The Chantastic Blog

My friends Stephe, Cobra, Jimbo, and Catalina have known each other for years. One of the things we always do is start unbelievably long e-mail chains where we reply all extremely frequently. How frequent? Here’s what my inbox looks like after an initial e-mail about going to a Raptors game. After a couple of e-mails, the topic changed to our new mutual obsession: the awesomeness that is Jersey Shore.

Note how everything stops right after 8 PM. That’s when Jersey Shore began (my e-mail account isn’t set to Eastern Standard Time and I don’t know how to fix it), and we decided that we needed a running live chat on MSN to discuss the show as it unfolded.

Isn’t it great to see technology being put to such constructive use?

While I was sick last week, I started entertaining myself in my medicated state by checking out a great site, http://textsfromlastnight.com/. The site is exactly what you think it is. And yes, the texts can be pretty racy, so be forewarned.

Anyway, I was on the site just now, and I think I saw the greatest text I’ve ever seen there.

You can bet this will be one of the sites I frequent with exams coming up and me looking for new ways to continue my epic procrastination.

Just woke up and turned on the TV. Maury Povich was on. Actual screen graphic during the show: “I lied when I said I went to buy a belt and left for 7 days.”

Speechless.

I was walking home today when I saw a guy run to his bicycle that was sitting on the sidewalk, hop on, bark loudly (yes, bark as in like a dog), jump his bike off the curb onto the street, and then yell loudly towards the sky as he rode off. This is at the corner of Bay and College in Toronto. At 11 AM.

Nobody can ever tell me that Toronto’s not full of crazies.

I was walking to school in the rain the other day when I stopped at a crosswalk. The light changed, and as I walked across, I saw a person on the other side of the street holding an umbrella tightly to the top of her head. Because of how close she was holding her umbrella, she couldn’t see anything and nearly walked right into me.

The purpose of having an umbrella is to prevent any rain from getting on you. I understand that. But what point is there to the umbrella when you hold it in such a way where your field of vision is blocked and you can’t see where you’re going? A couple of rain drops won’t kill you, so why the hell won’t these people hold their umbrellas up higher? Why do some people act like rain hitting them could lead to death? It’s like they don’t understand that rain is just water.

Today, I saw one of the most unbelievable and surreal scenes in my life.

I was walking up the left side of Yonge Street (that is, I was walking on the sidewalk going against the flow of traffic - this is important as you’ll see in a bit) when a girl in a skimpy dress came out of a Mr. Sub holding a sandwich and started walking a few feet ahead of me.

After walking a couple of blocks, a Mercedes with the sunroof down driving on the right side of Yonge (that is, going in the same direction as us, but on the other side of the street) suddenly U-turned and stopped a few feet in front of the girl. I assumed it was a friend she knew who was saying hi.

Not quite.

Instead, the guy in this Mercedes was the epitome of sleaze. He was middle-aged (likely in his 40s or early 50s), wearing a suit without a tie and the top button of his shirt open, and had a cigarette dangling between two of his fingers. He had basically U-turned to try to pick up this girl. This actually happened.

He said something (I couldn’t hear what he was saying because I was listening to my iPod, and besides, I wouldn’t have heard anything he said anyway because I was in total shock) and then basically motioned for her to hop into the front seat of his Mercedes. Again, this actually happened. But it gets better.

She ignored him and kept walking. You’d think the guy would give up and drive away, right?

You’d be wrong.

Instead, he pulls another U-turn because the girl had walked past his car and he needed to catch up. So he’s on the far side of the street driving his car, keeping it parallel with the girl on my side of the street. That’s right - he was at a cruising speed of about 5 km/h. And he continued to do this for a good two blocks, all the while motioning towards her and trying to get her to hop into his fancy car. Two blocks - he did this for at least a minute. But it gets even more bizarre.

There was a light up ahead, followed by a car that was illegally parked in his right lane. So to beat the red light and keep pace with the girl, he crossed the intersection and parked his car right behind the car that was already there. I’m convinced that he did this so that he could hop out of his car, cross the street, and continue to proposition this girl. But the girl saw where his car was and took a quick left at the intersection to avoid him, thus ending one of the most amazingly surreal moments of my life.

I cannot fully explain how unbelievable this situation was, and how ridiculous it was the way it unfolded. The thing is, this guy had clearly done this before. And he wouldn’t be doing this if it hadn’t worked before. I have to ask, who the hell would actually get in that car? A sleazy stranger in a Mercedes propositions you on the street - well, don’t mind if I do! Really? Is this what passes for romance in Toronto? I sure hope this isn’t a representation of how guys interact with girls in this city because there’s not a chance I would even think of doing anything remotely close to that.

I made a return trip to the infamous Wednesday Aveda warehouse sale last week because it was my last Wednesday at my summer internship, and my mom e-mailed me a list of things she wanted me to buy for her.

As I stood around like a deer in the headlights, a girl entered and saw the wall of items for sale. She then exclaimed, “Oh my God! This place is AMAZING!”

My co-worker, who was also acting as my purchasing consultant, replied to her, “It’s your first time here, eh? You get total ADD because you don’t know where to start. It’s great.”