Bizarro World
So I'm in Canada for a couple of days due to an immigration issue, and, as is typical when Emily and I go to Canada, we end up shopping in stores we could have shopped in at home, and we're in the Gap. Emily is trying on clothes and I'm listening to the music. The song seems familiar and I can't place it. After a while, I start thinking: "Holy crap! Is this the High Dials?" The High Dials are approximately the 7th most important indie band from Montreal.
So I walk a couple of stores down to the mall record store to check. I look in the rock section for the High Dials album, but it's not there. Quelle surprise. But apparently the problem was that I didn't notice they had a separate indie rock section. So I find the High Dials album and it turns out I was wrong (It was New Order's "Waiting for the Siren's Call.") And while I'm browsing, they start playing Sunset Rubdown's "Us Ones in Between." Bizarro.
World Cup fever actually exists in Canada. I wasn't surprised by the amount of official World Cup merchandise, but rather by the huge number of knock-offs. Stores like Roots, The Bay, and so forth realized that country names are not copyrighted and you can slap them on a T-shirt, no problem. I even saw something that looked like a baseball jersey with the name "Germany" on the back, which is inauthentic on so many levels. There's only one man a baseball jersey with the word Germany on it should honor, the last man in history to steal first base.
We went to Toronto and at lunchtime it was even more intense. A huge crowd gathered on the sidewalk outside a sports bar to get a peek of England/Trinidad. A china shop on Bloor put two big flatscreens in its window to draw a crowd; they also had a big sign that said "Come in and see the world of cups!" Also, the number of cars with window flags was huge in both London and Toronto: imagine the scene in the US after 9/11, but with flags of England, Portugal, Italy, Poland, and other countries instead of just American ones. Doubly bizarro.
Some other random observations of Toronto:
On Yonge there's a food cart called "Mrs. Dalloway's Hot Dog Stand." The frankfurters must be 100% Virginia wolf.
A couple of blocks north of the hot dog stand, all located within half a block of each other, are The Blue Man Group, The Church of Scientology, and the Toronto Hemp Company. Coincidence? I don't think so.
So I walk a couple of stores down to the mall record store to check. I look in the rock section for the High Dials album, but it's not there. Quelle surprise. But apparently the problem was that I didn't notice they had a separate indie rock section. So I find the High Dials album and it turns out I was wrong (It was New Order's "Waiting for the Siren's Call.") And while I'm browsing, they start playing Sunset Rubdown's "Us Ones in Between." Bizarro.
World Cup fever actually exists in Canada. I wasn't surprised by the amount of official World Cup merchandise, but rather by the huge number of knock-offs. Stores like Roots, The Bay, and so forth realized that country names are not copyrighted and you can slap them on a T-shirt, no problem. I even saw something that looked like a baseball jersey with the name "Germany" on the back, which is inauthentic on so many levels. There's only one man a baseball jersey with the word Germany on it should honor, the last man in history to steal first base.
We went to Toronto and at lunchtime it was even more intense. A huge crowd gathered on the sidewalk outside a sports bar to get a peek of England/Trinidad. A china shop on Bloor put two big flatscreens in its window to draw a crowd; they also had a big sign that said "Come in and see the world of cups!" Also, the number of cars with window flags was huge in both London and Toronto: imagine the scene in the US after 9/11, but with flags of England, Portugal, Italy, Poland, and other countries instead of just American ones. Doubly bizarro.
Some other random observations of Toronto:
On Yonge there's a food cart called "Mrs. Dalloway's Hot Dog Stand." The frankfurters must be 100% Virginia wolf.
A couple of blocks north of the hot dog stand, all located within half a block of each other, are The Blue Man Group, The Church of Scientology, and the Toronto Hemp Company. Coincidence? I don't think so.
posted 7:22 PM
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