Wassup & Other Nonsuch

We've been knocking back OJ, frying bacon, cooking eggs and griddlin' waffles in honor of the OJ sentencing - 13 years to the day he was acquitted for the murder of Nicole.

Talk about karmic payback. I still can't see a white SUV and not think of him.

Anyhoo, that was SO breakfast. Lunch this weekend was an overdose of church meetings sandwiched between soccer games and Nutcracker rehearsals. I'm now teaching in Holy Son's middle school class, where we romp through world religions at nanosecond speed. Owing to the auspicious occasion of the Jewish high holy days right now, we're on Judaism.

And dinner is of the hamburger variety - school bbq Friday night, and then the kids and I had a burger last night at A&W - I love Teen burgers but A&W has not been available in Washington State until just recently, I presume. This particular A&W is situated in a precarious area near the Sam's Club - some weirdo walked into the A and dub and he started cussing and yelling up a storm - Holy Hub noted to the kids that that's what happens when you do drugs. Umm, yup, pretty much. We saw quite a few homeless men wandering the streets with their shopping carts as well.

We were there, as I noted, to check out the Sam's Club. I was so curious about Sam's Club, I made everyone stop what they were doing yesterday afternoon so we could go check it out. I had no idea it was Costco. Why didn't someone tell me that? Jeesh. So of course, owing to its look and act and smell like Costco-ness, we spent way too much money on stuff we probably don't need.

But it was the post-dinner kick-back that was most energizing. Hockey season is back - which means the snow should be flying soon somewhere - let it not be here! - and CBC Sports was busy hyping the new Hockey Night in Canada anthem.

They're down to 5 finalists - we listened to them all - not bad, the lot of them - but there was one clear winner in my mind. Have a listen and see if you can guess my pick.

Don't you hate those games ~ Guess what I'm thinking, come on, you know you want to? Like you care. Or maybe you do. Or maybe you don't. Some do, some don't, some will, some won't, I might. Vote for my pick, that is.

Lazy, Crazy, Hazy Days of Summer

Lazy
Today was the first day in a long while that the whole house (save Holy Hub, who is a 5am creature of work habit) slept in. Holy Son awoke at 10:50 am. Long live sloth.

And yet summer, in all its lazy splendour, barely begins and evidence of its demise is all around us. The more audacious leaves of the bunch dare to turn colour. Bathing suits are already marked down for clearance in the stores as the merchandisers impatiently prepare to bring the back to school stuff in. And the seasonal camping gear displays are now slim to nil. How sad is that?

Summer is short enough already. But I'm doing my best to ignore the department stores and their mixed up calendar.

Crazy
The latter part of June saw us prepping for our crazy Canuck street party. We were mostly on track with getting the house in order and food/drink together when we received a last minute call from out-of-town (country actually) friends that they were a couple of hours away and heading our direction with baby in tow.

The weather was gorgeous during their stay and one of the highlights was being able to attend the local Canadian Consulate barbeque, with Canadian wines and beers on perma-pour and Cadbury chocolate bars in huge abundance. We got to play hose hockey - our team name was The Touques - and we sucked which was not entirely good, considering the game entailed blowing a ping pong ball through various team member hoses attached to the sides of the blow-up hockey "arena" through to the opponent's goal.

These friends departed on the last Monday of June but not before said young mat-leave wife, who shall remain nameless, divested herself of the equivalent of someone's annual salary on anything and everything she could think to buy, most especially if it sported a designer name and a stiletto heel. We see our fair share of Canadian visitors who come to shop but she took the proverbial cake. Our friend advises that the shopping didn't let up even enroute back to the border. They couldn't even open their car door without something falling out. It brings new meaning to the term loaded. May the Lord have mercy on him. They've barely been married a year. He's in for it, I think.

I like when our life is graced with real shoppers though. It helps put things into perspective for Holy Hub, who harbours the erroneous belief that I'm a shopper. She's way out of my league, I'm afraid.

Anyways, no sooner did they drive off, then sheets were being washed and changed for our next arrival, a few hours later, of my sis-in-law, who caught took the Clipper over from Victoria with nanaimo bar ingredients in tow (Bird's vanilla custard pudding mix). At 5am the next day, I was busy making a triple batch of this quintessentially Canadian dessert for our party that night.

We were blessed to have 83 degree weather for the party that night and hosted the entire affair on our front driveway, which is quite large. Somewhere between 40 and 50 people showed up from the cul de sac, our old neighborhood and various other nooks and crannies of our life here. Holy Daughter set up a Canada Customs booth and our cardboard cut-out Mountie acted as sufficient deterrent for those hoping to sneak into the country without appropriate i.d.

Lucky for them, she was feeling generous that night. She permitted library cards, Costco and Safeway cards and even a red and white debit card. All visitors were then duly branded with a Canada tattoo and allowed entrance, but not before having to attempt to answer a series on not so skilled-testing questions about Canada. Holy Hub passed with flying colours - I barely did. I couldn't resist throwing a dud question into the mix that even the Canadians in the crowd answered wrong - see if you can find it.

1. What are Canada’s two national sports?
A. Ice Hockey, Basketball B. Baseball, Tennis C. Basketball, Lacrosse D. Lacrosse, Ice Hockey

2. How many lakes are there in Canada?
A. Unknown B. 500 thousand C. 1 million D. 5 million

3. Who was the first Prime Minister of Canada?
A. Alexander Mackenzie B. John A. MacDonald C. Louis Riel D. Wilfred Laurier

4. Canada has two national symbols. What are they?
A. Beaver & Maple Leaf B. Maple Leaf & Moose C. Beaver & Grizzly Bear D. Moose & Salmon

5. Canada has the longest covered bridge in the world (1,282 feet long). Where is it located?
A. West Montrose, ON B. La Sarre, QE C. Gold River, BC D. Hartland, NB

6. What university developed the world's first anti-gravity suit?
A. University of Toronto B. Simon Fraser University C. University of British Columbia D. Queen’s University

7. Andrew Bonar Law was the only Canadian ever to do what?
A. Win the Indianapolis 500 B. Serve as Prime Minister of Great Britain C. Board the MIR space station D. Win the Tour De France

8. How many National Parks are there in Canada?
A. 84 B. 25 C. 40 D. 60

9. In which year did Canada adopt the metric system?
A. 1975 B. 1985 C. 1967 D. 1970

10. How many time zones are there in Canada?
A. 6 B. 8 C. 4 D. 5

11. What is the highest mountain in Canada?
A. Mount Forbe B. Mount Logan C. Mount Kitchener D. Mount Lefroy

12. What is the longest river in Canada?
A. Fraser River B. St. Laurence River C. Mackenzie River D. Red River

13. What is Canada's most northern island?
A. Queen Charlotte B. Ellesmere C. Victoria D. Baffin

14. Which of the following authors is not Canadian?
A. W.O. Mitchell B. Margaret Atwood C. A.A. Milne D. Michael Ondaatje

15. Which Province has the largest concentration of moose in North America?
A. Alberta B. British Columbia C. Newfoundland D. Quebec

16. When was “Oh Canada” proclaimed as Canada’s national anthem?
A. 1870 B. 1935 C. 1980 D. 1999

17. What year did Canada quit using dog sleds as the main mode of transportation?
A. 1898 B. 1903 C. 1911 D. 1932

18. Which one of these inventions was not Canadian?
A. Roller skate B. Basketball C. IMAX D. Artificial Heart

19. Which one of these games was not created in Canada?
A. Trivia Pursuit B. Pictionary C. Scrabble D. Balderdash

20. 80% of Canadians live where?
A. In Igloos B. In Ontario C. With a Caribou D. Close to the US border

We featured Hockey Night in Canada street shootouts and Capture the Americanadian Flag in the back forest for the kids, while adults got to eat, drink Canadian beer or our own special yuckaflux, another Canadian tradition, and be merry. Holy Hub, who wore a cowboy hat made of out Molson Canadian beer boxes, made a saskatoon berry (a crunchy blue-ish berry indigenous to Alberta and Saskatchewan) cobbler in the Dutch oven that proved popular with Canadians and Americans alike. I looked equally as festive, decked out as I was with my Mountie-ish hat and RCMP apron.

And a fine time was had by all. One neighbour whispered that the block has never seen so much fun.


But the fun and frivolity didn't stop there. We then kicked into Holy Hub birthday mode with family celebrations starting the very next day, since Holy Hub and I were planning to be out for the evening of his birthday. Not just anywhere out but at the BB King concert, no less. A few months ago, I went searching the Net to see if I could maybe surprise Holy Hub with a flight to wherever BB King happened to be playing the night of his birthday. Imagine my surprise to find out that he was booked to play here, of all far flung places. Gotta love synchronicity.

So off we went, with little more than our newly-purchased beach chairs in tow, to our first outdoor concert at the local winery. Talk about feeling like a couple of naked, country bumpkins showing up to the city faire. All the couples - and that was pretty much the demographic - 50+ white couples - were decked out with little picnic baskets, bottles of wine, intricately-etched wine glasses, miniature cutting boards with cheese knives, imported cheeses, grapes, the whole wine and cheese enchilada.

I had thought to pack some cookies and chips. We bought our wine and our kiosk dinner there and then proceeded to sip serupticiously out of plastic cups and dine in dubious plastic fork and plate pleasure. And then we did what all good concert goers do - we grooved to the King. He was as much a delight to listen to, as he regailed the crowd with tales of yesteryear and now, as he was to watch. 82 years old and still oozing the blues. It was fun. I haven't smiled that much or felt inclined to break into musically-inspired tears so much in a very long time.

So little wonder that come the 4th of July, I was plum tuckered. We flew an American flag on the house for the first time - it was a landmark day in liminal citizenry. Attempting to hit the hay at 9pm that night in these parts, however, was an exercise in futility. Whereas our old neighbourhood was pretty quiet and devoid of covert pyros, our new neighborhood was a vestige of such. Firecrackers were shooting off from every side and in every direction. I felt like I was the lone dud popcorn kernel in a pan of hot oil that night. I finally gave up, got up, and with Holy Hub and the kids newly returned from their high hilltop fireworks viewing vantage point one neighborhood over, I joined them for a quick dogwalk around the block.

Hazy
Not even a week later, we would return for the same walk around the block in order to view the charred remains of a neighbour's house that went up in flames in the wee hours of yestermorn when, to quote Edgar Alan Poe, "each seperate dying ember" (of the lady's squashed cigarette butt) "wrought its ghost upon the floor." It was a cataclysmic awakening outside our bedroom window with fire sirens wailing, helicopters hovering, embers exploding, flames raging and smoke billowing.

And it was surreal on many fronts, to say the least. I had just finished drafting my memoir chapter on Fire, which details our own family tale of how much went up in smoke the day our house burned to the ground on January 7, 1970. Fire was very much on my mind. It's never been very far outside my consciousness, actually.

When I was the same age as Holy Son now, a house nearby to our own in Kenilworth blew-up - the fatality of a gas leak. I remember riding my bike over and standing there, aghast and in wide-eyed stare at the gaping hole where their house and home once stood.

As I trace our own married life and times - (two decades come August), I can't help but notice how often we have been touched by tragedy equally as close to home. In Edmonton circa mid-9os and only a few blocks away from our house, a young mother was brutally murdered by an intruder. Holy Hub studiously went about installing a house alarm system for us and I slept with one eye open each night for years thereafter.

In Islamabad, a Swiss man was senselessly murdered while hiking on the scenic-lookout hiking trail across the road from our home. Holy Hub studiously went about fostering increased security and international relations in our parts by plying the Checkpoint Charlie police at our corner with all-you-can-drink tea and chat.

One year later back in Canada, our brother's house caught fire. All escaped relatively unscathed but as I recall, he wore that tragedy with "like father, like son" pride for years to come.

And then not long after settling into our Calgary home, our neighbor just three houses up was found dead at her front entry landing ~ supposed the legacy of a random intrusion. But those of us who knew her to be estranged from her disturbed husband, an aldermanic hopeful in the previous civic election and fundamental Christian with a troubled teenhood, knew different. Rumours quickly spread of how the kids were found locked in their bedroom upstairs. What mother locks her kids in their bedroom unless fearing a danger far greater than fire?

Three years ago, tragedy again struck close. Shortly after moving to the U.S., we awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of fire engines. Turns out, a disgrunted divorceed man a couple of blocks away had set fire to the house for the insurance claim. The house next door caught fire, as well, and three years later, it has only just been rebuilt. The burnt remains and blacked shell of a car in the attached garage of Mr. Arsonist's house (who now sits in jail to ponder the perils of playing with fire) stand as testament to his bonfire of vanity.

And here again, the home fires burned. "A spark neglected makes a mighty fire" is perhaps the greatest of Herrick's understatements, as our now homeless neighbors have learned.

Suffice to say, I'm thankful for a little quiet on the western front from hereonin this summer. The closest I wish to get to fire this summer is at marshmallow stick's length away, superstitiously chanting "I hate white rabbits."

Games Without Frontiers

The Iceman Cometh
If you were to play Name That Tune in 5 notes (OK, max 12) and ask all 33.4 million Canadians to play along, you'd get a 99,9% accuracy rate on one particular song.

What tune am I referring to? Canada's penultimate anthem, of course. The one Wayne Gretzky dubiously dubs Canada's best song and arguably, the one that is the most identifiable sound in hockey, next to a slapshot.

If you're Canadian or a weekend NHL fan, then you know the tune and you also know the recent hooplah surrounding it. It's the Hockey Night in Canada theme song and the news of the week is that the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) is supposedly giving thought to not renewing the licensing on it.

I say 'supposedly' because we all know there was something rotten in the state of Ottawa and television negotiations in going viral with this "leaked" news. It's likely all part of the negotiations - appeal to the national sentiment in order to bring some sense and sensibility to an unsettled, $2.5 licensing lawsuit that the CBC wants the composer to make go away. Unsettling is definitely the word of the day in the matter. The outcry and uproar this has caused cannot even begin to be measured. It's a veritable afront to our national identity.

It's as near and dear to Canucks as God Bless America is to Americans. Perhaps even more so.

The song, composed by Doris Claman, came into being in the late 60s and it soon became the musical Saturday night battle cry and beacon call to armchair hockey fans nationwide to gather round their black and white, rabbit-eared television sets to watch Canada's hockey greats duke it out on ice. One didn't need to look at a clock if the TV was on....you just knew what time it was when you heard those opening melody...duhn da duhn daduhn, duhn da duhndaduhn, duhn da duhn daduhn duh....doodoodoodoo dooodoooo (tune fades significantly offkey)...

Ask any Canadian, go ahead. We all have our own rendition and way of bastardizing the HNIC theme song. Some of us go deep baratone, some whistle, some even brandish an air hockey stick and feign superstar hockey player position while doing so. But we all know it. It's permanently etched on our psyche to the degree that if there were to be tribal lineups in heaven, all the dead Canadian angels could easily be the choir at the heavenly hockey match.

That's the funny thing about being Canadian. We don't have much to show for our cultural identity that we can truly brand and brag about internationally - not like many other nations. But the few things we have - like our Molson beer, and our Tim Horton's doughnuts and our hockey theme song and our toques and curling brooms - we hang onto those tenaciously and if anyone tries to take those away, we get very pugnacious and well, like right some panicky, eh.

*Update*: CTV announced yesterday that they have bought the rights to the song, which is the ultimate in media scoops, considering this was a CBC deal, and that they intend to use the song during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Way to go, CTV. We love you. And they know this. They had the foresight to see that Canadians will feel a heightened sense of gratitude, loyalty and warm fuzzies now when they think of CTV. That's how much we love our song. For shame, CBC, although that's the difference between private sector take-action decisiveness and crown corporation procrastination.

Games Without Frontiers

Andre has a red flag, Chiang Ching's is blue

They all have hills to fly them on except for Lin Tai Yu

Dressing up in costumes, playing silly games

Hiding out in tree-tops shouting out rude names

Whistling tunes we hide in the dunes by the seaside

Whistling tunes we piss on the goons in the jungle

It's a knockout

If looks could kill they probably will

In games without frontiers-wars without tears

Peter Gabriel, "Games Without Frontiers"

I never gave much thought to my Canadianness in Canada. It has only been through travel and living elsewhere as an expat that I've been able to see my nationality and my home and native land in new perspective and through new eyes.

I still get the accent thing all the time....people noticing that I apparently have one. And of course, while I've adapted to new ways of being ~ such as Americanizing my spelling, and alternating between saying either z or zed when verbalizing my e-mail address to locals, in direct correlation to how accommodating and/or sadistic I'm feeling when they inquire, "can you repeat that, I didn't hear that last letter?"), or refraining from barking whenever a neighbor talks about their roof (Holy Hub and I now just look at each other and smile and wink instead). It's a round-about kinda way of saying that while I've integrated, I'm still fiercely, fiercely Canadian.

I like to think I've become a little less tribal and apologetic in the three years since moving here though. My angry imperialism rants have lessened (somewhat), American politics leaves me feeling more indifferent than not of late, and I'm beginning to warm up to the notion that as light-year different as Americans and Canadian are in both worldview and character, we are perhaps not to very far apart.

But then schmidt happens that tests my magnanimousness. Like this article in Parade magazine last Sunday, which really pissed me off. Sometimes there is no better way to descibe a certain slant of anger than being pissed off. And I say that because those are the very words I uttered to the republic upon reading the propaganda, I mean article, from beginning to end. Although God knows, there will not be an end in sight to the issue soon. Pissed off also fits because the high Arctic is nothing if not the last unclaimed geographic pissing match and yet another so-called Great Game to be played between power-hungry nations.

Which, just thinking about the whole thing again, gives me pause for desperate prayer. Dear Great Game Scorekeeper, if Stephen Harper has nothing more to show for his legacy as PM in this early years of this new millennium, let it at least be that he does the right thing in our extreme north strong and free. And if you're going to let anyone else piss on the tundra snow, let it then be Norway or Denmark.

I don't trust this whole hunger for oil thing and the fact that all of a sudden, the U.S. has suddenly wised up to the fact that oil rights and mining reserves are unnaturally/unfairly rich in northern Alberta, the NWT and in Nunavut. I'm wating for the other shoe to drop - first Iraq, then Iran, next it will be Canada that will become the new enemy of the States. I can't fathom what hidden weapon of mass destruction we might be accused of hiding except stockpiles of hockey pucks, curling rocks and doughnut holes.

So all that said, I take back what I said about becoming less tribal. In some ways, being an expat in a foreign land has manifested in me a heightened sense of tribalism. I suppose that's only natural. Yet there's a lonely kind of liminality that an expat inherits upon receiving the exit stamp in the passport and thereby stepping off the precipice of kindred soil. The liminality is akin to any other cultural rite of passage from youth to adult, single to married, virgin to whore. You are no longer what you were before, and not quite wholly the other either.

As an expat, you remain on threshold ground between the two, able to see and participate ~ albeit only superficially ~ in the events, customs, rituals of both tribes. But you don't quite belong entirely with either group. It's a curious thing. You become, instead, an Iyerian citizen of a larger land outside nationalistic borders, even as you still identify and sympathize with the concerns and angsts of the overlapped tribes you have a toehold in. In its simplist, visual form, you can envision the expat as occupying the space between two overlapped circles.

So, in some ways I feel more tribal and emic, and in other ways, more like a long-distance etic - an Audubonian with Eddie Bauer binoculars and a keener vision to see the forest through the trees. I watch this Great Game play out on earth's northenmost ice, and I swear and I can almost hear the theme song for Hockey Night and Canada and see the Canada Kicks Ass banners waving ~ banners, incidentally, that owe their roots to the 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the former USSR, in which Canada kicked some serious Russian zhopa.

It's hard not to get caught up in it all. Sung to the tune of, "when two tribes go to war, a point is all that you can score."

Holy Son and I played the game of Risk awhile back. It was interesting in a surreal kind of way. We both wanted Alberta - it was a small measure of homeland security, I suspect. He was intent on conquering it all whilst I was quasi-cool with amassing a collection of equatorial islands and such, ever while recognizing that no man or woman is an island. Suffice to say, before long, he blew me out of the water with all his strategic dominions and republics and armies and newfound geo-greed. I had nary a leg nor isthmus to stake my flag into - I went from Churchillian "I will never surrender" threats and promises, to finally having to lisp, "'isth mus end, this not so great game of ours. The world is your's - may you take great care with it." This was after much concession and not a small measure of a particularly fine-tasting shiraz. I noticed the more wine I drank, the more land I,too, wanted to consume, which made me ponder if alcohol and foreign affairs are perhaps a dangerous combustion.

I played an experiential seminar game once upon a time called the Game of Life. I played it eons before reality TV came into existence. The point of the game was, ultimately, not traditional win/lose tactics but rather, for participants to garner experiential insight around how they "do" life and play the game. Do I play to win at all costs? Do I sit back and let others take control? What's my stratego? ~ these were and remain the burning questions. If all of this is but a game, how are you playing it? And what I realized is that I'm a push/pull dichotomy of fascist and serf - I'm a contortionist who suffers each time I flip from take charge to take cover. Perhaps we're all a bit that way, which might explain why the inhumane game of war and peace seems destined to continue. We haven't donned our own oxygen masks nor mastered control of the puck in the interior affairs game. In economic terms, we're not export ready. That's my version of the story and I'll defend it to the death, on this day anyways. Tomorrow is a new day, a new game, a new frontier. Who knows what flag I'll be carrying then, or which silly games I'll be playing or rude names I'll be shouting out.

Speaking of tomorrow, if you clicked the two tribes link and heard the song then you may well have heard my favorite lyrics de semaine, which read, "if any member the family should die whilst in the shelter, put them outside, but remember to tag them first for identification purposes."

We've been listening to that song in the car the last couple of days and I'm trying to get the kids to commit it to memory, because the way I figure it, you just never know when you may need to utter such sage words of advice to others. It's been kind of amusing though because Holy Daughter has been asking all kinds of questions - "what does that mean ~ tag the body? How do they tag you if you're dead?," and my favorite, "but if you're dead, who cares?" She has a point, insofar as the historical record has pretty much proven as much on the global lack of care thereof.

Sometimes I feel guilty that I clutter their minds with meaningless fodder but at other times, I'm pretty certain they'll thank me for this daily bread I've fed them. One day, I'm sure. Perhaps when they're tagging my body and dressing me up in army boots. And when they do, I'll be sure to roll over. 'Cuz that's a mother for you - always trying to get the last punk in there.