Dumb. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Disgusting. Stealing someone’s mail carries a stiffer punishment.
Want. Doublewant. Want for Nellie (’cause she does that).
Funny. But only if you’ve seen the original.
Author: Dan Dickinson
Unhand me, yankee!!
That’s my niece Hannah. She likes to climb on Uncle Dan. She also likes to pose/mug for cameras. At the moment this was taken it would seem she couldn’t choose what she wanted to do more. Hilarious.
I do have two whole years to make up for, after all
I’m hungry just thinking about it.
Last night, in an early celebration of Nellie’s birthday, we had dinner at Jacob’s & Co. with T-Bone and The Sof. And what a dinner it was. After a drink downstairs in the bar we settled around a big comfy table. More drinks — beer for the guys, sparkling wine for the ladies — followed before we opened our menus. Our server Harry walked us through the details and intricacies of each cut of meat they had that night and we made our choices.
I started with the lobster bisque (which contained, like, half a lobster). T-Bone had steak tartare, The Sof had oysters and Nellie ordered the Caesar Salad. That salad was prepared tableside and tasted, according to Nellie, better than any Caesar’s salad she’d ever had. All our wines were paired nicely as well. So far, so good.
Then…oh, then, the meat arrived. T-Bone and The Sof split a 28oz USDA Prime Black Angus bone-in ribeye. I opted for the 14oz version. Nellie had an 8oz Wagyu striploin. My ribeye was so tender my knife just slid through it; Nellie’s was almost like butter. Amazing. A lot to handle, too…I’m not sure how I finished it. I guess it might have been that I largely stayed away from the sides of mushroom, broccolini and duck fat french fried potatoes, though I did enjoy the pureed potatoes quite a bit. The whole affair went down with…I think the sommelier said a Cabernet, but I can’t really remember. It were tasty.
No one had a lot of room for dessert, though I did feel like having a single scoop of house-made coconut ice cream and Nellie got some sorbet. T-Bone had port, natch. The Sof skipped dessert, and concentrated on trying to digest the 14 ounces of meat he’d just eaten. Before heading back downstairs for one last drink, Harry dropped off four house-made muffins for our breakfast the next day. Nice touch.
Jacob’s is a beautiful space, and the food was spectacular. So, as one would expect, were the prices. Economic downturn be damned, though – that room was full last night. We enjoyed our experience there thoroughly. And, in a perfect little coda: the muffins this morning were delicious.
La Princesse
I’ll admit it, I’m not fond of spiders. I’m not scared of them, and would never squish one (I was often reminded by my farmer father that spiders kill all the ‘bad’ bugs, so I was conditioned not to kill them as a kid) but they make me uncomfortable. I prefer that they don’t crawl on me, and the big hairy ones like bird spiders freak me out a little.
However, this is pretty goddamn awesome:
Click on the link above to see all the pictures, and read the story of La Princesse arriving in Liverpool.
"Here I am, Wagyu like a hurricane" would be a stretch, wouldn't it?
No time to blog (much) tonight. No time to blog tomorrow night either as I’ll be spending several hours trying to eat, and then digest, a hunk of meat at Jacobs & Co. steakhouse.
What’s that? Vegetarian? Nope, don’t recall anything about that. Sorry.
Hooray for good genes
Visited my (hot) doctor yesterday. She’s very speedy — walks quickly, talks quickly, moves quickly — and my physical was over just as I was starting to process the idea of sitting around in a little paper gown. Turns out my bloodwork revealed that I’m in very good health…she sounded a tiny but surprised as she said it, but then I suppose I don’t really project the picture of peak physical fitness. Good genes, I explained. She agreed. Quickly.
She also commented, when taking my history last time, that it’s not often she encounters someone who has never smoked, and grew up in a house where no one else smoked either. Even in my extended family on both sides, there were no smokers except for the odd one here and there, and those quit by the time I was old enough to remember it. No heavy drinkers either. Two grandparents who lived into their 90s, another who lived into his 80s. That’s a pretty good starting point, and not being gassed in my childhood years helped.
So, uh…thanks ancestry. Good work.
I, for one, find the Harbor Hopper ads very offensive
Just when I really start to like Halifax again, it goes and does something goofy like reject the Atheist Bus ads. (Full disclosure: I donated to the Atheist Bus campaign in Canada.)
A ‘Without God’ ad has proven too controversial for Halifax transit.
Humanist Canada wanted to place ads on Metro Transit buses with the slogan, “You can be good without God.”
But officials with the transit authority deemed that too controversial.
“We’re a public transit system first, and then we sell advertising,” Lori Patterson, spokewoman for Metro Transit, told CBC News on Monday.
“So, if anytime we feel there’s a message that could be controversial and upsetting to people, we don’t necessarily sell the ads.”
First of all, that reasoning is absurd. Virtually every ad could be offensive to someone. If one gives Ms. Patterson the benefit of the doubt and assumes she means “upsetting to the majority of people,” it becomes hard to reconcile the fact that they’ve granted ad space to the anti-abortion organization Birthright, as reported on the Atheist Bus website.
Second, not only is the actual message less inflammatory than the “There’s probably no god…” ads to run in Toronto, it’s completely benign! How can you possibly argue with the statement “You can be good without God.”, let alone find it upsetting? Can, people, can. The ads don’t say you will be better without god, they just state the fact that people who don’t believe in gods are capable of being good.
I’m confident this response — which seems much more like a knee-jerk than a reasoned reaction — is so baseless and silly that, despite how conservative Nova Scotia can be sometimes, will ultimately be reversed. I’m also hopeful that Vancouver will avoid embarrassing themselves in this way.
So far the best response to the ads I’ve heard about is what the United Church of Canada is planning: ads that say “There probably is a God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Hurrah! Instead of trying to silence a contrary argument, they made their own counter-ad, and with a sly wink as well. Well played, UCC. (More full disclosure: I was raised United, and while I’ve been an atheist for many years, my parents remain very active in their church.)
Oh, murgh makhani, how I've missed you
Just back from a Winterlicious dinner at Amaya Bread Bar. It’s the more laid-back, TTC-friendly version of Amaya Restaurant. The food’s the same (which is to say, delicious) though we were limited to the ‘Licious menu. The wine selection was shorter, but that didn’t bother me; I like beer with my Indian. The only one available — Cobra — went nicely with my pakora starter. We shared the four mains — lamb roganjosh, butter chicken, seafood xacutti and a veggie trio — and washed it down with more Cobra. I won’t lie, I enjoyed asking the waiter to bring more Cobra. It’s fun to say. Cobra. Cobra cobra cobra cobra. Cobra.
For dessert T-Bone and I had Greg’s mango ice cream; Nellie and The Sof had the spiced brownie, but neither of them came close to finishing.
Tasty, not too heavy, and reasonably priced. And a quick walk to/from the subway, or would have been, had we not we caught a ride down to Summerhill. We will likely go back. Missionlicious accomplished.
Eddy Grant, where are you?
From today’s Globe and Mail:
Toronto Hydro’s problems with “stray voltage” mounted over the weekend with reports that another five individuals and three dogs had received shocks but had not been injured after stepping on the city’s aging metal handwells.
The utility received six calls on Saturday and one yesterday to a hot line it set up to report such incidents. Sean Borden reported that in the summer he and his dog, Mocha, both got a jolt after stepping over a handwell in the east end, just around the corner from where last week a pupil at Regent Park/Duke of York Junior Public School was zapped, but uninjured.
Gives a whole new meaning to “Electric Avenue,” don’t you think?
"The German Claw, Mister McCluckCluck!!"
Last night I dreamed about something…unexpected. I very, very rarely remember my dreams at all, maybe once or twice a year, so it was odd that what I would remember dreaming about was Grand Prix Wrestling.
If you didn’t grow up in the Maritimes you’re unlikely to know what that is. I’m pretty sure it only aired on local stations. Imagine the early days of the WWF, but with much lower budgets and hilarious nicknames. Even my own memories of it are quite fuzzy. But last night I could remember, as clear as day, names like Bulldog Bob Brown, Sweet Daddy Siki, Killer Karl Krupp, Big Stephen Pettipas, No-Class Bobby Bass, The Cuban Assassin and Leo Burke, and apparently my dream last night was the revival tour. It’s a bit hazy now but I’m pretty sure I remember someone grabbing the Cuban Assassin by his beard and throwing him, and Killer Karl’s signature line (in the subject line) definitely came up.
Weird. I don’t imagine I’ve thought about Grand Prix Wrestling in 25 years. Any bets on what I’ll dream about tonight? Littlest Hobo episode? Greatest American Hero theme song? My brother’s old yellow bike with the banana seat?
