Wow. What a game. Tense. Awesome, but tense.
This past week was frenetic; I’ve definitely earned my day off tomorrow. We’re headed out for a wine excursion in Niagara-On-The-Lake, the first time we’ve left the city since we went to France last fall. The weather is supposed to be shit but I don’t care. I need this. And I need some good food. And I need some fresh air. And I need a comfy hotel bed.
And I need to be back for game five.
Jeez, could my teams look any more awkward stumbling toward the playoffs? My Habs slumped at the end of the year, barely locking down the #8 spot and staring at the President’s Cup-winning Washington Capitals in the first round. The Raptors, meanwhile, have lost too many good players to injury and, following today’s loss to the Bulls, have slipped out of the playoffs.
Methinks I’ll get to enjoy the spring weather outdoors this year, rather than spending very many evenings in front of the TV. Too bad I didn’t care about baseball a little more; the Jays are off to a pretty good start.
I learned something this weekend: that there are three indispensable ingredients of a great weekend. These are, in no particular order: beautiful weather, ample time and people with which to share it.
On Friday I did have to go to the office, but it was nice enough outside that I could walk there, and I didn’t stay long. By noon I was home, fed and ready to enjoy the unseasonably warm day. Nellie and I strolled down to the Bier Markt patio for sunshine and beer (me: Erdinger weiss, Weihenstephan weiss, Spaten lager and Delirium Tremens; she: KLB Raspberry Wheat, Big Rock Grasshopper, Okanagan Spring pale and Koningshoeven Tripel) on a lazy Friday afternoon. Nellie had an urge for an Urthel Hop-It so we wandered up to the Beerbistro in search of one; alas, they had none. So we availed ourselves of the rest of their collection (me: Maudite and Trois Pistoles; she: Durham Hop Addict and Koningshoeven Quadrupel) while making dinner reservations at nearby Harlem. We’d been there once last year and liked it and it felt like the right fit on a lazy Good Friday. One ill-advised cocktail later and were into the starter (catfish Lafayette…yum!) and then our mains. My pork hocks were okay, but Nellie wisely got the fried chicken. I didn’t mind that I missed on some of the flavour. The relaxation was tasting delicious enough.
Saturday was the first day in about two months that I haven’t had to go to work, so I celebrated by sleeping in. Despite it being another beautiful day we didn’t really get out and about that much as we were prepping for dinner with T-Bone and The Sof. Well…Nellie did the prepping, I just cleaned up and provided moral support. Anyway, after a great meal (baguette w/ honey, balsamic and goat cheese; sausage-stuffed pasta with pancetta and sage; steak from Cumbrae’s and three kinds of cheese) this is what our table looked like:
Just for the record, that’s:
And yes, in case you’re wondering, Nellie does like to drink her beer from a wine glass toward the end of the evening.
Sunday was, blessedly, another lazy day. A good lie-in, brunch at the Jason George, a nice long talk with my mom who turned 60 (!) today and Zombieland (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which was excellent. Tomorrow it’s back to work, in spite of my best efforts to take a day off, but for the first time this year I feel like I really got my money’s worth out of a weekend.
Oh, and the other ingredient for a perfect weekend? Consecutive shutouts.
Whoo unexpected platinum seats whoo!
So, uh, that happened.
Sorry for the delayed editorial response, but it’s basically taken me a week to recover from the off-key shit show that was the closing ceremonies. With that cleansed from my memory (a simple what now?) I find myself looking back fondly at what were, for me anyway, the greatest winter games ever. Highlights for me:
My one regret about these games was that we weren’t there in Vancouver to experience them. If I knew in 2003 what I know now I would have started buying tickets and booking flights immediately upon the games being awarded to Vancouver-Whistler. I’m not sure when Canada will ever have another games (Toronto seems to have used up its chances at landing the summer games and isn’t a viable venue for winter sports; Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver have all had their recent go. I suspect Quebec City is our only hope now.) and so I worry that I’ve missed my chance. But it’s become so commonplace to watch live events on TV that we sometimes forget how lucky we are to be able to witness such events in real time, along with two thirds of the country, and jump up and cheer and, in our case, run up the middle of the world’s longest street high-fiving strangers. That doesn’t happen every day.
Now, a week later, I miss that feeling terribly.
I hope I never stop.
Here’s what we’ve been up to in the four days since we left you:
On boxing day we enjoyed the main part of Nellie’s gift to me: gold seats at the Air Canada Centre for the Montreal Canadiens / Toronto Maple Leafs game. We were eleven rows from the ice, right at one of the blue lines, and had a great view of the ice. I was actually surprised by the number of Montreal fans in attendance…I’d say maybe 20% of the fans were cheering for the Habs. It was amazing for me to be that close to the ice — in my previous visits to Canadiens games (both in Montreal) I’d been in the nosebleeds — and to see and hear everything. It was also nice to see my team win for a change (the Habs won 3-2 in overtime) as the first two games I saw were losses. Nellie had fun too, eating a hot dog and drinking beer and making eyes at Carey Price. It was a blast, and an experience I was worried I’d never get to have in Toronto. Top-notch Christmas gift, baby!
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December 27th was actually our anniversary. Typically we’d go out to dinner to celebrate, but it being Sunday everything was closed. We hung out with CBGB for a little bit and generally just took it easy.
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Yesterday we thought we’d get out of the house and see what all this Avatar fuss is about, so we walked in the freezing-ass cold to the Scotiabank to buy tickets. Little did we know that tickets to the IMAX screenings had been sold out for days. Bah, forget it. We cut back across King Street and decided to stop in at the beerbistro so that the afternoon wasn’t a complete loss. I had a Tilburg’s Dutch Brown Ale and a Maudite, while Nellie had a Durham Hop Addict and an Urthel Hop-It, which I think is her new best friend. We went to movie plan B at home, watching Defiance (imdb | rotten tomatoes) on the PVR (it was okay…given the subject matter it probably should have been a little more engaging than it was). Then we got ready for dinner.
Much like North 44, Scaramouche is such a quintessentially Toronto restaurant we couldn’t hardly believe we hadn’t yet tried it. An anniversary seemed like an ideal time for such an adventure, and it was settled. First, the room: pleasant, if a little dull & dated, and while we were seated at the window to appreciate the famous view, the evening’s snow squalls made it difficult to see much. Second, the service: a little off, to be honest. Our server was efficient enough but not exactly friendly, and somewhere between dessert and the bill he just disappeared. We never saw him again, and after several minutes of waiting we finally got someone else’s attention and they tag-teamed our bill, etc. So that was weird. Third: the food, and this — most importantly — was the best part. I had warm duck salad, venison wrapped & roasted in smoked bacon and coconut cream pie for dessert. Nellie had butter poached lobster, a grilled kerr farms filet mignon and her dessert was three kinds of cheese. We had various glasses of wine before dinner and with our apps, but the real star of the evening was the 2006 Petite Sirah/Zinfandel/Mourvèdre ‘Phantom’ Bogle. Excellent without the food and downright superb with it, neither of us wanted to finish the bottle, but we couldn’t help ourselves. Nellie’s port and my Calvados with dessert were good, but I know we were both thinking about that wine. Oh, and the restaurant did make a nice final flourish with our dessert plates:
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Today was a bit more pedestrian: grand plans of shopping withered on the vine when we realized it was -20 with the wind chill, so we opted instead for leftovers, chocolate, napping and more movie-watching. Today the PVR served up the Warner Herzog documentary Encounters At The End Of The World (imdb | rotten tomatoes). Really, I could watch anything by that man and be happy, but from a strictly mechanical sense it did precisely what documentaries are supposed to do: answer some questions and raise still others.
Tonight the plan (well…my plan) is to watch Canada’s junior team play the Slovaks, and then tomorrow it’s back to work for a bit. In other words: wow, it’s been a relaxing vacation.
Last weekend I had an urge to watch a big, dumb, loud movie. I didn’t get to fulfill it (I watched Enemy At The Gates, which was big and loud, but not so much with the dumb), so last night I suggested we see what was sure to be the very epitome of big, loud and dumb. And man, did 2012 (imdb | rotten tomatoes) deliver. It was ridiculous, poorly scripted, badly acted end-of-days porn. Did it look stunning? Absolutely. Did it carry you along to the point that you barely notice 2.5 hours have gone by? Yup. Did we roll our eyes so far back in our heads that we could give the chair-kickers behind us the stinkeye? Oui. Entertaining, sure, but I would have hated myself if we’d actually spent money on tickets.
Oh, and avoid the Yonge/Dundas AMC on a weekend night. It’s like a stupid kid bomb went off in there.
I’m not sure what to say about Drag Me To Hell (imdb | rotten tomatoes) except that I’m just not a Sam Raimi horror fan. I didn’t like the Evil Deads or Army of Darkness, probably because I didn’t see them as a teen. I never found it scary, and I didn’t find it funny either…at least not how they intended it. I’m amazed that it holds a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, but I guess I shouldn’t be. There’s a lot of nostalgic Raimi love out there.
Finally, just now, Nellie and I watched a documentary that we nearly scheduled during this year’s film festival: King’s Ransom (imdb) by Peter Berg. I’m glad now that we didn’t. There was nothing there I didn’t already know, and I don’t know much emotional insight you can get out of your subject when you’re about to tee off.
To make my shit movie weekend complete, Nellie wants us to watch Red Dawn (imdb | rotten tomatoes) tonight. She claims it’s a classic, but her criteria for such a designation is that a) it came out in the 80s, and b) she liked it.
Tonight my beloved Montreal Canadiens will hit the ice for their first exhibition game of the fall. I’ll miss nearly the entire pre-season, as well as their season opener against the Leafs (blurg!) while we’re in France, but I’m intensely curious about how the team will look.
I’ve held off talking about all the off-season changes Bob Gainey’s made as I wanted to see the final product take shape before commenting. This was the most change I’ve seen my Habs, or maybe any team, go through in one summer. After the disastrous 08-09 season, the centennial celebration in which the Canadiens were supposed to contend for the cup, Gainey knew he had to do something. And what he did was blow up his team’s leadership core and start over.
Saku Koivu, the heart of the team and one of the club’s longest-serving captains, wasn’t signed. Likewise Alex Kovalev, their most talented player and assistant captain. Mike Komisarek and Chris Higgins, both of whom have worn the A and have been projected to eventually don the C, are gone. Alex Tanguay, Robert Lang, Mathieu Schneider, Patrice Brisebois, Tom Kostopulous, Mathieu Dandenault, Francis Bouillon…all gone.
Plenty of players came back in return, and on a talent-by-talent basis they’re as good or better as what went out the door. The interesting part of the great reset of 2009 was the fact that Gainey looked at his core of veteran players and decided he simply wasn’t going to win with that group. Loathe as I am to admit it, he was completely right. There’s been something lacking on the Canadiens team for a long time, something intangible…usually teams use words like chemistry or cohesiveness to describe it. Maybe it was heart. Short of Koivu, who would probably run through walls or kill a hobo if that’s what it took to win, there were a lot of guys on the team who would disappear when their backs were against the wall. But even Koivu, with all the heart in the world, often couldn’t get his name into another gear in crunch time. The effort was there but the execution wouldn’t come.
So, Gainey brought in Scott Gomez, Mike Cammalleri, Brian Gionta, Jaro Spacek, Hall Gill (!), Travis Moen and Paul Mara to reform the bulk of the team. Whether they can produce the chemistry Gainey’s looking for, or whether the departure of the old guard allows others to finally step up, remains to be seen. There are already early whispers of better chemistry in the room, so we’ll see if that sticks. Interestingly, those comments about chemistry came from Carey Price, upon whom success this season hinges more than anyone. If Price doesn’t bounce back from a bad year, all of Gainey’s machinations may be for naught.
However, the time for introspection is passed. The time for hockey is…uh, tonight. I can’t wait to hear the sweet sounds of blades carving ice and boards being rattled.
Go Habs go.
Pretty exciting few weeks coming up for Nellie and I. Tomorrow night we see our first film festival movie of 2009, which we wrap up just 72 hours later. Then I have five days in which to complete the twelve labours of Hercules at the office, and then…France.
Woo!
Then, once I get back — and I realize this is much more exciting for me than for Nellie — the hockey season starts. Technically I’ll have missed the Canadiens’ season opener against the Leafs, but a classic Saturday night game should make me feel right back at home in Canada.
Finally, in what could be either extreme serendipity or a classic over-reach, the day we get back is Nuit Blanche. Since we’ll still be on France time we’ll likely fall asleep early and wake up around 3 or 4 in the morning…the perfect time to head out to see some art. It’s a nice bonus that the TTC will be running all night too. We’ll see how that holds up.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 