Here I am in toronto again, this time to help move my son Jesse into his new apartment.  I am staying with my brother this time.  He lives in North York near the top of the Don Valley Parkway.  So last night, I zipped down to pick up Jesse at Jarvis and Wellesley where he was working and we went to a Mexican restaurant on Yonge St. 

This is supposedly the neighbourhood where I grew up but it has changed so much in the last forty years it is almost unrecognizable.  There were two stores I recognized from my time there, one being Freeman formal rentals.  People always got our store mixed up with theirs because we were Friedman Tailors.  The whole south side of Wellesley St. between Yonge and Bay is now gone and a new highrise will no doubt climb out of the ruins.   The original buildings are now just the few houses on the north of Wellesley just west of Yonge but of course, they have been completely gentrified.  The house where the Vaillancourts lived is now an upscale boutique of some kind.  

I felt a little like a strange visitor from another planet but there were a few traces of my own neighbourhood still there.  The big black lettering of M. Rawlinson still stands etched on the side  of their old headquarters although I have no idea if the company still exists.  The stores along Yonge Street from Wellesley to Irwin have almost all changed but again there is still the hint of the past in Hockridge’s fine china where the doll  hospital used to be and where I could see injured dolls in the window, missing arms, legs and the occasional head.  The dolls have long gone and now the store, expanded and improved, sells china and crystal and collectibles in shelves that are highly organized and neat.  

Our old store doesn’t seem to have brought much luck as tenants have changed as frequently as light bulbs since we left.  Yet there is always someone who wants to take the risk and the store is always rented.

After the Mexican food, which I  can still taste this morning more than twelve hours later, we drove up to Sheppard and Yonge to catch the Simpsons movie.  It had some funny scenes in it but I am not sure it was that different from the T.V. show.  We did get to glimpse Bart’s privates, Bart gave somebody the finger and Marge used the word “goddamned” in yelling at Homer, things which would no doubt be left on the cutting room floor on television and as my son pointed out, the backgrounds were digitally animated. 

Essentially, though, it was a long episode of the Simpsons with a lot of self-reference.  The movie starts with the Simpson family sitting in a theatre watching a film of their favourite TV show and Homer declaims that you have to be a sucker to go to a movie to watch somethng that you could get on television for free.  He then points to us watching him and says something like “like all of you”.    There are the usual funny gags, having Shwartzenegger as President, and Homer bringing home a pig who he marches on the ceiling singing “Spider pig, Spider pig, does whatever a spider pig does….etc.”

All in all, quite amusing but why see it in a movie theatre?  I think it shows that we go to the movies to participate and share in our culture just as much as we do to actually see something.   The movie will no doubt serve as a source of conversation and blogs for some time.

I then drove my son home and got home myself around midnight.   Today, I await his call after he wakes up.   Maybe the Mexican food will get him up a little earlier.  Or will it cause him to sleep longer?   I’m taking bets.