Cover photo by Mike Lau, used under Creative Commons license

“To put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.”

August 16, 2014 Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Last week was an insane week at work. Long hours, very busy, running around. Stressful. So while I heard the news about Robin Williams, I didn’t really have a chance for it to sink in. The guy had been famous and hilarious and manic for as long as I can remember. I vaguely remember watching Mork and Mindy when I was little. I distinctly remember watching Popeye with my dad many, many times…it was, for some reason, one of his favourite movies, and therefore one of the first we ever bought on VHS. I was always amazed by Williams, by how high-velocity he was, how funny he could be at absolutely breakneck pace, and then turn out serious roles with that mania just dusting the edge of him.

Last night, with Nellie out for a work thing I finally had a few hours to myself with the laptop off. I read the Grantland piece about Williams and Norm MacDonald’s story about their first meeting, and listened to Marc Maron’s podcast with Williams from a few years back. And, of course, I watched Dead Poets Society.

I know The Fisher King is probably his peak, but this is the one that always stuck with me. Probably because I was a teenager the same as these kids when I first watched it. I wrote nine years ago about how this is one of the few movies that really got to me, about how I could barely make it through the final scene without tearing up.

Last night I didn’t make it.

Rest in peace, captain.

.:.

Cover photo by Mike Lau, used under Creative Commons license

Cover photo by Paul Heaberlin, used under Creative Commons license

Nuts

August 5, 2014 Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

When we visited Halifax last weekend we flew Porter. It’s great service and we like flying out of the island airport, so…yeah. We always fly Porter.

Anyway, just before both legs (Toronto -> Montreal, Montreal -> Halifax) the head flight attendant made an unusual announcement. Before closing the door she told us that someone aboard was so allergic to peanuts that she had to collect any open containers of nuts before closing the door. Also, that no one could open any nuts during the flight, and they would obviously not offer almonds as one of the snacks.

First, let’s assume the flight attendant misspoke and conflated nut allergies with peanut allergies, and that the passenger was allergic to peanuts as she first stated. Let’s also assume that the afflicted passenger is one of the estimated 0.6%-1.0% of people with an actual peanut allergy, not the self-diagnosed sort.

Going by a quick and dirty estimate based on Porter’s Q400 aircraft spec, I’d estimate that this passenger sat in roughly 9,300 cubic feet of cabin space. Granted, the air in that cabin is pressurized and recycled for the 90 minutes of flight time, but that’s still a pretty big space to worry about a single package of nuts being opened, no? We’re talking about peanut dust which, having gone airborne and diluted in nearly 10,000 cubic feet, being able to kill you. That seems incredibly sensitive. What happens in a movie theatre? Or a school bus? Or a doctor’s office, where you must surely spend a great deal of time? An airplane crew chief aside, I’m not sure how you control for that in your daily life.

And of course if that person was so massively allergic to peanuts we should accommodate that, and of course the airline was right to protect the passenger.

But maybe…

.:.

Cover photo by Paul Heaberlin, used under Creative Commons license

Coney Island Parachute Jump

August 4, 2014August 4, 2014 Dan Dickinson2 Comments

Just got back from a weekend of fun in Halifax to celebrate my birthday. I’m kind of tired, so no prose this time. Just the highlights of places we hit, both new and familiar.

BAR AT THE PRINCE GEORGE HOTEL
Since we stayed at the Prince George hotel we decided to have a lunch at the new bar downstairs. The fried chicken sandwich was pretty tasty, and they had a surprisingly good beer selection; before I started on the locals I had two from Dieu Du Ciel: the Blanche du Paradis and the Aphrodisiaque.

FIELD GUIDE
After meeting up with our friends we tried to hit this place, but they don’t open ’til 6pm. Next time, then.

STILLWELL
This was the one I was really excited about. It’s a new(ish) place modelled after places like Volo and Pony Bar, and I’ve been following their progress and Twitter account since they were under construction. We all started with samplers; I got the PEI Brewing 1772 IPA, North Brewing Belgian IPA, Boxing Rock Sessionista, and Picaroons Dark and Stormy Night. Our entire group then split a stellar bottle of Brooklyn Sorachi Ace — what a treat. I wrapped up with the Uncle Leo’s Smoked Porter, which tasted like bacon. By the time I left this was my new favourite place in Halifax.

AUCTION HOUSE
This was another new stop for us. There’s a gimmick where they raffle off special appetizers and desserts and such, and people bid using paddles at their tables. We only took part in one auction and weren’t quite willing to part with $20 for a dessert, but it was still kind of fun. We split half a dozen appetizers and I had a Hell Bay Dark Cream Ale.

CARLETON
This was another first for me, even though the Carleton has been there for years. See, when I lived in Halifax, the Carleton was a SMU bar, so I didn’t go there. And old habits die hard. Anyway, it’s gotten a bit swankier inside, and the live music was pretty good. Not a great beer list, but they did have Unibroue Blanche de Chambly and cocktails named after local 90s indie bands like Thrush Hermit and Eric’s Trip. So there was that.

MAXWELL’S PLUM
Yet another Halifax institution which had never had the pleasure of my company. We were getting pretty silly by this point. I remember starting with a Boxing Rock Hunky Dory Pale Ale and ending with a Big Spruce Cereal Killer Oatmeal Stout; there may have been another in between those two but I can’t be sure.

STILLWELL
That’s right, we went back. It was that good. And before I left I’d noticed they had bottles of Dieu Du Ciel Péché Mortel in the fridge, which our friend Becky had never tried, so I ordered two (and some delicious Atari fries). After this magnificent reprisal the girls dragged us somewhere awful. I won’t even discuss it here. Awful.

PIZZA CORNER
Aaaaaaaaaaand the evening was back on track. And by “evening” I mean 2am. And by “back on track” I mean covered in donair sauce.

EDNA
After a very slow start to Sunday morning we dragged ourselves over to EDNA for brunch. By the time we left it had joined Stillwell atop my list of favourite Halifax places. The food was outstanding — I had a smoked pork chop, eggs, beans, toasted sourdough baguette, duck fat potatoes, and a cappuccino. The space (rustic, open) felt completely welcoming, the music (folk, blues) was perfect, and the clientele was almost universally happy and attractive. I can’t wait to go back for dinner some day.

TWO IF BY SEA
We braved the drizzela and walked down to the waterfront, stopping at TIBS for some fuel: capp #2. From there we threaded the needle of Buskerfest crowds down the waterfront, past a superyacht, all the way to the market.

GARRISON
The rain had let up and the sun was out now, so we stopped for two wee samples on the Garrison patio. I had the Raspberry Wheat and the Nut Brown.

HENRY HOUSE
Since we were just around the corner and felt we needed just a little more food in our stomachs we visited an old familiar haunt for some spicy calamari and a Granite Brewery Best Bitter on the patio. Nellie got one of her new favourites, the Ringwood.

STUBBORN GOAT
Sunday night’s plan was to have a proper dinner at another new stop, the Stubborn Goat. The Murphy girls rejoined us, and we added three others, but none of us had much in the way of energy. Even Nellie and I had to power through a few drinks, but we couldn’t leave that beer selection untouched. I had a Boxing Rock Sessionista, a Picaroons Best Bitter, and a Dieu du Ciel Pénombre. The menu looked impressive, though it didn’t really blow us away…or maybe that was the service, which was pretty amateurish the whole night. Still, I want to go back — our friends assured us this was out of character for the Goat, so we’ll keep it in mind for next time.

No Pizza Corner on night #2; we all rolled out of there and made for home. I crashed into bed immediately; Nellie insisted on watching The Other Woman, which even Kate Upton in a bikini couldn’t save. Our travel back to Toronto was unremarkable except for the limo driver who had spent his childhood working on a blueberry farm only a few miles from our own. Small world.

Thanks for the 46 hours of fun, Halifax. It was a hoot.

Oude Quetsche Tilquin à l’Ancienne

July 31, 2014July 31, 2014 Dan Dickinson1 Comment

A friend brought us one of these for my birthday this week.

It was unbelievable.

.:.

Cover photo by Allagash Brewing, used under Creative Commons license

Photo by Peter Kudlacz, used under Creative Commons license

“Mmmm. Gueuzy.”

July 27, 2014 Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Well, that was a beer-y weekend. It actually started Thursday night when Nellie and I found ourselves near Volo and stopped in for some Great Lakes drinks (Chill Winston for me, Audrey Hopburn for her) before some dinner at Mercatto. At that point we’d momentarily switched to wine, and decided to watch Red Obsession (imdb | rotten tomatoes) while we drank a bottle of the Tawse wine club T-Blend Red.

My Friday afternoon was spent on a boat cruising around Toronto harbour for a work event, during which I consumed quite a few bottles of Steam Whistle. We were dropped off a few minutes away from the Amsterdam Brewhouse, so a few of us secured a table until Nellie and our friends MLK arrived. The food was pretty decent and I kept to the lighter beers (until the one-off Boxer (10 Count) farmhouse ale with Brett) so I could remain more or less coherent. After dinner we retired back to ours where we shared a (spectacular) bottle of Five Rows Sauvignon Blanc.

We took it easy on Saturday, just lying about and running a few errands, before meeting our friends JP + Sue at Triple A for some barbecue. We ate our ribs and steak and brisket and sausage and drank Camerons California Sunshine APA (mostly), then made a quick stop at our place to share a bottle of St. Louis Gueuze Fond Tradition on our balcony before heading to C’est What for a few more. I’m glad I picked up a bottle of that gueuze before the LCBO ran dry.

And now…I need a nap.

.:.

Photo by Peter Kudlacz, used under Creative Commons license

“Well they’re not moon burns, goddammit.”

July 20, 2014 Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

While Nellie was away this weekend I managed to squeeze in a few more movies between errands and work: one of last year’s best and a classic I’d somehow never seen.

All Is Lost (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was a showpiece for Robert Redford, and a very different kind of film. It opens with about 60 seconds of monologue, and apart from that there’s probably less than twenty words in the whole script as Redford sails through the Indian Ocean. Redford is the only actor to appear on-screen, though you could make a case for his ship being another character, and for the ocean being the antagonist. It’s remarkable, actually, how much Redford can express with just his face, or his sighs, or a slump of his shoulders, or the length of a look. It was an aquatic, effects-free Gravity, though it still didn’t net Redford an Oscar nomination the way it did for Sandra Bullock, presumably because the Academy didn’t like the thin script — though Redford himself blamed lack of distribution. But for a pure visual experience and a master class in acting, this is hard to beat.

I don’t think I realized how much of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (imdb | rotten tomatoes) is embedded in pop culture. I’ve always known that sequence of tones was famous but I guess I never really knew why. Also: MAN, Richard Dreyfus in that era was fantastic.

Mischief

July 15, 2014 Dan Dickinson2 Comments

Last weekend, by the grace of good friends Matt & Kaylea, we made our now-annual pilgrimage up to a cottage in the Kawarthas. We stopped in Barrie on the way up to pick up a passanger and to eat some pizza & ~~charcuterie~~ cured meat, cheese, and Peruvian olives. We made it to the cottage that night, and crashed shortly after.

The next morning I woke up to this:

…met a new friend:

…went for a swim:

…lay in a hammock:

…ate some lunch, with a very special bottle of wine: a Benjamin Bridge 2004 Brut Reserve:

…smoked a pork shoulder (well, watched Matt smoke it):

…and went for another swim:

See how calm the water is there? Yeah, so did the resident mosquito population, and they ate me alive. Could be worse though: I could have gotten as badly sunburned as Nellie.

Friday was a rapid-fire drive north through traffic, and Sunday didn’t amount to much other than rain and buttermilk pancakes, but Saturday…bacon, sunshine, swimming, sparkling wine, swimming, pulled pork, swimming, camp fire…Saturday was glorious.

Get the di taleggio

July 7, 2014July 8, 2014 Dan Dickinson1 Comment

It’s been more than two years since we visited Prince Edward County, which was entirely too long. I almost forgot how much we love it there.

The love came rushing back to me pretty much as soon as we arrived at Norman Hardie‘s for some tastings and wood-fired oven pizza. The food and wine, the fresh air and green fields, the County camaraderie…it’s starting to feel like home out there. After Hardie we hit stops from our previous trips, including Rosehall Run, The Old Third (where there was a chocolate lab puppy so cute I wanted to just eat her like candy), Closson Chase, Hinterland (where they fed us pulled pork sandwiches outside), and Lighthall. We also hit a few new ones like Hubbs Creek, Broken Stone, and Trail. Hubbs Creek was really good — nice Pinot Gris, decent Pinot Noir, and a very interesting Sussreserve Gamay rosé.

We checked into our room at the Newsroom Suites, had a little nap (I’d sampled a lot of wine), and walked across the street for dinner at East & Main. It was, as always, terrific. Nellie had mushroom ravioli and the steak frites while I had the scallops and the duck special. Our server recommended a bottle of Karlo Estates Quintas to go with it, and it lived nicely indeed amongst our two mains.

The next day I got up early for breakfast at The Tall Poppy while Nellie slept in. Soon we were on our way again, checking in at Huff Estates and and TerraCello for early-morning tastings. TerraCello was a new stop for us; we liked that they’re doing very different wines there, like a straight Vidal and a De Chaunac. They also do wood-fired pizzas, though they weren’t quite up and running yet that morning due to an overnight power outage. No problem though; we just skipped back over to Norm Hardie’s for round 2. Bumped into an old colleague while there too, which was a pleasant surprise.

And with that, we were off back to Toronto. Here’s the motherlode we brought home:

Broken Stone 2013 Pinot² (x2)
Closson Chase 2011 KJ Watson Pinot Noir (x2)
Closson Chase 2012 South Clos Chardonnay (x2)
Hinterland 2011 Sparkling Rosé
Hinterland 2013 Whitecap
Hinterland 2013 Borealis (x2)
Hinterland 2012 Lacus (x2)
Hubbs Creek 2013 Pinot Gris (x2)
Hubbs Creek 2011 Pinot Noir (x2)
Hubbs Creek 2013 Sussreserve Gamay Rosé (x2)
Huff Estates 2007 Cuvée Peter J. Huff Sparkling
Huff Estates 2011 South Bay Chardonnay
Huff Estates 2012 Cabernet Franc Rosé (x2)
Lighthall 2011 Muté White Port
Lighthall 2012 Mes Trois Fils Pinot Noir
Lighthall 2012 Gewurztraminer
Norman Hardie 2013 Calcaire (x2)
Norman Hardie 2012 County Chardonnay (x2)
Norman Hardie 2010 Pinot Noir (x2)
Old Third 2012 Pinot Noir Blanc (x2)
Old Third 2011 A La Volée Sparkling Pinot Noir (x2)
Old Third 2013 Golden Russet Cider (x2)
Rosehall Run 2012 Pixie
Rosehall Run 2011 The Swinger Syrah
Rosehall Run 2011 Pinot Noir
Rosehall Run 2012 Gamay
Rosehall Run 2012 Certain Ratio
Terracello 2013 Riesling
Terracello 2012 Vidal
Terracello 2013 De Chaunac
Trail 2013 Unoaked Chardonnay
Trail 2013 Sauvignon Blanc

À la prochaine, county.

“Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women.”

July 4, 2014 Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I know Narragansett Lager doesn’t have a great rating, and I don’t think I can even buy it in Ontario, but I really want one now. From Fast Company:

From Spuds MacKenzie to Sam Adams, there have been many beer spokesmen over the years, but none of them can beat Quint, the Narragansett chugging shark hunter from Stephen Spielberg’s Jaws. Played by Robert Shaw, Quint was a survivor of the U.S.S. Indianapolis who watched hundreds of his fellow sailors eaten alive by sharks. For sheer manliness, Quint’s the kind of beer spokesperson that makes Dos Equis’s The Most Interesting Man Alive look like a milksop.

So to celebrate both the film’s 29th anniversary and the Fourth of July weekend (when all of Jaws‘s shark attacks happened), the company is re-releasing the beer with the now iconic 1975 can design.

“Little shakin’, little tenderizin’, an’ down you go.”

Skirl | Dan Dickinson

Skirl: (skûrl) n. A shrill wailing sound