Thanksgiving in Toronto

For the second year running, I spent the Thanksgiving weekend in Toronto with my good friends. They have what Kim Jong-Il really wants: the World’s greatest turkey recipe. To wit, Napa Valley turkey (no, this is not bad red wine). They’ve been roasting and basting and invasively taking the temperature of this bubblyjock every year for twelve years now. How good was it? Let me count the ways: tender, briny, juicy, salty, gamy. This year I realized that even the night of the dinner is part of the recipe, leading up to the morning-after delicacy of perfect turkey sandwichvana. The key is to stuff as many peas as you can into the sandwich. Really, it’s the peas.

Otherwise, just good times in the T-Dot. The right mix of sentimentality and shuddering over undergrad days. Everyone in Montréal talks smack about Toronto whether they’ve lived there or not. This is starting to get my goat. Toronto's a great town. There’s a lot to be said for:

1) drivers who look out for signs so at least they know what laws they’re breaking.

2) vestigial courtesy.

3) superior public transportation.

4) this West Germanic way people have of expressing themselves. It reminded me of Frisian.

5) fine outposts of the coming Revolution like the Communist Daughter on Dundas St. They understand that party members need refreshment.

So lay off Toronto. Face it, if your career were going anywhere, you’d be there too. What? You won’t be a sell-out? I don’t see anyone making you an offer. I didn’t know you had anything besides self-deceptive principles to sell. You procrasturbating loser. As if you could make Toronto rent. This is the big city. Even the bums are big-city bums. They have more pride than mangy Montréal sans-abris...more pride than you. You’ve always nurtured a secret love for the Leafs. You know where your deposits go. The symbolism of the CN Tower can’t be homophobically snorted away. Even now, as you read, your eyelids are getting heavier…and heavier…you have a hankering for a double-double and Boston Cream and edible oil product…they’ll help you work that 60-hour week…that’s right…you’re soaring over the hick towns…shedding upon them your Milquetoast days and ways...you’re already in Toronto...now your sense of inferiority can be less geographical and more purely personal.