"There's No Place Like Home"

I could never be from Toronto; my disdain isn't stylish enough.
Comedy has afforded me several free meals and a slew of new acquaintances.
L.A. being too expensive a flight with too attractive a populace, a lot of comics bed down in Toronto.
I've had run-ins with the natives before.
Living in Banff, I roomed with Francis for a while.
He was all expensive trousers and constant, vocal judgement.
Don't get me wrong - I love Francis. I did then.
Today, he still stands as the only man whose back I have shaved (and I wouldn't do it for just anyone).
But everywhere we went. Everything we did.
"Oh, in Toronto etc. etc."
"In Toronto there'd be extra bathroom stalls in here."
"In Toronto you could buy coriander at any time of the day."
"In Toronto there are more homeless people."
I used to make fun of him for it all the time.
I lived in Toronto for a while. I get it now.
It's a teeming place with a real pulse.
What Francis said time and again was, I'm sure, usually true.
You can get an Asian woman to massage you and then jerk you off at 2 in the morning.
You can find somewhere to purchase a shower curtain immediately after your massage.
There is a restaurant representing every ethnicity - some shitty, some wonderful.
I get it.
There's more available. There's more to do.
I guess my problem, then, is the occasional Torontonian's inability to adjust.
You live in the biggest city in the country.
Other places will seem slight by comparison.
Those who are truly 'from' Toronto in the sense I'm talking about, they want it to be shittier everywhere else.
They look for fault.
I was eating poutine in one of the late night pizza corner places (see! We have late-night pizza) with a Toronto guy.
He's eating his chicken whatever it is. Wrap.
"I think the chicken's dry. Not sure if this is very good."
This is a bite or two in.
"Yup. Chicken's dry, guys."
Might as well add, "I knew it."
City Slickness isn't as charming as Billy Crystal portrayed it.
It's one thing to miss the comforts of the home you're used to.
It's another entirely to assume all other homes aren't built like yours.
It's not like I'd fly into Papau New Guinea and hope to find everything I'm used to here, and then complain when I didn't.
"I knew it. There's no 24-hour plumbing company here.
...
Nope. I checked Papau New Guinea411, AND the phone book.
I'll bet there isn't even a Rona on this whole goddamned continent."

Billy Crystal isn't looking good, by the way.
I don't know where his confidence level is, but he's disgusting.
I saw him on Letterman not long ago and I found it legitimately disturbing.
All of these surgeries.
You can dress up dying however you want, Billy...
However, the experience helped me realize one true fact:
If I, at 80 years, have a choice between a head that looks like a raisin, and a head that looks like a child's elbow, I know what my choice will be.