The Beer Store: a Canadian treasure

Being my family's official day laborer, I was dispatched today to the Beer Store to recycle some empties. So with my eco-friendly green bag full of clinking bottles, I ventured towards the Beer Store to perform this eco-friendly task.

The Beer Store is an establishment that looks like a giant box located near highways, in parking lots, malls, street intersections and probably schools, day care centers and libraries. I think the only thing that beats the frequency of the Beer Store is Tim Hortons, so my trip probably took a whole minute of walking.

The Beer Store sells beer in quantities needed for the Canadian species, aka "two-fours" or packages or 24. Rolling belts are used to transport beer with various animals pictured on the bottles, such as moose and reindeer. A sign in the store said "get your spring beer gear," and I'm assuming it was referring to the necessities they were selling such as coolers with Canadian flags.

I did my best not to show I was a Beer Store recycling virgin. I knew that this would be a task I would perform over and over in Canada and, this being the closest Beer Store, I needed to conquer the task. I followed directions I was given as if I was facing the Beer Nazi instead of some friendly Canadian dude - take empties out of green bag, put empties in bin, roll bin to end of belt, get money.

I was slightly embarrassed that, in addition to the animal-pictured beers, my bin contained several wine bottles, a Baileys bottle and some wanna-be-beers, such as Bud Light, which was clearly brought to some party by either a non-Canadian or a beer-drinking virgin.

But the Canadian Beer Store dude took all my goodies and I walked away with a loonie and 60 cents, aka $1.60.

The interns

Working from home has its perks. And when you sometimes work from your parents's home, that also has its perks.

I call them my interns. One is an overly ambitions one (mother). The other one I pulled a Donald Trump on the first week and fired him. (father). I can't remember what he did to deserve this, but after he redeemed himself by making some mean cappuccinos a few days in a row, I hired him back.

Having your parents as your interns is interesting because in addition to handling tasks regular interns do - such as fetching coffee and taking care of administrative needs - they also do other things. The overly ambitious one, for example, runs over with a fleece jacket as soon as I utter a word about being cold. The other one decided to hold a 3 p.m. happy hour the other day and served up some serious mid-day pina coladas, complete with the colorful umbrellas and matching straws.

Sandwich for lunch? That doesn't exist when the interns are around. Lunch is more likely to be a five-course meal, starting with oysters and salmon tartar as appetizers. Need a new desk for the office? No problem. The father-intern built one from scratch in a matter of minutes. Want a new haircut? The mother-intern is happy to make recommendations and book the appointment.

Unlike younger interns, parent-interns are very disciplined and work all the time. They cook, clean, do grocery shopping and handle other tasks without even being told to do so.

But just like the young interns, parent-interns do not need to be paid. I am however, considering giving them college credit at the end of the semester.

I'm so sorry for (insert verb here)

Americans are ignorant, the French are rude and the Irish are drunks.

There are stereotypes for every nationality, and so far, the one about Canadian politeness has proven true.

- My sister once bumped into someone here and before she could utter a word, that person started apologizing to her.

- I nearly bumped into a woman while getting off the elevator, thinking I was in the lobby, whereas she was getting on on the third floor. "Oh, I'm so sorry," she said and proceeded to apologize for having the audacity to use the elevator.

- A street bum recently asked me for money, starting with this sentence: "Excuse me miss, may I please ask you a question?" Quite a change from a bum at Chase bank in Manhattan who started screaming after me once for not giving him money after I walked through a door he was holding.

-While playing tennis and constantly hitting balls to the next court due to my non-existent backhand, a woman actually thanked me and my tennis partner for letting her know a ball was rolling behind her feet when she was about to trip on my ball for the 10th time: "Oh, thank you so much for letting me know, I really appreciate it."

I guess I'm no stereotypical Canadian, considering my reaction to someone's tennis balls rolling all over my court involves rants about how recreational tennis players should be banned from certain courts and lines like: "Keep the ball on your own court, moron."

How 'boot some clothes, eh?

Ice hockey has turned into street hockey. Hockey practices have turned into rollerblading. And white lawns have turned brown.

Spring has arrived to the Great White North.

While this season brings us joys such as outdoor drinking and dining, chirping birds and Tim Hortons' iced cappuccinos, it also brings way too many under-dressed people.

It was sunny and in the low 70s over the weekend, but still windy and definitely not hot enough for some of the outfits that were displayed in the T-dot. Annoying teenage girls were out in their tank tops and socks and nylons were nowhere to be seen.

Women wore shorts short enough to show their thing and men put on flip-flops that displayed their white, 'spent-the-last-8-months-in-my-snowboots' toes. I mean, seriously, get a pedicure before emerging outside in your Hawaiians, eh?

To a Canadian, this weather must be the equivalent of 150 degrees. Will they all walk around naked when it actually gets hot in a couple of months?

Molson Canadian

I saw a Molson Canadian commercial and thought I'd let you know about some of their lines about how do you know you're Canadian:

-You've used a blowtorch to curve your hockey stick
-You've used your arm for an ice scraper
-You've grown a beard during the playoffs

On Molson Canadian's Web site, there is a hockey section where you can search for places to watch hockey games and a place where you can "grow your virtual beard."

I could not find the commercial I saw on You Tube, but here is one of their most popular commercials, which I also thought you may enjoy...

This one's for the ladies

So being in a new country, I have to find new doctors, including a new ob/gyn. I was referred to a vagina doctor without a vagina (aka, a male). And it felt kind of like dating.

First, someone you know sets you up (your family doctor). Then you call that person and settle on a date and time to meet. Then, I shaved my legs and put on some decent underwear. Then I got nervous.

But unlike a blind date, I was actually hoping to meet someone old and ugly. I don't know why, but the thought of a young and good looking ob/gyn would make me even more uncomfortable than how uncomfortable the whole thing is to begin with. Luckily, the ob/gyn met both requirements I was hoping for.

Once the awkward introductions are over, the ob/gyn asks questions that may or may not come up on a first date, such as if you ever got knocked up and whether you are a whore (well, they are delivered in slightly more professional terms). And depending on how good the blind date is, they may not get to see or feel nearly as much as the ob/gyn does.

The good news is that Canada has universal health care, so even if the date sucks, it's always free. And you don't have to feel guilty about waiting a year to call the guy back.

Rollerblading - fun and scary

Two sports that terrify me are among the sports Canadians are good at - rollerblading and skiing. But I think it's good for everyone to do something they are scared of, so I went rollerblading the other day.

I put on my knee pads, wrist pads, elbow pads, arm pads, ass pads and whatever else I could find to pad myself with and off I went.

Bikers, joggers and walkers all passed me as my fear kept me from going faster than one mile per hour. Then at one point, I had a 10-minute shoulder-to-shoulder race with a fellow rollerblader.

I was proud of myself once I finally passed that 6-year-old Chinese boy. Towards the end, as my confidence grew, I also took on an elderly crippled homeless man with bags and a shopping cart and practically whizzed by him.

Luckily, I did not end up like the fellow in the picture. Like hot yoga, I'm sticking to small goals and am happy to say I fulfilled both. I did not end up under a TTC bus or in Lake Ontario.

Identity crisis - Canada

No, you are not seeing double. The earlier 'Identity crisis' post was about Toronto. This one is about Canada.

Except for Degrassi and Hockey Night in Canada, they can't come up with anything on their own. Just like Toronto steals New York's names for its condos, Canada takes American shows and makes them oh-so-Canadian buy sticking the word Canada in the name.

What are some TV shows here? Canadian Idol, So you think you can dance Canada and Project runway Canada. Magazines? Elle Canada. Channels? Bravo Canada and Food Network Canada.

You get the point. Just because you stick Canada in the name doesn't make it Canadian. It's still American. America is hardly a country to emulate and Canada spends a lot of time distinguishing itself from its neighbo(u)r. Yet Canadians watch American TV and read American media.

Come up with your own show, Canada. Preferably something more than 10 people would watch.

On Prof. Greene - from one of your 'pups'

On Thursday, journalism lost one of its greats. Bob Greene, 78, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor, was also my teacher, mentor and friend. I haven’t been in a joking mood but luckily, Prof. Greene was, among many things, a funny man. So I thought I’d share some funny vignettes about him.
Two memories from his “Journalism 13” class, aka journalism boot camp:
- He taught us to dig up dirt on people. Literally. He once came to class with a bunch of gloves and big garbage bags he had picked up off people’s lawns that morning. We had to sift through them and piece together a story about those residents.
- Once, in the middle of a lesson, two people wearing black robbers’ masks rushed into our classroom demanding someone’s belongings and scaring the crap out of most of us. When they left, we had minutes to write a story, with our hands still shaking. It was not a real robbery, but a real lesson in covering breaking news.

That was from me. This is from some of the thousands of people he had an impact on:
Excerpt from “Pulitzer’s Gold,” by Roy Harris:
“Bob Greene was a born snoop. He had been involved in some type of investigation work since high school, when he was employed as a “sniffer” for a department store, checking out the underarms of fancy dresses that women bought and later returned. His olfactory test proved whether a woman had worn the garment to a party before bringing it back for a refund....”

The following three comments are from Newsday’s Web site:
From “realist,” Trumbull, CT:
“I was an intern at Newsday in the mid-1970s when a jetliner crashed at JFK. Bob Green was the night editor and when the passenger list came over the wire, he divided the Suffolk County phone book up among the staff and we were told to call anyone in the book with the same last names as the deceased and ask them if any of their relatives were on the plane in order to get a local angle. Naturally, being a college intern, I did as I was told but after waking a few people up around 11 pm or so with this horrifying question, I decided that this was very cruel and I just started dialing my own number and pretending to talk to people.”

From “Kathleen Wickham,” MS:
“The night before the awards dinner Bob and a gaggle of young reporters (with the same goal in mind) went to a bar (of course). We were hanging on to his every word. The waitress came over and wanted to know who he was. With a straight face, Bob told her he was with the mob. We had great service after that!!!”

Brian Magoolaghan, Brooklyn, N.Y.
"Whether he was recalling the telephone conversation that ended his reporter/source relationship with the Kennedys, meeting some dark and potentially dangerous characters in a hotel room in Turkey, the one about teaching a reporter a lesson about the difference between Farmingdale and Farmingville by making the reporter drive from one to the other and report back the mileage, or the one where he pulled black socks over his tennis shoes so that he could get into a swank restaurant, he always had us riveted and thoroughly entertained."

From mediabistro.com
By Richard Behar
"He would sometimes rant about how today's cutbacks in long-form, high-quality journalistic probes were degrading our democracy. As he once told me, the founding fathers didn't give us the First Amendment "to publish apple pie recipes."

"According to former Newsday editor Tony Marro, Greene once pounded on a wall so hard during an argument with editors that he sent pictures crashing off the wall of the publisher's office next door."

"When Newsday's bean counters banned staffers from flying first class, Greene literally measured the size of a coach seat and the size of his not-inconsiderable posterior — and informed the bosses that he'd continue flying in the front of the plane."

Coming soon to Canada - caller ID!

Until a couple of months ago, Canadians must have used smoke signals to communicate with each other. Or cans attached to strings. Or they taped messages onto hockey pucks and got the Canadian geese to deliver them.

Because getting a cell phone here is ridiculous.

First of all, instead of 1 or 2-year agreements, most companies have 3-year agreements. For a commitment-phobic like myself, this is as annoying as Avril Lavigne.

The number of minutes is also a joke. Most plans start at 200 minutes a month - I don't think this even exists in the United States or Europe. (To give them some credit, night-time minutes typically start at 7 as Canadians have lives outside of work, unlike Americans).

Most plans here don't include text messages so you have to pay extra for that. Want to call the United States? That will pretty much bring your monthly charge to a three-digit number. In fact, when I inquired about such a plan, the salesperson said: "Oh no, you'd want to use a phone card for that."

It gets worse. Unless you're willing to sign your life away for 3 years, most phones don't use SIM cards and can only be used in Canada. That's about as useful as summer wardrobe in Yellowknife.

And then, just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, the sales guy uttered these words: "And of course, voice mail, caller ID, call waiting and all that are extra."

Are you shitting me?! Caller ID is extra? What is this - 1988 or 2008? Because I didn't think this was still possible in 2008. I mean, the crappy minutes are one thing, the 3-year agreements are another, the fact that their phones die outside of Canada's borders are something else, but paying extra for caller ID? I suddenly realized why everyone here still uses land lines and answering machines.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So I just walked away.

Is that a flag on your ass?

TV was on in the background last night and showed a red carpet, screaming fans and obnoxious entertainment reporters - all the pre-requisites for an awards show. For about 1/100th of a second, I got confused thinking it was the Oscars or the Grammies, before realizing it was the Junos, Canada's music awards.

The fans were screaming so loudly and the red carpet interviewers managed to reach Joan Rivers annoyance levels. Michael Buble was revered like some kind of a god. Once Avril Lavigne started singing "Girlfriend," I couldn't take it any more and had to leave the room. Nevertheless, in my 5 minutes of watching the Junos, I have come up with 5 reasons why it was clear it was a Canadian awards show:

1. The host was Russell Peters. Yeah, exactly. Who?
2. The fans surrounding the red carpet wore coats and jackets.
3. One of the award presenters showed up in a hockey jersey.
4. The best new group of the year award went to someone named "Wintersleep."
5. Avril Lavigne performed with a Canadian flag pinned to her ass. (I'm assuming it's because she didn't have a backpack to attach it to.)

Go Blue Jays go

As you probably figured out by now, Toronto is usually a pretty low-key place. But yesterday, things changed dramatically.

On a bridge I regularly cross alone, there were hundreds of people. Music blasted from everywhere and the street entertainers were out in full force. One was using several buckets for a drum set and another was dressed as Santa Claus and asking for money for his sleigh. People were selling pictures and other trinkets. A stand that sells fries and perogies (this rare combination clearly reflects Toronto's multi-cultural environment) which I have never seen open before had two lines of customers waiting. Even the homeless came out, rattling their cans every few blocks.

The Blue Jays were in town.

This was puzzling to me, as I was still cold in my winter jacket, scarf and gloves and I somehow thought baseball was a spring/summer sport. But the Blue Jays did indeed have their home opener last night.

The event brought out blue-dressed Canadians, who must have all been in hibernation until now. There were repetitive chants of "Let's go Blue Jays," teenage-like obnoxiousness and smell of beer, street meat and marijuana. For the first time in Toronto, I saw a regular cop and a traffic cop, as even they had work last night. A sea of white trash Canucks flooded downtown Toronto, dropping F bombs like it was the middle of Baghdad. Everyone from the bearded men to the overweight middle-aged women wore Blue Jays T-shirts (don't they make jackets or scarves?) and other baseball paraphernalia. Some (like the fans pictured above in the Toronto Star) were even too hot for T-shirts.

While the crowd generated by this event was my worst nightmare, I could not help but feel rejuvenated by the rare sight of so many people. So I joined the party and started chanting the Blue Jays slogans.

The polar expedition blog

U.S. newspapers feature dozens of blogs each on topics such as law, business deals, education, health etc... Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper, has 11 blogs, one of which is on an auto show so I don't think it's even worth counting, one of which is on a guy trying to quit smoking (who cares) and no fewer than four of which are on sports (Blue Jays, Raptors, etc..)

The newspaper's latest and newest blog is called The Polar Expedition Blog (http://thestar.blogs.com/arctic/) and has posts such as "Hockey day in the Arctic." There is also an Earth Hour entry - like I said, Canadians don't mess around with this - they turned off the lights on their snowmobiles or sleds, or whatever it is they use up there.

Paging the only customer

With only 33 million people living in the world's second largest country, Canada provides certain inconveniences and conveniences that are quite a change from Manhattan, which, according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, is the most populated county in the United States, with nearly 70,000 residents occupying each square mile. Here are some examples:

Banking: Apparently, I'm supposed to be grateful that I opened a free checkinq account here more than a decade ago since that doesn't exist any more. Banks here charge for everything - I heard one guy got charged every time he checked his account online. Quite a difference from the States, where banks chase you with free iPods, sports tickets or $200 bonuses to give you a FREE checking account.

Credit cards: Similarly, while I'm used to getting tons of offers for free credit cards in the States, here they all seem to have annual fees. So my credit card recently arrived (along with its impressive $800 spending limit - hooray!) and before I charged anything, I already got a $30 annual fee bill.

Bank machines: Yesterday, I walked probably close to a mile on Yonge Street, Canada's largest street, before finally finding my bank's ATM machine. Again, quite a change from having Chase Manhattan in every Duane Reade. Apparently, the concept of convenience has not caught on yet.

Prescriptions: Now here is an example of how lack of people (which apparently leads to fewer of the above choices) brings about some good stuff. To pick up a prescription, they give you one of those pagers like you get at some chain restaurants while waiting to get a table. They are also very polite (unlike at any CVS in Manhattan) and don't require an hour to give you a medication I can reach behind their head (unlike at any CVS in Manhattan).

They take the pager stuff seriously: I think I was the only person in the store, at the drop-off, and at the pick-up, yet they still gave me the pager. I was roaming about the store when it buzzed seconds after I dropped off my prescription. Impressed with this efficiency and scared of arriving at the counter too late after it buzzed, I ran down the aisle and traded my pager for the prescription.