Love And Monster Trucks

And banging each other's cousins.

Oh, and public drunkenness and terrible reporting.



Poor lady. The reporter should have let her go the minute he realized she was in no condition to be interviewed, and instead delved deeper into personal questions when he saw that her being drunk led to her being open and honest. And now the whole world will know her story.

I'm tagging this with ''stupidity'', but on the journalist's part, not the woman he's laughing at and putting down.

Theoadore

My friend Theo likes to cook, drink, and dress fabulously, but his favourite activity is - without a shadow of a doubt - talking about cooking, drinking and what he's wearing.

Lucky for us, he recently discovered the joys of blogging and can do so online, for all to read.

Best of all, most of the stuff he makes is pretty simple, including his Bloody Caesar, detailed here.

Test two of those recipes, and call me in the morning don't call me!

Weird Pepsi Flavours

I don't always drink cola, but when I do, I try to drink Pepsi. Because it's the least disgusting, and Pepsi Max has ginseng. And triple the caffeine of the regular brand. Zero fucking calories.

Yet Pepsi Max isn't in this list of 19 (actually 23) of weird Pepsis.

I'd try most of them.

Then again, I really, really liked Crystal Pepsi. As a teen, when my corner store stopped buying it, I emptied their remaining stock by myself, one at a time, for a month. Then I hit withdrawal.

Off To See The Rum Diary

''That’s gibberish!'', I said, when the woman asked me for ten bucks in exchange for some gelatin candy.

But I paid anyway. I needed the sweets to bring to the movie theatre, where I’m finally set to watch The Rum Diary tonight, after six unsuccessful tries/dates.

I’ve been waiting for years to see this fucking film, before the book was even fucking released – Hunter S. Thompson had been writing about it for years, having tried to have it published since the 1960s.

And who better to play Thompson’s alter ego (he’s never referred to by his own name in any of his books, a trick Charles Bukowski was also very fond of) than fucking Johnny Depp, who did a bang-up job in Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas?

Rum is where the journalistic story starts, in Puerto Rico. Constant drinking, before the drug use. I’m off. Wish me luck.


edit: here's what I'm talking about:

Why Wrestling Sucks... Or Rules, Depending On Your Point Of View

Oh boy.

Last Sunday, I went out with a few friends to check out the NHL All Star Game in a pub, and as is customary for us, the heavy drinking led us to remain there longer than expected, which means we got to see the start of the WWE's Royal Rumble. What a piece of shit display of terrible theatre that was!

I think we left less than an hour into it and got our drink on at my corner dive bar instead. Except we ended up talking about how much it sucked for maybe two more hours before talking about anything else - longer than we'd watched! It was just that ridiculous!

Well, today, my friend Martin Itfor sent me this, and as far as ridicule goes, it fucking wins.

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...

Absinthe: Nectar Of The Gods: Yahweh, Or No Way?

So on Friday, I was playing the Velvet Underground tribute show, Waiting For The Man, with new and old musician friends - and we had a blast. Most of the people there seemed to have a lot of fun as well, except maybe for the Alternate Lady Of The House, who doesn't like that style of music.

More importantly, though, was the fact that it was played at L'Absynthe, the bar named after the infamous drink 'absinthe', banned - under false pretense - in many countries between 1912 and 1915, usually because it cut into wine sales, and the wine distributors invented bullshit stories about absinthe giving epilepsy and tuberculosis when, in fact, it was used as a cure for malaria for a while by French soldiers in the 1840s, who brought their taste for it back home and inspired its popularity. The closest it got to the symptoms of epilepsy is that it has thujone in it from the wormwood, which can give spasms and lead to seizures in too high a quantity, but usually absinthe bottles contained far less of it than was first thought - although some modern brands have a relatively high 100mg of it.

In any event, it's legal nowadays, but barely imported and extremely expensive (think $12 for a small glass of a cheap brand) - and we couldn't pass up the opportunity to try it in the place that is named after it...

It tastes like black licorice, from the anise in it. That means it tastes kind of like Jägermeister, and pretty much like Ricard Pastis, both of which can be had at a third of the price, if you like that sort of thing. If you're ambivalent, it's too expensive for what it is. And if you hate it, you've just been punked out of enough money for 3 beers.

For my money, if you want to get fancy with a hint of anise, go the the Golden Elf - also  known as Liquid Cocaine, Nazi Zombie, Sledgehammer, Gestapo, Iron Curtain, TG Black & Gold, or, simply, Jägerschläger - half Jägermeister, half Goldschläger. That's heavenly.

Absinthe? Not quite. Come to think of it, not at all.

Chasing The Dragon

This one is a weird one; even today, bits of that evening come to me in bizarre flashbacks that barely make any sense until I tack them on to whatever hazy memory I have and somehow the events are reconstructed a little bit more.

There was a particular night this summer, I must have played a show and then we'd gone to party at the bar near my house afterwards, it's pretty much the only way I can account for my friend, The Big E, to have been there.

The details of what went on before things started fucking up are still hazy today; it could have been a night where the Lady Of The House and My Dad had been there where an old woman came on to me a bit hard, grinding against my leg while I was just sitting calmly and talking with the folks at my table, then proceeding to give me a full-on ''I Touch Myself''-style show on a chair she'd pulled next to me and acting like a stripper (but keeping her clothes on, at least). Eventually, though, she was tossed out of the place, and chances are she ended up fucking some panhandler in an alleyway somewhere.

Then again, it may have been a totally different night. Oddly enough, I mostly remember the details of what happened after we'd all had, perhaps, a little too much to drink. There was this drunk nerdy girl, the type you see in movies - kind of cute but that you're pretty sure that is she took her glasses off she'd perhaps be hot, or maybe she'd be the type to get gang-banged by a boatload of sailors, you never know - anyhow, she was playing pool, for all we knew, but at some point when that ended, she came to sit at our table. By then, The Big E and I were the only ones left.

Beers followed glasses of Jack Daniel's, then beer made a comeback. The girl was visibly way too fucking drunk - and so was E. E doesn't require much - usually a single shot of vodka will help derail his whole night - and, even though he stayed on beer all evening (he dislikes JD), he was way past his point of tolerance. Myself, I was in my comfort zone. Closing time - 3 AM - was rearing its ugly head, and I was just getting started.

Last call came and I ordered us a massive round - two beers each, and a quad-JD (four ounces) more for me. They let us finish our drinks before closing the place down, but apparently my partying mood was contagious. Many of the other customers decided it'd be wise to continue ingesting booze in the alley behind the bar; I went home (not even a block away) to grab a 40-ouncer of JD, that I planned to share with Big E.

When I got back, E and the girl were standing outside the bar's locked door, in full view of any and every passer-by, facing each other, forehead-against-forehead. I wouldn't have a problem with it, despite the girl saying she had a boyfriend for most of the time we were inside - he's no concern of mine - except E's Lady is possibly the closest friend I've had this past year, and I won't let him fuck their relationship up for a drunken tart in a shit-hole local bar - at least have it be something meaningful, for fuck's sake. So, when I'm near enough for them to hear me, I say ''am I interrupting anything?''

- No, E answers, you got here just in time.
- Good, I reply, now let's move out back.

They both get out from in front of the door and start walking ahead of me when I notice she's got the worst Plumber's Crack in the history of mankind - pretty much her whole ass is showing. All I could think was to use my best Denis Leary impression and say ''Pull up your fucking pants!'' while pulling them up; I didn't expect her to be so light, so I lifted her two feet in the air in the process. I can still make 'em fly, I guess.

When we got to the alley, sitting relatively comfortably, the girl doing her best to stick to E like glue, everybody there kept telling him to throw her away. We were all drinking, having a good time, when weed started making the rounds; that killed E and pretty much got him to fall asleep right then and there. I had to convince two girls to escort him home - one who had fake teeth, and her friend. I'll get back to the fake-toothed girl in a later post, she's so worth her own chapter, but we got E the hell out of there while his magnetized date-for-the-evening went to throw up. We got her in a cab before she realized what was happening.

Eventually, as more people left, the more obscure - or at least less public - habits and consumptions came to arrive. A girl we've come to nickname Duncan, coming off giving birth to her first child, and her boyfriend, Scary Bald Punk Dude, started doing lines of coke; that's not my scene at all, though, so I politely refused and kept drinking my Jack.

It wasn't long before more weed made the rounds, and for Duncan to offer me a ''special blend'' she'd just bought, in a pipe (I hate fucking pipes). I didn't take much, because it didn't seem right: no smell, no taste, no real buzz. It didn't feel like anything at all, yet I recognized the feeling - I just couldn't put my finger on it.

Suddenly I felt warm inside, like a fever taking over, but putting my hand to my forehead, I didn't feel a change in temperature; I just went back to my bottle, and to the conversation. By then the sun was coming up, and we all went our separate ways. I got home and was relaxed - but I couldn't sleep. And as my brain was trying to figure out why, my heart was pumping because I couldn't come up with an answer; I can usually control my main body functions to an extent that scares people, and when I lose that control, everything fucks up and a feeling of unease, of extreme nausea takes over. It took me a half-hour to get back to normal, and enough energy to do so that I was extenuated and went to sleep. Finally.

The next day was even more bizarre. I wasn't really hung over - that, in itself, wasn't entirely out of the ordinary, because I can take alcohol, but I had ingested copious amounts and was at least expecting a migraine - but I couldn't find the energy to move, either. Lying on my couch, watching TV, when a position had become uncomfortable, I had trouble mustering the strength to just shift over a little. And - another rare occurrence in my case - there were blanks in my recollections.

I remembered E wanting to keep our whereabouts secret, but I recalled having even better arguments in demonstrating that it'd just be easier to ready to disclose most of the night and, perhaps, just leave certain elements out of the retrospection - say, a certain lady whose forehead was glued to his and whose ass was taking in the Montréal air when I got there.

It took me hours to remember I'd smoked up, and a while longer to remember the ''special blend''. I was pissed off at myself for having forgotten, and at having agreed to it in the first place. Then I started wondering just what the hell it was; it couldn't have been pot, that's a given. Pot and coke - or pot and crack? It seemed unlikely, there was no ''uplifting'' effect to it, no heightened senses, no added strength, if anything, it was the opposite. And knowing how I have an ''addictive'' personality (weak self-control when it comes to consuming, whether it be simple stuff like goods or food, or others), I do my best to steer clear of hard drugs because I know I'm the type who wouldn't keep it recreational.

It took a few months during which I'd have occasional flashbacks of second-long moments from that night (yet another unusual occurrence) before I'd remember what that familiar feeling had been; it came to me in the most awkward way, too, reading Slash's autobiography... I'll have a complete post about it later, but when I was a teen, I was prescribed Oxycontin to re-balance my system after having been sick all Winter (something like 6 or 7 tonsillitis's in a row combined with a lack of sleep when Spring came)... and Oxycontin is nothing other than a semi-synthetic form of heroin.

Suddenly, it all made sense: the ''lack'' of effect, of smell, of taste... they weren't what I expected, so I didn't see it coming. The feeling from the next day was explained too: I couldn't get myself to do anything, but my brain was feeling fine, it's just my body that couldn't follow.

I still get flashbacks at times that help make the general picture of that evening clearer, pieces of the puzzle that help piece it back together. And, each time, I'm reminded to not take just anything from people I barely know, and, considering the way I am, to stay the fuck away from that substance because the next time could be the last time I enter a situation with my mind intact.

What It Feels Like To Drink Stella Artois

Since my last trip to NYC a couple of years ago, where it was very hard to drink decent beer and I had tons of overexpensive Stella Artois instead, it's been my default beer of choice.

Even when I came back to Montréal, I'd start preferring it to Heineken and Kilkenny and Molson Ex at the dep (convenience store to the international crowd).

And today, completing an online survey, I was asked to describe the very first time I had it. Well: the fuck if I know. I can't remember. So here's my answer:

it must have been summer, on a terrace with many plants and smallish trees, surrounded by dozens of nubile young women who served me melted Toblerone chocolate; it was decadent and superb, worthy of remembrance and a day whose grace I strive to attain/maintain ever since

There's a 50-50 chance that it isn't exactly the way I claim to remember it, but now that I crave a bottle, I'm pretty sure that's how it would taste to me. Good thing I have Toblerone at home, and deps aren't closed yet.