The Younger Woman - A Cidiot Short

Mon Ex et Moi

I have a habit of becoming really close friends with my ex-girlfriends, which is a little strange I know, but it just sort of happens that way. This fact alone wouldn’t be such a big deal except when you combine it with my never failing ability to say the wrong thing to my girlfriend.

I’ve got Relationship Tourette’s.

With a little to fond a look in my eye I can ruin movies, books, even entire towns for my girlfriend Amanda as my remembrance of dates gone by with … we’ll call them all Allison … lingers just a little to long.

So it didn’t help when my girlfriend discovered some photos of one ex-girlfriend, (for the sake of the story) named Allison, who wasn’t exactly dressed to go out… of the bedroom.

“What is this?” Amanda demanded.

The question what is this can have one of two meanings, either you’ve gotten her something romantic or went above and beyond on some chore that needed doing, or you’re screwed.

I hadn’t bought her anything and I certainly hadn’t been helpful without being asked, so I knew whatever she was looking at would lead to trouble.

My stomach dropped when I saw the photos. It wasn’t as though I kept them for some nefarious purpose, I forgot they existed. But here Amanda was, excavating some lost artifact of a relationship gone by, raiding some lost ark of a shoe box, a Holy Grail of trouble, a temple of doom for my relationship. It was as if some high priest of Polaroid paper had reached from the photo and ripped her still beating heart out and she responded with a short round of swearing.

“Allison! Why’d it have to be Allison?” I asked myself, before trying to pretend I didn’t know who this girl was or how I came to own pictures of her. It was a tactic that’d last all of three seconds before my bluff would be called.

The argument quickly degenerated into a discussion over the definition of half naked, an argument I was not aided on by my old friend Wikipedia who seemed to disregard the whole encyclopedic approach to the question and instead opted to strike up more of a The Stranger from The Big Lebowski sort of tone, informing us that “the quantity of skin exposed is not the determining criterion, it's the "quality" that counts” for defining half naked.

My ex's name was icily received from then on, yet somehow my name managed to avoid a similar fate in Amanda's mind. We moved forward.

Yet for some reason I still had the misguided belief that Amanda and Allison would somehow hit it off and become best friends. If only they could meet they'd realize what kindred spirits they were and soon there'd be no more tension! The three of us could go for coffee regularly, or maybe the two girls would go for a day of shopping. We could have dinner parties and Allison could bring the wine, who knows maybe the three of us would all have a little to much of that wine and then...

Right, sorry. Back to the real world.

I had somehow convinced Amanda to come meet Allison over dinner at this restaurant. You may have thought this proposition would've been a battle to get Amanda to agree to, a difficult series of negotiations that could've helped me fill several paragraphs. Sadly she agreed to meet Allison immediately.

My efforts to prepare for the night were a different story. If I spent an extra minute then normal staring into the cotton void of my closet my motives were to be suspect. Apparently my desire to look less like Tom Hanks circa the second act of Cast Away signaled I was trying to hard.

Had I reached for the aftershave I surely would've found myself sleeping on the couch.

When your girlfriend meets your ex-girlfriend its like two worlds colliding, like the planet Theia being flung through space and smacking straight into the side of the Earth. If things don't go just right it could spell utter destruction. If by some astrological miracle though the two collide and it goes well, who knows, you may have inseparable friends. Like Theia becoming the Earth's moon.

That's the desired outcome, I thought as I drove to the restaurant. Allison mooning Amanda.

That probably could've been phrased better.

I was worrying more and more. What if the thing about the photos came up? If hair pulling and biting broke out amongst them would it be inappropriate for me to keep eating? If you knew that I had had to skip lunch earlier that day would you be more understanding if I did? Or what if on the flip side they started to get along a little to well. They started gossiping about me, Allison recounting everything she hated about dating me. Maybe that'd suddenly make Amanda see me in a new late, maybe suddenly the value of Ex would equal 2.

I had decided the whole plan was a mistake, but had only settled on this after we were saying our hello's to Allison.

I sat there, waiting for the first signs of disaster. Yet there were none.

In fact it almost seemed as though the two girls were hitting it off, trading horror stories about work and laughing.

By the time our meals arrived we were in a comfortable conversational rhythm. Things were truly going perfect, and at this rate by the time the waiter brought the bill we'd all be complaining about the price of gas with one another over brunch every Sunday.

Some wine was uncorked.

"This really is going well isn't it?" I said, deciding to launch into a director's commentary on the evening.

"Its funny, here we are with candle light and wine and I've had this fantasy for awhile now that starts off just like this."

"Oh?" my girlfriend asks warily.

"Yeah you know, the three of us all have a little to much wine and we end up coming back to my place and one of us says jokingly..."

I made the mistake of finishing this thought once, I'll try to avoid repeating the error.

In life like in astronomy it's not the threats you see coming that are the risk, its the ones you don't.

For me, my ever forgiving Amanda and the dozen or so Allison's before her, it's my Relationship Tourette’s.

The Taken Seat

Some time had passed since 'Kool-Aid Gate' and my girlfriend Amanda thought it was safe to go back to a movie theater with me. She had several drink based conditions but still, she hesitantly agreed to go with me.

Boy, was that a mistake.

Now I am a man of principals, and I don't mean your standard "thou shalt not kill" or "thou shall not commit adultery"... don't get me wrong, I generally adhere to these principals, although come on, who hasn't done something unholy on the Sabbath?

Sure it bugs me when my bike gets stolen or someone lies to me, but these aren't really the principals I fight for.

Here's one that I do fight for: say I have a keen ability to read what time a movie starts and a general knack of arriving before this published time. Say this super human ability allows me to get prime seats in the theater, ones that you yourself may covet.

Now lets say you don't trust what is written on the Internet, in newspapers, what is listed on the marquee and printed up on your tickets. Let's say you don't believe in time. So you arrive just barely before the movie starts.

Naturally I would think your mind would say "I was late, clearly I don't deserve as good a seats as that strapping curly haired Adonis."

Let me stop and explain for a second, by Adonis I am not referring to my manly good lucks, but rather my ability to inspire women to plant vegetables, and ultimately my inevitable future death on the tusks of a wild bore... but I could see how you would make this mistake.

Now continuing with my point...

For some reason a vast number of people don't think this way, they believe that they should have prime seating, and so, even though there are a lot of other sitting options open and available to them, they choose to sit next to me.

When there are other seat choices, I should not be forced to share an arm rest and leg room with you. And yet I sit there quietly, not saying a word.

That is until the other day when I decided to stand up for my principals! To become the Dark Knight of Obscure Social Taboos! Defender of the anal retentive, voice of the neurotic!

I do hope you read that last paragraph with the enthusiasm my exclamation marks instructed you to give it. As the author I am instructing you to go back and re-read it if you failed to properly the last time around.

So like I was saying, this small group of people decide to sit in the row myself and Amanda in, no big deal, until the guy at the end of the group makes a motion for my seat.

Again normally I would let this slide and just be secretly bitter for the rest of the night, but for some reason I felt inspired on this night.

I quickly put my popcorn down in the seat before he could make his move.

Caught off guard he looked at me, trying to size me up.

"Is someone sitting there?" he asked.

"Yeah, yeah someone is," I said before I could even think about the words I was saying.

"Really?" I must've had a bad poker face, he wasn't buying it at all.

"Yeah, really, someone is," I don't cut and run on my lies.

Backing down the guy led his group to one of the wide open rows closer to the screen. Perhaps it was wrong of me to deny this man the seat he sought. Perhaps, but with empty rows why should we have to cram together?

Karma looked like it'd catch up to me in the parking lot after the movie. Throughout the previews the man who had been denied my 'taken' seat looked back at me, seeing if someone was going to sit in that chair.

I should mention that the guy was tough looking, and by tough I mean street tough, not shrunken scrotum needle jabbing weight lifter tough. Admittedly he wasn't the best choice to test the whole 'standing up for principals' policy on.

"He kind of looks like he wants to stab you on the way to the car," my girlfriend whispered to me.

I was starting to get a little worried.

That's when a group of young teenage girls walked into the theater, and naturally, they wanted to sit next to me.

Fearing for my life and needing someone to occupy the 'taken' chair I didn't object.

But now I needed to sell this thing.

Whenever the tough and dejected seat suitor turned back to me, which was far to often, I would turn to the young girl beside me, trying to fake like we knew each other, like we were talking, like maybe, just maybe we were friends.

The only possible logic behind my friendship with this girl would be a) that I was an online predator, or b) that I had fathered her at the ripe old age of eight. Yet I felt my life was riding on me selling this, and so I tried.

"Ehauh" I mumbled in her direction, over exaggerating hand and mouth movements for my audience a few rows up.

The girl looked at me, not sure whether to feel sorry for my apparent turrets, or to ready her mace.

Once the movie got started the seat suitor seemed to lose interest in me, and I breathed a sigh of relief, that is until the movie came to an end.

Practically knocking over my girlfriend I tried rushing to exit with the teenage girls, trying to look like I was following their story about a trip to a mall.

I can't say I sold the role, I can't say my girlfriend was to impressed, but I can tell you Babydoll's are 40% of from now until Tuesday, and I can tell you I'll think twice before defending my principals again.

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Oh No!

From time to time I make poor decisions a much smarter man would avoid, decisions that almost always lead me to end up on the receiving end of my girlfriend's frustration.

Not long ago my girlfriend Amanda and I were at the movie theater. Now before I go on I am not sure if you know this about me but I'm a sucker for the up sale at the movie theater. You might be asking yourself, why would I know this about you? Well I don't know really, it just seems like every time I walk into a theater every teenage popcorn merchant can sense it.

So I start off saying the word "Medium", medium popcorn, medium drink. Then out of nowhere, the hook comes.

"For just a dollar extra you can get the large?"

Sold.

I arrived wanting a small thirst quencher, I leave with enough sugary liquid to satisfy the thirst of a small African country... and bring about a diabetes epidemic among the locals.

This night was no different, I settled in with my girlfriend, a mountain of popcorn, and a cup that holds ten times more liquid then your bladder. We sat there and watched the commercials. And by commercials I don't mean product placement within the movie, or the trailers for the upcoming movie, or the commercials for products they show before the trailers. I'm talking about the pre-commercial commercials they show you while you wait for all of the other ads to start.

So we're sitting there and it's about five minutes to showtime (showtime: the time the first batch of commercials end and the lights dim for the official commercials) and my girlfriend goes to grab the drink.

Now what happened next was not my fault in any way and even if the video surfaces from the kid in the back row who was playing with his camera phone, even if it comes to light like a grainy Zapruder Film of the incident... there would be no proof to implement me.

Amanda reached for the cup. The condensation causing her grip to slip slightly as she lifted it from the cup holder, sliding straight into the lid. As her hand went up the lid decided it didn't want to carry on this journey. It slid off, her hand lost its grip.... the entire drink, bright red Kool-Aid went splashing down upon her lap, ice cubes clinking to the ground around her feet.

Amanda's face looked like she had just been dealt a Tropical Punch from the Kool-Aid Man himself. The flavour had been Cherry, but my guess from the look of it all over her brand new white shirt, that it wasn't Kool-Aid's 'Invisible Cherry' flavour. I'm sure to Amanda it was their 'Changin' Cherry', though I'd like to think of it as 'Rock-a-dile Red'. Yes, there's no pun to Rock-a-dile Red, but when else will I ever get to say it? Try it, right now, we'll wait to continue the story. Come on, I'm giving you the one opportunity in your life to say Rock-a-dile Red.

Done? Okay, so my girlfriend was soaked, sticky, and stained red from shirt to skin with the stuff. But as you recall it wasn't my fault. So how did I end up in trouble?

The laughing probably didn't help, the "Oh Yeah!" Kool-Aid impressions may not have aided my cause, but it was the next words out of my mouth that probably did me in...

"We've got like two minutes before the movie starts. We'll move down like a seat, you run to the washroom, dry yourself off a bit. I'll go, get us a refill of Kool-Aid."

"A refill?" she asks.

"Yeah, I mean, with popcorn we're going to need a drink."

"Derek, you expect me to stay here? After this?"

I did. Apparently we didn't see eye to eye.

It was a quiet drive home, and not a "Oh yeah!" was heard that night.

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Rock & Tackle

From the fall of 2002 to the summer of 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) hit Toronto. The disease developed first in China and was then carried over via a Toronto woman who was back in China visiting her family.


Less then 20 percent of all SARS cases in Toronto were fatal, yet an even bigger fallout occurred. The city's hotel occupancy was cut in half, tour bus business' teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, and everything from shopping malls to major theater productions were hit hard.

The city was in a crisis and the economy was in trouble, enter the Rolling Stones.

Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and... those other two guys came up with a plan to headline a massive concert to help revive tourism and the economy within the city. This is where our story starts.

Let me set the stage for you, July 30th 2003. The former military base Downsview Park was played host to 500,000 audience members and fourteen bands for a day long concert.

My brother Will, our friend Dan, and my girlfriend at the time arrived at 6am.

A few hours later we were all let in, going through security checks we rushed the stage, everyone laying down blankets and beach towels to mark their little piece of the park.

The ground was littered with them, with small patches of grass between. This made leaving your blanket for any pricey refreshment or piece of merchandise a difficult maneuver.

Bounding over blankets you felt like something out of some lame, forgotten, arcade game. Atari's Blanket Dodger 3000.

If you made it over beach towels and blankets you had to face another obstacle, what we dubbed the gauntlet. A crush of people in an incredibly small corridor pushing every which way. If you were to loose your footing, as I nearly did several times, no one would see you again until the poor volunteer who is picking up empty water bottles the next day discovers your body, all smushed to a pancake like Wile E. Coyote on a work day.

So truly there was very little incentive to leave your spot under the scorching sun. Waiting some seven hours before the first act took the stage, waiting over twelve before the big ticket acts like AC DC and The Rolling Stones performed.

The monotony and sweating felt like we were part of some mass sauna sit in. We had packed lunches that were quickly disappearing simply because it was the only thing one could do.

Off in the distance, over on the other side of the stage someone had brought a beach ball, throwing it into the crowd it bounced its way around.


I watched it with fascination, suddenly feeling less judgmental of a cats strange love for a ball of string.

I waited and willed the ball to come over, to have something to do, to see how far into the crowd I could hit it, to see what way the wind would take my mighty volley.

Hours went by, but the ball never reached me.

Several feet (or five beach towels) away from us a group of guys were forming a human pyramid.

Now maybe it was a love for Egyptology, maybe one too many viewings of Bring it On, or perhaps just shear boredom from waiting six hours in the hot summer sun... we may never know for sure, but for some reason my girlfriend was compelled to join in.

"Be back in a second!" she squealed, the idea of doing something beyond controlling the rationing the last juice box bringing joy to her words.

Before I could say anything she was off. Bounding over towel and blanket alike she began claiming her way to the top of the tower of human.

She tops off the pyramid. Like an angel topping the Christmas tree. She's my angel I thought, the sunlight causing her to radiate beauty. I was simply lost in thought until...

"Take it off!" shouted someone in the crowd.

"Take it off!" joined another, and before long we were in full blown chant mode. A crowd of the countries most stoned, the countries most drunk, or simply the nations most sun burnt were all chanting for the girl on top of the pyramid, my girl, to take off her top.

Everyone is chanting, and she, the drama class geek, is soaking in the stardom, toying with the crowd. With me.

So I do the only thing I can think of. I take off running towards the pyramid.

Now I haven't put much thought into what I will do once I get there, and 'there' is fast approaching. I am only a couple of feet away, my eyes locked on my girlfriend like bull on matador. Her top is now off, and with it so am I.

My feet leave the ground as I hurl myself toward the human tower, arms spread.

What happens next I like to think of as a tackle, though onlookers may describe it as a belly flop. The human pyramid collapses like a house of cards, a mass of body parts land atop of me looking, I can only imagine, like a game of Twister gone horribly wrong.

Now somehow this made her view me as overbearing, over protective, and just plain over. As she disappeared into the gauntlet I was prepared to give chase, until I noticed that beach ball heading my way. Deciding I had waited to long not to be a part of this I braced myself, connected, and sent the ball flying into another part of the crowd.

By the time I had finished and turned around my girlfriend was swallowed by the sea of people. Yes bouncing that beach ball had cost me the ability to run after her, you know I guess we all give in to the crowd from time to time.

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Baggage Claims

If you've followed my career in comedy you'll find I seem to spend a lot of time talking about the baggage carousel, the lamest of all types of carousels which lacks both colourful, ridable animals, and organ music.

The baggage carousel is that moment of truth, that time when we discover whether we'll be wearing our carefully planned wardrobe for the duration of the trip, or whether we'll be sporting the ill fitting tourist trap t-shirts with the graphic that leads one to believe the shirt was commissioned back in the early to mid 1980s, you know, when people we're to busy worrying about the red menace and to coked up to care about simple things like taste.

And so if you've ever been out to see me perform stand-up you've probably heard me rant about the fear induced by this particularly slow moving device.

In fact just last February I wrote and directed a short film about about this very topic (Baggage, starring Evan Brandon and Kristen Dealy).

Now I've never had my luggage lost, although I thought I did once on a red eye home from California. I was incorrect, or so the airline informed me, my bag wasn't lost, they were only 'temporarily delayed.'

Temporarily delayed? So what, my bag was going to join me in Toronto but something important came up and it'll be with me at its soonest, most available time?

This isn't a story about my bag having scheduling conflicts, nor a story about my film or my stand-up. No, this is the story about how I met my girlfriends father.

We'll start at the end and work our way back, Momento style...

The End

As I am standing there, trying to identify the shape of my suitcase from the suitcase lineup diagram the woman trapped in the lost luggage cubbyhole has handed me, my girlfriend taps me on the shoulder.

She's standing there with her dad, a suitcase between them.

"Derek, this is your bag," she informs me.

"Ha, where did that come from?" I ask the father, the daughter, and the woman whose midwest accent almost hides the fact she hates her job.


My Girlfriend's Version of Proceeding Events

Okay, so if you believe my girlfriend Amanda (and I am by no means encouraging you to, please wait till my version of the story for a plausible explanation) here's how it all went down.

We stood there, waiting on my bag, slowly everyone around us got theres, but not me. From time to time a strange looking dark green suitcase would rotate by.

"Is that yours?" Amanda asked.

"Are you sure it's not yours?" She asked the second time around.

"Derek, we should at least check this one," the third pass.

Now I know my suitcase, I am familiar with its look, design, and shade of green. This was not it. I wasn't going to humour her by checking, risk the actual owner running at me convinced I was stealing his luggage.

Soon it was just the two of us and another guy further down the carousel. Why he wasn't taking his dark green bag I don't know. And where was my slightly smaller light green bag?

"Let's just check this one..." my girlfriend was saying, or something similar. I didn't fully hear as I was wandering up to the cubbyhole window to discuss with the woman on duty the case of my missing bag.

In the background Amanda was on the phone to her father Jeff, who had been waiting in the parking lot to give us a ride.

"Hey dad, we're still at baggage claim, Derek thinks they lost his bag."

Meanwhile the woman at the counter was busy dealing with me, "it shows on the computer that all of the luggage from that flight has been loaded onto the carousel." Her voice was half matter-of-fact, half pleading with the universe that this wasn't something that would lead to her filling out more paperwork.

As the woman and I began to discuss the case of my missing suitcase Jeff showed up to get the scoop from his daughter.

"Derek is pretty sure they lost his suitcase."

"What about that one right there?" Jeff asked at the dark green suitcase which was so clearly not mine.

"That's what I keep saying, but Derek says its not."

At this point Amanda grabs for the suitcase, pulling it off she checks the tag.

As I am standing there, trying to identify the shape of my suitcase from the suitcase lineup diagram the woman trapped in the lost luggage cubbyhole has handed me, my girlfriend taps me on the shoulder.

She's standing there with her dad, a suitcase between them.

"Derek, this is your bag," she informs me.

"Ha, where did that come from?" I ask the father, the daughter, and the woman whose midwest accent almost hides the fact she hates her job.

What Really Happened (aka Derek's Version of Events)

I've landed in Minneapolis, Minnesota to meet my girlfriends family. I am waiting for the seatbelt sign to go off so that I can get out of my chair and gracefully hit my head on the above storage compartment.

So now I wasn't there, so I cannot be 100% sure about the following events, but this is what I've pieced together.

A guy with earmuffs and a bright orange vest, possibly two of them, unloads the suitcases. My slightly smaller, slightly lighter green suitcase is still there at this point. I don't believe these vest wearers to be in on the take.

They load everything up onto their little car and one of them drives off with it.

Now there's probably another guy who handles placing the luggage onto the conveyor belt, the guy who drives the little buggy is probably not aloud to help, a union thing. So here's a guy who controls the flow of the luggage, and he's all alone.

Now I cannot say for certain his motives, as I have never met this dastardly man, yet here is what I have deduced.

At some point this man lost or damaged his own suitcase, one his wife gave him as a gift, yes it wasn't the most romantic of gifts but he needed a suitcase, he had been hinting and hinting, and so she got him one. But now it was lost and/or stolen.

As fate would have it my suitcase was a deadringer for his. All his dread about the wife finding out was put on hold, if he could just bring this one home no one would know.

But then he would be doing a disservice to the actual owner of the bag.

Thinking fast he grabbed another suitcase, a darker green, a little bit larger. He took everything out of it, not thinking of the fact that he was now robbing someone else of their suitcase (the other guy waiting further down the conveyor perhaps!), he put all of my stuff in before transferring my name tag to it.

'My' suitcase went down the conveyor, shooting out onto the carousel.

We stood there, waiting on my bag, slowly everyone around us got theres, but not me. From time to time a strange looking dark green suitcase would rotate by.

"Is that yours?" Amanda asked.

"Are you sure it's not yours?" She asked the second time around.

"Derek, we should at least check this one," the third pass.

Conclusion

I know what you're thinking, how could I know this? Well I drove for several hours with my girlfriend and her father, several hours from the airport, hearing the whole way about how I didn't know my own bag, how I should trust my girlfriend. Several hours of time to think and figure out what really happened at that baggage claim...

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Epilogue to the Horror Film

For those of you who haven't skipped right ahead to the play button let me say this week's Cidiot is a little different than normal. It's part of a stand-up set of mine edited specially for Confessions of a Cidiot (as noted by the Cidiot specific intro and extro.)

My girlfriend Amanda has a love of horror movies and from time to time she'll try forcing them on me (a man whose late night imagination and paranoia are not well suited for the genre.) After sitting through one to many I got to thinking...

I could go on with the back story (in fact I already have, but luckily for you my fingers found the backspace key) but really just sit back, hit play and enjoy this special Halloween edition.

I had fun with it and I'm hoping you will too.

(Note: Despite the appearance of a video screen, this is solely an audio presentation. Do not attempt to adjust your internet connection.)

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Conversion Conversation

There’s a website called Craigslist which, for those of you whose internet usage revolves solely around Confessions of a Cidiot (and in my mind that is all of you), is a website featuring lists. They are on job postings, personal ads, apartments to rent, junk for sale… basically everything that makes up the chunk of the newspaper you grab first when going to build a fire. Presumably there’s also a guy named Craig, a little less popular then Myspace’s Tom and understandably, when was the high stakes world of classifieds a glamorous place?

On Craigslist in the personals category they have a section known as ‘missed connections’. The idea is that one person sees a person they find attractive, but instead of trying the age old method of going up to said person and saying hi, they run home to their computer, write out the event and hope the other person checks Craigslist, reads it, and contacts them.

I really don’t know what the odds are that two socially challenged individuals connect over a ‘missed connection’, though I am not holding my breath for a wedding invitation.

I’m not really a fan of this process, I mean isn’t part of life that awkward surge of adrenaline as you teeter on the edge of rejection during your well planned out speech that went something like, “so um, yeah, I guess I was sort of thinking, um, like, I don’t know, if you’re not busy or whatever, um, maybe we could do something, um you know, together? Sometime, maybe.”

Regardless I have written my own ‘missed connection’, though I am not sure old Craig will run it. It goes like this…

You, late 30’s – early 40 year old balding scientologist, me 22 year old non-believer. Should I have taken you up on your challenge to fight?

I’ll explain this in a moment.

From time to time I am greeted by people who want to stop by my house and see if I am familiar with Jesus. Apparently there is a deep seeded feeling amongst the religious community that my house lives in such a vacuum that even a Mel Gibson movie hasn’t come to my attention.

“Like Jesus Christ Jesus? Or are you talking about a Mexican who just moved into the neighbourhood?” I ask, because I clearly have nothing better to do in life.

“We speak of the Lord and Savior.”

“So that rules out the Mexican?”

They’ll always ask me if they could come in for a few minutes and tell me about their beliefs. This is a strange notion, and I wonder how many people say, “oh yeah, come right on in!” I mean half my friends haven’t even seen the inside of my place, why would I invite someone in who the minute I excuse myself to go to the bathroom they might be spiking my Kool-Aid?

“Try new Kool-Aid mystery flavours! The Kool-Aid where you don’t know what you’ll get till you’re drinking it! Now in Cherry, Grape, and new Jonestown Valium & Cyanide^TM! Oh yeah!”

I did once allow someone to enlighten me on their door to door religious beliefs, but she was very attractive and so I figured, you know, it was only polite to listen.

She told me that there was a prophet on Earth and that once a year he speaks to everyone via satellite. When asked if I would be interested in being a part of all this I replied, “No, but do you know if your prophet is hiring anyone to shoot his next video?”

What? In my industry you always have to be on the look out for the next job.

And then there’s Scientology, a group who I haven’t interacted with much. Once, while I was waiting on a friend, I was asked to sit down and be tested by an E-Meter. Bored and looking for amusement I agreed. Sadly there were no attractive women in the equation this time around.

The man told me to think about different things in life and his little meter went up and down over and over, very theatrically. He took some notes and told me my life was filled with a lot of stress and that he had a ‘cure’ for this. He pulled out two thick books written by one L. Ron Hubbard and told me I should buy them.

A machine to justify you buying over priced books? Genius, why didn’t Amazon.com think of this?

In fact I was so inspired I have been thinking of sitting outside of bars, comedy clubs and theaters I perform at with a ‘C-Meter’ designed to tell you your life lacks comedy and you should probably buy a ticket and come inside.

I’ve never wished any of these people whose beliefs did not go hand and hand with mine any sort of ill will, and up until this weekend they too have treated me with the respect you’d expect from people secure of their place in the afterlife.

So back to my ‘missed connection’, I was walking at the time with my sister and my girlfriend as we passed a tent full of Scientologists selling, yes, books by L. Ron Hubbard.

As we walked by, having our own conversation, the bald man must’ve misunderstood something, or maybe he was just suffering from overexposure to the E-Meter, because he lost it.

Threatening us he demanded we come back and say it to his face. That we didn’t walk away like chickens.

I don’t really know why, or what it was he wanted said to his face, but he was on the verge of becoming a cartoon and erupting in a cloud of smoke.

I guess it must be tough being on the fringes of belief, I guess sometimes it must make you just want to lose it.

So maybe I don’t give my money to your organization, maybe you’re not attractive enough to be invited in for a good old converting session. But can’t we all be friends?

I’d like to leave you with a song I’ve written as inspired by the classic 1970's Buy the World a Coke song, for frustrated pilgrims and prophets everywhere.

On a hilltop in Toronto
I’ve gathered door knocking converters
From all over the world
To bring to you this message
From religious fringe sects
From all over the world
It’s the real thing – Flavor Aid
And they sang…

I’d like to buy the world a temple
And furnish it with love… and life savings
Exit our human vehicles and board a spaceship
And self-immolation

I’d like to teach the world to chant
In perfect harmony
I’d like to buy the world a Flavor Aid
And wash it down with cyanide
That’s the real thing.

I’d like to teach the world to chant
In perfect harmony
I’d like to buy the world a Flavor Aid
And wash it down with cyanide
That’s the real thing.

What the world wants today
Flavor Aid
Is the real thing

What the world wants today
Flavor Aid
Is the real thing

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Derek's Inferno

Somehow I had gone my whole life without ever visiting a chain of Swedish Furniture Outlets, at the time this didn't seem like much of an achievement. I've never been to Polish Car Dealership or a New Zealand Waffle Maker, though I bet the Polish would make some pretty reliable cars.

Last week this all changed as my sister Emily and her husband Chris (experienced Swedish Furniture Outlet shoppers) wanted to take my brother Will, my girlfriend Amanda and a friend of my girlfriends to get stuff for their new places as they prepared to start a new year of university. Being the dutiful brother and boyfriend that I am I agreed to tag along as soon as I got off work.

My instructions were to take the Swedish Furniture Outlet's courtesy shuttle to get there, but when I arrived at the pick up point the shuttle was no where to be seen and I was hardly in the mood to wait around for it. Being born and raised and a big city where you could walk to everything I made a mistake I've made far to often all across the continent, I believed I could walk it.

The thing about the Swedish Furniture Outlet is that the largeness of its building, topped only by the largeness of it's epically flat and barren parking lots, forces it to the outskirts of the city, with all of the other big box stores, a sort of freak show at the edge of the fair.

"Not for the faint of heart but to your right you'll see a store the length of two football fields that sells nothing but bean bags!" Everyone gasps as they take in the freak of shopping nature, "how can such a thing exist?" one would ask in amazement before adding, "man I hope they take debit, I could use bean bags in every room of my house!"

And so there I was, on the edge of Sanity and Suburbia, convinced that I could navigate the streets towards the store in the distance. Why I thought I could do this I'll never know, in my experience suburban streets dip and loop, seeming to want to avoid straight lines at all costs, quite often by the time you reach the end of one long and pointless curve you'll realize the street has no exit. These needlessly long journeys down arching streets are made worse by the monotony of seeing identical home after identical home, your sanity kept only by the fact that some cookie cutter homes have basketball nets on the side of their driveway, some do not.

My walk became longer and longer and just as tiredness was letting me have it for choosing to walk I found I had looped right back to where I began, the courtesy shuttle waiting for me like some cruel joke.

It's tough to say anything bad about the courtesy shuttle, for had I not gotten aboard I may still be wandering the streets right now, but all the same the small bus had wooden 'seats' running down both sides of it, forcing passengers to sit face to face with their fellow travelers, our knees practically touching. It felt more like we were being shipped off to some sort of war, my fellow travelers and I prepared to do battle against the insurgents in bedding and linen.

When we arrived at the parking lot for the Swedish Furniture Outlet I fought the urge to storm the beaches and instead met up with my party.

As my fellow shoppers began loading up on things for their dorm rooms I wandered along amazed, the store was carefully crafted so that one had to wander down a path through each department, never missing one. Windows and clocks were non existent, unless they were for sale in the windows and clocks section. The store was beautifully crafted to ensure you'd see see every object that was for sale without ever having a concept of how long you had been in there or that there was a world beyond this windy path of 'Swedish' goods. I was finding myself throughly impressed and appalled all at the same time by these manipulative tactics.

Then there was the Swedish. Every product had it's own Swedish name. If you wanted to buy a rectangle bowl you were buying the Rektangle tm. As far as shopping experiences go with the girlfriend this one was looking up, at least I could learn the Swedish word for over priced - poorly constructed lamp (that's " över kosta - torftig anlägga lampa " I believe). If I could learn the Spanish name for mini skirt my easily distracted mind may be more tolerable on some of her other shopping ventures.

But then, as any outing with me seems to do, things took a turn for the worst.

I had the sudden and unrelenting need to go to the washroom. This was no big deal at first, I split off from everyone else and began to follow the signs to the restroom. At first I expected it to be just around the corner, when this was not so I figured it would just be another turn or two on the Swedish twisty path, but it was not.

Suddenly as I found myself wandering from rugs to bathroom accessories (a cruel irony if ever there was one) it occurred to me I was trapped in the nine circles of Swedish hell.

As I darted through the first circle I couldn't help but think how tempting several show toilets looked, but I had to say strong, surely another bend or two in the path would lead me to salvation.

I arrived in lighting, our second circle of Swedish hell, where one is convinced by the charming name and reasonable price to buy a paper bag over a light bulb and set it up within their home proudly, for reasons their friends will never understand.

Another sign with an arrow towards the washroom lay ahead, and either hope or wishful thinking filled me, I bounded around the next corner and straight into the circle known as Prints and Frames, where one could buy I concede some beautiful paintings, but with so many of the same print for sale you just know someone would come over to your house and go "oh, Swedish Furniture Outlet, I saw that on sale a few weekends ago".

I continued my journey deeper and deeper into Swedish hell, finding myself bombarded by Swedish words like Vildbar or Smyekn as I searched desperately for the 'toalette' as Swedish hell may call it.

As I passed through the end of Home Decoration I seemed to be getting close, the maze of paths and shelves of things were coming to an end, the building was changing around me, surely this must be where the washroom would be found.

It wasn't.

In fact I was in Self Serve Furniture, a warehouse where customers could grab pieces of furniture off racks upon racks. I contemplated how one would self serve themselves some furniture on the top shelf, wondering if letting Joe Suburban use a forklift would end well. My concern for the safety of the people trapped shuffling around this circle of Swedish hell passed quickly as my own needs took center stage again.

I ran through the checkout, passed the Swedish Foodmarket, finally arriving to where the signs had began leading me to several hours or days ago. There were two individual washrooms, individual... individual. For a store of such massive size there were two washrooms that could be used for a maximum of two people at a time. Nearby there was a sign cheerfully telling me if these were in use I could find additional washrooms at the front of the store.

I pulled out my cell phone, prepared to call my brother and tell him to avoid Bathroom Accessories for the next little while, as something bad was about to go down.

My cell phone had no service, I was cut off from the rest of my party, lost and still desperately searching for my salvation. Lost in Swedish hell I began my journey all over again.

If you ever find yourself traveling through the nine circles of Swedish hell my one piece of advice for you is this, check out the Cooking and Eating circle, they've got some fantastic deals on bägare's!

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