Monthly Archives: March 2006

Squidsicle

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Now for some frozen cephalopoddy goodness. Looks like this Giant Squid, caught off the coast of New Zealand last year, has finally gone on public display.Aussie Giant Squid In contrast to the public coming-out of Archie the London Giant Squid, Damien Hirst’s people were not consulted. Perhaps a bit of We’ll Show Those Toffeenosed Poms A Thing Or Two About Publicly Exhibiting Your Squid…I’m sure no-one on Earth with any degree of experience doubts either the ability or the inclination of Aussies to publicly exhibit their squid at the slightest provocation.

This Squid was frozen in a block of remarkably clear ice. Really, how do they get it like that? It would soooo improve the look of my cocktails if I could just get all the bubbles out, or force them to form pretty patterns or something, like maybe a monkey wearing a fez. Really, is there any illustration of a monkey that isn’t improved by the addition of a fez? I think not.

 

Giant Squid. It’s a blog entry about Giant Squid.

 

This poor bugger doesn’t even have a name. I wonder, when they brought him into the country, if they even gave him a prisoner number! I wonder, too, given that the critter is huge, terrifying, and originally from New Zealand, if Peter Jackson has signed up the film rights? Does this Squid have an agent?

 

Here’s the hot poop on the cold Squid:

The 7 metre squid is frozen in time in the world’s largest man-made block of ice and is on display as part of the Monsters of the Deep exhibit. The exhibit also features live cuttlefish, bioluminescent fish and octopus hidden in dark, eerie caves and rare footage of a live Humboldt Squid, filmed off the coast of Mexico.

Awesome! How did I miss this??? Is it too late to book a ticket?

Over the decades, tales of the Giant Squid have ranged from just a little creepy to absolutely mind-boggling! One of the most amazing stories is that witnessed by the crew of a Soviet tanker in 1965, which came across a battle between arch enemies, the Giant Squid and the Sperm Whale. The fight continued for some time and finished far below in the depths of the ocean. Eventually the strangled body of the 40 tonne whale was found floating with the Giant Squid still wrapped around its body. But the Squid did not win – its head was later found inside the stomach of the whale!

Find out about other stories like this at Melbourne Aquarium, where historical newspaper articles will be on display, revealing more chilling escapades of the Giant Squid and other Monsters of the Deep. Giant Aussie Squid On Ice

Dining and Damning

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Oh! How the mighty have fallen. Ladies and gentlemen, is thisGlamour not one of the crappiest-looking, low rent, most cheesetastic web pages you’ve ever seen? It looks like something the most pompous steak house in Hill City, South Dakota would put up. Allow me to assure you that the degree to which you approve of this web page is inversely proportional to the degree to which you would enjoy Delilah’s. It is the one authentically glamorous restaurant in Vancouver; both Dorothy Parker and Princess Diana would have enjoyed it. And combining the two (which you wouldn’t think possible) Prince apparently likes it very much.

Now let me tell you a story about Delilah’s.

I’m going to assume you know the story of the original Delilah, the temptress who cost Samson his flowing locks and freedom. So the name has long been associated with disreputable hidden-agendoids, sexual temptation leading to tragic falls, important historical events, religion, politics, the rights of political prisoners, justice, nemesis and (most importantly) personal grooming.

So this story is kinda like that.

Now, in the old blog, RIP, I used to use pseudonyms for my friends. I was out to dinner with one of them tonight and he mentioned offhandedly that he liked the name I had given him in that blog. Damned if either of us can remember what it was, though, so I’ll just make up another one for him. Normally I’d use his real name on the new blog, but since he’s already known to thousands as “Whateverthehellitwas” I must continue from the basis of the precedent and call him “SomethingIpulloutofmyassbutdon’tgetthewrongideaaboutuswearejustfriends“.

Javier? Bob? Tarquin? *hits Yahoo.com quickly* JJ. It was JJ. Meh. I suppose I could go with JJ, or I could just make up something new. Samson. Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaah, Samson. Sampson? Yeah, I like that even better; there’s just something about a P. Not that.

Where was I? Sampson @ Delilah’s.

Samson and DelilahSo there’s something you should know about Sampson/JJ. He’s really, really good-looking; he looks like the guy who should play Beethoven in the biopic if Beethoven were really, really good-looking. A mature Rilke, only like not dead and stuff. It’s hilarious to walk down the street with him; it’s like pacing alongside an extremely selective tornado, as about 15% of the straight women and 40% of the gay men he passes whirl around to take another look. I once took him to an art opening, and we had to leave because a sculptor was following him from room to room, arms outstretched with fingers a-quiver, mumbling, “that head…that head…” Ye-ah, kinda creepy.

So we went to Delilah’s one night with his then-partner Teddy. The waiter…noticed. Notably. After the warmup Martinis at the bar, we moved to a table and picked out our courses; Delilah’s has a list of courses, and you tick off what you want for each course. It’s a bit like a very hedonistic exam. Perhaps the Epicurians had finals like that? Eventually, the soup came, and the waiter very nearly did. It was thus:

I got my soup. I am a chick: nobody even looked at me except some of the older men with women slightly older than me. Looking to upgrade, I guess. Ickypoo. So, I got my soup without incident. Teddy got his with a bit of edgy hostility; waitroid clearly knew who was getting what he wanted to order that night. Then it’s Sampson’s turn.

Slosh, goes the soup, right into his lap. Fast as lightning, the waiter grabs a napkin and attempts dabbage.

“I’VE GOT IT! THANKS!” says Sampson, slightly quicker than lightning and blocking it with a wrist move I think he stole from Wonder Woman. Looked like it wasn’t the first time he’d had this extra-personal service.

The waiter slunk away, clearly disappointed. The manager was happy to serve our table the rest of the night.

Once, Sampson took me to the Alibi Room. After the meal we were still hungry, so he asked the waiter what did he have that was sweet and delicious, and the waiter replied, “You mean on the menu?”

That, Delilah’s staffer, is how it is done.

Canadianism: Two Solitudes indeed

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I can’t believe I went to the hottest restaurant in New Westminster and they had two televisions hanging from the ceiling, playing curling. I don’t think I live in the same country as the rest of these people do; this is a cultural divide that cannot be bridged. It’s all very well for me to lord it over Americans and the English, yammering on about PC and Relativism and Pierre Trudeau, but there is, let’s face it, no multicultural initiative that can allow the curling fans and the I-suppose-they-call-us-mundanes to coexist. Hence Newfoundland; it’s a 21st Century sort of reservation/theme park for curlers.

When I get back to Vancouver, I’m sneaking into Delilah’s and not leaving until they throw me out and given how their clientele normally behaves (to say nothing of the staff) I may be there for the rest of my life, sustaining myself on smoked oysters, olives, lime wedges, and vodka-infused apricots. That’s all the food groups, right?

In any case, after several years on the Downtown EastSide, if there is nothing else I know, I do know how to give Canada what it wants:

Hockey Joke

Operation Global Media Domination: Irish Poet Edition with Bonus Irish Poet Story

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I am in the unfortunate position of having to report that Irish poets, even Nobel Prize winners, are to hits as Ebola is to cardiovascular health. We’ve dropped in popularity by 68% overnight. Seamus better watch his back if he ever gets to Vancouver, that’s all I’m saying.

Frank McCourtSo Frank McCourt was on Conan O’Brian’s Conan O'Brianshow, and he was of course telling a story, as every Irishman is compelled to do in company of another Irishman or even Irish-American, or even, it must be admitted, in the presence of nobody more than just the voices in his own head.

The story goes like this, more or less. I shall paraphrase recklessly. I spoze I could look it up, but I’m a blogger, not an effing researcher!

Frank: So I used to teach at New York University. Are you listening, Conan?

Conan(rapt): Huh? Yeah!

Frank: Good. I used to teach poetry at NYU. Are you paying attention, now?

Conan: What? Yes!

Frank: Ah, that’s good then. And you know, there were lots of nice young people, and some older ones, you never knew what they were doing there, who used to be my students, because I used to teach, you know. Poetry. I was a poetry teacher. Conan!

Conan: I AM LISTENING!

Frank: Good to hear. Yes, so I was a poetry teacher, and one day, years later…this is the important part, now…

Conan: FRANK! I AM PAYING ATTENTION!

Frank: Excellent. So one day I’m walking down the street in New York, and I run up against a fellow who used to be one of my students. They leave…they go on…I never see them again…So. I asked him what he was doing now. “Well,” says he, “Your teaching really inspired me and now I’m a poet, Professor McCourt.” “Well that’s grand,” I say, “Is it going well?” He says, “No, I’m fucking starving!”

Conan: You know Frank, you were brought on to elevate the show…

Crediting Poetry: Seamus Heaney’s Nobel Lecture

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Seamus HeaneyFrom NobelPrize.org. See link for full text and Realplayer recording.

Here is a snippet:

*

One of the most harrowing moments in the whole history of the harrowing of the heart in Northern Ireland came when a minibus full of workers being driven home one January evening in 1976 was held up by armed and masked men and the occupants of the van ordered at gunpoint to line up at the side of the road. Then one of the masked executioners said to them, “Any Catholics among you, step out here”. As it happened, this particular group, with one exception, were all Protestants, so the presumption must have been that the masked men were Protestant paramilitaries about to carry out a tit-for-tat sectarian killing of the Catholic as the odd man out, the one who would have been presumed to be in sympathy with the IRA and all its actions. It was a terrible moment for him, caught between dread and witness, but he did make a motion to step forward. Then, the story goes, in that split second of decision, and in the relative cover of the winter evening darkness, he felt the hand of the Protestant worker next to him take his hand and squeeze it in a signal that said no, don’t move, we’ll not betray you, nobody need know what faith or party you belong to. All in vain, however, for the man stepped out of the line; but instead of finding a gun at his temple, he was thrown backward and away as the gunmen opened fire on those remaining in the line, for these were not Protestant terrorists, but members, presumably, of the Provisional IRA.

*

It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir; that Tacitus was right and that peace is merely the desolation left behind after the decisive operations of merciless power. I remember, for example, shocking myself with a thought I had about [a] friend who was imprisoned in the seventies upon suspicion of having been involved with a political murder: I shocked myself by thinking that even if he were guilty, he might still perhaps be helping the future to be born, breaking the repressive forms and liberating new potential in the only way that worked, that is to say the violent way – which therefore became, by extension, the right way. It was like a moment of exposure to interstellar cold, a reminder of the scary element, both inner and outer, in which human beings must envisage and conduct their lives. But it was only a moment. The birth of the future we desire is surely in the contraction which that terrified Catholic felt on the roadside when another hand gripped his hand, not in the gunfire that followed, so absolute and so desolate, if also so much a part of the music of what happens.