The End of the Escort

“Ha ha, wow. That's awesome,” my son Cam laughed when I told him about how my car met her death at the hands of the Crusher. “At least she had an adventurous last day.”

My ’95 Ford Escort had been living on its last legs for most of the year-and-a-half that I owned it. When I bought it the rear struts were nearly gone and they gave up the ghost soon after. The tie rod ends – especially on the driver’s side – were toast a few months later, causing a great deal of concern with my tire guy, who I saw far too often.

“This is about to go,” he would say worriedly, as he wrenched on the wheel and shook it from side to side. “You really need to do something about this.”

I’ll get right on that, I would mumble, knowing full well I would do no such thing. I did add it to the list of Things That Need To Be Fixed on my car, however.

It was a long list. In addition to the struts and tie rod ends, the rest of the suspension was done in, making for a truly epic rough ride. I got used to it and got pretty skilled on avoiding big bumps, but my passengers always seemed ... a little nervous whenever they rode in my car. I also had a small oil leak – nothing major – and my radiator leaked as well, prompting my landlord to lay a car mat down on the driveway for me to park on.

It didn’t bother me much, but I know ol’ Bessie didn’t appreciate the gesture. Like wearing Depends, you know?

I put up with grinding brakes for a while as well, before the noise drove me to finally fix the front set, though a seized calliper on the passenger side (the pads were fine on that side, damnit!) meant we just did a three-quarter job.

Whatever.

For an $800 outlay I wasn’t going to stress myself out. I got 18 months out of that investment, so I considered myself lucky.

But all good things must come to an end, and deathtraps on wheels must as well. And so it was last week on Highway 2 in Ajax – not five minutes after I left work – when I lost all power and had to get it towed to my guy to assess the damage.

No compression, said Jerry. Timing belt, probably. Could be heads as well.

The bottom line is it would cost me a couple hundred dollars just to confirm that it would cost me at least a thousand bucks – probably much more – to fix it.

Not going to happen.

So the scrapper and a date with the crusher it is. The fact that Jerry only offered me the $90 I owed him for the car made that decision an easy one.

I arranged with a couple of buddies to help me get the car to the scrap yard – saves a ton of money that way – but when we arrived at Jerry’s shop on Wentworth Street we realized I may be able to get Bessie to the scrapper without a tow. Close, anyway. Worth a shot, says pal Steve.

I climbed in the driver’s seat (for the last time) and – when the way was clear on busy Wentworth – Steve and Adrian gave me a push and away I went.

It was 80 metres or so downhill to Nelson Street and I coasted there easy enough before turning right. Nelson was pretty flat but I had enough momentum to just make the crest in the middle of the 100 metre stretch to Waterloo before the stop sign loomed. A quick glance to my right and with no dangers (like oncoming cars - it was not a four-way) to contend with I was through the stop sign and turning left, down the slope towards the Gerdau Ameristeel Metals Recycling yard.

Now I’m picking up speed, and it’s about 150 metres to go, with Steve standing outside his pal’s truck, urging me to turn left into the scrap yard.

So I did. And I rolled right onto the damn scales. Just like I knew what I was doing.

Awesome!

With scrap prices at 8.5 cents a pound I wasn’t going to get rich selling Bessie to the crusher, but 2,800 pounds - minus 160 pounds to compensate for my sorry ass behind the wheel (don’t roll your eyes – I got the paper that says 160) – is still a lot of ’95 Ford Escort. That’s $224.50, to be exact, which is a damn sight better than the $90 Jerry offered me. Jeez, Jerry.

I’m picking up my next car today. A 2000 Chrysler Intrepid with 212,000 clicks on it for the bargain price of $800. (What else.) I`ve owned two Intrepids in the past and both experiences ended spectacularly bad, so I might be pushing my luck on this one.

At least I know I`ll have a few adventurous days with this car as well.

*

I remember, shortly before I bought my Escort, telling a former co-worker a few tales of woe about my lack of success with the ladies. Don`t you worry `bout that, Pizza Dude, said Pat. ``I’ll buy you an escort. ``

You still owe me $800, Pat.

Irie, Silver Medals and the Long Walk

I am currently without a car and I understand Durham Region Transit route schedules about as well as I understand how my new cell phone works.

So I walk a lot.

No car means I couldn’t do my part-time job (gotta earn that Pizza Dude nickname), so I had a free night Saturday and there was a reggae festival downtown I wanted to check out. So I walked.

From my house in the east end to my buddy Colin’s place, right in the heart of downtown – took 40 minutes. The walk a few streets over to the TD IRIE Festival at Memorial Park (after re-fuelling) took just a few minutes more.

IRIE is a celebration of Caribbean music – reggae, world music, soca, salsa and soul – that was born 11 years ago in Toronto. Along the way Mississauga was added and now Oshawa makes three (which is a reflection of Oshawa’s changing demographics, in case you were wondering), with more than 100,000 people expected to attend the three-weekend event.

Memorial Park was bursting with people Saturday night. The air was thick with the smell of roast fish, jerk chicken and oxtail, and reggae beats were blasting from the stage. The stylings of King Fabuloso, the Black Latino, to be exact, who describes his roots thusly: “I’m from New York, with Jamaican parents. Born Costa Riiiiica (you gotta kinda sing that last part), and I now live in Pickering.”

So there you go.

Anyhow, we didn’t stay long at the festival – Colin is not as big a fan of reggae as I am – but we caught the King’s entire set and I enjoyed some fried snapper on rice (with a little oxtail gravy). And we drank in the sights. Good music, a little dancing, and so many beautiful women.

Definitely worth the walk.

Speaking of walking, the walk home (after some more re-fuelling) took a little longer than the way there, but I think I was singing along the way.

That always slows me down.

**

I didn’t get a chance to catch any of the lacrosse action at the Civic this past week. That’s too bad: it’s not often we get treated to a World Championship of anything right in our backyard.

The United States, as expected, had little trouble winning the gold in the 2013 World Cup women’s lacrosse tournament, but Canada enjoyed its best ever performance by reaching the final against the mighty Americans.

The two games against the U.S. were Canada’s only losses in the tournament, in fact, though the scores in those two games weren’t close. The U.S. crushed our girls 13-2 in the preliminary game, while the gold medal game was more of the same, as the Americans didn’t break a sweat in winning 19-5.

But with four grads of the Oshawa Lady Blue Knights on the Canadian team, a silver medal and a packed grandstand for the final, the tournament can only be described as a huge success locally and for the national program.

As I said, I didn’t see any action, but I did run into the American team enjoying a post-match re-fuel at East Side Mario’s Thursday evening.

I couldn’t help but notice that they were all very young – early 20s – and they were all very beautiful.

The young part is easily explained. Field Lacrosse – especially for women – is a college game south of the border, and there’s no pro league or Olympic Games or any other incentive to keep the girls playing after their NCAA careers are over.

The beautiful part? They are athletes, after all. Strong, smart, bold and full of confidence. Being beautiful is only natural.

Movie Magic – it’s all in the family

The J Man is an actor. Says so right on his Facebook profile, so it must be true.

Thanks to my brother-in-law, Anthony, it’s an accurate assessment of his occupation, at least as far as an 11 year-old can have an occupation. In fact, thanks to movie-making Anthony, nearly everyone in my family can make that claim. Everyone ‘cept me, but that’s okay. Maybe next time.

Jake’s debut was in The Land Between, a television documentary which told the story of the land between the Canadian Shield and the St. Lawrence Lowlands –essentially Ontario’s Muskoka-Kawarthas cottage country. Part history lesson, part environmental message and beautifully shot with gorgeous photography, The Land Between featured stellar performances (I’m biased, of course) from my wonderful clan.

For the record, top marks go to number one son Matt and brother-in-law Adrian for the meatiest of roles, while the J Man, who played a child sneaking up to the campfire to hear the grownups talk, took home the Oscar for best scene-stealing ‘look.’

Anyhow, Jake brushed off his resume and we gathered up his lovely nieces Allison and Lauren and headed to High Park in Toronto Monday night for another performance for the ages. This time for a scene in a 30-second spot for the Toronto International Film Festival.

This was the first time seeing Jake and the girls in action, and the first time watching Anthony, who wore a producer hat for this gig, work his movie magic.

The setting was the back yard of a beautiful home (owned by a bank executive) high on a cliff overlooking Grenadier Pond. A million dollar home (maybe $2 million: what do I know?) with a ten million dollar view, for what it’s worth.

The shoot was for a promo for the Midnight Madness horror section of the festival. The scene? It called for the kids – there were seven, as I recall, with the youngest just three years old – to play summer campers innocently roasting marshmallows on the campfire until a horror named Igor arrived to interrupt their reverie.  Jake and his fellow actors were expected to scream in terror when Igor (actually a nice dude  named Lars, who is a stand-up comic when he’s not scaring children) arrived, carrying the limp body of a camp counsellor in one hand while brandishing said counsellor’s gouged-out eyes in the other.

Scary, huh?

I’d tell you more about the shoot, except Anthony told me it was still all hush-hush. So you didn’t hear this from me.

The scene went beautifully –it only took nine takes – and the kids were awesome. It was also very cool to see my bro-in-law in action, though during a coffee run to Starbucks he was asked by the barista if he was the “production assistant.” (Maybe that was the hush-hush part. Sorry, Anthony.)

There was even a little excitement in the evening, when immediately after the final take and the applause was awarded, one of the neighbours started shouting obscenities about the presence of spot lights on his lawn. Or something.

Some people just don’t appreciate movie magic.  

*

While I’m handing out laurels to the kids, I would be remiss if I didn’t give a shout-out to my friend David, son of my buddy Don and Anne, who is also a friend from college.

David was proudly representing District 3 at the Special Olympics Provincial Championships last week in three events – the Shot Put, the 50-metre dash and the Standing Long Jump. He ended up medalling in, let’s see, carry the ten and...ALL THREE events, with silver in the 50 (he told his mom he was wearing his magic shoes) and a pair of bronzes in his other disciplines.

Pretty damn special, if you ask me. Awesome job, David!

Killdeer and the booty fluff

It’s amazing what some parents will do to protect their children from giant monsters and their thunderous machines of death.

Killdeer are a kind of plover that long ago decided to leave their shorebird cousins at the beach and toss their lot in with humans, figuring shopping mall parking lots and the surrounding landscaping offered better opportunities for their families.

The little birds are everywhere – ubiquitous, really – and they are among the first birds to greet the day with their melodic kill-deer, kill-deer songs.

And normally we humans greet them with some level of affection – if we notice them at all – except on those days when we must maintain our man-made geography. Grass-cutting days can be hell for a ground-nesting bird.

On one such day I was confronted by a frantic Killdeer as I was pushing my mower around a flower bed. She was employing the classic broken wing ploy, where the predator (me) is supposed to follow the supposedly injured prey (the bird) away from her babies. I was amused, but as I was being paid to cut the grass and not terribly interested in a meal of Killdeer, I ignored her and continued on.

So she (I’m being sexist here as it could have been either parent) moved on to step two, which is to turn around and show me her beautiful backside, or more specifically, the rich brown feathers on top of her booty which are normally hidden by her wings. And proceed to fluff them feverishly to get my attention like a stripper hepped up on extra-strength goofballs.

The classic Killdeer Booty Fluff

Well, she (or he) got my attention. Now I’m nervously looking around, fearful that I’ll run over the little fellows. And suddenly there’s two of them, both giving me the stare down. If looks could kill, I’d already be tarred AND feathered.

On my final pass around the flower bed I finally spotted the nest, with Dad guarding four tiny speckled eggs, casually plunked in the dirt, less than a foot from the grass and my approaching blades.

The bird is used to humans, and if I look like a monster to him, I’m probably thought of as a mostly benevolent one. What he thought of the lawn mower, all sound, fury and destruction, nobody knows. But he bravely stayed on the nest until I was mere inches away before exploding out of the bed and onto a nearby sidewalk, shitting himself in the process. He then proceeded to regale me with the most spectacular mash-up of the broken wing ploy and booty fluff-up in the history of Killdeers.

I was in awe.

I was still staring at this brave bird when my boss drove by. “Quit bothering the birds, Pizza Dude,” said Harry, “and get back to work.”

It ain’t easy being a monster.

Happy Canada Day, eh!

Aah, to be Canadian on this most hoser-ific of days.

I was never a big fan of the eh! characterization of Canadians, thinking I was a little better than the stereotype. I didn’t say eh!, damnit! And I didn’t say ‘oot and aboot, either.

But I did, on occasion. Eh!, that is. Not ‘oot and aboot. No self-respecting Canuck says that. But eh! worked its way into the vocabulary of all of us back then. Some more often than others, of course.

Bob and Doug McKenzie said eh!, a lot. Thanks to Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, those two letters became Canada’s catch phrase, much like Yo, Adrian! Was for Rocky, Hi Neighbour was for Mr. Rogers and Sufferin’ Succotash was for Sylvester the Cat.

And to think it all started as filler on SCTV to both satisfy and mock Canadian content demands.

When the show moved to CBC in 1980 the network asked (ordered?) the producers to add two minutes of ‘Canadian content’ to the show for its national audience. Moranis and Thomas thought this was a stupid idea and came up with the Great White North talk show as a sort of protest. The show featured the boys as a couple of tuque-wearing hosers talking about important Canadian issues, such as doughnuts, back bacon and how to get a mouse in a beer bottle.

(To get free beer, of course.)

Much to everyone’s shock – especially Moranis and Thomas –  the skits were a smash hit and became a pop culture phenomenon, spawning a movie (Strange Brew, which starred my friend and college roommate Steve as an extra), a Grammy-nominated comedy album (remember Take Off! With Geddy Lee, and The Twelve Days of Christmas?) and leaving behind a linguistic legacy.

We do have an accent, eh?

Moranis remembered in a 2000 interview coming up with the material on the fly in the studio.

"Rick and I used to sit in the studio, by ourselves – almost like happy hour – drink real beers, cook back bacon, literally make hot snack food for ourselves while we improvised and just talked. It was all very low key and stupid, and we thought, 'Well, they get what they deserve. This is their Canadian content. I hope they like it.”

And they did, especially south of the border, with the U.S. network NBC specifically asking for the “two dumb Canadian characters” when they ordered the show for syndication in 1981.

And for those too young to remember SCTV, an animated version of the show debuted in 2009, with Thomas reprising his Doug McKenzie role while Dave Coulier (yah, the Full House dude) voiced Bob’s character.

I don’t hear eh! much anymore, but I figure I’ll hear it plenty on National Hoser Day. That’s today, eh?

**

I actually got my patriotic Canadian mojo going a couple of weeks ago when I had the honour of participating in a flag raising ceremony in Ajax.

Okay, it wasn’t an official ceremony. It just felt like one to me.

The giant Canadian flag flying from the Best Buy plaza at Harwood and Highway 2 in Ajax needed to be replaced, so Rio Can bought a new flag and we (and by we I mean me and my Brock Property ‘A’ Team crew) put it up.

Raising a flag is pretty straightforward but this flag raising felt different. For one thing, this flag (Original Flag Store, $1,015 plus tax) is huge. It’s 15 feet high and 30 feet wide and is a pretty impressive sight when it’s raised.

I felt very ‘Canadian’ doing it. Sort of like Joe from the I Am Canadian ads, but quieter.

My job was to ensure my half of the flag didn’t touch the ground during the unfurling process (it’s an international sin to let that happen – CSIS is watching) and I didn’t let the team down.

I felt proud.

**

I had all the kids over for dinner tonight. All four of them, plus girlfriends and all three grandchildren.

It was a combination Canada Day/belated birthday bash for my son Cam, who turned 22 more than a week ago. I called it CAM-ada Day. Clever, no?

It was also a chance to finally pay Cam for winning the family hockey pool. He didn’t get all that was owed, but he left with $10.25 in his pocket and as far as I could tell he left happy.

It was nice. We ate pork loin and birthday cake and sat around and talked about the Simpsons, the Leafs and gender equality.

It was all so beautiful I didn’t even make it down to Lakeview for the fireworks. Christian-Ann was taking the J Man down, so I went to bed instead.

Happy Canada Day, eh!