Am I? I am.
(At home.)
It’s sunny. And September. And nice.
Though different.
From Barcelona. Where it, too, was.
 (Sunny. September. Nice.)
And I’m writing.
 Very.
  Short.
   Sentences.
For. Some. Reason.
Who knows why?
Not I. And who cares?
Not 1. (That’s “one,” not “eye.”
 Nor “aye.”)
And that’s it.
…is it?
Aye! It is.

 - El Jardinero (hoy extra-Zurdo!), in Montreal

Last night I had a bit of a “thrill.” I was at home, alone, watching some TV, getting ready for bed. The new neighbours across the back lane were having a big party on their terrace (basically on the roof of the restaurant below them). I’ve heard them playing music before, having a few friends over for dinner outside, but this was different. It was LOUD. Was it a housewarming or something else? Who knows, but there were around 100 people there. The place was really hopping, inside and out. Looking down from my own terrace, I could see flashing disco lights inside, people drinking and dancing, streamers decorating the terrace, tons of folks outside chatting, smoking, taking photos of each other with their camera phones. They were having a great time. Hey, live and let live, man.

It was after midnight. My house, as usual, was still cooling from a hot day, so there was no doubt that I had to sleep with the windows and patio door open. I harnessed my newfound tolerance…after all, everyone is entitled to a noisy party from time to time, right? And this was the first really noisy one from these new neighbours. Imagine if I were now living in Spain — I had to get used to people and noise. Relax. Don’t call the police. Don’t do anything.

Still, I turned my back light on just to let them know someone was there. I turned it back out. I went out back and watched them for a while, my passive-aggressive side getting the best of me. Just to let them know they’re not alone; there are other people in the world. Maybe they’d realize the time and turn down that subwoofer a bit. It went back out to watch a few times — not only to “send a message” (as if!), but also because it was fun. Fun to watch the social interactions from afar, like a little colony of social bees or ants. I meant them no harm, and they meant me none. Or so I thought.

I went inside for awhile, getting ready for bed. I was tired and figured maybe I could sleep, even with the music and chatter. No big deal. I brushed my teeth, then went back out for one last look. I was startled to find some people looking back at me. One guy pointed…or was he waving? What was going on?

Then a guy climbed down their fire escape to the lane. I looked down, over my railing. There were several other guys climbing my fire esacpe.

“Red shirt!” someone shouted, from the party. Many people were pointing my way. “Hey, RED SHIRT!”

Yes, I was wearing a red shirt. More and more guys started pouring out of the party, into the lane, and up our stairwell. The first guy had made it up the three flights to my back door (I was still one level up, “safe” on my terrace, looking down at them with a nauseating sense that something big was about to happen. No, this did not bode well.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Now, I should have been the one asking that question, but it was one of them. Now there were five or six angry faces, two metres below, looking up at me. “How do we get up there?”

“You can’t come up here,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“You’re the asshole throwing tomatoes at us.” What? “You been throwing eggs.”

“No!” I said. I couldn’t believe this.

“We’re coming up. We’ve got to check it out.”

“No, you can’t…” There are no outside stairs from the third level up to where I was, on my terrace. But as we’d been talking, already two guys had climbed, ninja-style, up onto the lower storage shed, leaping up to grab the railing above, and now stood towering above me from the shed on my terrace. My knees were shaking. What to do? I couldn’t just run inside to call the police, that would look really bad. I’d look guilty. No, stand my ground. I was innocent. I only had to convince them. Still, they were steaming mad, a little inebriated, and I suspected I was in for a beating — an undeserved beating based on a misunderstanding. For a moment, I imagined my friends reading a news item about me in tomorrow’s paper. Is this what they called a domestic disturbance? Was any of them “packing?”

I guess someone in our block had been so pissed off by the party noise that they’d thrown something down, across the lane. A dangerous and stupid move. But the party people had only seen me, my head suspiciously “popping up” from time to time on my terrace and then disappearing again. I’ll admit the music irritated me a bit, but I would never throw anything. I’m passive-aggressive, not aggressive-aggressive! But…could I convince a crowd — now of ten guys — of that? Some stood on the terrace with me, snooping into my house, others stood on the thin metal roof of my shed, others were now up on the roof of the condo, walking along, peering down into other terraces. Their rage was palpable.

Them: “What are you doing up here?”
Me: “I live here.”
Them: “Someone hit me in the head with an egg!”
Me: “It wasn’t me, I didn’t throw anything.”
Them: “Well, we’re gonna find out who the hell it was…”

How many times can you swear you didn’t do something? How pleading can you be? When your life depends on it…a lot, it turns out!

“If anyone did throw eggs, though,” I said, a little more confidently now, “it’s probably because of the noise from the party.” I assured them that I firmly believed that throwing things was no way to solve a noise problem — certainly I would never solve it that way. You should go and speak to the people directly, obviously. That was the rational thing to do, and I had to convince them I was a rational person.

Eventually, there were around 20 (!) angry guys up there, intimidating me, looking down at me or standing next to me, others searching (for what: a crate of eggs?) from the rooftop. Somehow — I don’t know how — I managed to calm them down. In spite of myself, I spoke calmly (though perhaps the obvious fear in my voice and wide eyes helped “satisfy” them a bit). I picked out one of them, one who seemed more rational, and addressed myself to him. He asked who lived here, who my neighbours were. I assured him we weren’t the kind of people that would throw eggs, and in particular — I couldn’t stress this enough — it hadn’t been me! I also said that they couldn’t just come up here; this was private property. I said that if their party had been assaulted by eggs, the best thing to do would be to call the police to sort out the whole mess. Obviously that wasn’t something they were too interested in, and perhaps that saved me. After about five interminable minutes of “discussion,” they headed back down to the party.

One of the last guys to leave spoke to me, almost conspiratorially: “Do you really think we’re being too loud?”

Hmm. A trick question? “Well, it is pretty loud,” I said. I quickly added: “But that’s okay, you know, to have a party once in a while.”

A bit later, I noticed two big guys were still camped out on my roof, lurking there in the shadows.

“What are you doing?” I asked. They said they wanted to keep an eye out, watch for further egg-throwing. No, this would not do. They had to go. And somehow, I felt more and more confident. It hadn’t been “1 vs. 100″ but it had been close enough. And I was in the right. “This is private property,” I reiterated, waving them away. “Sorry, but you can’t sit on my roof.”

Amazingly, they climbed down and returned to their party. “We’ll be watching,” they said, ever-friendly.

“That’s great,” I said. “Have a nice night.” Then I went inside and tidied my house for a few hours, because my tiredness had been overcome by my pumping adrenal glands and testosterone; my brain was going a mile a minute. I was angry. I was relieved. I was scared. If someone did throw more eggs, would they assume it was me? Would they come back when I was asleep, with only a screen door between me and the mob? No, I wouldn’t get to sleep until 3:30am. Only now, it had nothing to do with the music.

No, I’m not talking about “Bonds, Barry Bonds” and his new and dubious (or not) home run record. I’m talking about the baseball-sized hail that rained down on southern Manitoba yesterday.

It reminded me of something; another storm. Twenty years ago, I was in Edmonton on “Black Friday,” when, on July 31, 1987, a devastating tornado killed nearly thirty people. We didn’t get any baseballs where I was, but we did get hailstones borrowed from another sport — golf ball-sized chunks of ice. Our car roof and hood needed dimple-reducing surgery, and car insurance premiums went up the next year. I was in another part of the city, away from the main tornado, but there were other funnel clouds around where I was, and the sky was an ominous greenish-yellow colour…something I have since associated with very bad weather. I’d been riding my bike in a nearby park and (as the “tallest thing around” on my metal bike) had to race home as the lightning started crashing all around and great gusts of wind tried to knock me over.

Our dog suffered post-traumatic stress disorder from that “weather event.” Most dogs are afraid of thunder, or perhaps they have some “sixth sense” to pick up low-frequency vibrations or pressure changes or…I don’t know. All I know is that previously he had been a little nervous during storms. Probably a healthy, sensible nervousness, if there is such a thing. After that day, he became neurotic.

At the first hint of thunder, he would begin panting nervously, leaving huge puddles of drool on the floor. He would slink downstairs, to the basement, as far as he could get from the noisy rumbling above. Sometimes, when I felt like having some “fun,” I would put on one of Dan Gibson’s “Environments” records, something along the lines of: “Distant Thunderstorm at Loon Lake,” and watch the poor dog quiver. In my defense, I would actually stroke his fur and hold his head, trying to reassure him: “You see? I’m not scared. Nothing’s going to happen.” A kind of (highly unsuccessful) therapy, you might say. But he was always a total wreck, and it was hard not to laugh. No, I’m not proud of it; but it’s true, and I was young. Cut me some slack: at least I wasn’t pulling wings off flies or tossing cats by their tails into walls of velcro.

Once, when we were at my grandmother’s for Sunday dinner, he was left outside in his kennel. It was a luxurious enclosure my Dad had built — a long concrete pad (easier to scoop up you-know-who’s you-know-what) with a trendy, winter-proofed, A-frame doghouse. The whole facility was surrounded by heavy chain-link fencing (to protect him from other dogs?).

If we suspected it was going to storm, especially once he became neurotic, we’d leave him in the house, but this one took us by surprise. It came suddenly and the heavens flashed and crashed and dumped down their oceans. We returned home to find our “prisoner” had escaped. He was not prone to running away. It seems the storm drove him insane, and he managed to tear through the metal fence with paws and teeth, and ran all the way to…our house. Ten metres away.

He escaped from the dry safety of his doghouse to whimper, drenched to the bone, by the back door of our house, presumably because he felt closer to the protection of his masters. It was awful. When we found him, he was a pathetic, soaking, shivering mess, bleeding from the mouth and paws. He had lost a few teeth and lots of hair on the sharp metal edges that poked from the hole he’d made in the chain-link. Luckily he didn’t lose an eye.

After that, even if skies were blue, when we went out for any length of time we made sure to leave our “plucky little fellow” in the house. I don’t know if dogs can have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, but, by GAD, he certainly did. Unfortunately, it seems that often the worst storms we suffer are literally in our heads.

Sorry, I know this is just shameless marketing for the upcoming movie, but I couldn’t resist making a Simpsons avatar and sharing it with you here.

Thanks to Sugary for the idea. You can play and make your own characters on the movie’s promotional site.

Well, Montreal’s Plateau Mont-Royal neighbourhood (my ‘hood) has a new “free bike” program, called Bécikvert. They have a pool of 20 green-painted bikes, to start out, and all you need to do is exchange a piece of photo ID for the bike. Your ID is returned when the bike is returned. They have various kinds of bikes, different styles to meet all tastes. You also have access to special offers and discounts at various shops along Mont-Royal while you are in possession of the bike!

In Barcelona, meanwhile, the “green” bikes are actually red. They have a major new bike pool program this year, called Bicing. Theirs is far more ambitious, on a much larger scale. Although not free, it’s a great deal at 24€ per year. For that rate, you can borrow a bike (you swipe your personal access smart-card to unlock them from large racks) anytime for up to 30 minutes, without additional charges. If you want to borrow longer (up to two hours), you pay a small amount for the rental. You are not allowed to borrow for more than two hours — the idea of the program is for the bike as a means of point-to-point transport, a supplement to public transit and thus a car replacement. And the pool stays “afloat” in this way. If certain stops are underserved, then there are vehicles which move around rebalancing the load, delivering bikes when they are needed at “empty” stations. They claim to do this very quickly, so if there is ever any waiting, it is minimal. It would be good to hear from folks in Barcelona who’ve tried it, to see just how well it actually works. I imagine there are a few startup glitches, but the basic idea is great.

There are pickup/drop spots all over the city, especially linked with metro stations, bus and tram stops, and so the idea is to grab a bike and go wherever you’re going, then “return” the bike there. Later, you take a different bike to your next destination. You could spend all day hopping from location to location, for free! They currently have “only” 1,500 bikes, and that will double by the end of the year. You can even check bicycle availability in real time on the internet, since the whole thing is automated. I don’t think they offer helmets, though…so bring your own! I wouldn’t want to ride without one in Barcelona, although you may look like a freak because no one seems to wear them there.

These are both great initiatives which, coupled with increasing numbers of bike lanes and better driver awareness(!) will hopefully start to transform our cities. Not only making them more “green”, but making for healthier (and happier, I would hope) citizens. Already 80,000 people have signed on in Barcelona for annual memberships in bicing! Of course, it would be silly to offer year-round memberships in wintry Montreal…our trial program only runs during the summer this year, until September.

I must speak out! About fashion, no less. Those who know me might consider this a tad hypocritical. “El J.Z.,” they might say, “what right do you have to judge? You are many things, but a fashion all-star is not one of them.”

It’s true that I have, at times, dressed in ways that some would label “geeky,” while others might label “regrettable.” We fringe-dwellers call it living life on the EJZ (that’s prounounced “edges,” kids). But if I don’t care what people think of me…why should anyone care about my fashion views? Well, frankly they shouldn’t. Not that it’s going to stop me. No, blogs are for the disenfranchised, the frustrated, the mildly irritated. They’re for people who have something to say even when they’re certain no one is listening. And that’s me. And so, on with the show…

Those giant bug-eyed sunglasses that are so popular with women (and some men) these days look ridiculous. That’s it; I said it; I’m done. (Ah, you ask, so why does the post ramble on for another five or six paragraphs? Smart-aleck.) Normally, we’re supposed to look back on trends from ages past with disdain. You know: bell-bottoms; mullet haircuts; glow-in-the-dark shoelaces; mini-skirts (oops, how’d that one get on the list!). We’re supposed to laugh at the naïveté of a bygone era, or at least reel with the shameful knowledge that “we were once like that.” And how are we able to do this? With time and distance. With perspective. The point is that fashion trends are at least supposed to seem cool when we’re in them, because we don’t know better (yet).

Speaking of sunglasses, I feel like I’ve awakened from the Matrix and am living in the harshness of the “real world,” because I can see through it all (through the artifice, if not the sunglasses). And the reality is that they look silly. They did in the 70s; they did last summer; they do this summer; and they will in twenty years. I’m not saying stop wearing them; you have a right to that. I’m just saying don’t expect me not to laugh a little, inside.

Says me.

Opinions can be ill-informed, they can be brutally direct to the point of cruelty. But the beauty of opinions is that they are subjective; they can’t be wrong. At least, that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.

[Full disclosure: Your beloved Jardinero used to wear ridiculously large (non-sun) glasses in the 80s, but no one considered them cool then. Neither would they be cool now by any stretch of the imagination. And that has nothing to do with this discussion. Neither do his white socks with brown shoes. Nor the farmer’s tan. Really.]

[Full disclosure #2: I realize that the last thing the Internet needs is another blog whining about large sunglasses (I just did a search and it turns out there already are…er, a few of them). They invariably explode into insoluble Mac-versus-PC-esque religious wars. {The Olsen twins,Britney Spears,Paris Hilton} look{s} awesome; no they’re stupid; no, they’re hot. You suck. You suck. No, I rule! Etc. It quickly gets tiresome, so let’s spare ourselves the hassle. For the record, yes I do agree there are many more important things in the world than the contents of this post. Yes, my efforts probably could have been put to better use, saving the {seals,trees,planet}. I’ve said my piece — now let’s all just move on and save time and stress by contributing no further discussion to this post. Thank you all for your comprehension, you’ve been very understanding.]

[Executive summary: If someone as “fashion-tolerant” as I am thinks giant bug-eyed sunglasses look silly, then the glasses must be really, really awful.]

Or should that be: “Long post? No time!” Wow, it’s been a little while, hasn’t it? The quick summary, then — among other things, I’ve recently:

• hosted a rather pleasant(!) visitor from Spain. This lovely visitor continues to try to convince me (by the sheer force of her extreme pleasantness) to move across the Atlantic. My resistance continues to weaken, in spite of the overwhelmingness of imagining “lightening my load” in life (house; tons of physical and emotional “stuff”) and making such a massive change. Exciting but scary (scary but exciting?). To that end, though, I continue to gather the information and “fiddly bits” I need to successfully apply for a residence visa.
• gone to my sister’s beautiful wedding in small-town Manitoba (well, technically it was in the second-biggest city in the province), where I had to MC the reception. I split the emceeing duties with the groom’s brother, but I haven’t managed to figure out whether I was the ‘M’ or the ‘C’ (fortunately I, K, E and Y weren’t able to make it).
• seen the latest great Robert Lepage play, called Lipsynch. This one was a walk in the park, as it was “only” five hours long! (the last one was six or seven hours, and this one — once it is “final” in a year or so — is supposed to clock in at around nine hours…) No one ever believes me, but his work is normally so engrossing (touching, funny, thought-provoking) that you truly don’t notice the time flying by. Plus there are always two lengthy intermissions where you can eat, drink and make merry.
• wandered among the scantily-clad people at the first of two consecutive street sales on St-Laurent (there was also one on Mont-Royal near my place). Being a bit unintentionally scantily-clad thanks to my “holey” underwear, I took the opportunity to make my biennial underwear purchases.
• continued to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous smoking neighbours and mysterious parking-space manipulators…perhaps some day these stories will be told, but not today.
• gotten sick (again) and gotten better (again, thankfully). I love jogging but suspect it may be one of the culprits. Instead of running (and speaking of “walks in the park”), I’ve started hiking up Mont Royal with heavy weights strapped to my back. I’ve been carrying a 30lb backpack and hiking up the mountain from my place, then up and down the “top stairs” (close to 40m vertical) a bunch of times (e.g. five times). I figured yesterday I hiked around 7km with a total vertical gain of 300m…not bad considering the elevation difference between my house and the summit is only around 140m. And though it’s practically downtown, the walk is through a beautiful green forest. What a great city: you almost feel like you’re in “real” nature — in fact, I could only barely hear the whine and roar of the Formula One on Île Notre Dame, about 5km away…
• continued working on my novel. Up to almost 150 pages (somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the first draft), though the going has been getting tougher, recently. Have I lost my momentum, with all the “other stuff” going on? With writing (as with life), I have bad days, then incredibly amazing days, followed by a series of not-so-great days to balance it all out. Consistency is not something I’m known for. Unless consistent inconsistency counts. That, I mastered long ago.

Late the other night, our building fire alarm went off. I’m sure I’ve heard it before, but I didn’t remember it being so LOUD! I went into the hall to investigate…out there it was so piercingly loud it made you cringe. I went down the stairs, and was met by another groggy-eyed neighbour in pyjamas coming out of his apartment.

We didn’t smell smoke or see anything amiss. We went to the front door to stare at the locked “control panel”, which had a red light on, but no indication of why that should be. Finally, after several ear-bleeding minutes, the alarm shut off on its own, having “silenced” itself (likely it just got tired of making that racket).

The door to the apartment next to the entrance opened, and a sheepish-looking neighbour told us she didn’t know how, but thought it might be her fault. She had a chair up under the heat alarm just inside her door, and the alarm itself was hanging from wires…she’d been trying to disconnect it.

She tells us she didn’t know what to do — she heard an alarm in her house and she tried to fiddle with the thing to get it to shut up. In the process of “tampering” with the alarm, the whole building’s system was triggered.

Though the loud bell had stopped, there was still something buzzing in her apartment. They have a home security system, and she had its control panel open, and had even removed the battery. “How could it still be buzzing?” she asked, waving the battery at us. It was intermittent, occasionally stopping for a few seconds and then restarting. My pyjama-clad neighbour started poking around the alarm system, and together we tried to pinpoint where the problem was coming from. I said it sounded like it was inside the wall, he thought it was inside the alarm closet, and she was sure it was the fire alarm by the door.

I guess we were all kind of groggy and out of it. Eventually, I noticed that the alarm would stop and start intermittently as we walked around, even when I stomped my feet. Strange! I finally picked up a big paper bag she had sitting near the door, and the alarm stopped. I set it down. The alarm started. I reached into the bag and discovered…a buzzer for the game “Taboo“! It was just a toy; in the bag, some books were resting on top of it in such a way that the buzzer button was depressed enough to sound.

Much embarrassment on her part (after all, having two strange men in your apartment late at night when your boyfriend is still out is pretty taboo, no?). Her home alarm system now had wires poking out of it, no battery, and the ceiling fire alarm was all but disconnected. She’d awakened the whole building and given most of us heart attacks. And all thanks to a harmless little toy buzzer. Her face red, she told us thanks for the help, but…please…just…get…out.

Good night! Bzzzzzzzzzzz….

One day they’re just little kids, playing at Disney World. The next thing you know, they’re all grown up and off to explore outer space!

Off on his Mission To Space. Of course, we all worry about him, but at least he’s doing something he truly loves…