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).

Day Four: I Forgot About the Garbage Thing (MJ)

If I may indulge...

If you are even close to my age (and if you’re not a baby or 125 years old, you are), then you probably owned Thriller. If you were born between 1965 and 1983, you probably had the first release of the record while you still lived with parents—in the days when records were the only choice and not the hipster alternative to practical listening.

Thriller wasn’t even music for me when my parents bought it: I was four and liked album covers (which explains Taco’s Puttin on the Ritz, Abba’s Super Trooper and Laura Brannigan)…Thriller’s cover was perfect: a good looking black man in a white suit with a tiger. When you’re four and don’t know what sex is, this IS sex.

Though I wasn’t born in the peak Farrah Fawcett age, I get that she was the icon for many of those in pre-sex mode. I wish I had more to say, but Lynn Crosbie’s Globe and Mail piece on Farrah Fawcett from a few weeks ago says it much better (actually, Lynn’s eulogizing is much more polished than this attempt).

Back to Michael Jackson. His death today is not heartbreaking. That doesn’t mean it’s not too bad (no pun intended), but it’s not something that shocks and saddens as much as Larry King claims it does. Michael Jackson’s death is reflective and symbolic. No one will miss the Michael Jackson of Jay Leno jokes, Oprah interviews, court cases, or cosmetic surgery. We’ll miss Thriller Michael.

The Michael we miss, we missed long before today.

In 2004, my cat Kamala died. Our family had had her since 1987, and while we were all upset, I don’t know if we were sad at her actual death, but rather, the thought of 1987 and the simple thought of how much time had passed. The death of a pet always seems to elicit a montage: when Kamala died, I was 25 and all I could think of was getting her when I was eight years old and a few other scenes, none of which involved me as an adult. Michael Jackson’s death has the same effect for the 8 billion people on the earth who don’t know him personally: nostalgia. But we already had that.

I don’t compare the death of a man I didn’t know to a pet I did, but last week, if asked why the world liked Michael Jackson, no one would have called him the King of Pop for anything after the Bad album. It was Thriller. It was Off The Wall. It was the Jackson Five. Watch the news: any music we hear will be 25 years old* and amazing and not pop music as a synonym for empty sounds (looking at you Will.I.Am).

Today when I heard that Michael Jackson died, I thought of 1983: I was four and he was awesome and my mom made all my meals and all we had were records. Fuck the Thriller album was good. So was that cover.

The Michael we miss, we missed long before today. Yeah, okay...today is sort of heartbreaking.


(* Not including his 1995 duet with Janet Jackson Scream which is still a pretty amazing song)

Day Three: My Garbage is Boring.

"A small one-man fighter should be able to penetrate the outer defense." - General Dodonna (Star Wars)

Today I left home with a little grocery bag (the green kind that costs 99 cents). I brought it out with the expectation of buying tonic water, limes, and BBQ corn chips (see Day 2). I ended up not purchasing any of those items and thus, write Day 3 stone cold sober. Sort of.

With no open trash cans and no shopping spree, I found myself using the bag as my own little garbage tote. When I got home, I was fairly astonished at how lackluster my garbage production can be on a typical day:

Plastic Starbucks cup
Nivea water bottle
Extra Gum wrapper
Flyer for some play I wasn’t going to go to
Bank machine receipt
Debit receipt for a white shirt

If garbage is any indication of a man (“man”), frig I’m boring. Uninterested with my on-the-go garbage and needing personality vindication, I decided to look into the bin under the kitchen sink—which has not been taken out since Monday. It smelled a bit, but Honourable Mayor David Miller told me to keep my trash inside for a week: maybe it’s the 25% Greek in me, but if Leonadis’s 300 Spartans could rally around a leader at the Battle of Thermopylae, why the hell can’t I support my elected official (I didn’t vote) in the Battle of the City (needs a better name)? The Casa Blanca apartment complex doesn’t have compost, so pardon the lack of green-savvy, but here’s what’s in the kitchen sink garbage as of now:

Corn husks and Various Vegetable parts
Tin Foil
A burned CD labeled “White People Music Mix #2”
A snapped screwdriver
A flower
Something I can’t identify and don’t remember throwing in the garbage.
A penny

My house garbage is far cooler. This is the sort of thing that leaves some questions! This is the sort of thing that TMZ would report! Also, it sort of reads like a list of possible murder weapons for the board game Clue.

As for the civic update, things didn’t seem that filthy on the streets today. I jogged in a park that was still litter free, and the only thing that seemed out of place on the Toronto streets was a pile of dog shit in front of a Toronto Star Newspaper box (though this may have been a dash of biting media commentary—I noticed no such defecation at the Globe and Mail box).

I don’t know what I was expecting today, and day three was a bit anticlimactic on the garbage front. The drama has yet to crest in mid-town unless you have kids in daycare, in which case, your Day 3 blog would probably be far more interesting to read (the home garbage to my portable garbage, if you will).

Tomorrow, I’m going to the reported mother of temporary dumps: Christie Pitts.

Day Two: Liquor Store? I Hardly Know Her Store!

Well, it’s day 2 in the great city strike of 2009. I haven’t been to Chinatown (this isn’t racist, my mom’s Chinese) or any city parks yet, so I haven’t quite noticed trash on the streets. In the thirty degree heat, I smelled pretty bad today, but the air stench remains negligible.

Someone (the city?) has taken the mature step of putting a thick saran wrap over garbage cans with a sign saying “Not in Service”—this has the same affect of putting a “No Girls Allowed” sign on your treehouse: you’re only going to get MORE girls—and people have brilliantly poked a hole through the saran wrap and jammed garbage in anyway. Screw you talking, garbage can! Don’t tell me what to do!

The more exciting news of the day was the rush on liquor at the LCBO (which is set to strike as of midnight tonight). As I love the combination of booze and panic, I thought I would join my fellow Torontonians and check out the liquor store.

Have you ever been dumb enough to buy your booze on New Year's Eve? I have. This was times 10! The competition for bottles was fierce! Elbows were thrown...bodies were bruised. If you've seen Jingle All the Way, it's like the scene where Sinbad and Schwarzenegger fight over a Turbo-Man Action figure for their sons on Christmas Eve.

I haven’t seen a gin shelf this ravaged since I visited my Grandma Todd (love you, Grandma!)
*Note how no one seems interested in the Russian Prince Vodka.

Though I’m pretty sure the booze strike will end before the garbage strike (we have our priorities) and there will be no shortage of getting a buzz-on (beer stores and crappy Ontario wine stores are still open), it was fun to look at all the empty shelves and see everyone filling baskets, sure that sometime soon, they will NEED peach schnapps.

Ah, Toronto. You’re a mess. If this was an episode of Intervention, we’d be bringing in Jeff Van Vonderen to take you on a plane down to New Beginnings in Miami.

And speaking of Intervention, here is my 2009 panic haul.
p.s. Don’t Intervene on me. I got caught up in the frenzy.

Tomorrow's Day 3. And you know what happens on the third date?

Day One: City of Toronto versus City Workers

Well, it's not a sport, but it's going to be a competition: Toronto vs. Toronto City Workers (and let's be honest, despite public pools, daycare, and a few museums being affected, this is going to be called a garbage strike). As of day one, I am on the side of the city, but I'm also a bit ignorant...all I've heard is that city workers want 18 sick days. That sort of feels unreasonable, then again, all the exposure to spores, sick kids, public pool feces, and... museum specimens (?) must mean more susceptibility to illness with this group. All I know is, it's going to suck and a lot of people are going to be saying this sentence: "I pay my taxes, and this is ridiculous."

Today is normally garbage day in front of my building. So we're already one week in...last week I put half a cooked turkey in the garbage. I bet that starts smelling first.

While Toronto is gripped by 30 degree heat, garbage in city parks, and now, an impending liquor store strike, I'll be filling this blog with daily installments to distract myself from the smell and lack of gin.

It's CITY VERSUS CITY WORKERS!

Here we go. Let's get ready to rumble.

Gym Culture: The Sauna

Tell someone you just came out of a sauna and, 83.2% of the time, watch their noses and foreheads scrunch (in all languages, the semiotic connotation is “Ewwww. Gross”). The gymnasium sauna conjures up the most odious of images: sweaty bodies oozing last night’s toxins, pools of bacteria festering in deep cedar crevices, orgiastic bath houses, Finnish people.


But I sauna at my gym. I admit it. Scrunch if you must, but know that I have a routine in all public places where genitals are exposed (my public bathroom ritual is well-documented). The gymnasium sauna is not an imperfect place; in fact, it can be downright carnal and disgusting (not that carnal can not also be pretty great). But, oh sauna, place where almost anything goes, you need reformation. Oh, the things we tolerate in cedar boxes...

Here are my 5 Theses for safe and courteous sauna’ing:

1. Sit on a towel. I’m perplexed by the amount of people who are comfortable sitting bare-assed (and because of the heat: bare-balled) on a place where a stranger also may have sweat bare-assed/bare-balled. I am convinced this activity alone contributes to most of the sauna’s bad reputation.

2. Don’t make eye contact. Look, I know we’re both naked, sweating, and close to meditation, but let’s not ruin it, okay? This is as far as our bond needs to go. Effective saunas are about pretending you’re alone. And while we’re at it, don’t say anything: Yes, it is hot enough for me, and yes, I do think it’s quite a nice thing to sauna after a workout (The no contact rule has been adapted from my previous: “How to Piss at a Urinal in a Civilized Society.)

3. Don’t shave in a sauna. Now this seems obvious, but on numerous occasions, I have seen men using their sweat as shaving lubricant. Stop doing this. Do I need to go into all the reasons why?

4. Don’t eat in a sauna. I’ve never witnessed this one first hand, but a fellow teacher I know who saunas (though it’s a female sauna, so maybe it’s a different world in there) has told me of a woman eating a sandwich in a sauna. The idea of a ham and cheese slowly melting in the steam of a sauna is enough to make me regurgitate last night's toxins. Eating and sweating don’t mix.
a. Addendum to rule 4: Don’t vomit in the sauna.

5. Legs together, both feet on the ground/bench below you. Let’s keep the money shots to a minimum. To get a better idea what I'm talking about, envision Kevin Costner in this picture but with no pants on:


Next week I shall nail these rules to the sauna door at the gym. Like Martin Luther, I hope to begin the reformation of sauna culture, so that we might all sweat in peace.

Amen.