Dislike

           

            On Sunday morning when I got up I saw that my anti-virus scan had trapped several pieces of malware, which I removed. The problem on my Facebook page persisted though. Finally, I looked up how to remove an add-on from the Firefox list and once that was done, the problem went away. I still think it would be interesting to have a dislike option for my page, but I’ll wait until Facebook comes up with one.

            Next year’s writer in residence at U of T, Rawi Hage will be holding a fiction-writing seminar in December, but they are only accepting fifteen people, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I had to submit two pages of fiction by November 9, and so on Sunday I sent my two short stories, “Mission to Mars” and “I Like to Masturbate In My Car”. It’ll be interesting to see if I get in.

            I listened to a couple of episodes of Amos and Andy from the 1940s. In one show, Kingfish’s wife, Sapphire was going to Philadelphia to visit relatives, leaving Kingfish all alone in New York. At the train station she asked if he had any money and he answered that he didn’t. “Good!” she declared, “Then you can’t get into any trouble.” Before he’d left the station though, two young women asked him if they knew where they could rent a room till Sunday. Since Sapphire wouldn’t be back till Sunday and the young ladies offered him five dollars, he said that they could rent his house and he would stay with Andy. But Sapphire called to tell Kingfish that she would be coming home early because her sister had the flu, so now he had to figure out how to get the girls out of his house before his wife came home. They refused to go when asked, so he arranged for Andy to pose as an agent for the city that hands out eviction notices, and they converted Kingfish and Sapphire’s marriage licence into an eviction notice to make it look official. There were phrases like, “United in holy eviction”. But while they were there, the phone rang and one of the girls answered. Sapphire was on the other end, wondering why a woman was answering the phone. Kingfish had to explain that the girls were his nieces from Georgia and Sapphire believed it, but she was calling to say she was arriving at noon and she’d love to meet Kingfish’s nieces. Kingfish tries to get the girls to stay and pose as his nieces but they refuse, so Andy finds two girls who are willing to play the part. But shortly after Sapphire comes home and meets the girls, the other girls change their minds and come back, saying they are Kingfish’s nieces. Then Kingfish’s real nieces happen to coincidentally show up. Just about then, Kingfish gets a lamp broken over his head by Sapphire.

            The second episode featured Jack Benny and Rochester as guest stars. Kingfish and Andy start an employment agency and their first customer is Rochester, who is tired of working so hard for nothing. Their second customer is Jack Benny, who is tired of paying too much to his employee for too little work. They find a perfect match for both their clients, but of course it’s the same arrangement that existed before. When they realize their mistake they are worried that they’ve committed “industrial bigamy”, so they let both clients know that they can’t help them.

            Since I’d been inside all day, that evening I took a bike ride. As I rode up Brock, a young woman in a purple helmet shot past me. I almost caught up with her several times but I actually stopped at the stop signs while she barrelled through them. There were no cars coming at most of them, but on Croatia, just south of Bloor, there are almost always cars coming from the right, and there was one that had to stop for her as she just kept on going. It’s a good thing she wears a helmet. People who drive like boneheads should have external skeletons.

            The Bloor subway must have been out of service as there was a convoy of busses rolling along Bloor. It was kind of annoying most of the way downtown because there was too much traffic in the centre lane to pass them when they stopped to pick up passengers. They got snarled in traffic after Bathurst and so I was able to get ahead of most of them. They were all turning right on Spadina. I noticed that the westbound stream of busses all had Spadina station written as their destination as well.

            I went to Yonge, down to Queen and home. At the streetcar stop near my place there was a middle-aged guy in a baseball cap who also had a monster jet-black handlebar moustache.

            That night I watched a little more of the Sid Caesar documentary. There was a silent film parody about a drunk and a skit about living in a tiny apartment in New York and trying to throw a dinner party. Most of the bits that I’ve seen so far were amusing and well done, but not earthshakingly funny. They were certainly as good or better though than a lot of what one might see on Saturday Night Live. The funniest thing about them is Sid Caesar’s facial expressions.