The elderly lady beside me stepped up to the display table, dipped a chip into the sauce, and popped it into her mouth. As she chewed, her face contorted and she made a noise, sort of a cross between a whoop and a wail. She muttered something and marched off in a huff. “She was mad,”Akemi pointed out the obvious. Indeed. But it was a winning demonstration so far as I was concerned. I pointed to the hot sauce that had sent the elderly woman into an endorphin tailspin. “I’ll take one of those.”
We were at a Toronto Garlic Festival, one of the many local events I was free to check out now that I was unemployed and all. We’d picked up about a dozen different types of garlic, some garlic powders, and sampled a bunch of garlic-themed snacks including a chocolate and black garlic popsicle which, quite frankly, would have been just fine without the black garlic. But it was the hot sauces that really drew me.
I moved on to the next table, spotting six bottles in a row. “That’s a habanero base, right?”I asked, pointing to a bottle on the far right, its contents a vibrant orange. The guy behind the counter confirmed it was indeed. “Okay,”I said. “I’ll take this hottest one on the end then.”
“Oh, that isn’t the hottest one,”he informed me. “Our hot sauces start with habanero, and then work their way up.”
I eyed the half dozen or so other bottles, then glanced back at him smiling amiably, chip bowl at the ready. A second’s hesitation and then: “Okay, let’s do this.” And so, I worked my way down the line, from habanero to ghost pepper to scorpion chili to the Carolina reaper to one at the end that was a seven pepper mixture I suspect is also used for crowd control by certain dictatorial regimes. So, yeah, I got a bottle.
One of the nice things about having your new original show cancelled in favor of reruns of another show is the opportunity it gives you to expand your cultural boundaries. For instance, I purchased Akemi and I an annual members to the Art Gallery of Ontario and this morning, Ivon Bartok in tow, we checked out the Guillermo del Toro exhibit, “At Home with Monsters”.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here! But photos a okay. (This photo courtesy of Ivon Bartok)
Aieeeeee! No flash photography!!!
You may kiss the bridge. Go ahead. KISS THE BRIDE!
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary…did I remember to lock the back door?
For the angry bibliophile who has everything – an electrified library!
Museum security says “Please, take your snack outside.”
He looked like he was about to read something aloud but after some twenty minutes of waiting, I decided to move on and leave him with his thoughts.
From Flight of the Penguins: The Director’s Cut.
Yeah, I think I’m just going to let my beard grow out. Thanks anyway.
Who wants to go for a swim?
Hey, to those international Dark Matter fans worried about getting your letters in time for the giveaway, the deadline has been extended to November 15th! And, apparently, we’ve already received our first letter! Jay predicted maybe a couple of hundred letters. I suspect we’ll receive a few more than that.
Suji Takes Flight!
But it’s not all fun and games. The wheels are turning on some other projects. I’ve had some preliminary meetings regarding some interesting opportunities and, in early November, I hit L.A. to start pitching a new series – and take a meeting with some, er, old friends.
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