http://twitter.com/#!/bukquotes/statuses/104695826907009024
Big words, coming from a man who lived in Los Angeles most of his adult life.
Category Archives: culture shock
Scotch that!
It's bad news when the Bartender cries
So yesterday I decided I’d been good (god knows why I decided that, but I can be somewhat arbitrary at times) and deserved a treat, and so I took myself to the local filling station, an agreeably-but-not-intimidatingly casual place named after a species of plant which did not, in fact, exist on the premises.
Unless it was hiding, and after what happened, who could blame it?
The waitress was attentive, and sweet, and barely old enough to be out that late on a school night. She asked me what I would like to drink, and I thought about what not-too-exotic-but-still-tasty items might be available in the subarctic regions and said, “Do you have Johnny Walker Black?”
She looked at me with alarm.
“Rum?” she asked.
“…Scotch,” I replied, probably just as startled as she had been. She’d apparently never heard of this exotic tipple. I might as well have asked for a Connecticut Bullfrog, Andover style.
She toddled off to whisper to the bartender. No doubt she thought it was something that was kept under the bar, in case of the po-po.
She came back smiling, and saying Yes, Yes, we have this ‘Johnny Walker Black’ stuff! or words to that effect. So I ordered a double.
“With Pepsi?”
And so concludes our Slice of Life in the Knife for this evening. The following I post here because it is perhaps the finest ten minutes of a bartending god as you will ever witness in your entire life, unless you buy the film The Sin of Harold Diddlebock and watch the whole thing repeatedly, as is your right. Or would be, if you hadn’t downloaded the damn thing from Bittorrent, eh?
and, for the complete opposite, here:
Did that guy actually get paid for this?
(via Whisky2.0)
File Under: Things That Make Me Homesick
Sigh. So this weekend the sun came out in Vancouver, it was Pride, Illuminares, and the Symphony of Fire. Yeah, I know you’re not supposed to gripe, but well, goddam. The only thing I was gonna do up here this weekend was check out the “cariboo-hair tufting workshop” and the damn festival got rained out.
Symphony of Fire boater by Jonah Lewis
Sigh. I miss the days when Illuminares was at Trout Lake, and was awesome. This year it was in Coal Harbour, and was, apparently, somewhat less awesome for that reason.
Farther from the hippies=less awesome, duh!
I heart East Van too!
But it must be said, the view from Kits and downtown is pretty impressive, especially during fireworks.
Symphony of Fire 2010
And then there are the more flamboyant events, like, say PRIDE:
I think you can try the two wheeler next year; you
and I love the way families come out to support the parade and even rapacious corporations get into the spirit. Or maybe not so rapacious: that’s not so much in the parade as in the back at the Pumpjack.
I
and, back in The Hood, the Powell Street Festival. This is the one that started off the Homesick Sulks for me, bigtime. Probably because it doesn’t look like any damn thing to any damn one who doesn’t know that this used to be called Needle Park, and was so called for very good reason. I’m glad I lived there long enough to witness the change.
Vancouverites may begin arguing about “gentrification” now, but they should be careful if they do it from rent-controlled glass houses in Chinatown./in-joke
IT
A Woman, A Plan
A Simple Plan
I haven’t been here long, and I’m finding it a HUGE adjustment (not big: HUGE, all caps, yo) so being as organized and productive as I am I decided to do One Thing Per Week, no more.
Week One: reserved for being sick. Alas, I was sick as a dog, and that being a dog that was really sick, and not to mention waking up in the middle of the night and having heart attack after heart attack seeing the light in the sky and thinking I’d slept in. I gather from work sleeping in is not such a big deal that they tell you to pack your knives and go back to the decadent, sleeping-inner, southlands from whence you came, but I’d rather not find out first-hand, if you know what I mean.
Week Two: reserved for freaking out and drinking. If you’ve ever freaked out, I don’t think I need to explain this to you. Drinking up here is different from drinking down in Vangroover; you’re much less likely to run into, say, Ryan Gosling, and much more likely to run into, say, an elder woman who tries to tell you in a language you’ve never heard before that you’re gonna get hit by a car if you don’t stop typing away on your iPod while walking down the street. And who could disagree? But it’s not exactly partying at Bar None on Raj’s tab. Speaking of which, if you’ve never done it, this is what it looks like:
Week Three: reserved for exercising and getting out of the apartment. With mixed success; in part, this was inspired by the fact that the door to work was locked on Monday and I had no other options than to toddle to the art department next door, do as much as I could on my iPhone, and then go for a stroll. Actually started the Sun Run training plan, so Go Me and all that uplifty shit. I managed to pick the least interesting road on which to run, and ended up in some Trailer Park Boys netherland that caused even DTES me to turn around and leave, lest someone try to hook me up with their Uncle Daddy.
Week Four: is reserved for regularizing the blogging schedule, which is ironic as the Manolo, my blogging boss, has suggested I take August entirely off. Oh well.
settling in
Notice to All Employees
So yeah, things are a little different in Yellowknife. In Vancouver, they made you get a tattoo of whoever was on the cover of Billboard’s latest issue, and DEAR GOD I wanted to wear a burqa when it was the Jonas Brothers’ turn. Eventually I ran out of space, so they just gave me new arms to start fresh, and that was when I made my escape.
I’ve been learning a little about the town thanks to these instructional tourist guide videos that a commenter sent to me.
Part the First
Part the Second
Seems pretty much right-on so far. I must say it IS amusing when people try to frighten me with stories of the Range. I just laugh and tell them about the time I went for coffee with Willy Pickton and that usually gives them some more perspective on the DTES relative to the Range.
raincoaster 