Happy Valentimes!!

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If you watched 30 Rock last week you’d find that title funnier.

.:.

Uh oh…is 300 gonna suck??!?!

.:.

A few nights ago on The Daily Show Jon Stewart made fun of last week’s non-stop “news” coverage (which has let up only slightly this week) of the Anna Nicole Smith story.

“She might’ve been our Lady Di?” Come…the fuck…on. Not that I have any great respect for anything to do with the British royals, but Anna Nicole Smith was famous for a) having giant fake tits, b) marrying a decrepit old man for his money and c) being retarded. Those three things, nothing else.

Come to think of it, that may be the most accurate analogy for American celebrity worship that I’ve ever heard.

[tags]valentimes, 30 rock, 300, daily show, anna nicole smith[/tags]

Florida? Really?

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Four years ago today I got engaged. Happy engagiversary to me.

.:.

The Canadiens have become le suck. They lost again tonight, and are barely holding on to the final playoff spot in the east.

.:.

Speaking of le suck, 24 has been predictable for the last three seasons, but now it’s getting to the point where we can’t go 5 minutes without making fun of it. If I manage to make it to the end of this season, I think it’ll be my last.

[tags]engagement, canadiens, 24[/tags]

In so deep as in, "Which way is up?"

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I’ve done something to my back. It’s tweaking like a bastard just under my right shoulder blade. I think it started with the benches at Eggstasy and my chair at work just made it worse.

.:.

We watched Miami Vice (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night. I liked it, but I seem to be in the minority on that. I confess to being a full-on Michael Mann junkie; the way he shoots his films is enough to make good movies great (Ali, Collateral) and make great movies classics (Heat, Last Of The Mohicans). In this case it made a mediocre film good.

.:.

It’s (apparently) confirmed now: we take possession of our condo April 9th. That would be…less than 2 months. Our inspection’s only a month from now.

You know, this condo thing has been going on so long it’s felt theoretical. It’s almost hard to believe it’ll actually happen soon.

[tags]back pain, miami vice, michael mann, condo inspection[/tags]

Argh

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Apparently my last post got sucked into the wrong series of Internet tubes, so here’s the point-form version:

Dang.

[tags]eggstasy, moosewood, rebar, the queen, wordpress[/tags]

I'm cryin', cryin', cryin' over you…

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You may have heard in the last few weeks that Telus is now selling porn via their mobile phones. Now an archbishop in Vancouver is protesting:

Archbishop Raymond Roussin is upset, saying the move takes the “accessibility of pornographic material further into the public realm.”

Roussin told The B.C. Catholic newspaper that the move is especially ill-considered because of the problems pornography is causing in society.

“Given the increasing awareness about the problem of sexual addiction to pornography through Internet access, and the abuse that this perpetuates of vulnerable persons, Telus’s decision is disappointing and disturbing.”

…

He is also considering directing Catholic institutions to terminate their contracts with Telus Mobility.

He might as well leave the contract where it is. The other carriers will be on board with this as soon as humanly possible.

.:.

The Onion AV Club lists their 15 pop movies owned by movie scenes. While some are no-brainers — “Stuck In The Middle With You” in Reservoir Dogs, “Lust For Life” in Trainspotting, “The End” in Apocalypse Now, “Tiny Dancer” in Almost Famous — they missed one which seems obvious to me: “Goodbye Horses” in Silence Of The Lambs. Nobody who has ever seen that film will think of anything but the sight of Ted Levine tucking away his bait & tackle as the song ends. In fact, one of the few funny scenes in Clerks II was predicated on everyone knowing the relationship between that song and that scene.

That’s not to mention “Mad World” from Donnie Darko or “Bohemian Rhapsody” from Wayne’s World, both of which I think are mentioned in The Onion’s comments.

.:.

After our big blowout dinner Friday night we stayed low-key yesterday, watching two movies: Ask The Dust (imdb | rotten tomatoes) and The Wages Of Fear (imdb | rotten tomatoes). The former was a 1930s period piece, unremarkable that it featured a great deal of Salma Hayek nakedness. Even with that, I fell asleep once or twice. The latter was a French movie from 1952 about four men who drive trucks loaded with nitroglycerin through the South American wilderness. The first hour seemed slow and a little silly, but it was really just all scene-setting for the final 90 minutes, which was pretty much non-stop tension. Considering the film’s 55 years old I think it’s held up pretty well.

[tags]telus, cell phone porn, onion av club, ask the dust, wages of fear[/tags]

Birthday decadence, part II

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Well…so, that dinner last night was pretty amazing. Yeah, it cost a lot, but we’ve never had a dining experience like that before. Besides, Nellie only turns 31 once.

CBGB, Nellie and I arrived at Splendido first, with T-Bone joining us shortly after. From the second we arrived we knew the service would be expert in every possible sense of the word. Once we settled in and the ladies had set their purses on the padded bag stools (no, I’m not making that up) we ordered drinks: the ladies chose from the champagne trolley (no, I’m not making that up either) while GB and I each had a cocktail called a Cape Bretoner (Glen Breton whisky, maple syrup, ginger and blood orange), which I quite liked. From there the fun began. The service buzzed in and out constantly, clearing plates and placing new dishes, never bothering us except to describe the dishes and accompanying wines, pulling out chairs for the ladies and folding napkins before you’d even made it five steps from the table. Even the physical placement of the dishes was something I hadn’t seen before: perfect coordination by the three servers with one issuing hand signals to the others to ensure the timing was right. The meal took four hours, but the food was incredible, the service impeccable and the company — of course — perfect.

As it turns out, friends of ours happened to be having dinner there that night; today, thinking about it, I realize we hadn’t seen them since this time last year when they had us over for dinner. Perhaps we only congregate around food. To that end, I made plans to meet up with him for lunch soon.

Anyway, back to Splendido: they were nice enough to write down the entire menu for me (they don’t normally write out the vegetarian tasting menu since it’s prepared, according to our server, a la minute) so I can recount it for you here*:

  • 3 canapes (which they didn’t write down, so I’m kind of going on memory here): cauliflower soup, a crispy wafer with rapini and a cheese & onion tartlet
  • comfit beet carpaccio, fennel, arugula, parmagiano salad
  • shallow friend bean curd and dried soy bean, chili oil, sesame oil, coriander
  • Cookstown vegetables in a truffle broth, herbs, ovile oil
  • potato wrapped courgette carrot galette, cumin scented Hawaiian papaya, coriander yogurt
  • house made linguini in a woodland mushroom sauce
  • cheese plate: Stilton, Selles-sur-Cher goat cheese, Cru de Clocher Quebec cheddar
  • Grand Marnier Soufflé, chocolate infused whip cream, chocolate sauce
  • peanut butter & chocolate truffle

* The standard (read: meaty) tasting menu is on their website. There was an amuse bouche in there as well, which wasn’t written down…it was julienned vegetables in a nori paper wrap, but I don’t like nori paper, so I just ate the vegetables. They were tasty.

After four hours we finally wrapped up the meal and decided to go for a drink. Our server hailed us cabs; when I say hailed, I mean was standing in the middle of Spadina waving them over; needless to say his tip was well-deserved. We stopped in at Panorama, where the great view doesn’t quite make up for the cover charge (wtf?!) and overpriced drinks, before saying goodbye at the subway. We walked home, another birthday done, and by all accounts a good one. If Nellie ever wrote in her blog these days you could hear it from her. 😛

.:.

Halifax has probably set the new record for the world’s largest pub crawl. The story made me think of how it must’ve been at Pizza Corner last night; I assume it was like that scene from The Simpsons where Bart’s elephant is charging the peanut factory and the plant manager starts to give a speech about how “this is the day we’ve all been preparing for” before the elephant smashes through the wall.

.:.

Looks like the 60-story condo planned for the southeast corner of Yonge & Bloor might finally go ahead. While I’m glad I won’t be around for all that construction, I’m happy the corner will finally get a facelift. That intersection deserves better.

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Dumbassedness of the day: a theatre in Florida, faced with complaints about the title of a popular play, is now set to present “The Hoohah Monologues” instead.

[via Boing Boing]

[tags]spendido, panorama, halifax pub crawl, pizza corner, yonge bloor condo, hoohah monologues[/tags]

"Man, that's faster than my recovery after ACL surgery."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Ted Haggard, he of the megachurch, meth addiction and male-on-male action, now claims to be cured of his homosexuality. This man is going to break the needle on his ridiculousometer.

The Onion weighs in.

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Ridiculousness averted: according to the Quill & Quire’s blog (a great read for all things book-related, by the way) the Ontario Catholic school board* has decided not to pull Snow Falling On Cedars from school library shelves. The controversy (albeit minor) was due to the book being “full of dialogue that contained dozens of curse words, many of them modifying the nouns ‘God’ and ‘Jesus Christ.’”

* Remind me again why Ontario has a Catholic school board?

[tags]ted haggard, ontario catholic school board, snow falling on cedars[/tags]