Today’s soundtrack: now I’m a man, made twenty-one
Today at 12:02pm: squatting in a desk chair while a hotel maid vacuums around me



I spend most of Saturday holed up in the hotel, working the Wacom. The German project is like a high-maintenance girl disguised as low-maintenance--more work than you thought.

Tony, Lam, Kirk and Francis are out somewhere in Toronto yukking it up and I’m stuck inside like a kid with piano lessons. I drove nine hours to do work. I’m aware this sucks, but I’m also aware this is how I pay my rent. I am freelance-on-demand, and it beats being nine-to-five and solvent.

Turns out last night, while I was working in the hotel room the fellas were out hitting up a strip club. Doesn’t bug me that I missed it because I’m not really a strip club kind of guy. (“Skanks for the memories,” to quote Dave Attell.) I can’t get into the artifice of the whole thing, and conversations I’ve had with strippers have been somewhat less than spellbinding. Maybe I just don’t know what to say.

It’s got me wondering, though. Because while we’ve got paper singles in the ‘States, in Canada all they’ve got is coins. There’s even a two-dollar coin. So what do they do at the strip clubs, tuck these metal coins into “Lace” and “Devon’s” G-strings? Those strippers must be all chafed. Or maybe they have those change-belts like the ice cream man of my childhood.

Maybe if I have daughters and I name them Lace and Devon they won’t become strippers.

“Lace! Devon! Call Scarlett and T-Bone and get down here, dinner’s ready!”

Mid-morning I have to take a break, because I’m having trouble working knowing there’s a whole city full of Tim Horton’s out there.

Tim Horton’s is to Canada what Dunkin’ Donuts is to the Tri-State Area. I loves me some Dunkin’ Donuts, and Tim’s is even better. Canadian counter service in general is way better. Most of the people who work the counter of a Dunkin’ Donuts, like that one up on 34th or the one on Broadway in Elmhurst, you could stagger in there with a knife in your chest and they’d watch you bleed to death without flinching.


ME: Help! Pull this knife out of my chest!

Dunkin’ Donuts Clerk: There’s a line.

ME: There’s a line to have knives pulled out of your chest?

DDC: There’s a line to buy donuts, asshole. This is Dunkin’ Donuts, not Dunkin’ Emergency Room.

ME: I can’t stop the bleeding...for the love of god, gimme some napkins!

DDC: Napkins are for paying customers only.

ME: Please help me! I--I’m starting to black out!

In contrast, counterpeople in Toronto are pleasant by default. I hit the Tim Horton’s on Dundas happy as a clam. The countergirl there was really nice, I bet she’d pull a knife out of my chest and sew me up afterwards.


ME: Socialized medicine is great!

SHE: Hold still, sweetheart; I’m almost done with the sutures. Would you like another glazed?


Plus the coffee at Tim’s is killer.

In terms of drinking chain coffee in Toronto, there’s Tim Horton’s and you’ve got some joint called Timothy’s. I was saddened to see Starbucks has spread all over Toronto like a venereal disease and I vowed not to spend any of my dollar coins there. Hell, I’d rather tuck it into a stripper’s change-belt.

Back at the hotel, I slave away.