A Pile of Leaves Almost Killed My Dog

Over Thanksgiving weekend we took off on a wine tour, sampling many rare vintages.

You felt that the Shiraz smelled and tasted like a 10 year old wine, while I commented that it may smell and taste 10 years old but is probably closer to 15 and that's how it is with a wine of this calibre.

We drove back to the hotel in awkward silence and then you punched me in the nose. 

We spent a rainy evening inside cooking a fabulous lasagna dinner, drinking beer and playing scrabble.

I argue that nothing is better than spending a wonderful evening with someone you love, while you take exception with my liberal use of the words "better", "wonderful" and "someone".

We drink to our health and then you usher me out of your house, slamming the door behind me.

Overnight it snowed and in the morning we were greeted with a beautiful white pillowy blanket covering everything.

The snowman we made reminds me of a shorter, whiter and more serious version of my dentist, while you believe that the snowman looks more like a taller, darker and more jovial version of your doctor but that he could very well be a dentist if he went back to school for more training.

We both shook our heads at each other out of bewilderment for so long that we eventually broke out into "The Robot".

Who doesn't love the circus? It is a wonderful after work activity that can be enjoyed by adults and children alike.

I felt that the big tent was a slight exaggeration and that it was only a tad over medium and that the whole tent thing was a bit of a disappointment. On the other hand, you felt that the tent was not only not medium but also plenty big enough and that it would also make a wonderful set of curtains.

We enjoyed a bit of a giggle over it, then I pinched your cheek until it left a mark.

The morning air was fresh and unseasonably warm on our Sunday pre-breakfast stroll. 

You thought that the relatively balmy conditions were further signs of the worsening environmental troubles confronting all humans, while I preferred to be optimistic either out of spite or as a devil's advocate.

We agreed to disagree, but we did decide to try to reduce our impact on the environment by cutting back on burning effigies of those who wrong us.

Tuesday night we met with our book club and had a pretentious conversation about the themes of the depressingly realistic novel that was this week's reading.

You believed that the true intent of the author was to humiliate the reader, while I was pretty sure that I already felt humiliated, and thus, it was really hard to differentiate between any humiliation I felt as a result of reading the book and the humiliation I carried around with me on a regular basis.

We hugged and went our separate ways but only after you gave me what I would describe as an overly aggressive hug and an obviously condescending pat on the back and, as you were leaving, I swear I heard you mutter some insulting personal remarks.

We both enjoyed the movie and agreed that it was both hilarious and depressing.
I thought that it was a realistic take on the modern times in which we live, while you thought it was either too Kafkaesque or not Kafkaesque enough.
We laughed about it and then you smacked me on the back.

Then there was that time we flew our kites in the park.

You felt that the soaring kites, blowing in the wind, reminded you of two carefree butterflies full of joy. I felt that instead they represented the oppression of the proletariat by the rich bourgeois. 

We exchanged a long, meaningful look before you suggested that this was one major reason why I didn't have more friends. 

That summer we traveled down to California and tried to learn how to surf.
I loved the refreshing time out there on the waves, while you compared the challenge to being tortured, understanding all the while that that was a tad bit melodramatic.
We both agreed, that while the activity was neither of our favourite, your sunburn was something that we would always share.

Fall came and the intricately patterned leaves scattered themselves in the park.

I wanted to collect them and attempt to preserve the more attractive ones as a way of commemorating this period of time in our lives,while you just wanted to burn them all.

We opted to do nothing and instead to go to the movies - the unexpected offshoot of this story is that many years later a pile of leaves almost killed my dog.

Well-costumed kids were trick-or-treating - it was Halloween. 

I felt that you would make a wonderfully scary witch while you stated that I would be but a mediocre ghost or a fantastic linen table cloth.

We laughed about it and I decided to cut your hair while you were sleeping.

The winter festivities are upon us and the house is filled with food, family and holiday cheer.

You wonder aloud if you should consume any more eggnog worrying that you have had too much already, while I counter that that ship had sailed two days ago.

We looked at each other lovingly and decided to attempt to be less obtuse with each other in the new year.

Emotional Dominoes

He looked at her.
She looked back.
He always appreciated that about her, even though it made him slightly suspicious.

She made some toast.
He watched her butter the toast.
She enjoyed her snack, but felt oddly self-conscious.

He was running in the grassy field.
She rode her bike along side of him.
It was times like this when he almost forgot his manners.

She moved her pawn.
He furrowed his brow and, after a moment, moved his own pawn.
She suppressed the furrowing of her own brow in an attempt to be an individual.

He was raised on a healthy dose of respect and root vegetables that were roasted with garlic and herbs and served with a beautiful beurre blanc. The respect was not served at all. As a young boy he would look out his window up at the stars in awe and chuckle to himself. "Stars" he would say shaking his head. He wanted to meet a woman like his mother, which is odd because she was an intimidating ox of a woman who rationed out hugs much the same as she rationed out turns on her antique yo-yo. He longed to make a difference in the world, mostly as an homage to his favourite mathematical operation, subtraction. 

She peels potatoes to the beat of her own drummer.

He sits mesmerized by the rhythmic peeling.

She contemplates ordering in and dressing the potatoes up instead as the main characters for her puppet theatre version of Beauty and The Beast.  

He looks off into the distance.
She sits next to him reading a very worn novel.
He is jealous of something beyond his current level of awareness.

She enjoys the hot water of the bath.
He hopes there will be some hot water leftover for him.
She momentarily has mixed feelings about wanting all the hot water for herself but quickly returns to playing with her rubber ducks.

He sat down next to her.
She contemplated running away, yet stayed.
He was so glad that he had decided against wearing his big, fake, furry eye brows.

She spent many hours of her youth picking flowers - surprisingly not for bouquets or as presents, but instead mostly for therapeutic reasons. She used to be described as her own worst enemy, a title that made her proud. Her misunderstanding of the term enemy dated back to her preschool years. Her father warned her of men who would take advantage of her kindness or her love of cement, which oddly he did all the time. She longed to shelve books, not for a living or as a volunteer, but mostly just to clean the place up as it was always this side of messy. 

She watched the game on the edge of her seat.
He preferred to use his whole seat, thank you very much.
Afterwards she turned and smiled at his naivete.

He appreciates her performance at the theatre.
She is partially glad that he came, although she did have to deliberate for a while over the choice of the word 'glad'.
He wants to tell everyone his secret, but now isn't the time although it would be a good place.

After a moment of thought, she gives him a standing ovation.
Though there is some second-guessing, he decides to revel in it.
She can tolerate many things and revelry is surprisingly one of them, though second-guessing is a major pet peeve.

He opens his present.
She opens hers.
He always looks forward to their Wednesday evening ritual of opening things.

They held hands wherever they went less out of affection and more to avoid falling or having random passersby attempt to dance with them. While they were in love, it was not a fairy tale romance as they were constantly guarding against being too cliched in their love - instead their love was hyper-realistic- if you were to paint a picture of it, you'd swear it was a photograph. They wanted to grow old together, as it seemed like a fairly manageable task, or at least much more readily achievable than growing mold together (although they had reached some success recently and were thinking of creating their own brand of gourmet blue cheeses). They were each other's best friend, make-up artist and harshest critic and they loved finishing each other's crude jokes and apples.

He placed his hand gently upon her wrist.
She enjoyed having a slightly warmer wrist.
He wished that they could stay like this forever, but it was just too awkward and inconvenient.

She often dealt in hypotheticals.

He had zero idea what was going on most of the time.
Usually she just couldn't get enough of his confusion, and although she occasionally felt regret, that feeling was fleeting.

She wants to whisk him away.

He loves being whisked places.
She has a strange desire to use a spatula or at least a handheld mixer as well, just for variety's sake.

He laughs at her seriousness.
She sighs at his laughter.
He loves playing emotional dominoes.

Using My Fingers To Count

If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, save your sorries for someone who gives a damn. Not that I don't appreciate a good, heartfelt sorry from time to time, don't get me wrong. You know on second thought, waste all of your sorries on me, it's really your choice. I mean who am I to tell you what to do with your sorries?

You are trying to strike a delicate balance between sinister and curmudgeonly. I am more interested in watching reruns of Oprah. It's true what they say, you always hurt the ones you love.

Some days I wish I could eat more chocolate, other days I wish I owned more glue, and still other days I pretend my pillow is a cat and I pet it and try to feed it cat food to no avail. Everyday you sit at the table, carefully observing me, furiously taking notes.

You spend a lot of evenings shadow boxing. Normally, I would have no issues with this, except you have started solely boxing and pummeling all of my shadow puppets.

I had a single hair growing out of my forehead. It was an eyesore to say the least and a reminder to me of my advancing age and receding hairline.  One morning I started pulling it slowly, little by little. After a few minutes I looked up at the mirror and noticed I was bald - just like the time you got a thread from your sweater stuck in the door, except that you were able to go buy a new sweater and I now look like a hairless freak, but aside from that it is exactly the same.

As we are taking our stallions out for a trot, you state that on the outside we are essentially the same, but on the inside only one of us glows with an internal light that shines so brightly. I would have tried to guess who, but you keep interrupting my thoughts by clearing your throat loudly and pointing at yourself.

I am sorry! I can tell I offended you when I made those derisive comments about your guitar strumming that I thought was too post-modern when you were aiming for flamenco. I know you are annoyed and don't even want to look at me, but did you really have to install miniture curtains on your glasses and keep them perpetually closed whenever I come around.

You are running down the road at night, thinking of all of the wild geese making their way south for the winter and hoping that your lasagna was not burning in the oven. Coincidentally, I am baking wild goose for dinner in the oven and daydreaming about pieces of lasagna that not only are running down the road, but they also strangely remind me of a saucier, cheesier and more delicious-smelling version of you. 

I often use my fingers to count and you wonder why I limit myself to the digits on my hands when my toes would probably love to be included. I nod my head slowly, with a dramatically arched left eyebrow and a look of disgust on my face. If I didn't think you'd notice, judge or comment, I'd use my fingers to count all of the ways you annoy me.

You ooze charisma through your texts to me. Each message carries so much feeling and portrays you as this vibrant and immense character and I wait, each day, with baited breath, for the next eloquent message to appear and provide me hope and excitement for the future. The juxtaposition between the person I envision behind these texts and the one who has me constantly peeling potatoes, shucking oysters and scrubbing calluses is mind-numbing to say the least.

I am writing postcards in advance to you in the event that I travel to Spain someday. I am telling you all about my expected incredible times without you. Tears are welling up and starting to fall upon the cards when I think about how much I will miss you. And then I notice that it has started to rain and that I am not crying at all. Then I look more closely and realize that I am inside, sitting by the window, watching it rain and you are holding our watering can above me pouring water on my head.

You are such a disappointment to everyone who knows you. First you were asked to do the simple task of cleaning the house, but you couldn't do that. Then, I asked you to walk the dog, and you didn't do that. Finally, I asked you a number of rapid-fire skill-testing questions, but you couldn't even answer one correctly. Then I remembered that it was sound-proof glass.

I am throwing caution to the wind and you keep trying to catch it.

You have selected today to air your grievances. I am sitting in the audience clapping as loudly and enthusiastically as I can. "Bravo!" I exclaim. "Bravo, bravo, bravo!" It really is a good, grievance-airing performance for the ages. Rightly or wrongly, you have put those people in their place, which was your New Year's resolution.

I am travelling in the Mt. Everest region of Nepal and have infiltrated the ranks of the sherpa. Tomorrow we begin our ascent of the snowy behemoth. You are sitting at home anxiously awaiting my next correspondence, and when it arrives, you sit, shaking your head as you had actually told me to increase my shakra. Just goes to show, never pass messages via "broken telephone". 

You are constantly all up in my face about math. It's all like "add this, sucka", "you can't handle that quotient, boy" and "Times?!?!?! You want some freakin' times?!?!?". I have never understood, I don't think I ever will, why you get so aggressive and gangsta when it comes to math.

I have finally swam in the ocean. It is so big and fresh and I just feel so alive. And to think I wasted so much time in your little wading pool that you called "the sea". True, you gave me free ice cream and gave me all of the pats on my head I could have ever wanted, but was it too much to ask for you to be truthful with me at least when it comes to bodies of water?

You sit down across from me at breakfast, smiling. I look up from my bowl of cereal and after a moment, smile back. You glance away and then quickly and vividly lock eyes with me with even a larger smile. I momentarily lose my breath and look down, only to rebound with a smile for the ages. You take a ferocious bite of your toast with the energy of tiger and then throw me a smile that literally knocks me off my seat. I lay on the ground, dazed and confused, but I find a source of inner strength that I was previously unaware of and I rise, like a nearly vanquished warrior, and unveil the smile to end all smiles. A smile that "He" would have made. A smile that other smiles would only hope to be like when they grow up. A smile that is so much a smile that it is almost not a smile. And then we go to the park to throw a Frisbee.

I stand back and admire the lettuce I have grown in my garden. You are significantly less impressed, but then again, you have always been totally underwhelmed by lettuce.

You are watching and re-watching the same scene in your favourite movie again and again, and it is making you weep uncontrollably. Tears flow from your red, puffy eyes. There is an endless stream of gloopy stuff that dribbles from your nose. Your hair is a stringy, beehive of a mess. I look at you and fall in love once again.

Origins of Expressions: Part 1

I am a lover of expressions and really nice hard cheese. I try to use expressions when I talk as often as I can to spice up mundane conversations or to make time pass or to "appear all smart and stuff" - one time I used an expression to win a bet and another time I pulled an expression out of my hat (not literally, though that does sound like fun) to save an awkward dance party and,  yet another time, I used a particularly fancy and uppity expression to woo a lady (I also wooed a number of animals and my up-till-that-point-heterosexual male mail carrier at the same time but that is a story for another day). This is the first in a series of pieces where I explore some common expressions and figures of speech and attempt to unveil their true meanings and their often unexpected origins. I know some of my explanations may come as a surprise to you, the reader, and you may think I am off in left field (this one not discussed in this entry), or that I should be institutionalized (a little harsh, don't you think), but in the end, I think you will thank me (or at least not un-thank me) for shedding light on these often mysterious and usually misused bon mots. And to think I am only using a 60 Watt bulb! 

The first expression to discuss is "making a mountain out of molehill". 

Now, many people think this plainly refers to making a big deal out of a fairly minor thing. Why, I do this all the time! Just the other day, I dropped my ice cream cone and briefly debated protesting outside city hall. Interestingly, the original expression was actually "making a molehill out of a mountain" which was a problem for the ancient Phoenicians in Greece. They constantly, and tragically, were always underestimating the seriousness of situations (plagues, aphids, eating sandwiches that had been left out for days). The people of Phoenix also loved molehills and to be held in high esteem a noble person would have a yard full of molehills. Having a molehill of great size was a necessary part of a dowry as well and you wouldn't even think of having a BBQ without a molehill to show off to your friends and neighbours. Mountains on the other hand were, honestly, a bit of a joke. Like what are you - big? Woooo. Good for you - what else can you do? Let's just say the silence spoke volumes. Herodotus and Isidore Mountain were the laughing stock of lower Phoenix and they had to move to Athens to escape the ridicule, where they had a good, albeit unexciting life, running a clay tablet shop. The myth of the Phoenix involves a grand bird that rises from its own ashes. This has no connection to what I am talking about right now, just thought I'd mention it on the oft chance anyone had forgotten and later on decided to make a ridiculously large commotion over such a small, inconsequential tidbit. The people of Phoenix made many attempts both figuratively and literally to make molehills out of mountains. An example of the day that has been passed down orally over the years involved a young boy whose huge mistake of replacing his father's sword for battle with a pouch of unripened olives thus causing a month long battle with the near by Corinthians resulting in much bloodshed and a scar on his father's left thigh (that coincidentally was in the shape of a pouch of olives). This huge momentous and tragic event was predictably downplayed by the Phoenicians and the boy was only reprimanded by having to change the wheel on his brother's chariot, which he actually loved doing. 

The first historical usage of actually trying to make mountains out of molehills happened in northern Lithuania. General Frangarz ordered every able-bodied man of the local town to convert the many molehills near the border into mountains that "even those mangy heathens wouldn't dare cross!" The workers set out one cold and hazy morning, saying goodbye to their tearful wives and less-tearful mistresses and not-at-all tearful next door neighbours. They worked and toiled and tried to convert the less-than-intimidating molehills into an adequate first line of defense. When the men failed to make more than a small hill due to the extreme frost of the winter he threatened to behead them all- only changing his mind because he promised his mother on her death bed that he would cut back on the beheading so they could spend more quality mom and son time together. Plus he was growing tired of all of the blood. A mountainous range would have come in handy if for no other reason than the anticipated spike in commerce due to all of the high-in-demand mushrooms that would have popped up on the mountains. I try to imagine what the moles must have thought when they saw the men not swearing at them and using shovels to flatten their hills and instead almost working with them for a change. If those Latvians had been successful it could have led to a new chapter in man/mole relations where instead of adversaries, we could have been partners or even friends. On a side note, many years later the expression "making mountains out of molehills" was used by world famous Chef Pantelon who aimed to make the world's tallest mound of mashed potatoes. So grand in size that even the mole, himself, would be impressed (moles are generally very unimpressed by chefs generally and by potato creations specifically). Ironically, the chef was a minimalist for most of his life, and his previous claim to fame was creating the world's smallest chicken dinner, or at least he claimed it was a chicken dinner. It looked like a few specks on a plate that very well could have been what happened to the last of the h'or dourves. A few of the house guests that evening wanted to check to see if it was chicken, but fortunately for the chef and his embarrassed wife, the microscope was a few hundred years away from being powerful enough to verify. Chef Pantelon had many regrets, late in his career, and he tried to expand his horizons mostly through the usage of potatoes. His grand "mountain" of potatoes was the talk of Europe, if by "talk" you mean "whisper" and by "Europe" you are mostly confused.

Strangely, the people of Ghana are quite proud of making figurative mountains out of either figurative or literal molehills (whatever if more convenient at the time), unlike most others where it is seen as an overreaction. In Ghana, the bigger deal you make out of a minor thing the more highly revered you are. This has had two results: first, everyone is constantly exaggerating and using hyperbole (which can get really tiring really quickly, let me tell you). There are constant battles over who has the biggest and best and arguments ensue. It is not uncommon for the police to get involved over what had initially started out as a conversation over who has the nicer couch. I'm not sure what is Ghanan for "take a chill pill" but I'm sure that they would start exaggerating and embellishing the facts over who had the "chilliest" pill or who pill looked like the president. The second result is that those people who have actual hugely large events or occurrences, who would normally have some actual reason to brag or boast, are completely unsure of how to react and they end up sitting at home by themselves eating carrots and reading. It is almost like a whole society of boys who cried wolves. The one upside is that the funniest comedian has a few great bits on the extreme "mountains" that some men have used to describe some really small things, and the women who love them. The women of Ghana have tried, historically, to avoid all hyperbole as it makes them look...ummm how to put this...like they are filling out their size 5, hand-dyed, hand-woven, Kente cloth patterned-smock a little too much. Sorry, just telling it like it is. 

It would seem that in the end, the mole himself, has the last laugh. Both the annoying, real holes that he digs and the slightly less annoying figurative holes used in speech just give more publicity for the much maligned mole. Give your publicist a raise! Now if only he could get people to realize that being compared to a mole isn't necessarily a bad thing and that he has zero to do with the chocolate-y spicy Mexican sauce aside from both tasting good wrapped in a tortilla (or so I'm told).

The next expression to look at is one of my personal favourites: "till the cows come home".

Now this expression currently refers to something that won't happen quickly or for a while since those cows are really slow at coming back to the barn. And to think that no one is the least bit curious or suspicious over what is taking so darn long!?! I mean they could have an illegal gambling ring set up around the barn and could be extorting the sheep (I mean they do seem skittish at the best of times) or they could be selling contraband branding devices and rust and dent free milk buckets. Interestingly, cows have not always been the slow, meandering animals we love and therefore, the expression hasn't always been true. The expression has a rich and powerful history that speaks to who we are as a race. A look at the history of the expression will proof instructive and, hopefully, educational, but I can't make any promises. The last time I made that promise I spent five months hiding behind a large cacti in the New Mexican dessert. True, I learned how to extract milk and food from the cacti, I domesticated and subsequently ate some small rodent-type dessert animals I encountered and I even opened up a little Catci theme park in my backyard when I returned home, but those were some dark times and I was forced to do some unbelievably regrettable things to survive. Don't even think about judging me - I'd like to see you survive in the dessert with nothing except the clothes on your back and also the clothes on your legs and feet (I left my hat at home). Anyways...as you will soon see, before our modern-day understanding, this expression of waiting "till the cows come home" has oscillated between meanings over time.

Our first stop in the history of this expression is Indonesia. The highly-revered fast cows of 18th century East Timor were loved and appreciated far and wide. Many people prayed to them, played rudimentary gambling games with them and, naturally, bred, trained and raced them thoroughbred style. Only rarely, if hit with a certain craving, were they eaten and when they were they were marvelous, albeit slightly tough from all of the running and weight training. Eating these fast cows was frowned upon, as they could be literally cash cows for a family. Hungry children would ask "why don't we just eat Mildred already, we are starving. Plus she hasn't won a race all year!" and their mothers would reply "Eat the cow?!?! Are you crazy!?!?! Is that what we do in this family - eat someone when they are no longer winning??!?! Now be quiet and eat your fried armadillo like a good girl." These cows were treated like the queens they were (and sometimes like kings as well, as East Timor was way ahead of its time in regards to their view of gender roles, at least among livestock). A few days before each race, the cows would be paraded throughout the downtown dressed in their regalia. The townspeople would stand by the side of the road and cheer and wave signs like "How da cow? You da cow!", "Marry me! (if only 'the man' would reverse the antiquated laws prohibiting human and bovine weddings)" and  "Moooo! There it is!". After a full day of parading - the wagering would begin. The city square would be packed early Tuesday evening to discuss and debate every topic from which racer was looking good, to if it was "wrong" to love a cow more than your own kid, to wondering who would win a fight - the legendary cow Tomido who once won 25 consecutive races or that loser what's-his-name president who keeps raising taxes. Wages were placed and the races were a day of much excitement. On such an occasion that a family's gamble paid off, there was much celebrating and the yams were plentiful.

From East Timor we find ourselves in the South American country of Argentina. Back in the 15th century, there was a native group of Argentinians who worshiped a group of mythical, wise cows who oversaw and protected them and also passed judgement on all dilemmas amongst the people. These learned cows really took their time, so much so, that the time it took them to deliberate became one of the time markers and some South American historians think this was an early precursor to the modern month (most other historians laugh at them behind their backs). The people would be known to say "see you in a how-long-it-takes-for-the-wise-cows-to-decide" or "I can't believe how big little Juan has grown since two-cow-deliberations ago". One especially important and delicate judgement went on and on (two townspeople couldn't decide whose yucca tree was the most inspirational and, thus, better to appear on a series of tourist pamphlets advertising the upcoming jicama festival) - so long in fact that some wondered if the cows were in fact a myth after all as "Crazy" Paolo was always rambling on about after eating to many ghost peppers. A sentiment was growing among the Argentinians why they were looking to cows to make decisions for them in the first place, especially as no actual cows had ever been milked, let alone sighted in the local area. "Crazy" Paolo would take up his perch every Sunday morning exclaiming to all in earshot "Waiting till the cows came home makes no sense - how many times must I tell you- there are no cows here! They are never coming home, because this is not where they live. Is it just me? I feel like everyone else is drinking crazy cow sauce!" The backlash against praying to these cows was harsh and this divided the community between two groups, the traditional, increasingly-more secretive cow worshipers and the more modern "wise potato" worshipers. Potatoes also, coincidentally, took a very long time to come to a decision.

Finally, the earliest reference is believed to involve the C'oww people of northern Ur whose account pre-dates all written history. Some of the oral records seem to indicate that they could have written stuff down but were pretty snobby on the whole and writing was considered fairly low-class. These ancient heros were famous for venegance, revenge and amazing butter cream frosting. They scoffed at all attempts to codify laws, use zeros, domesticate dogs and wash armpits (though oddly they made it a law that people must shave zeros into the armpits of their mangy dogs). They were evidentially both super adept at leisure activities like card games, lawn bowling and watching camel races and also very slow at all household tasks, including taking out the trash, wiping around the sink, and changing diapers.They also loved going out and either taking their sweet time coming home making it next to impossible for their wives to time the tabbouleh or coming home really fast especially when they were due for a foot massage or a sandal repair. The men were either faster or slower than cows making any attempt at linking them together troublesome and confusing. Wives would often complain and wish their slow husbands were as fast as a heavy pig. Any comparison to a relatively speedy cow would be drowned out by riotious laughter. The women of the faster, blister-footed men sometimes wished they had married actual bovines, if nothing else for the conversations and the plentiful cream.

The final expressions go hand-in-hand as both are pastry-related and very tasty sounding -"a cake walk" and "as easy as pie". 

These taste bud-massaging expressions invoke amazing experiences that utilize all the senses and are ultimately a huge let down as they are only metaphors, and not even slightly tastier than some random, regular words (I mean have you tried the new strawberry and mint flavoured "and" they are making these days?). The original cake walks of pre-Gold Rush San Francisco were legendary. The now-infamous cake district was a gathering area for the goateed intellectuals, mustachioed artists and surprisingly facial hair-free cake makers of the early 19th century. This was truly a hub of groundbreaking philosophical thoughts, hyper realistic glass-blown artwork, and avant-garde cake design. Not an evening would pass without an intense sharing of ideas usually focused around a debate over art for art's sake vs. art as a means for social change vs. "that glass bowl is meant to be presumptuous right?". This all would take place over a table adorned with remarkably plain table clothes and the crumbly leftovers of the creations of the "Cake Mafia", a group of five, living-on-the-edge dessert renegades who baked and lived life on the edge. They mixed hard, partied hard, and harvested their own baking powder at least twenty years before it became mainstream. They baked as they lived, and they lived as they swam and they swam often (nothing like a good dip in the ocean after a day in the kitchen) and they were both revered and feared. Cross them and you may as well have been a ghost, stay on their good side and you'd be enjoying the best beignet this side of Paris, do something in the middle and you may be lucky to lick some leftover chocolate sauce. Start on their good side but make a mistake and someone else, maybe your mother, would be enjoying French pastries at your funeral. The ominous walk from your home to the graveyard was a thing of lore and was known colloquially as "the cake walk". There were also some regular walks taken by average citizens to go buy a slice of cake, but those are not at all noteworthy.

What do you call people who are so rebellious that they didn't even fit in with the way-out-there whisk and cake pan rattling renegades? Throughout history people like this have been known by many names - The Cross Sculpturers, The Miniature Garden Caretakers, and Fred and in 1800s San Francisco these brave, often misunderstood men, were known as The Pie Guys. These Pie men eschewed the baking norms of the day and flat out refused to associate with cakes even when the cakes themselves "appeared" welcoming. Instead they spent their time rolling out crusts, exacting their own brand of vigilante justice using solely rolling pins and flour, creating creamy fillings, collecting rare and often inappropriate porcelain figurines, adorning their top crusts with cute apple-shaped edible art work, attempting to curtail the rapid growth of all vinery and serving up the most scrumptious pies in the world. And to top it all off they looked fantastic while doing all of this. Yes, the legends are true, they not only strove to make incredible pies but they also were constantly setting fashion trends while doing it. Other groups of pie makers had come before them but were squashed by either the Cake makers, by societal pressures, or by an avalanche (that only happened once and no one stood so near that snow-covered mountain again). But, this particular group not only survived but flourished due to their flare and abundant use of sweet, juicy berries. Their enemies claimed that these berries were artificially enhanced and that Pie Guys were "juicing" (adding extra sweet cane juice to their berries to gain an advantage). These suave vigilantes were constantly wanted by the law as much for their secret pie crust recipe as for taking the law into their own hands. Men wanted to eat their pies, women wanted to eat their pies and cats just wanted to lap up spilled milk and lick themselves, but you knew that already. The expression "as easy as pie" was their catch phrase whenever they either swooped in and saved someone in peril or waited until the last moment and served up some delicious pie to a person who was in dire need of a good snack. 

For nearly one hundred years these two groups dominated the California scene and while they clashed relentlessly, they drove each other to dizzying new heights that many local foodies say has never been matched before or since. Their food rivalry was matched outside of the kitchen, where the Cakemen took out the trash and also got rid of those who didn't bow before them while the Pie Guys tried to help society in their own unique way  -imagine the Hell's Angels only as really really well-dressed men who baked like your grandma on her best day. Where people walked around in a constant state of fear as the next "cake walk" could be imminent, there was also a strange, feeling of peace, knowing that the peace keeping "easy as pie" guys may be just around the corner ready to save the day. Tensions eased when one day the great-great-great grandson of one of the Cake Mafia fell in love with the great-great-great grand-daughter of one of the Pie Guys. But only very recently did the descendants of these groups sit down for tea together, thus ending years of bad feelings and overly harsh competition. They decided that they could live and work side-by-side or possibly one in front of the other too on special occasions. After hands were shook, backs patted and noses itched, the dessert menu was placed in front of them and a big decision had to be made - cake or pie? I wasn't there that day, but I have heard from friends who know other friends who talked to some guy who knows people that an audible hush fell upon the restaurant that and that the day was only saved by an exceptionally good tiramisu.