HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-07-18, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 18, 2013. PAGE 5.
“In Mexico we have a word for sushi. Bait.”
– José Simon
Reactionary as it may sound, I feel a
touch of empathy for Señor Simon. I,
too, tend to avoid sushi. Generally
speaking, I prefer the concept of cooked
food over raw – especially food that may
contain unwelcome surprises such as
anisakiasis. This is an infection of the gut
caused by little wrigglers known as anisaki
larvae. They normally live in fish guts but are
happy to move uptown to take up residence in
yours.
You don’t want anisakis larvae in your
alimentary neighbourhood; they’re painful,
unpleasant and hard to get rid of. Granted, the
chances of ingesting anisaki larvae in sushi,
sashimi, ceviche or other raw fish dishes are
remote, but cooking the fish reduces the risk to
zero. Ergo, fire up the burners, ma.
But then what is one to make of the fact
that there’s an upscale Tokyo restaurant
called Ne Quitez Pas where clients line up to
taste the latest culinary creations of famed
chef Toshio Tanabe? Maestro Tanabe
specializes in dishes featuring, well, dirt.
Diners can sample the delights of soil
soup which is served with a flake of dirty
truffle and, for the truly adventurous,
there’s the ‘soil surprise’ (a dirt-encrusted
potato which features an unwashed truffle
centre).
What separates chef Tanabe from a
kindergartner in a sandbox? Hey, it’s not like
he serves ‘raw’ dirt – he simmers it slightly
after running it through a sieve to get rid of
crunchy bits.
When it comes to restaurant food,
occasionally life imitates art – or at least the
human digestive system. Take the case of the
McDonald’s outlet in the city of Dorval,
Quebec. The restaurant is being sued
for...clogging arteries.
Not human arteries – municipal ones.
Dorval city fathers claim that discarded grease
from the McDonald’s galley has bunged up
city sewers resulting in nearly $15,000 worth
of damage.
Perhaps they could cram an industrial-
strength antacid tablet down the galley
drainpipe.
Different strokes. There’s a man-and-wife
couple in Gibsons, British Columbia
transforming the very concept of breakfast
with a cereal they’ve created that’s chock-
full of organic goodies. Its name is...well,
the name originally was ‘Hapi’ – until one of
their first customers tasted a spoonful
and yelped “Holy Crap! This is
amazing!”
Holy Crap it was. It’s a breakfast sensation
now sold all over Canada and in 40 other
countries. It also made it to the International
Space Station where Chris Hadfield
and colleagues chowed down on Holy Crap
for breakfast as they looped around the
earth.
Think of that – a humble cereal concoction
conceived by a couple of Canucks in a
small town in British Columbia orbiting
the heavens in the bellies of astronauts.
Holy crap indeed.
Arthur
Black
Other Views
If you knew sushi… holy crap!
Last week I got to play out a childhood
fantasy of mine at the Central Huron
Community Complex when I met
former Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Kelly
Gruber.
Those of you who have seen me around town
when I’m not working will know that I own a
Blue Jays jersey or two. Now that I am an
adult, and have my own money to spend, I have
been able to treat myself every now and then.
When I was a kid, however, it wasn’t that easy,
and a baseball jersey was a little out of our
price range.
My first unofficial baseball jersey, however,
was a Gruber jersey.
When I was very young, my parents and I
(because there was no internet on which to
look these kinds of things up) took one of my
baseball cards, to get the Blue Jays writing just
right, and a gigantic black marker to my white
Blue Jays sweatshirt. On the back of the
sweatshirt, together we marked the name
Gruber above the number 17.
It wasn’t perfect, but I was in love with it.
Being a sweatshirt, it was a little warm in the
summer months, but I wore it nonetheless. Of
course, it got dirty to the point that even after a
washing cycle it was a delightful shade of light
grey, somewhere in between the Blue Jays’
home whites and road greys.
However, anyone who ever watched Gruber
play knows that he wasn’t afraid to get dirty, to
slide head first, dive for balls and put his body
on the line. So whenever that sweatshirt was
dirty at the end of the day, I knew I had played
hard, a principle I would continue to apply to
my baseball career throughout my life.
So when Huron-Bruce MP Ben Lobb asked
me to come out on July 9, not only to cover the
event, but knowing my love for baseball, to
participate in the camp as a volunteer leader, it
was something I looked forward to until that
day.
I showed up to the Central Huron
Community Complex with my backpack in
hand; one half filled with baseball supplies like
my glove and cleats, the other half reporter
supplies like my pen, notepad and camera. I
saw Gruber and I was instantly nervous.
I don’t often get nervous when I meet
famous people, but when those people were
heroes of mine when I was a kid, that’s a
different story.
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to
meet several current Blue Jays and go down on
the Rogers Centre field during batting practice.
We met José Bautista and Brett Lawrie, among
others. I was cool as a cucumber. But when I
shook the gigantic hand of former Blue Jays
pitcher and four-time World Series Champion
Jack Morris, I turned into a schoolboy who
dropped everything he was holding because he
was too nervous for life.
So yes, I met Gruber, interviewed him for an
article in this week’s Citizen, and had him sign
a baseball for me. I spent a few hours
running ground ball drills with a handful of
kids alongside Lobb, which reminded me how
far removed I am from playing baseball
myself.
Both professionally and personally, it was
very rewarding to spend time with Gruber, the
man whose dives at third base I emulated
throughout my childhood years. He was the
inspiration behind my choice to play third
base during a baseball career (I use that term
loosely) that would eventually span 25 years.
It’s not often you get a chance to meet
someone who influenced your life to such a
high degree, and last Tuesday meeting Gruber
was exactly that for me.
My first Jays ‘jersey’
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Radio is a forum that lends itself to up-to-
the-minute live content almost more than
television because it requires only one thing; a
person to speak.
There’s no worrying about make-up in
radio, no concern over costumes, no worrying
about lighting or cameras, there is just a booth,
some people talking, a large panel of
instruments to go to and from commercials
and to and from the next song if it’s a music
station.
The accessibility of the radio is both its
greatest asset and its greatest downfall. On
the plus side, anyone can be on the radio.
On the downside, anyone can be on the
radio.
For example, look at what I like to call “A
Tale of Two Mayors.”
Toronto’s Rob Ford (and his brother,
Toronto Councillor Doug Ford) routinely
stick their foot in it (it either being a pile of
refuse or their mouth) on their weekly
radio show where they criticize fellow
Toronto council members and spout off
on whatever is wrong in Ford Nation that
week.
North of the provincial border, Mayor
Stéphane Gendron has also made some odd
remarks on his radio show. Notably more
gruesome than most of what the Ford brothers
have said, Gendron made reference to running
over cats with his truck.
Now, I’m no fan of cats, but I certainly don’t
think that warrants him running over strays
with his truck.
Gendron, the mayor of Huntingdon, Quebec,
which is east-northeast of Cornwall, has since
apologized for his antics, something the
Ford brothers haven’t done in recent memory,
but, unfortunately, that won’t be the end of the
tale.
While I won’t claim to know much of his
policies, his practices or his political
background, I know all I need to know about
Gendron now; he has what some may call a
clinically psychotic view of cats on the road
and he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth
shut.
Gendron quite candidly discusses how he
accelerates when he sees a cat on the road and
talks about how he has backed over newborn
kittens and how his “pick-up passed over [the
animal] like it was nothing.”
Gendron, who by trade hosts a television
show as a political analyst, for media outlets,
should probably have known better than
to make these comments, but he is far from a
new face to controversy, having claimed
Jean Charest was a murderer for refusing
to subsidize a drug against breast cancer,
having been accused of sexual harassment,
having called Prime Minister Stephen Harper
‘a shame,’ ‘disgusting’ and stating Harper
has ‘no clue of history and humanity,’
and having stated Israel doesn’t deserve to
exist.
While there is likely more of an issue with
animal cruelty here than there is simple idiocy
(despite Gendron later saying he was using
overly-graphical imagery to make a comment
on the overpopulation of cats in his area which
he considers a nuisance), I think the lesson
remains the same.
Aside from when news programs require it
and when they are running for election, I don’t
think politicians have any place on the radio,
television or writing any kind of non-vetted
information.
Sure, this would definitely hide some of the
crazy that seems to ooze out of politicians like
the Ford brothers and Gendron (who could
quite possibly trump Mayor Ford in
international notoriety if this story takes off
south of the border or across the pond), but it
would also help Canadians save face during a
time when, let’s face it, we’re not putting our
best foot forward.
Between Justin Bieber urinating in a
mop bucket before defacing a picture
of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the
country being dropped from several
prestigious posts in the United Nations due
to the decisions made by our top-tier
government, the constant expense scandals
that seem to be pouring out of Ottawa and
the crack video scandal in Toronto this
summer, Canada has got one, maybe two,
real good shiners. It looks like we were
on the wrong end of a Tie Domi beating
(and he is definitely not a finesse
player).
While banning politicians from hosting
radio shows helps control what hits the
airwaves, it also prevents a politician
from gaining an edge in an upcoming
election.
How many members of Ford Nation would
be as involved in politics if it were up to them
to get involved instead of it being up to them
to just turn on the radio?
How many members of Ford’s support
base would still be there if his detractors had
the same access to such a publicized radio
show?
Some may want to point out that I did
mention the accessibility of radio earlier.
That does still hold true. However, having
access to radio and having access to a
platform as widely heard as Ford’s show (or
perhaps Gendron’s show) is different than
being able to get on the air at 3 a.m. for a
pittance.
Giving a politician with a decided
leaning (and if you doubt that, go find
Ford’s video from his picnic that Prime
Minister Stephen Harper attended) a platform
to further his agenda is fine as long as
that same opportunity is offered to all
challengers.
This is why we have limits on what
individuals can spend to get elected and how it
can be spent.
If this continues, we’ll have dozens
of politicians taking to the radio and either
gaining an advantage when it comes
to election time or leaving their cities,
their provinces and their country looking
like it’s run by fools, crooks and
slimeballs.
And while that may prove to be true, it’s not
something we need to publicize.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Canada’s black-eyes get reapplied
“If all misfortunes were laid in one
common heap whence everyone must take
an equal portion, most people would be
contented to take their own and depart.”
– Socrates
Final Thought