Working For The Weekend [refrain]

Because I appreciate you, Gentle Reader, more than you'll ever know, I want to give you a few days' notice: I'm off to England on Friday.

Yes, I'll have access to email and yes, I'll be checking it, and yes there will be stories to tell... of that I have no doubt. But I likely won't have time to tell them to you until I return.

I'll be in Bristol, meeting with my thesis advisors and trying to wrap my head around my doctoral dissertation, the one about postmodernism and Internet advertising, the one I've been ignoring quite spectacularly since last year about this time.

If you're going to be in the neighbourhood, and fancy sharing a pint, do let me know. (I mean "share a pint" in the metaphorical sense. You can have your own.)

There will be one more story for you this week, before I leave. It's almost ready now. It's called Hotel California, but it's not about California at all, just about a hotel that... well, you'll find out in a day or two. It's the one many of you have been waiting for. It's about this guy.

Until then, and while I'm gone, here are a few good tunes you might listen to, if you like. Some will allow you to get to know me better. Some will just make you laugh.

Jack and Diane (An oldie but a goodie; one of my most requested songs.)
My baby, she wrote me a letter (I don't really think Jack is the biggest ass of 2005, but I couldn't resist.)
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do (About the best neighbourhood bar in Toronto. Hey, how many bars do you stay in for three straight days?)
Something Stupid (The first story in The Viking Trilogy. Read all three if you want to see just how much of a clueless dork I can be sometimes.)
More Songs About Buildings And Food (Things I saw at the grocery story one day.)
I Want You To Want Me (A sprachspiel about David Letterman's "Is This Anything?" schtick.)

* * *
Click here for the next chorus of Working For The Weekend.

I'm Your Handyman

I had just been emailing my karaoke buddy, Goldilocks, who does a mean version of Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground, to ask if he wanted to go to the White Stripes concert at the Molson Amphitheatre in September — they played here last summer but it sold out before I could get tickets — and telling him how it's too bad I don't have friends in high places at the Amphitheatre who'll give me free tickets to shows, like I do at the Air Canada Centre, when an email arrived in my inbox from my FIHP at the ACC, asking if I wanted a couple of tickets to see James Taylor at the Amphitheatre. That night. Like, in three hours.

So it seems I do have an FIHP at the Amphitheatre. Or at least an FIHP who has an FIHP. Which is just as good, almost.

I live on the lake right across the marina from Ontario Place, so the Amphitheatre is a five minute walk, and a very lovely walk on a summer evening indeed, and the Amphitheatre itself, being, after all, an amphitheatre, is open-air, and so is even more lovely on a summer evening. And though I was much too young in the early seventies to have lost my virginity to James Taylor — it may have been The Buzzcocks, or possibly Gang Of Four, but I digress — and though it's not like I'm a big James Taylor fan, but I don't mind him, and the sort of mellowness he plays seemed a perfect fit for the weather that evening.

Besides, I had nothing else to do.

So I went alphabetically through my cell phone's address book, looking for someone who'd be available on three hours' notice to go to the show with me. I didn't mention it to Goldilocks because he doesn't seem like a James Taylor fan. Then again, I like both Connie Francis and Green Day, so one never knows.

First on the list was Lynne, who's one of my best friends that I haven't told you, Gentle Reader, about yet. She answered on the first ring, squealed when I told her I had tickets for James Taylor, then cried when I told her they were for tonight. She has friends visiting from out of town.

I tried Lana, but couldn't reach her. I caught Zee on her cell phone, but she was up north (by that I mean, north of the 401) with Darryl — yes, they're back together, though cautiously, and on eggshells.

Remember Janice? Well, last weekend Sara and her new husband — we have to refer to them exactly that way, Sara-and-her-new-husband, for at least a year — were in town and the four of us went out for brunch and to my surprise I've actually begun to like Janice, so we exchanged phone numbers and vowed to get together soon. I called her next but discovered that the number I'd programmed into my cell phone for her was incorrect.

I scrolled through the list. I made a couple more calls, but everyone was either unreachable or too far away to make it on such short notice.

Then I thought of Boz. Boz is a neighbour, one of the original owners in this complex, like me. He's either independently weathly or just doesn't work; I don't know; but he's around all the time, like me. Just the other day, in fact, I'd been outside, leaning against the one of the black posts that supports the chain which provides the only barrier between our property and the marina, smoking a cigarette and watching the baby ducks, when Boz wandered by and we got into a discussion about the fire escape stairs.

Yeah, well, it's interesting if you live here.

We bet a beer on the outcome of the proof of a point of disagreement — I said you couldn't get onto the roof from the fire escape stairs, he said you could — and I lost. So I owe him a beer.

Boz is 6'3" and awfully cute. Not that that has anything to do with anything. Hey, a bet's a bet, and I'm no welcher. And though I've vowed never to ask a man out on a date again as long as I live, after what happened with The Viking, I reasoned that this isn't the same thing, he's just a neighbour and I owe him a beer and making good on that debt at an outdoor concert that just happens to be a stone's throw from where we both live, well...

So I knocked on his door.

And was both relieved and disappointed that he wasn't home.

So I walk back out to the marina side of the building, and I'm looking down at my cell phone still scrolling for ideas but running out of them, when I look up and see a sailboat has pulled up to the boardwalk — which isn't a boardwalk at all, but a very wide concrete pedestrian walkway running along the west edge of our building &mdash and there are two men crouched on the boardwalk, one at each end of the boat, tying it off. As I approach, the one who's back is to me stands up, sees me, and says,

"Hi!"

It's Boz.

Did you ever see that episode of Will And Grace where Grace falls down and bumps her head, and when she looks up there's Harry Connick Jr. climbing down from a white horse to help her up?

I don't know why that went through my mind just then.

Anyway, Boz starts telling me about how he's crewing on this boat and that there's an international regatta going on this weekend at the National Yacht Club and they're racing in it. They'd just tied up for a minute to lower and fold the sail, then they have to get back to the slip and ready the boat for tomorrow.

I tell him that I'd just been looking for him, and I tell him why.

He can't, he says, and he looks kinda disappointed. He has some James Taylor albums. He likes James Taylor. I'm not sure that's a point in his favour, but now is not the time to ask about his feelings toward Green Day.

There'll be time for that when I pay him the beer I owe him.

* * *
In October, Sass will have an opportunity to do just that, but because she learned last winter that she sucks at asking guys out, she's going to obsess about it first, and ask for help. The next story in sequence is another chorus of Working for the Weekend, in which Postmodern Sass thanks her readers.

Turned To Stone

This story won bronze in the Best Post category in the 2005 Canadian Blog Awards

Reprinted by permission from The Postmodern Times, Utopia, NW

by Sass B. Snarky

Inspired by the resounding success of their recent installation of a statue of Elizabeth Montgomery, star of the 1960s television series Bewitched, in a park in Salem, Massachussetts, executives at U.S. cable television network TV Land today announced that they have entered negotiations with NASA to erect a statue of Larry Hagman at Cape Kennedy.

"As everyone in America knows, Mr. Hagman played an astronaut on I Dream Of Jeannie, another beloved 1960s television series," said Larry Jones, president of TV Land. "At TV Land we firmly believe that honouring television actors by placing their likenesses in American towns of historical significance will augment the cultural sensibilities of both residents and tourists alike."

Critics have called the TV Land initiative, which also saw a statue of Mary Tyler Moore placed in Minneapolis, the city in which her fictional 1970s television series was set, nothing more than crass commercialism.

"That's absurd," Jones responded. "This is a project of national importance. It's a tribute to all Americans who watch television."

Indeed, the timing of the Bewitched installation, which coincided with last Friday's release of the movie Bewitched, starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, has also fallen under criticism. Some say it was a public relations stunt designed to capitalize on the media frenzy surrounding the movie and the rumoured romance between the two Hollywood stars.

"Nonsense," said Jones, "This project has been in the works for more than three months, and with the full cooperation of the town of Salem. I don't take orders from Hollywood."

Projects like Jones's could be a new revenue opportunity for cash-strapped tourist towns all over America. "When TV Land approached us with their offer to pay us to place the statue of Elizabeth Montgomery in our town common, we jumped at the offer," said Salem mayor Stanley Usovicz. Everyone in town was thrilled with the idea," he added.

Though financial details of the arrangement were not disclosed, Mayor Usovicz did say that revenues from the ten year contract with TV Land will be put toward parkland improvements in the town. Experts estimate the deal to be valued in the four figure range.

"It's, like, so sad that Elizabeth isn't alive to see this," said Erin Murphy, who played baby Tabitha Stephens on the show, which ran from 1964 to 1972, and who was present at the unveiling last Tuesday. "I'm sure she would feel totally happy. I wish I were dead, so they'd put a statue of me somewhere."

Elizabeth Montgomery died in 1995.

When asked which town she'd pick, if she had a choice, Murphy replied, "Wow, that's a tough one. Maybe somewhere in Connecticut, since that's where the Stephens family was supposed to live. I'm not sure which town, though. I was just a baby, remember. Oh, or maybe somewhere in New York City, since that's where Tabitha's father, Darrin Stephens, worked."

Murphy might find herself in competition with her fictional father there. Jones hinted that TV Land has been approached by top New York advertising agency, Ogilvy & Mather. The firm is reportedly interested in placing a statue of "Darrin" in the parkette in front of their worldwide head office on West 49th Street. "He's the most famous fictional advertising man in America," said Nona Serius, Director of Public Relations for Ogilvy & Mather. "We'd love to be the ones to make that cultural link between the world of real advertising and television."

A source inside the agency revealed, "The hold-up right now is the board of directors can't decide whether the statue should be of Dick York or Dick Sargent."

When asked whether it was a requirement for the actor who played the fictional character to be dead, Jones replied, "I wouldn't say it's absolutely a requirement, it's more of a respect for tradition. All the greatest statues are of dead people."

What's next for Jones? "As long as this nostalgia craze for classic TV shows continues, there's no end to the possibilities," he said. "I can see a statue of Russell Johnson, who played the Professor on Gilligan's Island, in the quad at Harvard. I'm fairly certain he's dead."

Editor's note: Just before this story went to press our reporter was informed by sources that Larry Hagman is not dead yet. Officials at NASA were unavailable for comment, and calls to TV Land representatives were not immediately returned.

* * *
In the next story, Postmodern Sass is nearly turned to stone by her handsome neighbour.

Working For The Weekend [refrain]

Tim does his weekly browser peek; me, I'm more interested in where my readers are coming from. I'm fascinated by what I see in my blog logs.

I seem to be popular in Texas. Why? Who can say? So I'd like to say howdy to my readers in Dallas, Humble, Plano, Roma, Mansfield, Lubbock, Austin, Stafford, and Houston. I've never heard from any of y'all. I'd love it if you'd email me.

Howdy, too, to all the geeks (and I say that with love) at all these Big Ass American Software (and Hardware) Companies who drop by regularly: Sun, Microsoft, Oracle, Peoplesoft, Agilent, Vignette (hey, aren't they in Texas, too?), HP, IBM; also Amazon.com, HP, CNet, and NBC.

Then there are visitors from some Little Ass Canadian Companies: MKS, Waterloo Maple, RIM, and of course Tucows (that's Accordion Guy).

Oh, and the übergeeks at NASA and NCAR and LANL.

Someone in the U.S. Navy, in San Diego, reads my blog. Like all girls, I love a man in uniform.

Every day I have several visitors from Australia and Germany — maybe because I write about Gänseblumen.

Prudence in Paris tells me I have a small but growing fan base in France. It's the home of Sartre, Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault, after all. They understand what my local academic colleagues refer to as "that postmodern existentialist crap." I really ought to move there.

Speaking of academics, in the last few weeks I've noticed a new crop of eggheads from MIT, Harvard, University of Oregon, Renssalaer, Duke, University of Waterloo, University of Chicago, University of Alberta, Ivey, Northwestern (Professor Kotler, is that you?), and the University of Hawaii — I wanted to go there, for marine biology, but my parents said, you must be kidding.

Knowing I have readers in all these places is like vicariously travelling the globe...

And now, to this month's thank yous:

Thank you to Colby Cosh, who so poetically titled his post "Swept away by a demographic tsunami in the blue sea of May" when he linked to this story.

A special hello and thank you to Tony in England, for telling me about his mother.

Thank you Norm, for the good karma for Andrew's baby.

Thank you to these bloggers who recently linked to me, added me to their blogroll, or just started reading: Zemblan Grammar, Comments From The Peanut Gallery, and Shawna in Minneapolis.

Goodbye, Christie!

And finally, the guffaw of the week award goes to Jack, who emailed me after he read this story to say, "Come to think of it, one of the first columns I wrote for [insert name of Internet company here] was about the Donny & Marie talk show that had its debut in the fall of '97. It was supposed to be a moral, upright, mayonnaise-on-Wonder-bread sort of talk show. I remember writing, "Donny and Marie Osmond. Interviewing people. She's a little bit country; I'm a little bit, could this idea possibly suck more?"

* * *
Click here for the next chorus of Working For The Weekend.

Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head [part III - fin]

Continued from part II

My father taught me everything I know about the birds and the bees — and the flowers and the trees, too.

In response to what I had just told him, my father said, "Vaaaat?"

I can't do justice, in writing, to the way my dad speaks that word. It's a drawn out, sing-songy syllable; his voice goes up a notch at the end. It's a good sound, though, I can tell you that much for certain. I learned very early to identify my father's moods from his whistling, and his tone. He's not so good with words. I got that from my mother. From him, I got my nose, and my knowledge of plants and birds.

Did you know that, if you want to attract bumblebees to your garden — and who wouldn't? — you want to stay away from fancy modern hybrid flowers. They might look pretty, but they're sterile. If you aspire to the kind of flower garden my father has, populated by wildly coloured wild flowers that bloom continuously from April through October, you need bumblebees. You also want to stay away from double-bloom flowers. They make it too difficult for the bees to get at the pollen and nectar.

Poor bumblebees. They have a bad rap. Though they look big and fierce, they rarely sting people. They're not aggressive, and are perfectly happy pollinating all day. If you watch one closely, as my father and I are about to do, it might even wave its legs at you.

An especially plump bumblebee was buzzing around my father's early-flowering honeysuckle bush.

"Vatch, Vatch," my father instructed me, and motioned me closer to the flowers.

"What am I looking at?" I meant, specifically. I've seen bees doing their flower business before.

"Look at where he puts his stinger."

I vatched.

"See, how he goes outside the petals, to the base of the corolla, then sticks it in from the outside? Smaller bees, honeybees, climb inside the flower. This guy, he's taking a shortcut. Smart, ah?"

"And efficient."

"Ja."

My father admires efficiency in all things.

I showed my dad a picture of Jack. The one from Sara's wedding. And he made a non-English, monosyllabic sound, one of many that only my mother and I would have been able to translate. The sound expressed, in Daddy-speak, a favourable reaction.

"He's a really good dancer," I said. "And I told him I wanted to go dancing for my birthday, and he said he would come here — oh, by the way, he lives in San Francisco..."

I've been told I babble when I'm nervous.

" — so anyway, he's going to be here the weekend of my birthday, and I tried to find a place in Toronto where we could go ballroom dancing, but there just aren't any, not even at the Royal York, can you believe it? — and, so, anyway well he said why don't you ask your father, he'll know where to go, and so, that's what I need you to do, find a place where we can go dancing on that weekend."

What was that I just said about not being good with words? Sheesh.

My dad was doing this thing he does, where he's smiling but he's trying not to, because he doesn't want me to think he's smiling, even though he is, so he's trying to look stern and serious, but he only half pulls it off and doesn't fool me one bit.

"Zo, you mean he can dance? To die alten Schlager? Not that new music the kids these days are listening to?"

My father is a fantastic dancer. He taught me how to dance about the same time he taught me to skate, which is to say, not long after I was able to walk.

"He's not as good as you, of course," I replied.

At that moment, I probably could have gotten $200,000 for my mortgage out of my father.

A raindrop made my father blink. He looked up to evaluate the sky, and so it was difficult for me to make out the subsequent monosyllable. I think it was another favourable one, though.

"I guess I'd better get those tomato plants home," I said.

"Remember, water them every day for the first few days, and keep them protected from the direct sun if you can."

"Yes, Daddy," I replied, as I climbed into my car.

In my family, we're the Bad Leavers. You know, like the Seinfeld character, the Close Talker? My dad closed the car door and waited for me to roll down the window, so he could tell me once more about the tomato plants.

Then it started to rain.


It's eight weeks until Sass's birthday, and in the interim she'll be going to England. Jack is in Australia again, trying to close a big deal before quarter-end, but you'll hear more about him soon. Just before her birthday Sass goes to Los Angeles for a job interview, but makes it home in time to meet Jack at the Royal York. A lot can — and does — happen in eight weeks.

Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head [part II]

Continued from part I

The foxglove my dad dug out of his garden for me isn't doing well in its new clay pot on my rooftop patio. The tomato plants are doing just fine, though, despite the relentless baking-dish heat of the last week. The parks around my building have turned into hayfields. I can't remember the last time it rained.

In the end I took home the four tiny tomato plants, two asters, a foxglove, the smallest of the already foot high orange day lilies, and a plant with felty leaves that my dad says will grow red flowers, but he forgets what it's called.

As I followed my father up and down the garden paths, he told me about his trip to Germany. The trip he didn't take me along on, because... well, just because.

"It's a good thing you didn't come. It vas a disaster. Evelyne and Susannah didn't even come home vile I was there. Vell, Evelyne lives in Berlin, but Susannah doesn't live that far from Oberdorf. And Peter, the day I arrived he left for Mexico with his friends!"

"They would have come home if I'd been there," I said. Evelyne, Susannah, and Peter are my father's brother's children. They are about my age; just a couple of years younger.

He ignored my comment, because he knew it was probably true.

"So, what else happened that made it a disaster?" I asked, trying not to sound too gleeful. "And, by the way, it serves you right."

"I vas so sick as soon as I got there," my father continued. "Man, I hate to fly in a plane. The air is so bad. As soon as I got out I breathed the fresh air as deep as I could, but I must have caught something on the plane. My stomach hurt so bad I had to go to the doctor."

Take my word for this: if my dad went to a doctor, he must have been nearly dying.

"What about your old friends?" I asked. "Did you see Arnold?"

"Vell, yes, that wasn't so bad, Arnold was still there, but the rest of them had moved away. Arnold didn't even know where some of them vere."

Who was it that said, you can't go home again?

"They're all old men, now," said my dad. "They're going to be dead soon."

My dad is in his sixties. That's not old. Besides, in my family, we live forever. My grandmother just turned ninety.

The conversation about Germany was interrupted by a pair of chipmunks who scurried toward us from the bushes along the fence, looked up at my father briefly, then darted back under cover. If you know anything about chipmunks, you know they rarely come out into the open, and they move so quickly that usually all you catch is their shadows.

"They came right to you," I said. "You've tamed them, haven't you?"

Squirrels, my father dislikes because they dig up his plants, so he catches them and releases them in the woods. Chipmunks, according to him, don't do much damage. Raccoons, well, you don't want to get him started about them.

"No... vell, sometimes I give them a peanut," he replied. "But they like it here because they're safe. Look — did you see, they ran into that pipe there? Now, vatch, they'll come out the other end."

And they did.

"What's that pipe doing there?" I asked.

"I put it there."

"You mean, for the chipmunks?"

"Ja. Look here, too."

There is a network of pipes running along the perimeter of my father's back yard. Some are pieces of PVC, some are metal. They are all discreetly covered with plants, or bushes. But the chipmunks know they're there.


"Let me see if I've got this right," I laughed. "Squirrels, you catch and take to the woods. Moles, you spade. Racoons — no, wait, I don't want to know what you do to raccoons. But chipmunks, you build shelters for."

"Ja," he said, as if this were common behaviour in the suburbs. "Oh — you should have seen, in the spring, before the leaves were out on the trees, there was a hawk that came swooping down into the yard. I saw the chipmunk run, and I thought, nah, it's got him, but he made it into the pipe right here. The hawk, it was a Cooper Hawk, sat right there on the fence for half an hour, watching that end of the pipe, but the chipmunk had already run out the other end and was gone."

We had worked our way around to the front of the house to the myrtle and other creepers and the Japanese maple, when I felt the first raindrop fall on my head. I'd been working up the courage to ask my daddy something. That is, to tell him something. About Jack.

"So, um, Daddy, I need you to do something for me," I said, and got exactly the response I knew I'd get:

"Oh, oh. Vat now?"

I gave him a moment to think the worst. That I was going to ask him for money.

"Do you know when my birthday is?" I asked.

I know, he's my dad, he should know the answer to that question, but he's always confused it with his and my mother's wedding anniversary, because they're both in August. A year apart, the right way, if you must know.

He replied, and got it right. A good start. I plowed on.

"So, er, it seems I have, um, a date for my birthday."

* * *
To be concluded in part III

Smells like anything but

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I can imagine the pitch to the record company:

"You all know Paul Anka, of course, and if you don't, your wife or girlfriend does. Women of all ages love Paul. He's had hits in five decades."

This is true. I remember my mother taking me to see him at Ontario Place when I was about nine years old. Lonely Boy. Diana. Puppy Love. Put Your Head On My Shoulder. Most of Donny Osmond's solo hits were Paul Anka songs.

"What are the trends in music today? Well, look at Il Divo. Big band, swing, oldies, are all big right now. What's more retro than an original retro crooner? But here's the kicker: instead of oldies, Paul will be singing rock hits. We'll call it Rock Swings, by Paul Anka. Isn't it great? Why, if Frank were alive today, I bet he'd be doing it himself!"

A pox on you for mentioning The Great One.

"Close your eyes and picture this: Paul Anka covers the greatest hits of the 90s. Oasis. Van Halen. Eye Of The Tiger. Can you dig it?"

As soon as anyone mentions Van Halen and Oasis in the same sentence, the red flags should start waving like crazy. And did you say, Eye Of The Tiger? Excuse me while I close my eyes and vomit.

"It's time for Paul's comeback — not that he ever really left; he's been touring regularly in those five decades — and this time, it'll be for a whole new demographic. The new Paul. Paul the crooner. Paul the rocker. He'll do a tour, he'll do the talk show circuit. He'll do Letterman."

He did Letterman. On Wednesday night. Oh, how I wish it were possible to un-see what once you've seen... but if wishes were horses I'd have a dozen wild mustangs instead of the memory of Paul Anka singing Smells Like Teen Spirit à la Bill Murray's Nick the lounge singer.
* * *
When Sass saw Paul Anka with her mother, the stage at Ontario Place was called The Forum, but in the 1990s Molson built a larger amphitheatre on the same spot. In a couple of weeks, Sass will see James Taylor perform there.

Dear God [refrain]

I was at The Banknote last night, and Andrew was behind the bar. It was Day 18 for his baby at Sick Kids.

Andrew was in much better spirits than when last I saw him — when he was trying to be his usual jovial, entertaining barman, but the effort was telling. It's a good sign. Junior is responding well to the treatment, he reports.

Everyone who comes into the bar inquires about the baby.

"He's doing great," Andrew responds, "Really great. Considering the poor kid's been poked more times than Paris Hilton."

His wife is at the hospital 24/7.

"Maryanne could be a doctor by now," says Andrew. "She's up on all the meds and procedures, and rattles off explanations like a new intern on E.R."

While I was outside on the patio having a cigarette, Andrew taped my glasses case shut. That's so old. He did it to me the first time I was foolish enough to leave the case on the bar unattended. One learns quickly to be wary of a practical-joking bartender. One also continues to patronize the bar because of it.

To me, it was a sign that Andrew's going to be OK.

* * *
Thank you, Gentle Readers, who have emailed me with good wishes. I have passed them on to Andrew. I may not believe in god, but for those of you who do, I'm sure a good word for the baby couldn't hurt, nor could any and all good karma or magic spells you can send in the general direction of The Hospital for Sick Children. In the next story, one of Sass's musical heros takes a turn for the worse. Sass returns to The Banknote in August, when Andrew meets Jack.

Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head [part I]

My father lives around the corner, in country terms, from the university where I teach, where I'd been all Saturday afternoon, borrowing 100 pounds of books from the library, to read for my thesis. So I thought I'd drop in on my way home.

The sky was threatening rain, which is why I didn't find my father out back in the garden, but inside in the living room, reading The Economist.

"I was wondering if you have a beer for me, and maybe some tomato plants for my garden," I said by way of greeting. If you were expecting me to ask about his trip to Germany you can forget that, Gentle Reader.

The former request was a negative, the latter a positive, so, beerless, I followed my dad into his back yard and watched and listened as he showed me what he was growing. My father's garden is a complex system of planks (to walk on, when it's muddy), plastic juice bottles (as mini terrariums for the young pepper plants), golf balls (to cover or uncover the juice bottle tops as necessary), chicken wire (wrapped around the grape plants), poles, and upside-down plastic mesh trays, the ones that plants from the garden centre come in, to provide a degree of shade for the seedlings.

My father brought back some Gänseblumen from Oberdorf. He said he'll give me some next year. This year it's too late already, because they're blooming. You can't transplant flowers once they've started blooming.

Tomato plants occupy a world of their own in my father's garden. At the end of every season he lets the rotten ones lie, or throws them into an unoccupied quadrant, and so, in the spring, tomato plants spring up hither and thither. He watches their early progress, then decides whether and where to move them, or to thin them out.

In my family, we refer to the tomatoes you buy in the grocery store as rubber tomatoes. Which they are.

The timing of my visit was perfect, in tomato terms. My father located and carefully excavated four of the tiniest plants, only an inch or two high.

"Keep the tomatoes in the shade for the first couple of days," my father instructed me. "The sun might kill them. Plants go into shock, you know, when you dig them up. Water them every day, and in a few days if they're not dead you can move the pots into the sun."

"I'll be sure to talk nice to them when I put them in their new homes," I said. I wasn't joking. And I did, too. My father knows I have no shade on my rooftop patio. The sun is brutal up there. Kills everything except the goddamned wasps.

"Put the pots against the wall on the west side, so at least they'll be shaded for part of the afternoon," he suggested.

Together we walked up and down the gangway plants, like the chief of medicine and his residents on rounds, inspecting all that was growing on this small square of suburban earth. Looking for those plants, whether flower or vegetable, that would be suitable for clay pots, and which were still in their early growth stages.

Pumpkins, no. Beans, no. Too tall. Irisis, no. Though they are the most gorgeous, deep purple colour you've ever seen, and I envy them... but they are happiest in swampy conditions, which condo rooftops don't meet. Carrots, no. I don't like them, anyway. Maybe a tiger lily. Maybe.


As my dad bent down to dig up a baby aster he sighed. It might have been the exertion, or something else.

"So my trip to Germany was a bit of a disaster," he said.

* * *
To be continued in part II.

Money For Nothing

This week, in between reminding myself what my thesis is about, after dog walking and before hanging out at The Banknote, I've been watching the first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the weirdly un-sitcomish sitcom starring Larry David, and it reminded me of the time I had dinner with Howard West in Beverly Hills in 1996.

Howard West is one of the executive producers of Seinfeld, along with Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, but my dinner with him had nothing to do with that. What it had to do with was two guys named Stuart and Steve, who published a magazine called Websight, and a deal we were cooking. The search engine company I worked for was looking for content, and they had it.

The night before my dinner with Mr. West, Stuart, Steve, a couple of their friends, and I, had gone bar hopping. Bar hopping in L.A. is quite a different experience from bar hopping in Toronto. In Toronto, you have hundreds of bars in a few square blocks, and you either walk or cab around. Nobody walks in L.A., though. Stuart, who was driving, lived in Manhattan Beach. He picked me up at the Figueroa, an exotic hotel that I swear I've recognized in episodes of Alias, then we gathered the others and drove for miles up Sepulveda into Hollywood.

We started at a pretentious martini bar, then drove over to Vine to some place that was decorated with an abundance of palm trees. Indoors. Good to see that La La Land is not without a sense of irony. Our third stop was an out of the way club, the entrance to which was an unmarked door in an alley. As we approached a bouncer opened it from the inside, gave us the once-over, and permitted us to proceed into a long, dark, corridor. Two more bouncers — clearly, they were triplets — watched us pass; the last one nodded his head to indicate a staircase. We went up.

The club was small, dark, narrow, and free of frippery of any kind. I barely discerned a ledge along the wall, against which leaned several tall, skinny, bored looking people.

"Cameron!" exclaimed Stuart, as he approached one of them. Introductions were made all around. Cameron Diaz had posed for the cover of Websight earlier that year, and so was acquainted with Steve and Stuart. This was two years before There's Something About Mary, so she wasn't yet the A-list celebrity she would become. Still, I remember noticing two things about her: that she was as tall as I, and that she had a quality. A movie star quality.

She was a model, and had done some acting, but what she really wanted to do was sing. "Do you guys know any karaoke bars around here?" she asked.

The next evening, Steve and Stuart arranged for me to have dinner with Howard West, of Shapiro/West and Associates, one of the biggest talent agencies in Hollywood. Mr. West, as they always referred to him, had invested in their magazine, and was interested in finding out about "this Internet thing." My boss, the president of the search engine company, was in San Francisco that week, and decided to fly down for the evening.

He was always schmoozing and wheeling, but very little dealing went on until after he was gone. Maybe another time I'll tell you about the deal we made with the software company whose employees wore Star Trek uniforms in their trade show booth, and which imploded when its president took the entire company on a retreat to what turned out to be a Scientology compound.

We met at a cozy French restaurant on Beverly Boulevard at the appointed time. Mr. West's limousine pulled up in front of the door, just as Mr. President and I were entering. He greeted us, and then he was the mayor. The hostess came outside to show us in. We were ushered to a secluded table in a glass-enclosed alcove, looking out into the small garden. Mr. West's table.

"I've taken the liberty of ordering for all of us. I hope neither of you has any food allergies?" asked Mr. West.

My parents raised me with the understanding that, if someone is making you dinner, or buying you dinner, you eat whatever they serve you without complaint.

There were no complaints. I don't remember what we ate, but I remember that it was delicious. We read no menu; no prices were posted in the window. Courses were presented and removed unobtrusively. Movements were directed by the occasional raised eyebrow or finger of Mr. West's. The chef came out to greet him, and ask how we enjoyed our meal. No bill was accorded Mr. West, not even discreetly.

As we chatted during the meal Mr. West asked whether I watched Seinfeld.

"Of course," I replied. "In fact, I watched the show back in 1989, when it was on on Wednesday nights and called The Seinfeld Chronicles."

There's a good chance that if I were to call Mr. West today, he might remember me, just because of that sentence.

He was a charming man, Mr. West was — still is, I'm sure — and once we'd established Seinfeldian common ground he regaled me throughout the meal with tales of the early days of the show, before it became the monster hit and landmark program it was to become.

"When Larry and Jerry came to me with their idea for this show, a show about nothing, I don't know what made me go along with them. I thought they were crazy, but I sold the pilot to the network. They ordered four shows after the pilot."

"Is that good?" I asked.

"My dear, it had never been done before. When the network wants to give a show a chance, they order six episodes, then decide whether to continue or cancel. I got four only because of who I am. I was sure I'd owe them big down the road."

"But you had the last laugh, didn't you?"

"I sure did, eventually," Mr. West smiled, "But it didn't come easy. Not until Cheers went off the air in '93 and they moved us to Thursday nights did we find an audience. No one saw those early shows."

"I did."

"What was your favourite episode?" Mr. West asked me.

"The one where they go shopping and can't find their car in the parking lot. Kramer's carrying around a box with an air conditioner, and Elaine has a goldfish, and they wander around and around looking for their car. I remember thinking, this is brilliant. Who hasn't had that happen? But when it happens to us, we find our car, eventually. They don't, for hours. It felt like a horror movie. Funny, but scary at the same time."

I think it was only then that Mr. West believed I hadn't been bullshitting him.

"That episode must have taken days to shoot," I ventured. "And having to close down a parking lot while you did it? I thought you didn't have much of a budget in those early years?"

"That wasn't a real parking lot," Mr. West replied.

"You're kidding."

"It was a set. We built it. Believe it or not, it's cheaper to build a parking lot set and fill it with cars in the studio, than it is to go out on location and film in a real parking lot."

Everything I know about television, I learned from Howard West.

"Did you ever notice the Pepsi in Jerry's fridge?" Mr. West asked me.


"You mean the six pack of Pepsi that's there in one episode, and in the next it's a six pack of Coke?"

I'm not sure, but I think Mr. West might have wanted to kiss me just then.

"People are always asking me how much Pepsi paid us, or how we made that deal, or why we didn't do what all the other shows did — make a prop that looks like a Pepsi can, but isn't."

"I wondered about that myself," I said, "I mean, how can you get away with that? Isn't there some sort of rule in television? Characters in movies and on TV always order "a beer" or "a cola"; never a brand name. I assumed it wasn't allowed."

"That's what everybody assumes, but it's not true. There's no rule, or law, it's just a custom. Producers have always taken the position that they don't want to give free advertising to the brands, so they use fake props instead. But we, like I said, had a shoestring budget. Jerry's the one who suggested, why don't we just put a real six pack of Pepsi in the fridge? We all looked at each other; no one had a good reason why we shouldn't, so we did. But where Jerry was really brilliant was a couple of weeks later when he suggested this time, let's use a six pack of Coke."

At the end of the evening Mr. West shook Mr. President's hand, and kissed me on the cheek. Websight magazine ceased publication a few months later, our deal vapourized, and I never saw Mr. West again.

Back in Waterloo, a week later, Mr. President came to my desk. "I just had a phone call from Howard West," he told me. "He asked about you, and said he found you charming and candid."

Candid? I'm not sure whether that's a good thing. But to this day, whenever I put a six pack of Pepsi in the fridge, I think of Mr. West.
* * *
Click here to read another story about Sass's adventures during the Internet Days. In the next story, Sass finds out how her father's trip to Germany went.

QwertY

This morning I received the following email message from my best friend Kay, who is in France on business. The keyboards are different there, it seems:

"chat later = stop procrastinqting on your dissertation zith your email qnd get zriting it so we can call you dr sass"

Bossy, isn't she?

But she's right. I'll be travelling to Bristol in July to meet with my thesis advisors, and it's time I reminded them of who I am.

And myself, of what my thesis is about.