Hey, do you like fat guys? Well, you’re going to love me. I have barely been to the gym this month and I have eaten like I have Prader-Willi Syndrome. You can motorboat my stomach! Hooray, summer!

Anyway, I did go to the gym a few times this summer and it was the complete genetic freakshow it has always been. The highlights:

- Some old guy drying his socks and bathing suit by jamming them into the nozzle of a handdryer and repeatedly pressing the dryer’s start button for about five minutes. I just think there is something unseemly about this. I’m a prude, I know, but I don’t want my freshly-washed hands tainted by the stray juice from his delicates.

- I have noticed at least three different guys who have tramp stamp tattoos. Fuck, is that ever unfortunate. That ranks just below “condomless Haitian gang bang” on the Regrettable Life Choice scale. It also cements the fact that I am never going to get tattoos. Don’t get me wrong — I like tattoos. I think they look bad-ass. It’s just that I have zero faith in my judgment and I would bet that my tattoo choice would end up being a dolphin kissing a unicorn in an embrace surrounding my belly-button. It’s best just to stay away from the concept altogether.

- I have been doing an exercise where you carry heavy kettlebells across the room. I don’t know how this constitutes as a workout, but it certainly has prepared me for a future career as a bellhop. Anyway, I walk across the room and when I get to the end of it I turn around and come back. Every time I turn, I TURN THE SAME DIRECTION. I am apparently Zoolander.

- There is a guy at the gym that shaves his face (shaving cream and everything) while wearing a dress shirt. It’s a recipe for fucking chaos and stains. I can’t even look at him. To me he might as well be using a rusty syringe.

Well, I’m done for the week. I’ll be hitting the gym. Big weekend at Wasaga. Time to show off the guns (and the tire that comes with them). Cheers!

Last Sunday I had the pleasure of attending the Canadian National Exhibition, which is also known to Canadians as “the CNE”, “the Ex” or “the biggest fucking waste of time and money the Toronto summer has to offer.” If you don’t know anything about the Ex, it’s basically the Canadian version of a state fair, only with a moderately lower level of obesity and a markedly higher level of apologies from people barfing after going on the Tilt-A-Whirl. Mrs. Butter Chicken is a huge fan of the CNE and wants to go every year. Her baseless enthusiasm makes me seriously reconsider my wedding vows to her. I guess I see her point: why waste a day at home relaxing on the patio and drinking beer when you can spend it trudging around a blazingly-hot concrete fairgrounds for a mere $16 admission fee? It would be insane not to go, right? Well, call me John Forbes Nash, but I am not totally convinced.

The highlights of the day:

- There was a really fat woman in front of us in line at the Dufferin gates. Jesus, she was curiously large. She was holding hands with a normal-looking dude and Mrs. Butter Chicken and I commented to each other that he could really do much better than her. Then Mrs. Butter Chicken started looking at me funny and I quickly deduced that she was thinking that she could do better than me, so I rapidly changed the topic. Still, that woman was really fucking fat. Like a wobbly fridge. The best part was that she was wearing a lot of black. Right, no one’s going to notice those extra hundred pounds because you are wearing an ebony sausage casing. She was like a jiggling night sky.

- When we were in the Arts & Crafts building, I saw a shirtless guy with the words “Honda V-Tec” tattooed across his back in large Gothic lettering. I have no idea what he was doing in the Arts & Crafts building. Presumably he was looking for a guy with a Kia Rio tattoo so that he could kick the shit out of him.

- My wife wanted to go to the Cat Show they were having. You know, like “Best in Show”, only with cats. It was actually fantastic. Dogs like being picked up and manhandled. Cats? Not so much. Every cat was either freaking out in its cage or looked like this when it was picked up by the judge:

I laughed my ass off until my throat started to close due to my cat allergy. On the plus side, in case Allah needs help, I found a ready supply of female virgins to supply to jihad-fighting terrorists in heaven. Mind you, they are all in their mid-forties, mildly portly and faintly scented like Meow Mix, but they are virgins nonetheless.  

- Tiny Tom donuts. I ate two dozen and had to stop myself before I started sweating out powdered sugar. I also may or may not have tried to convince Mrs. Butter Chicken to let me get this as a neck tattoo:

- I was walking down one of the incredibly crowded aisles in a random pavilion when I suddenly felt a sharp stabbing pain in my ankle and Achilles tendon. My leg went completely numb and I nearly fell down on that side. I quickly turned around to see that someone had jammed the metal footrest of a wheelchair into my leg. I was going to yell at them but then realized, how the hell can you yell at someone in a wheelchair, or someone pushing a wheelchair? I hobbled away completely furious yet entirely impotent to do anything about it. The Wheelchair — the ultimate get-out-of-jail-for-free card (unless of course we are talking about the prison of being denied bi-pedal mobility. Then it’s the stay-in-jail-forever card).

- There were multiple booths that just sold lavender-related products. Is it just me, or do you absolutely hate the smell of lavender? It ranks just above “pre-rinse compost bin” and just below “cheap Polish sausage fart” on my desirable smells list (oh, you better believe I have a list!). It’s supposed to be an aphrodisiac, but fuck that shit sideways. I’d have a hard time picking between lavender perfume and pepper spray. The only difference between them is that the beating that follows the former would be by an openly gay, rather than closeted, cop.

- When my wife and I were sitting on the lawn outside the Food Building (and while I was completely stuffing my fat fucking face with the aforementioned mini donuts), I saw a little kid run away from his parents without the parents noticing. I watched the kid stroll away without doing a damn thing. When the parents finally figured out what was going on and started losing their shit, I pointed at their kid, who was probably 50 feet away from them at that point. I am a bit of a hero, if you consider being a completely lazy-ass, donut-eating gawker who can barely muster the energy to point out a lost child a hero. My award will be a fart in an engraved jar.

So, that’s the CNE. I barely lasted four hours before freaking out and dragging my wife home. I hope your Sunday was as good as mine.  

Follow me at http://twitter.com/ButterChickenBC You’re probably already following Gourmet Spud so I’ll just leave that alone.

As most of you know, we here at Food Court Lunch devote most of our considerable free time to the “sport of queens” - cricket. We’re often seen in the parking lot at lunch time squeezing in a few “overs”, or waxing our wickets on smoke breaks. That is why we were devastated to learn that members of Pakistan’s cricket squad are (allegedly) embroiled in a match-fixing scandal. This is just another in a long line of scandals that have rocked the sport that is supposedly eponymous for fair play. Needless to say, we took the day off.

However, there is always a silver lining. For from this latest cricket disaster have emerged some instructive lessons from Pakistan on how to properly protest scandal in sports. In particular, the protestors in Lahore provided the following protest guidance:

1. Find some random animals that have seemingly nothing to do with the sport in question (donkeys apparently work just fine);
2. Assign the animals the names of the targeted players - it’s like Watership Down, only classier;
3. Pelt said animals with rotten vegetables (after all, the animals brought this on themselves);
4. Beat (or pretend to beat) the vegetable-laden animals with your shoes in a display of seemingly insane rage; and
5. Act shocked and surprised when the world (i.e., ignorant North America audiences) continues not to take your sport seriously.

Blue Menu and I are off to Chinese Tai Pei in order to stage a protest over the treatment of Canadian little leaguers. Taking a page from the cricket protesters’ playbook, we intend to repeatedly roger three-toed sloths with cucumbers until our cause gets the recognition it deserves…

No, I haven’t found it - I want to design it. A public bathroom containing every single one of the annoying things that, taken individually, make using a particular facility less of the transcendent experience it rightfully should be.

Please note that I haven’t listed ‘filthiness’ as one of the attributes, because a pube-garnished floor or a counter sloppy with mystery liquid will ruin even the Pope’s can (which, if you’ve never used it, is totally worth the eight days in a Vatican jail). In this scenario, we are building the bathroom from scratch, and it’s never been used.

The list:

1. Weak hand dryers

Obvious. Everyone wants, nay, yearns for paper towels, which cut your drying time by 80%. But cheap washrooms still refuse to give ‘em. Nowadays, newer places have started to introduce the automatic, super powerful dryers - the ones where you insert your hands into mitten-sized slots, like it’s a toaster and your hands are bread, and they then get blasted by hurricane-force winds. The problem with these is that they are louder than an airport. But they are still light years better than the old school, push-button jobbies.

Those ones take an average of four minutes to completely dry your hands, no matter how vigorously you rub. And there is always a line-up behind you, since it takes exponentially longer to dry your hands than it does to pee (if it were an assembly line, the operations manager would be fired). This then gives rise to a tendency to cut it short, which inevitably means you will run into your old high school teacher outside in the food court, with the resulting obvious-though-unacknowledged shaking of dry hand to damp.

Seriously, weak hand dryers are the worst. I would welcome a return to pay toilets if it meant I could rub my paws on some thin brown sandpaper, and get the hell out of there.

2. Separate hot and cold faucets

This is the stupidest thing you can put into a public bathroom. Two separate faucets are designed for bathtubs and only bathtubs, where you are filling a large space with water and have the time to adjust for the perfect mixture of temperature (or so I’ve heard - I don’t take baths, on account of my overwhelming manliness). If you are filling up a bathroom sink, plug in place,  just to wash your hands, you are a psychopath. But then your only other option in a two-faucet scenario is to turn them both on, and then frantically shimmy your hands back and forth, from scalding to freezing, until you get all the soap off.

This is no way for civilized humans to live. And unless your bathroom has heritage value, like it’s in an Aztec ruin or Anne Frank’s house, there’s just no excuse.

3. One urinal and one stall

And by this I mean that these are the sum total of the receptacle hardware in the bathroom. In that scenario, I can’t tell if it is a bathroom meant for one or two. Have you ever mistakenly walked into one of these (with an inviting swinging door as opposed to a lockable knob, no less) only to find a guy at the urinal? What do you do? If you go back outside and wait until he’s finished, you feel like you’re being weird, like the kid from grade school who pressed up way too close to the urinal to pee. But if you stay, the tiny space makes it feel like two people using the same washroom in someone’s house. You may as well be crossing streams.

If there was just one more urinal in there, it would be clear it was a multi-person facility. But a 1-and-1? It’s a complete wild card.

4. No hook on stall door

Maddening, particularly in winter. Where do you hang your coat? You can’t drape it on the back of the john. There’s cocaine residue and drunk guy urine on there. The floor is obviously out. So you have to hold it or drape it over your lap, which no one enjoys.

Cheap hooks are $ 7.99 at Home Depot (I checked). There’s just no excuse.

5. No reading material over urinals

I admit, this is a bit of a spoiled complaint. You can’t really expect bar owners to go the extra mile of paying for the daily newspaper and switching it out everyday just so you can read the sports section during your fifteen (or in my case, eleven hundred) second pee. But isn’t it great when they do? Even a gum commercial on one of those automatic television monitors gives you something to look at.

So while this isn’t exactly a horrible attribute, the world’s worst bathroom definitely doesn’t feature it. On the list it goes.

6. Urinal placed right in front of the door…

…so when the door swings open, there you are. It’s much worse if the men’s bathroom is right across from the women’s. I don’t need a long line-up of females knowing I lean my leg up against the bottom of the urinal to wizz. That’s between me and my chiropractor.

Anything I missed?

Because I bought my TV receiver from Skymall, I only just now learned that Canada’s entry into the 2010 Little League World Series lost its game against Chinese Taipei on Tuesday by a score of 23-0!  You read that right - 23 to Zeeeerooo.  What’s more, the game was called after 4 innings!

What kind of heartless bastard tells his team to go out and run the score up by 23 runs?  And just what the hell is “Chinese Taipei” anyway? 

Out of respect for our scrappy Canadian boys, I felt compelled to take to the internet to find out more about these Dragos of the little league baseball world.  Turns out “Chinese Taipei” is the name China calls Taiwan, as a way of distracting the world from the fact that Taiwan does not want to be part of China.  That’s all I could discover from Wikipedia, because I instantly became too bored to keep reading.

Judging by its showing in this year’s Little League World Series, Chines Taipei long ago gave up on international diplomacy to focus instead on worldwide pre-teen baseball diplomacy.  And based on the steady stream of lead-laced toys making their way to our shores from Taiwan on a daily basis, I can only assume that these diminutive powerhouses subsist on a diet of melamine and BPA which gives them the superhuman ability to drive in runners in a clutch manner.

But 23-0?  Talk about a ‘Taipei” personality.

“The Canadian players kept smiles on their faces despite the lopsided loss.”  Well sure, because they’re kids, and they know their parents are still going to take them to Dairy Queen for Peanut Buster Parfaits.  But how did those heartless bastards from Chinese Taipei celebrate their win?  You guessed it: They returned to their hyperbaric chambers at the Cobra Kai Dojo and Baseball Training Centre, awaiting their next victim.

Well, this isn’t over, Chinese Taipei.  And we haven’t forgotten your failed foray into 1980s dance pop. Consider yourself officially on Canada’s shitlist.  And don’t be surprised when you get boarded from behind by a 6′1″ 12-year-old grain-fed Albertan at the next Little League Stanley Cup Finals. 

SWEEP THE LEG!

August 25 - a defining date in our collective history. Why, you ask? Wonder no more…

1814 – Washington, D.C. is burned and White House is destroyed by British forces (from “British North America”) during the War of 1812. Canada 1, U.S.A. 0…

1944 – World War II: Paris is liberated by the Allies. Just for good measure, and to maintain their international reputation, France surrenders.

1970 - Claudia Schiffer is born, giving new meaning to my adolescent years.

1980 – Zimbabwe joins the United Nations, finally laying to rest those pesky rumours that the UN is an ineffectual international body.

1981 - Rachel Bilson is born. The world briefly stops in her honour (please return my calls…)

1987 - Blake Lively is born, rounding out the “Claudia, Rachel, Blake” triumvirate of hotness…

1987 - Whitney Stevens is born. I had no idea who Whitney Stevens was before this post, but I will not rest in my continuing quest to inform our readership until I have carefully scrutinized her entire body of work and reported back to you, our readers.

We have nothing for you today but our hopes, dreams, and wishes for a better future for all our readers. Oh, and a list of titles that you could give to pornos that were based on Shakespearean plays. This was the best we could do on short notice. Have at it, readers.

• As You Lick It
• The Merchant of Penis
• The Two Gentlemen in Vagina
• The Shaving of the Shrew
• A Midsummer Night’s Ream
• Much Ado About Fucking
• The Tem-Pissed On
• Julius Caesar, Then Fucks Her (You have to say it to understand it)
• Hamlet Me Do Anal
• Tits Andronicus
• Romeo and Juliet and Juliet’s Friend
• Richard III-Way
• The Rape of Lucrece (Huh, it didn’t even have to change)

If you come up with something good for “MacBeth” or “Troilus and Cressida”, I will be extremely impressed.

A mercifully short look at the headlines that shape your world

(Apocalypse) Coming Soon: Labatt Blue, Brewed by Molson

Canadians are expecting an identity crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen since the “I am Canadian” guy was arrested for possession of child porn.

Muskoka Bear Cub Comes to Toronto to Have Broken Leg Fixed, Leaves with Heroin Habit

If I’m a mama bear and I’ve got a cub with a broken leg, I’m going to get it looked at in Sudbury? Yeah right.  Even wildlife know that Toronto is the centre of the universe.

Wyclef Jean Said to be out of Haiti Presidential Race, Fugees

Turns out the first four questions on the application form are: (i) Are you a resident? (ii) Do you Speak French or Creole? (iii) Do you operate a Fraudulent or at least incompetent charity? and (iv) Can you hold a tune?

Bully Street Broads? Women’s Hockey Debated at Summit

As a purist, I am heartened to see that the women have adopted the whole ‘playoff beard’ tradition.

Many US Kids Confused by Equal Sign Also Have Difficulty with Similes

That hasn’t seemed to stop them from using ‘like’ as every third word when they talk.  [ed. note: I hate teens].

Woman Dies in Hwy. 69 Crash, May Have Been Upended

Either that or she was going the wrong way.

For a period of about five years, I lived close enough to work that I walked everyday. It took me about twenty minutes, and I loved it. In that amount of time, I could listen to the first four songs of a new album or a podcast on my iPod, pick up a coffee at my neighbourhood Tim Horton’s, and stretch my legs out before I commenced sitting on my ass for the next ten hours. It was delightful.

Then my fiancee and I bought a house in the suburbs (which, as I understand, are chock full of heartbreak), and started to drive into work. And holy hell, talk about a 180. My morning commute transformed from a breezy, stress-free stroll into an enraging exercise in misanthropy.

My trip is now divided into two parts; the initial twenty minutes on the highway, and ten to fifteen more spent puttering along in downtown Toronto traffic. The second part sucks, with its slow crawls, suicidal cyclists and reckless, largely non-white cab drivers all incrementally chipping away at my sanity. But surprisingly, it’s the relatively rapid highway portion that really brings out the worst in me. Because it’s on the highway that I have the opportunity to enact my one-sided, petty measures of revenge.

My go-to move? It’s an old chestnut. And it starts with my absolute hatred for people who follow me too closely. Now I’ve got a bit of a heavy foot. It’s something that I’ve been trying to curb after six speeding tickets and a needlessly high monthly car insurance bill, but it still happens. On a 100 km/h highway, I’ll usually do between 120 and 130 (about 75 to 80 miles per/h for you Americers), and I drive in the left lane. I’m not trying to brag - that’s just how I roll.

My point is, I should rarely, if ever, be subjected to aggressive tailgating for driving too slow in the fast lane. And if I am, I gladly move over to the right and let the other person by. But what absolutely drives me nuts is when I pull over to the right, and the person follows and stays right behind me. That is the worst type of driver. That is the driver who is not only happy to allow me to take the risk of getting the speeding ticket (because I’ll naturally be the one passing any speed trap first), but who does so in a way that means if I have to slam on my brakes for someone in front of me, he is going to smash into my bumper (which has happened to me twice). There is nothing wrong with the first part per se; in fact, I love it when you’re on a highway for a long period of time, and you make that symbiotic connection with another driver where you both share the lead for equal periods of time to split the risk of a ticket. But the second part absolutely drives me insane.

So my go-to move is this: after the person has followed me into the right lane and it dawns on me what is going down, I slow down to a crawl. Like, 10 km/h below the speed limit. The person will invariably become confused. He usually lingers for a little bit, thinking that something must be temporarily distracting this conveniently-placed speedster who was clipping along at a nice pace just a short moment ago. But after a minute or so, he’ll get antsy and pull back into the left lane to pass me. And that’s when I immediately pull in behind him, inches from his bumper, and follow him like a wakeboarder until I’m sure he’s gotten the god damn point. Then I pull up beside him, give him the “incredulous grandpa” head shake, and speed off on my way. Check and mate.

Now, in my calmer moments, I can accept that most of these people aren’t following me too close to be pricks or to annoy me. They are just bad drivers. But when it’s actually happening, it doesn’t matter. They become my enemy. And I become Darth Vader in one of his cozy little TIE Fighters, making them pay for their refusal to pledge allegiance to the Empire’s cause.

But when I used to walk to work - what’s the worst that could happen? A crowded sidewalk? I was an expert sidler. Snow or rain? I’m not made of salt. Running into a co-worker on the way who you’d rather not spend the whole walk talking to, but who is going to the exact same place you are, so you pretty much have no choice but to remove your earphones and settle in for twenty minutes of bliss-interrupting awkward banter?

Actually, that sucked. But I’d take that in a heartbeat over the freeloading barnacles who dangerously leech off my blazing speed.

I guess my dream is to one day win the lottery and become a full-time dog walker. They get to walk for a living, all while hanging out with dogs, who are notoriously respectful of proper following distances. But unless and until that happens, I’m stuck with my morning slog, and the passive-aggressive games I play to get through it.

Feel free to share your go-to road rage move below. We can help each other.

A few months ago I was out for dinner in Montreal with a group of friends, including the esteemed General Tao. Picture “My Dinner With Andre” but with three other people and an exponentially greater number of Batman and pro wrestling references. Classy, huh? Anyway, one of the attendees (we shall call him “Bibbity”) was in the middle of relaying an anecdote or story when he dropped the following sentence on the rest of us:

“It’s like that line in that Jay-Z song — I like a lotta poubada, and…”

Sorry, what?

“I like a lotta poubada.”

Collectively we had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

“You know, poubada.”

That’s not a word.

“It’s in the song.”

What song?

“You know, that one. The poubada one.”

…

“You know, “Can I Get A…”.”

Each of us at the table scrambled for our blackberries to find out what the hell Bibbity was talking about.

Let’s see the video for the song. Go to 1:55 of the video.

I have no idea what she says, but I am pretty sure it’s not “I like a lotta poubada.” Why? Because “poubada” is not a word. Not even remotely. We asked Bibbity about this.

“I don’t know. I thought it was some rap thing. I assumed it could be used universally as some kind of noun, verb or adjective.”

As in “I grabbed her poubada.” Or “Her ass is poubada.” Or “I am going to poubada the shit out of that.”

The actual lyrics?

“Git Up, Git Out and get somethin” Shit!
I like a, lot of P-rada, Alize and Vodka

Remember, folks. The Devil Wears Poubada.

I can understand getting the lyrics to a song wrong. However, hearing a made-up word and just going with that as the lyrics, that’s a new one.

We tried to convince him that “Alize” was made up as well. No dice.