Crush With Eyeliner

Sunday was The Viking's birthday, and in keeping with the philosophy that life's not fair, there was no Kickass Karaoke at The Rivoli that night. There is no more loyal KAK devotee, and nearly no better singer, than The Viking (seriously: The White Stripes. Cream. Radiohead), and it's such a shame that we couldn't all sing together that night, me and my karaoke buddies. Last year The Viking accepted karaoke challenges on his birthday. I got him to sing REM's "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" then. This year, I was going to have him sing "One Way Or Another," my signature song, because I know he can do it, and because he's told me that he thinks that a guy singing that song would sound like a stalker and he's right, and so because he doesn't want to do it is exactly why I want him to do it.

So instead I went to The Banknote with Maria.

I got there before her, and Martin, the bartender, says to me, "You're all dressed up tonight, what's up?"

I was wearing black jeans and a sweater, but I'd washed and combed my hair, and was wearing mascara. Lesson learned.

I tell him my date for the evening is Maria, the chicken wing girl who's recently lost her mitten. She promised to bring The Mitten along, so he could have a beer with us.

Martin asks about Maria, and I tell him she's the one who was here with me a couple of weeks ago, who reviewed the chicken wings. I tell him about her blog. He tells me he doesn't do that Internet thing much. I tell him a little bit about blogs, and how Maria writes about knitting, and chicken wings, and lost mittens. He says,

"She must have a lot of time on her hands."

I say, "Most bloggers have real jobs, and only write online as a hobby."

He asks what she does. I tell him she has a degree from the London School of Economics and works for a market research firm.

He seems to have difficulty parsing this information.

"What do you do?" he asks.

"I write about The Banknote, mostly," I tell him.

"No, I mean, in real life."

"I teach marketing."

"Where do you teach?" he asks, so I tell him about the university I work at now, and the one I worked at before that, and about the first one I taught at, right after I left the real world of marketing, in New Brunswick.

"In Nova Scotia?" he asks. "Halifax?"

"No," I say, "St. John. New Brunswick."

A minute later tonight's Murphy Brown waitress is at my side. "Did you ever teach in Nova Scotia?" she asks.

"No, only in New Brunswick. St. John."

"But are you from there?"

"Oh, no. I'm an Ontario girl, through and through." I reply. "My four months out east were a culture shock. They almost stoned me when I told them I'd never heard of Great Big Sea."

"You look really familar," she says.

"Maybe because I'm here all the time."

"Tonight's my first night."

And probably your last, sweetheart. Did you not watch Murphy Brown?

Yeah, I'm three miles of bad road tonight, and Maria's s'mitten.

* * *
Next, Sass gets a chain letter from her friend Angela. Friday, it's another chorus of "Working for the Weekend".

What Am I Doing Wrong?

When the multiple-choice question on my second year intro to marketing class's midterm exam reads

Marketing is:

1. developing new product concepts and improvements
2. selling
3. advertising and promotions activities
4. planning and managing sales campaigns
5. a philosophy that focuses on customer value and satisfaction

and half the students don't know the right answer?

* * *
Before Sass has a chance to give them all a grade of Q-fucking-minus, as her friend Ace would say, Maria calls and wants to go to The Banknote for ribs. The students will never know what a close call they had.

Toast

I'd like to tell you about when I was a young boy. I must have been three or four months old at the time. I didn't really know what I wanted, and if I did, I wouldn't have been able to tell anybody, 'cos all I could do was gurgle. So I sat there in me highchair, thinking one day, looking at me tray and thinking what I'd give for a meal on there. So I started looking round to see what I could have. I was rubbing me eggy soldier in me head, trying to think, and then I looked in the corner and there's a little breadbin with its mouth open, just staring at me, like. And then I looked in and I saw bread. I thought, oh yeah, I'll have toast. A little piece of toast.
—Paul Young

One day last summer I'd been making toast and the phone rang just as I was waving a dish towel under the smoke alarm to make it stop sounding. It was Jack. When I told him what I'd just been doing, he said he found it charming.

"You think it's charming that I'm such a klutz I burn my toast and set off the smoke alarm?"

"Yes," he replied. Jack always says yes; never yeah, or yup, or uh huh. "It means you like real toast. Toast that's actually toasted, not just waved over the warmer for ten seconds."

What I was thinking was, What it means is I need a new toaster. But what I said was, "Ooooh, I hate it when they give me toast like that in a restaurant."

"Me too."

The weekend of my birthday, not last summer but the summer before, when Jack took me dancing at The Starlight Room in San Francisco and I had, let's say, to be kind, one martini too many, I had a hangover the next day that only corned beef hash could cure. When I woke up that morning I communicated this prescription to Jack, who was lying on the floor between the king-sized bed and the luxurious armchairs in front of the window. Something about me stealing the covers and, um, kicking. You'd think that a hotel as luxurious as the Mark Hopkins Intercontinental would have a bed that two people with a combined height of almost thirteen feet could sleep in comfortably, together, but then Jack and I never had enough practice at that. Sleeping together, I mean.

He mumbled something about, whenever you're ready, and then, come back up now? And I said sure, you can have the covers, I'm going to get up. And then I got out of bed and ran to the oh so elegant, marble bedecked, mirror bedizened bathroom and threw up.

Yeah, I know. Hard to believe he dumped me a second time, isn't it?

With my stomach contents emptied, and only the pounding headache to combat, I was ready for a greasy good breakfast of corned beef hash and fried eggs, over easy. And toast.

We had planned to spend the day at Half Moon Bay. Jack drove down the 101 to San Mateo, and took me to his favourite diner. I'd never told him that I love diners, only that I love corned beef hash, and him. I can't recall the name of that diner; not sure I even knew what it was at the time. I'd been too busy keeping my head down and breathing deeply, trying to keep the nausea at bay. There's nothing in there to throw up, you idiot, I'd been telling my stomach silently. So just shut the fuck up, OK?

The waitress led us to a booth with dark red vinyl benches, and a chrome edged table with a miniature jukebox on it. It was awesome. I took off my sunglasses, looked up at Jack, smiled weakly, and, thankfully, did not throw up on him. The waitress poured coffee for me—Jack doesn't drink coffee—and then took our order.

A few minutes later, she set our plates down in front of us, and as soon as she'd gone I said, "Damn."

"What is it?" asked Jack.

"I forgot to ask her not to put butter on the toast."

"Don't you like butter on your toast?"

"Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, but in any case I'd rather they didn't put it on for me," I explained. "They always put too much on, sometimes so much that you can see it there, in little clumps, too big to melt into the bread."

"I see," said Jack.

"And also— fuck, I wish I'd remembered to ask her this, but I don't go out for breakfast often enough to remember... if I think of it, I like to ask them not to cut the toast, either."

"And why is that?" Jack inquired, with the patience of glass blower heating his latest project.

"Because they always cut it on the angle, so the two pieces are triangles. I know it sounds silly, but I don't cut my toast that way—I cut it into two rectangles, because, well, because that's the way my mother always did it."

"So it looks wrong this way."

"Exactly."

He understands why this matters to me. He's not making fun of me, not even a little bit.

"Would you like me to ask the waitress to take it back, and bring you some toast that's uncut and unbuttered?"

How much do I love this man?

"No, I can't do that," I replied. "See, that would make me one of those customers. You know, the kind waitresses talk about behind their backs. Making unreasonable demands. It wouldn't be fair; she didn't do anything wrong, she just brought me the toast they way they always bring the toast. If I'd wanted special toast treatment, I should have asked for it, but I forgot to, and that's my fault, not hers."

"You have toast sensibilities," Jack declared, and then he added: "You know that thing?"

"Which thing?" I asked, though I knew. It was a game we'd been playing for almost fifteen years. A sprachspiel.

"That thing we never say."

"Yes."

"Well, that."

"Me too."
* * *

Last week, I finally bought that new toaster. I went shopping for it on Tuesday, but that was just by coincidence.

I wish everything didn't remind me of Jack.


In the next story, Postmodern Sass wonders why her marketing students don't know what marketing is. Instead of giving them all Fs (or, as a professor and musician friend of hers might say, Q minuses), she goes to The Banknote with Maria again.

Oh, oh, telephone line [redux]

Tim pointed me to an article that detailed the marketing hijinks orchestrated by Simon & Schuster, Stephen King's publishers, to publicize the release of his novel, Cell, which I wrote about the other day.

Not many people think of him this way, but Stephen King is truly a marketing genius. To wit, he has:

• released a book in six segments over six weeks (The Green Mile)


• simultaneously released two books, written under two different names, featuring the same characters but a different version of the story (Desperation and The Regulators)


• written a book that was available only as a download (The Plant)


• written a book that was only available as an e-book (I forget what that one was called, because I downloaded it on my old laptop and never transferred it to my new computer. Never read it, either, because I don't like reading on a screen. I like reading in the bathtub.)


• published a "trailer," if you will, for his next book, in his own handwriting, at the end of his current book (Lisey's Story and Cell, respectively)

And now, with Cell, comes a microsite on which fans can sign up to get a phone call from Stephen King. OK, sure, it's a recording; I mean, it's not like he's going to call every single one of his fans, but still, that's pretty cool, you gotta admit.

Even cooler, and way creepier: You can send The Pulse to a friend. Whoa! Dude, I've read the book! No way am I doing that to my friends! I'm not even sure I want my enemies running around biting the ears off of dogs, eating Twinkies without first removing the plastic wrapper, and playing "You Light Up My Life" all night long on their boomboxes.


I'm already looking at my Nokia with suspicion. You know what they say, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Because, though to the best of my knowledge The Viking has not bitten the ears off of any dogs since getting his new cell phone, I was not quite so lucky—I did, in fact, sing an abominable version of "Jessie's Girl" last Sunday at Kickass Karaoke. Maybe it was The Pulse. Maybe it was The Viking's game of karaoke roulette. Who can say?


In the next story, Postmodern Sass buys a new toaster. And then it occurs to her that The Viking's cell phone was probably a birthday present.

Oh, oh, telephone line

I predict, Gentle Reader, that Stephen King's latest novel, Cell, is going to do for cell phones what Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds did for, well, birds. You never look at them quite the same way again—birds, that is, not cell phones—especially when you see them behaving like they did in the movie. Alighting on telephone wires, then all taking off at the same time. Flocking.

Oh, just you wait until you read about how the phone-crazies, the people affected by The Pulse, who go insane because they carried and used their cell phones on the wrong day, also flock.

Seriously, you'll want to let that battery run out on your phone for a few days, at least.

While my cell phone was quietly dying on my kitchen counter over the weekend, I finished reading Cell and I have to say, it was good. It's been a long time since I couldn't put a Stephen King book down. For one thing, it's only 350 pages; practically a short story by King standards. For another, the ending doesn't suck. In many ways (though not that one), it reminds me of The Stand, my all-time favourite Stephen King book, and the first book of his I ever read. Good thing, too, because if I'd read, say, The Tommyknockers first, I'd have never read a second. Some of King's books blow dead rats, as he himself might say.

Quite a few do, in fact. Like, for example, Dreamcatcher, the first book he wrote after The Accident. Catharsis, yeah, I get it, but after reading 150 pages of King excruciatingly painfully detailing not one but two characters getting hit by cars, I closed the book and never picked it up again. And some, like It, for example, are terrific right up until the ending, at which point the evil clown who'd been hiding in the sewer, snatching chidren and having them for lunch, turns out to be a giant spider living in a cave. Or like in the miniseries Kingdom Hospital, where Peter Rickman rescues everyone from the fire in the mine by drawing a fire extinguisher on the wall, then using it. Yeah, you read that right. He draws a fire extinguisher on the wall—because, hey, he's an artist, so he can— then he uses it to extinguish the fire, thereby saving the little girl so her ghost can rest in peace.

The Stand has a ridiculous ending: the Hand of God comes down and smites the Bad People. Or is that smotes? But I forgive Mr. King for that one because he had a hand in making the miniseries of the book, and the miniseries starred Gary Sinise, one of my all-time favourite actors, and the casting of Laura San Giacomo as Nadine Cross was nothing short of fucking brilliant. And then there's Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, which is not a novel but a 94-page short story in King's 1982 collection, Different Seasons. Fucking fantastic story, with a fucking fantastic ending, made all the better when brought to life by Tim Robbins in the movie.

Ah, Tim Robbins. Excuse me while I swoon spoony for a moment.

[Talk amongst yourselves.]

OK, I'm back now.

So last night at Kickass Karaoke I noticed a cell phone lying on the table in front of The Viking who, until now, had been one of the normies.

"Is that yours?" I asked, surprised and slightly freaked out.

"Yup. I thought it was about time to get one," he replied, oblivious to the fact that he was about to turn into a raving lunatic, howling at the moon and biting the ears off of dogs. Sure, he'll still have great hair, but he won't have the presence of mind to use his hair gel any longer.

You wouldn't say that if you'd read that book, the panic rat inside my head sneered. Down, boy, I commanded it. It's just a novel.

"Call it," suggested The Viking.

Are you crazy? the panic rat thought into my head, If I do that, the next thing you know I'll be up on stage singing "Jessie's Girl" and realizing I only know the chorus and can't hit the key in the verse. I'll revert to novice karaokedom! My membership in the Kickass Karaoke Slut Club will be revoked! The panic was swirling in my head now, waxing into a cyclone of power. And you'd like that, wouldn't you, you smug, streaky-haired blond Viking, you? Sure, yeah, that's all part of your master plan, isn't it? Get me out of the picture so you can hog the stage. Don't think I can't see what you're up to, mister!

I bite the panic rat's imaginary ear off, to shut it up, and dig my cell phone out of my purse. OK, I didn't really let it die. I just turned it off.

"What's the number?" I ask The Viking, cool as a cucumber, but putting a few more inches between us, just in case. He wants me to call it so I can hear his ring tone. It's a song—of course it's a song!— and he seems quite proud of his choice. I have no doubt it'll be clever, and, since he's still a normie it won't be "Wind Beneath My Wings" or "You Light Up My Life." No; those'll come later, after The Pulse.

I stare at the tiny piece of live ordinance on the table. Its display screen flickers for a nanosecond, then lights up. And then it rings.

Someone is singing Def Leppard on stage, so I have to pick it up to hear what it's playing. I hold the cell phone to my ear, and watch my life flash before my eyes.

It's playing "London Calling."

* * *
I won't tell you The Viking's cell phone number, Gentle Reader, but I will let you know how you can turn your friends into phone-crazies. Click here.

867-5309

This is why I love Jenny. And I mean, love as in, I love those shoes, not love as in, I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you.

She lives in Chicago and loves Toronto. I live in Toronto and love Chicago.

Most of her readers are Canadian. Most of mine are American.

She drinks real beer, and whips out her notebook in bars.

She tap dances.

I am a karaoke slut. She is a comment whore.

She too has two cats. Mine were named after muppets, hers are named after Angelina Jolie's children.

She's a carnie.

She makes me laugh.

* * *

Other things Postmodern Sass loves: The Viking, Stephen King, and toast.

I Am Woman [part II]

Continued from part I

I know why Boz is ringing my bell.

It's because I have a package for him that Liz, our postie, wasn't able to deliver to him on Friday because he wasn't home and it didn't fit into his mailbox. She saw me, knows me, knows I know Boz, knows Boz knows me, knows about the sailing adventure, and knows I like Boz.

Posties know a lot about their customers.

So that Friday afternoon I sent Boz an email to let him know I had his, ahem, package, and then I put some mascara on. I made sure all day Friday and all day Saturday I had mascara on, just in case he came over. But when I hadn't heard from him by Sunday morning I figured it was safe to go mascaraless to Home Depot. I figured it would take me a couple of hours, max, to complete my postmodern plumbing project &mdash and after that I could clean up and put the mascara back on. I figured Boz must be away for the weekend, and that I'd see him or hear from him on Monday.

Naturally, as soon as I let the mascara down, he shows up at my door.

I can't not answer. He knows I have it, and he probably knows I'm here. He knows my car. And if I don't answer he'll get annoyed at not having whatever it is that's in that envelope. He's like that: fussy.

Why, oh why, must it be that without fail, every time Boz sees me, I look like something the cat dragged out from under a car and brought into the house? What is it that I have done, oh Lord, that you hate me so?

I open the door.

"I hear you've been playing postie," says Boz. He's smiling.

Actually, I was hoping we could play Post Office.

"Yes I have. Come on in."

"I can't, I have to get back."

Boz is all business, like I told you before.

"Just come in for a minute and close the door so the cat doesn't get out. I have to get your envelope; it's upstairs."

He steps inside and closes the door. He's never been inside my place before. Only as far as the outer door, once, after the building's picnic two years ago, when he helped me bring home the leftover beer in a big plastic crate. But he was married then.

He's in the foyer, at the bottom of a short flight of stairs that leads up to my townhouse proper. I'm in the kitchen, where I was smart enough to have put his envelope. I knew that if I were to leave it on the shelf just inside my door, he wouldn't have to come in to retrieve it.

Yes, Gentle Reader, I actually thought that through back on Friday.

"I was just about to embark on a plumbing project," I call down the stairs cheerily. "Do you want to see?"

Do you want to have a look at my pipes?

I hear him coming up the stairs. "I can only stay a minute," he says. But in the end, he stays for twenty. One of the things that I like about Boz is, he's a bad leaver. Just like my dad and me.

He admires my new faucet. We compare gripes about the cheap fixtures the builder installed. He notices the Volkswagen photos and posters on my wall, and asks about my 1967 Beetle. I tell him about my mother's Pacer, too. He asks what the letters on my sweatshirt mean, and I tell him that's the university where I'm doing my PhD. He knows about that, and asks how it's going.

Ask him out! Ask him out!

I'm curious about what's in the envelope, but I don't ask, and he doesn't offer.

Maybe it's his divorce papers.

* * *
Now that Boz is gone, I put on The Tragically Hip's "That Night In Toronto" DVD and climb back under the counter. I was at the concert when they filmed that, so I know how long it is. I figure, by the time it's over I'll have my new faucet ready to go.

The Hip are into their third encore, Boots or Hearts, and the timing is perfect. All I have left to do is re-connect the hot and cold water pipes, and Bob's my uncle.

That's when I realize the pipes extending from the new faucet are about 6" short of reaching the end of the water delivery pipes to which they must be connected. I scratch my head, rubbing the WD-40 deeper into my hair, and wonder how it is that I just this minute noticed that.

Reminds me of the time in high school that my friend Jerry and I installed new speakers in my Volkswagen Beetle. We installed them on the door panels, because there's really no other place to put them in a 1967 Beetle. It was a beautiful, warm, July evening. Jerry lived in St. Catharines, and I had promised to drive him home when we were finished. That's me; car girl. Always driving the boys home.

It was only when we hit the highway and picked up speed that we decided to roll up the windows, and discovered that we couldn't.

So it's back to Home Depot I go, 9.5 km one way, where I have no doubt they'll have some sort of extension pipe. In situations like this I always remind myself, it's unlikely you're the first person in the world to have this problem. Many faucets are installed every day around the world, right?

I take the old piece of shit, my Price Pfister faucet, with me. I learned early on in my home renovation career never to throw away the old part until you're damned certain the new one fits. I thought maybe they could cut some of the copper piping off of it, if that's what I was going to need. I mean, why buy a new 8' piece of copper pipe when all you need is six inches, and there's about 12 inches of perfectly serviceable pipe attached to the old faucet?

An hour later, after a brief consultation with Hal, who actually smiled when I told him what a goof I'd been to not notice that the pipes weren't long enough to reach each other, I'm back home, two 30 cm flexible polymer braid faucet extensions, $5.88 each, in my hot little hands.

(Did you know the French word for faucet is robinet? In Canada, everything must be labelled in French and English, so not only am I learning new plumbing vocabulary, I'm learning it in French, too.)

I attach one end to the water deliver pipe, remembering to use Donny's two handed wrench technique.

I'm almost done now.

Except for one thing: the other end of the extension doesn't fit onto the Moen faucet pipe.

But how can this be? I showed Hal exactly what I needed. Hal is my second favourite plumbing associate at the St. Clair Avenue Home Depot. Hal would not steer me wrong!

So back to Home Depot I go, one last time. But first, I go next door to AC's to use his bathroom. My water's been turned off all day, remember?

An hour later I'm back in aisle 9 at Home Depot, and there's Aziz. I'm awfully happy to see him, because I'm not so sure I trust Hal now. I tell Aziz my latest problem.

"Which brand of faucet did you buy?" he asks.

"Moen."

"You need this piece, then."

Hal had given me the extension pieces that fit a Price Pfister faucet, because that's what I had in my hand. It didn't occur to me they'd be different.

Back home, I'm polishing my new faucet with Windex. It shines like a beautiful chrome cubic zirconia. Then I put the Tupperware back under the counter, take the toolbox back upstairs, gather up the old faucet, the old chrome plate, and the old sprayer hose, go downstairs to the garbage room, and toss them gleefully into the garbage bin.

The crashing sound the Price Pfister faucet makes as it hits the side of the bin makes the whole weekend worth it.

Epilogue

I learned a great deal last weekend, Gentle Reader, and would like to share these lessons with you. I hope they'll help you, in some small way, one day.

1. The Tragically Hip is perfect music to plumb by.


2. It's true what they say about WD-40.


3. Whey you're lying on your back looking up, you turn bolts and screws left to loosen them, and right to tighten them, just as you do when you're standing up.


4. It's easier to hold the adjustable wrench still in your left hand, and turn the fixed width wrench with your right hand.


5. Teflon tape is cool.


6. You don't need plumber's putty to make a seal between the faucet plate and the countertop if you buy a Moen faucet. They come with a fitted rubber pad for that express purpose.


7. Always wear mascara, even when doing home renovations.

* * *

Now that her kitchen sink looks gorgeous, Postmodern Sass needs a new toaster to go with it.

Pictures of Lily [refrain]

Can I just say, I love this photo? This is Postmodern Sass at her dorky best, wearing her glasses and writing in her notebook at The Banknote. Thank you, Naked KnitGirl.

Chicken Dance

"Hey, Stretch, where's Napoleon?" asks Larry, as I take my usual seat at the bar. He's referring to AC, and doesn't realize that tonight I'm here with Maria. She arrived first and is already sitting there with a beer in front of her. Larry is one of the owners of The Banknote.

"I don't know, it's not my night to watch him," I reply. "This is my friend Maria. Be nice to her, she's here to review your chicken wings."

"Shhh, don't tell him!" Maria scolds me. "I don't want them to do anything special."

Larry comes over to our side of the bar and shakes Maria's hand. "The wings are really good here," he says, "Especially the Cajun wings."

Those are my favourite, too. First, though, we're going to have a couple of fine hoppy beverages, and talk about boys. Because that's what girls do.

"Hey, can I show you two something?" asks a boy's voice from the other side of the pillar at the end of the bar. He doesn't wait for us to answer. Instead, he holds out a tube of Dep hair gel.

"This is the greatest stuff," he continues. "I got it in my stocking for Christmas, but never tried it until today."

"It doesn't look like hair gel," I offer. It's a light green colour, and opaque; sort of milky looking. Not the usual translucent bubbly look, but I recognize the brand name. So would The Viking, I'm sure.

"It's new," says the boy. "It's cream gel. Seriously, it's great."

"Are they paying you to say that?" I ask.

"No, but seriously, this stuff is so great, I want to work for the company."

Maria is examining the menu. "I have to order hot wings for the review," she says, "So it's the same as all the other places. But maybe I should try the Cajun wings too? And I want some real food; I haven't eaten all day."

Maria is serious about her chicken wing reviews. She carries her Palmpilot with a spreadsheet and rates the chicken wings on a list of qualities and criteria, takes a picture of the wing presentation, then publishes her review on her blog.

"The ribs are really good here, if you like ribs," I say. "You have to be really hungry, though; they're huge."

We decide to get one order of the ribs and wings, and another small order of wings, and share. That way she can try both the hot wings and the Cajun wings.

While we're waiting for our food we talk about blog stalkers. Blog stalkers, it seems, are almost always boys. Maria had one, once. Me, I just had Donny.

"So who is this Boz guy?" asks Maria. "Is he really your neighbour?"

"Oh, he's real, all right," I tell her. "And every time I run into him, I look like something the cat dragged in, or barfed up."

Maria laughs. With me, I like to think, not at me.

"Seriously, it's like I'm cursed. If there's a day that I run out of coffee, say, and decide to walk over to the corner store to get some, and I've got my hair in a ponytail and my sweatpants on, and I look like I haven't had any coffee yet that morning — a terrifying sight, I promise you — that's when I'll run into him. Inside the store; or he'll be walking back from it just as I'm walking to it, and our paths will cross and we'll say hello. And then he'll go on his way, thinking to himself, who was that bag lady? She looked familiar."

Then I tell Maria what happened after Boz rang my doorbell last Sunday. I'll tell you the rest of the story, Gentle Reader, tomorrow.

Maria tells me a story about a boy who lives in her building. Seems she also has designs on a handsome neighbour. We have a lot in common. She has tap shoes, too.

I'm looking in my wallet for my tap teacher's business card to show Maria. I can't find it, but I find a picture, and show that to her instead.

"Who's that?" she asks.

"It's Jack."

"Jack? Oh, is he the guy you wrote the song for?"

Now it's my turn to laugh. "That's a Fleetwood Mac song!"

"What happened to him?" Maria asks.

"He dumped me. Again."

"Again?"

"It's a long story," I say.

Long enough to be a novel, in fact.

The chicken wings arrive. Maria tells me about all the cities she's reviewed wings in: San Diego, Montreal; Buffalo, of course. In some bars they're still called Buffalo Wings.

"Dave says there are all kinds of great wing places in Chicago," Maria says, and so we talk about him. She met him at Joey's birthday party last fall.

"Did you sleep with him?" Maria asks me, and I tell her.

Later, I program Maria's number into my cell phone. I'm scrolling through my list, to make sure she's entered correctly, and she's looking at the screen, too, and she sees Donny's name and says, "Oh, you have his number?"

"Yeah, don't you? He was at your party last weekend."

"Yes, but I only have his email address. What's his number?"

I press the key to display his number for her, and then, because I'm on my third beer, I press the dial key.

"Hi, Donny, it's Sass. What are you doing?"

He says something about pyjamas, and I realize, too late, that it's probably too late to be calling anyone.

"I'm at The Banknote with Maria. She's reviewing their chicken wings. You want to come down here and have a beer with us?"

Down, in Toronto terms, means downtown. As opposed to uptown, which is where Donny lives. Way uptown. Eglinton Avenue.

I hand Maria the phone, and she tries to convince Donny to come. It doesn't seem to be working. I turn to the two boys sitting around the corner from us and ask, "If you were a guy, and you lived alone, and you didn't have a girlfriend, and you weren't working right now so it's not like you have to get up early tomorrow morning, and two girls called you from a bar and asked you to come join them, like, wouldn't you?"

Penny, the waitress, is standing at the bar beside the two boys. She calls across to us, "Is he a virgin? Maybe he's a virgin."

Maria is still talking to Donny.

"I don't think so," I yell back across the bar.

Not that I have any first hand knowledge, you understand, Gentle Reader.

"I mean, he's in his thirties, so it's not likely," I yell.

"I wouldn't have thought so either but I just watched The 40 Year Old Virgin," yells Penny.

Maria looks like she's giving up.

"Here, let me talk to him," says the boy sitting near us at the bar.

In the end, Donny blew us off, and Maria and I went home and blogged.

It's nice to have a new friend who's as dorky as I am.

* * *
Click here to see the picture the Naked KnitGirl took of Postmodern Sass at The Banknote. It won't be long before Postmodern Sass and the Naked KnitGirl return to The Banknote for ribs and wings—and, speaking of crushes, in the next story, you'll find out what happened when Postmodern Sass answered her doorbell, dressed in her dorky best, to find her handsome neighbour had dropped by.

I Am Woman [part I]

On my first trip to Home Depot on Sunday morning, the second of what would be four trips in total that weekend, I purchased something called a basin wrench.

On Saturday, I'd asked Aziz what tools I'd need to remove my old faucet and install the new one. He listed an adjustable wrench and a screwdriver, and recommended plumber's putty for creating a seal between the chrome plate and the countertop, but he never said anything about a basin wrench.

It was 10:00 Sunday morning and there was no Aziz in aisle 8, the Aisle of the Faucets. There was, however, a plumbing associate named Hal, an older gentleman who walked with a bit of a slouch and whose face, when I came closer to him, held the expression of a man who hasn't seen his children in ten years.

Hal was standing in front of the wall o' faucets, so I told him I was having a plumbing problem and simultaneously reached up and removed the demo model of my Moen Banbury faucet off the wall, turned it upside down, and showed him the hexagonal bolt I couldn't reach with my adjustable wrench.

"You need a basin wrench," he said, and led me over to aisle 9. I followed, still carrying the demo faucet.

Hal plucked the package containing the wrench from the wall, opened it, and demonstrated its use on the demo Moen faucet. When he flipped the rubber head to a 90° angle I realized this was the tool Donny had been describing to me at Maria's party. I'm not sure whether he called it by its proper name and I just forgot, or whether he just referred to it only as a wrench — when Donny starts talking about tools the conversation moves out of my league quite quickly. Sometimes that happens when we talk about cars, too, but if you ever tell him that I'll deny it.

Back home, basin wrench unpackaged and in hand, the Tragically Hip live concert DVD (which I got for Christmas from Markus and Amy) playing on the TV, I'm back under my kitchen cupboards and whaddyaknow, that basin wrench fits perfectly in between the big stainless steel boobs. A little WD-40, a few turns, and poof, the old faucet is loose. Such elegance.

(Go ahead and laugh at me, Gentle Reader, but I have to tell you, I haven't been this excited about an addition to my toolbox since the miter box I bought back when the X and I installed crown moulding in our livingroom.)

So there I am, just emerging from under my sink, hexagonal bolt successfully removed, my hair unwashed and streaked with WD-40, wearing my very best sweatpants and a navy blue hoodie sweatshirt, and, selbsverständlich, no makeup, when the doorbell rings.

It's Boz.

* * *
In the next story, Postmodern Sass and her new friend, the Naked KnitGirl, go to The Banknote. You'll find out what happened when Postmodern Sass answered the doorbell on Tuesday.

Ich bin kein Blogger

Hats off to Simon Dumenco, who writes in the January 16 issue of Advertising Age magazine,

"...there is no such thing as blogging. There is no such thing as a blogger. Blogging is just writing—writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology. Even though I tend to first use Microsoft Word on the way to being published, I am not, say, a Worder or Wordder. It's just software, people!"

If I have to, I can do anything

Though I had put the new Nine Inch Nails album, With Teeth, on my stereo just before I began my postmodern plumbing project on Saturday afternoon — after my first of four trips to Home Depot and my first consultation with the man who was to become my personal plumbing associate, Aziz — what I was hearing in my mind as I cleared out the Tupperware containers from the cupboard under the sink, and searched for the T-stop with which to shut off the main water supply, was Helen Reddy's I Am Woman.

I know, I know, women can plumb just as good as men. It's just that not any of the women I know do, and I myself never have. I've done plenty of electrical work. Gotten my hands dirty under the hood of my car. I've even laid bricks and done drywall. Oh, and once I sanded a floor, but that's a job I now place on the list of home renovations it's worth it to pay someone else to do for you.

My townhouse is four years old and was marketed on the basis of certain upgrades, like granite kitchen floors, marble countertops, and "hardwood" floors. I qualify the word hardwood with quotation marks because the stuff is actually cardboard laminated with a razor thin layer of wood that sounds hollow when you walk on it. Better than cheap carpeting, but hardwood it isn't.

I love my condo and I especially love the master bathroom, which has a separate shower stall, a large, oval soaker tub, and 428 shiny white tiles on the walls. Yes, I've counted. The floor is black tile and the countertop is black marble with white swirls, and most of the wall above it is mirror. There's only a couple of square feet of paintable surface in the room, and painting it with a glossy white oil-based paint will be one of my projects another day.

But all the faucets are cheap crap. My bathtub should have sleek white fixtures, and one day I want a black toilet in there. But what's been bothering me the most in my home these days, like a microscopic sliver your tweezers can't seem to grab, is the cheap ass kitchen faucet, a single lever contraption made by a company called Price Pfister, a brand I will never buy ever in my life when I get to choose fixtures, and which, Gentle Reader, if you are renovating or building a new bathroom or kitchen I recommend you put on your black list. The handle's sensitivity began weakening after I'd lived there only six months, and it continuted to deteriorate until, for the past year, my faucet has had only two positions: off, and full-blast on.

Price Pfister. Remember it. Avoid it.

When I woke up on Saturday morning I decided this would be the day I toss that Price Pfister crapola faucet into the dumpster and become Postmodern Plumbing Sass. I can do it. If I have to. And I want to.

So off to Home Depot I went, to consult with Aziz, my personal plumbing associate. I learned that faucets range in price from $50 to $400. Aziz told me, god bless him, that for $20 I could buy something called a cartridge that would fix my faucet problem. I thanked him for that, but informed him that I'd already decided to hate my Price Pfister faucet with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, and today I wanted a pretty shiny new faucet, please.

He said he'd be happy to sell me one.

We looked at the display of 156 faucets from five manufacturers and he gave me the overview of features, and what differentiates a high quality faucet from the cheapo crap like Price Pfister (have I mentioned what a piece of shit my came-with-the-condo kitchen faucet was?). When I asked which brand he'd recommend, he said American Standard is the best, and Moen is also very good. He never mentioned Price Pfister.

I asked, will I be able to do this myself? Without having to call a plumber?

"You can do it," said Aziz. "And we can help."

I wonder whether the executives at Home Depot realize the marketing power their associates have.

I decided on a Moen faucet. The model name is Banbury, and it cost $169. Isn't it gorgeous? There's a black rubber button on the top of the spout which, when you press it, turns the water stream into a showering spray. And you can pull out the spout to use it as a remote sprayer.

Allow me to pause for a moment to say, Moen beautiful. Moen lovely. Moen faucets, I want to kiss you and pet you and sleep with you under my pillow. Moen, I love your products. I wish I could act in a Home Depot commercial showing how I installed my new kitchen faucet; my new, beautiful, shiny, polished chrome finish Moen faucet, all by myself.

And it only took me seven hours over two days and four trips to Home Depot.

Two hours into day one of the postmodern plumbing project, with my water shut off and the hot and cold water connections detached, as I lay upside down under my kitchen counter, looking up at the double sink which, from this angle, looked for all the world like two giant boobs, I realized that I lacked the tool that would be able to unscrew the hexagonal bolt that fastened the faucet to the counter, as it protruded directly between the boobs and permitted no radius within which to turn the adjustable wrench I'd been using to disconnect everything up to that point.

So I had to abort the mission to attend Naked KnitGirl's I Am Canadian party. I re-connected the water, took a shower, put on my red suit, pinned a Canadian flag to my lapel, and, for good measure, stuffed the Moen installation instructions into my purse. You never know when you might meet a plumber at a party.

Or, say, an engineer. I asked Donny if I could borrow his ratchet set, which got him started on a rant about metric vs. imperial, blah blah blah, and it took him half an hour to realize I wasn't inquiring because I wanted to work on my car.

"Oh, plumbing!" he said. "What is it you're trying to do?"

So I showed him the instructions, and pointed out in the diagrams where I was having trouble.

He opined that a ratchet set might not be the right tool for that job, and that my best bet was to go back to Home Depot. And then he explained best practices for double wrenching when loosening pipe connections, and presented a formidable argument justifying why a fixed width wrench was better than an adjustable wrench.

There's something I like about Donny, in spite of all my woman's intuition and just plain common sense to the contrary. I don't quite know how to explain it to you, Gentle Reader, unless you, too, are the kind of person who, when going to the pound to choose a new pet, is drawn to the mangiest, homliest, scraggliest dawg in the bunch because it wags its tail with more enthusiasm than any ten of the more sophisticated breeds surrounding it, and because you know that if you don't love it no one else ever will and it will end up being put to death and you can't bear to see that happen.

It's something like that.

There were a lot of bloggers at the party, and most of them had cameras. That's me in my red suit (with white go-go boots, of course), with Maria, watching Joey do Sloan's Underwhelmed. A fine, fine Canadian song. And this is part of me, holding Sharkey and feeding him a Timbit.

Sharkey was the life of the party. He's a character on Blamblog's blog.
Upstairs at Maria's, after the condo cops booted us out of the party room, a few of us diehards hung out. There was Donny, Blamb, Karen, JB, and Maria; the leftover beer, and one slice of tortiere. I don't know what happened to the penis-shaped Timbit. Then Maria said, "Let's go to my bedroom with Sharkey," and that's when I decided it was time to go home.

* * *
Next, the story, in two parts, of Sunday's three trips to Home Depot to finish the postmodern plumbing project. In the first part, Sass's doorbell rings while she's got her head under the sink and, since she knows who it is, she considers keeping it there.

Dear Mr Gable

It's Thursday, so I'm at the Banknote for my end of the week beer and chicken wings. It's almost midnight, I've been here for ten minutes, and every song I've heard so far has been one I've done at karaoke. Tom's Diner, You Might Think, and now, Dreamin', my favourite Blondie song and best karaoke number. I like this cable radio channel 83. Finally, something Sid and I can agree upon.

I look up at the silent TV screen and see four men sitting on two sofas. A talk show. A sports talk show. It's Off The Record — I recognize Michael Landsberg. I watch for a while, wishing the television had closed captioning so I could hear what they're saying. I'm not much good at reading lips.

I wonder who that handsome older gentleman is talking with Landsberg. He looks familiar... wait... of course, it's Darryl Sittler!

I love Darryl Sittler. Have since I was twelve years old.

I take a moment to sigh.

The camera is spending most of its time focused on him. I silently thank the unknown cameraman at TSN.

I met Darryl Sittler once, and I got all tongue-tied and goofy, which is not like me at all. I've met a lot of famous people in my life: Billy Bragg, Michael Stipe, Mordecai Richler, Exene Cervenka and John Doe, Lanny McDonald, Pierre Burton, Susan Lucci, Seth Godin, Beau Bridges, Guy Lafleur, Jodie Foster, Nina Hagen, Howard West, and Jerry Yang. I even had Jerry's cell phone number programmed into mine, once upon a time.

But only twice have I been awed by celebrities. When I met Gloria Steinem, and when I met Darryl Sittler.

Dear Mr Sittler: I think you're grand, that's true.

Yes I do. 'Deed I do. You know I do.

* * *
Next, Postmodern Sass becomes Postmodern Plumbing Sass.

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam

I can't say enough good things about Gmail. The way it handles conversations. The archive feature. The nice, clean, low clutter interface.

Sorry, Yahoo! You were my first love, but lately, you haven't been satisfying my needs. It's not me, it's you.

Best of all, though, is the way Gmail handles spam.

Sorry, Yahoo! I don't mean to be a beyotch, comparing you to... another, but, well, you've had more experience than anyone else in the business, yet you're almost as gawd-awful as Hotmail (which I can't say enough bad things about. Don't even get me started. Seriously, don't.). There's simply no excuse for you not having figured out how to deal with spam, after ten years. No excuse at all.

See, I get a lot of email. I mean, a lot. About 100 messages a day, to my main address (which is not yet Gmail, but will be soon). I subscribe to a lot of stuff. Important stuff, like the daily shoe auctions at Gotham City Online. Too, I've had my email address on a Web page since 1995 — lots of time for every spammer out there to have it on his list. So I also get a lot of spam.

And Gmail has never made a mistake yet. It puts spam in the spam folder, and my "real" messages in my inbox. Never vice versa. Never verse vica. Always just right.

Gmail, I love you. More than any man, right now.

Them I like tall, dark, and handsome. And if they have a wicked sense of humour on top of it, well, it's a most welcome bonus. These days, in my book, Gmail is better than any man.

Have you seen the text ads for spam recipes that appear when you go into your spam folder? They make me laugh every time. I can't quite decide whether they're serious, or whether these recipes are sprachspiels.

Savory Spam Crescents

French Fry Spam Casserole

Vineyard Spam Salad

Spam Breakfast Burritos

Spam Hashbrown Bake

Spam Primavera

What do you think, Gentle Reader?