifically a story about one man’s journey to TREK ACROSS THE GLOBE, REUNITE WITH HIS FAMILY AND SINGLE HANDEDLY SAVE THE WORLD from zombies.
Pictured: Hate Crime
Missing the Damn Point.
Now here comes Mitty, a giant lump of coal in my Christmas stocking.
Missing the Damn Point.
From what I can tell (and the tiny part of me that desperately wants to enjoy this movie hopes I’m way, way wrong) this Mitty movie is about a pathetic schmo who whittles the day away “zoned out” in his daydreams and learns that he needs to step up and have a REAL adventure in order to have a fulfilling life. They’re telling us all that our dreary boring lives aren’t good enough unless we’re jumping out of helicopters or street luging down some Icelandic mountainside.
Ben Stiller himself says “It’s about a daydreamer and a guy who sorta lives in his head and then he’s kinda forced to go out into reality.”
Any half-comatose jughead with a 7th grade education and A FUCKING LIBRARY CARD can tell you that is NOT what this story is about. That is, quite possibly, the exact fucking opposite message that is contained in James Thurber’s FOUR FUCKING PAGE SHORT STORY!
Walter Mitty is a story about a man whose overbearing tyrannical wife leaves him feeling worthless and emasculated. In order to cope he takes comfort in the adventures that he creates in his dreams. The story professes the VALUE OF IMAGINATION.
In this GoogleflixTweetbookXbox4 world I can’t think of a more necessary message we need right now.
Kids today can’t entertain themselves the way they used to. Most adults have forgotten how.
J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst recently released S. an amazing new book with a complex story that seemingly couldn’t possibly have been told in any other medium. ALMOST IMMEDIATELY the Internet is buzzing with “I can’t wait for the movie” and “Is it available for e-readers?” proof that our collective imagination is stagnating.
Every day another remake, adaptation, reboot or comic book movie is greenlit. Netflix is making a Jessica Jones series.
Don’t even get me started on Guardians of the Goddamned Galaxy.
Our lack of imagination makes it impossible for us to accept something we haven’t already seen. It’s the reason a Walter Mitty movie was even made in the first place. Movie studios scoop up the rights to any IP with a built in fanbase because they know they can sell it.
But again, they just don’t seem to be getting it.
Why go to all the trouble of adapting a story if you’re only going to strangle it to death and display it’s hollowed out corpse as your “version of it”?
World War Z would have been fine, and would’ve pissed fewer people off if it had been called Zombie Wars.
Ben Stiller turned 4 pages to 125 minutes. What we’re left with, I’m sure has nothing more than a passing resemblance to its namesake.
He should’ve called it Daydream Believer, licensed that Monkees track for the soundtrack and called it a day.
[note: it’s been almost three months since my last post. depression and poor physical health has made it impossible to motivate myself to write. the outraged fury that this innocuous episode of The Ellen Degeneres Show stirred in ma bellay finally shook me out of my funk. don’t get used to it. i might not be back for another three months]
The Daily Post at WordPress holds writing challenges every week and so I decided, after telling myself “I should try that some day” to make today that day.
The deadline is like, right now but seeing as how I’ve been up all night and have crossed the border between late night and early morning and most people aren’t awake yet I think I still might slip in at that last second.
The challenge for the week of September 9th is: Be Kind. Don’t Rewind
We’re taught to think that a well-told story — fictional or not — starts with A, goes on to B, and ends with Z. We automatically follow the rule established by the King of Hearts in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:
The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. ‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked.
‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’
(Louis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)
For this Writing Challenge, we’re asking you to disobey the King.
Sounds easy enough right?
Well here goes.
There’s really nothing in the world quite like the feeling of relief that one experiences when it’s all over.
We all need to eat but I’m confident in assuming that aroma, taste, and that gastronomical joy that accompanies some well prepared food all play a major role in making us want to as well.
Why else would the best tasting meals be the most unhealthy?
The rush of flavours. The surprise in feeling your mouth suddenly full of many strange and overwhelming combinations. You know that it’s not proper etiquette to sit at a dinner table with your cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk, but you can’t help it. Your face is stuffed and as ashamed as you’re supposed to feel you’re even more disgusted by how much you’re enjoying this.
It’s delicious.
A sweet start, salty notes throughout, a chewy finish and just the tiniest hint of acidity that you manage to choke back and hold on to as your vision blurs with unexpected tears.
The route from mouth to stomach is direct and even the most inept navigator would have no trouble, but tonight traffic is just zooming. It’s as if they’ve opened up extra lanes on the highway, and this sickeningly scrumptious bouillabaisse, the artisanal meal that your mouth has pulverized into gourmet mush, is literally spewing through your esophagus.
A gurgle.
A rumble.
You’ve always wanted to speak other languages but you’ve never had an ear for interpretation. It’s no surprise you don’t understand what messages your stomach’s sending, though the guests seated nearest have picked up the clues and have begun to inch away from you.
“Hear, Hear” the person to your right exclaims.
“My compliments to the chef!” you call out, “That was exquisite.”
Dinner is served.
By: J. Alex Alferez
The statistics say that the world uploads 100 hours of video to Youtube every single minute. That means that if I tried to watch Youtube in its entirety then I would never be able to catch up. You fall behind four days every 60 seconds.
Must… watch… Youtube
It’s for this reason that I don’t feel bad when I stumble upon a viral video that’s been up for 2 or 3 years but has somehow gone completely below my radar. Funny skits, or animations or music videos that seemingly everyone else has seen but I’ve, for one reason or another, never noticed.
This is different from the flash in the pan cultural phenomena I go out of my way to avoid like “Gangam Style” which I went almost a full year without ever hearing, or “Thrift Shop” which I miraculously have still never heard.
I still don’t know what “twerking” is and if I go to my grave without knowing, I’ll be happy.
I’m talking about videos I’d genuinely want to watch but have just remained oblivious to until very recently.
I only just discovered the amazingly talented Youtuber SweetAfton23 and I feel something approximating love beginning to stir in my withered black heart.
Her album is only five bucks on bandcamp so everyone should go buy it.
MyHope, I Pity the Fool, Peep Fight and Our American Cousin are all solid tracks but It All Makes Sense in the End is my new #1 favourite song in the world and possibly the best breakup song ever written.
I feel like this song was written especially for me as the complaints she makes are things I’ve been told before by those poor ladies unfortunate enough to have dated me. The actual subject of the song, though, is pure genius.
I did that fancy thing where you have to highlight the text after the song to read the spoilers. Listen to the track then drag your mouse underneath to find out, if you haven’t already, why it really does all make sense in the end.
It’s a break up song about wikipedia. She’s breaking up with a website. How cool is that?
“I’d like to purchase these products please!”
Anyone who’s been unlucky enough to go shopping with me knows that is my customary greeting to cashiers as I plop my merchandise on the checkout counter. Usually they’re not expecting such candor from the long serpentine line of customers trying their damnedest to get out of the store as quickly as possible, so depending on their reaction (mild annoyance or curious amusement) I’ll either try to engage them in a little droll conversation or just clam up and pay for my goods.
It wasn’t always this way. I used to hate forced social interactions and stumble through them with the tension you’d expect from someone as awkward as me but about a year ago while stopping at Food Basics for a couple of bottles of Coke Zero and hair conditioner with my surrogate parents, I began to have a change of heart.
I should explain.
My friends Kyle and Callie a are couple with whom I spend the majority of my time. They’re usually the first ones to hear about any crises(plural) I’m going through and have on multiple occasions shown the ability to shake some sense into me and bluntly tell me when I’m acting like a fuck up. I’ve said before that they’re like parents who are the same age as me and I can get wasted and talk about sex with too.
Kyle scolded me for being a dick when being nice to the sweet innocent checkout girl requires a minimum effort and would probably make her day.
I started thinking about the possibility of making people’s days. It took me years to admit to myself that I could never don a cape and cowl and fight crime but now here was a real and simple way that I could inject a bit of positivity into the world.
So I started being nice to every retail and service industry professional I encountered. Making chit chat, telling jokes and always finding something to compliment them about. An ol’ shot in the arm as it were.
I sort of got hooked on it because I started to do it to real people. I made a decision to let everyone, friends and strangers alike, get a taste.
I went over to Kyle and Callie’s for dinner one night and right as I walked in the door I said to her “Callie, I don’t usually take the time to come out and say this, and for that I apologize, but you are looking lovely tonight.”
I learned that it’s fine when you do it to close friends and family but when you to it to strangers or even acquaintances, friends of friends, it can come across (at best) as flirty or (at worst) as super-goddamn-creepy-as-dicks.
I did it to K&C’s winsome redheaded neighbour and I think I really freaked her out.
So I had to pump the brakes a bit and went back to just being awful when it comes to social interactions.
That is except for, the genesis of this whole experiment, customer service reps.
A few months ago I had an issue with Rogers, my Cable and Internet service provider, and so I used their online live chat service to try and ask for help.
I’ve posted this before on Facebook but I think it bears repeating. I didn’t have the presence of mind to take any screenshots so what follows is a transcript of our conversation:
7:01 PM Connecting…
7:01 PM Connected. A support representative will be with you shortly.
7:01 PM Support session established with Eric.
7:01 PM Eric: Hi, you’ve reached Eric, how may I help you?
7:01 PM Joshua Alferez: Eric, a fine strong name if I’ve ever heard one. I’m having difficulty logging on to the MyRogers website
7:02 PM Eric: Have you tried the forgotten password feature? If so, did you receive any type of error message when using the forgotten password link?
7:03 PM Joshua Alferez: Your site has erred on the side of caution. In an effort to keep my information secure it requires me to answer a “secret question” before it sends me a temporary password via email
7:03 PM Joshua Alferez: i dont remember my answer or my password
7:04 PM Eric: I can update the secret question and reset the password for you. In order to access your account, I will require some information from you. Please click on the following secure link to enter your personal information. You will notice I requested a four digit PIN. If you do not have one associated to your account, please leave this field blank. Please let me know when you are finished.
7:04 PM Eric has sent a link: https://safesend.rogers.com/index.php?ut=c055fbfb2a0df99ca317eecd0143a979f73399c1b372093fdea5b19a0d9fb705&vq=y
7:06 PM Joshua Alferez: The task is complete, sir!
7:06 PM Eric: This will just take 1-3 minutes to bring up your account. While I am bringing up for account, is there anything else I can assist you with at this time?
7:07 PM Joshua Alferez: You’ve already been so helpful it would be selfish of me to ask for anything more dear lad
7:11 PM Eric: In order to reset your password, we will also require you to provide us with your preferred temporary password in the secure link I have just sent you.
7:11 PM Eric has sent a link: https://safesend.rogers.com/index.php?ut=28b73b58e4d1889301dcbd7891fe4cd247a94aa888e80782e748f6bb58090d2b&vq=y
7:12 PM Joshua Alferez: done
7:13 PM Eric: I have successfully reset your Rogers.com password to the temporary password provided in the form. This temporary password will be valid for up to 24 hours. Once you log in, you will be asked to create a new personal password. Please ensure to store this password in a safe place for future use. Please go to rogers.com/signin and let me know if you can login.
7:16 PM Joshua Alferez: SUCCESS! It works, HUZZAH FOR TEAMWORK. We did it Eric, we did it. They all said we couldn’t but we proved them wrong
7:16 PM Eric: Thank you for choosing Rogers Live Chat. For your references your session id is: 152148899. Also, please feel free to bookmark our direct link www.rogershelp.com/chat. We are available between the hours of 7AM to midnight Monday to Friday, and 8AM to midnight Saturday and Sunday EST.
7:18 PM Joshua Alferez: I’m going to very upset in the sequel when you are revealed to have secretly been a robot this whole time. Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!
7:19 PM Eric has ended the session.
You see that!?!?!
You can see how I tried my damnedest to engage the guy but he was giving me NOTHING.
Undaunted however I decided to try again.
A few days ago I used the service once more. This time I took some super lo-rez pictures for your enjoyment:
As you can see Rob was just as unreceptive to my charm as Eric. When he responded so flatly to my introductory salvo of compliments I didn’t bother pressing the matter and just let the rest of the session play out mechanically like a long term relationship’s obligatory birthday sex.
It was just as unsatisfying.
Just a few hours ago I had my third interaction with Rogers Live Chat and it has reaffirmed my faith in humanity and has caused me to vow, anew, to be more social.
See for yourself:
Wow!
I grant you it’s not much of a two way conversation, it’s obvious I did most of the heavy lifting, but for the first time ever I got someone at Rogers to acknowledge the extemporaneous conversation I, up until this point, had been having with myself.
Persistence pays off.
I’m gonna keep trying to be friendlier and I think it’ll go a long way towards my ultimate goal of just being happier.
Don Draper had it wrong.
I don’t say that flippantly, it took me hours of contemplation to make that decision. Don Draper is in the top 3 on the list of my favorite “Double D’s” in the world and I usually take his words as the gospel truth, but in the season 1 finale of Mad Men, Draper gives an awesome speech about nostalgia that I’m starting to interpret in a new way.
He’s pitching an ad campaign for Kodak’s new slide projector. Being that it’s the middle of the 60’s during the U.S./Soviet space race, the muckety mucks at Kodak want to market the sleek curves of their new “wheel projector” as a spaceship. They’re trying to cash in on the NASA zeitgeist. Don Draper puts together an alternative campaign that causes one of the stuffedshirts in the boardroom to burst into tears and run out of the room crying.
He decides they shouldn’t look towards the future to market this product, but rather the past. To use the slide projector as a time machine. To let us catch a glimpse of days gone by.
Better days.
Up until recently I would’ve agreed. If you asked me I’d have said that looking back into the past is painful and as Draper says, “takes us to a place where we ache to go again… a place where we know we are loved.”
But over the last few days I’ve been swimming in nostalgia and it’s making me happier than I’ve felt in the longest time. And not just happy about old memories but rather happy with myself as I am today.
Netflix has added to their Library, the first two seasons of Digimon: Digital Monsters.
Now for anyone who doesn’t know me very well, I consider myself to be musically inclined. I sing in the shower a lot and I’m a 10 speed dynamo when it comes to karaoke but I also play a handful of instruments with varying levels of competence.
Here’s me shredding on guitar.
I play a little bit of accordion, drums and piano as well but the first instrument I ever learned, the one that started me on this musical journey nearly 15 years ago was the harmonica.
Yes, ladies, he’s STILL got it… and by “it” I mean cripplingly low confidence and that self deprecating charm that drives the girls wild.
There is exactly one reason why I, as a child, decided to learn to play the harmonica.
It’s because of Matt, a character from Digimon. More specifically, Matt, my favorite character on the first two seasons of Digimon.
Now he wasn’t the star of the show, he wasn’t the hero. He was always sort of the “second banana”. He had a cool exterior that belied a tumult of emotion contained just under the surface. His mom and dad were divorced and he and his little brother had been split apart as each of them went to live with one of their parents. During their adventures with the Digimon he always worried about his brother’s safety, attempting to be a responsible caretaker, but often having to face the sad reality that he wasn’t well suited for the task. When his younger brother starts to develop a strong bond with the show’s goggle-headed protagonist he gets jealous and further questions his self worth.
He was far too complex a character for what was meant to be a kid’s show but he played the hell outta the harmonica and I always thought he was super cool.
People have told me that it says a great deal about my personality that I don’t ever identify with the main protagonist of any story. If there’s any leading man in any movie, book, TV show, video game or comic, I always see more of myself reflected in the main character’s best friend or sidekick.
It turns out there’s even a name for that ultra important character in literature. It’s the Deuteragonist. He’s the secondary character who shoulders a lot of the burden when it comes to the plot, but he’s not always a hero in the traditional sense. Sometimes he’s a rouge or scoundrel, sometimes he’s just a weaker character who needs the support of the hero to fully develop. Whatever the case I’ve always thought I shared a similar temperament to the Dueteragonists of my favorite stories.
Let’s go through the list shall we:
and of course the guy this whole thing has been about,
Yes, ladies, he’s STILL got it… and by “it” I mean cripplingly low confidence and that self deprecating charm that drives the girls wild… and a digimon, I suppose.
Now while these characters, for the most part, may not share many personality traits with each other I always identified with them more than I would with the heroes of their respective stories.
I guess I just lack the confidence to consider myself the leading man in the story of my life.
I’m definitely sidekick material though.
Watching Digimon for the first time in almost 15 years has transported me back into the past in a way that has let me see all the ways that I’ve changed in the intervening years.
And all the ways in which I haven’t.
But it’s been nothing but a joy.
I’m not a fan of anime. People are shocked to hear that just like they’re shocked when I say I don’t really like Sci-Fi. They think that just ’cause I’m a geek I like Doctor Who and Star Gate. It’s the closest to racial pigeonholing I’ve ever experienced.
People just expect me to have an interest in things that are considered “geek”. The truth is I couldn’t give a single fuck about Dragon Ball, or Bleach or Gundam and Evangelion. I think Akira sucked balls and Miyazaki is boring. No I don’t loooooove Full Metal Alchemist and I think people who read comic books backwards are a bunch of pretentious jackasses.
I am a self proclaimed geekI I love Star Wars and DC Comics. My thumbprints are concave from decades of videogames. I have toys in my house. But when it comes to anime I just never delved into that word. Ironically it always seemed “too nerdy” for me to get into.
I was an Inbetweener in the schoolboy ecosystem. I occasionally got picked on by some of the more popular kids, but I still would make fun of the guys playing with their Yu-Gi-Oh! cards at lunch.
So as a total anime neophyte, and with nothing to compare it to, I just randomly got sucked into the world of Digimon in 1999 and it was my favourite show for 2 years. Then by that time I mysteriously became more interested in boobs and rock music than cartoons and I stopped watching.
Now that I’m revisiting the series after so long it’s made me feel totally nostalgic but more than anything it has, surprisingly, helped me with my goal of moving forward with my life.
I’ve never been able to think about the future. When I was young I didn’t think I would live a very long life because I couldn’t fathom what I would be like as an old guy. I’ve never really made any plans for the future and have always been sort of ambitionless. My mind functions only in the immediate present and so it’s especially difficult for me to ever hope for the best. If I’m going through a painful emotional experience I literally can’t imagine a time when I’ll no longer feel that way.
But by watching this show that makes me feel the way I did as a child, and then thinking about how different I am today, it makes me wonder for the first time ever what I might be like 15 years from now.
And aside from all the philosophical revelations it’s still just such a damn good show. It holds up so well even after all these years.
At least to me.
So, Don Draper talks about nostalgia as being painful, of making you want to go back and relive better times.
As stupid as it may sound Digimon and the nostalgia I feel for it has made me excited about the future for the first time in recent memory.
For those of you who remember the show fondly, or for those who may have never seen it, here’s a clip from season 1 of Matt playing the blues.
There are 104 episodes in the first 2 seasons of Digimon.
I’m going to watch them all!
He’s back ladies and gentleman. After almost 2 whole months of depressed, motivationless wallowing, the prodigal son has returned.
I feel I owe it to you all to preface this post by admitting that I’m drunk as dicks right now.
Try to picture that. A bunch of disembodied penises all crowding the bartender, getting all up in his grill shouting things like “I’ll tell YOU when I’ve had enough”.
That’s how I feel right this very now.
Maybe it’s the 375 ml of vodka flowing through my veins or the fact that a piece I wrote about online dating has just been published on the far more interesting Steph not Stephanie but whatever it is, I’m back.
Whether or not this is a good thing remains to be seen.
I’m a self delusional sociopath.
I started this blog as a way to be honest with myself, just to organize my thoughts and get my jumbled up feelings out in the open. Then a couple dozen people started reading it, then over a hundred subscribed and then I sort of lost track of what I had originally intended.
As much as I want to be entertaining when I write, this blog is really, at it’s core, about an emotionally stunted, chronically immature man-child and his struggle with mental illness.
It should come as no surprise then, that the extended sabbatical I took from blogging was due to a relapse I had in my ongoing lightsaber battle with depression.
For almost a year I have been taking 2 different mood stabilizing medications to stop me from collapsing in the middle of the street in a fit of sobbing and to prevent me from driving my fist through the faces of the ever growing population of mouth breathers that surrounds me.
It was going well until about 10 weeks ago when I just stopped taking me meds.
It wasn’t a conscious decision, it was more like a growing apathy that started with me taking my doses much more sporadically and then eventually just reaching a point where I couldn’t be bothered to follow the routine that I had set.
The routine that was specifically set up to give my life structure and stop me from going crazy.
After 2 weeks off of my antidepressants and anti anxiety medication I started to feel sick. It was withdrawal but rather than talking to my doctor I just missed a couple of weeks of work, ignored all calls from my friends and family and started a series of 40 hour days.
The calendar meant nothing to me. I’d stay awake for 30 hours straight and then sleep for 10 only waking up to repeat the process.
It was during this time that I started having really bad nightmares.
They scared me so much that I went back to my doctor, stopped cancelling my psychotherapy appointments and started taking my meds again.
During this transitional period I suffered an extreme case of anhedonia.
Now for those of you who don’t know how to google definitions of words you don’t recognize, anhedonia is the inability to feel happiness or pleasure.
During this time I was watching all the TV and movies I wanted, playing TONS of video games, reading (and spending the majority of my disposable income on) comic books and having regular sex.
I mean regular as in “on a regular basis” not regular like “same ol’ same ol’ boring” sex.
I guess it would be more accurate to say, frequent sex.
I need another goddamn drink. It’s time to crack open the Ballantine’s, fuck this vodka! Everyone knows that clear alcohol is for rich ladies on diets.
But to get back on track, of all the “fun” activities I had engaged in, none of it made me feel anything.
All of it felt wholly unsatisfying and coming to terms with the idea that the word is giving me everything I could want and I was still unhappy, filled me with shame and made me hate myself.
What the fuck is wrong with me? I’d go to bed every night thinking that and I’d wake up in a cold sweat from a terrifying dream that I couldn’t even remember.
After a while it wasn’t dreams anymore. Just an overwhelming sensation of dread whenever I’d go to sleep. Even dozing off for a few seconds on the subway would end up with me waking up screaming.
As it stands I’m back at work, I’ve reestablished the lines of communication with my social circle and I’ve been trying to regain some semblance of normalcy in the freakshow that my life has become.
The dreams haven’t stopped though.
Even though I’m back on my meds I still can’t get a decent night’s sleep without waking up covered in sweat and tears with my heart threatening to erupt from my chest.
It’s for all these reasons and more that I’ve been ignoring this blog. Maybe I’m flattering myself in thinking that people actually missed my regular posts, but the truth is the interest of readers hasn’t brought me back.
When I first started writing I found it to be a very therapeutic experience.
It made me feel less crazy.
It made me happy.
I’m trying to catch lightning in a bottle a second time. I’m hoping that by coming back here after so long an absence, I can recapture the peace of mind this blog had originally afforded me.
I promise my future posts will be less maudlin and self indulgent. I just needed to get this out of my head and onto the screen to stop me from going nuts.
The next post will be funny.
I promise
Thanks to an unfortunate, yet serendipitous, typo I’ve started using a new internet acronym that I’d like to share with you all.
WYF!
It stands for “What ye fucke!” the olde timey way of voicing one’s displeasure without spelling out full words and still retaining a bit of quaint ol’ fashioned charm.
Right now it’s the only invective that adequately expresses how I feel about the newest trailer for World War Z.
Brad Pitt…
Go Fuck Yourself!
What ye fucke, indeed?
In order to give everyone a bit of context, and I’m sure it will become clear in the coming paragraphs, I am obviously deeply disturbed when it comes to my love for this book. World War Z is my 100% absolute favourite book EVER!
This movie, on the other hand…
On the short list of things that I don’t joke about, one of the very few topics I consider out of bounds, or taboo is Cancer. My aunt died of brain cancer when I was a teenager. She was one of my favourite people in the world. Her passing is still among the worst days of my life. I don’t take it lightly.
That being said, this movie looks like the cinematic equivalent of infant bone cancer. They could’ve called it Osteosarcoma and it would have been a more appropriate title.
That’s how much I love this book and how bad this trailer made me feel.
Ridiculous hyperbole aside, people who are unfamiliar with the book often ask me “What’s it about?” and I have never been able to answer that question in less than 45 minutes. Lots of folks will try to deconstruct it and say dumb things like “It’s about zombies!” and to them I say, after a chastising (but affectionate) backhand to the face “That’s like saying The Bible is about a bunch of shepherds!”
Cmdr. Shepard, Systems Alliance Space Navy: N7 Special Forces,
Citadel Council’s First Human Spectre,
Carpenter and Messiah.
I went on a crazy rant about it on this week’s Long Distance Bromance so I’ll try to reign in the ire on this blog. The less I talk about it the better, because so far it’s just been a source of grief and it get’s me irrationally angry the more I think about it. Over the past few months I’ve been making a concentrated effort to feel better about myself and life in general so I won’t say any more on this sore subject. You’ve got to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative,
So instead of the anti-Brad Pitt tirade that will make me seem even crazier, I want to take some time to write about something positive.
I went on a date Thursday. It was the second time I went out with this girl. She’s super cute and super cool and I’m eagerly awaiting the opportunity to see her again. In addition to being very pretty she’s a great conversationalist and funny too. The plan was to meet for a quick bite to eat, she was taking me to sample some of Kensington Market’s finest vegan desserts. We ended up staying for hours just talking and laughing until the guy behind the counter’s dirty looks forced us to stop loitering long after we had finished.
Not wanting the fun to end we wound up wandering around aimlessly taking in the mild weather and sporadic sunshine just enjoying one another’s company. At one point during our walk we found a pair of discarded books just laid out on the ground. We each took one, sort of as a souvenir.
“I’ve often felt like a discarded book… waiting for someone to take the time to stop and pick me up off the floor.”
-Unknown Hipster Poet
We wrapped up the evening back at my apartment where we got a little snuggly on my couch and tried to outmatch each other while watching Jeopardy!
Sounds like a dream girl, amiright?
Most people will probably take for granted the normalcy of this kind of interaction and are probably asking themselves, “So what? Big Deal!”
The big deal is that I’m notoriously misanthropic. I don’t get along with very many people and the times when I actually DO find people I like, they, for whatever reason, don’t seem to like me. To find someone who piques my interest AND who can tolerate me is amazing.
Again, I feel like I’m flogging a dead horse with all the podcast plugs but I tell some crazy online dating horror stories on the newest LDB. I wasn’t having the best luck and was feeling discouraged but one of my favorite bloggers has been a source of inspiration with her recent positive experiences in the world of internet dating. Read her blog, she’s insightful and snarky!
At this point I’m not expecting too much. I’m happy just getting to know this girl and am looking forward to spending more time together. Where it goes nobody knows, but what I do know is that I’ve been on 2 dates with this girl and I’ve enjoyed every second. We’ll all just have to stay tuned to see what happens next.
NOM NOM NOM!!!
My German’s a little rusty but I’m pretty sure “liebster” means Sex Cowboy
That’s usually the sound you hear when I get my hands on a plate of PC Veggie Chicken Fingers and plum sauce.
Today it’s short for NOMINATION!
J. Alex Alferez, and his brain-baby Verb the Adjective Noun, have been nominated for an award for blogging. I didn’t even know there was such a thing so imagine my surprise.
The only thing I’ve ever won before was a lip synching contest when I was 5. I performed Brian Adams’ Everything I Do (I Do It For You) from the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves soundtrack. I was promised a $20 cash prize.
I never got it.
I cried…
After a scathing indictment of the meaninglessness of awards on my most recent podcast, you’d expect me to be ambivalent about being nominated for an award myself.
WRONG!!!
I am both honoured and humbled to know that at least one person thinks that my little corner of the world wide web deserves recognition. Honoured because it’s always nice when somebody throws you an “attaboy” and humbled because it was literally one person who determined I was worth mentioning. No write in campaign, no droves of adoring fans waving “Affleck was robbed” signs. Just a single reader who thought: This guy is pretty cool. Let’s give him a prize!
Not that I don’t appreciate it, but is it REALLY too much to ask that EVERYBODY love me?
If Morgan Freeman played Dumbledore, dressed as Yoda for Halloween the world would implode from a wisdom overload.
I got word a few days ago that VTAN had been nominated for a Liebster Award. I was sent a message by my good friend Amy who nominated my blog.
One of the most interesting and not coincidentally one of my favourite people in the world, Amy is a red headed, bespectacled, vegan lesbian blogger/slam poet/mischief maker. She is the henchman without whom my plans for world domination would never come to fruition. She’s also one of two people who constantly kept pestering me to start a blog.
Well, I hope you’re happy Amy! You’ve created a monster.
Along with the message there was a list of instructions for what I needed to do to accept the nomination and submit myself for consideration.
I gotta tell ya, I don’t think I can summon the effort necessary to follow through. It’s not that I’m not appreciative, I just really don’t do this for any sort of reward or recognition. I don’t pimp my blog out or actively seek to expand my readership. Often times I hope nobody reads what I’m writing so that they don’t suddenly realize how crazy and despicable a person I really am.
The one really cool part about the nomination was that I was asked to list 11 interesting facts about myself and to answer 11 preselected questions. That part seems like a lot of fun, so I’ll fill those in here. Other than that I don’t think I’ll be throwing my hat into this particular ring.
Wealth and fame he’s ignored
“Action” is his reward!
1) In 2006 I auditioned for Canadian Idol. I made it to the second round.
2) I’ve been an atheist for as long as I can remember. At a barbeque one summer I had a 2 hour conversation with a Jehovah’s Witness. It began with him telling me about the merits of the church. It ended with him questioning his belief in God. I was like Obi-Wan in Attack of the Clones.
You want to go home and rethink your life.
3) I have peed in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as well as the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas.
4) I invented the word “fauxhawk” and I will fight anyone who argues.
5) I am very susceptible to the power of suggestion. Advertising works on me and I will always say yes when a store clerk tries to upsell.
6) Even though I had never seen Star Wars until 1997, when they were re-released for the 20th anniversary, I distinctly remember that my mother would sing Frère Jacques to me when I was in kindergarten (circa 1990) and she had modified the lyrics. The version she sang to me went like this:
R2-D2, R2-D2, C-3PO, C-3PO,
Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Han Solo, Han Solo
7) In 2002 when Josh Hartnett’s 40 Days and 40 Nights came out I was inspired to complete the same challenge as the film’s hero. I was in 11th grade and when the girls in school found out about it they conspired to sabotage me. For a month and a half I had the hottest girls all wearing super revealing clothes and throwing themselves all over me, getting very handsy and trying to get me to crack. I lasted 38 days and was eventually disqualified due to nocturnal emission. In retrospect I should’ve just given in and let one of them blow me, I mean YOLO, right?
8) I became a Vegetarian out of spite. When I was 16 I saw David Suzuki speak about environmentalism and factory farming. He challenged everyone in the audience to go one month without eating meat. After his lecture we had a chance to wait in line for autographs and handshakes and when it was my turn I said “Mr. Suzuki I think I’ll take you up on your 30 day challenge.” He shook my hand and said in a slightly condescending tone “I don’t know. It’s harder than it seems, do you really think you’re up for it?” I’m sure he meant it as goodnatured ribbing but in my head all I could think was: WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!?!?!?! YOU DON’T KNOW ME!!! I’LL SHOW YOU, YA SMUG BASTARD!
I didn’t eat meat again until I was 25. Now I’ll eat pretty much anything. I prefer not to eat meat and I don’t ever keep any in the house but I don’t treat it like an allergy. When I’m at people’s houses and the hosts ask “Oh Josh, can you eat…” I always say I can eat ANYTHING, I don’t turn food away just because the cook doesn’t share my preferences.
9) The first time I really listened to a Beatles song was in 1998 and it wasn’t even sung by The Beatles. I watched the movie Pleasantville with Toby Maguire and Reese Witherspoon. During the end credits they play Fiona Apple’s version of Across the Universe. I was 12 years old and I remember being moved to tears. I asked a clerk at Music World and he told me it was a cover of a Beatles song. When I got my hands on a copy of the original I remember playing it again and again and again. I can’t verbalize the emotional impact this song had on me. I remember, irrationally, thinking that this song could not have possibly been written by human men. It was transcendental. Very few pieces of music have ever made me feel the same.
It’s the reason why I don’t understand the question “Beatles or Stones?” It doesn’t make a lick of sense to compare the two. It’s like asking if I’d rather breath oxygen or argon.
10) My family comes from Latin America. I’m the third of 4 kids but I was the first to be born in Canada. The thought that from now on every member of my family, that all future generations will be Canadian has caused severe cultural disconnect for me. I don’t identify at all with Latin culture. My culture has always been Pop. My father thinks it’s a travesty that I’ve “turned my back on my heritage” and it’s one of the many reasons he and I don’t get along.
11) Batman. That’s it… just Batman.
You can see that I play fast and loose with the definition of the word “interesting”. Now that I’ve listed the facts it’s time to answer the questions Amy sent me.
11 New Questions For You
1) What website do you subconsciously always type first in your internet browser even though you mean to go to a completely different website?
2) What are you MOST looking forward to in spring? (Patios? Birds? Women wearing less clothing? (that’s obviously mine))
Wearing shorts. I think I’ve got some pretty sexy legs. My calves look like my knee swallowed a grapefruit.
3) What’s one of the weirdest gifts your parents have given you since you became an “adult”?
Thankfully I don’t have an answer for this. I refuse to accept gifts. I actively request not to have any birthday gifts as it’s usually the worst day of the year for me. I hate it so much and so I try to draw as little attention to it as possible. The only person who still gets me anything is my well meaning older sister, but none of her gifts are weird. Usually books or movies that I want or clothes because I’m really not responsible enough to dress myself.
4) Did you ever read a book all the way through even though you knew you weren’t enjoying it/going to enjoy it? School books don’t count.
This question could have pretty much been phrased as “Have you ever been on a plane?” I read the first Twilight book on a plane ride. I hated myself halfway through but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let that book “beat me”!
5)Ditto the above for movies (though replace “read” with “watch”/”pay for”)
My cousin Brad is really more like an older brother to me. He’s the guy who first showed me Star Wars, and Raiders, Princess Bride and Mad Max. As part of my cinematic education he’s shown me tons of other gems, but for every Motorama, Fandango or Streets of Fire there’ve easily been a dozen duds I’d care not to mention. I’ve sat through a ton of movies just waiting out the clock but it’s a small price to pay for all the great stuff I wouldn’t have otherwise known about.
6) If you had to write a haiku (and you do have to) about your favourite Superhero, how would it go?
Oddly enough in my previous entry I wrote a haiku about myself. I don’t want to use the same one, even though I AM a hero of some renown, so here it comes
Hidden in shadows
the world’s greatest detective
watches over us.
7) What is your least favourite board game and why?
Pop-a-matic Trouble… she knows why!
8) You’re trapped on an island. You can only bring with you one celebrity of your choice. Who do you choose? (For sexy times? For eating? Who would be the best at figuring out an escape plan?)
Emma Stone won’t answer any of my letters, EVEN when I send her expensive flower arrangements so she’s out! I think I’d choose Louis C.K. I feel like he would be entertaining and there would be no problem with hierarchy because he’d be intimidated by me physically. I’d basically use the whole experience as a workshop to perfect my own stand up comedy routine
9) What is your go-to easiest meal to make yourself?
The very best thing I can make is Vegan Shepherd’s Pie. I got the recipe from a comic book so you KNOW it’s good. On a regular basis when I’m cooking for myself I usually make this or these. I have both recipes memorized but I still open up the bookmarks every time I make them.
10) Sprite or crab juice?
I’m glad you got the quote wrong. It’s supposed to be Mountain Dew or Crab Juice. I HATE Mountain Dew so much that you really would’ve had me stuck between a rock and a hard place. In this case I’ll gladly choose Sprite. Ya gotta “Obey your thirst” amiright? (see above: Fact #5)
11) How obvious was it that I ran out of juice on that last question? GET IT BECAUSE I SAID JUICE! Hahahah. How funny am I? (Don’t answer that)
I won’t… oops!
Well that was fun.I hope it took you 1/10th of the time to read it as I took me to write it and if you enjoyed it even only half as much as I did I’d count myself lucky.
True Bromance
The moment you’ve all been waiting for! Episode 2 of the popular and highly acclaimed podcast.
Long Distance Bromance Episode 2
Jaron Francis and Josh Alferez bring you a unique perspective on the world of geek news.
On this episode we discuss the sweet nostalgia of Dawson’s Creek, my debilitating Skyrim addiction, the upcoming Star Trek and Star Wars movies, the Justice League, the Oscars and MAGICIANS.
I know the ones of people out there are just burning with questions so send your queries, comments and hateful death threats to longdistancebro@gmail.com
In third grade I changed schools. Upon arrival I was immediately smitten with a girl in my class. It was one of those “pod” classrooms. The ones that housed 2 classrooms worth of kids, had 2 teachers and one of those retractable dividing walls that would allow the 2 classes to either unite or separate as the situation demanded.
I was in one half and she in the other and I remember focusing on her from across the room when I should have been learning cursive. I never did learn all the letters and I’m sure that will come as no surprise to anyone who has had to suffer reading my writing (before the “your blog sucks” zingers start flying I mean my actual chicken scratch handwriting).
Go ahead and steal my private diary… good luck reading it!
Since I was “the new kid” and since I hadn’t yet developed my obnoxious habit of forcing everyone to pay attention to me, I avoided any kind of conversation and hopelessly pined for her through the years.
By the time we reached 7th grade I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with or to her but I no longer just stared while avoiding her completely. Instead I created excuses to be around her as often as possible. It strayed into a weird place when I began walking her home every day after school. I’ve never been a particularly well adjusted person but I think that I actually started going crazy at about this time in my life.
When the school day was done I would walk home West and she would go East. We lived in opposite directions and so it took me twice as long to get back to my house whenever I walked her home. I tried not to call too much attention to it but when she started asking me why I was suddenly taking this new route home, rather than telling her that I just enjoyed spending extra time together I began a Jan Brady-esque web of lies.
If they made this show TODAY this kid would be on Ativan, Ritalin and Zoloft.
I told her, and even now 15 years later I can’t explain why I did this but I told her that my parents got divorced and that my mom lived in a new house. That was the reason why some days I walked home one direction and some days the other.
The strange thing is that the next year my parents did get divorced and I ended up changing schools again. It made me feel weird. In addition to all the regular stress that kids go through when their parents split up I also had this weird feeling that I had caused it to happen.
Up until the point when my Mom actually left, there was never any indication that she was going anywhere. Everyone in the family knew that there was a lot of unhappiness in both the marriage and the household overall, but no one ever thought she would pull the trigger and go.
Because it shocked everybody with it’s suddenness the divorce made me think that either I was clairvoyant and could predict the future or that I had magically willed it to happen.
We all know that godlike abilities are often bestowed upon mischievous preteen boys.
Since then I’ve had a strange symbiotic relationship with dishonesty. I never wanted to be intentionally deceitful but in the past, usually when I’m asked about topics I wish to avoid altogether (family, future goals, emotions) I just wouldn’t tell the truth. Not even to myself.
This blog was created as a means for me to face what I used to make a habit of ignoring, to clean the cobwebs out of the closet so to speak. It’s been difficult being so honest and open because a lot of the words that I’m committing to perpetuity on the Internet, are things that I don’t even want to admit to myself and yet here I am on a regular basis telling the whole world.
By now most readers are no doubt thinking “get to the fuckin’ point already” and I apologize for my propensity to ramble and my penchant for $10 words. I can’t help it, I grew up watching Dawson’s Creek and Kevin Smith films. What I’ve been trying to say is that this 7th grade “love” story has been on my mind recently.
This was my first taste of unrequited love. Since then it’s happened again occasionally, but I’ve found that most of the time I avoid this kind of drama altogether. Rather than holding a torch for someone when I know I have no chance I’ve realized, upon reflection, that I’ve been playing things a little safe.
By only pursuing ladies that I know are interested in me, I’ve skewed the odds in my favour making me much more successful with women then I have any right to be. I do this with the people I choose to be friends with as well. I search out specific types because, and I don’t mean to offend the people who are closest to me, I always want to be the smartest person in the room.
I like it when people are impressed by how clever I am or by what books I’ve read. I love introducing you to great music and movies that you’ve never even heard of.
When I’m lucky enough to make friends with guys who are cooler and smarter or better looking than me, I don’t get intimidated. Instead I fall into this “little-brother-tag-along” role. It’s just another obstacle I face when it comes to connecting with people. I either feel superior and hold myself above my friends, or I develop and almost obsessive hero worship relationship with them.
So what happens if I meet a girl who isn’t impressed by me? What if she’s smarter than me or funnier? Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have someone understand why my jokes are funny? Wouldn’t it be great to not have to explain pop culture and literary references? As it turns out it’s more frightening a prospect than I would’ve ever imagined.
I always talk about how I have a love for Batman and an almost hostile disdain for Superman.
Nuclear Apocalypse and Divine Intervention aside, NOBODY BEATS BATMAN!!!
I never understood the appeal of Superman. He’s just a jerk who can do anything. He never has to work or try hard, he’s just naturally gifted and is the best at everything.The writers always try to introduce conflict by making him lose his powers and this is where my preference really makes itself clear.
If you take away all of the things that make Bruce Wayne into Batman, the BILLIONS, the suit, the car and the gadgets, he would still be an expert martial artist and a genius detective. If you take away Superman’s powers he’s NOTHING. He’s a whiny little bitch. He’s never had to learn to fight because he can knock dudes out with a flick of the pinky. More to the point he’s never had to learn to take a punch. He’s spent his life being invulnerable so the second he loses his powers and some third rate street thug socks him on the chin he suffers massive physical AND emotional trauma.
Feeling pain for the first time in your life when you’re 30 years old will fuck up anyone’s day. And the feeling of impotence that comes with knowing that you used to be all powerful and now it’s all gone is worse than the pain itself.
This is how I feel now.
People will point to a certain type of woman, smart and sophisticated, a raconteuse who can keep up with and even beat me when it comes to my long winded ramblings, and say “She’d be perfect for you!”
When my charms fall flat, and she doesn’t fall for the tricks that usually work for me I end up feeling like Superman without his powers.
Like I said, I’m used to being the smartest, most charming person in the room and while I would love the opportunity to share time with someone more like what I’ve described, when the opportunity does present itself I feel strangely intimidated.
Paralyzed with fear actually.
I usually rationalize that “opposites attract”. If I’m being honest with myself what this actually means is that I look for someone who I feel superior to and isn’t challenging.
Because I’m intimated by women who I’d see as equals, or better than me, I’ve limited the possibility of sharing some great experiences with someone who would ACTUALLY APPRECIATE ME MORE.
I need to take a better look at myself because by my logic only 1 of 2 explanations exist.
This is just another thing I need to add to the list of stuff that’s wrong with me.
It’s almost 2:30 am.
At 8:55 I picked up my guitar that was gathering dust in the corner nearest to my bathroom and decided that I would fiddle around with it to keep my hands busy while watching the newest episode of The Walking Dead.
I’ve always been pretty musically inclined. When I was 14 I took a year of piano lessons and then used that knowledge to teach myself to play the accordion and harmonica.
I mess around pretty regularly. I know 10 different chords and can play 3 or 4 full songs. I don’t own an amp but one of my guitar cables has a USB adapter that I use to make loud noises, that could technically be called music, come out of my computer speakers. It never occurred to me until about 5 hours ago that I could use that cable to record on to my laptop.
On guitar I’d describe my level of skill somewhere between Beginner and Novice but when it comes to recording and editing audio my skill level is non-existent.
So after 5 frustrating hours of trying to teach myself to use Audacity, I present my first ever original composition. You can hear a few obvious edits but I couldn’t figure out how to smooth them out and it’s too far past my bedtime to keep trying.
It has no title but if I were going to call it anything it would be My Fingers Hurt
Enjoy
I hadn’t planned on updating so soon. Three entries in one week sets a dangerous precedent that I don’t anticipate maintaining but I’m facing something of a dilemma and it’s keeping me awake and restless even with my friend Pam gently stroking me to sleep.
Stifle your wolf whistles, by “Pam” I mean Diazepam, (better known as Valium) not some sweet young lady, but she sure does treat me nicely and I’ve toyed with the idea of committing to her long term especially after the conversation I had earlier today (or yesterday technically since its well past midnight… I’m feeling pretty sleep deprived so expect more incoherence).
My dad asked to move in with me.
This may not seem like such a big deal and you’re probably thinking that because you have normal parents but my dad is far from normal.
As spectacular a failure in life as you’re likely to meet, my father has a special talent for ignoring responsibilities, making poor choices and then finding convoluted rationalizations as to why the problems in his life are everybody’s fault but his.
My father runs a concrete paving business. He doesn’t own it, the owner is a wealthy old Italian man who I’ve been told my whole life has Mafia ties, but my dad basically is in charge of operating the company. He makes quite a bit of money but he only ever works in the summertime and has zero income for half the year.
He knows this.
It’s been the same every year for the last 30 years. In the summer he spends like a WWII era navy man on furlough literally throwing money away (he likes to carry at least a couple of hundred in cash at all times and has had his wad fall out of his pockets many times over the years) he’s never had a savings account and it still comes as a shock to him that he has no money in the winter.
When I was 12, that is FIFTEEN DAMN YEARS AGO, my parents got divorced. They reacted to it in complete opposite ways. My mother viewed it as a chance to make a fresh start. She moved to the suburbs, got remarried, bought a house and now owns a business.
She is happy.
My father looked at it as the end of the life he had built. He figured he was too old and tired to start all over again and so instead just moved into a shitty apartment and rekindled his lifelong love affair with cheap Mexican beer.
Since then I’ve made an effort to avoid him. I guess it’s because I’m actually a lot like him in some crazy ways. I’m pretty impulsive and rarely think about consequences and I have had tons of hilariously tragic “adventures” that were a result of my poor decision making that I know I inherited from him.
Everyday I live with the fear that I will become like him so I’ve spent almost a decade avoiding and ignoring him.
I originally moved out when I was 18 because I had an older brother and sister (6 and 8 years older respectively) who still lived at home. I didn’t want to end up like that so I took off and over the last 9 years I’ve only spoken to him 3 or 4 times.
Until the week before Christmas.
I was alone at home, I couldn’t find anyone to do anything with, I was feeling depressed and after throwing back a few drinks I went for a walk and ended up at the movies by myself watching “Silver Linings Playbook”.
Maybe I’ve got a warped perception of myself but I felt like I was looking in a mirror while watching that movie and I don’t just mean because I’m as handsome as Bradley Cooper.
The guy had gone through an emotional breakdown, he was genuinely, albeit reluctantly, trying to overcome his mental instability with therapy and medication and I really identified with him.
If you haven’t seen it then, without spoilers, I’ll say that there comes a time in the movie where Bradley Cooper and his dad, Robert DeNiro, repair their damaged relationship. It’s a very cathartic moment and I sat there in the dark theatre SOBBING like a baby.
As soon as I left the theatre I was overcome with this intense urge to call up my dad, talk for a bit… maybe have a catch in a cornfield or something.
It felt amazing. We talked for almost 2 hours. I told him all about my life and everything I’ve been up to over the last 9 years. We agreed to meet and I had him come over for dinner. We watched Inception on bluray and made plans to do Dark Knight Rises the following week. It felt like the start of a whole new relationship with my dad.
Then he started calling me.
Over the next 7 days he called me 11 times. Each time to ask for some kind of help. He asked me to fix his computer, he asked to borrow some money and strangest of all he asked if I knew any lawyers who would work for free.
After years of zero communication, in a moment of weakness I called him and opened up the floodgates of bullshit.
I couldn’t see it then but it was just a case of misplaced affection. I realize now, and I’m ashamed to admit, that I love Robert DeNiro, not my dad.
It was DeNiro who I wanted to hug me and play catch with.
I started ignoring his calls and they became more and more frequent.
3 weeks ago he left me a voicemail. He needed me to give him $3000 or he was going to be evicted. I asked him who I should make the cheque out to and he said I should just give him cash. I told him that I would write the cheque to his landlord and he started to freak out about how I didn’t trust him and that by not giving him cash I was accusing him of being a liar. I got frustrated and hung up the phone.
My sisters have been in El Salvador the last 2 weeks. They went on vacation to visit family they haven’t seen in years and so I called my older sister up to say goodbye before she left. During the course of the conversation the topic of our father was brought up.
She was annoyed because he had promised to give her $1000 to put towards the trip but then told her he couldn’t because he didn’t even have enough to pay his rent.
His rent is $1000.
That’s when I figured out his scumbag plan. He was gonna fleece me for 3 grand, was going to give a wad of cash to my sisters so that he could come across as some kind of big shot, pay his overdue rent and then pocket an extra thousand for himself.
Since I didn’t give him any money his land lord is forcing him out next Friday and he has nowhere to go.
He told me that his friend is going to let him stay in his house in Barrie but he can’t go until the second week of February. He needs me to let him move in temporarily.
I have a hard time saying no to people.
It’s really strange. I have no problem being a dick to people and I’m an expert grudge holder. I hold grudges like they’ve got those huge Canadian Tire heavy duty rubberized handles attached to them. I’m usually not a nice person EXECPT when people are asking for my help.
It’s from all those damn times I watched Star Wars as a kid. “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope!” It’s ingrained in my consciousness and it’s become a real problem.
I either go out of my way to help people when i shouldn’t or I say no and am wracked with overwhelming guilt for weeks afterward.
In the end I tend to get walked all over and people have taken advantage.
I don’t want to let my dad stay with me.
I think I might actually hate him.
It’s a real concern of mine that if I let him stay for that week he’ll never leave.
If he refuses to leave I’ll probably murder him.
It’s quarter to 3AM and I’m about to pass out. I’m not going to bother proofreading this entry so if you gave up halfway because it was too disjointed a stream of consciousness to make any sense to anyone but me, then I don’t blame you.
The truth is that I don’t even need anyone to read this, I just needed to write this all down and get it out of my head so that I could finally get some sleep.
I really want to tell him to go to hell but I’ll wait until morning to make my final decision.
It’s no secret that in today’s world of sensationalist media the stories that get all the attention aren’t the most well researched or socially relevant but rather the most exciting. This means sex and violence. Since the overall goal of this project is to get people to understand me more and like me better I don’t think we’re quite yet ready for one my sex stories.
So that leaves violence. Here we go.
I got hit by a car last week.
I’m gonna be jumping back and forth chronologically and making wild tangential asides so try to focus. Also there’s no need to point out my my unnecessary use of paragraph breaks. I write the way I speak, which is long winded, simultaneously narcissistic and self deprecating, and full of pauses for dramatic effect.
I went to a bar last weekend with people I hadn’t seen in a long time. It was a friend’s birthday party but it was meant to be a low key “non-event”. I was initially hesitant because it usually falls onto me to be the entertaining one in social situations. It’s a lot of pressure when you’re not feeling too enthusiastic about where you are or who you’re with and as natural as it may seem from the outside, most of this charm is affected. But, I heard that a person that I had wanted to see would be there so I went.
I got there exactly on time so I circled the block for a few minutes and almost froze my ears off. It was cold as dicks and I didn’t wear a winter hat because I had my hair so carefully disheveled. I wanted the illusion of messiness not the real things and so my ears paid the price. When enough time had passed where I wouldn’t appear to be too eager I walked in to find a dozen people already 3 rounds in, and having a great time despite my absence. It was pretty relaxing having that burden taken off my shoulders seeing how they were all able to have fun without me there to be the life of the party. The person I was most interested in seeing wasn’t there though and those in attendance weren’t exactly what you would call my biggest fans.
So I started drinking. Everyone was splitting pitchers but they had been there hours before the scheduled meeting time so in an effort to catch up I started ordering Scotch and Sodas. Within 20 minutes I had thrown back 3 doubles and was starting to feel uninhibited. I was wrestling with my scumbag brain to not make the situation awkward by bringing up that fact that I, not too long ago, had a bit of a romantic dalliance with a certain lady in attendance who had brought her new boyfriend to the party.
He didn’t know anyone at a table full of friends and so rather than being left out of conversations he started clutching onto topics like a drowning man in the flotsam. Inevitably I got stuck talking to him but I couldn’t pay any attention to anything he was saying. I felt bad for the guy but I didn’t care too much because I was still waiting for someone to show up so that the real fun could start.
That’s when I got a text, “I’m not coming. Tell everyone I said hi and wish her a Happy Birthday from me.” I was bummed to be sure, but I wasn’t going to let this bring me down so I just kept the party rolling and continued having a good time.
So I kept drinking and everyone kept talking, I kept making everybody laugh and the night wore one. Eventually everyone left except for the birthday girl, her boyfriend and this one other really cool guy. We stayed until last call and the birthday girl ordered me 2 more Glenfiddichs bringing my total score for the night to 8 (10 including the ones I had with dinner before going out). When it was time to go she said what she probably meant as a compliment but what made me never want to go anywhere with anyone ever again. “Thanks for coming,” she said. “It would’ve been no fun without you here!”
I left the bar feeling like a clown who gets hired to perform at kids parties. The subway had stopped running and so I needed to catch the Yonge bus to get home. I saw one starting to pull up to the stop but I was on the wrong side of the street.
I needed to make a break for it.
There were a few cars crossing, but this one must’ve been closer than I had thought because as I made my wobbly-legged sprint to the bus stop the guy in the car leans on the horn and slams on the breaks. He comes to a skidding stop just a few feet away but the snow, ice and slush on the street had him slide forward and close the gap between us. His bumper hit me in the right knee and I toppled over, my shoulder bouncing off his hood, and collapsed onto the floor. I shot up onto my feet immediately as if nothing happened because at the time my main concern was still catching the bus, but it had already passed.
I looked back as if realizing for the first time that there was a car behind me and the driver started shouting at me before speeding off. I was left standing in the middle of The World’s Longest Street at 2:30 AM completely alone. I felt like the last survivor of the apocalypse as I limped back to the bus stop.
I eventually made it home but not before getting kicked off the bus at Eglinton. I walked the rest of the way with a veggie dog in one hand while I sent multiple sexually harassing text messages with the other.
I woke up the next morning fully clothed with a pocketfull of toonies and a sore knee and shoulder but NO HANGOVER.
The moral is “Don’t waste your time. Always drink the good stuff.”
Verb the Adjective Noun 