But I was There: When in Buffalo, Roam as the Buffalo Do

Exhibit A. It's Sometimes Sunny in Buffalo

Dear Reader, I am no longer a virgin.

It was my first NFL game and associated tailgate. This weekend I attended the Buffalo Bills–New England Patriots game with none other than…my Dad. It was everything I thought it would be, and something I would do at least once a year. Though this father-son moment is something most boys do with somewhere around the age of six, thirty seems about right. I won’t bore you with the details of the game other than to say that I saw two of my top ten all time favourite athletes connect on a touchdown (Brady to Moss), but (and cue the music) more importantly, I connected with one of my top ten all time favourite parents.

Here are the highlights.

8AM – woke up in Burlington at my Uncle's house. He is an awesome football fan and an actual University coach (like Craig T. Nelson, but real). I drank a delicious glass of orange juice and pa and me b-lined it to the Tim Horton’s for what would have been a lovely little commercial.

9AM – Driving through St. Catherines, I had the following exchange with my Dad (married 35 years to Ma), which is definitely, a top 5 all time for me:
Me: All my friends seem to be married now. How do you decide to finally do it?
Dad: If you think maybe you should marry the person you’re with, that’s a no. If you think yes, then get married.

9:30AM – We cross the border. I realize how much I’m like my Dad when I notice how panicked he gets around border guards. Border guards are pricks. There, I said it. I know this is part of the uniform they need to wear to catch Osama, but I actually think they will probably do more to increase terrorism than prevent it if they aren’t nicer to people: I should sell that to the government “Kindness: one weapon against terror.” When we handed him our passports, the border guard ordered us to hand them to him open as though he were ordering us to put all hands on the wall for a cavity search. I stuttered when he asked us our seats numbers and then laughed at how ridiculous a vetting question that is.

9:43 AM - Buffalo is a shithole. It looks like Hamilton except the billboards are for beer brands we don’t have.

10:00 AM – We arrive in Buffalo and pull into a parking lot. We pay someone in a yellow vest $25 dollars and park between two trucks. On our left, a group of guys bbq’ing chili. On our right, the same thing. In fact, everyone had chili on the go. My Dad and I feel slightly left out, so we go over to the KK Convenience Mart and pick up 18 Miller Lite and a bag of plain chips. We’re ready to roll.

Exhibit B. Friendly People

10: 15AM – We open the back of the Hyundai Santa Fe (painfully close to a Mom SUV) and sit on the bumper. It’s -5, there are drunk Americans everywhere, yet I feel like the Buddha must have felt sitting under the lotus tree for the first time.

10:20AM – I put on my New England patriots toque. Instantly, Bills' fans start yelling at me (e.g. “New England sucks!”), and Patriots' fans start offering me their first born.

10:26AM – A father and son selling pie to fundraise for their church tug on my and my father's collective heartstrings. We buy a peach and apple for 5 bucks each. They're not bad, more tarts than pies, but I guess their father son moment is a good cause; I have no idea what the church was: it sounded made up to be honest. 20 minutes later, high school cheerleaders come by and try to sell us peanuts. Though they'd go much better with the beer, I feel like I'm being pandered to and we reject. I'm glad we bought the cult-pies.

10:30AM – The first Miller Lite is going through me like water. My Dad and I start getting really folksy and I say something like “You don’t buy it, you rent it.”

10:32AM – I return from the portable toilet at the far end of the parking lot and warn my Dad that if he can avoid using them, to do so (then again, are they ever Shangri-la?). I should sell that name to a portable toilet company: Shangri-La Septic. My Dad tells me the second hand story he just heard from the group to our left of a guy who randomly had sex with some girl in a bar bathroom last night. When we’re kids, our parents try to protect us from these stories; I wish I were there to protect my dad from that one.

11:40AM - We get into an excellent conversation with the car to other side of us (I feel like we knew everything we needed to about the group to right). They are a group of Mormons (lapsed) from Erie. At first we talk about how my Patriots toque sucks “giant ass”, but then get into talking about the economy and careers. We offer career advice to a welder to look into the Alberta oil fields. It’s a completely asinine conversation to be having when 20m in the distance, I think I just saw someone throw up and urinate at the same time.

Noon – The game starts at one, so we decide to start making our way to the field. I see one guy so drunk, I wonder how (or why) he will get into the stadium. He’s doing that sideways walk thing, where the feet seem to be pointing to the side, but the legs and body continue to move forward. If he gets into the game, at least he can say, “I was there.”

1:00PM – The game starts. I scream like a little girl when Randy Moss and Tom Brady run onto the field. I take my hat off when the National Anthem begins (which you should do, even in a country where the border guards are dicks).

1:10PM – One row in front of us, this:

Exhibit C. The Worst Nap In Buffalo History

Now, I know what I paid for my tickets, and in this economy, I just can't believe this can happen. This lovely couple probably had a great Sunday morning, but they are to tailgating what the hare is to a race against a tortoise; furthermore, this kind of thing probably provides a lot of ammunition to people who try to argue that soccer is the better game than football (Let’s face it, Euro football vs. American football debaters: they are both boring. In fact, at some point, all sports (and sport blogs) can be boring if you aren't moderately drunk. But I think I’ll take the puking America tailgater stereotype over the murderous soccer hooligan stereotype for the simple reason that I can clean vomit from my clothes, but I can’t clean a knife from my chest).

1:20PM – A woman in her mid-50s sitting in front of me is offended by my Patriots toque. She takes a pink Buffalo Bills cap, puts it on my head, and takes my picture. If we were both half our age plus seven, we'd have exchanged facebook names and I'd be able to get a looksee how this picture of me turned out. Alas, not. Somewhere in Buffalo, my picture is on a her computer; I wonder what she’ll do with it. I worry that with the Pats toque under the Bills hat, I will someday be used for anti-Patriots propaganda, possibly with Perez Hilton style graffiti over my picture claiming that I am a "douchebag."

2:45PM – I brave the washrooms at Ralph Wilson Stadium. It's packed with men, of which I am one: when in traffic, don't complain, because you're a car too. If hell exists, it is found in a men’s washroom at a sporting event. All the senses are assaulted. I realize I'm growing up when the first thought that comes to my mind is whether or not the fire department would have a problem with all the people in this bathroom. A Bills' fan is banging on a stall door wondering what the person 'in there' is doing. A few minutes later, we all find out, when the guy who was in the stall exits, a fresh sheen of vomit down the front of his Terrell Owens jersey. But he was there. At least he was there.

4:15PM – The game ends and the Bills lose (see, I told you I wouldn’t bore you with the details). I take one last look back to see Randy Moss, and my Dad catches me. I quickly say something about girls.

4:40PM – We arrive back at the Hyundai Santa Fe and most people are on their way out except one group of Ontarians who can’t start their car. We give them a boost, talk about football, drink a beer and swear probably 30 times each. We wear the uniform of a tailgater to the bitter end.

5:35 PM – At the Niagara Falls border, the Customs officer wants to know why we both have suitcases if we were just in town for the Bills' game. We tell her the completely true story, that because of our nervousness sounds made up, about sleeping the night in Burlington at my Uncle's, a football coach, like Craig T. Nelson, only real...etc.

What I really wanted to do was to tell her to read my blog today—both to get her answer and to up the number of hits on my counter…just so she could prove, that yes, she was here.

Exhibit D. When in Buffalo, Roam as the Buffalo Do

On Disappointment: The Two Tigers

For a while, Chris Henry was one of my favourite NFL wide receivers. I’m not really sure why. He played on the Cincinnati Bengals which doesn’t really arouse anything in me, and he wasn’t even the best (or second best) on the team. He was fast and athletic: all the things you probably should be if on career day, the guidance counsellor says you should be an NFL football player. Chris Henry looked weird (my girlfriend recently called him “alien-like”), which was actually bonus, and I was pretty sure that by liking him, I would be alone, fulfilling the need that some of us have to like things that others don’t in order to seem indie or unique or ironic (other examples: Steely Dan, Raspberry ginger ale, not having a cell phone).

If you’re not up to speed on this, here are the basics (or reported basics as this story is less than a day old) regarding the recent death of NFL wide receiver Chris Henry. From espn.com:
“Police said a dispute began at a home … and Henry jumped into the bed of the pickup truck as his fiancée was driving away from the residence. Police said at some point when she was driving, Henry came out of the back of the vehicle."

There will be some speculation about what happened before Chris Henry fell out of the pickup truck (although much less than that surrounding the Tiger Woods vehicular-domestic dispute) and sadly, in a week, Chris Henry’s death will likely be forgotten or chalked up as inevitable given his history. Unlike Tiger Woods, Chris Henry had a pretty public spotty past: the almost cliché case of someone with all the talent in the world constantly disappointing those who took a chance on him. Since this is not setting out to be a tribute or obituary, I won’t shy away from some of those dirty bits. Since 2004, Henry had been charged or accused with the following: DUI, supplying underage girls with alcohol (though come on, they were 20), drug possession, gun possession, and assault (not against women), not to mention some pretty ridiculous on-the-field conduct where coaches referred to him as an embarrassment to the game. Note this is a game where Plaxico Burress goes to jail for shooting himself yet Ray Lewis stabs a woman, and wins a Super Bowl MVP the following year. Chris Henry’s crimes were largely the stuff of college movies and 1970s porn scenarios.

But this year, Chris Henry was moving on/growing up. The Bengals gave him a second (or tenth) chance, and at only 26, he was finally getting on with it. Sometimes it takes the first 26 years to sort your shit out (or if you’re Italian, 42). Chris Henry benefited from being not quite famous enough, which allowed him these under the radar chances, unlike say, Tiger Woods, who will, with little professional consequence, be just fine, despite the next few years of being asked about his “transgression.”

The next few days of Chris Henry stories will all be the same. They will mention his checkered past, his attempt at redemption, and perhaps the astute attempts will recognize that he was just a kid. Unlike Tiger Woods, nothing much was expected from Chris Henry. Within 20 minutes of the news that Chris Henry died from his injuries, the news that Elin wanted to divorce Tiger Woods had already taken over the top story. Between you and me reader, I don’t give a sweet fuck. Elin will still be rich and hot; Tiger Woods will still be rich and have his pick of cocktail waitresses or celebrities who have recently broken up with A-Rod or Tony Romo. Their kids will be fucked, but there is a chance that is going to happen regardless when your Dad is the athlete of the century.

But back to Chris Henry: as Jerry Reed (another thing to like if you want to seem unique) said, “He who don’t expect much, ain’t gonna be disappointed.” So 650 words to get to my point: despite his rather cliché athlete existence, despite my constant vigilance to try (and fail) to not care about celebrity lives, and despite those low expectations, Chris Henry’s death disappoints me, not simply because he was young, but because he wasn't getting any younger.

How Fantasy Football Ruins Football and Lives (in that order)

This will make sense to no more than five regular readers of this blog. I'll get the rest of you next time. For those of you who do care to read, I have provided a glossary at the bottom of this entry.

Brady Quinn: Back in the day when things were cool
all we needed was bop ba ba ba ba ba du

My New Reality TV Show

Okay, so there's new reality show called Fantasy House...no, there are no women in bikinis, no beer coming out of the faucets, or any of those other erection inducing things that men aged 14 to 95 are want to like...this is about 10 men who have been kicked out of their own houses by the wives and girlfriends sick of hearing about their fantasy football team. For 16 weeks the men live, eat, and surf the internet for football stats, unfettered by Thursday night Dancing with the Stars' hiberdates, Saturday afternoon trips to the mall, Sunday dinners with family: the men are free to spend every waking hour in the fantasy house discussing how crappy their quarterbacks are and how much the other nine men in their house/league "suck ass" - they will lose all perspective, proclaiming that yes, they could coach in the NFL and yes, being 3-2 in the first five weeks is qualification enough to lead the Cleveland Browns (they would be right).

Viewers will tune in to watch the 10 men systematically begin to never enjoy football again. The game of football will lose all meaning, like a computer translating Hamlet into binary code and an audience hearing "To be or not to be" as "1 0 1 0 0 0..."

By the end of season one on Fantasy House, nine of the ten men will swear it's not worth the anguish, that they will never to play a season of fantasy football again; they will return home, without their signed football and $400 cash prize, to the open and forgiving arms of beautiful wives and beautiful girlfriends; they will return home to towels which match the bathmats; to meals with cilantro; they will return home to biweekly intercourse; and then, they will realize what's truly important, who the real 'keepers' are. And for eight months, they will have what the wise call perspective. They will have love (or at least a comfortable arrangement), and all will be right. Fantasy House will go on hiatus until the following August when the league commissioner email reminding you that September 20th is draft day; season two of the show will begin, and the fog will return like it was Devin Hester, all that hard-earned perspective will vanish as though it was Brady Quinn's career: yes, Yeats encapsulated man's loss of perspective best when he wrote those famous words: "1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0."

Glossary

• Brady Quinn - Former mancrush and all-American quarterback who was amazing in college at Notre Dame but sucks in the NFL, leading one to believe that he plays for God, not the Cleveland Browns
• Cleveland Browns - the worst team in football. They wear brown and have Brady Quinn as a quarterback.
• Devin Hester - A guy who runs fast and gets touchdowns sometimes.
• fantasy football - 1. sports gambling masquerading as friendship; 2. the activity that makes Sunday a bad day to make plans with a significant other and places the emphasis on a romantic Saturday.
• keepers - 1. Fantasy Football - n. an actual player who you have from one fantasy football year to the next (see, me: Brady f'ing Quinn); 2. Real Life - n. a romantic partner who you want to have from one actual year to the next.
• league commissioner - the friend who organizes your fantasy football league in much the same the way in which a drug dealer organizes your baggie. (AKA. Johnny Commish)
  

Eleven Rules for Talking About Sports in Larger Groups

Be it dog catcher Michael Vick being allowed to play football, poker being on sports TV five times a day, or MMA achieving Monster Truck status with audiences, the berth of what constitutes sport talk has widened. And so, I present a public service for those at the beginner-intermediate-“expert” levels of sports conversation. Even if you don’t talk about sports, one of these tips may save your (social) life one day and make you look exceedingly well-rounded as though you were of common the people.

The Eleven Rules

1. Pick your Spots: If you’re the only one in a gathering who wants to talk about sports, don’t push the issue. Now’s not the time or place. Save it for next time you’re with an uncle or stuck with your girlfriend’s friend’s boyfriend who you’ve never met but find yourself at a table with while the girls have gone to the bathroom.

2. Take the road less traveled and make all the difference: One person should always take the least popular opinion on any sport debate. Possible POVs to try include women’s sports are not as interesting as men’s, North Americans who play soccer are douchebags, and baseball is awesome.

3. The Tom Brady Effect: Man crushes are allowed and cannot be judged under any circumstances. Who is anyone to get in the way of true love?

Figure 1. Take that David Beckham

4. The events in sports movies are fair game for discussion and can be argued with the fervor of actual sporting events: Ivan Drago really did kill Apollo Creed in Rocky IV, Kadeem Hardisson’s ghost really did help Marlon Wayans in The Sixth Man and there really were Angels in the Outfield helping Matthew McConaughey catch fly balls. [For less obscure references, please comment below.]

5. Yelling doesn’t mean you’re mad. It means you’re possibly wrong (see: Leafs fans, Italian soccer fans, those who earnestly follow Alpine Skiing).

6. Professional Wrestling is a sport. This became true in 1987 when Hogan body slammed Andre the Giant at Wrestlemania III. When engaged in a wrestling conversation, excessive name-dropping is recommended for nostalgic purposes. What conversation isn’t improved upon by reminding everyone at the table of the existence of "The Natural" Butch Reed?

Figure 2. Does putting quotes around "The Natural" undercut how natural you are?

7. Telling friends about your Fantasy Sports teams is acceptable. Telling friends about your fantasy sex scenarios is not …unless you’re on a camping trip in which case, go ahead [Addendum: Camping trips are no place to talk about fantasy sports]

8. There’s no I in Team: Try to include everyone in the conversation, but don’t reach for it. If there’s someone who doesn’t like sports in the group, let them go: they’ll catch up during the next conversation topic. Though consider how strong your friendship is if you always seem to be talking about sports and they don't. Oh, and for ye who don’t like sports…

9. There’s no U in Team: If you don’t like sports and a sports conversation breaks out, you have two options. 1. Silence and 2. Steer the topic to your own field of knowledge for momentary cul de sacs (examples: A-Rod’s play at third base → A-Rod getting to third base with Kate Hudson; Michael Vick’s right to play → animal rights; O.J. Simpson savagely murdering people → O.J. Simpson comedically murdering audiences in the Naked Gun movies). However, under no condition can you chastise sports conversations as stupid or pointless: not every conversation is Douglas-Lincoln and not every one is Nelson Mandela (who by the way, used World Cup Rugby to unite South Africa shortly after apartheid ended - holla bitches!).

10. With the exception of wrestling, spewing sport history, stats or award winners do not make a conversation: no one likes a show off. Learn the art of gentle history dropping and don’t submarine people with wikipedia entries as though you were some kind of 5x AL Rolaids Relief Man of the Year Dan Quisenberry

Figure 3. It is really hard to throw underhand and look cool. Dan Q could do it.

11. The Tennis Rule: Tennis is the least interesting professional sport getting regular television coverage that a group can discuss. If, after observing the above points, you find the conversation has found its way to tennis, do your friends in #8 a favour and change the topic to movies or sex, but never weather or politics, and only in certain climes, fantasy sex scenarios.

Now scroll back up to Figure 1...your man crush is safe here. Your man crush is safe here.

Day 34: Casablanca Dave and the Temple of Dumps

Indiana Jones feared snakes, Casablanca Dave apparently doesn’t care much for rats. Giant rats which drag tails the size of baby arms; rats that make Willard look like the recently deceased Taco Bell Chihuahua (Rest in Peace you 90s icon); rats that make you wonder what the hell little Michael Jackson saw in his pet rat Ben (if it’s not “too soon,” insert MJ joke now). Fievel might have gone west, but the rest of the rats are hunkering down right in the heart of Toronto.

So, I went back to the illegal dumping site today to get a better look:


Though it's not completely visible at this angle, in the bottom lefthand corner, and I shit you not, is an open bag of shit. This is not the cutesy garbage I thought I was going to explore. This is dirty, filthy trash that not even Oscar the Grouch would tolerate.

I didn’t get too close to this nasty pile as I was wearing my new Old Navy flip-flops (as all good adventurers do) and didn’t want to risk flesh-eating disease getting in through my toenails. Besides, the minute I arrived on the scene, a family of hedgehog sized rats came flying out of the pile and into the surrounding bush. For a moment I thought they were charging me, but this would have been far too dramatic to be true. As I walked the railway tracks home—don’t worry safety police, Via Rail went on strike today too—I realized what a big fat baby I was becoming.



My “eww” reaction to the rats surprised me since I never really considered them something to “fear”—in four years of a zoology degree I probably rooted around the large intestine of a dozen or so large white rats; I even recall a lovely three hour lab tweezering through fresh rat feces in the search for parasite eggs. I consider myself to have a pretty high tolerance for creepy crawlers and last night heroically* killed a bunch of spiders and a moth in my apartment, the latter of which unexpectedly had guts that looked like a Kraft Caramel. Alas, I did all this with nary a flinch.

But call me conservative, there is something about a big fangy rat bursting from a crap pile that makes me wonder how much longer Toronto can go on like this. It’s now day 34 of this CUPE strike; even Gandhi's hunger strikes didn't go on this long, and CUPE, I saw Gandhi, I knew Gandhi; Gandhi was a friend of mine. CUPE, you're no Gandhi.**

What started as potentially gross has now become potentially plague inducing. Parks are closed, social assistance paperwork isn’t getting filled out, people are blaming EMS workers for heart-attack deaths, union workers are punching people at garbage drop sites, and that 16 year old lifeguard blogging for The Star is showing me up with her good writing, mature perspective and first hand knowledge of the city strike. Meanwhile the rats are having a big old laugh as they develop our taste for convenience.

Frig, I should go wash my feet.

And speaking of feet, here are the footnotes.

*Heroically because my girlfriend watched me do it! Nothing shows you're a man like killing bugs in front of a woman. And unlike Indiana Jones’s girls, I am pretty sure mine won’t turn out to be a Nazi.

**One of the top 5 most obscure allusions. I barely even understand it. Lloyd Bentsen on Dan Quayle anyone? Anyone?

Raiders of Illegal Dumping: Part I

Last night, I felt like a Goonie. Go on you say? Okay. I will.

Which Goonie was I? I don’t know yet. I wish I could say I was Mikey, but the reality is, I was probably Chunk. While I’m sure there is some facebook application called “Which Goonie are you?” I’m going to do this the old fashioned way: self-reflection based on reaction.*

Last night, while walking home from my local Loblaws (the one that had a rat infestation last spring), I decided I would take a shortcut and walk along the railway tracks. In hindsight, this decision was an attempt at a Stand By Me moment, not a Goonies moment, but I guess we can’t pick which 1980s coming of age stories find us when we’re in our 30s.

So, here I am, walking the rails, trying to get all Will Wheaton, when I happen upon an illegal dumping site. Now, there is a dirt road to access this area, but other than that, I am walking in a very out-of-the-way area by Toronto standards (meaning I can’t see a Starbucks, anyone in skinny jeans, or hear a horn honking for no good goddamn reason). This is the type of area where you have bonfires or drink 4 bottles of Red Dog before your 10PM curfew.**

So, I come upon this giant pile of garbage filling up a natural valley made by the railway and high grass on one side and anonymous warehouse walls with half-assed graffiti on the other. Remember when the Goonies found the Fratteli’s hideout? Yeah, I know…I know.

The trash is fresh, and not even proper trash—a lot of it was simply white paper and other materials which are apparently recyclable (plastic and wrapping). But there was a shitload of it. It honestly looked like office waste, not household waste; I decide I’m in Dateline Investigation territory here. I pull out my camera to take a picture (‘cause this would be wicked investigative blogging) ready to blow the whistle on some corporate scandal and get a street named after me...when I hear a car approach…


Now, if you can picture a grown man scampering, well, shit, I scampered. I am not sure when the last time I scampered was: at least 20 years ago and probably on a Christmas morning. I ducked to the other side of the railway tracks and once there, self-conscious as I am, pretended I was “just chillin’” lest someone in a high apartment or literally, on the other side of the tracks, saw me making this bizarre move. My position must have represented the most unnatural “just chillin’” pose of all time: man with grocery bags, sitting on the rocks beside a railway track, looking intently at nothing in particular, holding an open cellphone, and I probably started whistling…a sure sign of someone who hasn’t seen something.***

I had to take a look at the car, so I peaked over the tracks where indeed, a Reliant K Car**** pulls up, and a man pops the trunk and dumps a few garbage bags into the pile. What was I supposed to do? Does Canada have citizens arrest? Should I call Mayor David Miller? I have raw chicken in my grocery bag! Do I really care that much? And what were the dumpers going to do if they saw me? Frig, what would a Goonie do?

Well, this Goonie hid out and waited for the car to leave. Yeah, I know: way more Chunk than Mikey.

So tonight, while many of my friends prepare for upcoming weddings, the birth of first children, maybe pay a bill and eat a meal with some vegetables, David Brock (b.1979) will put on black clothes, pretend he’s “just chillin’” and go check out the secret garbage dump by the railway tracks. Anyone want to come on an adventure? There are still positions available for a Corey Feldman type, an older brother in the mold of Josh Brolin, and a Data.*****

Footnotes (because they are important):
*Besides, I was slightly dissatisfied with recent Facebook application claims that my Punk Rock self is Iggy Pop (I wanted Fat Mike), my Sesame Street Character is Elmo (screw those second generation SS characters) and my Theatre Career should be Lighting Designer (I wanted “None of the above”).

** Anyone remember the rumour that the logo on a Red Dog bottle cap was supposedly Batman performing oral sex on Catwoman?

*** Or “hasn’t seen anything”. Or “has seen nothing.” There are too many indefinite pronouns which seem to make sense here.

**** Indeed is an overstatment. I don’t think it was a K Car, but it’s the crappiest car I can think of. It was probably a Contour or Malibu or something. I don’t know cars and am a crap eyewitness.

*****Must provide own spring mounted boxing glove, oil dispensing sneakers, and booby traps (that’s what I said, booby traps).

4 weeks In...

For those of you that I had reading this on the first 4 days, my apologies...I was taking my 18 sick days. Now that I know what it's like to take 18 sick days, my sympathies are creeping towards those city workers. We should all get AT LEAST 18!

Refreshed, I will resume...starting tomorrow (it's after 5PM...you can't expect anyone to work after 5PM).