fine-toothed nothing

Talking about common grooming tools today.  Yesterday my son biked across town to a family event and arrived totally soaked.  He dried off, checked himself in the hall mirror, and said, Hmm.  His hair was messy.  By coincidence (I was going to say strange coincidences but they are all strange, aren't they.  No one talks about a totally natural coincidence) I had just noticed that the back pocket of my dress pants contained a comb (exactly like the one in the picture up there).  I don't usually carry a comb - or wear dress pants, for that matter - but this was a fancy affair.  Anyway, without thinking I handed my son the article in question in order to help him fix his hair and he responded thus:

You know, Dad, I don't think I have ever used one of these.

Now, I am no follicular fashionisto.  I shave irregularly and badly, and get a haircut every few months.  My daily grooming ritual involves running my fingers through my hair and going downstairs for coffee. My father (Weekly Haircut Dan, they call him) makes pointed comments about rats' nests which I hardly even hear after all these years.  And my son, in his own way, is a very styling guy.  He frequents a super cool barber shop in Kensington Market (I would give it a shout out but they might not appreciate a plug from me, and besides I cannot remember the name).  His current look, modelled after the Lucky Luke character in the 70s French comics, is a very trendy one indeed.

But his words gave me pause.  Never to have used a comb. Such a common piece of male paraphernalia, responsible for so many iconic images:  the comb over, the pompadour combthrough,  the straight parting.  Could the guy in this picture look this way without a comb?  I do not think so.

Really?  I said to my son. Not even as a kid?  Didn't I comb your hair once or twice when you were going to some do or other?  

And even as he was shaking his head I was shaking mine too.  That picture - Dad bent over, running his pocket comb through sonny boy's cowlick -  is from my childhood, not my son's. 

Interesting, was all I said.

We stared into the mirror together.  He fixed his hair with his fingers. I put the comb back in my pocket til next time. If there ever is one.

 I heard from thousands of -- would you believe hundreds of? -- all right, dozens of blog regulars that I have been neglecting my duties ....  Well, actually, I heard from my mom.  So here I am, eyes downcast, shuffling my feet and saying sorry.  The word comes easily to me.  It's natural, part of my heritage. Canadians are born with apologies in their mouths.  I was walking up 5th Avenue in Manhattan last summer, and almost bumped into what looked like a fast-striding New Yorker.  No fault involved, but both of us said Sorry at the same time, and then smiled. 
Toronto, I said.
Halifax, until a few years ago, she said.
And we were continued on our two different ways.
Is saying sorry polite behaviour?  It sounds polite.  But I don't if it counts in your favour if it's something you do automatically, and don't mean.  Because, you know, I am kind of lying here.  I am not really sorry for not blogging more.  I have been busy.  My in-basket is still teetering. 

I have been to Saanich and Victoria and Vancouver and far-flung bits of Ontario to talk about the "7" series I am involved in.  (Do you know about this?  7 authors, 7 books of boy adventure, heroes and stories intertwined.  There's a website and cheesy video at www.7theseries.com ...  )  Anyway, after my presentations there'd be hundreds of kids (fine fine -- dozens) wanting to talk and get bits and pieces of their bodies signed.  And then I would go back to my hotel room and write my story about two kids who fall magically into  a comic book and edit my book about zombies.  And then go to bed and get up and do it again. 

I haven't had time for blogging. 

Oooh, funny story though.  I was in Victoria hanging out with a friend of a friend who owns a clothing and sporting goods store.  I'm meeting this guy for the first time and he's a super guy, warm and generous and successful, and he's trying to get me to buy stuff in one of his stores so he can give me a great deal -- and I am not helping.  I am such a bad shopper.  I mean, my coat cost me 3.00 at a second-hand store.  I had to tell Todd that 150.00 jeans for 40.00 was a great deal, thank you thank you, but not really my style.  I did end up buying a pair of runners at a ridiculously good price because I do try to stay fit, and when I jog my regular twenty kilometres my feet will thank me.  Did I say twenty -- would you believe ten?  Five?  One?  Would you believe down to the end of the block to buy licorice? 

Sorry for all the exaggerations.

racism, ageism, dudeism

Hey hey!  I lost this address and haven't been able to get to the blog for a couple weeks.  Just now, browsing around my computer looking for music, I found the missing address.  And I'm back.

Back from Florida, among other things.  Down there visiting my folks who are brown holy crap I did not know my own mom at first glance.  Generational views on tanning.  I dunno - Mom didn't look unhealthy so much as a different race.

Funny place, Florida - at least the part around Lauderdale which is the only part I know.  Nothing too horrible about it but there's nothing really great either.   Beaches, restaurants, highways, shops, buildings - everything scores a pretty good.  Can't help noticing that all the crappy jobs are held by non-whites, and that almost everyone on the beach is not non-white.

I guess that's kind of horrible.

Couple cliche moments on the road.  First, there's a lot of old people driving around.  I know I am not young but we are talking ooooooooold.  Like the guy in the picture.  One guy looked not just older than his Ford but older than the Ford motor company.  Was he travelling quickly?  No he was not.

Scariest was pulling out of my folks' parking lot on the way to the airport.  There was a big car tortoising towards us, and my taxi driver figured to beat it, but just as he pulled out, the tortoise put his foot down, and suddenly here was this grille  practically in my lap.

Dude! I shouted, as we skipped out of the way with centimeters to spare. And then I blushed all over at the idea that my last word on earth might have been, dude.

of mode and mackinaws

So I just got in from Saskatoon and my arms are -- well, they're cold, and so is the rest of me.  Sask is a pretty frosty province this time of year.  Nippy noodles, as Georgia Nicolson would say.

Doesn't seem to bother the natives, who go on biking and hiking and chatting even though it is minus a billion with the windchill.  Walking to the parking lot from the education building I thought my limbs would drop off.  My driver actually threw her head back and said, That's fresh, eh?  Much better than inside.  I thought I was going to bake in that conference hall.  I shared a glance with car mate and fellow author Glen Huser  (Stitches, Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen -- great books)  who as a Vancouverite is even wimpier than I.

This is not fresh,  he said.  Fresh is a jump in the pool on a hot day.  This is freezing.

When I got back I was still cold so I headed for my closet to don (I love blogging, since I can use words I would never allow myself in fiction writing, like don and doff) my mackinaw, but I could not find it.  I hunted high and low and side to side and I found a lot of things but not the sweater jacket.  I asked Ed if he had seen it.  
The red and black one?  I took that, he said.  I've had it for months.
Can I have it back?
No, he said.
There was a pause and then I asked, Why?  And this is what he told me.
You don't deserve it, he said.
What?
Well, Dad, see, that jacket is really cool, and you're ... 
Go on, I said
What I mean is, you don't know how cool it is.  It's the perfect weight and size.  Everyone's wearing stuff exactly like that one right now, and I just know I look better in it than you.  It would be wasted on you.
He was so earnest I had to work not to laugh.
So what you are saying is that the lame old guy never has a chance.  The one time he finds something that is actually cool, he can't wear it?  
Yes, said Ed.  That's it exactly.  He went up to his room and came back with my mackinaw, which is like the one pictured only somehow cooler--  at least it looked cool on Ed.   But darn it I was still cold.  Doff that!  I called.  Doff that right now!  But he didn't.

I stole a hoodie from him. I don't know if it's lame or not, and I don't really care. The part of youth that worries about what everyone is wearing is not wasted on the young.  They can have it.

not the humidity

Let's talk about hot sauce.  Every Christmas  there is one gift that dominates memory and conversation, provokes more comment and laughter than all the other gifts combined.  This year that gift was a kris kringle joke -- one kid to another -- the gift of hot sauce.

You don't think hot sauce can be exciting, do you.  Well, you are wrong.  Take a roomful of giggly Christmas teens and young twenties (sidebar:  what do we call these guys?  There should be a word for the years from, say, 18-24, especially if single and underemployed, more or less adult but essentially irresponsible.  Yadults? Adolts?  Groan ups?  Anyway...) and add a bottle of the world's spiciest product.  It's called Death Sauce and the bottle is covered in warnings.  Yeah, something like that one in the picture.  Sam put a drop on his finger, licked, and  immediately began to cough and hiccup. The spasms lasts fifteen minutes.

Yes it was mildly funny, and that might have been it -- a smile, a shrug, and a lesson learned.  But for some reason we (I was in on this too) couldn't quite believe that the stuff was as hot as Sam was making out.  Could a single drop could be that potent?  One drop?  And so, like gustatory lemmings, only stupider because we did it one by one, we sampled.  And one by one we succumbed to our own case of coughs and wheezes and hiccups as the stuff burned its way around our mouths and down our gullets.  Was it that hot?  Yes it was.  Yes it was.  Yes  it was. Yes it was. Yes. It. Was. Each time was funnier because more of us were in on the self joke.  

And then  ... you remember building up a static electric charge by rubbing your feet on the carpet and then touching the door?  And it hurt, but you did it again and again and again?  For the next hour or so we tried putting the hot sauce into things.  Was the sweet potato soup spicier with Death Sauce?  Ouch!  Yes it was.  Okay, how about a Bloody Ceasar -- was it too spicy?  Ouch!  Yes. My lips are burning!  What about salad dressing?  Gravy?  Shortbread cookies?  Ouch! Ouch!  (Ok not Gramma's shortbread.)

No prizes for guessing the sex of the hot sauce experimenters.  Imo suggested a card cutting lottery with the loser drinking a shot of Jose Cuervo and Death Sauce, but when Sam held the deck out for her to pick (we all had our cards -- mine, sadly, the two of diamonds), she laughed and shook her head.  That stuff is way too hot for me, she said.

Is she on her way out of adolthood and into adulthood?  Maybe not yet. When I was gagging and gasping from my Lava Tequila, Imo laughed so hard she fell out of her chair.

stay what you are

If I were a Rob Ford supporter (now there is an unlikely sentence-opener ... reminds me of a conversation I had a while back where I caught myself saying, The good thing about Nickelback ... and started to cough because I was laughing so hard) I might be able to respond to his ouster by saying that he was being railroaded for being true to himself. Mountains out of molehills, I would say. We elected him because he seemed like a regular football-loving guy who didn't care about politics, didn't mind what he wore, hated the artsies and the gays, wanted to save money and look after the suburbs.  

All that is still true.  He may have bent a few rules but, hey, who doesn't?  (Do you tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth on your income tax?  You do?   Good for you.  So do I, in case anyone from Revenue Canada is reading this.  Those trips to Vegas were all research! Fascinating place, Vegas.  My next book may be set there.)   Ford has not changed in the couple of years he has been mayor.  We liked him then - why not now?

Comparing the response to the Ford news to Obama's re-election is interesting. The same kinds of people are smiling because the "good guys" have won.  In the Obama case the smiles are from relief.  In the Ford case the smiles are tinged with this sense of wonder.   

Now, the thing about Nickelback is that ...

 ... well, come to think of it it's the same as the thing about Ford.  They are what they are.  When you walk into a strip joint (I am going to have to work on my sentence-openers) and hear Nickelback playing, you know where you are.  The world makes sense.  The time to worry, to check over your shoulder, to maybe run like hell, is when your strip joint is playing Justin Bieber ....

packaging

So I was at the Packaging Your Imagination conference in Toronto yesterday -- me and a couple of hundred other writers for children.  And you know what I remember most vividly about the day?  Lunch.  It's not that I didn't have a great time hanging out with old friends and making new ones;  it's not that I didn't learn stuff at the master classes, and get a kick out of prancing around on stage (yes, sadly, that is me in the photo) and making myself and others laugh.  But lunch marked a real change for me.  Not the meal itself, which was sandwichy salady straightforward.  It was the venue.

The conference took place at a college on the University of Toronto campus.  Lunch was in the dining hall, and there was a High Table and I -- this is where my eyes widened and my breath quickened slightly -- I was instructed in no uncertain terms to sit myself there.  

Are you sure?  I said.  
Yes, said the bossy lady with the bundle of sticks, standing in the doorway.
I've never eaten at High Table before, I said.  Are there rules?  Do I have to talk to the person on my left first?  Can I swear?  Do I have to finish my meal before I can get a dessert? 

She frowned, gestured, and I took my plate in my trembling hands, made my way up (yes up -- High Table is actually two steps above the level of the floor) to my place.  I sat between two people who were so at ease that they were clearly used to High Tables.  They were not a bit snobbish, and answered my questions very naturally. By the end of the meal I was able to make a small joke -- one of those zen master and a rabbi  and a necrophiliac jokes -- and the polite laughter all round the table told me I had hit the right note.  Then we dispersed to our afternoon sessions.  It took my blood pressure some time to come down.

All right, maybe I am making this a bigger deal than it was.  But I was not comfy up there.  I had a moment thinking, I am not a High Table guy.  There's nothing special about the way I eat lunch -- nothing to mark me out from the other lunchers.  If I ran the Packaging conference --- well, it would be a complete failure  because I would forget to book the venue or get the date wrong or something --  there wouldn't be a High Table.  Or, better yet, there'd be High Tables for everyone.  And no fascists telling us where to sit.

I ran into a very energetic forward-planning lady at the after party.  She is already thinking about next year.  She asked if  I had any suggestions.  Packaging Your Imagination is perfect, I said, except for one thing.  I turned to get my drink and when I turned back she was gone.  Oh well.  I wonder if she reads my blog?