This is all I have left of my grand-great uncle, Bishop Candid Norman Rowbury. He was a bishop, but with a heart of gold. (Though I’d always thought he was a better piano player than he was a bishop.) His will was so incredibly specific: it divided his estate into pieces and donated those pieces to different charities.
He did hereby leave his Studebaker to Lorraine Daley-Kline (a real charity case). His fixtures, false teeth, adjustable tools, winterwear, and soaps went to Lottery Winners of North America. The legs of all his chairs went to the Royale Society of Seaman. But for me, he left his most prized of all possessions (and he was a Bishop, so that’s saying a lot.) He bequeathed unto me these tomatoes. Correction: He bequeathed unto me these heirloom tomatoes.
These heirloom tomatoes have been in my family for twelve generations. His forefather, Mackenzie Wallenbach Brinkley Rowbury purchased these tomatoes at the Chimineroo farmer’s market in the late 1700′s. Legend has it, Mackenzie was drinking a macchiato that cost the price of a full-day’s meal out of a golden goblet, when his eye struck upon the most amazing tomatoes in all the land. More than just serendipity, this was destiny’s child knocking right on Mackenzie Rowbury’s door.
You see, he’d been planning for sometime to “finally stop eating out so much and use my galley kitchen for more than just Chinese takeout.” The tomatoes cost him nineteen hundred guilders each, as well as his eldest daughter. This was a price Mackenzie Rowbury was willing to pay as hitherto, he’d been unsuccessful with dozens of gazpacho attempts.
Sadly, Mackenzie Rowbury was lanced by a neighboring nobleman during a dispute over compost (how many lives will be lost?!) . He left a legacy behind and that legacy is carried with the torch of these heirloom tomatoes. Now, every night I pick them up and let them fall through my fingers like doubloons or loonies or toonies. I sleep in them like Scrooge McDuck. My very own heirloom tomatoes. I hope one day I will make the world’s most expensive salsa and feed it to the starving children of Cabo San Lucas.
How many days does it take to get a joke? We’re on day sixteen, and counting.
This is the last time I use Amazon for anything other than buying Bunsen burners. Not only do I do all my cooking on Mr. Bunsen’s miracle, but I also heat my home with them. Dangerous? Not as dangerous as frostbite. Have you ever seen the movie What Happens in Vegas? Well think about how much worse that movie would have been if you had FROSTBITE during the whole thing.
Actually, they’ve really just blended into one song, like a morphing lite FM transformer. I feel like I’m in a waiting room no matter where I go.
It takes me back to another suicidal time when a co-worker would play Smooth Jazz all day. I should say almost all day, from 12-3pm when he played The Rush Limbaugh show in its entirety, thereby creating the most toxic work environment of all time. For the record, there have only ever been seven smooth jazz songs composed. They play on a loop interrupted by Sade and commercials for Bennigan’s Steakhouse.
This weblog is taking an increasingly dessert-centric turn, noted. This will stop. I will provide more of what readers really want from weblogs (unresearched biographical information on 19th century presidents).
But¹ I want you to know The Smith has a walk-up window. The most important feature of this window is that they’re selling $3 ice cream sandwiches out of it. You might be aware of this feature already, but–unless you’ve eaten one–you wouldn’t know some information I am about to tell you via letter-bulleted list.
A. The cookies are perfectly balanced, not too dry or too chewy
B. The ice cream is creamy, not icy
C. You can split one with a friend²
1. The Chicago Manual of Style [5.191] “Beginning a sentence with a conjunction. There is a widespread belief—one with no historical or grammatical foundation—that it is an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and, but, or so. In fact, a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions…”
2. You cannot split one with a friend if you do not have a friend, or if you are, in fact, lactose intolerant. In the case of the former, you have to eat all of it and in the case of the latter, you have to eat none of it. Please, try with all of your might to tolerate lactose.³
3. I’ve struggled for years with an intolerance of the lactose intolerant. I even made a movie about it with D.W. Griffinth but he kind of took it over (everything was always about him.) Vegans though, ya’ll are all right.
T-6 hours until the feature length DeGrassi movie DeGrassi Goes Hollywood premieres on the N network.
DeGrassi Junior High charmed its way into my life in sixth grade (that’s grade 6, Canadians) Health class. It is the absolute best teaching tool I’ve ever encountered. It kept me out of Canada until I was 25.
I just didn’t feel like getting teen-pregnant. The teen pregnancy statistics in the Toronto metro area are alarming. Or they were alarming, until I found out DeGrassi is not a documentary program. Apparently, it is pretty difficult to find an Etobicoke junior high school where every student is dealing with their parents’ break up by drunk-driving to the middle school prom with their closeted-gay date, only to arrive and have a baby in the bathroom. Especially when your production budget is $36 dollars, Canadian. Don’t get me wrong they found one, but unfortunately nobody had an STD (although three people had pink eye).
What many people don’t know is that DeGrassi Junior High was preceded by The Kids of DeGrassi street which was, you guessed it, a series of afterschool specials from ’79-’82. I think at this point we can all appreciate the impact early ’80s after school specials have had on my life. It goes without saying that the kids of Degrassi Junior High eventually moved on to Degrassi High where more tomfoolery continued. Most of it was c*nsored in the United States, which made episodes as confusing as post-code Hollywood films. It’s too bad Raymond Chandler never wrote a novel about Erica’s pregnancy.
At first I was angry about the spin-off, DeGrassi: The Next Generation as I am about all spin-offs (I take a judgment-first approach to my tv-viewing. see: future angry post on Save By the Bell: the New Class). Spike and Snake’s baby, Emma is the central character of the show. After watching only a few episodes, I was hooked.
However, there have been some major disappointments:
Really Aubrey? They just lost by 80 points; I don’t think that they are the best. Not even second best… out of two teams. Some passing drills might help… or sports bras. It’s too bad there’s no autotune for basketball.
But still, I’ll be watching tonight. Whatever it takes.
The best part about gay ice cream is the way it is so effortlessly fashionable. I had a twist cone with caramel and sea salt. It was a tasty treat. Passersby gave me several glances but this is New York City–they’ve seen it all. This ice cream totally deserves the right to marry itself and then be devoured by me at the reception. I can’t wait to try the Questioning falafel down the street (it’s not sure if it’s falafel, but I’m sure it smells delicious!) and the 2-Spirit hot pretzels (they taste unjustly overlooked by other marginalized pretzels).
I asked a tiny insignificant question on Amazon.com for my gift search and now people have gone crazy. And not the Gnarls Barkley kind either. Or the Seal kind. Or the Jay-Z and Bëyõncé kind. No, not even the Patsy Cline kind. It’s the kind of crazy you don’t write songs about (unless you write songs about misunderstandings on Amazon.com that accidentally start Presidential bashing threads).
Furthermore, I told you we should watch our backs. Now it seems Tim Horton’s is trying too hard to be American. I’m not going to fall for your silly ruse for one minute. Forget the wily subterfuge, put down that Uncle Sam mask and Steve Shearer’s American flag shorts. You can’t fool me, Canada; I’ve got the Halifax.
“Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism’s in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, “I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.” Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I’d still have to bum rides off people.”
To Gillian President Obama on her his 37th 48th birthday:
Hi Guy! Happy birthday! I thought a lot about what to get you. Some people made jokes: “oh, you should get him Congressional approval of Judge Sotomayor” or “beer of the month club!”¹ or “give him the ability to root for the Yankees AND the Mets”. One person just shouted “invisible!”, but I’m still not sure if they were talking to me. However, birthdays are far from a laughing matter, so I ignored their advice as if I were the American public and they were announcing a new healthcare initiative.
Forfeit your magazines
Gift number one, pictured left, I found in Sky Mall. Most people have forgotten at this point that you have a dog. I haven’t. This also comes in an ottoman or a hamper. Or mini fridge. You stow your full size pet in the bottom and your red pepper hummus on top.
This seemed more like a gift for Bo than for you so, I kept looking. I went into Rave, but I realized that store doesn’t exist anymore. (Maybe it never really did?)
I tried the Amazon.com gift forum but no one answered my query. I looked on giftfinder.com but they stumped me by asking me if you’d prefer a mouthwatering meal at your favorite restaurant (after a secret service taste-test.) or a burger and an ice-cold beer? Why are you so many things to so many people, sir?
A Tasteplosion!
I settled on an Edible Arrangements Floral Fruit Basket, but only so I could remind the world that my sister once sent one of these to herself. How hungry does one have to be to make that phone call? I blame sudden-onset scurvy.
Have a delicious birthday, Mr. President. Try the chocolate-covered bananas. They taste like legislative victory! The grapes taste like grapes.
1. For those keeping score at home, I’m finished making jokes about this incident and have moved onto making jokes about people who are still making jokes about this incident.
When was the last time you turned off the computer, walked outside, went to the park, picked up the phone, called a friend and had a really, really long conversation about nougat? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Nougat is so overlooked these days and I, for one, am sick and tired of it. Have you ever even considered nougat? I mean have you truly dug deep down into the creamy (but chewy) center of your soul and thought about how nougat came to be on this earth? Get over yourself, please.
Nougat is not going anywhere and you need to decide today if you can be the kind of person who just walks around blindly, without a care in the world (or a cane) taking nougat for granted. The choice is yours, and to each his own, but I know if I were fighting a war: I would rather be sitting in a foxhole next to a guy who had his priorities straight and put his money where his mouth was, and sometimes that mouth was full of nougat. It’s time to take stock of your life and I hope when you do, you find some nougat in your pantry.
