An X-Rated Pita Is Breaking The Internet & Canadian Misery Is Off The Charts

Cormac: Hello, you just made the best decision you're gonna make all day. You're listening to Now On Narcity. I'm Cormac.

Tyeler: I'm Tyeler.

Lea: I'm Lea.

Brit: And I'm Brit and this week we're talking about which provinces are feeling the most miserable right now and we're discussing a particularly explicit piece of pita bread. I know that's vague, but you'll see what we mean.

Cormac: Air horn at the ready. [airhorn]. Shot and chaser. Let's go.

Brit: People in Alberta are apparently booking multiple vaccine appointments so that others can't. We thought we had hit an all-time low with toilet paper hoarding.

Cormac: Dark times.

Lea: Canada's population changes every minute and you can watch it happen in real-time. Somehow, it's more exciting programming than the Friends reunion.

Tyeler: Aw, come on!

Brit: Shots fired.

Cormac: A B.C. Airbnb says it had to change its name from hobbit mountain hole after threats from Warner Brothers. And unrelated news B.C.'s hottest new Airbnb, the Schmord of the Shrings is now accepting bookings.

Tyeler: Census workers are about to start knocking on doors if you didn't complete it yet. What a nice, alarming way for you to meet a stranger for the first time in months.

Lea: Thank you, Canada.

Cormac: Listen, we'll take any social interaction we can get.

Lea: An Ontario man won the lottery and immediately paid for the bills of the other customers in the store. Somehow a more likely chance of eliminating my student loan debt than the federal NDP party getting elected.

Tyeler: So sad.

Brit: Elliott Page posted a topless photo in his first pair of swim trunks and looked absolutely radiant. This is the only white boy summer picture we're accepting.

Tyeler: Yesss.

Cormac: Open and shut. You can hire barbecue donut floaties in Montreal to spend a summer day floating away. The only problem is they're actual Tim Hortons doughnuts and they f—— suck at floating.

Tyeler: A woman had a baby as her husband was driving down the 407. And this still isn't the worst 407 experience anyone's ever had.

Cormac: I love this story. This popped up. Oh, man a couple days earlier this week, or late last week, wasn't it? Fill us in, Tye. like how did it? I mean, how do we know about this? What the hell happened?

Tyeler: Basically, what happened was this husband and wife who happened to be YouTubers, were filming their birth story. And in the video, which I have watched, have you guys watched it,

Cormac: I'm terrified too.

Brit: I've seen parts.

Tyeler: So basically, her husband's driving down the 407. And obviously trying to get to the hospital in a hurry. And she cannot wait. And she gives birth on the side of the road on the 407. Side of the highway, I should say. And it is, like, terrifying but incredible that this woman just delivers her baby in the passenger seat of the car. But what's also incredible is how calm her husband is. Like he's just like totally dad mode. They have I think three other children or two other children.

Cormac: This was their third child. Yeah.

Tyeler: Yeah. And he's just like, he's on it. Like, it's like he was trained for this literally, it's incredible.

Cormac: I mean, they were you know, they're YouTubers, they might for the content, they might have been waiting in that car for quite a while.

Brit: We don't know what the YouTuber training camp is all about.

Lea: Which highway is the 407

Tyeler: The 407 is our toll highway. So it's basically like a faster way of getting where you want to go. But you have to pay for it. You have to pay every time you get on that road.

Cormac: Which this family doesn't have to do anymore.

Tyeler: That's true. So basically, the 407 caught wind of this viral story. Obviously, it was literally everywhere. And what they've done, I'm sure the 407 doesn't get too much press like this.

Cormac: The 407 press guy was so stoked.

Tyeler: The PR team took their head off the desk. They're like what's going on. And basically, the president of the 407 ETR gifted this family a year of free travel, but not just travel anywhere in the world and travelling for vacations once COVID's over. Just travel on the 407.

Cormac: So they don't have to pay tolls on the 407 for a year.

Tyeler: So they can relive this birth story over and over for the next year.

Brit: What a special...a push present, if you will.

Tyeler: It's kind of like the woman that had a baby on a plane to Hawaii a few months ago. I don't know if you guys remember this, but there's so many stories like this. There's so many stories like this.

Cormac: At least when you have a baby on the plane to Hawaii, you're in Hawaii. When you have a baby on the 407, you end up in Hamilton or something.

Brit: A little different.

Lea: Quebecers are a very special breed in more ways than one. We've discussed a few of them on Now On Narcity before but this week in very weird Quebec sews Amir, the literal Prince of Lebanese food in Quebec. And if you don't know why I just said that, Amir means prince in Arabic. They posted a pita appreciation post earlier this week that caused a big stir on social media. It wasn't Pasta Gate. It wasn't Pasta Gate, but it was up there. It was still up there. So basically what happened was, in the simplest terms, the restaurant posted a photo on Facebook of a pita bread folded into the shape of a vulva for an ad.

Cormac: Okay,

Brit: Did it look nice?

Lea: It was quite accurate. It was quite suggestive and quite accurate. Actually, the person who wrote this article for us was Ezra Black, one of our writers on MTL Blog, he wrote an article on how Montrealers were responding to the image. And like I said, it was quite controversial. Shout out to the Lebs. Shout out to my fellow Lebanese people. Many comments on the article that Ezra wrote highlighted the objectification of female bodies and others called it a disgrace, that lacked a lot of intelligence. So it's a lot to take in, guys.

Brit: May I ask, was it on purpose a vulva?

Lea: Yes, it was quite intentional.

Tyler: The caption of the photo is "pita appreciation post (heart)" in English and French. There's no other context.

Cormac: So it wasn't as though I mean, Pride Month is coming up. Open and loving celebrations of sexuality and identity are to be celebrated. Was this positioned in that sort of way? Like was it?

Lea: No. It was a vulva. And so a lot of people were questioning, you know, using the female body for clicks, ads, you know, views and objectifying people with vulvas for profit, essentially. So very, very interesting discussion from a picture of a pita bread suggestively folded pita bread.

Brit: Okay, that's incredibly interesting.

Tyler: You know what, this is not the first time that women have kind of come to head on marketing campaigns. Like, do you guys remember the Burger King campaign from earlier this year? That was like, super, super viral. And it was like the woman belong in the kitchen kind of thing.

Cormac: Yeah, in an attempt to get more female chefs. Yeah.

Tyeler: Yeah. And it's like, read the room, you know?

Lea: Totally.

Brit: But all of these, these things all beg the question. And this is something I've been thinking about for a long time is with this vulva pita, the line between exploitation and empowerment is so fine. And a lot of it of course has to do with like, who is behind the project? What's the what's the message behind the project? Is it a female empowerment, raising money for vulva owners everywhere like what what's the move? But no, it's just a like, we love pitas and vulvas are funny, I think.

Lea: I think it was a we love pitas and vulvas, essentially.

Cormac: And when you when you post with zero context, I mean, then you're risking, it's all up to interpretation, and people are not going to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Tyeler: It's so bizarre. It's Yeah, obvious. Like if you look at the photo, which you can see on their socials, I think it's still there.

Cormac: It's still Yeah, it's still up there.

Tyeler: Just a plain red background, and then the pita in the middle of the frame. And it's, I mean, painfully obvious what it is. And it's like, yeah, again, you have to think like how many people did this go through before it went live? And how did no one say, ummmm?

Lea: To be fair, Amir is a very locally owned Lebanese restaurant, and I don't think they even have stores across Canada, but they do have them in Quebec and Ontario, there isn't really much publicly available information on Amir's corporate structure, or who owns the business now, it is a franchise, so each franchise has its own owner. But the only information that I could find was that it was founded in the 80s by Michelle Zenake, who died in 2016, at the age of 84. So he was the founder, and it is a family business, they continue to call it a family business and they pride themselves on the fact that it is a family business. So I assume it's a member of his family who was taken over, but it's not clear right now. So honestly, I don't know the facts on this. We might have to get fact-checked on this. But I really don't think they have, like, a very intense marketing department. You know, I think it's some person doing a social media post.

Cormac: Well, I mean, we saw we saw something slightly similar that we discussed on a couple podcasts ago, which was the Joe Jonas Expedia hand.

Lea: Well Expedia is obviously completely different, right?

Cormac: Totally. And it seemed almost so bizarre as to get people talking about it. Do we think that this was sort of a similar vibe here?

Lea: I think so. I think it was to generate controversy.

Brit: Yeah, it's either wildly ill-thought-out or very wisely thought out to generate buzz.

Cormac: Have we heard from the company? Have they responded to any? Did they respond to criticisms on the post itself?

Lea: I don't believe so. Ezra tried to reach out to them for comment, and they haven't responded yet. So we will be updating that article once we do get a response but so far, nothing really they kind of just dropped it in and let the chips fall where they may. Let the pitas fall where they may.

Lea: I mean, it's not the first time a company has used women for clicks and of course, sex sells the famous phrase sex sells. But generally, it's actually funny that that phrase sex sells that is kind of synonymous with women sell.

Brit: It is, one hundred percent.

Lea: Because you don't think about male sexuality or non-binary sexuality or any other sexuality selling would we have ever thought that it? Immediately what comes to mind for me and those old ads, you know, 90's ads, where we weren't as enlightened thank you to Gen Z for helping us be enlightened. But it, for me, sex sells, when I was younger, was synonymous with women. You know, sex was synonymous with women.

Tyeler: Yeah. A blonde woman and a tight red dress with red lipstick on and heels.

Lea: Yeah, eating a hamburger.

Brit: Yeah, Jessica Rabbit.

Lea: We've come so far, especially as a gender women have come so far, and still so much work to do. But we kind of tend to be the butt of many jokes, I think is like the bottom line. And it's interesting to me that despite the fact that I feel like these are widely known phenomenons, like people know that you should no longer make women the butt of a joke, or should no longer make women's sexuality the focus of your ad campaign. There's still brands that do it, there's still brands that haven't caught up to the norm, which is the norm nowadays, you know, like, such as Amir, with their vulva pita. So it's quite interesting to see that these things still exist, despite so many advancements that we've made, you know, as women.

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Tyeler: So, how are you guys feeling this week?

Cormac: I feel good. It's been sunnier in Toronto, which is nice. Long weekend vibes last week, you know.

Brit: Long weekend was helpful for the psyche.

Lea: Oh, totally. I'm like, so enjoying just doing nothing. Which is so nice, you know?

Tyeler: Well, it turns out, sadly, there's a lot of pretty miserable people out there. And the MacDonald Laurier Institute has actually released a COVID-19 misery index that shows how miserable people in developed countries have been throughout the pandemic.

Lea: Um, hold on, what is the misery index?

Tyeler: So it's a bunch of research about how people are feeling right now that focuses on three main categories. So the categories are one disease misery, two COVID-19 response misery, and three economic misery.

Cormac: Just the worst round of Jeopardy ever.

Tyeler: Yes, absolutely. So the disease category covers how the virus, the COVID-19 virus, itself has caused harm to human well-being, particularly with respect to human health and mortality.

Tyeler: The response category covers how people feel that their government has responded and reacted to the pandemic. And then the economic misery category covers feelings related to the pandemic's effect on unemployment and on the economy in general. So it's pretty intense and comprehensive.

Cormac: So it's among different countries?

Tyeler: Yes. So there were 15 different countries that were part of this study, Canada being one of them.

Brit: And within Canada, they broke it down further into provinces.

Cormac: Okay.

Brit: Which honestly just felt really personal for me, because Alberta is friken miserable. We are the most miserable over here in Alberta. Out of all the Canadian provinces, we fared the worst on this index, as well as other large provinces. So in order of most miserable, to lease it went Alberta, then Ontario, then Quebec, then BC, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and then jump up to Atlantic Canada, where people actually fared really well. And we're just vibing feeling good over the last 15 months, apparently. In Alberta, specifically, us being down at the bottom, and just living in misery over here. The things that really bummed us out, apparently, are things like the case rates, unemployment rates, deaths and debt are terrifying and terrible. And that makes a lot of sense.

Brit: But yeah, so that's how Canada within Canada did. But when we tally it up to how Canada did it and compared to other countries, it is actually really interesting to look at in a more expansive way.

Tyeler: Yeah, Brit. So basically, each country that was studied, received, like, a letter grading system, like something you would have in school. So A+, B, C, D, and Canada - Can you make a guess on what grade we got on this misery index?

Cormac: I mean, it would make sense. C for Canada, right? That's gotta make sense.

Brit: I want to say.

Tyeler: Heyo, you got it.

Brit: Oh.

Cormac: Hey listen, I'm a C. C's get degrees.

Lea: What I find interesting about this index is that Canada's COVID-19 response misery index is higher than the United States and it's one of the highest among all the countries that were studied.

Brit: Just about how we responded to the pandemic?

Lea: Yeah, so Canada got a 61.44 response misery index, and the U.S. got 34.36, so half of what we got.

Cormac: Is it better to have higher or lower?

Lea: Better to have lower, it's a lower misery index. So double negative.

Cormac: Okay, so States did twice less miserable. I see. Okay. 64.

Lea: So it's almost double ours, which is actually quite interesting.

Tyeler: That is interesting.

Lea: Yeah, it means, I guess it means in essence, that their response was perceived as better than Canada's response.

Cormac: We've talked about this before on the podcast, where we have these studies where it's people interviewed, and they talked about their perception of what's the best country and we're asking people, this misery index doesn't, it hasn't interviewed anybody, no one's been interviewed, what they're doing is just pulling data. So they're pulling things like for instance, they're pulling things about COVID vaccination rates in terms to calculate how happy people are, they're pulling things on mortality rates to figure out how sad a population or how miserable the population may be just pulling these stats together. I mean, we're missing a whole ton of the human experience, I mean, miseries an emotion, it's hard to, you know, directly quantify that. And even the statistics they've chosen can still be a little misleading. I don't wanna say misleading, but they can still be a little, you know, they still have to be interpreted, and they still have to be construed.

Brit: Totally and one thing that kind of made me realize this when I was writing the article about how the provinces stood next to one another on the misery index, one of the metrics was like, goods being produced and never in my life has someone been like, are you okay? And I'm like, I'm feeling down because of the rate that Alberta is producing goods. It's bumming me out.

Brit: If you really extrapolate the data, sure, that could bum a population out in terms of just like the economic standing of the province and I'm sure there's a lot of snowball, what have you, but that's not **** I'm thinking about I'm not telling my friends like yeah I've had a hard week have you seen production this week in Alberta? It sucks.

Cormac: Hey, thanks so much for taking time out of your day to listen to Now On Narcity. If you like what you're hearing, and we hope you do, feel free to subscribe and follow us on all your favourite streaming and listening platforms. And hey, if you have something that you want us to hear, we're all ears. Send us an email at podcasts@narcitymedia.com. That's podcasts@narcitymedia.com, and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks so much, enjoy.

Cormac: Alrighty, let's wrap it up with...

All hosts: Last call!

Cormac: It's always so fun for me to edit those together. I like vastly different positions they end up in. We're chatting about what the biggest stories of next week are going to be - Brit, what are you keeping an eye on?

Brit: Something that I'm personally very excited about but also really interested in globally, the world is starting to get a little bit back to what we knew as life over 15 months ago. People are getting back to what they love most, the essence of themselves, some people love socializing. BC just announced their opening plans, a lot of other provinces have done the same, and just keeping an eye on that. It's like giving me a little twinge of normalcy. And some people love socializing, some people love going to the bar, some love going to the office even and some really love travelling. And something that I think is really interesting is the Government of Canada has a list of travel restrictions and advisories for everywhere in the world, just to help Canadians navigate their travel prior to leaving, and I'm just amped to see those things being like we are open for business, come back. And I can feel it like things, things are just feeling nostalgic in kind of a way that none of us have ever really felt before because we didn't realize that these sort of little normalcies would feel kind of novel again. And they all do, and that's really exciting to me. So I've got my eyes on that. I wrote a little article about it. And yeah, it's firing me up a lot. Lea, what are you looking forward to? What are you excited about?

Lea: Well, I'm hoping to write a really interesting story this week, that's going to break some major news in Montreal. Very, very hopeful that I will be writing this story this week. It's about Balarama Holness, who is a new mayoral candidate for Montreal mayor. The race is going to begin sometime this year, and it's going to be very interesting to see if we keep our current mayor Valerie Plante, or elect Balarama Holness, or Denny Coderre, who was our former mayor. But I spoke to him, I had a really good chat with him on the phone today, and he told me some very interesting news that has yet to be announced. So I am very, very excited to reveal that in an article this week.

Cormac: Check it out, MTLBlog.com folks, get over there. Check it out.

Lea: MTLBlog.com

Lea: Tyeler, what are you looking forward to this week?

Tyeler: Okay, this is like kind of sidebar. But I went grocery shopping earlier this week and I came across a very subtle and surprising, simple joy. I'm gonna call it. I was shopping for soup as one does.

Cormac: Yeah.

Tyeler: And I came across you guys know, the Andy Warhol piece of art of Campbell's soup, right?

Hosts: Yeah!

Tyeler: Classic. So those cans from that piece of art literally on the soup can shelf at the grocery store.

Lea: Really?

Tyeler: And I was like, What the heck, they're beautiful. And I was like, what the heck? So obviously, I picked them up, read the back of the can to figure out what the heck was going on, Campbell's is doing like a celebratory promo, I suppose, for Andy Warhol, his painting and 60 years ago, him drawing the can. But these cans are so cute. They're totally the cans from the painting and so I got them and now I have flowers in them in my house.

Lea: Oh my god, I love it.

Tyeler: And they're just really cool. Yeah.

Lea: I want some!

Tyeler: Cormac, what are you looking forward to this week?

Cormac: I'm keeping an eye on Ontario, which is unsurprising considering I live here. But last week, we saw a pretty major reopening announcement. One of the big important things in it was that it was more about how many people have been vaccinated that will lead to the next stage of reopening versus any specific dates. They want it tied to vaccination rates. And they said 60% of Ontarians vaccinated would be sort of the first statistic we'd need to see before we could move into stage one of the reopening plan. They anticipated it would be mid-June, it actually looks like it's gonna be a whole lot earlier. So there's been some incredible people in the city and in this province doing amazing jobs with vaccinations, these massive great big vaccine clinics. So, fingers crossed that we could actually see an earlier opening in Ontario than we were anticipating could be interesting.

Brit: Oh la la.

Cormac: Exciting stuff, exciting stuff.

Cormac: Whether you are listening to this podcast on a rainy, miserable day or you're enjoying some of your favourite Lebanese food…

Tyeler: I thought he was going to say vulva pita.

Lea: Falafel, shawarma…

Cormac: Thank you for tuning in to Now On Narcity. We'll be back again for you next Friday. My name is Cormac.

Brit: I'm Brit.

Lea: I'm Lea.

Tyeler: I'm Tyeler and we'll see you at the digital dive bar next week.