Session 99

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

Yesterday Nellie and I dragged our slightly-hungover selves to the Session 99 craft beer festival. We’d bought tickets in advance, though I’m not sure why…we still had to buy drink tickets and we didn’t take part in all the events, so they were kind of a waste of money. Still…tasty beer and tasty food. Here’s what we drank:

  • Granite Brewery: Summer Ale & Hopping Mad (cask)
  • Stone Hammer: Dark & Strawberry Light Blonde (cask)
  • Lake of Bays: Pale Ale & Red Ale
  • Nickel Brook: Maple Porter & Organic White
  • Hop City: Lawn Chair Weisse & Mr. Huff Pilsner
  • Wellington: Blackened IPA
  • Amsterdam: Big Wheel Amber & Urban Wheat
  • Muskoka: Summer Weisse & Red Hop Chili Peppers
  • Charlevoix Dominus Vobiscum Triple

They were all good, except the Wellington Blackened IPA, which was terrible. I also had an excellent pulled pork sandwich from Cowbell, and Nellie had a plate of charcuterie from Leslieville cheese market. We also had some treats from Sassy Lamb: a Canadian Mancake (a peanut butter cupcake with maple buttercream icing & bacon bits) and an Eye Opener (a coffee porter chocolate cupcake with espresso cream cheese icing). Supoib!

If it’s on again next year I think we’ll do it again, but not bother with the tickets, and not drink half a bottle of scotch the night before.

Upon further reflection

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I have edited my ‘50 best songs ever‘ list as follows.

In:

  • Beastie Boys . “Sabotage”
  • Bob Dylan . “House Carpenter”
  • Godspeed You! Black Emperor . “Storm”
  • Spiritualized . “Lord Can You Hear Me?”

Out:

  • Constantines . “Hyacinth”
  • Bob Dylan . “Desolation Row”
  • Fiery Furnaces . “We Got Back the Plague”
  • Radiohead . “The National Anthem”

I should also point out that a few songs are hanging on by their fingernails and Danger Mouse‘s mashup of “99 Problems” and “Helter Skelter” is waiting impatiently in the wings.

Say it ain't so, Joe

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Last Wednesday I flew to Atlanta for a conference. I sailed through customs and security at Pearson and thought I was en route to the most effortless flight of all time, but then the Air Canada workers strike bit back…the ground crew forgot to file some paperwork to get us across the border, so we sat on the tarmac for an extra half an hour. That delay allowed a huge thunderstorm to roll into Atlanta ahead of us, and that storm shut down the airport, so we circled for almost an hour. By the time we got on the ground we were two hours late. It then took me (I’m not kidding here) twenty minutes to get out of the airport; no one warned me that the terminal is so long you have to take a train from one end to the other. Anyway. I checked in to the Westin Peachtree (avoid if you’re in Atlanta — it has great views, but is old and shabby once you get past the lobby), headed to the bar and watched the end of the seventh game of the Stanley Cup finals. I never actually left the hotel for the next 24 hours, heading straight to the airport for my return flight…pity, I’d found a few decent-looking beer places in the city and was hoping to try one or two of them on for size.

.:.

Back to that game 7 for a minute. In the official order of my preference for who wins the cup, it goes Montreal first (obviously), then any of 26 other teams, then Philly, then Boston, then Toronto. So it really does pain me to say that Boston deserved to win the series. They played like the better hockey team, even if they weren’t. It also pains me that the likes of Zdeno Chara and Brad Marchand get to hold a cup, but that pain is somewhat offset by my happiness for Tim Thomas winning his first cup, and for Mark Recchi ending his career with yet another championship. As I watched the final game end and the Bruins start to celebrate, I thought that what would sting the most was that Montreal came so damnably close to knocking the Bruins out in the first round — losing only in overtime of game seven. But, of course, what would sting the most the next morning was the insanity of the rioting in downtown Vancouver, an embarrassment felt by the whole country. Surely, with Canadian teams having lost in the finals five straight times since 1994, you’d think we would be used to it now.

.:.

After the traveling and frantic catch-up at work, I was hoping for a quiet weekend of doing as little as possible. That almost happened. Friday we just had a simple dinner out and drank some wine. Saturday we did some errands and generally enjoyed the gorgeous weather and then I actually had a nap. Seriously, a nap. I never have naps. I usually can’t sleep during the day no matter how hard I try. But yesterday, since I was on twelve hours sleep over the previous three nights, I curled up on the bed and went to sleep for a couple of hours. Until an emergency came up.

We found out Smokeless Joe, one of our favourite beer joints, would be closing in two weeks. And that night was the last time our friend Kaylea would be working there.

A dire situation indeed.

We sprung into action, throwing some food down our necks and arriving to find two plum spots waiting for us at the bar. We got the scoop, and sat down with the intention of having three each. Which, of course, ended up being five each. Or possibly six, if you count the vanilla ice cream and Nickel Brook Green Apple Pilsner float that Steph made for me. We drank and laughed and listened to blues and were especially happy to see Colin and Eddie, our favourite bartenders before Kaylea began working there, show up later in the evening. We said (and hugged) our goodbyes, not knowing if or when we’d see them all again, and left the place that’s been one of Toronto’s best beer bars and our unofficial living room for the past…I don’t know, eight years?

Hopefully it’ll come back in some incarnation, but it’ll just never be the same.

Steph, Kaylea, Eddie and Colin

Asteroidea

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

On Friday night all we wanted to do was have a nice, simple dinner and an early night, since we’d spent the previous night on the Volo patio with our favourite beermistress. And we were this close.

We wound up at Starfish, a (mainly) seafood place just down the street from us. Somehow we’d just never tried it, but it was top of mind since meeting Suresh Doss (aka @spotlightcity, aka the most socially active man alive) the day before and he expressed amazement that we’d never been. Anyway, we popped in at 7, sans reservation, and were told we’d have to be out by 9…fine by us. The night was shaping up to be early, and at least somewhat cost-controlled.

Now, I should point out that I don’t really like fish. Or most seafood. But I have found that I don’t mind it if it’s done properly, so I ordered the calamari salad and the bass. The salad was meh and the bass was okay, but Nellie’s lobster bisque was excellent and she claimed her mussels were good as well, so she definitely enjoyed her food more than I. The name of our wine escapes me completely, but it paired nicely with the food. Dessert was the best part of the meal, probably for both of us: shared sticky toffee pudding. We killed it dead in under a minute, I think.

At this point it was just a couple of minutes to 9 and we had about half a glass of wine left, so we offered to move to the bar. We decided to have just one more, but before we knew it we were chatting with the bartender and sampling multiple bottles of Soave & Valpolicella  and chatting with the chefs and sampling these incredibly hot smoked peppers. It was kind of odd. But fun. And we’ll definitely be going back.

I am surprisingly a) not sunburned, and b) not hung over

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Yet another great weekend in ever-so-slowly-warming-up Toronto. After another long week at the office (hark: no weekend work! well, a couple of conference calls, but that was it…) we decided to celebrate our friend CBJ’s return to Toronto with a few brews at Smokeless Joe. Somehow that devolved into drinking a Tripel out of a football-sized glass, and from there it decayed further into hot wings and seeing an Asian kid puke outside of a Pizza Pizza. But overall, quite a good night.

Saturday morning we got up early in the hopes of scoring a table, sans lineup, at Lady Marmalade over in Leslieville. We succeeded, and just barely, since we got the very last table (at 9AM!) before the lineups began. And lining up would have sucked since it was pouring rain outside. Anyway, we were here because T-Bone wanted to try it, and because one of our co-workers said it was good. And it was: my brunch/breakfast was quite tasty (apple chai french toast + sausage) and everyone else seemed to enjoy theirs, though Nellie’s left something to be desired. And by that I mean that her plate looked like more an accidental spill site than breakfast. However.

The rest of Saturday was quite lazy indeed — Nellie had a nap while I shot XBox Nazis. We could do little else as the thunderstorm outside kept us hemmed in. Eventually we snuck out for groceries in order to supplement the goodies Nellie had obtained super-early that morning, in preparation for a meal that night to continue the celebration of the return of the CBJness. We had lemon/asparagus/shrimp pasta with a bottle of NOVA7 (which didn’t really work…we just really wanted to try the NOVA7) and then grilled sausages along with a bottle of 2008 Ravine Cab Franc, followed by a bottle of 2006 Little Yering Cab/Shiraz to go with some salted chocolate. Nom. Nom hard.


Fortunately the weather was significantly better on Sunday, because we had plans for a 3-hour cruise around Toronto harbour with friends. We did something similar last year…same guy, same boat, roughly same group of friends. We laid our asses down in the sun and drank beer and enjoyed the alternate view of Toronto and chatted happily in perfect early summer weather. No one wanted to get off at the end of the three hours.

Of course, this view — taken from our balcony when we got home — isn’t so bad either.

"I wish monkeys could Skype."

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Toronto seems to have awakened from a long, dark winter. Not a hard winter, mind you, just one that seemed never to end. But yesterday the sun came out, and today it’s scorching (41 with the humidex) so I’d like to think this past weekend signaled the final curtain on spring.

Friday we both worked late. When we got home we decided it was a good idea to disassemble the old home theatre (the new receiver and tv stand had arrived) and rebuild it. Somewhere between “disassemble” and “the rest” I got tired of that idea, and we went out for dinner instead. Thinking the Wine Bar would offer a quick, simple meal we went there. We ended up with frites and flat breads and Miami ribs and giant scallops and pork medallions, not to mention pretty much every red by the glass (and a few whites) that they serve. We ended with five cheeses, paired with five wines. We also ended up chatting quite a bit with Carlos, the manager, who was from Spain. We mentioned that we were considering a trip to Spain in the next couple of years. He came back later with a few bits of advice:

On Saturday we stepped gingerly around the pile of cords and equipment in our living room on our way to the market for the week’s supplies, before doing a few errands. Those errands included me picking up a much-needed HDMI cable, which meant we walked past Future Shop’s collection of LED TVs. Nellie pretty much decided on the spot that we needed one; alas, who am I to disagree?

Really, we were up around Yonge & Dundas to see The Hangover Part II (imdb | rotten tomatoes) which was rubbish. Nellie described it well: take the first Hangover, pretend it’s a Mad Lib and just replace all the major plot points with something new…Vegas = Bangkok, tiger = some other exotic animal, and so on. The best part of the movie was being surprised beforehand with the new red band trailer for David Fincher’s remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

We came home and, as best we could, set up the new receiver. Still a couple of kinks to be worked out, but it’s getting there. I hear a new LED TV should really pull it together. Anyway, we couldn’t enjoy it too long as we were off to GB’s surprise birthday party. Again, we mistakenly thought this would be an early and easy night. Later, as we drove home in a cab at 2:15AM, we wondered exactly what had happened. I think Nellie kept wondering that the whole next day, which she spent on the couch.

Sunday was unremarkable, save the last-night lightning storm that crashed around the city.

 

Il Pleut àMourir

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A sudden, rather cool-looking thunderstorm rolled through Toronto tonight. I took some pictures and snagged some video, here and here. Check out the lightning and thunder, in the second video, around the 0:10 mark. There was even a nice double-rainbow afterward.

Given today’s news, it’s a relief to live in a place where the weather is at best a photo opportunity, and at worst a pain in the ass, and not somewhere where you have to worry about mile-wide tornadoes.

"But what is so outrageous is that this isn't about Pat. This is about what they did to a nation."

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

I don’t know why, exactly, but I’ve/we’ve watched a lot of movies this month. Being on a plane for ten hours doesn’t hurt, and I did just get a new digital media player, but given how busy we’ve been at work (and how much good TV is on right now) I was surprised to see that I’ve gone through 14 movies this month. One more and it’ll be the busiest movie month for me since September 2008, when I took a week of vacation and watched 30 movies in 10 days at TIFF.

The five most recent have been:

Restrepo (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was the companion documentary to a book I just read (War by Sebastien Junger) about soldiers deep in Pakistan’s Korengal valley. While I appreciate putting faces to names and seeing the actual ground described in the book, the book was far more compelling. However, it was difficult to watch the documentary knowing that photographer and cameraman Tim Hetherington died last month in Libya.

The Tillman Story (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was another documentary about war, but with a very different twist. Many people knew about Pat Tillman, who played football for the Arizona Cardinals and turned down a multi-million dollar contract so that he could enlist and go to Afghanistan, along with his brother, following the attacks of September 11 2001. Tillman was killed in Afghanistan and immediately celebrated as a war hero — even being awarded a posthumous Silver Star — but his family wanted to understand more about how Tillman was killed. The star of the documentary is kind of Pat Tillman, and kind of his mother, but really is just this entire extraordinary family who display more character than most of us would be capable of.

The Last Exorcism (imdb | rotten tomatoes) had all kinds of promise, and despite being a Blair Witch knockoff in a lot of ways was actually an effectively creepy little genre film, but just lost it badly in the final act. Like, BADLY badly.

Manhunter (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was weird for me. It was the first Hannibal Lecter movie (it was actually spelled “Lecktor” in this movie) before Anthony Hopkins was Lecter and before Scott Glenn was Jack Crawford and when Will Graham was the protagonist, not Clarice Starling. It was, of course, remade with the proper title Red Dragon (imdb | rotten tomatoes) years later, but that remake wasn’t very good. So when I saw that Manhunter had a historical rating of 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, I thought it would be better. And it might have been…it was, after all, directed by Michael Mann, one of my all-time favourites. But it’s hard to get past the fact that it was made in 1986, with all the cheesiness you’d expect from a director who was also producer of Miami Vice at the time. The bad music, the absurd clothes, the bad slo-mo…it’s hard to believe Silence Of The Lambs came just five years later. I guess it played better in 1986.

How To Train Your Dragon (imdb | rotten tomatoes) holds a 98% rating on RT, which I couldn’t quite figure out. Upon seeing the ads I had written it off as another animated kids movie, but…yeah, it’s not. It’s really quite good. The animation is ridiculously strong, the story is sweet (and has more meat to it than you might expect) and it doesn’t try too hard for laughs. Kids will obviously like it, but much to my surprise, so might mostly-jaded movie snobs.

***UPDATE!*** We watched Inside Job (imdb | rotten tomatoes) this afternoon — really good, highly recommended — which puts me at 15 for the month…like I said earlier, the most since TIFFapalooza ’08.

"When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. Unless you don't have any water or sugar. And then you just eat the lemons, and the rind will give you diarrhea."

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Aided by a pair of 5-hour flights and some rainy weather, I have watched seven movies in the last seven days.

The Hollywood Complex (imdb | hot docs) was our final Hot Docs screening. I expected a movie about the desperate lives of aspiring child actors and the parents who push them to evoke a little more emotion, but it felt flat to me. Not bad, but a let-down compared to others we’ve seen at Hot Docs, this year included. I gave it a 3 out of 5 in audience voting.

TRON: Legacy (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was an in-flight movie, watched somewhere between Toronto and San Francisco. I watched it mainly because I have vague memories of both the original TRON movie and the video game, because I will watch Jeff Bridges in anything and because I am mesmerized by Olivia Wilde. And light cycles. It was rubbish, but that’s what I expected, and it served its purpose — to kill two hours. But what was with Michael Sheen channeling David Bowie?

The Green Hornet (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was another in-flight movie, and not a good one. Maybe the worst one. It just felt scattered and random and several steps below what I’ve come to expect from comic/superhero revivals in recent years.

The Next Three Days (imdb | rotten tomatoes) seemed like a good way to kill some time on a plane, given that it was over two hours. That was about the best that could be said for it, unfortunately. I just have no time for Russell Crowe playing anyone other than Jeffrey Wigand, and they did a poor job making us care about the plight of the characters, rather just jumping right in to the action-y parts of the plot. Elizabeth Banks was, as she often us, the only good part of the film.

Dinner For Schmucks (imdb | rotten tomatoes) should have been so, SO much better. I mean, with a cast that included Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Zach Galifianakis, Jemaine Clement, David Walliams, Ron Livingston, Larry Wilmore and Kristen Schaal, I expected something so much better than the bizarre, faux-zany mess that turned up. On the other hand, I suspect this movie would be HIIIIIII-LARIOUS if watched when stoned and/or not on a plane.

Bridesmaids (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was more like it. I was off the plane now, obviously, and seeing this one in the theatre. A very cramped theatre, by the way, full of people who would laugh at every single thing which happened in the movie. Which was kind of annoying. But still, it was a funny movie, and sweet too. That formula has worked for under-appreciated comedians before, and there’s no doubt this was Judd Apatow’s attempt to give Kristen Wiig her own 40-Year-Old Virgin. There were parts that made me laugh very hard, and parts that made me smile for other reasons entirely. Like I said, it’s just a funny, sweet movie…at least, as sweet as a prolonged scatological scene would let it be.

The Fighter (imdb | rotten tomatoes) accomplished the amazing feat of making me hate — not dislike, hate — several of the central characters. I suppose credit is due to the actors (especially Melissa Leo and Christian Bale) for that, but I fear it will have a halo effect and make me hate Toni tonight when I watch Treme. The movie itself was fine…typical Oscar bait where you know exactly what will happen, but the actors were all so good (especially Bale and Amy Adams) that you found yourself caring even if you weren’t emotionally invested.