A Movable Feast

Over the course of any given year, many ideas seem like they might make for a great column, but often never develop into anything beyond a paragraph or two.  I’m always reluctant to kill them off, though, as you never know when they might come in handy and provide just the right spice for another dish.  So I leave them in a Word document, tucked into the back of my writing refrigerator, checking them out every once in a while to see if they might satisfy my appetite.

Other weeks, I’ve just got too much to fit into a single column, and good jokes must be sacrificed for the flow of the overall narrative.  But I can never bring myself to toss these, either, so I stick them in their own Tupperware-like container, because you never know when good leftovers might come in handy.

With a new year upon us, I figured it was a good time to clear out the metaphorical fridge and make some decisions about what was in there:  either reheat the stuff sitting in the back into an odds-and-ends, I’m-too-lazy-to-cook sort of column/meal, or toss it, because if it doesn’t taste right in that kind of meal, it’s never going to taste right, no matter how much ranch dressing you drown it in.

And so, with that I give you a special kind of random column -- a few ingredients that never became a full meal, some side dishes that didn’t quite fit with the other random columns, and the leftovers, extra thoughts from other columns that for one reason or another didn’t make the cut.

Bon appetit!

[We interrupt this broadcast for a brief message of great importance:  It’s WOTY time.  If you haven’t submitted your nominees for the State of the Union 2006 Worst of the Year Awards, click here now, or keep reading and click when I remind you again at the end of the column.  We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programming.]

I’ve had it with the meth addicts.  As if it wasn’t bad enough that their labs smell like urine and/or ammonia, and their dope ruins lives and communities, now they’re making my life difficult.  Thanks to these selfish pricks, now I can’t buy Sudafed 12 Hour after the Target pharmacy’s closed -- and when it is open, I’ve got to show my ID to get allergy medicine, like I’m some kind of criminal . . .

Speaking of urine, I’d like to give a special shout-out to Floyd Landis and the World Anti-Doping Agency.  I have no idea, even now, whether Landis is guilty or innocent (although I’d like him to be innocent, because I watched the Tour de France this year, and his comeback was pretty cool), but thanks to him and all the people who are out to get him, 2006 was without question a banner year for the word “urine” being spoken on TV . . .

Speaking of Target, I think we’re all becoming a little too familiar with retail marketing insider jargon.  A while back, I was looking for something at my local Target, and when I asked where I might find it, the employee replied, “They’re on the endcap on this next aisle.”  And I knew exactly what an endcap was, and where she meant.  “Endcap” was not part of the vernacular just a few years ago.  For some reason, I find this troubling . . .

When I heard Weird Al was releasing a new album this fall, my first thought was, “I can’t believe he’s still at it.”  But then I thought about it for a second, and realized, what else would he do? . . .

Postcards are like bait for tourists.  In tourist districts, every shop puts a rack of them just outside their front door, so you can’t help but see them.  And who, when traveling, doesn’t at least in theory want to send postcards?  (The number of unsent postcards I currently have in a shoebox in my closet -- some of them even stamped -- is testament to theory trumping practice here.)  So we stop for a second and we spin the rack, searching for a postcard that perfectly captures our tourist experience before we are reminded of the postcard law which decrees that the ones on the rack outside the shop are not only the cheapest postcards the place has to offer, they’re also the worst -- they look like they’re from 1974, and not in a cool, kitschy, ironic way, but in a bad font way that makes you think someone in 1994 tried to make it look like they were printed in 1974.  But from the outside rack, you can see inside to more racks, which look like they might have some better postcards on them . . . and before you know it, the bait has worked:  you’ve been lured inside, and the only way out of the trap is to buy some overpriced crap you don’t need and/or postcards you’ll never send . . .

Speaking of tourist crap traps, a lot of the leftovers came from September’s Quebec column.  When I’m in a new place, I can’t help but notice what’s different, which is why I’m always filling up the little notebooks I keep in my back pocket; my time in Quebec City was no different.  In fact, I probably could’ve followed up that Quebec piece with another one devoted entirely to random Canadian observations, but instead, I stuffed those scraps in the back of the fridge.  Consider these next few morsels microwaved for your dining pleasure . . .

The major disadvantage of not speaking the native tongue is that whenever you go out to eat, you get the creeping feeling that the people at the next table are talking about you.  Perhaps it was just my own special paranoia, but I constantly felt like I was emitting some sort of signal -- in French -- to everyone around me that said, “This one here doesn’t speak French -- talk about him as you wish!” . . .

I don’t mean to suggest that I wasn’t appropriately impressed by and indeed, fascinated with the cultural, historical, and architectural wonders of Quebec City, but I spent a disproportionately large amount of time there shopping for a t-shirt for a hockey team that no longer exists and making note of the differences between Canadian and American advertisements.  I have no shortage of t-shirts, but as soon as I saw that Quebec Nordiques ringer t-shirt, I wanted one.  However, I couldn’t bring myself to shell out $24.95 -- even $24.95 Canadian -- for a t-shirt.  Two thoughts crossed my mind as I popped into every tchotchke shop we passed looking for a more affordable alternative:  one, maybe if the NHL wasn’t so greedy (since these were not silk t-shirts, I’m attributing the steep price to the NHL’s hefty licensing fee for official merchandise), it wouldn’t now be relegated to the former Outdoor Life Network, and two, if there had been half as much demand for Nordiques tickets as there is for nostalgic Nordiques gear, maybe the team wouldn’t have left Quebec for Colorado . . .

As for the Canadian advertisements, one obvious difference was that many of the ads were in French, and the ones that weren’t exclusively in French still included a French translation.  But two other things stood out:  the surprising number of print ads for Clamato, and the fact that in Canada, the ads for Axe are even more lascivious than they are in America -- which I didn’t think was possible . . .

Speaking of the American/Canadian divide, they love our music in Quebec City, but not our beer.  In one of the city’s many parks, we saw a busker with an acoustic guitar playing a series of classic all-American tunes, highlighted by “Willie and the Poor Boys,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.  As we lunched, “Hotel California” played quietly on the radio.  But at the Pub Oncle Antoine on rue Saint-Pierre, where we stopped for a few pints of brew, there are 56 beers on the menu, and not one of them is American . . .

Watching American TV shows overdubbed in French is a sublimely bizarre experience.  Despite an almost total inability to follow the rapid-fire French emanating from the TV (although admittedly, I wouldn’t have done much better with slow-fire), I watched an entire episode of CSI: Miami and was able to follow most of the story.  Oddly, I found the broadcast of the Toronto Blue Jays vs. the Oakland A’s much more disorienting -- I would have had an easier time of it with the sound turned off.  But my favorite part of watching Francophone baseball was the game break for highlights from other games; when they showed a clip from the Cardinals, in which Albert Pujols smashed a home run, this is what I heard:  “French french french l’french l’french ALBERT PUJOLS!  French french french l’french . . .”

My favorite quote from the Quebec trip, from my wife, while walking down the heavily-populated rue de Saint-Jean, comparing Quebec City to Paris, where she has traveled frequently:  “A lot of times it smells like pot and armpits,” she said as two teenage boys brushed past us.  “Very authentic.”

Here’s the reminder I promised you:  If you haven’t submitted your nominees for the 2006 WOTYs, you still can.  Just click here to go to the nomination form, or click here for a review of the rules, the categories, and previous winners.  Happy new year, and happy nominating!