Seen just east of the corner of King and Dufferin:
Category: It Happened to Me
Categories
How Not to Say It
While channel-surfing with my lovely wife, we ended up catching the final segments of What Not to Wear. The episode featured a young woman living in Manhattan. Her “after” pictures looked great.
“I wonder what the ‘befores’ look like,” I said.
As if in response, the show cut to her “before” pictures. They were
mostly a cross of college “schlump” outfits and stuff that was locked
permanently in 1987. She looked more New Jersey than New York.
“She lives in the city,” I said, “she should dress a little.”
Wendy recoiled in horror.
“Was it something I said?” I asked.
“No, it’s how you said it. You sounded just like my mother!”
Oh, great. I think I just cancelled the next fortnight’s nookie, and I
didn’t even do anything fun like coming home completely smashed with
the boys to play Grand Theft Auto.
Just for kicks, a photo of me in my role as Best Man at Rob Strickler’s and Leslie Thun’s wedding last month:
And while we’re at it, one of my lovely wife:
And here’s one of the bride and groom after the wedding rehearsal dinner:
I’ll post whatever photos I have from their wedding and various pre-wedding celebrations in an album soon.
Categories
A “Best Of” Page
I used to have a “Best Of” set of links in the sidebar of this blog that listed what I thought were my best blog articles. The sidebars are a little crowded these days, but there’s a “Best Of” page.
It’s not complete — I still have a few more articles to add — but it should provide an hour or so of interesting procrastination. Enjoy!
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Happy American Thanksgiving!
One of the best things about being a Filipino-Canadian
Catholic/American Jewish couple is that there’s little or no overlap
between our holidays. Each set of parents gets to see us for their
respective holidays, and Wendy and I each get some bonus celebrations,
such as an extra Thanksgiving. Wendy got her bonus Thanksgiving last
month, and this month, I get mine.
We arrived at Logan yesterday, where Wendy’s parents came to pick us up. We had dinner over at Uncle Pete’s Hickory Ribs, a great barbecue house in Revere.
We started with some shared chips with mango salsa, after which I had a
nice big platter with Texas beef ribs, pulled pork, Asian slaw (cole
slaw with a thai-style peanut dressing) and baked beans, washed down
with an ice-cold Sam Adams. If you’re ever in the area and feeling
carnivorous, make sure you visit Uncle Pete’s.
I’ve just finished making the Baby Atkins cry over at Wendy’s parents’
place. We had homemade coffee cake for breakfast and pan-friend shrimp
with artichoke dip and pita chips prepared by Wendy’s brother and his
girlfriend for a snack. Later that afternoon, we had an excellent
turkey dinner, complete with cranberry jelly, mashed potatoes, squash
and pumpkin and applesauce breads. We also had a large selection of
desserts. There was pecan pie, caramel squares, Wendy’s butterscotch
chip oatmeal cookies, and one Wendy’s mom made just for me (since I
love chocolate): toll house cookie pie. I have the best mother-in-law ever!
Dinner was followed by general immobility and a couple of games of
Scrabble. Wendy and her family, being an erudite and well-read bunch,
are worthy comptetitors.
It’s been exactly two months since our wedding, so I am most thankful
for Wendy. Gentlemen, if you find a woman who will tolerate a mild
videogaming addiction and even buy you a PlayStation for Christmas and
the Warriors game for your birthday, and even watch you loot and shoot your way through Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, propose marriage immediately.
I am also thankful for Wendy’s family, who welcomed me with open
arms
from the moment I met them. They are wonderful people whom I am pleased
and proud to have them as part of my (increasingly international)
family. I am reminded of
the dedication in Cory Doctorow’s latest book, Someone Comes to Town,
For the family I was born into and the family I chose. I got lucky both times.
To my American friends, family and readers: have a happy Thanksgiving!
Categories
Feliz Cumpleaños, Maria!
(And here’s hoping that my Spanish-by-way-of-Tagalog isn’t too sloppy!)
Happy birthday to Maria “Adventures in Downtown Toronto” Davo! See you at your party tonight.
Some quick notes on last Friday’s entry about the pillow fight at Dundas Square…
Intelligent Design
In the comments for my entry in which I rebut Colby Cosh’s comments about the pillow fight, one commenter talks about David Warren’s ‘angry and somewhat bizarre apologia for intelligent design’, which s/he suspects is due to the fact that it’s supposed to be part of the neocon credo.
I am beginning to believe that the refusal to follow generally accepted scientific principles is the neocon equivalent of the fear of “acting white”.
This often-debated notion goes as follows: black students create peer pressure to do poorly by taunting those who excel academically, saying that they are “acting white”.
This theory is nothing new. I remember a discussion about it with a bunch of my friends at the Diefenbaker club (not really a club, but what a group of friends of mine who were proto-neo-cons back in ’91 called themselves) at Mackintosh-Corry Hall, a regular hangout at Crazy Go Nuts University.
I remember giving them some mild but unrebuttable annoyance by remarking that “for us Asian kids, ‘acting white’ means ‘completely sucking at math, science and videogames.'”
Back to the point I’m trying to make: I will posit that Warren and a number of his ilk are leaning towards ID because belief in evolution is “acting liberal”. This is the white “acting white”.
Kill ’em all
In that same entry, I remark about how little fun hanging out on the Western Standard cruise would be. Comment away, but can we cool it with the sinking and torpedoing jokes? It brings the discourse down to Ann Coulter’s level. There isn’t much that separates suggesting that the cruise ship be torpedoed and Ann Coultersims like the classic “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.”
By the bye, the word is spelled “torpedo”, not “torpedoe”.
Coverage
BlogTO went to the pillow fight; go check out their writeup.
There’s also a Flickr photoset covering the event.
An anonymous commenter who went wrote about how it was a bit creepy — they went there for fun, in the same spirit as that annual tomato fight in Spain,but instead felt co-opted as the anti-gun rally seemed to be using the event as a lure. If this was the intent, it would be as dishonest as those “wear denim if you support cause X” days in universities and high schools.
Where I was
I didn’t attend the pillow fight, owing to a prior commitment that I had forgotten about when I first made the posting. You see, I’d promised the wife and my friend Jessie that I would take them to another crazy mob event scheduled for that weekend: the 30th Annual William Ashley Warehouse Sale. That trip was worthy of its own blog entry; I’ll post one later.
I mean, dude, that William Ashley gold coin (redeemable for merchandise) that we got as a wedding present wasn’t going to spend itself, was it?