Codes, switched

The column: Reading Emily Nussbaum’s fantastic New Yorker piece on The Goldbergs and Gertrude Berg got me thinking about the whole ‘you couldn’t make a show like that anymore,’ and how that usually means, ‘because it’s too offensive,’ but in this case meant kind of the opposite.

The Jewish Angle: Got to chat with the very smart Ellie Avishai, a fellow Torontonian, who wound up sort of professionally embodying the thing where ‘free speech’ went from being (supposedly) a euphemism for right-wing to the other way around. She literally did just want to promote critical thinking and viewpoint diversity, is the thing! But was stifled from the right for doing the thing one was told throughout the 2010s was code for being right-wing.

The unclassifiable: Everything (not everything-everything) you read about parenting is either existential woes or this kind of overly sappy counterpoint to it. Not enough is about the search for toilets, which is quite frankly a lot of it once they’re out of diapers. So a trip to Riverdale Farm to see but not pet, definitely not pet the extremely affectionate goats led not only to some serious architectural appreciation of its facilities (dream house: the one they put the toilets in, seriously) but also, not long after, a search for post-Slushie facilities in Cabbagetown. Nothing we passed seemed at all plausible for this.

I was starting to despair, making the calculation one does about a 3-year-old and a Slushie into which her not-thinking-this-through mother agreed to pour extra water en route, when we reached the place where I knew there to be a Japanese convenience store with restaurant attached. I had yeah kind of wanted to go there regardless, but not thought there’d be a reason to, and OH MY GOD they had not only a bathroom but a Toto toilet with all the fixins’. Heated seat, bidet functionalities, like in Japan.

If you want to know the name of the place where after this epic toilet was visited, and where I then compensatorily bought a bottle of fancy Japanese beer I’m not likely to drink anytime soon as well as a fermented soy sauce I very well might, you will have to figure it out for yourself. I don’t want to be the reason people flock to this tourist destination. I don’t want the Toto to break from overuse.

If you plan on fully recreating this outing, know that the next facilities will be the community center on Sherbourne, this because we had to do subway because the Taste of Little Italy festival meant no 506 streetcar. This was conveniently situated and absolutely saved the day but no Toto, not that same realm of experience.