Alizée, Zack & Cody, Madonna, and me

It turns out that the bus ride from Montreal to Toronto I took earlier this week as I returned from my Alizée-cation may have been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it allowed for a random encounter with (and apparent conversion of) a Lili-curious college kid on the bus helped me to rediscover my sense of purpose…but on the other, it also exposed me to the kind of high-quality germs and contagions that only eight hours trapped in a big metal tube with over a hundred strangers can provide.

I got back on Monday evening, and went to bed with a little tickle in the back of my throat. By the time I got up for work seven hours later, it felt like my entire respiratory system had been buffed with heavy-grit sandpaper, with all the shavings left to sit in my lungs. Like an idiot, not wanting to be “that guy” who calls in sick the first day back from a long weekend, I decided to tough it out and go into work, regardless. Fortunately, someone far wiser than me had the good sense to send my sick ass home by two, before I infected the entire floor with whatever brand of typhoid I’d brought back from Montreal with me.

I wound up being out until Friday, on doctor’s orders, turning what was already a four-day work-week into a day-and-a-half work-week. Ostensibly, I was supposed to spend my sick days recuperating, pointedly avoiding the operation of heavy machinery and/or other activities that require intense concentration or a high degree of mental alertness, at least according to the labels on the horse-tranquilizer pills my doctor prescribed. But daytime TV, quite frankly, blows…and even the most dedicated of Lili-fans can only watch Stars à Domicile and 1H avec Alizée so many times in a couple of days before he begins to get antsy.

…which is how I suddenly wound up with a stockpile of about 40 Mark IV DVDs by Saturday morning (where previously I’d had none) accompanied by a pretty intense sensation of cabin fever. Though I’d originally planned the next Op Drop to occur on a weekday (for reasons that will become evident when I reveal where it takes place), and I wasn’t yet in 100% top disque-dropping form, I nevertheless threw the whole lot in a bag, and hopped the subway bound for the Eaton Center. After all, what is illness to the body of a knight errant? What matter wounds? For each time he falls, he shall rise again, and woe to the wicked!

*cough* Sorry, Man of La Mancha moment. Won’t happen again.

It went well, if a little more slowly than my previous expeditions to TEC. Some dude from The Suite Life of Zack & Cody was holding court on the main floor for most of the day, signing autographs for what looked to be a bajillion starry-eyed tween-aged girls, who were lined up from here to Terra Haute, messing with traffic patterns and forcing me to detour around them several times. Security was naturally also a lot more prevalent than normal as a result, and by the time I made my third circuit around the floor, I was quite plainly on their radar, eliciting more than a few raised eyebrows and pointed stares from security guards and concerned parents alike. Though I’d only managed to successfully drop about half my payload, I reckoned it best to cut my losses and get the hell out of Dodge, lest I inadvertently wind up on To Catch A Predator, or something.

Instead, I hopped back on the subway, intending to go a little farther south, and hit up some of the more heavily trafficked stations downtown—both the Argos and the Toronto FC were playing the last home games of their respective seasons today, so I knew the stations closest to the Rogers Centre and BMO Field would get pretty busy once the games let out. On a whim, I also decided to check out what was going on at the Air Canada Center, seeing as how it’s virtually right next door to Union Station…if the Leafs were playing tonight, it might be worthwhile dropping a few disques in and around the ACC as well.

Well, it turned out the Leafs weren’t playing at the ACC tonight…but Madonna was.

Holy. Crap. Only if Tinkerbell herself had suddenly appeared before me to whack me upside the head with her magic wand would I have considered it more of a good omen. I’ve written here before about the Alizée-Madonna connection, and how much of an inspiration Madge has been and continues to be to Lili. So how cool would it be to turn a few Madonna fans onto Alizée? (Answer: it would be hawsome.)

It was still a few hours before the concert, but already it was pretty busy…and the dudes who were looking out for the Zack & Cody dude had nothin’ on the security guys at the ACC. Still, I managed to unload all the disques I had left—sadly, only eight—in some fairly prime locations in and around the entrance of the ACC (which was as far as I could go without a ticket). Though it was less than ten disques total, I still came away feeling like it was biggest drop I’d done to date.

And the best news? Madonna’s there again tomorrow night, for a second sold-out show. And Op Drop is definitely going back, this time armed with more disques.

Stay tuned…