Last night I strolled up the street to see the latest installment of Comedy Kapow at 120 Diner. My friend Amy was one of the comics, and she killed it as usual. There were a few others I found really good as well, especially Jimmer Lowe and the two hosts, Amish Patel and Ernie Vicente. It was nice to see a few of my old colleagues there too.
Weirdest moment of the night: seeing Globe and Mail sports reporter David Shoalts walk on stage and do a set. Was not expecting that.
On Monday night I met up with T-Bone (finally!) for a dinner at Canoe, put on by Le Vieux Pin, one of my favourite BC wineries. It was…okay. I liked the wine (T-Bone didn’t as much) but the dinner didn’t blow either of us away. My beef was cooked to medium; my dessert was unremarkable. Quite odd, for Canoe. Luckily, I get another crack at it next week for work.
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Cover photo by b-l-k, used under Creative Commons license
As in previous years, I’ll just smash all these lists together for simplicity’s sake. All lists are in alphabetical order, unless otherwise noted.
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I haven’t yet listened to the new ones from A Tribe Called Quest, Honeyblood, Kaytranada, Leonard Cohen, or Modern Baseball, but this is what I’ve liked so far this year. I’ll probably change my mind entirely by the spring.
So much more mature and evolved than her last album, adding some fuzzy rock and punk to all that country torch, with the result feeling so much more plaintive and driven. Like Julien Baker last year, Angel Olsen sounds so much more beaten down by the world than you might expect.
Big, space-agey rock. It shares a number and name with Led Zeppelin’s biggest legacy album, and while it might not carry the weight to make it a similar classic, it was a largely overlooked powerhouse for 2016.
While there’s a bit too much sameness as the album goes along, standouts like “A 1000 Times”, “The Morning Stars”, and “In A Black Out” are strong enough to outclimb most of the rest of the year’s offerings. I think I still prefer The Walkmen and Vampire Weekend as whole parts, but this is an interesting side/combo project.
Usually taking a back seat to Chance The Rapper (who has the best guest spot on the album, name-dropping Ta-Nahisi Coates and lamenting dead iPhone batteries) but here using a killer combination of catchy melody, solid flow, soul samples, and thoughtful lyrics, Joey Purp had maybe the biggest surprise album of the year.
These guys don’t sound like they’re from Halifax, really. They sound like they’re the reincarnation of Velvet Underground, if VU never got into the hard drugs and stayed a little more upbeat. And were from, you know, Halifax. I listened to this, and their previous album Whine Of The Mystic, heavily all year.
Sometimes raw emotion pours itself out into an album, and this is that. Written after (about? for?) the death of his son, the trademark Cave darkness takes on a new depth here. Still manages to be catchy/punchy though.
I like that there are no surprises in a Pack A.D. album. You know what you’re getting. You still feel pummeled by it though. “Yes, I Know” is the standout here, but top to bottom it’s an enjoyable, solid album.
Another surprise, this time swinging much more to the folk-ish side of things. Catchy, and the kind of thing you can listen to at home with your hipster friends (done) or in the car with your mother (also done). Side note: this is another one featuring pretty sharp lyrics…not a few minutes into the album the singer’s already referred to his “solipsistic moods.”
Power-pop-punk played by a band who label themselves “aggressively queer” — this was the best straight (so to speak) up rock and roll album of the year. There are lots of great songs here, but “West Texas” has a special place in my heart. It makes me wish there’d been a gay storyline on Friday Night Lights.
Maybe the most complex album on this list. It’s so thoughtful and earnest, but also feels slippery and hidden. I have a distinct memory of listening to it start to finish in the KLM lounge at Schipol airport in Amsterdam while waiting for a connection, and feeling more excited and at peace. Not many albums pull me back to a place like that.
Honourable mentions to the new ones from Danny Brown, Blonde Redhead, Joe Budden, Regina Spektor, and The Men.
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This has been my least-busy movie year in some time, so I still haven’t seen Hell or High Water, Moonlight, Don’t Think Twice, Manchester by the Sea, The Nice Guys, Doctor Strange, Tower, The Witch, La La Land, The Fits, Green Room, 13th, Gimme Danger, Queen of Katwe, Paterson, Lo and Behold – Reveries of the Connected World, Hail, Caesar!, Loving, Midnight Special, Jackie, or The Witness. I can’t even make it a top ten list — these five are the only really good films I saw this year. Expect this list to be heavily altered by the spring.
So nice to have thoughtful, challenging sci-fi in theatres: an interesting look at language and memory, with overtones of militarism and geopolitics, all wrapped up in an alien story. Terrific performance from Amy Adams too.
Not without its flaws, not the least of which was the director’s past spilling out onto newspaper pages just before the film opened TIFF, but still a significant, important, fairly gripping epic story. Kind of like Braveheart set in the American south.
The Marvel universe keeps hitting semi-regular home runs with the Captain America and Avengers installments. This third Cap was no exception — essentially another Avengers film, with all the same quick dialogue and fun action, these are smarter than an action movie has a right to be.
My favourite from this year’s TIFF, this was the story of a woman whose fetus instructed her to murder people. Darkly funny, with brief moments of savage and disgusting violence…somehow this wasn’t part of the Midnight Madness program.
A worthy addition to the Star Wars set, Rogue One had great visuals, excellent action, funny droid dialogue, and enough tie-ins to episode IV to satisfy any Star Wars nerd. I’m glad they can continue telling this story in decent films.
I hereby acknowledge that I haven’t yet watched any of Westworld, Atlanta, Better Call Saul, Better Things, BoJack Horseman, Luke Cage, Documentary Now!, Rectify, or the latest season of The Fall but this is what I did watch and like:
Any chance to have Paul Giamatti, Damien Lewis, and Maggie Siff all in the same place is fine with me. Sometimes the drama gets wound a little too tight, and sometimes not enough actually happens in an episode, but it’s still enjoyable for all the masterful scenery-chewing.
So amazing. So unsettling and captivating and cool and disturbing and thrilling and insightful. There’s a reason why TIFF screened a few new episodes of it at this year’s festival — it’s operating at the level of top cinema.
Still my only must-see show. Still the one I get excited about weeks in advance. It’s the only show for which I watch the after-show. I have Game Of Thrones beer from Ommegang aging in my wine fridge right now. I get panicky at the idea that there are only a handful of episodes left. Please, please, please don’t go. Please. Arya forever.
Just as Jon Stewart left us, John Oliver arrived. But he could curse, and suffers no commercials. Hallelujah. These long-form rants are funny, pointed, and so necessary in a Trump-ish world. Sorry Trevor Noah, but this is The Daily Show now.
Still somehow compelling despite its soapiness — I give credit to Lizzy Caplan. I keep getting sucked back into this time and again. Even sideline characters who should mean nothing to me at this point are interesting, and the set design makes me miss Mad Men.
Season 2 was kind of a mess after the bad-ass arc of season 1, but it was still excellent. The whole show behaves like a buggy, maybe-hacked piece of software. I’ll take a sub-par Mr. Robot over just about any other season of TV.
Seriously, I hate the 80s. Like, so much. But I loved this show. The kids, the music, the ridiculousness of it all, the D&D…it was more fun than is reasonable to pack into eight episodes. Bravo, Netflix. More like this!
I know I’m cheating here a bit with a miniseries, but suck it, it’s my list. This contained more action, intrigue, character development, and twists than most series twice the length. Tom Hiddleston was great, but so too the rest of the cast — especially Hugh Laurie, Olivia Colman, and Tom Hollander.
So much terrific substance here: John Turturro’s feet, the cat, Bill Camp’s Detective Box, and all of the Riz Ahmed. Seriously, get this guy in/on more stuff. But even outside of him, it was terrific stuff. I just wish James Gandolfini had lived to see it through.
Still the funniest show on TV. The RIGBY “dictionary patch” from episode one this year was brilliant, the kind of thing that just enters the zeitgeist. So many terrific comedic actors, and a seemingly endless supply of valley bullshit to draw from.
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Okay, so I only read three books this year — but that’s still three more than last year.
Read in a single morning whilst lying in a hammock on a beach in Costa Rica. Surf, sand, and outrage at the unfairness of the financial system. Just the way vacations should be. I’ve already started his newest one.
I bought this within minutes of finishing the movie Everest, and read 2/3 of it that night, into the very wee hours. I wish I’d read it years ago when my dad first bought it. Gut-wrenching.
This was given to me partially as a joke, but I like Junger’s stuff so I didn’t mind. Wasn’t exactly memorable though. I read the whole thing on the flight to Kigali and gave it back to the original owner when I returned to Toronto.
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A bit more geographic variety in this year’s list. Listed in chronological order.
My second visit after a wine-tasting dinner, this was a full tasting menu affair, and confirmed for me that Alo is currently the best restaurant in Toronto. How something as simple as a bread course could be mind-blowing just shows the level at which they’re operating.
It wasn’t fancy. It was just amazing. Fresh fruit, banana muffins, homemade bread with fresh jam, and coffee filtered through something that looked like a sock, old-school. That it was next to the most beautiful pool view I’d ever seen didn’t hurt.
Sitting by myself, at the bar, at this restaurant in a part of Calgary I’d never seen before (or since) while all the other conference attendees were at some rodeo, I had a tremendous bacon starter and an exceptional steak, and a hell of a quiet, good time.
It was transcendent the first time. It was even better the second time. Not enough words.
Truth be told, the food here — while slightly exotic — was only better-than-average (that said, my kuku paka was pretty damned tasty). But eating it overlooking the hills and lights of Kigali put it on this list.
Kind of a panicky, last-minute decision after flailing desperately for options over the course of an hour, this was a lucky stumble-in down in old Montreal. The kind of place where you occupy a teeny corner of a drafty old room, read the menu off a chalkboard, and then fall into course after delicious course and count your blessings as you rub your belly.
It’s been on everyone’s Toronto top-ten list for ages, but I’d just never made it there. And Christ, was I missing out. Definitely one of the best, and most adventurous, meals I’ve ever had in Toronto. Add to that the stunning room and ace service, and this has to be right up there with Alo for destination meals in the city.
Trip #2 to Montreal this year saw visit #1 to Maison Publique, a wonderfully cozy, friendly room with uber-French food and an uber-Canadian wine list. It’s since become a regular visit when in Montreal, and feels like my living room. God, I love it.
I’ve been here half a dozen times, but the last time might have been the best. The burrata and calamari (frequent orders) were somehow better, the pasta was tops, and the Sangiovese my guy recommended was mind-blowing. Sometimes the perfect comfort dinner makes the list, y’know?
I stopped for lunch on my way to a meeting, sat at the bar, and ate a killer goddamn burger and fries with a glass of Freemark Abbey cab sauv and put the whole thing squarely in my lunch hall of fame.
Honourable mention: the garam masala duck breast at Pukka; the 1946 Don PX at Cava; the octopus starter from Charcut in Calgary; the bombas at Patria; the pork buns from some random dim sum food truck in Montreal while I’ll probably never find again.
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This is why I pay for an Untappd supporter membership: to be able to download my full beer consumption list. For the ones I remember to log, anyway.
No charming story, just a bottle I picked up at the LCBO and tried at home. Fantastic stuff though.
One of a number of bottles (mostly sours) downed in an evening at Boxcar Social, which has become one of the more reliable bottled beer venues in Toronto.
A very special treat, Burdock’s first collaboration with Pearl Morissette winery, a saison/rosé hybrid brought over by friends before the latest Session beer festival.
The best beer at this year’s Session festival, it was strong but well-balanced and well-integrated. Sawdust City killed it at Session.
My favourite of the many beers I sampled in the warm sun on The National’s 8th Ave rooftop patio in Calgary: an out-freaking-standing hefeweizen.
My first visit to the new(ish) Bar Hop introduced me to an outstanding Folly flemish sour. I don’t know how Folly pulled this off…I wouldn’t have expected to find one of the best examples of this style I’ve ever encountered on Peter Street in Toronto.
I had this during a quick stop at an old Amsterdam favourite, BeerTemple. As big and heavy and sweet as it sounds. As delicious too.
Put down at the Café Gollem in Amsterdam whilst sharing the bar with a cat who lives there and drinks his water out of a Westmalle glass. It should have been overwhelmingly sweet, but it wasn’t.
Yet another amazing beer sampled in Amsterdam, this time at Craft & Draft, and the second from this Italian brewery. It was one of the best sours I’ve ever tried. Incredibly strong and sour, but so so good.
The second beer I’ve ever had with ghost pepper in it, and this one was almost as good. Such a well-balanced brown, and with all that heat in the back of the throat, just makes it a special combination. Granted, I tend not to log all the beers I drink when in Quebec, so this will have to represent la belle province on my list.
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It feels a little weird to write this given a major event this year, which I’ll talk about in my next post, but here goes:
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Cover photo by David Stillman, used under Creative Commons license
I’d barely gotten off the plane from Vancouver before heading to work, then the company’s holiday party, then a sick day or two, then more work. I was ready for vacation.
First, though, we spent Monday night at The Burdock drinking delicious beer (Meube Noir, dark saison, APA) and watching My Father’s Son (fb | bandcamp) do an excellent live set, followed by a Christmas sing-along at The Three Speed well into the wee hours.
NOW I was ready for vacation. Thankfully I arrived at the farm two days ago. Stay tuned for stories of supreme relaxation.
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Cover photo from the Three Speed twitter feed.
For various work reasons I found myself in Vancouver for three days this week. Never a bad thing, I says. In between meetings I found a few opportunities to entertain my taste buds.
I used my last AC upgrade to get myself into business class, so I was well-fed on the flight from Toronto to Vancouver. A little spicy chicken, a little basmati rice, a little white whine. Actually, a lot of white wine, and terribly oak-ridden at that. I struggled through though, whilst watching Jason Bourne (meh), Ghostbusters (fun), and The Wrath Of Khan (which was under the Classics section, naturally).
I landed at YVR, checked into my modest little hotel (the St. Regis), grabbed a capp from Caffè Artigiano, did some work, and had a killer steak dinner at Gotham:
Not surprisingly I fell asleep on my hotel bed, trying to watch Netflix.
Giant breakfast downstairs, a coffee meeting with my work friend William, lunch at the spectacular Hawksworth restaurant (a burger and glass of Freemark Abbey Cab Sauv), an espresso at a different Artigiano, a meeting at our Vancouver office, and then more work and more coffee back in my hotel room.
That evening I had drinks at Chambar with my old friend Amy. At first we tried the Reflections pop-up at the top of the Hotel Georgia, but it was about seven different kinds of awful. Luckily I know and love Chambar (or the previous incarnation, at least); I had a Timmermans gueuze and a Grimsbergen dubbel and we shared some charcuterie and over-truffle-oiled bison carpaccio, and got caught up on…I don’t know, seven years?
All-day meeting. Flight was delayed; I killed at time at Vino Volo wine bar in YVR and then got home in the middle of the night.
It’s rare that I go this long without posting, but it’s rare that I’m this busy. I’m going point-form this time, just ’cause.
Plus lentement, s’il vous plaît.
With a friend/colleague in town and wanting to meet up for a drink, I scouted possible options near his hotel. Having never tried it, despite a long-standing intention to do so, I settled on The Gabardine. We met before it got too busy, after a Christmas-strewn shortcut through The Bay.
I had a lovely little bourbon + ginger ale cocktail, and (at the bartender’s insistence) a plate of “crispy fried grits, pickled jalapenos, nacho cheese, bacon, and maple” that was decadent and completely delicious.
I am seriously pissed at myself for not trying that place sooner.
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Cover photo from the Gabardine site
Too rarely these days do I get to see CBGB (and their linked pair, MLK) so I jumped at the chance to have brunch/lunch with them today. It was great to catch up and talk, naturally, politics.
I’d also forgotten how much I miss The Oxley, now that I don’t work near there. Such a nice cozy place, and such a solid burger.
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Feature image from The Oxley’s website.
Met up with CBJ today at Bier Markt. Beers + sun +patio +sausage + it’s been too long = a pretty solid afternoon which required a nap when I got home.
By the way, in case anyone’s wondering what that title meant:
https://t.co/lDo9OS11dt—
Arden Zwelling (@ArdenZwelling) September 23, 2016
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Cover photo from BlogTO
Along with most Canadians between 30 and 60 years of age, I watched the final Tragically Hip concert last night. The CBC, blessedly sensing the import of the moment, preempted Olympic coverage and aired the whole concert commercial-free. We knew we’d want to watch it surrounded by other people; luckily our friends JP and Sue invited us over to their backyard viewing party.
I’d seen them live three times — light, by Canadian standards — and would have been strangely okay if the Fully Completely anniversary tour in 2015 was my last time. I’d kind of drifted away from the Hip in recent years, paying less and less attention to their albums and tours, but there’s no denying how important they were to me through the 90s. I didn’t really pay attention to the first albums that won them fans, but I knew who they were. Ultimately what won me over was their performance of Locked In The Trunk Of A Car live on the Junos (I think?) in 1992. I struggled to process what I was listening to: a song about a car that eats…conquistadors? It was stuck in my head all night and the next day; I remember standing at the end of our lane the next morning, waiting for the schoolbus, hearing Gord sing “Let me ooouuuuutttttt!!!!!!!” over and over. To this day it’s one of my three favourite Hip songs.
By the time I got to university they were everyone’s unofficial soundtrack — Fully Completely was on constant rotation until Day For Night came out; I was at home on the farm one weekend, driving to Amherst with brother #2, when a radio station played Grace, Too for the first time. I have a clear memory of driving across the Southampton bridge as those first bass notes started, and I’ve loved the song deeply since. It too remains one of my three favourites.
My other favourite was a slower build over several years, buried halfway down Fully Completely, and so utterly drenched in Leafs history that I should hate it, but the simplicity and sadness and power of Fifty Mission Cap are special to me. Clearly, though, their music holds meaning for me, and for millions of other people. And while I’ve long felt that the Rheostatics might be even truer representatives of Canadian culture (at least to nerds like me) there’s no denying the Hip’s cultural importance in this country. I could hear it coming from strangers around me last night, and from CBC interviews before and after the show, and from all over the internet in the days leading up to the show. There was palpable weight to the moment before they took the stage, and it mattered to me what they played, and when.
That they started with Fifty Mission Cap was almost troubling — shouldn’t this be a powerful set closer? How could they possibly keep the momentum up? But they did, with songs carrying a different kind of weight — the weight of Gord Downie’s diagnosis. When he sang “Courage (for Hugh MacLennan)” we were all singing “COURAGE!” back at him. When he grumbled the bridge in “At The Hundredth Meridian” it tore at us.
If I die of vanity, promise me
Promise me they bury me some place I don’t want to be,
You’ll dig me up and transport me, unceremoniously,
Away from the swollen city-breeze, garbage bag trees,
Whispers of disease, acts of enormity
And lower me slowly, sadly and properly
Get Ry Cooder to sing my eulogy.
They played all their slow-song crowd favourites (Wheat Kings, The Last of the Unplucked Gems, Poets, Scared) which have never been my favourites, but they also played Fiddler’s Green, which no one seemed to expect. I didn’t, anyway. It was tough.
The first encore, predictably, was all Up To Here. There was no way they could leave without playing any of New Orleans Is Sinking, Boots or Hearts, or Blow at High Dough. The second encore is what got me though…but not Nautical Disaster or Scared. It was Grace, Too. It was how Downie broke down, completely, as he screamed the final words — “Now??! No!!!” — over and over. We were watching a dying man staring his own mortality in the face, in front of a whole country, and spitting rage back at it. I couldn’t deal with it. I felt tears on my cheeks. Judging by my social feeds, and the rest of that backyard, I wasn’t the only one.
That ended the encore, and the band walked off. I think they had always planned for another, but couldn’t count on Gord being able to continue. I glad he did; that might have been the most poignant end, but it wouldn’t have been the right one. They came back out and to my great joy played Locked in the Trunk of a Car. Finally, thankfully. I got to hear Gord screaming “Let me out!” one last time, and felt complete. Only the surprise appearance of Cordelia could have made it better, but of course that dark a song wouldn’t fit. They were back to say goodbye with a smile, or at least a smirk. They ended with Gift Shop — one last show of wit and power — and Ahead By A Century, so Gord had enough time and room to say proper goodbyes to the crowd. And they were gone.
Now that I’ve typed this far, my random ‘play all Tragically Hip songs’ playlist has served up Cordelia, so I almost got my wish after all. It must have been the one more thing I really needed. I don’t know what that will be for Gord, but I hope he gets it.
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The set list, according to the CBC:
Fifty-Mission Cap
Courage (for Hugh MacLennan)
Wheat Kings
At the Hundredth Meridian
In a World Possessed by the Human Mind
What Blue
Tired as F–k
Machine
My Music at Work
Lake Fever
Toronto #4
Putting Down
Twist My Arm
Three Pistols
Fiddler’s Green
Little Bones
The Last of the Unplucked Gems
Something On
Poets
Bobcaygeon
Fireworks
New Orleans Is Sinking
Boots or Hearts
Blow at High Dough
Nautical Disaster
Scared
Grace, Too
Locked in the Trunk of a Car
Gift Shop
Ahead by a Century
Cover photo from thehip.com
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 