A Christmas Prayer

If you are anything like me, it just isn't the holidays without an Oriental Party Pak from M&M Meatshops. For the past 15 years it's been part of my family's Christmas Eve tradition - and I gotta tell you, after an night of spirited neighbourhood caroling, nothing hits the spot quite like it.

As Mother takes a Party Pak from the freezer and pops it in the oven, I gather the children round our pink aluminum tree and once again tell them the story of Baby Jesus and the first Oriental Party Pak. According to the Book of Enoch, when the three kings followed that Star out of the East, they weren't bearing gifts of frankincense and myrrh, but rather a hamper of exotic foods from their homelands: mini-vegetable spring rolls. breaded chunks of seasoned chicken and pork as well as those mini-potsticker things (whose actual ingredients remain a carefully guarded secret to this day.)

Arriving in Bethlehem, they presented their offering to Mary and Joseph and then they all dug into the first Oriental Party Pak. The scene became an eternal symbol of hope. For when people of different faiths and nations come together to share finger foods and dip them in plum sauce while gazing upon the Miracle of Life, then all our other problems seem insignificant.

As a Party Pak cools on the kitchen counter, we bow our heads and pray that somewhere in the world, Mr. Bush in his White House and Mr. Bin Laden in his cave are also enjoying an Oriental Party Pak and thinking about how to make the world a better place for us all.

Then we turn off the Christmas tree lights, plug the television back in and watch a Christmas special.

New Years Eve - and I haven't got a thing to wear!

Hey, it's me again. Avanta. I'm the chick who comes on here occassionally to vent about my stupid, stupid parents. It's been a while tho. I guess they haven't done anything too anal for the last few weeks. Either that or it's getting close to Christmas and I don't want to press my luck.

Not that I ever get what I really want for Christmas. My old man is always bragging about how he once met Prime Minister Chretien. So for the past five years I've been after him to use his influence to reunite my favorite band, Our Lady Mother Peace. But he never does. He just smirks and makes some comment about how Rainey is no John Lennon.

But I've got other problems. More important ones than my parents. Them, I can handle. But there are certain things in this life that I have little control over. Like what in the world do you possibly wear to a "James Bond-themed" New Years Eve Party?!? This boy from school? Billy Dunkenfield? He's a senior, you know. Anyways, he asks me out for New Years Eve. And then after I say, sure whatever, he tells me we're going to a James Bond party at Cindy Marshall's house.

So, I'm thinking - James Bond? I've never even seen a James Bond movie in my entire life. Hey, I'm only 17 fukkin' years old! And then - Cindy Marshall? You mean, like the head cheerleader at school? The one who never speaks to me - or people like me? The one we all refer to as "the Prettiest Girl in Puppet-land." She's also the one with the big sweaters and is always bragging about how rich her father is because he's not only head of the Parks Department but owns a car dealership as well. Billy says this party is going to be catered and kind of formal and to be sure to dress up.

Yep, nothing like being under a bit of pressure. I mean, if you are a woman, just what do you wear to a fancy party like this? I may not have ever seen a James Bond movie, but I have heard of 'Bond girls' before. And I know that every girl there is going to be dressed like some kind of sex-goddess skank. I've looked up the credits to Bond movies and the names alone say it all - Xenia Onatopp, Pussy Galore, Ursula Undress. Nope, nothing too subtle there. Leave it to good ol' Cindy Marshall to come up with an idea like this. Her and her big pom-poms.

So the girls will all be dressed in micro-mini's. The guys will all be wearing tuxedos. And if last year's prom was any indication, most of them will look more like Austin Powers than 007. Let's face it, there's a real lack of choice of what to wear to a party like this.

So for advice, I did what I really don't like to do unless I have to - I went to my dad and asked him. He claims to be a James Bond expert. He's read all the books. Has bubble-gum cards from the 1960s. Has a vintage toy gun (which is actually from a TV rip-off of Bond called The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) And he's seen all the movies, "Except for the ones with Roger Moore. You don't even want to go there."

After he insisted that I be home by midnight (on New Years Eve!) he sat me down and put on an old James Bond movie, From Russia With Love - starring the first Bond, Sean Connery. And that's when I decided what I wanted to wear to the party. I'm going to go as Rosa Klebb. She's this Russian spy who is an expert on torture and killing people. In the movie she's middle-aged, kinda ugly, never smiles and just might be butch. But I won't pay any attention to that part.

What was cool about Rosa Klebb was her shoes. Right near the end of the movie, there's a scene where she's disguised like a maid and comes to James Bond's hotel room to kill him. He knocks the gun out of her hand and then she clicks her heels together and this poisoned razor-sharp dagger comes out the toe. Just like a switch-blade knife. And she starts trying to kick him. I know it sounds dumb but it was really pretty exciting.

So that's what I'm going to do for the party. Rent a French Maid's costume (and Cindy and all the other girls are thinking that they're going to look so sexy in their micro black or silver cocktail dresses - well, wait till they get a load of me,) And then glue a cardboard "dagger" painted silver onto the tip of my right shoe. I'll look hot - and I won't look exactly the same as every other girl there.

Not only will I save many $$$ on a dress - but anyone there who actually knows their Bond will applaud me for making an obscure pop-culture reference that will be over the heads of everyone else. There's nothing cooler than letting people think you're the hippest person in the room.

Either that or I'll just rent a tuxedo. borrow my dad's toy spy-gun and go around all night introducing myself as "Bond. Jane Bond." That would be cool too. Some guys like that kinda thing.

Cheese & Onions

Picked up the new Beatles CD the other day. Love, it's called. And it's the best new CD I've heard by the lads in ages. Too bad they had so little to do with its production and release. What with two of them being dead and all. And one of the others being Ringo.

This is a new approach for the boys in reaching new fans. Longtime producer George ('The 5th Beatle") Martin and his son Giles, use the mash-up method which is so popular with the young people these days, particularly hip-hoppers and those scratcher guys who can't come up with an original catchy riff or lyric on their own so they steal one from someone with more talent and throw it into the mix-blender.

But here, it actually works. Possibly because the whole Beatles catalogue of songs is so huge and Martin is so familiar with all of it - having had a hand in all of its creation. So he throws in little bits and pieces from various Beatle songs and make them into a whole new song.

Get Back, for the most part is the song we all know. But it starts off with a bit from A Day in the Life, then the opening chord to Hard Days Night, followed by the drum solo from The End and then over those drumbeats launches into the opening chords of the actual song Get Back. And it all works beautifully. At times the album morphs into a 'George Martin Presents the Fab Four as Stars on 45' mode but that's just part of the fun.

Other songs are just played straight without the blenderizer approach. Either way it's great to hear the boys again whether it's a "re-imagining" or "re-inventing" of the Beatles or not. As one reviewer - or maybe it was Sir George himself, put it - it's a chance to be reminded that in their short career together they were four young musicians in their 20s and all at the top of their game. And this CD shows just how good they were at breaking new ground and coming up with songs totally different from anyone else - and even from themselves.

However, it's really pretty psychedelic stuff and the best way to appreciate such trippy fare is to down copious amounts of LSD and slip into an addled stream-of-consciousness mode.

..... Much later. Back now. Sitting on a cornflake. Quite stoned now. Cuckoo-ka-choo. I begin to air-guitar.

It's a Snow Day!

Was summoned for a dog walk at 5:00 a.m., no time to wake up with a coffee - and the first thing we see is four feet of snow outside the front door. Even for a Great Dane, this was high. But we plowed through until he finally found a spot to empty those bowels. Right in the middle of the road. And since I was covered in snow already, I shovelled out our sidewalk. No point in doing the driveway. No one's going anywhere today. Certainly not on my street. Some fool has his car stuck in the middle of the road and so we can forget about any snow-plows till he moves it.

Just a nice day to stay in and listen to AM radio tell us about everything that's closed. Which is basically everything. When the cops say don't go on the roads unless it's an emergency, that means the whole town is shut down. When the taxis are only making trips to hospitals, that says it all. Still, I'm sure I could get a bottle of booze delivered if I really wanted one. It would be a nice day to sit in front of a fire, look out the front door window and curl up inside a nice glass of red wine.

And it's about time we had a Snow Day. Even though London is supposedly in the middle of a 'snow belt,' we haven't had an official snowday in decades. Back in the late 70s actually. I remember it was the winter of '77. I remember that year because the year before was the year they had all that flooding down in Windsor. I remember that because it was in 1976 that they finished building the Ambassador Bridge. Before that, if you wanted to cross the river you had to take the ferry over to Detroit. All it cost was a nickel. American nickels had a picture of a bee on the one side back then. So if you wanted a return trip on the ferry, the ferry-man would tell you "That'll be two bees." But if you wanted to buy a soda over there, that would be just one bee. So when you left the house in the morning you would make sure you had plenty of bees in your pocket.

Ah, winter memories. Course they don't have nickels with bees on them up here. But that doesn't matter. We have snow. Four feet of it.

I leave you with Wally Cox's thoughts of snow taken from his book, My Life as a Small Boy (1961, Scribners.) ... "I always wanted the snow to make everything disappear. It seemed to me that snow had a sense of humor. Snow fell for the fun of it. Adults had no use for it, and kids did, so it seemed to be on our side, as few things were."

Oh Lord, Why Hast Thou Forsaken the Forest City?

Finally got the new Bell Canada phone book the other day. Did the usual, looked up my own name to reaffirm that I actually exist. Looked up a few people from high school that I haven't seen in years. Yep, that cheerleader I once had a crush on still lives in Masonville. But is no longer married to the captain of the football team I couldn't help but notice.

And then on impulse I looked up someone whose acquaintance I had made a few years ago. And there was no listing. I'm talking about God. There was a time that you could pick up your phone book and be comforted by the fact that God was listed and living on a small street off Hamilton Road in east London. There it was right there in black and white type. Right between 'Gocon, Letty' and 'Godarn, R.'

I don't mind telling you but at that moment, I kind of panicked. I retrieved the 2006 phone book I had just tossed in the blue box and was astonished to see that God wasn't listed in that one either. Well, that explains a lot. But it doesn't explain enough. Because I know for a fact that God was listed in the 2005 and the 2004 books. It was in 2004 that I had first found God in the white pages.

It had been a rough night at the slots. And the hydro bill came the next morning. On a whim, I dialed 'directory assistance' and asked if they had a local London listing for God. It's not like there's something like the Bat-signal to get His attention.

"Yes, we have a God living on Delaware Street," came a surprisingly blase reply from the operator.

"Is that God with a capital 'G' or a small 'g,' I asked. I wanted to talk to the big Gahuna himself, not some minor-league deity. I was assured it was the Big 'G' and given a phone number.

You know, it's a bit intimidating to just call up God out of the blue. What if He mistook me for a telephone solicitor? A sure ticket to Hell if there ever was one. What if I woke Him from a nap? What if He was in the can? What if I got Him out of the shower?

And just what do you say to The Supreme Being when you finally do get Him on the phone? Do you blurt out what you want right away? Or do you act polite and all as if it was a letter to Santa Claus and so you first enquire about His health and how's Mrs. God? And what if there isn't a a Mrs. God? Or that God was a woman? Do you ask for Miss God? Ms. God? The Goddess of the house? The Bible is pretty vague on that kind of stuff.

I needed a good opening line because everytime I pray, it seems that I'm asking for something. A new bike. A new toy gun. A million dollars. Jessica Simpson's home phone-number. That kind of stuff. I didn't want it to seem so obvious that I was only calling to ask a favor - like winning the jackpot that night at the slots. No, it would be best to play it low-key. It was December and nothing would seem more natural than to call up and ask if He had any ideas what His Son might like for a birthday gift. Then just casually mention that I couldn't spend too much this year due to my poor cash-flow situation. Hint, hint.

So I made the call. And got a busy signal.

Then it occured to me, Maybe this wasn't the God. Wouldn't the real God at least have call-waiting?

I was about to redial when another thought occured to me. Maybe there was a good reason why the line was busy. After all, the world was going to Hell in a handbasket. War in Iraq. Church attendance was at an all-time low. TV-evangelists were embarrassing Him on a daily basis. And the Earth was due to collide with Planet X.

Maybe God was a bit too busy to to be concerned about my insignificant problems. If I needed money, I should be able to figure out a way to get it myself. Isn't that what the gift of free will and independence was all about when He kicked Adam and Eve's bare asses out of that garden in the first place and told them to get a job?

A few days later my cash-flow problems were solved thanks to some nice Christians working in the city's welfare office. Once more, all was right with the world and I called up God again to say thank-you. And when She answered (that's right, 'She,' - God sounded like a young woman in her early 20s,) well, She told me that's why the phone had been busy the day I first called - because She wanted me to figure it out for myself. "You know, I'm not Santa Claus," is the way She put it. And because She had been on hold for twenty minutes waiting to talk to someone at Rogers to arrange a time for Her cable hook-up.

We had a few good talks on the phone after that and then I stopped relying on Her so much for free advice. So it was a shock to see that She was no longer listed in the phone book. Or hadn't even been around the past couple of years. Or even said 'Goodbye.'

Where has She gone?
God only knows.

Should we be afraid? Should we be very afraid?

I don't think so. One of these days, I'll pick up the latest new phone book and there She will be. Just like She never left.