I love to love you baby

I feel better today, probably because of coming out of the grief closet. Why wasn’t I able to tell some of my friends why I’ve been upset and bitchy for a couple weeks? Why did I just assume that would be a bad idea? What made me think my grief was so special and incomprehensible I had to scrunch it all up in a tight little ball of bitch? Because the sun shines out of my ass, that’s why. My beautiful, beautiful ass. God, I’m glad my ass is on the back of me or I’d just sit around staring at it all day. I’m also better because the news from Yorkshire is better and Mum and I did manage to cheer each other up some, somehow, in consequence.

Now I would like to write something of limited consequence, for example about how I wish every day was the World Cup because I think that would help men and women understand each other more, as men are liable to see women they want to have carnal knowledge of every day, several times a day, whereas I (in the absence of my sweetheart) can go weeks without seeing a man I want to have carnal knowledge of, but if at any given moment I could switch on the television and see any of the players from this particular tournament the situation would be re-equilibrated because this was the least attractive man playing and I’d still have hit it ‘til it hurt.

I’d also like to point out that renowned, recently deceased Canadian leftie economist John Galbraith, who among other things coined the terms ‘conventional wisdom’ and championned deficit spending and whose dryly humorous and occasionally persuasive The Affluent Society I’m currently enjoying. . .

looks just like . . .

But then I promised ya'll I’d stop going on about football, so I won’t. And now it’s time for me to get ready for Ottawa, my bitches, and BLUESFEST! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Good grief

My grandfather is not long to be with us. I don't want to write about him on a forum where I post naked pictures of football players - he hates football - but that doesn't preclude navel gazing. I haven't lost anybody this close in 15 years and I think in a lot of ways 12-year-old have better mental equipment for this sort of thing than 27-year-olds. At my age, especially sans baby and responsibilities, one is enmeshed so deeply in consumer culture that the notion of loosing something you can't pick up another of from a specific store or internet site just boggles the fucking mind. Mostly I'm fascinated by my different comportment around different people as my brain struggles to deal.

1. General public = outright hostility. These days I hate the world for real, perceived and anticipated injuries. The real injuries come from living in an environment de-prioritizing these relationships; I don't forget the number of people shocked I went to Yorkshire instead of, say, Barcelona last March. Grandparents? Visit? Wha? Do they smoke drugs? The perceived ones come in imagining people want me to get on with caring about their own shit, which I can't and frankly don't want to. Finally anticipated - no one has said this to me yet, but I dread them doing so because it will probably inspire me to put the beats on them - consolations like "Well, at least he's had a good run!" I don't fucking care he's had a good run. I'm still losing him. Fuck off and die. Honestly.

2. Figaro = needy hostility. I don't usually tell people what's happening - unless I become visibly upset and need to explain that - because I don't think most people have a right to care what's going on and that any sympathy they demonstrate would be insincere. Figaro, however, has a right to care, and when he acts like he does I believe him and feel some comfort. And yet if he says anything like the wrong thing, I have to swallow a massive urge to say something nasty that I would never dream of saying to anyone else without deep, proddy, pokey provocation. Why are we such bitches to our lovers?

3. My mum = gross, circular schizophrenic sympathy. I want to make her feel better; more than anything in the situation I want to be able to comfort her. And yet she's my mum, so I want her to comfort me. But I know that's not her job anymore, at least in this situation. This is primarily her grief and I want to make her feel better; more than anything in the situation . . .

4. My analyst = snotty gulpy kiddy tears. I guess that's why he makes the big bucks, because they don't come out anywhere else, even though they always want to. Sometimes I think the combination of Calabrian appoggiarsi sulla famiglia and English Banker Stiff Upper Lip I was brought up with are what's costing me $60 a week with him.

"Hey, Hanrahan. Your wife's a dyke. Suzanne's a dyke. I know. I know. A lesbian. A lesbian. A lesbian."

Since Materazzi could get FIFA sanctions for racism but not for trashing Zidane's mum and sister, I'm going to assume this is the whole story and that I was pretty much right right right. Onwards and upwards to the best peice of sports trash-talk I've ever heard of (besides the above from Slap Shot, mostly memorable because it was from Paul Newman) and then I'll start trying to spare y'all my footie freak. This is from Randy Ambrosie, an investment banker who played with the Canadian Football League back in the day, to Bennie Thompson - himself a well-reputed shit talker in the League.

'Hey Bennie, recite the alphabet. Just once. Betcha can't do it.'

Waking up at a stupid hour seemed reasonable today

I had a 4 am yoga class today. Woke up refreshed at 3:30. Madness, no? I didn't show up for the first half hour of ragas because I don't speak whatever language they're in but the chanting I did show up for was soothing, yet upsetting; it gave me too much space in my head to be sad in. I don't know what the power of positive thinking is, but my family could use some of yours if you can spare any; our lips are not practiced with words like 'palliative' and I guess the years have allowed us to start tacitly believing if my mother's parents had lived this long, they'd just keep living forever. We don't seem to know how to help each other now. It's awful.

Anyways. Here's a list of people who are out at 4 am between my neighborhood and Little Italy/Portugal/Wherevs where yoga was:

1. Other bitches on bikes on thier way to yoga classes
2. One great big black guy on a bike on his way to a yoga class
3. A scabby woman who was obviously pretty once trying to sell me a bike when I stopped for water, despite me being on a bike already, who explained she was born on Bastille Day
4. Somebody in Little Italy/Portugal/Wherevs who I could smell making cannoli. Mmmmmmmm.

Porn or professional sport?

Either way, thank you, Calisaurus. And God. Thank you, God.

Oh la la

It's nice how the readership of this blog has got a little bigger lately, but I'm still pretty sure I'm the only person involved in it who remains interested in what Materazzi said to Zidane on Sunday. The accusations of racism are flying. My personal hunch is that Materazzi called him a filthy sisterfucker or something; almost every Italian I've ever known would look at a Kabylie and see a generic white man and Materazzi doesn't look like the type to sit down with a couple of books about Algerian history and cultural dynamics before a match. Now I'm going to try really, really hard to stop caring. Although I would like to point out this obsession of mine has made clear that there's a 1984-esque problem with online news sources - yesterday the BBC kept erasing and updating the same article. Maybe tree-fucking print shouldn't die just yet.

As promised, I'll write about food. On Sunday I went out for brunch with Miss V.K. at Clafouti on Queen West. Brunch, hah. I just wanted a coffee and some fucking clafouti and didn't want to make it myself because I didn't have any wax paper. Clafouti is delectable, one of the greatest things ever, and not very difficult to make. It's as though the French saw the English cheerfully enjoying a nice rich bread pudding and decided to be not even nearly outdone (though I love me a moist buttery vanilla bread pudding), so they invented something that eats like a fluffy baked crêpe. Sounds impossible, I know, but what can I say . . . the French are arrogant for a reason. It's essentially a substantial baked custard, usually made with almonds and cherries.

I'm no longer allowed to eat almonds because they make me die, so part of the reason I went to Clafouti on Queen was to get some inspiration for non-deadly variations. What I ended up with was the last clafouti they had in stock that morning, made with lychee and caramel. Not the best clafouti I've ever had - too dense, too flan-ish (ever since I saw that shit-awful movie Envy on a Toronto-Ottawa Greyhound, I've had a thing against flan.) The caramel was kind of pre-fabricated and I think the lychees were canned, which shouldn't have been necessary as lychees are in season here now and the body of the clafouti should have been dryer than it was, which would have let it soak up fresh lychee juice. Miam miam miam. See, it could have been so good. And it was fine, actually, it wasn't bad or anything. If I'd never had clafouti before I would have been jizzing all over myself. It's just now I'll have to do it at home, and better.

So thumbs down-ish on the clafouti at Clafouti, but Miss V.K. says her pain au chocolat was amazing so don't write it off if you're in the market for French breakfast pastry in Toronto. It's fucking embarassingly hard to get a good pain au chocolat here.

Wherein I pretend to be a jock

I woke up this morning with a creepy feeling about the World Cup. What did Materazzi say to Zidane to get head-butted? The last time Zidane freaked out in championship play was because of some Saudi cocksucker mocking his Kabyle origins. What on earth did that tattooed trog say? Was it fairly standard shit-talk Zidane just couldn't handle after that phenomenal peice of ass Buffon made an impossible save of his header a few minutes before? Was it the most effective, exceptional peice of shit-talk to have ever occurred in the history of sport? Was whatever it was exacerbated by the French team being disowned by a mainstream national politician?

I wanted Italy to win to make my daddy happy, and I was happy when they won on my own account, but today I've stopped. I'm not a hero-worshipping type when it comes to sports but I had a bit of a man-crush, a bit of he-would-raise-fine-babies-and-protect-me lurve for Zidane; what happened wasn't nice. Materazzi is from Lecce; if he said something all ethnically gross . . . I don't understand how people as shat-upon and marginalized as southern Italians get so ethnically nasty. If he was nasty it wasn't a pretty win. Except, of course, in terms of aesthetics. There are at least 46 places I'd like to sit on the Italian team.

Upwards and onwards. Tomorrow I'll go back to writing about food, the only realm where ethnic tension actually makes sense. I had some wasabi hummus last Friday. Revolting. Two beautiful things that do not go together.

I'm waiting for my man

Toronto Island rocks. Thanks to all concerned for a lovely fucking day out there; amazing how running around after a soccer ball and a frisbee in the sunshine can help with mind-boggling sexual frustration. So beautiful.

Last night I went to El Amigo where the evening's DJ was a music critic for a local free newspaper. The music was awful. It really seemed as though the DJ was trying his best to keep the dancefloor empty; the place wasn't exactly packed but you could tell the people there wanted to be dancing . . . he wouldn't let them . . . It's not as though the songs he was playing were horrid, but they too often weren't dancey; when he managed to get people up with the occasional dancey song (like "Heatwave" by Martha & the Vandellas, which ordinarily I'd be happy to hear but was sort of pissed about last night because that's the closest he said he could get to "The Love you Save" from the Jackson Five) he'd follow it up with some non-dancey crap. What the fuck? My involvement with pop music is superficial at best and I could have done a way fucking better job - how could a professional music critic be so fucking inept? And it's not like he was playing underappreciated gems, either; I don't think he was making an effort to 'educate' us. Just music no-one in the world would want to dance to interspersing a few songs they would want to dance to so clumsily no-one ended up wanting to dance to the songs they'd ordinarily want to dance to.

Miss B. grew weary of the situation thirteen minutes before last call and proposed running up the road to Stone's Place. Fuck, am I ever glad I said yes! In five minutes I went from planning the fastest route home to bed to wondering where this place had been all my life. The couple of DJs, who coincidentally Miss B. knew from highschool - oh, they were lovely! It was lovely! Lovely! Delfonics and Donovan and dirty Velvet Underground and Jefferson Airplane and early Stones, lovely! It was like they were auditioning to DJ my wedding or something. I'd so, so get them to DJ my wedding, except I could probably make my iPod do it for less money.