M'EGGS!!!

M'EGGS!!

I have another friend and his name shall be Dmitri. Naturally, Dmitri is not actually his name, but if you know him, you will see through the pseudonomial veneer instantly. And I could hardly fail to extend to Dmitri the favour I've extended to Carlos.

I lived with Dmitri for a full school year, and I think he may very well have been one of my favourite roommates of all time. More fun than my karaoke-singing and Hannah Montana-crazy Phillipino roommate. More nightmarish than the half-rehabilitated crack dealer who taught me how to make ecstasy from common household ingredients. Not that I've done it, mind you. But knowing how is an interesting little bit of spice for the resume.

I think, in fact, that one of the best parts about living with Dmitri was three am. There was something magical about three o'clock that turned Dmitri and every person around him into complete babbling fools.

Now, I normally like to think of myself as a rather even-keeled person. I can get rather nutty; don't get me wrong. But I always got the impression that my continued existence in the house was entirely for the purpose of acting as a character foil for Carlos and Dmitri. As if God were a novelist and I were a stock character straight man for the other guys' jokes. An if that meant putting out fires and having small candy frogs hurled at me every couple of nights, than that's what it would have to mean. That was my role in life.

But this particular three o'clock the madness was contagious. You really had to be there. And so, to that end, I shall try to make it real for you.

I am tired. Not tired enough to go to bed, but tired enough to be sure that doing homework is a bad idea. I go to the kitchen to consume some sugary substances. As tired as I am, there is, in fact, work to be done and it can't be put off a day longer.

Dmitri, likewise, is sitting in his room off the front hall. I decide to pay him a visit, cup of hot chocolate in hand. He is sitting in the corner of his large bedroom. The room is made particularly large-feeling because he has no wall decorations or stuff. You couldn't call the room spartan; that's Carlos. Carlos has no stuff and what few things he allows to exist in his room are rigidly catalogued and organized. Dmitri is a fan of free expression and long intervals between laundry days. Clothing in particular is the defining decorative feature.

Like I said, Dmitri is sitting in the corner at his computer, staring blankly at an equally blank screen, 2L bottle of Diet Pepsi in his hand. He notices me, turns to face me.

“Friend,” he says, his voice rippling with a hoarse baritone. Hoarse baritone usually precedes something very unimportant and very awesome. Hoarse baritone never comes before, “Will you pray with me” or “I killed a man today”. That is, unless he's talking about Carlos, who he often declares to have killed.

I nod, smiling a tired and weak half-smile.

“Friend,” he begins again. “I'm not having a lot of success with this paper.”

“No?” I jab, raising an eyebrow and looking at the screen. I can be a jerk when I'm tired. But Dmitri doesn't seem to care.

“Nope,” he says, and takes a big swig from his bottle. Than he rises and walks towards the door. I am standing in the door. He stops about a foot in front of me. I stand in his way. I don't know why I don't move, but I don't. He looks at me and laughs.

“Friend, what's up?”

I stare at him. A very long pause goes by.

“S'up, Christmas?” Dmitri says, with a side head-bob like from Night at the Roxbury. I don't know how I got this particular nickname; perhaps from wearing red and green one time ever in my life once.

I have lost the will to be sane. So I walk a few steps across the hall to the closet and retrieve my Canadian Tire, a bit-too-small and not all that comfortable or even protective goalie mask and put it on. Dmitri has seized the opportunity to walk to the kitchen to make food, or some such thing.

He turns and looks at me.

I don't know why, and I think I never will, but I make a neanderthal-esque overbite face, bring my arms up to my chest like a T-Rex, and stand perfectly still. Like a startled squirrel, or a meerkat. With a goalie mask.

Dmitri begins to laugh and almost falls over.

Maybe it's cause it is late and we are making noise, but more likely the product of the increasingly diseased state of my mind, but I step close to him, peer at him through the helmet and say, “Shh Shh Shh Shhh Shhh.”

Now Dmitri actually falls over. His Jamaican beef patties just barely make it to the counter before their bearer collapses in a heap of laughter. I join him on the floor.

I decide to walk back to my room, content that I've entertained Dmitri for a couple minutes.

Ten minutes later I am no longer content and walk back to his room. His screen is still blank but his pepsi bottle is significantly more empty. Or maybe less full? Which of those is optimistic? I am still wering my goalie mask, and I shush him again. Then, with my little squirrel arms, I wave them about in a squirrelly facsimile of a breaststroke.

“Swim?” Dimtri asks between chuckles.

I nod very vigourously.

“You swim?” Dmitri asks. “You swim good?”

Now we both laugh again.

Despite all of my effort, I'm not sure this exchange could have possibly been made to be funny unless you are either myself or Dmitri. But I shan't easily forget the day that it was I and not one of my crackpot roommates whose completely irrational behaviour made someone else's life a little bit stupider than before.

3AM is magic hour. Where Cadbury Mini Eggs are gold and Frogs are LSD. No wonder I never get any homework done.

Irreverence

I think I've always been fascinated with irreverence. Irreverent comedy, for example, has always been a favourite. Although, to be fair, hardly any comedy these days could be styled as 'reverent'. So perhaps most comedy is irreverent. And when I think 'irreverent comedy', I'm usually thinking 'absurdist' comedy. Which isn't the same thing, exactly. Absurdist comedy is great. Carlos is absurdist comedy. People-watching is absurd. Family Guy, before it began to really stink, was deliciously absurd.

But enough about that, because what I've been thinking about is irreverence. I hear a lot and think a lot about the values of irreverent speaking, of irreverent leadership, of irreverent participation in democracy, and other similar things. That creating these artificial boundaries of 'reverence' do a lot of harm. It keeps people from speaking their mind and being plainly understood. It makes absurdism impossible. In fact, it may make all comedy impossible.

But the problem, I think, with breaking down the boundaries of reverence is that it leaves us all rather too irreverent. That if we prize and value honesty to the point of bluntness, pointedness to the point of unsophistication, and shock-and-awe to the point of un-nuanced and purposeful speech, I think we lose something. That just because a speaker says something striking doesn't mean it's true or even very bright. Just because a writer posits naked honesty doesn't mean that they are saying anything of meaning or substance. That it's one thing for someone to say something that tickles your ears and it's another thing entirely for someone to say something that convicts the soul and captivates the imagination.

And as a collection of young twenty-something, impressionable, over-educated, shaving boys and girls, maybe we need to realize that we will grow the look-before-you-leap instinct later and that it's not a bad thing. That maybe lots of my anxt and zeal and existential Tolstoy-ism is not necessarily because I'm smarter or better-read or deeper-thinking than anyone else. Maybe it's just that I'm 21 and so I therefore freak out about life.

Is that ageism? I dunno. I don't think so. I hope not. I'd hate to get associated with any -isms.

Which may also be a symptom of being 21. Fear of being wrong? Fear of being disliked? And at the end of the day, maybe a little reverence is the exact kind of structure that could hold the jumbled mess of thought and colour and smell that is my overtaxed and macaroni-dependant brain.

People-Watching

Last term the Nipissing and Canadore Christian group had a big worship service and they brought up this speaker. He had a lot of cool and amazing things to say, but this is neither the time nor the place for the cool or the amazing. This is the place for oddity. And there was one very remarkable thing he told us that struck me and has stayed with me.
See, he was actually a Nipissing alum. And he opened by telling us stories from his education - a long time ago when dinosaurs roamed the Earth - and about his nostalgic memories of North Bay.
He told us that North Bay, Ontario, was the single best place on the face of the planet to people-watch.

Apparently, if you go and sit down at Twigg's at the right time of day - I think it was early-morning-ish but I don't remember exactly - you can have the time of your life watching people pass by. Apparently the folks scurrying around in our bustling "downtown" are fascinating.

Naturally, I have been rather skeptical. Wouldn't the people-watching be better in a really odd place like a fish market in Hong Kong or a hot dog stand on Wall Street? But being the inquisitive and experimental kind of guy I am, I've tried to take him up on his people-watching dare.

Now, I don't want to alarm you, but what follows is not for the faint of heart. Put the kids to bed, pop a Tum's to settle your stomach, go pour yourself another glass of wine. A full one.
Ready?

North Bay, Ontario, IS the best place on Earth to people-watch.

I had to figure out what I was doing first. There's a bunch of rules I hadn't been given that I was forced to discover myself. For example, it's best to not even try watching other people in the coffee shop. You're just too close. They'll feel your eyes on them and then they spin, look at you funny, and back away slowly. I guess it beats being shanked back home in the city, but it's still a mite unsettling.
Doing it at the school, too, is a dodgy bit of business. For the last ten minutes I've been trying to watch the teacher's college students in the small cafeteria but they just aren't that interesting. I'm beginning to think teacher's college sucks a tiny bit of your soul away the longer you stay in it.
But the school can have benefits, because Nipissing has some real characters. For example, at this very moment there is one very fascinating young man typing furiously away at his laptop with such intensity and quaking with purpose. Occasionally, he stops, sits erect and scans the cafeteria. He almost caught me by surprise doing this the first time. And then, as suddenly as he stopped, he starts again. As if he was a groundhog popping out of his hole or a squirrel standing up on his haunches to get an extra two inches' perspective on the universe. And, having returned - I suppose uneventfully - from his little reconnaissance mission, his typing is as furious and squirrellious as before.

Truth is, there's something about this town so potently human, I think, that you can watch people live their lives and be amused. The city is a borderlands of sorts, where people are all kinds are drawn by the promise of education, work, country life, city life, or a butt-whalloping Dionne Quints museum. And with all kinds living in such close proximity, I can't help but stare. And hyperventilate with laughter.

Then again, while I'm killing myself laughing, there's someone else in this cafeteria wondering why I'm staring mercilessly at this very fascinating young man in the corner, pausing only to type and smile amusingly to myself.

HOSS!!

I have a friend and his name shall be Carlos. At least, I'm calling him Carlos to protect his identity.
Carlos is the loudest person you shall ever have the great fortune to meet. He enjoys nothing quite so much as loudly declaring whatever may come to mind. Often, a loud declaration is entirely appropriate. For example, when he is watching hockey and my team (Pittsburgh) scores on his team (Calgary), he yells. Very loudly. And usually after yelling he will pounce on me and attempt to throttle me with a Cheeto. So far he has never been successful, but the last couple of times were rather close.

But more often than that, Carlos' s affinity for audaciously aggravating audio carries not even the slightest bit of justification. He is particularly fond of three-syllable words or phrases. CHEVY HAT! BREAKFAST TOAST! and SKIN SKIN FRUIT! are some of his favourites.

The reason I'm telling you about Carlos is because, here, on the threshold of a new blogging adventure, I owe him a sincere debt of thanks. For it is Carlos who gave me the name "Hoss". It's not the first unexplained and unsolicited nickname he has bestowed, nor will it be the last. Allow me to sketch the scene:

"S'UP, HOMIE!"

"Hi, Carlos."

A pause

"WHAT'S UP?...HOMIE!"

A pause. I stare at him blankly, unsure of what he wants from me. Sometimes I ask him what he wants, but experience has taught me that Carlos never has a good answer to this question. So I stare at him blankly.

"HOMIE!"

I wait, praying he will tire of the game.

"HOMES!"

I wait.

"HOMIE WORD LIFE!"

'Homie Word Life' is in fact four syllables, but you wouldn't think so the way Carlos screams it.

By this point, I am tired of the game. I go to sit down in front of the TV, pretending Carlos isn't there.

A very long pause.

"SO HOMIE WORD, WHAT'S UP!? WHAT'S UP, HOMES?"

The next three come in rapid fire, almost rhythmic if it weren't so mentally jarring.

"S'UP HOMES?" "S'UP HOMES?" "S'UP HOMES?"

He pauses again. Then, entirely unexpectedly,

"S'UP HOMES?"

And it is then that everything changes forever. At that precise moment, in a flash, a streak of brilliance flashes through Carlos's mind. A new idea.

"S'UP, HOSS!?"

That gets my attention. I look at him. Inexplicably, just as inexplicable as everything Carlos does, he break down laughing. His entire shaved head turns bright red, his lungs screaming to pull in enough air while at the same time vomiting it out again in a torrent of the most inexplicable laughter.

In spite of myself, I begin to laugh with him.

"Hoss?" I ask, between chuckles.

"HOSS, HOMIE!" Carlos declares, clapping his hand on my shoulder in an entirely uncomfortable and unsolicited way.

"HOSS!"

And thus was I named.

The New Year is a time for new beginnings. New classes, new resolutions, new friends and a new carbon monoxide detector. And so, fittingly, I have been dubbed with a new name, entirely unfamiliar to anything that has come before it. I've been called Jimbo. I've been called Fish. I've been called Monica. But this piece of linguistic mastery, this figment of feverish folly's fruitless flailing to find a fitting phylogenesis is the new me.

I am Hoss.

Apparently.