Evil Detergent

            On Monday morning my elbow was still in pain during poses that put the wound in contact with the floor or my body.

            Ever since I came back from the food bank on Saturday there has been a strange, funky smell in my place. On Sunday I discovered that there was a similar odour coming from the sealed jug of cold-water detergent that I’d been given. The smell in the air was stronger though than what I got from sniffing the jug. It spread though the whole apartment, making other odours smell dirty. I have a bucket of vinegar in which I’ve been soaking a rock containing amethyst crystals and so the odour of the acetic acid is usually prevalent but I couldn’t smell it at all since I’d brought the detergent home. I was beginning to worry that the fumes from the detergent were mixing with those of the acid and tuning into something dangerous. So on Monday morning I took the jug and put it outside on the deck. Within a few minutes the all-permeating pungent odour of the detergent went away. From now on I think I’ll just stick with the lemon scented Sunlight dish detergent that I've been washing my clothes and dishes with for years. My things smell good afterwards and I don’t feel like I’m being poisoned.

            The jug said it’s an irritant but it doesn’t say gas comes clawing out of the sealed bottle. It’s called Xtra and it contains biodegradable ionic and non-ionic surfactants. One review says that it's corrosive and may contain ingredients with potential for cancer and respiratory effects.

            That afternoon I took a bike ride and it was my first long trip since Wednesday evening when I had the fall that caused the elbow injury. I felt the wound rattling whenever I went over a bump. From now on whenever I’m mad at something I’ll say, “That really rattles my elbow!” It was as if a small weasel with no legs was hanging from my elbow by its teeth and couldn’t let go.

            I rode up to Eglinton and Victoria Park. Eglinton Avenue makes me nervous in a lot of places west and east of Yonge because there’s a lot of traffic and it’s not very bike friendly. It looks like there might be a bike lane built for the opening of the LRT in 2021 or 2022. I took Eglinton across to Pharmacy and then headed south. I should have waited at the top of the hill before coasting down into the ravine because the light changed to interrupt my fun.

            That night I watched the last episode of the second season of Dobie Gillis. Dobie and Maynard graduate from army basic training and Dobie’s parents came up for the weekend. The men had a top-secret manoeuvre during that time and Dobie's father decided to give the men extra training WWII style. Maynard fell on his head and temporarily lost his hearing and so Dobie’s father replaced him in the war game not realizing that he would be jumping from a plane.

            I watched what was labelled as the first episode of the third season of Dobie Gillis. Dobie, Maynard and Zelda are suddenly in college, with no explanation about how Dobie and Maynard got out of the army. It turns out to have been the second episode. In the original Max Shulman Dobie Gillis stories Dobie was a college student from the start and there was no Maynard G Krebs. In this story Zelda continues to put a spanner in the works of any relationship with any other girls that he tries to start. It’s usually enough for Zelda to show the girl Dobie’s grades and a picture of his father, but one girl, Maryanne, who personally sees nothing attractive about Dobie, wants him because Zelda does. She concludes that if the smartest girl in college sees something in Dobie then he must be a catch. Zelda begins wearing black like someone in mourning and sits across from Dobie and Maryanne wherever they go while sobbing with a big bottle marked “poison” beside her. Even though Maryanne knows it’s a ruse, she finally gives up and so does Dobie.

           

The Tom Phillips Memorial at Artists 25

            On Sunday morning, though my elbow was slightly less painful, doing yoga with it in certain poses was still difficult and sometimes more so.

            Just before noon I rode up the street to Artists 25 for the Tom Philips memorial. I was prepared to punch the code to get in the front door but there was a sign that instructed visitors to Artists 25 to go around to the south alley. I went around but didn’t see an alley, so I was confused. I keyed in the code and opened the door because the door really is on the south side of the alley but then I saw that the sign on the door definitely had a crude map with an arrow pointing out and around the building to the other side, so I went back and found what I wouldn’t call an alley but rather a narrow laneway. The fire escape door of the studio was propped open and I decided that it was safe to just lean my bike against the wall without locking it.

            The studio had been decorated with many of Tom’s paintings and there were other works on the walls. The stage had some of Tom’s sculptures and woodcarvings too. The first person I saw was Maria Kasstan, whom I knew as a fellow model from the time I first began posing for artists, but who moved onto other things about ten years ago. The second person was Michael Jansen, for whom I used to work a lot as a model but haven't done so in this century. We shook hands and he told me I haven’t changed a bit. I told him that would only be a good thing if I looked good before. He assured me that I looked 20 when I was 50.

            I stood in front of Maria, who was sitting with a dark haired woman in our age range who was wearing an attractive blue dress. Maria told me, “You know Karen”, and Karen got up to give me a hug, though I'm not sure if I knew her, but it's possible. Karen is also an art model and used to work at OCADU when it was still just OCA.

            Since OCA was the main thing that all three of us have in common, that’s mostly what we talked about. Karen recalled there being a pub downstairs at OCA, but neither Maria nor I remembered anything like that. The unofficial pub for OCA students and teachers was the now long gone Beverley Tavern at 240 Queen Street West.

            I mentioned that after I’d taken five years off from modelling in the late 80s and had trouble getting back in at OCA, Maria had put in a good word for me with the model coordinator. Karen complained that she wasn’t able to get back in to work at the college.

            We talked about various art teachers that we remembered, a lot of which had been drinkers and some of which had been a little tipsy while teaching.

            Karen went to talk to someone else and I sat down with Maria to chat some more. She told me that after her husband Jim died, Tom came to the vigil. The circumstances of Jim’s death were that he died of a heart attack on the street and since he was not dressed well the police had thought that he was homeless and had perhaps thought that he was an unconscious drunk. Maria believes that the police would have gotten Jim to the hospital sooner if they had not made that wrong assessment and so she began to try through legal circles to make them accountable. Tom paid for her Metropass for three months so she could freely travel in the city for meetings with lawyers and other people that could help her investigate Jim’s death.

            After about half an hour the testimonials began.
            The first one was from a middle aged, shaved headed, bespectacled and goateed member of Artists 25 that I’ve seen for a few years at the studio, though I forget his name. He talked about his and Tom’s relationship as fellow painters and how they would look at and comment on one another’s work. Tom would show one of his paintings and usually say something like, “What do you think of this mess?"

            Next Michael Jansen spoke for about twenty minutes, telling how he first met Tom and how their relationship developed. Michael was 16 years old and doing sketches on the beach when Tom suddenly loomed over him and said, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours!” To looked at Michael’s sketchbook, critiqued it a bit and then suggested that they draw each other right there. Tom became one of Michael’s mentors, along with Warren Lucock, who was also a close friend of Tom’s. I think that I remember working for Lucock at Northern Secondary School.

Michael once asked Tom why he’d approached him on the beach and Tom answered, “Because you were such a pretty boy!” It had crossed my mind over the years that Tom might have been gay, but he exuded no sexuality whatsoever, so I concluded that he was more likely asexual. I guess though that Tom having been homosexual would have worked as an explanation for why he declared, after I’d turned down his invitation to dinner at his place, that he would never ask me again.

            When Michael was finished speaking, Paris Black and his girlfriend got up to leave and explained that they were going to a parade that “Tom would appreciate”. I wonder if it’s true that Tom would “appreciate” the Gay Pride Parade. Whether he was Gay or not I really doubt that the Pride parade was really his scene. He probably would have enjoyed painting some of the costumes if he could have gotten participants onto a stage in a studio, but I don’t think he’d go for any event where he couldn’t sit and paint.

            Maria and I agreed that we’ve never liked parades of any kind. I told her I was very relieved when my daughter lost interest in the Santa Clause parade.

            Next, Tom’s second cousin Lisa, who brought most of the food, came forward to speak. Lisa was given some resources in Tom’s will to apply towards Tom’s artistic legacy. It turns out though that Maria is the one that introduced Lisa to Tom.

            Lisa spoke about Artists 25 and what it meant to Tom and how Tom had supported it financially but now it’s got to support itself. She said there might be some money down the road for the studio from Tom’s will but members are going to have to step up. We learned that Artists 25 has finally gotten the third board director it needs in order to become a corporation. There was also something about a student of Michael Jansen who has volunteered to donate a considerable amount of money towards the rent.

            Lisa said that every artist that uses the studio should become a member, including the models. That struck me as odd because I was worried that any model that worked at Artists 25 would be expected to be a member or become one. I learned from Cy later on that a lifetime membership would only be $10.

            Lisa also said that help would be needed cataloguing the thousands of Tom’s paintings in his house in Etobicoke.

            Afterwards Michael Jansen and a few others sat down with Maria and I and we chatted more casually about Tom. I said that Tom was one of the first people that hired me when I started modelling in 1982. He asked how I’d gotten started and I told the story of how I’d been working as a furniture mover and the bottom fell out of the housing market which caused there to be a lot less work. One day during that time I was sitting in the By the Way Café at Bloor and Brunswick and reading “In Search of the Miraculous” by P.D. Ouspensky when I noticed that a guy at the table near mine was also reading a book by Ouspensky. This was Ken Barth. We talked about Ouspensky and Gurdjieff but I also learned that Ken worked as an artist’s model. On hearing that I was looking for another line of work he offered me some numbers for modelling work and Tom’s was one of them. In the mid 80s Ken got married and had a kid and went into selling life insurance.

            The gathering gradually began dissolving at around 15:00, but it was almost 16:00 when I left. I went home and had a late lunch, and then I took a late siesta.

            I didn’t take a bike ride that afternoon, partly because I’d been at the memorial so long but also because it was raining.

            I had an egg, some cheese and some toast with a beer for dinner while watching two episodes of Dobie Gillis.

            In the first story Dobie and Maynard visit their old high school and discover that their former English teacher, Mr Pomfritt is giving up teacher for financial reasons. Dobie goes about trying to track down all of the most successful people that Pomfritt had taught and to have them come to a party for Pomfritt, urging him to stay but Maynard screwed up mailing the letters. They ended up with just a handful of people with ordinary jobs such as postman and janitor, but the things they had learned from him moved him so much that he decided to continue teaching.

            In the second story, Dobie, Maynard and Zelda are minding the grocery store on a dark and stormy night when their imaginations get the better of them and they think that a visiting movie crew are all aliens from outer space. They even think that Dobie’s parents are really aliens in disguise. They lock everyone in the freezer including the cops, Dobie’s parents, the film crew and Zelda.

An Umbrella Makes All the Difference

            On Saturday morning the wound on my elbow from when I’d fallen off my bike on Wednesday evening was generally less painful than the day before. During yoga it was easier lie on my back with my arms at the side, whereas the day before the contact between the big scrape and the floor was excruciating. Some poses were a little more difficult, such as propping myself in the shoulder stand with my elbows or doing the locust, in which I have to lie on my stomach and bring my arms together underneath me to lift my legs up in the air. Overall, a lot of the ordinary bending I do with my elbow on a daily basis was slightly easier, though some of them still smart, such as lifting my guitar strap over my head to put it on. I’m glad that I went on Thursday for x-rays because at least now I know that the pain I feel when bending is just from stretching the wound and that I’m not agitating cracked or broken bones.

            I don’t know if it was me or the day but even though it was cloudy and rainy outside I felt like there was a pretty good energy from the mood on the street as I looked out my window and sang. It was probably me.

            I worked out the chords to Serge Gainsbourg’s "Docteur Jekyll et Monsieur Hyde”, which is kind of a fun little rock and roll song to play and sing.

            It was raining when I left for the food bank, but I still wore only a tank top and shorts, though I’d stuffed both a long sleeved shirt and an umbrella into my bag. The line was quite short, I guess because of the rain and as soon as I got at the end of it I put my shirt on and opened my umbrella. I’m not really an umbrella person but when one is stuck waiting out in the rain someplace an umbrella makes all the difference in the world. I would have been miserable if I'd gotten soaked but with a brolly I could actually even enjoy being out in the rain.

I was impressed that I hadn’t been the only food bank client that had brought an umbrella. There were about ten of us out of thirty that were able to hold back the rain. The short East Asian woman with the hennaed hair and the white roots had a pink umbrella with a few flower designs on it. She was also wearing mostly pink. She said hi when she stepped into line behind me and said, “It’s quarter to ten, but it’s raining!" I told her that it was supposed to rain all weekend. After a little while she started talking to herself in what I think was Chinese and sometimes laughing.

The tartan-lined cart belonging to guy with the neck tattoo was a couple of places in front of me. He came to get his umbrella out and after opening it I thought he was going to put it over his head but instead he started struggling with fixing it over the cart to keep the rain off. After about three times he’d found the right position and was about to walk away but first barked at the guy in front of him, "You don't have to fuckin stand in line!” and then he went off with his hood up to brood in the rain. The guy he’d yelled at asked me what his problem was. I explained, “I think that he thought you could have moved out of his way”. For some reason, after I told him that he seemed hurt, as if I wanted him out of the way, and he moved further away. After a little while he went inside the foyer to wait because he didn’t have an umbrella. When I think in retrospect of the guy with the neck tattoo's outburst, I recall that I haven't seen him smoking for the last few weeks, so maybe he's got some internal struggles going on in addition to his regular anger management issues.

I was given another good reason to be glad that I had an umbrella a little later on when I looked up through the baby blue canopy and saw a blob of green bird shit had landed on top. The rain had stopped but I couldn’t close my umbrella to put it back in my backpack with poop on it so I stepped off the curb and straddled the puddle that had formed on the street in front of 1501 Queen Street West to wash it off. Then I moved away from the curb because close passing cars were often sending meter high splashes onto the people that were waiting on the sidewalk.

I was able to read about half a page of my book before it started raining again and I had to reopen the umbrella.

Martina came around with the box and I drew number 9, then I stepped out of line and wandered around until she called the first five people in at around 10:30. It seemed like an unusually long wait before the next five were invited in. During that time Martina left in the van with Valdene, the manager and another volunteer, who hadn’t been there for a few months, took over as the doorkeeper.

It was after 11:00 when I went downstairs. The guy in front of me was angrily swearing, punching walls and slamming doors open all the way to the food bank.

Downstairs the elderly regular named Mike came out of the elevator and he was ahead of me. I heard him mention that he is living in a shelter now and looking for a place for between $300 and $400 a month. I did a quick glance at rooms for rent on Kijiji and found that he’d have to move out to Mississauga or Scarborough to get a room in that range and most of the ads are asking for young female tenants. It’s actually a breach of human rights for landlords to rent only to one gender unless the landlord will be sharing a bathroom with the tenant. But the Ontario Human Rights Commission is apparently too small to be able to police discriminatory ads and when the ads are online they fall under federal jurisdiction anyway. Maybe if you showed up to look at a place and got a recording of the landlord admitting they were discriminating against you because of your gender then you could take it to a tribunal.

            My volunteer was a young guy that I hadn’t seen there before. The other volunteer, Marlena was telling clients, including me, to hurry up. I had spoken to her a few months ago about that kind of thing being disrespectful and she had agreed to behave herself. I didn’t say anything this time.

            I got a 4.5 litre jug of cold water laundry detergent; a clear bag of coffee which I was assured was ground and not instant; a 368 gram bag of blue corn tortilla chips; a sleeve of saltines; a small box of apple, cranberry and almond granola; two strawberry yogourt granola bars; three chocolate nut granola bars; and a can of chickpeas (there were a wide variety of canned beans).

            I turned down pasta and rice, although there was plenty of that.

            I notice that it’s been a few weeks since they’ve had any soup or broth on the shelves.

            From Angie’s section I turned down the milk because I have plenty at home, but I took everything that she offered: a pack of two small containers of slightly sweet Greek yogourt with two attached containers of pralines, cashews and almonds; three eggs; a frozen cheese and bean enchilada verde; two fresh chicken legs; and behind her were a couple of stacks of boxes of pizza, some small and some large. I assumed the large was for families so I took a small one but I noticed that Mike had put a large box in his bag. It was nice to get a little fresh meat.

            I didn’t take any onions from Sylvia but I accepted a handful of potatoes; two carrots; a cauliflower, three kiwis; and two granny smith apples.

            On my way in I’d noticed that there was a whole pie in the bread section but on my way out I saw that it was in Mike’s bag.

            As I walked down the hall, Valdene, the manager followed me out. The East Asian woman who’d been talking to herself was just getting into the elevator as I passed. As the elevator closed I was opening the door to the stairs and Valdene exclaimed, “That’s a lot of pink!” I climbed the stairs with Valdene behind me and she said, “You’ve got some long legs! I was looking at them from the back!” Either Valdene was flirting with me or she’d been smoking dope and noticing things again.

            After the food bank I went home and put my things away, then I headed out into the light rain again to buy some fruit at No Frills. I bought grapes; a pack of three chicken legs; yogourt; a jar of peanuts; and since I’d gotten the blue corn tortilla chips from the food bank, it made sense to get a jar of hot salsa.

            I had half of the pizza for lunch.

            I didn’t go for a bike ride that afternoon because it had rained a lot and even though it was clearing around the time I would normally go cycling, I figured it would be too puddly and it might even rain again. So instead I stayed home and wrote about my food bank adventure.

            I had eggs and toast with a beer for dinner and watched a couple of episodes of Dobie Gillis.

            In the first story Dobie meets a female soldier who doesn’t want to have anything to do with him because she comes from a long line of career soldiers and considers Dobie to be a civilian by comparison. So Dobie begins to lie about his father having had a distinguished and heroic army career and a chest full of medals and so Martha is suddenly interested in him. She says she’ll be meeting Dobie’s father soon at the father and son day at the base. Dobie quickly lies again that his father can’t be there because he is missing in action, having never come home from World War 2. So Dobie doesn’t tell his father about the father and son day but he finds out through Maynard's mother and decides to go. On the night of the dinner Dobie is asked to say a few words about his missing father and so he gets up and tells everyone about his father escaping from a Japanese prison camp using secrets of judo that even the Japanese didn’t know. Around that time Dobie’s father walks into the hall and Maynard tells him he's got to do something. Herbert says, “Wait a minute, I have to find out who I am first, and so he listens to more of Dobie’s story about how he sacrificed himself while blowing up the bridge on the River Kwai. There is not a dry eye in the place but then suddenly Dobie’s father steps forward, exclaiming, “Dobie! It’s me, your father, they found me, I’m here! I’m alive and home at last!” The lieutenant asks Herbert to tell everyone about how he survived, and so, in the Gillis tradition, he lays on the bullshit as thick as he can.

            The second story was more interesting because it was almost entirely focused on the character of Zelda Gilroy (Sheila James Kuehl) with some help from Jenny (Trudi Ziskind Ames).

            In this episode, Zelda’s snooty and rich former schoolmate Rochelle, who throws poorly pronounced French words into every sentence to make herself sound classy, is going back to the fashionable school she attends in the east. She comes to tell Zelda that her parents are throwing her a big party to send her off that that she is invited and though all of her other friends will have to bring dates she will make an exception in Zelda's case because she knows she won't be able to get a date. Zelda asks her what makes her so sure that she can't get a date but Rochelle just smiles incredulously and says, “Come now!” In response to this Jenny steps forward threateningly with a clenched fist, saying, “Right in the labonza!” Rochelle adds, "Perhaps you'd like to come alone mon petit chou?" Zelda says, "It just so happens I can get a date!" "Do tell!" ”We’re secretly engaged!" "And what, pray tell is the name of this si charmon garcon?" "Dobie Gillis!" Rochelle leaves and Jenny confronts Zelda about lying. Zelda decides to go to Rochelle and confess that she wasn’t telling the truth but Jenny stops her and says, “This is bigger than just you! What about the rest of us girls who got short-changed in the looks department? You’re a shining example of a girl who made good in this world in spite of limited physical resources, and no shape, and a face that wouldn’t turn a single head in an isolated navy base …” “Well I wouldn’t say that!” “Don’t be modest Zel, you're our leader! Show us dogs we can win!” Suddenly Zelda has a plan to create several ruses that will convince Rochelle that Dobie is Zelda’s fiancé. She fakes a long distance phone call from Dobie in front of Rochelle and at the same time to receive a dozen flowers from Dobie along with a poem. Then she will explain that Dobie can’t get a pass for the party, which will justify her showing up alone. The thing is though that Dobie and Maynard accidentally do get a pass. Rochelle goes to the Gillis grocery store and finds out that Dobie is in town and so she arranges to trap Zelda by leaving him an invitation to the party. Having no idea what is going on, Dobie goes to the party. Zelda arrives before Dobie and when she gets there Rochelle calls all of the other guests around her and announces, “When we were children, Zelda was fond of showing me up in intellectual pursuits!” Just then Dobie arrives and Rochelle tries to humiliate Zelda by revealing that her claim about being Dobie’s fiancé is false. But on seeing what is going on and the look on Zelda’s face, Dobie immediately steps forward and pretends that he is in fact engaged to marry Zelda. They dance and Dobie, with a loving smile, whispers in Zelda’s ear, “When I get you alone I’m gonna strangle you!"

            This episode had the feel of a tease for a spin-off and it turns out that was exactly what was being planned around that time. Zelda's character was so popular that a pilot episode of “The Zelda Gilroy” was shot with the aim of the show coming out for the 1962 season. The stories were to feature a super intelligent but aesthetically challenged young woman coming up with schemes to catch various attractive young men. The opening segment to match Dobie’s elbow on knee and fist to chin pose, followed by a monologue would have Zelda playing the cello and then speaking to the audience. The pilot was shot and hopes were high but the president of CBS rejected it, saying that Zelda looked too butch.

            In order to shoot the pilot, Sheila James Kuehl had been required to cancel her contract with the Dobie Gillis show. After that she only appeared in four episodes. Of course though, she went on to become a successful politician in California and the first openly gay California legislator.

Painful Shower

            It’s interesting how the morning after I wounded my elbow in my bike wipe-out I had more mobility and less pain than the morning after that. On Friday morning I was still able to do all of my yoga poses but the ones that were difficult on Thursday morning were more painful this time.

            Later, after I took a shower my elbow stung a lot for the next couple of hours, proving that one needs dirt on one’s wounds in order for it not to hurt.

            I took a bike ride in the afternoon under an overcast sky. The car traffic was heavy and slow and so it wasn't possible to pass any other cyclists from Bay Street to Church. I started to feel a few raindrops around Yonge Street and at Sherbourne it was splattering enough for me to decide to turn back. The traffic was thick and slow on the way home too. As I went south on Yonge it turned to a light rain and it looked like I might be wet before I got home, but it went back to sprinkling on Queen and before I got home I could see the sun through the haze. So maybe if I’d continued my ride east I wouldn’t have gotten caught in a downpour but then again it might have been worse in that direction.

            I had a small chicken breast, a wing, a little potato and some gravy for dinner and watched two episodes of Dobie Gillis.

            In the first story, Dobie and Maynard get the lead roles in a play that will be staged on their army base. After a rehearsal they go to the PX where Dobie sees an attractive young woman named Dorrit, but when he tries to chat her up she rejects him because he’s a private. Dobie and Maynard’s next rehearsal is in full costume with Dobie as a major and Maynard as a sergeant. When dress rehearsal is over they rush over to the PX without changing their costumes because it will be closing soon. Dorrit is there and doesn't recognize Dobie in his false moustache so she begins to flirt with him because she thinks he’s a major. He plays along and gets in deeper when she introduces Dobie to her father, who is a colonel. He eventually gets in trouble for impersonating an officer but the colonel goes easy on him because Dobie’s father served under the colonel when he was a captain in the war and Herbert Gillis was remembered as “Snowjob” Gillis.

            In the second story Maynard is extremely homesick. He keeps begging his lieutenant to give him a pass but he keeps refusing. Finally the c.o. gives in and gives him a pass, telling him he has to be on the bus in ten minutes. But Dobie doesn’t know that Maynard left with a pass so when he sees Maynard missing he thinks he’s gone AWOL and goes to ridiculous lengths to cover for him such as playing both sides of the net on the same volley in a volleyball game. 

Radioactive Dominatrix

            On Thursday morning my knee only bothered me when I was getting up because I tend to go on my right knee before I stand. The knee wasn't a problem during yoga because none of the positions put weight exactly on the wound.

The elbow was a little more problematic. I found it hurt a bit when I stretched my arm above my head. Most of the poses didn’t bother it, but the resting positions did. Just lying on my back with my arm at the side was painful or lying on my stomach with my arms folded and resting on the floor presses the wound down into the floor. I had no problem using my arms to prop myself into the shoulder stand, but getting myself into the position was a bit difficult. The worst was getting into the fish pose because I have to lean back on my elbows in order to bend my upper body back from a sitting position in order to put the top of my head on the floor, so I found myself shifting a bit to the left just to get into position. Once I was in the fish the weight was on my head so it didn’t bother my elbow again until I came out of the pose by lifting myself back up on my elbows and had to shift my weight to the left again.

I was worried that during guitar practice my elbow injury would affect my playing but it didn’t. I actually had a pretty good practice and my guitar stayed in tune better than usual.

My elbow did sting a lot, looked worse than the day before and though I had most of my flexibility it was limited in that I could not touch my right hand to my right shoulder like I could on the left. Though I was determined that later that day I would go right back into my long bike ride, I decided that the smartest thing to do would be to talk to my doctor to see if I’d cracked my elbow in the accident. I made an appointment for 14:30 that afternoon.

I was at the Bloor Medical Clinic about fifteen minutes early, but had to wait about 45 minutes anyway.

I sat and read a page of Balzac’s "The Atheist's Mass" in French and than in English. A kind of attractive black haired woman that looked to me to be in her 30s or 40s although for all I know she might have been older, came in with a little old bent over woman in her 80s with a black eye and they sat across from me. The younger woman called the older woman "Mommy" and there was an interesting dynamic between them. The old woman seemed pretty helpless but her daughter seemed dependent on taking care of her. The daughter reminded me of a Jewish version of my daughter’s mother, Nancy in that she seemed like she was rehearsing to be an old lady herself.

Dr Shechtman didn’t think it looked like any bones were cracked but he thought that I should get some x-rays just in case. He sent me down the street to 800 Bathurst where after a twenty-minute wait an attractive young technician of East Indian descent escorted me into the imaging room. The last time I had x-rays there they just put a lead shield across my lap but this time she put a lead apron on me attached with Velcro and a matching lead collar that made me think I was having a session with a very un-stern radioactive dominatrix. The Velcro on the collar didn’t stick very well and so she had to reattach it a couple of times. She sat me down and had me put my arm in some difficult positions on the table with the palm up and twisted to the right. The projected light that shines down on the targeted area also has the projected shadow of a cross in the middle.

The technician immediately uploaded the x-rays and I went back to Dr Shechtman’s office but he’d gone out for coffee so I had to wait another twenty minutes. The old lady was still there and after a few minutes her daughter came up to tell her that they’d come on the wrong day for the test she was supposed to have. The old lady started shouting, “Then what the hell did I come her and wait all this time for?” The daughter escorted her out but once they were out of sight I could hear the daughter shouting several times for her mother to not go outside until she’d brought the car around.

Dr Shechtman called me into his office and he went online to look at my x-rays. I remember back when it would take a few days to find my x-ray results and now it’s pretty much instantaneous. Technology is amazing. The pictures were crystal clear. He said there’s a little calcification on my elbow but that has nothing to do with my recent fall. There were no cracks and so it’s just a matter of waiting for it to heal. He suggested that I get a tetanus shot if I have a dirty wound but I told I didn’t want one. “You’re not a vaccine guy?” he asked with a smile. I wouldn’t say that I am dead set against vaccines but I told him, “I’ve had lots of dirty wounds.” He assured me, “If you just keep it clean and put some peroxide on it you should be all right”.

On my way home I stopped at Freshco where I got a package of Ontario strawberries. They were not in very good condition but the store had dropped the price by $2 so I figured it was worth it just to get some local berries. I also got a pack of the ones from California. It didn’t occur to me at the time but maybe I should start boycotting US fruit until Trump stops being an asshole with the tariffs. I also bought bananas, cherries, grapes, milk, yogourt and a package of old cheddar.

Taking a long bike ride was going to be a write-off this time because it was past my normal lunch and siesta time and so by the time I got up it would be too late. It was worth it though to make sure my elbow was okay.

When I got home I made a lettuce and cauliflower salad with mayonnaise for a late lunch and got ready to take a late siesta. I put some hydrogen peroxide on my elbow and knee wounds. Holy crap did that ever sting!

It was evening when I got up.

For dinner I picked through the baby bok choy that I’d gotten from the food bank and sautéed the good parts. I had them with gravy and a piece of chicken while watching two episodes of Dobie Gillis.

The first story begins with Dobie dancing with a girl named Hazel at the Serviceman’s Recreation Centre. Dobie thinks that they are an item because of one dance but the girl is just there to dance with soldiers out of a sense of patriotism and she makes it clear she doesn’t like Dobie and would never date him. She tells him, “Why don’t you just flake off, okay Con?” As she’s walking away he corrects her that his name is Dobie Gillis. She suddenly turns around, walks up to him and asks, “Are you really Dobie Gillis?” “Sure, why?” “Here’s why!” and she gives him a big, long kiss.  Afterwards Dobie said, “I’m a fool for asking, but why?” “I promised mother!” She explained that her and her mother just moved to town but that when her mother was a teenager she lived there and used to go out with Herbert Gillis, Dobie’s father. Her mother told her to give Herbie a big kiss from Bubbles if she ever ran into him.

Later we meet Bubbles and she is an exuberant and over the top personality. Dobie’s mother gets very jealous because she was never as much fun but she finds that Bubbles is actually very lonely and so they hook her up with the military policeman who keeps dragging Dobie home after curfew.

The second story was more interesting because it introduced an intriguing new female character and it also presented a revealing speech by Maynard about how he feels about girls. Dobie has decided to play cupid and to try to force Maynard out of his fear of girls. He bribes a girl named Angela to pretend to be enamoured with Maynard. Another girl, Jenny, who is an annoying, aggressive and somewhat butch blonde firecracker of a girl who is always hanging around the store and trying to get bubblegum and movie magazines on credit, is bribed with bubblegum and magazines to do the same. Because of this attention Maynard gains confidence and begins to be extremely aggressive with all of the girls that he is normally frightened of. His aggression would be considered harassment nowadays but he gets a negative reaction in his era as well. Then Maynard reveals that he had been hip to Dobie’s scheme all along and was just trying to teach him a lesson. He then says, “No offence Dobe, but I aint you. I’m a different person. I got a beard, see? I also go certain ideas about girls.” “Like what?” “Like I don’t want any!” “But why not? They’re sweet and soft and friendly …” “They’re also tidy, respectable and determined, and I don’t think they’re very happy when all a guy wants to do is hack around, sit on the floor and listen to jazz and grow a beard!” “Is a beard really more important to you than a girl?” “It’s not a question of a beard! I’m an individual human person and if all them other individual human persons want to shave off their beards, get trapped by some chick, get married and live in a split-level house with a washer and automatic dryer and a PTA and a bridge club two nights a week and trouble with the sprinkling systems, well, that’s their business! Me? It aint for!

Jenny was played by Trudi Ames (born Trudi Ziskin). I don’t know if she appeared again on the show but it looked like they were trying set her character up as a tougher, blonde version of Zelda Gilroy as a match for Maynard. She was Ann Margret’s best friend Ursula in Bye Bye Birdie. She seemed to lose interest in acting in films and TV after she reached her twenties and then she went to UCLA. Later she became a teacher and was at one point a railroad brakeman for four or five years. There’s actually a long list of jobs she tried her hand at, including sheet metal worker. She changed her name later to Prashant Ziskin and became a life coach for people in the arts. She belongs to some kind of New Age group called the Evolutionary Collective and wrote a book under her new name entitled “Inspiring Creativity”.

Wipe-Out in Parkdale

            Wednesday started off a little cooler than usual and overcast but in the afternoon when I took my bike ride it had gotten hot again. It was mostly a pretty ordinary ride. I passed Madame Pavlov before the viaduct and she testily rang her bell as usual. I rode up Victoria Park again to Southmead, took that to Engelhart which I followed till it turned to Alvinston, I turned south on Pharmacy and went back down to Danforth. I stopped at Starbucks and there was an enormous blob of a man talking as loudly on the phone as he was large at his table.

            Along the Bloor Street bike lane I had a hard time passing a guy riding one of lie-down bicycles, which seem to be wider than an upright velo. I warned him I was passing but I guess he couldn’t get any further to the right. I was dangerously close to hitting the posts on my left as I was passing him. I took Bloor Street to Ossington, Dundas to Dovercourt and then down to Queen. While I headed west a woman whizzed past me and I sped up to catch her. She was a very fast rider or her bike was fast because she didn’t even seem to be trying that hard. I started passing her just after climbing the hill west of Dufferin but she didn’t slow down and there was a car ahead of me. When I was ahead far enough I cut in front of her and after that I’m not sure what happened. I think the car changed stopped and I had to swerve again. Maybe my wheel got caught on the streetcar track but I wiped out, falling on my right elbow and my right now. I think I only extremely scraped both parts below the joint      because I still had mobility in both places but both scrapes are a sizable deep red and painful. I think I’ll be hurting for a week or so. It seems to me the woman shouldn’t have been going so fast when someone was passing her, especially when she could see that there was a car up ahead. I couldn't tell for sure because things were happening so quickly but I think she actually sped up when she saw that I was passing her.

            When I got home I washed the dirt off my hand, arm and leg and went out to buy a can of Creemore. When I got I took some pictures of my elbow and knee on the deck.

            I cooked the spinach and cheese ravioli that I’d gotten from the food bank and heated up some sauce. I had it with my beer and watched a couple of episodes of Dobie Gillis. The first story was from just before Dobie and Maynard headed out to the army and it was mostly about Dobie’s father feeling sentimental about his son going away but also trying to toughen him up for the army at the same time.

            In the second, Maynard gets his beard caught in his rifle bolt and his sergeant orders him to shave it off. At first he resists but when he’s thrown in the brig he’s ready to give in but Dobie meets an attractive lieutenant whom he can’t date because of his rank. He hears though about a private that defended a similar case Maynard's and did so well that he was sent to officers training. So Dobie takes the issue of Maynard’s beard to court. The tribunal are about to rule against Maynard’s beard when the military legal inspector arrives in the courtroom and happens to have a full beard. They hurriedly find Maynard not guilty instead.

            After the shows I did a bit of writing but I started smelling smoke and wondered at first if a building nearby or even my building was on fire. I went out in the hall but didn't smell a lot of smoke until I went out onto the deck. My next roof neighbour, Taro was barbecuing again. I think the smoke was travelling into Nicky's apartment, across the first hall and then in through my bedroom door. I asked him if he was burning a tire. Usually his charcoal smoke doesn't blow into our place so much. There was hardly any wind at all. I asked if he has a fan but he told me he doesn’t, so there doesn’t seem to be much that can be done about it.

            When I went to bed, fortunately the skinned knee and elbow didn't intrude too much on my normal sleeping position. It hurt more get into the position than being in it. 

What Is Love?

            My guitar sounds more out of tune when I'm sitting down than when I'm standing up. Maybe it’s because I’m closer to it or hearing it from a different angle.

            A few days ago I figured out that the source of the noise that I’d been hearing while riding my bike was my front wheel and I was relieved to find that it wasn’t a functional problem at all, but rather just my plastic reflector rattling against a spoke. Before I took my ride on Tuesday afternoon I wrapped some electrical tape around the spoke and that served to muffle the noise. Since the rain yesterday it was a lot less hot outside but not cool enough to need more than shorts and an undershirt.

            I stopped at the Firkin at Woodbine and Danforth to pee. There’s a blonde bartender who always says hello to me when I walk in, though maybe she greets everybody. On my way out a male bartender with a moustache told me to have a great day.

            Whether I stop use the washroom at Woodbine or not, it seems that I always start feeling like I have to urinate while I’m climbing Victoria Park. It’s weird because the distance is not that far between the two locations. Maybe my urge is pee-sychological.

            I turned right on Southmead to where it forks into three directions and took Engelhart Crescent north through a corridor of identical red brick three-story apartment buildings that look like they were built in the 50s or 60s. Engelhart curves east and when it got to Harris Park Drive where I stopped to look in a box of some kitchen items. There were several small and unattractive plates as well as a meat grinder that looked better than mine but I don’t use it enough to bother carting another one home. I went south to Coniston Road, east to Pharmacy and back south.

            The east side of Pharmacy from Eglinton down to Leahurst is all industrial while the west side is residential.

            I stopped at Freshco on my way home just to buy fruit. They had cherries that were super cheap though clearly there were some overripe ones in each bag. At that price though it was worth it. They also had Ontario strawberries and I would have been willing to pay $3.99 for a package but they were in horrible shape so I passed. I got four bags of grapes and then checked out.

            Just as I got off my bike in front of my building a guy that I’ve seen before further east was approaching and wearing a home made sandwich board, which simply asked, in large letters, "What Is Love?" I wondered if the sign was meant to ask the question for himself or to compel others to ask it. The man looked like he was in his 40s or 50s and walked with very little expression on his face other than perhaps a little defiance. As the guy passed and I was opening the door to my building, my next-door neighbour, Benji walked up. I asked him, “What is love?” He told me that the guy with the sign lives up at the West Lodge Apartment complex and that he walks around with the sign all the time. It’s funny then that I've only seen him once before and that was east of Dufferin.

            I had a chicken leg with a potato and steamed cauliflower for dinner while watching two episodes of Dobie Gillis.

            In the first story, the wealthy Chatsworth Osborn, seeing how impressed everyone is with Dobie in his uniform, decides to join the army too and is placed in Dobie and Maynard’s platoon. He turns the lives of the other soldiers into a living hell because he is so good at everything such as rifle drill and self-defence that the sergeant makes everyone else work harder just to learn what Chatsworth knows. Then Chatsworth’s mother arrives and takes control of the base. She buys all of the land surrounding the base and has an architect design a new base with a state of the art recreation centre and also a building for her to live in. Chatsworth convinces her to give it up and let him become a soldier on his own.

            In the second, NASA wants to find the dumbest and most incompetent person available in order to test how the isolation of space travel will affect ordinary people. Their massive computer locates Maynard G. Krebs. Maynard is to go into isolation in an Earthbound dummy capsule with a chimpanzee named Corporal Kilroy but the scientists decide it would be best to have a third person with them who can control the other two and so they select Dobie. They are supposed to be in the capsule for 30 days with nothing to eat but three food pills per day for each of them. After 8 days the chimp figures out how to open the hatch from inside and he and Maynard are able to go out to lift some roast chicken, potatoes and apple pie from the PX. After fifteen days the scientists put Kilroy in the real capsule to get ready for the Moon shot. That night Maynard misses Kilroy and so he leaves the capsule to look for him. He finds him and spends the night but then the scientists come and seal the capsule to take it to the launch pad. Maynard and the chimp blast off. At the end we see a desert island and a crashed capsule. Then we see Maynard in a hammock, playing a ukulele and being attended by four smiling Polynesian beauties as they feed him an exotic drink from a coconut. The chimp is in the next hammock wearing a flowery hat and feasting on bananas. Maynard declares, “You Moon people are like real friendly and like real cool!"

            

My Cats Were On Birds Like Pomade Was On James Dean's Hair

            On Monday morning during song practice a sparrow flew in my window and landed just inside. It looked confused, like it had taken a wrong turn and was considering asking me for directions. I kept on playing and singing and after a few seconds it flew back out again. It’s fortunate that I don’t have cats anymore because they would have been on it like pomade on James Dean’s hair.

            It was a very humid day and I felt clammy and uncomfortable while playing and singing. It was also hot earlier in the day and I was in the apartment with my shirt off, the fan on and made ice tea twice.

            Around noon I roasted a chicken that had reached its best before date on Sunday.

            It was scheduled to rain during the time I would normally take my bike ride and so I was looking forward to an extra two hours writing time, which I got, because it did rain and I did get caught up on my journal. The rain broke the heat too, which was nice.

            I had a piece of the chicken with a potato, some steamed cauliflower and gravy while watching two episodes of Dobie Gillis.

            The first story begins with Dobie and Maynard being about to get on the army bus to training camp with Dobie’s father, Zelda and Chatsworth seeing them off. But at the last minute Maynard remembers that he left the water on at his house and his parents are away celebrating him going away. When the sergeant calls for Maynard G Krebs to board the bus he hasn’t gotten back yet and so to keep Maynard out of trouble Dobie grabs Chatsworth and tells the sergeant that he is Maynard and so Chatsworth is grabbed and taken away. Sometime later Maynard gets back to find Herbert and Zelda there but the bus, Dobie and Chatsworth gone. Herbert drives him to the camp but for some reason it takes long enough for all kinds of things to happen at the camp. Chatsworth, still denying he is Maynard is tested along with all the other recruits and when the army discovers that he speaks, French, Italian, German and Chinese, knows Morse code from his great grandfather, Morse, is a family friend of several renowned psychiatrists, when assignments are given they want to ship Maynard off for officer training. But Maynard arrives and switches clothes with Chatsworth and Dobie tells the sergeant that Maynard grew a beard overnight and it changed him completely.

            Chatsworth Osborn Jr. who replaced Warren Beatty's character, Milton Armitage as the snooty rich kid, was played by Steve Franken, who was comedy writer and former senator Al Franken's second cousin. He was also very funny as the increasingly drunk butler that keeps finishing everyone’s drinks in The Party.

            In the second story, Debbie, the waitress at the PX won’t date Dobie unless he finds a date for her unattractive roommate, Susie. Fortunately Maynard looks at Susie’s picture and thinks she’s a doll. But unfortunately they can only get passes if Maynard passes rifle shooting and inspection. They decide to cheat on rifle shooting since Dobie is keeping score but Dobie has an attack of honour and gives the real scores. The captain is impressed with Dobie and makes him an acting corporal in charge of inspection. Dobie plans to cheat on Maynard’s behalf again but once again is overwhelmed by army mentality and fails Maynard. But the captain comes in and tells him that he has to also be compassionate so he passes Maynard and Dobie gets guard duty on the night of the date. Maynard has a good time with Susie.

            Betsy was played by Diane Jergens who already appeared as a different character in an earlier episode.

Don't Shoot the Man in the Moon

            Sunday was a very hot day. I washed a pair of shorts and three undershirts and put them out on the deck to dry. It didn’t take very long.

            I always wait until 17:00 to take my bike ride because the sunlight before that, especially on a day this hot would be too much to bear. I was sweating right away but it didn’t take long before I was absolutely greasy.

            Bloor Street was closed from Avenue Road to Bay Street for the annual Fathers Day Yorkville Exotic Car Show. I got off my bike to walk to Bay and found that it is definitely hotter to be outside and to travel on foot in this weather because one is not creating a breeze. I was very glad to get back on my velo and ride.

            There wasn’t a lot of other cycle traffic. It consisted mostly of mad dogs like me and food delivery riders working for either Uber or Foodora.

            I rode up Victoria Park again to Southmead Rd and turned right. One block in it forks into three directions. Last time I’d gone south but this time I took the middle, which was Sundridge Drive, and took that to Pharmacy.

            On the way back there was another box of books in the same location as the day before, or maybe it was the same box with different books, plus a container of pharmaceuticals, which I quickly dropped. The books were a little more interesting than the previous batch. There was a complete, illustrated Sherlock Holmes and a couple of interesting books about popular music. I’d put those three on the sidewalk at my feet with the intention of later putting them into my backpack and was looking through the rest, when I suddenly saw that there were cockroaches crawling around the box. I just left everything where it was and got back on my bike, very glad that I hadn’t put any of the books into my backpack.

            It was already much cooler, though still very warm on my way back. On Yonge Street I could see from College that Dundas was still closed off, so I took College to Bay, went down to Queen and then home. When I got there I decided to take Homer’s Iliad, which I’d found in the same location as those other books on the previous day, outside on the street. I was worried that it might have roach eggs inside. It looked pretty clean but it’s better to be safe than sorry, especially since my place has been cockroach free for a couple of months.

            For dinner I made pizza with pasta sauce and old cheddar on the last of my tortillas and had it with beer while watching two episodes of Dobie Gillis.

            In the first story, Dobie’s mother is on a contest kick and enters any and every one she comes across. The only one she wins is a “Why I’d Like A Date With Merilee Maribou Contest” and for this one she entered Dobie’s name. Zelda sees this as Dobie’s big break to make it in Hollywood. In the park she, Dobie and Maynard rehearse a song together for him to sing for Merilee. Zelda is actually playing the guitar while Maynard plays percussion on a trash can lid with a broken evergreen branch and they both do backup vocals. It actually sounds pretty good.

On the day of the date though Dobie is told he will only have eight minutes with Merilee but he ends up with just a few seconds with nobody having time to listen to his song. Merilee Maribou, who appears to be an over the top parody of Marilyn Monroe, without the brains, was played by Joyce Jameson, who was apparently the exact opposite of the dumb blonde she was typecast as. She was a talented comedian, impressionist and also did a ventriloquist act with an invisible dummy.

The second story shows Dobie and Maynard after graduation. They don’t know which direction to take. Their former teacher recommends that they take an aptitude test to assess what type of profession would fit their abilities. Each of the boys is assigned a different psychologist to test them and each boy drives his respective psychologist nuts. For every word association and Rorschach test Dobie answers “girls”. Maynard is given a hearing test and his psychologist discovers that Maynard can hear frequencies that only dogs can hear, with a beat. In the end Dobie decides to enlist in the army and Maynard follows his friend.  

Bird Circus, with Free Poop!

            On Saturday morning my legs were aching and tired from all the bike riding I’ve been doing. I was also out of it a bit mentally as I fumbled slightly over chords and lyrics during song practice. I wonder if exercising this much is going to get easier or if I’m just getting old.

            I worked on figuring out the chords to Serge Gainsbourg’s “Comic Strip”.

            After breakfast but with a still almost full cup of coffee left behind on my desk I went to the food bank. The line up when I arrived was not very long for the middle of the month. I established my place in line by eye behind the plaid-lined cart belonging to the guy with the neck tattoo, but when the African couple with a friend or brother arrived and when the woman put their carts directly behind his I stepped up to let her know that I was in between.

            I read another page of Balzac’s “The Atheist’s Mass” from my dual language book. It takes me a good half an hour to get through that much text because I first try to understand the French parts on my own, then look at the English, then go back to see if I’ve now grasped the French. Sometimes I have to go back and forth two or three times before moving on to the next line.

            Here’s some of what I read this time: “That horrible, incessant battle that mediocrity wages against the superior man: If you lose $25 one night, the next day you are accused of being a gambler and your best friends will say that you lost $25,000. If you have a headache people will say you’re crazy. If you get angry you are anti-social. If you try to be strong against the forces that work to drag you down your best friends will shout you down for being overbearing and pushy. In the end your good qualities will be seen as faults, your faults will be looked upon as vices and your virtues will be viewed as crimes. If you’ve saved someone then you have killed him; if your patient recovers it is understood that you have assured his present at the expense of his future; if he doesn’t die, he will soon. If you stumble you fall. If you invent something and claim your rights you are difficult and shrewd and don’t want to give the young inventors a chance. My friend, if I don’t believe in god, I believe even less in man.”

            Angie came upstairs for a smoke and had one with a group of regulars that come early and hang out together, including the big woman, the former film technician, and the guy with the neck tattoo. She knows them all by name and gives them hugs when she greets them. She also reached out to touch my arm, say hello and then say tome, “Still reading!” I stepped out of line to avoid the smoke, but was close enough to hear her tell them how much she likes and admires the new manager, Valdene Allison. She said that she’s a hard worker and she treats everyone with respect.

            Around this time a pigeon strafed the sidewalk with green liquid poop that fell exactly along the line-up in front of the apartment building at 1501 Queen Street West. Fortunately there were very few people actually standing in line at the time and so it was mostly people’s carts that got bombarded, but two or three food bank clients were unlucky enough to be greenly shat upon and immediately set about to cleaning themselves off. The entrance to the building is framed by a classical pediment with a flattop canopy supported by two columns. On each corner of the top of the canopy is a life-size statue of an owl. After dropping its payload the pesky rock dove landed on top of the head of the owl on the left. The guy with the neck tattoo walked over to look directly up at the pigeon, pointed his finger and called to it accusingly, “You are an asshole!” Then he went back to one of his friends who’d gotten a little bit pooped upon and told him, “It’s supposed to be good luck!” If that were true, the biggest cities of the world would be the luckiest places on Earth. Then he declared, “If this happened when I was young I would have taken my pellet gun and shot that bird right in the eye!"

            I looked up at the pigeon and saw that another pigeon had landed on its back, I assume because the owl statue is a coveted perch and the upper bird wanted to force the other one off. So with a bird on top of a bird on top of a statue of a bird, it created a kind of mostly living totem and a strangely comical sight.

            These plastic owls are supposed to scare birds like pigeons away but studies show that pigeons are smart enough to figure out that it’s a fake after four days.

            Among the many mentally ill people in Parkdale there is a young man that’s been in the neighbourhood for a few years who seems to be in a constant state of mental and physical chaos. He is always walking but also frequently makes extreme and sudden gestures with his arms in all directions that some people might interpret as threatening, though I’ve never seen him being violent. He also seems to be in great shape, which might result from all of that movement. He went by while we were waiting and made some drastic gestures and made some loud but undecipherable verbalizations as he passed. The guy with the neck tattoo commented that the chaotic young man is probably supposed to get a needle every day. The big woman said, “Maybe he hasn’t gone for the needle.” If he’s the type of psychotic that should take regular medication to control his condition but could easily forget to do so, there may be an injection available for him but it would not be every day but rather every two or three weeks. There’s also a new schizophrenia medication that only needs to be injected four times a year.

            The food bank van arrived with the manager and the doorkeeper and so we all got in line to wait to draw our numbers. I moved the carts directly behind the plaid one so I could squeeze into my place and the male half of the African couple came up to confront me because he thought that I was doing something unfair. I explained to him the situation and he nodded. Martina came around with the box of numbers. I got number 20, which is close to what I would normally get with the old first come, first serve number system. Someone else complained about getting number 56 but Martina said, “You don’t see 56 people here. There are a lot of missing numbers so you don’t really have 56.”

            Valdene was unloading food from the van and decided to start giving away right there on the street packs of frozen meat that she’d picked up somewhere, rather than taking them down to the food bank. She was over by the door with the box of what looked like a white variety of frozen items, such as beef hearts, pork and cold cuts, and people were coming to her to take them. I didn’t go over to her because it felt undignified, but of course if I were desperately meat deprived I would have stepped up. Valdene said something about how people should take the meat at their own risk. The three Africans complained that the meat was past its best before date and in response Valdene shouted, “Did everyone here hear me say, to take the meat at your own risk?” She paused and looked around, then asked, “Everyone heard me? Okay!” A few minutes later Valdene walked down the line to where the Africans were and, with her cigarette behind her back, said, “Let me educate you. The best before date on meat doesn’t mean anything if the meat is frozen. It could last six months past the best before date. It means something with dairy or some other products but not with meat. I’m not trying to kill my brothers!” Then Valdene put her hand on the woman’s arm and added, “Or my sister!”

Martina let in the first wave of people with whatever numbers that weren’t missing up to thirteen. She was complaining about how many missing numbers there were and so I asked her if she’d ever considered taking each number back from people before they go through the door. For example, when she calls number 1 then number 1 would have to hand her number 1 before going in. That way there would be less chance of numbers going missing. The big woman thought that was a very good and smart idea. Martina said that was one way of doing it but she’s been thinking of just giving the numbers out five at a time to the first people in line. That sounded very close to the old system whereas I’d thought that the random system had come in to discourage people from coming too early. This idea would make people want to get there ahead of everyone else again.

Once I was downstairs and my name was checked off on the computer, my volunteer was Roy, who’d helped me a few times before but for the first time I noticed that he wears a cross around his neck.

From the shelves I got a bag of Italian herb and olive oil vegetable chips; a box of Breton black bean crackers with onion and garlic; a 750 gram bag of No Name honey almond granola; one strawberry yogourt and three chocolate nut granola bars and a can of black turtle beans. I reached for a can of tuna but their strange new policy was still in effect whereby if one takes tuna one can’t have any meat. And yet I was allowed to take a box containing a can of bourbon and bacon chicken salad with crackers.

            When I was finished at the shelves, Roy called out to Angie to let her know that I hadn’t taken any tuna. But the meat she had to offer was the usual cheap frozen ground chicken and frozen chicken wieners. There were some individually wrapped burger patties in the bin with hot dogs and ground chicken, but they looked like veggie burgers and Angie confirmed that they probably were. So I didn’t take any meat and yet I didn’t ask to go back and get tuna because of the other stuff that Angie gave me, such as a one-litre bottle of strawberry kéfir, which she said was a bonus for me. She also handed me a pack of 12 frozen bacon, mozzarella and onion mini-quiches; a package of cheese and spinach ravioli and a box of those Snak Man Do frozen mini samosas, though I don’t know for sure what flavour they are because I threw the box away so I could fit the samosas in my freezer and I didn’t think to read it before taking out the garbage. I assume they are the same very spicy tandoori chicken samosas that I had before. I turned down the milk but took a couple of small fruit bottom yogourts and three large eggs. The eggs, instead of being in the usual clear plastic bag, were in a six-egg crate. When I tried to fry two of the eggs later that night, the yolk of one of them broke when I dropped it in the pan, which is often a sign that an egg is not fresh, but I find also that the sunny parts of larger eggs tend to break more readily than those of smaller ones.

            Sylvia gave me a few potatoes, onions, a handful of baby bok choy that were getting a little brown, a green pepper and a bag of about twenty rainbow cherry tomatoes.

            I skipped the bread because I have some at home.

            It seems that under the new management there is a greater abundance of items at the food bank. When I compare this time last year in my journal, the amounts and variety of dairy, freezer products and vegetables were much less. Then again, two years ago there was a cornucopia of garden donations that hasn’t been repeated. There’s also now that weird choice of either one can of tuna or meat and not both.

            After the food bank I took my stuff home, put it away and then rode down to No Frills to buy mostly fruit. I got strawberries, bananas, grapes, cherries, three grapefruit and three mangoes.

            For lunch I heated up the 24 frozen mini quiches that I’d gotten from the food bank the week before, and ate half of them.

            Late that afternoon I took a bike ride. I noticed that at the corner of St George and Bloor there were a lot of flowers for the cyclist that got killed by the truck there earlier in the week. I wonder whose fault it was.

            I rode up Victoria Park, took Southmead Rd to Pharmacy and then headed back. I waited at the top of the hill just south of Donside for the traffic light to change from green to red and to green again north of the bottom of the ravine so I could coast without interruption. Just as I started going down someone pushed the “Walk” signal but I made it through the light with ten seconds to spare before it changed again.

            On the way back at around Donlands there was a box of books on the curb, so I stopped to go through it. It was mostly full of Ken Follett novels and other thrillers but there was also The Iliad by Homer, so I took that.

            While riding down Yonge Street I noticed up ahead that it was still blocked from Dundas to Queen, so I took Gerrard to Bay.

            That night when I made my eggs and one of the yolks broke, I fried the third one because I always like to have two runny yolks with my toast.

            I watched two episodes of Dobie Gillis. Whoever uploaded this torrent of the complete four seasons screwed up the order and the titles for these episodes.

            The first story I watched should have come five episodes after the second because it shows Dobie graduating from high school, while in the second he’s still in school.

            In the first, as Dobie’s in his senior year, the yearbook committee plans to publish family pictures of all the graduates accompanied by each parent’s graduation photo. Dobie’s father, Herbert is strangely dismissive of the whole thing but later reveals to his wife, Winnie that he never graduated because of enlisting during the war and then getting married afterwards. She insists on him going to night school so that he'll get a diploma in time for Dobie’s graduation. His teacher is the same as Dobie’s. Herbert doesn't tell Dobie that he's going to night school but takes for his own sake a sudden interest in Dobie's homework, which actually causes Dobie's grades to improve considerably. The only problem is that Herbert copies all of Dobie's essays, which of course the teacher notices and he gets in trouble. In the end though they give him another chance and he manages to earn his diploma, which he receives in the same ceremony as Dobie. The odd thing is that Maynard graduates too, which is strange because in almost every episode Maynard is shown to never do his homework and to fail every test. In the first season it was revealed that Maynard is a year older than Dobie and that he had to repeat a grade, but in the second he talks about having repeated Grade 12 three times. Dobie and Maynard are supposed to have grown up together but there is no explanation for them being in the same grade or how Maynard could possibly graduate.

            The second story is actually five episodes earlier than the graduation episode. In the story, Dobie’s father is spending way too much time at his lodge meetings of the Benevolent Order Of Bison (BOOB). Dobie is reading a book on marriage for school and begins to try to intervene in his parents’ marriage. He gives his father a husnband test from the book, which he fails miserably and convinces him to change his ways, which he does. Because of this, Winnie and all the other wives invade the next Bison meeting and make Herbert the head Bison.