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I am the mayor of Gastown

Saturday was somewhat ugly weather-wise, so we thought we’d take in a movie. We picked up our tickets for a late afternoon show and then walked a few blocks down to Gastown, which is a little bit skeeze, but also fun, and not nearly as flatulent as I’d hoped/feared. We took the traditional tourist picture next to the steam clock, saw the fake CN Tower and the fake Sydney Opera House, then stopped at the Steamworks Brew Pub for lunch. The after effects of Au Bar left us with sour stomachs, and despite having sworn off beer for the day only three hours prior, if you’re in a brewpub, it makes the baby Jesus cry if you don’t drink a beer (especially on Easter). Our waiter is sub-par, but the food is very good. It also ends up being the only real meal we have that day.

Our movie is The Wild, which Beth’s brother-in-law Chris worked on. It’s a cute film and it looks amazing. I haven’t seen Madagascar—the Dreamworks rushjob knockoff of The Wild—but the difference in the quality of the two is night and day. There were a half dozen other animated films that previewed before the movie, and more often than not they looked Madagascar-terrible—the exception being the new Pixar film, Cars. (Check the newest trailer for an out-of-the-blue hippie slam that’s still making us laugh.)

That night we stopped into the Rugby Club to watch the last Canucks game of the season. We caught the first two periods, shared two appetizers between the three of us, and then went back to Beth’s place. We started drinking and we tuned in to hear the Canucks win in overtime. Beth offered her willing womb to various Canucks as their on-ice performance dictated. After this, we put on Casablanca, which Beth had never seen. She loved it, we loved it more than ever, and we all continued to drink and not eat. Before bed, we also watched Rings, which is a short film that’s included on The Ring 2 disc. Worth watching and quite freaky, it sadly concludes with an it-was-all-a-dream wrap up. Boo-urns.

Sunday morning, we discovered that once you go hippie you never go back, because we found ourselves rushing off to The Naam for breakfast. We were all pretty seriously hung-over. Beth had a sore neck, which she decided could only be meningitis, which I then deemed alcohol-related meningitis (ARM for short. Expect our fundraising campaign to come to your town soon. Only you can prevent alcohol-related meningitis.) Breakfast was very good; my meal involved vegan sausages, which is a miracle I still can’t wrap my head around.

There was some indecision over what we wanted to do that day. As a last minute change of plans, Sarah suggested we drive to Squamish. It’s not a long drive, but it takes you along a winding mountainside road (the Sea to Sky highway; or if you’re a local, the Sea to Die Highway.) If the weather had been in any way inclement, it would have been a terrible go, but the weather was perfect and so was the view. About an hour later, we rolled into Squamish—where we honestly didn’t do very much. This isn’t a complaint, and it’s certainly not meant to say that the trip was wasted, it’s just that, in words, it sounds even less action-packed than it was. We used a bathroom, went to Tim Horton’s, checked out a tent sale, and left. It was worth it for the view, but again I have no pictures handy, and my powers of description are lank and weak. On the way out, we stopped at Shannon Falls Provincial Park for a photo op, then for another at a marine park, then it was back on the Sea to Die heading Vancouver-ward.

Dinner was at the Banana Leaf, where the second self-imposed alcohol ban in two days was again self-defeated (although not in the binge drinking style that has become our custom.) The Banana Leaf is a Malaysian place, and the meal was very good. I went from thinking this isn’t enough food! to my belly’s all sticky outty! in the space of three minutes. Back at the pad, we ate easter cream eggs and watched Land of the Dead, which might just have been the grossest movie I’ve ever seen, but strangely it didn’t gross me out that much. Clearly, something has dies inside me. At least I’ll be iron-willed and undeterrable when that zombie Armageddon is finally upon us.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Too much good food, too much drinking, not enough action. Sounds like the perfect weekend to me.
Beth said…
I'm happy to report that I'm the verge of finding a cure for ARM. But more research is needed, so please give generously to the ARM Foundation.
Anonymous said…
Court - It depends what you mean by not enough action.

Beth - I willingly donate Dave's money to your cause. It's a tough thing to do, but it has to be done. I also donate my liver.

Dave - I miss you terribly. The wolves are howling.
Anonymous said…
Jorge - "not enough action" is still better than "NO action", which is what I'm currently getting.

I stand by my earlier statement.
Isha said…
It's a good thing you're on vacation, because if you guys drank and ate that much during normal life in Ottawa, there's no way I would be able to keep up (such a lightweight). I probably would have ARM by association. Instead, I get to enjoy your company at trivia, games night, movie marathons and random DVD-viewings/movie screenings -- which are all super fun but way less drunky drunky.

Speaking of trivia, for last night's game I found a ringer who was so good that I'm thinking of removing myself from Banana Stand and putting him in. (You all know I'm deadweight anyways.)

This is why I'm impressed:

Q: Name the Danish astronomer who had part of his nose cut off in a duel by rapiers, and had the missing part replaced by metal.


Do you know who this is?
.
.
.
Do you?
.
.
.
Last chance to answer...
.
.
.
I was all "WTF?!?!" when Rob scrawled "Tycho Brahe" down ("That looks like what you get at the beginning of a Scrabble game," I was thinking) but it turned out he was right. And there were similar incidents throughout the evening.

It was totally hot.

[I did manage to contribute with "Subaru", "John Merrick", "Prodi and Berlusconi", and "Peeping Tom", so I wasn't completely useless.

Unfortunately, Rob might join forces with E. Jack Layton, whose brain is so huge I felt uncomfortable sitting next to him at the bar. He's a math guy studying graph theory, which is so far out of my frame of existence, it's like he's an alien. But really nice guy.

Anyways, I miss you guys but am happy you're having an awesome time in Van. But come back so we can start watching the first season of Veronica Mars.
Beth said…
Ohmygod, Isha, I KNEW the answer was Tycho Brahe!!! But only because that fact was written in my high school physics textbook and it was so freakin' cool to think of a guy with a metal nose that I always remembered it!

That would probably be the only question I would have got all night.
Anonymous said…
Isha,

Chiming in...just checked your comment and I, too, knew it was Tycho Brahe (same textbook as Beth). We also loved the fact that John Napier invented logarithms (though that was a math book).

Boo - no joining E. Jack Layton!! Kathy is away next week, so Rob can still be our ringer. We can always grow to a team of 5 (sitting down at the bar is for suckers!).

As for Veronica Mars - I am so there.
Isha said…
Am I, like, the ONLY person who didn't know about stupid Tycho Brahe and his metal nose? Further evidence that I am deadweight in my trivia team....

Beth, if you lived in Ottawa, Dave and Sarah would be all "Isha who?" It hurts me to admit it, but it's true.

[Further proof of my ignorance]
Sarah, I had to frickin' Google John Napier because I had no idea who you were talking about. Turns out he also invented the decimal point.

That's it. I'm quittin' Banana Stand to go study the Bible or walk the earth or something that makes better use of my limited skills.
Beth said…
Isha, no way! Tycho Brahe would have been the ONLY answer I got all night - mark my words!

When I visited Sarah & Dave back in November, I went to trivia with them (you were away that week) and the only answers I got were three questions to which the answer was "Vancouver"... honestly, I'm not making that up!
Anonymous said…
Man.

Tycho Brahe...

He was a jerk anyway, Isha.

The only answers you need to know are:

Jag

Inukshuk

Mussels

and

Thunderbox

That's all you need, baby!
Anonymous said…
DAVE ===> For the record, Madagascar rocks the house. Particularly the penguins, which are even cooler than normal penguins, which is saying something. A friend of mine knows some guys who worked on The Wild and it apparently isn't that great. Disney can't even get anyone to pick up the licence to make Wild products, and while I'm not certain, I think that Disney not being able to sell a licence to their product is one of the signs of the Apocalypse (albeit not a zombie one). In conlcusion, go rent Madagascar, blasphemer.

BETH ===> Beyond the bonus coolness for having a metal nose, Brahe was cool by definition, because he's Danish. The fact that so is my bloodline is strictly coincidental.
Beth said…
Dave - What happened after Sunday?? You have to blog those days or else I won't remember what we did!

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Discuss Amongst Yourselves - January 30th, 2006

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