I Told Jeffrey Ross Where To Drink

Last Friday, as I was getting out from the most boring XXXtreme Humour Show of the last 5 editions of Just For Laughs, putting on my earphones and gearing up for a walk home, Jeffrey Ross was walking up the hill with his crew/hangers-on and pointed at... me.

He then asked me where he and his buddies should get their drinks on, saying he'd been told to go on St-Laurent street but he couldn't find any decent bars.

I responded by saying he'd probably been told to come on St-Laurent because all the bars there were really expensive, with high cover charges and $20 drinks and nothing but gold diggers to talk to - a plot to get him to spend his not-quite-hard-earned American money on our most expensive strip. I told him he'd have at least as much fun on St-Denis, but that the folks there might be a tad smelly, and instead strongly recommended two places - Fouf's (where I actually ended up with the Former Lady Of The House later) where the music is fun and the terrace is comfortable and where his semi-fame wouldn't get in the way of his having a good time, and Madhatter's, on Crescent, basically the same ambiance but in English, and if he'd feel the need to get his legs moving, all the bars surrounding the Hatter's were dance bars.

He seemed to like my honest manner, and, really, I just told him where I'd go if I were me or him.

Now I just hope he doesn't call his next stand-up show Don't Listen To Strangers, featuring a skit called Why I Hate Montrealers...

Thursdays At The Mad Hatman's

It'd always be an unusual night when we'd go drink at the Mad Hatman's; strange characters were drawn to whatever crowd I'd be with, and we were all the better for it.

This time around, Mexicalex wanted to get his drinking on in ways he hadn't in a long time. His original plan was to bar-hop from downtown to my place, drink a beer in every bar on the way. I talked him out of it, even if it took all night, but it wasn't easy, and no bar was co-operating.

First we tried to hit the sports bar - The Sports Stallion - with $17 for 4-liter pitchers, but it was full. Maximum capacity reached, for reason of basketball game. Who the fuck watches the NBA playoffs in Montréal???

Upon refusing us entry, the door guy directed us across the street, to the Cock'N'Balls, saying ''it's the same concept, same owners, just less crowded''.

Yeah, I'd just spent an hour explaining to Mexicalex why the place now sucked: the previous owners had been kicked out of there by their shady landlords but hadn't copyrighted their name, and when over a year had passed that no tenant wanted to pay the extremely high rent, the landlord just re-opened the bar under new management, taking it upon himself to register the name and steal the business. And now I'd learned they also owned the sports bar with decent, affordable beer, and I was going to have to boycott that place too.

Push came to shove and stumbling became walking, and our feet led us to the Mad Hatman's, where we'd spent many a fantastic night in previous incarnations of the place, be it the one five steps down from its current location, or the one on Newhouse street. Even before that, it had been on McPeel street, but those are memories I'd rather forget. In any event, Mexicalex hadn't seen the new location, and I'd only been there thrice myself, so it seemed logical to delve into a pair of seats and experience ourselves a new past. It made sense at the time.

The first table we hit was leaking. Well, technically, it was being leaked on, from the ceiling. Or, rather, probably, from the men's room on the other side of the ceiling. So we moved two tables away.

We had a good time, as I usually do when drinking and talking with friends. Some serious subject matter, some abject, some humourous... always spontaneous. It was a great time. Then we were interrupted by an Oversized Child who seemed to want to pretend she didn't speak French, although it was clear she was fluent in it. What was also clear was that she wanted to get into Mexicalex's pants, although to his defense, as soon as he realized it, he made tremendous efforts in trying to convince her that he already had someone worthwhile in his life and didn't want to jeopardize it by engaging in anything more than discussion, which only led to more serious discussion about dark topics like The State Of the World.

Oversized Child (picture a baby, now make it 5-feet tall) had a friend, blonde, with intellectual/sexy secretary glasses who came to refill her glass at some point. Oversized Child told her: ''Kittie, come sit with us'', and Kittie glanced at the three of us and opted not to, but I said ''she'll be back, she'll sit right in that chair''. An hour later, she did. Lucky for me, Kittie was less gloomy and saw more humour in the world than her counterpart, so we soon got into our own conversation about British politics, dead baby jokes, and her boobs - she started it. All in all, for each of our interests, it was a good night. It would have been if it had ended right there.

Unfortunately, that isn't really the case. First off, Kittie told me to meet her back at the Mad Hatman's the next night, between 8 and 9. Then Mexicalex got hungry, and we went to Harvey's, the terrible hamburger place. I had the vomit burger and he had the vomit chicken burger; what fucking crap, and a terrible way to lose ten bucks. I should have eaten my money instead. Also, I went back the next night, got there at 9:15, neither of them in sight, had a pitcher of Rickard's White and a tasty burger-and-fries drenched in Louisiana hot sauce, then left as they still hadn't entered the premises. I'd been stood up.

I went home and went to bed. Unlike the eve of, this was a day to forget.

St. Patrick's Day Drinking... Or How To Spend Your Whole Paycheque On Things That Go Down The Drain

A few years back I had a fine St. Patrick's that I never want to have happen again.

I started it at Opening Time, which for this special, joyous occasion was 9 AM - I decided to forgo watching the parade and instead spend the whole fucking day drinking at a bar, in this case Madhatter's, at the bigger location on Crescent, the third of four incarnations of the bar I've drank in.

We started out being four, well, there were two of us, but lack of space made another two people sit at our table, but soon enough, the three people sharing my space, being the social blabbermouths they were born to be, got the other tables interested in us.

Madhatter's, with a great sense of profiteering, had no specials on beer on the one day that pretty much celebrates the fucking thing - so it was $15 pitchers and $6 Jack Daniels. Lucky for me, ever thinker-ahead-of-times, I'd brought in a 40-ounce of Mr. Daniels' fine drink to re-fill my glass at my own convenience and save dough...

By 11 AM, there were waitresses coming around selling $1 shots of vodka-fueled drinks - Sex On the Beach and Kamikaze... I acquiesced and took two of each, and for the first time of the day, also paid some to my tablemates - at a buck a pop, it would have been wrong not to.

At noon we had our first meal - I ordered a plate of nachos, fully loaded with olives, black peppers, salsa and topped with a bit of mozzarella cheese; food helps keep the booze down, and keeps the booze hound from getting his noose wound - and spitting some juice, brown.

By 2 PM, our new friends were wasted and left, quickly replaced by new drinking buddies. It was around that time that I got up, for the first time, to evacuate a bit of liquid and take some more money out; I'd had at least 5 pitchers at this point, plus perhaps 20 ounces of JD and a dozen shots of the vodka drinks... so up the stairs I went to the men's room, which was already a walk-in puddle of transparent stickiness, and one stall - one of two, the one on the left, first from the door - seemed to be reserved for vomit-emitters and those afflicted by diarrhea. I finished what needed to be done as fast as I could to not have to spend a second longer than I had to, and promptly made my way back downstairs for more beers.

Soon enough, an army of musicians swarmed the place and got the whole populace festive, standing and cheering and yelling; it was a mini-parade inside the bar, so those of us who had missed the actual one outside were treated to a show anyhow. It was all good.

By 5 or 6 PM, it was time for another meal - a hamburger with fries. I realize in retrospect that I should have had the meal that requires the most careful handling first, before things degenerated, but hey, I didn't; not that anything was wrong with the food, both the burger and fries tasted exactly like they usually do there, but it was about that time that I, personally, started to buy the shot-waitress a shot every time she came by, which was becoming increasingly often; I can only imagine that the same thing happened with the rest of the staff, from the bartenders to the cooks. For most humans, alcohol consumption means motor skills and attention to detail start becoming a priority... but as I said, it tasted fine.

I probably went to the washroom after my meal, say by 7 or 8 PM, and it was probably stickier, smellier and more disgusting than before. At this point, it was only my second time (in about 10 hours of drinking), but I'd be going every hour on the hour from then on, and the situation upstairs just got worse. I was tempted to use the ladies' room, but it wasn't much better there, plus there was a line-up. Between 11 PM and 2 AM, I'd just go outside and urinate in the alley to save time and keep my sanity, but later than that, I feared not being let back in - keep in mind, closing time is 3 AM...

In any event, they only kicked us out past 4 AM; they stopped serving us alcohol at 3:30 (well, the shooter girl handed us drinks, many of them free by then, until 4:15), the bar had been empty except for a half-dozen hangers-on for over an hour, and the staff was wanting to go home.

We each grabbed a cab - our table, and the shooter girl and bartenders - and headed our separate ways, sad to leave each other's company but exhausted (and, for some, dead-drunk). The sun was coming up, way in the distance, and with my going East, it looked like I was headed right for it, looking to meet the sunrise head-on.

When I got home, I called my bank to find out the damage done: $750. My whole paycheque I'd just gotten 3 days prior, and a bit more.

I went to bed at 5:30 AM and had to get up at 8 to go to work. I got there at 9:30, barely a half hour late, with a headache, and proceeded to tell my boss the tale of my previous night; he wasn't surprised, but he had trouble believing it.

It was an amazing day and night, but I wouldn't do it again - I couldn't even afford to, anyhow. It's the last time I ''celebrated'' St. Patrick's Day.