Men at Work
by Julie Bruck The Lost Valentinos. For Nik, Safe Travels and "break a leg!" I said, “Do you speak-a my language?” He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich. —“Down Under.” We middle-aged sense them immediately: four brittle pop stars sprawled across the rigid fibreglass chairs at the airport gate. It’s not just that they’re Australian, that gorgeous thunk of English, the stacked electric-guitar cases draped with black leather jackets, or their deep tans on this Sunday night in midwinter Toronto that holds everyone’s attention, drawn as we are, pale filings to their pull. Even their rail-thin lassitude attracts us, as it must Doug, the portly Air Canada gate manager in his personalized jacket, who arrives to greet the band, cranking hands and cracking jokes. Doug, who must live in Mississauga with the wife and a couple of kids, and who insists the boys come back to play Toronto next year, when we clutchers of boarding passes w