Today, of course, I heard all the stories. In the back of a cab on the way to the club with the boss; that was a good one. Certain alcohol-fueled flirtations upon arrival at said club. Good, good. Keep it coming :)

Unfortunately, I bailed from the office Christmas party at close to two in the morning. Technically, the party was over, but it usually just disperses to another locale. Took me some time to convince my cubicle buddy that we didn’t split at midnight as he kept insisting we did. I may have been sloshed, but if I can stand, I’m usually pretty with it. The service stopped at midnight … ah, that’s why it seemed like we left at that time. Right, right.

I felt like it was a pretty full night. We closed the doors on The Academy of Spherical Arts, a bar and restaurant with swanky pool tables and plush couches. You put your beer down anywhere and they leap out from behind the counter with a machete and cut you down like the savage animal you are.

Despite the plethora of criticisms I have for the company, their ability to throw a good party is without reproach. In the summer we gather at the top boss’ house (top boss in our office, anyway), get shitfaced and play baseball and other wholesome sports until the sun goes down. Then the hot tub cover comes off, someone gets naked (never anyone you want to see naked), and someone does a face plant on the lawn (because it’s so dark, of course).

But the Christmas party is the king of office parties, in my opinion. It’s the one where you’re supposed to tux around and act all grown-up, but that usually goes out the window at the sixth pint. It’s when people tell each other what they really think of each other, and it’s sometimes … less than flattering.

That’s probably why they chose some place with pool tables, it gives us a chance to settle scores like civilized drunkards: a bracing game of billiards. Here I am crossing swords with K.K., the marketing design whiz. Note she’s doing the rock horns while I’m saluting our dark overlord. That’s how the argument always begins. The gentleman in the back is the one who will administer the final coup de grâce once one of us lies gasping for breath and begging for mercy. None shall be given, of course.

Jeans in a sea of dress pants and dresses. I could’ve come to work all dolled up in the morning but that’s no way to get through the day – I sit near the rads and in the winter, stuff melts. The alternative is to run home, throw the getup on, and get back before the buffet gets cold. Unless they schedule the party right after the office closes. Some people actually still work at the end of the day, you know?

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There’s been more than one occasion when someone’s asked me, “Does anyone actually go to these things? Like, stand out there in the cold?” This is the most common response to my initial, “I’m going to (an outdoor winter event).”

I then typically follow up by popping open a browser (this is usually at work), hitting TCL, and showing them last year’s thing. “Wow, you’d never catch me out there freezing my ass off”, is typically the next statement. “Well, you keep warm by virtue of shared body heat. That’s what makes the evening so magical; improper touching”, I try to sell it. But that’s usually not enough. After revelations that there’s no booze and that the place is swarming with kids, the conversation just peters off into other subjects, “So … Toronto City Life … what is that, a government website?” “Yup.” “Not very interesting.” “Yeah.” ”Have lunch yet?” “Nope.”

People are too jaded. Perhaps because they’re hungry. The Cavalcade of Lights, with this year’s record lack of snow, didn’t really classify as a winter event, so all that hoopla about buttocks falling of in the cold were for naught. The kids were there, but you couldn’t hear them over the din of the show and any ones caught underfoot were pretty much fair game so that problem wasn’t overly daunting. I managed to get up to the front of the crowd with barely any resistance:

The alcohol prohibition thing is also a bit of a moot point. I was not once searched even though I carried a bag big enough to conceal a small keg. A mickey stolen away in a coat pocket would most certainly have gone unnoticed, or you could do as any self-respecting adult would and simply go already lubricated. Essentially, sobriety is for children, the infirm, and stupid people.

But I don’t want to get hung up on methods of smuggling drinks in because with the kind of cover you get in both the scenery and the crowd, you can pretty much set up a temporary shelter where you and your junkie friends can shoot up in complete privacy. Drinking? Please, the cops have bigger things to worry about. Like heroin addicts. Or those guys that sell all that light-up crap that the kids use once before it explodes toxically in the car on the way home. Domestic-quality Chinese products are always hit-and-miss:

The best way to avoid these shuckers of mens’ wallets is to simply avoid them. Look for the guys with the craziest head gear — dead giveaway — and beeline it in the other direction. If you have children with you, a) Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Hehe! Hahaha! *wipe tear* Oh man. Why would you do something like that? and b) Avert their gaze from crazy hat guy. If nothing else, at least save yourself some cash.

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I like Christmas, I really do.

I’m always a little surprised to hear someone say that they don’t. To me, the dislike inevitably always boils down to poor management, doesn’t matter the back story.

What do you see when you look at the following picture?

Do you see a brightly decorated foyer with a festively blue wreath above the door, or is that a translucently hot sun about to go supernova and tear you and your family limb from limb? I’m going to suggest that both are possible depending on how you look at it. This can either be the prelude to an idyllic Christmas, or it can the foreshadowing of utter bloody terror. What’s the difference? I believe the answer is expectations.

In the first scenario, the only expectation is that you’ll be home, happy with your family, and hopefully you’ll get to enjoy some relaxing time off and a couple of good meals. Pretty simple, easy to fulfill. In the next scenario, well, I don’t have enough space here for the lists, recipes, schedules, budgets, planning, planning, and more planning that needs to takes place. And that show really needs to hit the road ASAP if it’s going to get some traction by December.

The first scenario has fairly low expectations. The second’s are in the stratosphere. So the trick is to simply bring those expectations down. Manage them.

Part of that is letting everyone know you want to keep it as simple as possible this year:

Take a page from the people in the business district, they didn’t dick around. “Throw a string of shit on that tree and let’s get the fuck outta here, we’ve got money to make”, is most probably how it went down. The essence of pragmatism.

But the idea is to take a page and not the whole book, because otherwise you start getting stuff like this:

Okay, it’s certainly better than barf on the windows, but it seems a little cold. Guess I’m more of a traditional Christmas kinda guy; gimme a fireplace, a mug full of booze, and a comely lass on the knee. Trees are also nice. I probably wouldn’t choose to put giant, blood-red impalement pyramids in the entrance to my place. I think it gives off the wrong message.

Bay Street sure likes it’s Christmas angular and abstract. But that’s okay, I don’t expect any more than that.

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In part 1 of this explosive exposé on the real Santa Claus Parade in Toronto, I went into detail on some of the hazards and ordeals that you are really subjecting your kids to by bringing them along to the event. You may not even be aware of this because, as an adult, you’ve had a good chunk of time to build up your comprehension and so your defences. It’s like understanding how lightning works; it’s still a nervous giggle of a WHAM! outside but you don’t hightail it under your couch like the cat. You know you’re safe.

Consider this, for example:

Awww. You see Santa’s Workshop, a few rosy-cheeked, satisfied elves sitting outside with the happy labours of the year past, some cute houses topped with fluffy snow and powdered sugar. Merry Christmas, kids!

From another angle, this is Santa’s Sweatshop, miserly and terribly underdressed children cast outside their warm shelters in the middle of a cold Siberian winter, no doubt for under-producing for the “jolly old elf” (who’s probably enjoying himself a back-alley rub-and-tug somewhere in Bangkok). Merry freakin’ Christmas, kids.

At this point, some parents may say, “But I’ve taught my kids well. They’ll make the right choices.” I’ve no reason to doubt anyone’s parenting skills, but upbringing is no match for military-style indoctrination. Pretty soon your kid’s goose-stepping down University Avenue with the rest of his comrades:

Still not willing to co-operate? Let’s see how he feels after this:

No? I see; junior likes to play hardball, huh?

That’s right. If they don’t get him one way, it’ll be another. Do you really want your kid playing a tuba? What kind of a horrible parent are you to even consider that question?

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After squeezing my way through my second annual procession on Sunday, I can say without hesitation that the Santa Claus Parade is no place to bring your kids. The dangers are many and very, very real.

To begin with, you have strange men winding their way through the audience snapping random pictures of children and posting them on only God-knows what website. That alone should be enough, but there’s much more to be wary of.

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This is starting to look bad, isn’t it? Second Friday post that didn’t make it out until the weekend. But this time, dear reader, I want to assure you it was an absolute necessity. You see, an event took place this weekend that marks TCL’s first technical anniversary and I didn’t want to waste a post on something more mundane.

I say technical because if you look at the archives, TCL only goes back to January. But it’s really been online since November of last year.

Luckily the WayBack Machine has, as yet, no record of it.

At that time TCL had a mostly-black theme with content that induced hemorrhaging from the eyeballs and projectile vomiting. Pretty awful stuff. Back then I didn’t have the experience or the sphincteric relaxation to do anything interesting, really. Had anyone suggested I run a shocking exposé on what really happens at the annual Santa Claus Parade, I would’ve balked!

But in mid-November I attended Illuminite, the annual Christmas lighting of Yonge-Dundas Square. It was a cold and rainy November night, but the show went on anyway. Try as I might, I wasn’t able to muscle my way up to the front of the crowd, and it was in that soggy moment of inspiration that I remembered it was Toronto City Life. Most of these people were alive, so they qualified. I was getting all bent out of shape for nothing!

That epiphany, and the attitudinal adjustment that came with it, carried me through all the way around to this year’s event. Good thing too because there were a lot more people this time around:

Most of the show, consisting of fire, sparks, trampolines, and dancing, took place at the far end of the square. There was a lot of loud music that, more often than not, descended into a raucous noise that in no way said season’s greetings to me. Eventually, the same spooky music I remember from last year came on as the fire dancers wound their way across the square toward the stage I’d plunked myself behind:

The dancers paraded around on stage in wintry white and silver, twirling fiery objects and having pyrotechnics go off behind them as if to say, “here’s the last blast of warmth you’re getting for the next six months”:

The audience were close enough that one slip and the girl in the red hood got a face full of fire. Now if that’s not a reason to go see something live, I don’t know what is. The fireworks were pretty scary too:

Behind the dancers was the reason for the whole display, the tree.

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My best laid plans had all the chances of snow in hell.

I had been depending on the bitter cold to stay in place; I needed liquids to be able to flash-freeze on contact with surfaces. Unfortunately, a major thaw settled over the city and I ended up with nothing more than slush and puddles, and my originally planned topic ran down the storm drain along with everything else.

I was moping along until, my eye being drawn by a reflected glint of sunlight, I spotted something just as worthy of an in-depth article: a filthy snowbank, slowly disintegrating in the gentle afternoon sun, dislodging it’s treasures onto the sidewalk.

It occurred to me that the layers of the grimy snow (and more importantly their contents) were, in a sense, a sort of stratified time capsule much like the earth embankments of traditional archeological digs. Each line represented a period in which it snowed sufficiently to engulf any lost or discarded articles.

We could (more or less) correlate these layers’ contents to actual calendar days and trace the history of the pile.  A whole two months’ worth of history just lay there in the dirty ice waiting to be uncovered! … Continue Reading