Facebook is one of the biggest time sucks on the face of the planet. You know this, if you use Facebook. You get on, fully intending to only post a photo of the toast you just made or maybe friend some people you haven’t heard from in years and wouldn’t say hello to if you saw them crossing the street but feel safe doing so in the isolated atmosphere of social media, and the next thing you know, it’s a week from yesterday.
Or you run across the “What Kind of (fill in the blank) Are You? “ tests. And you take them and find out your aura is gold, your old-person name is Murray, which George Strait song you are, which once-upon-a-time character you need to be, and what your perfect job is. And so forth. And so on. One test begets another and suddenly instead of having paid the mortgage or filed a story on time or opined about the liberal scourge or right-wing lunacy that will plunge this country into ruination, you’ve fallen victim to one of Facebook’s biggest time sucks. The test.
I do all the time. I confess it freely. And regret it immediately after, having wasted all that time finding out the iconic anime heroine I am is Usagi Tsukino of Sailor Moon. Mind you, I have no idea who Usagi Tsukino of Sailor Moon is and I’m not exactly sure what “anime” means, but I am she. Or he. Or it. And I have invested several minutes of my life finding something out that doesn’t enhance it in the least.
We are all in search of ways to better ourselves. The self-test time-sucks on Facebook aren’t one of them. But we take them because, well, we’re curious, we want to validate our existence, or embellish its reality by lying on the test, and what better way to do that than on Facebook, where billions of people have made Mark Zuckerberg one of the most annoying rich young men in the world by lowering ourselves to levels we probably wouldn’t in real life.
And after we take the test, Facebook exhorts us to share our results on Facebook, so all our friends, some of whom we may actually know, can see how wonderful, pathetic, energetic, lazy, handsome, ugly, etc., we really are because a test told us so.
But I can’t stop taking them. Part of it is the competitive urge in me. I see a “friend” who scored “Stormy with Strong Winds” on the “What Weather Best Describes Your Relationship,” and I want to go for “Warm and Sunny!” Someone gets “The Bug” like the Arachnids in “Starship Troopers” on the “What Kind of Alien are You?” and I’m striving for “The Buddy” like in “E.T.” You get “Adorable” on the “Which Dictionary Definition Sums You Up Perfectly?” you can bet I’ll top your sorry cute ass with “Wonderful.”
Tough to Stop
It’s addictive. Facebook tests are the cocaine of social media. You think just one more, maybe two, that’s it, I’ll put it away, never go back, never. I can stop anytime I want. Then you see someone sharing test results that makes them “Too Cocky” on the “How Much of A Gentleman Are You?” test and you dig right into your soul to prove yourself “A True Gentleman.”
There are sites devoted to tests. One had so many I couldn’t scroll through them all. They raise questions no human being should ever raise, like “Which Celebrity Should be Stalking YOU?” and “What Kind of Mermaid Are You?” and “How Powerful is YOUR Love Potion?”
If social media had a social conscience (it does not), there would be a test to find out if you’re taking too many tests. It would ask “How much time do you spend taking tests?” with answers like “Not nearly enough!” and “Just the right amount” and “100 percent of my day” and “I’m a pathetic useless piece of human garbage with nothing at all resembling a real-life life, I mean I’m here, aren’t I?”
Road to Recovery
And son of a gun, I found one. Honestly. It’s the “Are You a Social Media Junkie?” For real. It says “Test your social media health! Is social media useful tool or an unhealthy obsession?”
So I took it. And scored as a “social media junkie.” It says us junkies “exhibit both stalker and celebrity wannabe tendencies. You have forgotten how to communicate face to face.” It offers advice like “Go outside” and “Actually speak to someone.”
My God. They’re so right. It’s time to act. It’s time to turn off social media notifications on my iPhone, iPad and computer. It’s time to reconnect with my fellow human beings in a meaningful, personal way. I’m going to go outside, take a walk, talk to strangers and replenish the soul long since lost inside a computer screen and hear sounds of humanity, not the inhuman, addictive click of a mouse.
Well, as soon as I find out which Beyonce song describes the woman I am. Be right back.
My food is looking at me. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
But he is. Or she is. OK, it is. A fried pigeon- head and all – at Le Cristal Chinois, as authentic-as-it-gets Chinese restaurant in Montreal’s Chinatown. That’s one thing you gotta love about Montreal, the culinary diversity is immense. And tasty. That includes pigeon..
Le Cristal Chinois is on the sixth floor of a building near strip joints in a seedy yet safe-feeling area of town. I take the elevator up and step into noisy nuptial bliss of four weddings going on at once.
I flag a waiter to get a seat near one and have fun watching the photo montage of the happy bride and groom and the crowd dancing to DJ-tunes like “The Twist” and a rap version of “Stayin’ Alive.” Though it’s a young crowd, they dance modestly in gentle side-to-side motions, like old white people at a wedding (that includes me).
I check out the huge menu. Abalone. Shark-fin soup. Swallow’s nest. Nope, I’m going fried pigeon. My waiter looks at me.
“It’s a pretty small bird,” he says in perfect English.
OK, so I also go with bean curd and seafood soup (quite good, could use more salt) and duck au jus orange (absolutely divine, sweet, thick breast in succulent orange sauce with orange sections wedged into the slices).
Then comes my pigeon, quartered, the head and neck separate. With one eye staring at me, seemingly sutured but looking my way. I look back and eat the other parts first. It’s quite good, fried crunchy and seasoned perfectly. That leaves the head.
“Sorry buddy,” I sigh, picking it up. “The time has come.”
I bite through the skull, revealing the tiny gray brain. I bite that, relishing the texture and taste, not unlike pate. Seriously. I realize it’s the first brain I’ve ever eaten. Well, sober anyway.
All in all a great meal for $45. I slip the waiter $15 for the tip. It’s the least I can do to honor the pigeon.
For the less adventurous but deep in the pockets, consider m:brgr, aka Mr. Burger, home of the $100 burger – and equally good, cheaper ones. The C-note variety is made with twin patties of Kobe beef, bacon, foie gras and honey truffle aioli. What besides that makes it worth 100 bucks?
“The experience,” smiles Jeff Dichter, owner, and a philanthropist who donates a portion of all proceeds to Montreal children’s charities, including the Montreal Children’s Hospital; Dichter had an ailing child years ago (now healthy) and made it a priority to never forget those in need.
I opt for the $39 foie gras burger, with Kobe beef, truffle carpaccio (didn’t know it existed), thick and creamy foie gras and honey truffle aioli. It is absolutely splendid, topped with what I think is a green olive but actually is an Italian dwarf truffle peach – which I also didn’t know existed.
All of it, including the sweet potato fries I try and pulled-pork poutine, a heart-clogging concoction of pork, gravy-drenched fries and gooey cheese curd, along with a couple of mohitos, gives me a “mouthgasm,” as I tell Dichter. He laughs and asks if I want another classic here, a massive chocolate chip cookie baked and served in a cast-iron skillet and topped with ice cream. I look at my swelling belly and decline.
You get no food at Ziggy’s, a very local bar on otherwise tourist-trendy Crescent Street.
“It’s a local bar,” deadpans owner, aka The King of Crescent Street, Ziggy Eichenbaum. “I don't serve food. I cater only to alcoholics.”
Ziggy’s is tucked below ground level down concrete stairs, past a mailbox with Montreal Canadiens stickers on it. Inside, the place bleeds Canadiens’ bleu, blanc, rouge, right down to the depiction of legendary goalie Ken Dryden on the men’s room door.
“He heard about it,” Ziggy smiles, “and had to come see it. He said ‘Ziggy, I’m on the bathroom door?’”
In one corner of the joint are red seats from the old Montreal Forum near a photo of Ziggy with the Stanley Cup, taken with four superstar Canadiens of the past, Jean Beliveau, Yvan Cournoyer, Henri Richard and Guy LaFleur, on the occasion of the team’s 100th anniversary in 2009.
Celeb sightings here are common, including local sports stars, car racers in the Montreal Grand Prix, MMA fighters who come through town, and American movie stars like Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci and Channing Tatum.
Sir Ben Kingsley came in once. Ziggy asked him about “that turtle movie he was in,” which was the little known “Turtle Diary” in 1986. Kingsley’s eyes lit up.
“He jumped over the bar and kissed me!” Ziggy laughs. “He said ‘That was one of my best movies!’”
Pro golfer Payne Stewart became a friend after Ziggy, not knowing who he was and that he was in town for the Canadian Open, offered him tickets. Stewart came back often, even giving Ziggy a putter in the shape of - there's no other way to put this - a cock, that Ziggy will playfully and happily show off.
A must-have concoction is the kamikaze, a shot of Russian vodka, triple sec and lime syrup, sweet and sweetly deceiving. We slug down three and stumble out into the Montreal daylight, happy for the impromptu encounter with the King of Crescent Street.
Later, as I sit on the street near the Montreal Jazz Festival with a hot dog, a sole pigeon pops up at my feet. Looking at me, I swear, with an evil eye. I feed him bits of the roll, figuring it’s the least I can do to honor my food source.
I live south of Boston and fly out of Logan International Airport there, but since traffic is usually a nightmare, I take the Logan Express bus out of Braintree, about 15 miles south of the city. It was on a recent ride that a little kid made me realize what windows were for.
He seemed about eight, wearing a bright green t-shirt, traveling with a young woman who appeared to be his mom. They sat in the row ahead of mine. We left Braintree and he knelt to peer out to the window. He stayed there for the duration of our ride.
He wasn’t noisy or bouncy or doing anything unusual. He was just a kid looking out a window like many windows I’ve looked out on this ride many times before. I figured he saw what I usually saw: Nothing.
Then I started watching like he was. Without a mind clogged with important things to think about. Without fretting about flight delays or crowded security lines. Without adult filters.
I realized he wasn’t looking at nothing. He was looking at everything.
The bus detoured temporarily off the highway to avoid traffic, cutting through local streets. A baby was pushed in carriage by a young woman chatting on her cellphone, talking to whomever our imagination fancied.
People filled the patio of a restaurant this sunny late afternoon, some engaged face to face, laughing and smiling, leaving us to wonder what they were talking about. Others stared somberly into glowing phones in their hands, face to screen, emotionless fingers flying, leaving us to wonder the same thing.
The bus lumbered back onto the Southeast Expressway, past the rolling green hills dotted by strolling duffers at Presidents Golf Course in Quincy. The boy stared. I wondered if he was thinking about his dad, about having played with his dad, or wanting to play with his dad. Maybe wishing he had a dad.
Cars moved slowly by us, their stressed occupants looking out their own windows, mindsets presumably not as innocent as the boy watching them.
We rolled past a big open park off the expressway, the name of which I’ve never known, the activity there I’d scarcely noticed. The boy did. As did I, pretty much for the first time. People walked. Dogs ran. Kites flew.
Boats dotted the waters around Boston, near the Neponset River and Squantum Channel, the harbor islands visible beyond, his gaze drawn to them. Maybe he wondered what they held. Maybe he fantasized he was captain of a fort protecting the city from the British. It brought me back to the times I had such heroic thoughts.
His gaze was drawn to the flashing lights of an ambulance, perhaps thinking as I was, about the undoubtedly sad reason for its howling rush toward a Boston hospital. It forced traffic aside, sped out of view, the boy’s eyes now drawn down, maybe trying to identify out-of-state plates, maybe counting highway stripes or gauging the time it took for them to stretch or blur by as the bus slowed and quickened.
In those cars were the occasional other little kids looking out. Maybe this boy in front of me realized how lucky he was going to the airport, to be flying away. But he wasn’t smiling much. Maybe the reason for his plane ride wasn’t a happy one.
It all kept him amazingly quiet, his mom having no need to drag him from the window to be still. Smiling, she pointed out familiar landmarks, identifying buildings in the cluster of the Boston skyline that reflected the waning sun’s rays off all that glass. Closer to Boston, a commuter train chugged toward South Station. The boy watched its slow slog, peering into all those windows through his.
Near the airport, his head tilted to see planes taking off and landing, eyes wide, nose pressed to the glass, likely harboring no thoughts of traffic or flight delays or security lines, only the magic of metal gleaming in the blue sky.
We pulled into Logan’s terminal A, where I got off. I walked by the mom and boy. He still looked out the window at airport life, of which we were now a part.
“You both have a fun trip, wherever you’re going,” I said to her. “I loved watching him just watching out the window.”
She smiled and thanked me. And I left the bus realizing how often I’ve looked out countless windows, seeing nothing because I used just my eyes. Children intuitively know how to see, not look. Like this little kid who watched me as the bus rolled away.
May he never lose that gift. May we all find it again.
Why do people love having their picture taken in front of the plane they’re boarding?
I see lots doing this, but only at airports you board from the ground. Like in the Caribbean. You don’t see this where you board from the lounge through what I like to call the “Shitting-Out Passengers Tube.” Admit it, when you’re in that tightly packed space of grumbling fellow passengers anxious to get on the plane, fight for overhead space and cram themselves into a seat for the next 10 hours next to fat people and screaming kids, you feel like you’re being shit out. Because, well, you feel like shit. OK, maybe it’s just me.
I see young people doing this, like honeymooners, their lives ahead of them. And old people, too, who want to show their loved ones just where they’re blowing the inheritance they thought they had coming.
But for some reason, I want to put them all in a Shitting-Out Passengers tube and grunt them out over the ocean. I’m jaded, I guess, I figure a plane is just a way of getting somewhere, not a magic silver bird that will wing me to the heavens. I mean, do they take pictures of themselves in front of the cross-town bus wherever they are? Or a subway train? I mean really.
Granted, it’s boring to wait to board but at least outside, if it’s nice, you can take pictures of, oh, I dunno, the mountains, the shacks on nearby hills or the ocean or chickens just outside the fence or the surly baggage handlers beating the shit out of luggage you pray isn’t yours. But a picture of the plane?
It’s sort of like people who like taking “optical illusion” photos. Like someone standing a hundred feet in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and pretending they’re trying to hold it up (though one fairly creative take on this was one I saw of one guy pretending to push down on the tower and up his bent-over friend’s ass). Or a hottie in short skirt “straddling” the Eifel Tower. Or some douchebag with an “I’m da man!” snarl on his face near a huge cactus pretending to hold what he wants you to believe is his giant, green, prickly prick.
In thinking about all this, I remember the time my daughter and I were traveling and were at a restaurant with a giant cow sculpture in front of it. I got underneath and pretended to suckle one huge plastic teat. She took a photo. Which she still has. And which if she posts, will find herself out of the inheritance I was planning to leave her. Which is roughly zero,
What follows is a longish blog about a shortish flight.
I am at tiny Union Island Airport in Clifton on Union, in the Grenadines, part of the Windward Islands in the Caribbean. That's a lot of qualifiers for a tiny airport. It is also a hot and humid airport because well, it is the Caribbean and the natives in the Caribbean sweat from conception to grave and think nothing of it. Air conditioning doesn't exist in these places. I think, I truly do, if the Carrier people suddenly descended on these perpetually hot and sticky places and offered everyone an air-conditioner, they'd say "No, thank you. We are a sweaty people. And we are OK with that."
Nearby the open-sided main ticket area (I say "main" generously, there is only one) is a small low building that houses the "Airport Shopping Centre," which is four locked blue doors. They look like they're never open. Next to it is a patio and seating area that is Dina's Dee Bar & Restaurant. Sitting there is a sassy little number whom I presume to be Dina Dee, a coffee-colored, round-faced elderly woman with a giant smile who asks me how I am.
"I'm fine," I say. "How are you?"
"I'm fine," Dina Dee grins hungrily. "I'm looking at you."
Wow. So what I find out she's the mother of eight - including her youngest, 40-something Roland, who it turns out in that magical small-world way was my waiter the night before at the Petit St. Vincent resort a couple of islands and a one-hour ferry ride away. So what she is a grandmother of 13, great-grandmother of three. I'll take the shameless flirtation.
I have a lemon-lime soda and talk to her before a bunch of locals come by and they all chat and laugh like they've known each other forever, which clearly they have. Dina Dee holds forth like she's the mayor, the town sage, everyone’s mama. She seems made for the role.
Nearby is a typewritten sign entitled "Gossip." It reads "gossip is the most common form of verbal attack among black women. Passing stories around, betraying confidence, embellishing situation (sic) to make yourself look good. So if you are going to gossip about me, remember, I'm a success."
I hope my dear Dina Dee is never hurt by gossip. But knowing her as well as I have for the last 10 minutes, I'm guessing Dina don't let no hurt happen.
I am here to connect to Barbados, then on to Boston. This tiny Union Island airport has a couple of counters and sweaty people in tan TSA uniforms. I have no idea if their TSA is the same as our TSA. I suspect so because they do not smile. Two of them hand search my checked bag, asking me to unzip it.
This is how I also know they're not our TSA. IF our TSA is about to hand search your bag and you attempt to unzip it yourself, they scream "SIR! Do NOT touch the bag!" as if to do so, a device would fire out of your fingers to detonate the hydrogen bomb they are sure you're hiding.
It is at times like that I want to say "Go right ahead. But I am sure you will not find that hydrogen bomb, or that deadly and illegal 3.5-ounce bottle of hand cream, or that tiny Swiss Army keychain with a knife so small it couldn't halve a grape, that you have trained so hard to find. But go on, look." But I don't say anything because the last thing I want is a body cavity search. Well, forty years ago, maybe, but not now
So here at the tiny airport they hand search the bag I check. Ditto for my carry-on at security. Security seems comprised of one disinterested young TSA female agent and a very old and rickety looking metal detector. The non-smiling agent, whom I'm guessing on a busy day will see about six people, tells me to take off my belt. I do. Then she asks me to unzip my carry on. Which I do with one hand, while holding up my pants with the other
I empty my pockets, change, pen, cigarette lighter. She says I cannot take the cigarette lighter. I'm like "what?" She's like "No."
I smoke. To a smoker who suddenly has his lighter denied him, well, it's pretty upsetting. You can lose my luggage, you can steal my money, you can find a hydrogen bomb in my bag, but you take my lighter, you are seriously tipping my emotional scale to "Oh fucking hell."
As any smoker knows, after a long, hideous, non-smoking day of flying and airports, the ONLY thing that matters when you're finally free of it all is that first lovely, life-shortening puff of cigarette the second you step outside. So be it, I think, as she takes my shitty $1 Bic. I wish I just left it in my pocket because frankly, this metal detector I walk through is so old I've no doubt I could be a bazooka salesman and walk through it with the newest model strapped to my leg and it would not utter one peep.
My plane, flown by Mustique Air, is due to leave at 11. At precisely 11, another plane bound for Barbados, my connecting airport, comes and goes. I ask another disinterested TSA agent where my plane is. He shrugs "Mustique is never on time." Suddenly and inexplicably the tiny lounge just past the old metal detector is alive with shrieking girls, like it was 1963 and the Beatles just walked in. I ask another agent what the commotion is. She actually smiles. And actually says "Someone's excited about something."
Ah.
On one wall are posters touting Chinese destinations. I somehow think there are no flights to China from here. On a door is a poster warning about inappropriately touching or molesting young children. The poster is old and fraying. It makes me wonder if Michael Jackson once had Neverland the Caribbean here.
My plane arrives. I am the only passenger. It is a twin prop J8-Kim, which I must look up, because I've never seen one. It is actually roomy if you're the only one aboard, a five seater: A three-person bench seat faces front and two solo seats face rear. All are off-white leather, soft and comfy. There is a long fold-away table in the middle. I imagine this as a private charter with five very evil people going over papers on the fold-away table to plot their hostile takeover of a small country of sweaty people, from which they’ll launch a global attack. It gives me chills that such evil exists until I remember it's just my fantasy. Sometimes they seem so real. Could be the heat.
There is only one pilot. Every time I get on a small plane with one pilot, I go "Hmmm, suppose he dies? Suppose this son of a bitch wants to die? Suppose his instrument of death happens to be this plane? Suppose this son of a bitch doesn't care I don't want to die. It's happened before."
This causes me some concern. I don't want to have to fly the plane. But this guy is in his 30s. He looks hale and healthy and handsome. I watch his every move, just in case. You never know. I watch how he moves the stick, I watch the instruments, I watch every thing he does, hoping that some part of my brain will remember just enough to land safely if he dies and I can get him back to his family in one piece for the funeral. I like to see the bigger picture.
I don't do this in big planes with lots of passengers, figuring at least one may be a pilot. Or Karen Black-like in her ability to look sexy and somewhat fly a disabled 747 until Chuck Heston drops in. If not I figure my odds are better of landing a big plane with many people on the ground to "talk me down," as the saying goes. I'm not comfy with the "down" part of that expression because it's also part of the description of a "downed airplane," where everyone dies. I would prefer, if the situation arose, they "talk me in."
But I feel good now. This pilot, this young, handsome, non-suicidal or cardiac-impaired pilot seems to have it under control. I am secure. Until we taxi to the end of the runway and I notice it's about as long as a good-sized Band-Aid. I'm not kidding. It's very short.
When I flew in here a few days earlier, I didn't notice that. I just noticed us flying over a hill full of somewhat ramshackle-looking pastel homes and over a debris-strewn field with chickens running about. I didn't notice how damn short it is. And I didn’t notice that it ends, several rapid heartbeats away, in the crashing surf. Until we're revving the J8-Kim ready to roll.
But Andy (I don't know his name, he never gives it, I just name him Andy. I like naming people and things I don't know, it humanizes them and makes me feel better) thunders down the runway and never have I wanted a plane to lift off so badly. I was going to grab my iPad mini and record it, either the happy takeoff or the precise moment of my watery death, but think better of it. I instead will the plane to lift off. And miraculously, due I am certain to my positive thinking, it lifts up about two-thirds of the way down, making me wonder about helicopter flights the next time I have to fly off a good-sized Band-Aid.
We fly over the Tobago Cays, an archipelago where the day before I’d snorkeled and swam with the turtles. And had an onboard barbecue. And three extremely powerful rum punches. which is unusual because on most of these charters you get way more punch than rum. But these made me tipsy and I hoped I wouldn't hurl on the way back the way a sweet young girl on her honeymoon did on the way out. But I don’t. And for the record, I don't know if the Tobago Cays are indeed an archipelago. I just like the word. It makes me feel better. Call this archipelago my Andy of the ocean.
We land in Barbados and taxiing in Andy opens the door to let in some of the stifling hot air that's at least moving. This is not unusual in small planes. But I notice that the door and his hand seem so very close to the spinning propeller.
Now I'm worried about Andy. I don't want to see his left arm get caught in the prop and unleash a horrific spray of blood and bone all over the place. For one thing I'm wearing a white shirt. But my worry is for naught. When we land and Andy shuts down the engines I see the prop is a reassuring several inches away. Whew!
And that's my long story about a short flight. Except to add that when I get out of the plane I say "Andy, that was a really smooth landing." To which he says, "Well, I gotta get one right every so often...and my name isn't Andy."
Yeah right, and I don't know an archipelago when I name one.