(Monday.  1:34 in the morning.  Air Canada Centre.  Arena is empty, except for Bryan Colangelo, who is on the phone in his office.)

Bryan Colangelo: …he’s fast, you say?  The fastest you’ve ever seen?  Hey, now we’re talking.  Tell me, how does he get along with the other sherpas?

(Suddenly, there is a knock at the door.)

Colangelo: (startled) Huh?  Who’s there?  Show yourself!

(Door opens.  Jose Calderon peeks his head inside.)

Jose Calderon: Yen-eral Mana-yer?  It ish just me, Ho-say.

Colangelo: Jose, it is 1:30 in the morning!

Calderon: I know, but I could no wait to talk at you.  Ish very important.

Colangelo: Alright, Jose.  (into phone) I’ll call you back.  (to Jose) That was Jampa, our scout in the Himalayas.  I’m trying to pick us up a defensive stopper.  So, what is it?

Calderon: Well, Yen-eral Mana-yer, it is about Tee-yay.

Colangelo: T.J. Ford?  Funny. I could have sworn I traded him… anyway, go on.

Calderon: Well, I am very worried.  He ish having much trouble now that he ish no longer starting, and thish ish making him muy, muy sad.  I think it would be best for the team if he wash the starting point guard de neuvo.

Colangelo: Why, Jose!  That is very selfless of you.

Calderon: (blushes) Oh, Mishter Colan-yelo, you are embarr-asshing me.

Colangelo: No, Jose, I am very impressed.  There are not many players who would do this for their teams.  And I think you are right.  Starting would mean a lot to T.J., and could be just the shake-up our team needs.  I’m going to call Coach Mitchell.  But I won’t forget what you’ve done.

Calderon: I just want what ish best for the team, ish all.  I will now leave you to be.

Colangelo: Thank you, Jose.

Calderon: Shall I close the door, or leave it open?

Colangelo: Open is fine.  Goodnight, Jose.

Calderon: Good night. (leaves)

Colangelo: (smiles) Well, I’ll be… (picks up phone)

***

(Tuesday.  1:18 in the morning.  Air Canada Centre.  Colangelo is in his office, doing one-armed push-ups.)

Colangelo: Seventy-six…seventy-seven…ugh, push it…seventy-eight…T-1000, T-1000…

(Suddenly, there is a knock at the door.)

Colangelo: (startled) Gah!  Who’s there!?!

(Jose Calderon peeks his head inside.)

Calderon: Ish me, Ho-say.

Colangelo: (sighs) Come in.

Calderon: Mishter Colan-yelo, it is about Primoz Brezec.  I have been noticing that ever since he came to us, he hash been having trouble making friends.  I think it may be because hish locker is all the way at the end, near, how you say el servicio…the toilets?

Colangelo: And?

Calderon: And I thought if I gave him my locker, he would be closh-er to the other players.  And that would help him make friends.

Colangelo: This couldn’t wait until morning?

Calderon: I wanted to set it up before he came in tomorrow.  He looked so lonely at the shoot-around. 

Colangelo: Fine, Jose.  That’s very nice of you.  Now please, I have work to do.

Calderon: Gracias, I go now. (leaves)

Colangelo: (sighs) My word.  (drops to floor, resumes push-ups) One…

(more…)

AOL Sportsblog put up a post yesterday morning to discuss the trial of Tammy Thomas, the first athlete to go to trial with respect to perjury committed during the federal BALCO investigation. The post quotes a San Francisco Chronicle article that details the strange effects that steroids had on Thomas, an Olympic cyclist:

Thomas seemed to be in the midst of shaving her face when an Olympic drug tester paid her an unannounced visit. …

Prosecutors have called Thomas a “hard-core” steroid user who underwent a physical transformation while using banned drugs. On Monday, a Colorado endocrinologist who examined Thomas in 2000 said the cyclist’s use of the steroid depo-testosterone had caused “severe virilization.”

Thomas had a deep voice, full beard, chest hair and even signs of male pattern baldness, Dr. Margaret Weirman testified.

Oh, come on. That smacks of bullshit. I mean, look at her coming out of court yesterday. She looks fine. She’s no supermodel, but let’s be fair, shall we?

That’s not what she used to look like? Well, I certainly can’t see it being that different, because…

Oh.

Well then, forget what I said.

It would be painfully obvious to any reader who accidentally stumbles upon our humble website, but it’s worth noting once again that the editors of Food Court Lunch operate this blog as a not-for-profit website (ed. note: actually, we operate at a $150 loss). 

This puts Food Court Lunch in the prestigious 0.000001% of websites not designed as vehicles for margin advertisements for hipster t-shirts or porn.  It’s all part of our commitment to provide our readers with the best in free sports- and Canadian progressive politics-related comedy. 

Granted, the fact that Food Court Lunch doesn’t produce any income can make life difficult for your editors.  Marriages become strained to the breaking point, bills go unpaid, and embarrassing medical conditions are exarcerbated with hilarious consequences.  

Naturally, each of the editors of Food Court Lunch is forced to maintain actual, gainful employment in order to survive.  For some of us, this can impact our ability to devote the time necessary to craft the comedic oeuvres to which you have become accustomed.  For instance, due to my employer’s draconian internet use policy, I am writing this post via the text browser on my cellphone while crouched in a broom closet behind the car hoist.

But rest assured: the fact that we all have day jobs doesn’t mean we’re not fully committed to our readership.  In fact, the editors of Food Court Lunch closely monitor the reading habits of our viewership to tailor our posts to their needs.  Indeed, as a result of extensive work with focus groups, we’ve been able to identify some of the particular likes and dislikes of our readers.

 For example, we know that you love posts about awkward television commercials involving robotic sports stars shaving each other, as well as posts that bring into question the veracity of professional wrestling.  On the flip side, we know that you dislike posts about Elton John, xenophobic municipal politicians, and God help anyone who dares question the automobile supremacy of the Pontiac Parisienne.

But perhaps most telling about our humble blog is the list of search terms that brings readers to Food Court Lunch.  These search terms say a lot about the minds behind a website, and in the case of Food Court Lunch, these search terms reveal that we are juvenile, unfocused, and morally corrupt:

What a proud day for this group of community college grads.  And congratulations to you readers, too, and good luck with your boolean searches for “blackface strippers with lazy eyes” and “Tatanka peeing on Benji Madden”.  After all, it is ultimately your schizophrenic internet searches that make Food Court Lunch what it is: a not-for-profit money pit.

When I was a young lad growing up on the sweeping plains of the Great White North, my pre-adult life was spent in eager anticipation of a single day every year that eclipsed all others. A day so special that the rest of the year passed almost without notice, serving merely as a prelude to the main event - the arrival of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. It was like god (through his/her/its North American-based media proxy, Sports Illustrated) decided to combine all the excitement of Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali and Kwanzaa into a single day of glory for young adolescent males. The months of suffering through weekly journalistic offerings on the ins and outs of the NCAA baskteball programs or the strengths and weaknesses of the Norris Division suddenly seemed almost a worthwhile endeavour when one finally gazed upon the captivating Elle Macpherson or her non-unionized European equivalent, Paulina Porizkova. And who can forget the unbridled excitement (among other emotions) generated by the release of the coveted 25th Anniversary Edition, with a young Ms. Kathy Ireland staring back from the cover of a veritable novella of glorious swimsuit-themed images… Life simply didn’t get any better.

Sadly, the youth of today will never experience this same joy. For theirs is a life of internet media, marked by instantaneous access to every imaginable fetish and sexual imagery that would make poor Kathy Ireland roll in her grave (were she dead and not cremated…). Whereas I spent the vast majority of my youth strategizing with my friends in the hopes of purchasing our first Playboy (which typically involved brainstorming about what permissible product purchases would make us seem “of age” to the store clerk - cans of mixed vegetables and feminine hygiene products were generally considered to be the frontrunners), today’s youth can view detailed video footage of women dressed as clowns pleasuring Shetland ponies to the score of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s lastest musical with the click of but a few buttons (or so I have been told…).

(more…)

If you are anything like me, you like to start off your Saturday morning (which follows a night of hard drinking on Good Friday) with a dose of TV porn. However, some people (let’s call them “Godless Hollywood Communists”) make it hard for you to find porn on a Saturday morning. Instead of getting easy access to a skin flick, you have to painstakingly scour through all of your channels to find a glimpse of skin good enough to get your juices flowing. As I was combing through the “300″ section of my Rogers Cable choices, I came across this little gem on the “Silver Screen Classics” channel (321 for your future reference). I was curious (Bi-curious? No, just curious).

Intriguing. I kept on watching and waiting for the small boys on the screen to stop looking around the haunted house and for the hot, hot action (Hott Axxxtion?) to start.

Still nothing. Those damned kids were still exploring the house. Wait, was this gay porn? Kiddie porn? Does NAMBLA have its own channel? Did Bryan Singer do a short film I didn’t know about? Oh, man, this was going to get awkward. I listened for the tell-tale wail of sirens outside my door, again.

C’mon! Get the kids off the screen and get to the nasty stuff! For Christ’s sake, Sex TV is still showing CityLine before noon. What’s a guy to do? Wait forever with his sweat pants around his ankles? It’s enough to make me think that Silver Screen Classics may have been showing “The Boy Next Door“, which doesn’t exactly feature the ribald images that I was looking for.

What a disappointment. I was only able to masturbate two times to it. Silver Screen Classics, you’ll be hearing from me! My letter will be the one with the sticky Kleenex in the envelope.

While Canada has a reputation internationally for being hockey-obsessed, those from the Great White North know that figure skating is really king.  It’s a dirty little secret here that most hockey players are failed figure skaters. For proof, one need not look further than the graffitti in the bathroom stalls; for every “Gretzky for P.M.”, an “Elvis Stojko for Queen” is never far away.

So this past weekend was a banner one for Canucknuckleheads, when Sudbury, Ontario’s own Jeffrey Buttle captured gold at the World Figure Skating Championships in Goteborg, Sweden.  He was the first Canadian world champ since the aforementioned Stojko left the competition in a bloody, if smartly assembled heap in Switzerland eleven years ago.

But what should have been an unfettered celebration of the triumph of an unlikely under-labradoodle was anything but, as silver-medal winner Brian Joubert of - big shocker here - France attempted to sully Buttle’s accomplishment with allegations that he only emerged victorious because he took the easy way out.

You see, Buttle won the title despite not attempting a quad jump all week.  For the uninitiated, a quad jump is where the skater twirls a transcendent four times in the air, rather than the standard, merely magical three.  Said Joubert:

“I am steel disappointed bee-cows Jeffrey did ze perfect competition.  ‘E did not do mistakes, but ‘e didn’t try quad jumps, and I was dees-appointed a-bowt it.  The new judging system eez like that.  Eet’s better to do simple and clean than to try some-zing diff-ee-cult.”

Zut alors!  Save the sour grapes for the Bordeaux, Brian.  While it is true that Buttle did not attempt a quad, consider:

• that Buttle smoked Joubert (not literally) in the scoring by a full ten points; 
• that all four of Buttle’s jumps had a difficulty level of four (the highest), while Joubert had two fours, a two and a three;
• that, according to the Globe & Mail, “Joubert also got docked for taking off on the wrong edge of two flip jumps”, which you just do NOT do, EVER;
• the irony of a Frenchman calling out anyone for cowardice.

Like a true Canadian, Buttle handled the accusations with grace bordering on sassiness: “He’s entitled to his opinion.  But I guess, today, the judges agreed with me.”

We cannot wait until these two meet on the ice surface of battle (or should I say, Buttle?) again.  But until that time, Joubert can console himself by resting his head on his brie pillow, biting down on a medal of shameful, shameful silver.  

Vive le Canada!

Last night the Toronto Raptors kicked the living shit out of the the Miami Heat 96-54. Being a Raps fan, this normally would excite me, but then I took a look at a list of the players the Heat put on the court last night. Basically, the Toronto Raptors did the basketball equivalent of beating, robbing and pissing on a retarded person. Congratulations. Maybe there’s a blind guy around who they can push down a staircase. Let’s check out the Miami roster:

Ricky Davis - SF
Earl Barron - C
Mark Blount - C
Daequan Cook - SG
Chris Quinn - PG
Bobby Jones - SG
Joel Anthony - C

The players on the roster are also more commonly known as: Poison, Who?, Dud, Oden’s Coat-Tail Rider, Slow White Point Guard, Huh?, and Really? If I was a Heat fan, I wouldn’t just wear a paper bag on my head — I would set that bag on fire. It’s like Miami management is attempting to re-enact the movie “Major League” on the hardwood. Accordingly, Heat fans can look forward to a summer of Dwyane Wade suicide attempts and rumours of Shawn Marion drunk-dialling Steve Nash and begging to be taken back. Good times for everyone. On behalf of all of us at Food Court Lunch, we say to the Heat:

God, I love going through my old comic book collection these days. It not only entertains, but it gives me solid advice, too. In fact, just the other day I was being molested by a neighbour and I completely forgot how I was supposed to deal with it. After several minutes of crying, a three-hour shower, a few attempts at cutting and a quick perusal of my comic collection, I finally figured it out.

In retrospect, maybe it’s not a good idea to rely on comic book ads like this one to deal with issues like sexual abuse. I mean, should you really trust a man in a mask and what appears to be the ghosts of dead abuse victims on this topic? The guy in the mask? Yeah, he’s the one who probably made the “night visit” that started all of this. But was it your uncle or your cousin? No one knows — the mask!!! The ghosts? If they are so fucking smart, they wouldn’t be dead in the first place. How’s this for advice, Power Pack? You shouldn’t have gone in the stranger’s car.

There is a lot of talk in Toronto these days that the Leafs should give up their faint hope of making the playoffs and instead tank the season in order to get a shot at Steve Stamkos, the potential number one draft pick wunderkind. Well, apparently Vesa Toskala has made up his mind on the subject.

That only could have been worse if he had put his mask on backwards and then taken a swing at the puck, baseball-style.

If you are a young, impressionable boy looking for good advice, who can you turn to? Your dad? That useless wage-slave? No way. The only one you can really trust is O.J. Simpson. What kind of shoes should I wear, Juice?

Several years later, O.J. followed advice in a similar vein: “Show Them Your Gloves”. The thing was, they weren’t his gloves.

It’s a good thing that O.J. wasn’t wearing the Spot-Bilts while stomping through the Brown/Goldman crime scene. Nothing says “guilty” like skin, hair and gore matted to your cleats. Stick with the smooth soled Bruno Maglis, right, Juice?

However, he could have used the Spot-Bilts at other points in his life. Sometimes you just need an extra step when you are on the spot.