opera please get a dress code

the new opera house in toronto is pretty sweet. I would not say it is luxe, but I think it is a pretty good space and it feels pretty intimate even up in the cheap seats. I went there at the end of my week in toronto for one of the opening concerts. the program was pretty diverse, which was a pleasant surprise.

equally diverse, and unfortunately rather unsurprising, was the standard of dress of the patrons. friend in the jeans and the untucked american eagle shirt: you are at the opera. buddy in the black dockers with white athletic socks: you are also at the opera. the singers managed to get dressed up. the musicians managed to get dressed up. I managed to get dressed up. it would not kill you to wear a jacket, you know. dress pants? they are actually just as comfortable as your cargo pants, honest. okay, I realize that nowadays the opera is all about trying to be accessible and accommodate young people and so on, but seriously that is a bad plan. with that in mind here are my suggested themes for upcoming seasons: "elitists drinking bubbly before the show" or perhaps "everyone in black-tie" or what about "cognoscenti mingling at intermission."

gross indeed

I started work today. for today at least, work equaled reading all day. including some orthopaedics texts. they all had pictures of fractured arms and dislocated elbows and stuff. I do not need to see weird protuberances sticking out of someone's forearm. they should have warning pages before you get to the picture pages. so to avert my eyes from the pictures, I kept reading the captions (gross appearance of posterior dislocation of radial head; gross view of inflamed olecranon bursa; other similarly riveting titles) and thinking to myself that it was nice that at least the authors concurred with my assessment: those pictures are nasty.

the birds

I am currently trying to enjoy a little bit of wi-fi freedom out here in the back yard. that is sweet, internetting and working on a sweet tan simultaneously. well, my body is under an awning, so really just my feet are kind of getting tanned if I stretch them out really far. but that actually works out rather well because I do not like putting tanning lotion on my feet, what with all the tendons and bones and stuff going on. I used to have big fat cabbage patch feet when I was a baby, or so I am told, and that would probably be great for rubbing tanning lotion on. I would have had a sweet foot tan back then if I had been possessed of the fine motor skills required to manipulate a bottle of bronzer. p.s. I do not actually use self tanner, that would be outrageous, where do you come up with that garbage anyway?

back to the wi-fi freedom. I am trying to relax out here, but all I see are the stupid birds alighting on the bird feeder, putting their little beaks in the bird seed, then twitching spastically, throwing seed everywhere. why can they not behave like civilized birds and nibble on some seeds and not make a big mess and waste bird seed everywhere? do not even get me started on the bird bath. it is just one big fiasco.

dental hygiene

I am going to the dentist soon. I am very excited about this. I cannot really think of anything that compares to that post-dentist feeling of clean. my least favourite part is the taste of the gross toothpaste that they use with that little spinning rubber toothbrush. nor am I a fan of the fluoride rinse which is really quite nasty. if someone could fix those two problems I think I might become addicted to going to the dentist. as it is now, I think the frequency that my future employer’s health plan will let me visit the dentist will play a significant role in my job choice.

a visit to the dentist is also nice because the hygienist always compliments me on my dental hygiene. I usually respond with a little friendly dental repartee. “but of course, I floss daily” I might reply to her note of praise regarding my gums. “well, I do use whitening toothpaste” say I when she remarks at the blinding whiteness of my dentition. we then clink glasses of fluoride rinse and make firm plans to meet again in a year.

snooty waiter you do not impress me

I was out for team dinner tonight at a french restaurant. appropriately, the menu leaned heavily on french preparations. I would expect nothing less. the fish that I decided to have came with ‘rouille.’ I did not know what this was so I asked the waiter. he admitted to being stumped, but then pondered for a minute, and relying on his vast knowledge of culinary french, spewed out an answer for me. his snooty brain clearly decided that rouille = roux. so he starts giving me a heavily flawed definition of a roux, brandishing about mother sauce and reduction like he knew what they actually meant. buddy, I have read escoffier. actually, I took his cookbook out of the library. there is a family tree of the mother sauces and their derivatives. I studied that chart extensively.

however, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. perhaps rouille is some sauce built on a roux, somehow in accordance with his bizarre explanation. well snooty waiter, rouille is a spiced sauce of olive oil and bread crumbs, featured heavily in provencal cookery. nice try. just so you know, snooty waiter, I saw right through your fake accent. also, just so you know, if you had actually asked me how my fish was, instead of blathering on about god knows what (I was not listening, snooty waiter), I might have replied that the garnishes were competent, but that the fish was just 30 seconds this side of overdone. that sounds kind of lame now, but let me tell you it was killer at the time.

high performance deodorizing

I was snooping in my brother’s room this morning (HAHA internet comedy I was not snooping bro) and I saw some deodorant. it was probably ultra blast with extra pheromones or something, but that is not why I am bringing you this exciting update. it had a power grip. like rubber speed grooves. what kind of ham-fisted product developer at proctorgamblecolgate3m invented that? I have never had issues retaining a firm grip on my deodorant stick, ever. I am even known to deodorize first thing in the morning, when I am probably at my most disoriented, yet I am still quite capable with that deodorant stick. now perhaps this is because I am not some crazy high performance sweater, so I do not require such high performance stick handling. my deodorant does say ‘extreme’ on it though, and so I hope I do not come across as boastful when I say that I would consider myself in the upper echelon of deodorant users. to those who consider themselves to be even more elite a user than me (highly unlikely, let us be brutally honest here): if gripping a plastic container is too much for your club-like cro-magnon hands, perhaps you should consider a spray-on.

okay where did I leave my application for law school

dear law school admission committee, please see the following post. if I naturally like to talk evidence and courtroom style I guess that is just how my brain works. I guess I watch judge judy sometimes, no biggie, I like to immerse myself in law whenever I can.

exhibit 1: week in stratford, breakfast at 7 am
exhibit 2: simon’s summer job, inaugural meeting at 7 am

I hope that this kickoff meeting is not indicative of some sort of general trend this summer. or in this field of work. I kind of cannot work that early. do you get paid automatic overtime or something if you have to be at work that early everyday or something? because I guess if they paid me enough I might be able to skip my morning internet browse, or maybe take my second morning coffee to go. but that is really not ideal, so I think we would have to be talking big $$$ overtime. ipso facto, right honourable justice thank you gavel legal robes.

monday evening report, simon edition

so a bit more on stratford. you have read about dining and theatre. but now I suppose if you really want to be picky, we were sent to these towns to learn stuff and play dress up and so on.

one thing we dressed up in was scrubs. now I am not saying I have killer long legs, but if the medium scrubs are too snug, and the large scrubs fit quite nicely, except for being rather short, then I guess you might deduce that I have killer long legs. a poor logician might venture that I am simply of more rotund build, but I would suggest reading the passage from earlier about my crazy workout routine. I simply do not think it is possible for someone who pumps so much iron to be rotund. also, I am confident that we are all on the same page here vis a vis long legs being an asset on men. I am actually not sure that they are, but they have got to be better than short stumpy legs.

this is an actual question, not a novelty closing to my blog post. I wonder if my man in hong kong will make me custom scrubs. because I am thinking that would be pretty sweet. please notice I said my man in hong kong instead of my budget yet surprisingly high quality internet shirt website because the latter is kind of lame while the former is kind of awesome. just like custom scrubs would be.

girl hair products

hold on to your homburgs everyone, simon is back with more of his hard hitting investigative journalism.

girl hair products are a sham. I am not afraid to say that. I am prepared to have vidal sassoon knocking on my door tomorrow armed with comb and scissors. I will take him on. I have been doing at least 15 pushups a day, so I am fairly confident I can handle him. actually, I skip pushups a lot of days because they are quite exhausting, but I am fairly consistent with my jumping jacks, and those are really a more extensive workout than pushups I am pretty sure. my rippling physique aside, I think I actually heard once that vidal sassoon was a bit of a hooligan in his youth. hooligan, as in trouble, not as in a jolly soccer hooligan. we are talking serious punk, gangs, secret handshakes, probably a unique system of identification based on the roll of a trouser leg. as I think about this more, there is the possibility that this vidal as punk was merely a joke in some comic, evidently trying to procure laughs from the outrageous dissonance between haute hair and street youth.

well, vidal, listen up. I concede that shampoo and conditioner are legit. I can tell if I have not washed my hair, so clearly shampoo is a real thing. I can also tell if I have put conditioner in, because my hair feels sleek and shiny, so I will give conditioner a pass too. every other hair product? not a real thing. bottles of water. maybe scented water, at best. I do not believe that heat protector, hair detoxifier, intensive treatment, volumizer, curl relaxer, curl enhancer, reviving spray, or scalp revitalizer are real products. I am sorry. actually, I am not sorry, that is just one of those things people say when they are actually not at all sorry. I am fairly confident that I could fill all those bottles with water and no one would notice. hold on, they already are just water. AQUA IS JUST WATER! do not be duped.

p.s. guys, I am not talking gels and hairsprays here, relax. you can use hairspray as glue, so it is quite clearly on the up and up. I am a vigilante for truth, not for crazy.

week in review, simon edition

okay so stratford was a bit of a bust. theatre ended up being a family musical and fine dining ended up being suspiciously pink burgers in a hospital backyard. you might think I would like family musicals because I really like music and I guess families are okay. well as a matter of fact I do not like family musicals really that much at all. I really do not feel that I have to explain that one. if I were in english class I would lose a lot of marks for that, but then again if I were in english class I would be more worried about the fact that I cannot really say for certain anymore what a subjunctive is. good thing I am not in english class.

also about fine dining: I love casual bbqs and restaurants that serve mashed potatoes out of a sysco bucket, do not worry I am not a dining snob at all. hope that is cleared up.

because I insist on the highest journalistic standards here I did some sysco googling. I also googled it because I love the internet. sysco, which sells buckets of mashed potatoes and the like, has several lines. for the “Elite of foodservice”, they offer the ‘Supreme’ label. it features an ornate font with extra curls on the S. you can get things like Supreme cheddar cheese product sauce mix. that is just nasty and this is the high end. you then move through ‘Imperial’ (cursive, but no extra swooshes), ‘Classic’ (italics), and ‘Reliance’ (block letters). sysco says that reliance products offer ‘consistence.’ I do not know what consistence tastes like, but my one word review of the reliance line would probably be barf.

looking at pictures of sysco reliance ketchup extra thick, which promises 26% to 28% solids, is really quite exhausting. so I guess that is about all I am going to write about stratford. so much for that thesis statement in paragraph one.

good thing I am not in english class.

nutella sandwich

before discussing my nutella sandwich I should probably share the recipe:

recipe for nutella sandwich - scratch that

recipe for disaster:
- 1 frozen english muffin, partially thawed. I suggest separating it by fork, for a more natural texture, but this is really an area where you can express your personal style. then toast it. smoking hot use of pronoun with ambiguous antecedent there. toast the muffin.
- nutella, as required. spread it on with a knife. that method would be my suggestion, and I would stick with it. this is not an area for personal expression, wolfgang (reference to puck, not the one with talent. yeah I said it. can you take it, wolfy p?).
- in order to toast the English muffin enough to get the middle cooked, it will be nice and burnt. like really burnt. there will be a carbon party on your english muffin, and everyone will be invited. top and bottom, sides, they are all invited. in fact, they have vip invites.

anyway, I guess the only real discussion is that the non-frozen/charred version is delicious and I suggest that you try one. by the way, it is an open-faced sandwich. do not go freestyling with closed-faced, that would be a disaster.

thesauruses/thesauri

having a bit of the shakespeare in me, I must admit that finding the right word is never really a problem. in fact, I will most likely be remembered as one of the most important authors of this century. notice I said 'this' century and not a number. that is both a literary device that my friend mr. pulizter taught me, as well as clever way of skirting the fact that I can never remember if you add one to the current year's thousands to get to the century or if it's the other way around.

from my rarefied position on the top of the world of fine literature I find myself wondering about some of the other authors who fill pages with their words. do real writers ever use thesauruses to find the exact word they need, or to give their work more richness? or do they just have the gift of always being able to find the perfect word?

i.e., do they have the same gift that I have?

what if I am bored?

what if I actually do get bored soon and become one of those people who posts so many times and then after a few days just posts every month or two bemoaning the fact that they do not post more frequently? I was not cut out for blogging, it is quite honestly exausting with all its myriad stresses. for instance, did I just use myriad correctly? that is going to make me very tired just thinking about it. I think I need an editor.

short attention span

I have been doing this blog thing for a few days now and it has been pretty fun I guess. but I am pretty bored of it by now, it has been almost twenty posts and I usually get bored after reading the first few pages of the front section of the newspaper and then I just start reading the style section, or maybe the toronto section if I am feeling particularly cerebral. so I am rather proud of myself that I did not abandon this cyber project somewhat sooner.

wait, I am just joking. it has simply been a really busy day of living the high life. you know, walmart, winners, swiss chalet. bought some frozen entrees, which I will not eat out of the tray. those last few lines rhyme so they would probably make a tight rap song. I would call it 'big living'.

free low rates on cialis stock picks

I just got a spam from shelby porter telling me that she or he is ‘really annoyed about last wednesday.’

hot tip, shelb: first, don’t pick a loser name like shelby if you want me to read your spam. nobody has a friend called shelby, so people are not going to be tricked into reading your spam. second, I am not going to read a spam if you are just going to be whining at me about how annoyed you are about last wednesday. I have got better things to do you know.

unleavened jewish bread, part two

having done no fewer than one serial posting in the past you may rightly assume that I am somewhat a master of the genre by now. however, even masters sometimes falter. you may have struggled through the bombastic oeuvre 'unleavened jewish bread' and assumed that there would be no more from me on such matters. there is actually a part two to this story. I could have passed it off as an epilogue, because you don't have to call something 'part one' if the 'part two' is really just an epilogue, but I am not a dishonest blogger who tries to dupe you with cheap tricks like that.

first, some background story. I do not actually own 'passover, feast of freedom, the exodus'. it belongs to mila's grandmother. so in order to procure this recipe, I sent mila's grandmother an email. now until quite recently mila's grandmother had not used a computer. she had never owned a computer. world wide web? information superhighway? internet? none of the above. but the siren call of ebay was too strong, so now she has a sweet little laptop. so I guess one day my email arrived in the inbox of this laptop. now mila's grandmother is really very good at reading emails. I would say it is one of her best internet skills. she calls them 'letters' but whatever you want to call them, she can read them really well. so she read my request for a recipe from 'passover, feast of freedom, the exodus'. I made sure to request a short recipe, because I knew scanning was not going to happen. I thought she could type it up and send it over, a nice task for a grandmother to do on her new laptop. as I have said, she is very good at reading emails, so she read my email and leapt into action.

she photocopied the recipe, called me and suggested I pick it up the next time I am in toronto.

she is very good at reading emails, I assure you. replying is maybe her second best skill though. second, as in not quite mastered yet but I am sure that she is working on that skill and that next time I send her an email she will probably click that reply button and send me an email right back.

so five hours of travel time and a bowl of ice cream (jewish grandmother, remember) later I have the recipe in hand. I promptly made my now-favourite matzoh recipe and sent mila's grandmother an email to report on how delicious it was. I thought that a casual email conversation about matzoh would be a great chance for her to show off her new replying aptitude.

wednesday morning. and remember that grandmother mornings start several hours before student mornings. "SIMON! I GOT YOUR EMAIL! THANK YOU SO MUCH!"

she had not forgotten to turn off caps lock. she was excitedly yelling at me over the phone.

golden elixir

I'm going to let you in on the secret of my new favourite beverage. I am not sure why, but one day I started calling it golden elixir. most likely because it has a golden hue and because it is so refreshing that it can maintain life indefinitely?

hold on, I did not know that elixir meant that. I thought it was just a potion or brew or something. but the dictionary is going on about philosophers' stone, which I am quite frankly surprised by because that first harry potter book is a great read, but I do not understand why they have started basing real life on it. I am probably going to have to switch dictionaries or something, because I have lost all faith in this one.

so despite the dictionary indicating that I am somewhat misusing the word elixir, I still call it that. sometimes if I am in a rush I will call it 'golden e' or just 'golden'. sometimes if I've got to fly it is just 'lixir'. these are all the same beverage, actually. in fact, they are all really just iced tea that I make from a pot of hot tea.

it all started when mila was sick a while ago, and I would steal the remainder of the tea in her pot and pour it into a pitcher and put it in the fridge. but let me tell you that with a beverage this refreshing, that kind of casual production was simply not going to keep up with demand. so I started topping off the teapot with more hot water, and then filling my iced tea pitcher. still not cutting it. so now I run a small little moonshine operation in which I fill the teapot for the sole purpose of creating iced tea. it is still really hard to keep up with demand, if you can believe it.

well reader, you probably think I am some sort of brewmaster by now, and you are probably right. sometimes my beverage creations amaze even myself.

I forgot to mention my bamboo

yes, there is another plant here. first you thought there were three, because that is what I said. then I added on a sage plant, so we were peachy at four. but would you believe that I forgot the very first plant I ever got? it is like a bloody greenhouse in here, let me tell you. if the london police came by because they suspected a grow-op I would not be at all surprised, because that is simply how lush this place is.

well, the bamboo doesn't grow in soil, so perhaps that can be my excuse for forgetting to include it on my initial survey of the foliage in my vicinity. it is in a tall glass vase that I got at target. did I buy it in canada? no, because they do not have target in canada. is this a shame? yes, it is an enormous shame because target has reasonably priced goods of high quality for both you and your home. anyway, this imported glass vase contains two bamboos. I am really not that happy about that, because I think it would look a lot better with three. I bought them a long time ago, so I am no longer really sure why I just got two. maybe I was saving my money for future simon, who would want to spend it on shirts from hong kong.

these two bamboo have not been doing so well lately. I tried moving them to my office for a bit, thinking the light might be a bit more gentle in here for their tender leaves. but then I think they just got sicker. so I decided to fertilize them, because I realized I had never fertilized them in the many years I had owned them. the only problem was that the only fertilizer I have is for cacti. but it's fertilizer, right? so I can just put a few drops in the bamboo water and the bamboo will probably start growing really quickly and look quite resplendent in a few days time. WRONG. completely erroneous. without any basis in fact. my bamboo are in no way improved, and now there is nasty green skunge growing on my bamboo rocks that sit in the bottom of the vase. I get sweet zen relaxation now when I look at all that garbage growing in my pristine brita-filtered bamboo water. sorry guys, typo. that should read zen rage.

if my memory serves me correctly, in a speech I once compared my life to this same bamboo. if so, my life is now in shambles. but I might have been comparing bamboo to my high school, can't really remember. in that case, I guess now would be a good time to change schools or something.

p.s. I used that cactus fertilizer today to fertilize my cactus because my computer reminded me that today was watering and fertilizing day. my computer flashes warnings on my screen about plant care. that is how serious I am about these plants.

unleavened jewish bread

I don't really know how to spell this word. my current box says 'matzos' which seems akin to a tray of porterhouse steaks saying 'beefs,' but what do I know. my whopping 25% jewishness comes via my dad who now directs a cast of hundreds in an annual pageant celebrating the birth of jesus christ. (I hope in mentioning him that it does not invite him to start posting zingers like another parent of mine. my dad, that is, not jesus.)

I am writing this to advertise two things to make with matzoh that I had never heard of before, but which are quite delicious.

the first is pretty simple. just spread some margarine on your matzoh. I would suggest low-salt or no-salt matzoh, as some of the regular varieties are pretty intense. I would probably buy the regular salt version anyway to help my thyroid, but I'm guessing the folks at manischewitz are probably pretty set on using the kosher salt for their passover bread.

the second treat is somewhat more complex, and requires a recipe. the recipe came from a cookbook called 'passover, feast of freedom, the exodus.' that is written right here in front of me, I did not make that up. I do not cook from this cookbook very often. actually, I do not cook from it at all other than this recipe, I just have a photocopy of this one page. the recipe is for matzoh covered in toffee and chocolate. yes, it is pretty awesome and I eat it until my belly hurts. the authors are even so confident in their recipe to suggest that if you only make one thing at passover, this should be it. now that seems a little excessive to me, as I can only imagine the cavities that would ensue. and you would get some serious vitamin deficiencies, because this stuff is really just sugar and butter. maybe they do only make this one thing, but then drink V8 to make up for it like I do.

trash talkin'

I have a confession: I eat frozen entrees sometimes. usually just during exams, just because we don’t really go grocery shopping so our fridge gets pretty bare. I like to eat them on a plate at the table because then it is pretty civilized and I don’t feel quite as tawdry.

some people like to eat them straight out of the plastic microwaveable tray. and some people like to eat them in front of the tv. now I’m not saying that’s any less or more trashy, but if I were to say I would probably say it’s more trashy. I’m also not saying who some people are, but if I were to say I would probably say her name starts with m and rhymes with mila.