Dave's Digglings

A Week in Istanbul

2011-11-04T11:27:00.000-07:00

Istanbul. The name itself conjures up exotic imagery and a deep sense of history. Deservedly so, as it has been a capital city of three successive empires and can boast over 2,000 years of history. In addition, its location on two continents, the crossroads between Europe and Asia, provides a stunning and culturally diverse backdrop to the world's 7th largest city. It's no wonder that today Istanbul is one of the world's top tourist destinations.

I was fortunate enough to spend a week in Istanbul earlier this year and despite my best efforts to see as much as humanly possible, I got the sense that I had barely scratched the surface. Most of the tourists I met planned to spend only two to three days in this marvelous city, a mistake of epic proportions in my books. Yet, in a way their hurry worked in my favour, as once I got away from the major tourist sights the crowds thinned considerably, allowing for an intimate look into the people and neighbourhoods of a truly remarkable city.

What follows is a look back at my week in Istanbul told through words and photographs. The photos are in small format to fit the proportions of my blog, but can be viewed in larger format simply by clicking on the individual picture.

Preamble
First things first: yes everyone in Istanbul (and all of Turkey for that matter) will try to sell you a carpet. And yes they have a special price just for you.

"Hello My Friend, free to look!"

Don't be irritated or put-off. It's just the way it is. After a while you can't help but find it amusing.

The Big Three - Hagia Sophia, The Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace

The three main tourist attractions in Istanbul are located a short walk from each other in the old town (Sultanahmet). Each is a marvel in its own right, and as a result is overrun with hoardes of tourists. Be prepared to be pushed aside by noisy school groups, stuck behind slow moving grandmothers on tour and hearded like cattle.

Most people will try to see the big three in one day. To me that doesn't do them justice, simply because of the exhaustion brought on by fighting the crowds. In order to appreciate each place to the fullest, I opted to visit them one by one on different mornings when the crowds are smaller. Then, when I was about ready to rip the head off of some idiot sitting on a "please do not sit here" sign, I would head out to some less visited sight for a calming cocktail.

Hagia Sophia
If you plan to visit Istanbul and Hagia Sophia is not at the top of your "must see" list then you may as well rip up your ticket and go home. Not only is it stunningly beautiful, but Hagia Sophia is one of the most extraordinary buildings in the history of architecture.

Hagia Sophia from Sultanahmet Square

Hagia Sophia overlooking the Bosphorus Strait

With its 56m high dome Hagia Sophia is the fourth largest cathedral in the world (after Saint Paul in London, Saint Peter in Rome and the Duomo in Milan). However, quite incredibly, it was built more than 1000 years before the others.

A Truly Breathtaking Space

The current structure was built as a cathedral in 537 by Emperor Justinian. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmed Conqueror turned it into a Mosque and built the four minarets at the outside corners of the building.

56m High

The Dome

The walls are adorned with two large circular plates where the names "Allah" and "Muhammed" are written in Arabic.

A stunning view from the upper galleries

There are splendid Byzantine mosaics in a gallery on the second level. Visitors must pass through a security gate to enter the gallery where they are reminded not to use flash photography. As you near the mosaics there are large signs posted on the walls in every language imaginable prohibiting flash photography. Yet, when I approached the mosaics I was almost blinded by the constant flashing coming from moronic tourist's cameras. It's so bad that a security guard is posted under the mosaics all day long doing nothing but yelling "No Flash! No Flash!". I was tempted to join him, adding the use of abundant expletives, but chose instead to leave the mindless masses behind and find a quiet cafe.

Flashy Byzantine Mosaics

The Blue Mosque

Located across Sultanahmet Square from Hagia Sophia is the beautiful Blue Mosque. It has an uncharacteristic 6 minarets. Legend has it that when the Sultan ordered its construction in the early 1600's, he asked for gold minarets. Apparently the Arabic word for gold is similar to the Arabic word for six, and the rest is comedic history.

Beautiful and Busy

The Mosque's interior is adorned with intricate tiles, not surprisingly accented primarily by blue tones. It was designed with over 270 windows providing brilliant light to play off the many different angles in the building.

Despite the modern way of life exhibited in Istanbul outside the Mosque, I couldn't help but be struck by a stark contrast on the inside. It's not necessarily my place to comment, but I gotta say it, "C'mon guys, isn't it about time you let the women hang out with the men?"

A woman's place

Out of sight and way at the back

Topkapi Palace

The last of the big three is by no means the least. Topkapi Palace was constructed soon after the fall of Constantinople and remained the residence of the Sultans until the mid 1800's.

Topkapi Palace sits high above the meeting of the Bosphorus with the Sea of Marmara

The palace is a sprawling complex as it used to house, in addition to the Sultan's residences, a hospital, bakery, arsenal, state mint, a part of the treasury and more. Give yourself plenty of time to wander around the entire site.

I was particularly struck by the beautiful tile work in the Sultan's residences and the harem. It seems almost garish when viewed out of context, but in their place the designs are ornate and tasteful Have a look at some of the photos here and you just may find yourself transported back to a different time and place; when men were manly and women were "well kept".

The highlight of the palace is unmistakably the harem, so much so that there's a separate entry fee just for it. I found the very idea of a harem fascinating as I come from a part of the world where monogamy is, and always has been, the norm (unless you're a Mormon). So I took extra time to sit in the expansive harem courtyard, imagining what it would be like to stroll along gazing up at all the women who were hoping to be the one to catch my fancy that day. I decided that the Sultans were probably very tired most of the time.

The Harem Courtyard - a little lower key today

The Bazaars

People love to shop, and in Istanbul it's no different, except that their version of the shopping mall is the Bazaar. I found the Bazaars exotic fascinating slices of Turkish life. Mind you, to the average resident of Istanbul they are probably as rudimentary as Walmart and The Gap are to me. I wonder if there's a Turkish equivalent to the Mall Rat?

Grand Bazaar

This place is a marvel. The Grand Bazaar is one of the the largest covered markets in the world, with 4400 shops in 64 streets and with 22 gates (entrances). It was started in the late 1400's and has grown outward in a rather haphazard manner, creating a labyrinth of corridors to confuse even the most experienced orienteer.

The Grand Bazaar - let's shop!

Needless to say, the most common items for sale in the Grand Bazaar are carpets, but you can find almost anything amongst these ancient corridors, as you can see in the following photos.

Carpets, carpets and more carpets

Bangles were also popular

I love the juxtaposition of catholic religious figures with Hookah pipes

Every little boy wants to be a Sultan for Halloween

These girls took a wrong turn at Albuquerque

Spice Bazaar

The Spice Bazaar is located adjacent to the harbour near the foot of the Galata Bridge. It's not as big as the Grand Bazaar, but is arguably more interesting as it is where a wide variety of food and spices are sold. It's most lively (and less crowded with tourists) first thing in the morning when the shops are being set up and the various items are being delivered.

Main Entrance

Not sure I'd buy anything from these characters

Couldn't think of an appropriately cheesy caption

Sometimes you feel like a nut

You can pickle just about anything

Spices - what this bazaar is all about

More bangles

snake oil galore

Modern Apothecary

Prof. Dr. Suluk recommends leaches for all of your medicinal needs!

Other Sights

Dolmabahce Palace

When the Sultans left Topkapi Palace, they relocated to the more modern Dolmabahce Palace on the banks of the Bosphorus across the harbour from Sultanahmet.

Not bad digs

The style of the palace reflects European influences, the result of the Sultans (and Turkey) becoming more friendly with their neighbours to the west. Probably the most notable influences are French, and the Dolmabahce is often referred to as the Versailles of the east. There are countless stunning rooms, ornately decorated and loaded with furniture and accessories from around the world.

The Grand Entrance

Visiting the palace can be a bit of an ordeal, however, as entrance is only granted via a guided tours. That, and they make you wear pink plastic booties over your shoes. So everyone bunches up at the main entrance until the tour in their particular language is called, at which time a stampede of plastic booty clad tourists pushes through a single turnstile and is quickly hearded from room to room. The complete tour is actually done in two parts so the whole scene is repeated a second time for the tour of the harem.

Taking photos is strictly prohibited anywhere inside the palace, so all I can show you are some pictures of the grounds. Even so, not bad digs.

A lone sentry guards the gate to the Bosphorus

The gardeners must be very, very busy

Basilica Cistern

The Basilica Cistern was constructed in 532 as an underground water storage reservoir for the Great Palace and other buildings in Sultanahmet. The dark and voluminous cistern is supported by 336 columns and is full of tourists taking flash photos that will inevitably not turn out.

Still standing after all these years

Taksim Square

Taksim Square is located at the top of the modern Beyoglu district of Istanbul, across the Galata Bridge from Sultanahmet. It's a major shopping, tourist and leisure district famed for its restaurants, shops and hotels. So imagine my surprise when I stepped out of the subway and saw this:

Modern crowd control device

That was one well armed crowd control vehicle, complete with a large front end scoop for showing mobs who's the boss. I headed for Istiklal Street, the main shopping street that leads to Taksim Square, to get a better look and was confronted by one of the largest crowds I have ever seen.

Something was up on Istiklal Street

Something was definitely up. The crowd wasn't menacing or unruly, but they were certainly with purpose. At first I thought that perhaps they were protesting gay police officers,

Proud to serve and protect

but then I saw this sign and it all made sense:

In addition to being a destination for leisure activities, Taksim Square has historically been the starting point or destination of many political demonstrations. May 1 marks the annual Labour Day demonstrations in Istanbul. It was during these demonstration in 1977 that unidentified gunmen opened fire and killed 36 demonstrators, an event since remembered as the Taksim Square massacre. All forms of group protests were banned in the square until 2010 when Labour Day demonstrations were permitted for the first time. The peace was short lived, as a Kurdish suicide bomber killed himself and many others in the square on October 31, 2010. Needless to say, the May 1 Labour Day demonstrations of 2011 were heavily monitored and the police presence was extreme. I tried to keep a low profile.

I returned to Taksim Square and the surrounding streets on a number of occasions. It's lively, fun and well worth exploring. In fact, despite the somewhat dark history (and the warnings on the US Consulate website), the Beyoglu district is where I will stay during my next visit to Istanbul.

Galata Tower

Located down the hill from Taksim Square and facing Sultanahmet is a fire lookout tower built in the 1300's. It wasn't until the 1960's that the amazing panoramic views from the Galata Tower were opened to the public.

The Galata Tower at dusk

The view of Sultanahmet from the tower is unparalleled in Istanbul, providing a panoramic perspective of the Big Three attractions.

A tourist points across the Galata Bridge to (from left to right) Topkapi Palace, Hagia Sophia and The Blue Mosque

The Galata Tower provides an unobstructed view of the Bosphorus and Asian Istanbul on the other side. It also allows one to peek into the many rooftop terraces that are so popular in Beyoglu.

The Bosphorus with the Asian side beyond

Plenty of cafes, terraces and bars

A cosy rooftop hideaway

Up The Bosphorus

No trip to Istanbul is complete without a boat trip on the Bosphorus. The Bosphorus Strait acts as the major artery of Istanbul; connecting the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, and Europe to Asia. It has been the region's major means of transportation for centuries, and despite the rather recent construction of huge bridges that span its width, the Bosphorus remains a hub for shipping and commuting.

Looking up the Bosphorous from Sultanahmet towards the Black Sea

Many private companies offer tours and dinner cruises on the Bosphorus, but probably the most authentic boat trip is to ride a commuter ferry. The locals call it the "Beggar Ferry" because it makes so many stops along the way, all but begging for passengers at each one. The ferry I took was jammed, so I think they're doing a pretty good job.

The most popular day trip is to begin at Eminonu (the ferry terminals along the Bosphorus in Sultanahmet) and take the ferry to Anadolu Kavagi, a charming fishing village on the Asian side of Istanbul near where the Bosphorus meets the Black Sea. The trip takes about an hour and a half as the ferry zig zags its way from one side of the Bosphorus to the other. Passengers are treated to some beautiful vistas while at the same time getting a sense of the immensity of Istanbul.

Yet another mosque

Ancient meets modern

Anadolu Kavagi is just as advertised; a small seaside village with a mass of restauranteers vying for your tourist dollars. And I thought the carpet salesmen were pushy! I waded through the touts and wandered up a hillside to the old fortress that used to stand guard over the entrance to the Bosphorus. My guide book suggested taking an hour or so to walk the ramparts, but at the front gate I was greeted by a padlock and a sign stating "Closed for Archaeological Purposes". Judging by the dilapidated state of the fortress and the rust on the lock (it had obviously not been opened for years), I'd say the sign could more appropriately have read "Closed because we can't be bothered with the upkeep".

Standing guard over the Bosphorus for centuries

Still, I had noted an inviting restaurant on the hillside above the village, so I clambered back down and ate lunch overlooking the sparkling Bosphorus. I haven't enjoyed many better dining views than that anywhere.

A seat with a view

I had eaten far more than planned so was looking forward to a long walk before taking the ferry back to central Istanbul. I set off in every direction I could, other than straight back to the village, but was inevitably confronted by the same sign:

Not very welcoming

The village is apparently surrounded by military land, and except for a single access road, there is no other way in or out besides the ferry. Disappointed, I did what any sane traveller would do - I headed back to the village and found the cafe where the old men were gathered to gossip and play dominoes. I downed a few Efes (Turkish Beer) and soaked up the atmosphere.

Life in Istanbul

The best way to get to know any city is to wander through its neighbourhoods without any particular destination in mind. Some of my most memorable experiences occur when I'm doing just that. It often doesn't require a major effort to get away from a tourist destination. The side streets adjacent to a popular monument or building can often provide the little gems that make travel so much fun.

Istanbul is full of such opportunities. By taking some out of the way excursions I was exposed to some real aspects of day-to-day Life in Istanbul.

Ok, you don't have to go out of your way to find these street vendors. They are everywhere! They are selling Simit, a crisp, ring-shaped, savory roll covered with sesame seeds. Turkish people love the stuff, especially when they wash it down with another Turkish favorite - ayran (salty liquid yoghurt).

Shopping is a man's diversion in Turkey

Doesn't anyone want to look at MY beads?

Not all of the shopping is done in the bazaars. Poke your head behind a Mosque or down a side street and you often encounter one of these makeshift markets. Some of the markets seem more legit than others (I wouldn't buy an iPhone from one of these guys, but I might buy a leather wallet), yet they are inevitably populated by nothing but serious looking men. And of course there is the obligatory arm waving and yelling that as far as I can tell is really just to add atmosphere.

Ok, so anyone who grew up in the 70's is familiar with spirograph. It was all the rage for kids before computers and video games came along to rot their brains. Actually, all it involved was spinning a plastic wheel around inside a plastic ring to make spacey designs, so I'm not sure which is worse. Regardless, it was for kids and the novelty wore off in about 5 minutes.

Spirograph? Are you kidding me?

So why are there grown men on every street corner in Istanbul selling spirographs like it's the next big thing? I kid you not. They were almost as prevalent as the guys selling Simit. I asked around and to this day have not heard a plausible explanation.

And more street scenes:

I wouldn't eat anything that came out of that water (at least knowingly - I did eat a lot of street food).

Pedestrians wander by yet another Mosque. There are more than a few Mosques in Istanbul and they emit very loud calls to prayer at some ungodly hours. To me that made the place seem even more exotic. I'm guessing it would grow old pretty fast, however. (Hey look, it's a street vendor selling Simit!)

Because even the Turks get hemorrhoids - (Pfizer makes preparation H). But seriously, I was struck by the close proximity of an emblem that I associate with corporate America to the Turkish flag.

Does this sign make any sense to you? "it is a place where 5 meal taste is delighted"? It's no wonder there have been wars. They were understandably caused by blatant misunderstandings!

Keeping up with the Akhbars - "Well the Akhbars next door got a bay window. I want a bay window!" Quite a cool little side street in an Istanbul suburb.

I feel for this restaurant owner. My liver is pretty unhappy with me some days, too. I love the French translation, as well.

One of the countless side streets off of Istiklal Street. They are full of restaurants, cafes and bars, and make for great people watching any time of day or night. The Turkish people are passionate about life which is reflected in the lively conversations being had at any given table.

Ah the exuberance of youth! The same day as the May 1 demonstrations, students flooded the side streets preaching their mantra of Anarchy. As far as I could tell, their definition of Anarchy was "let's all sit around and get drunk", which is pretty well the mantra of every student, is it not?

Ortaköy

I haven't mentioned much about Turkish food, which is diverse, spicy and often beautifully presented. Istanbul is a foodie's delight (as long as you aren't a vegetarian), and deserves a separate post of its own. I came across one notable Turkish favorite, however, while strolling through the neighbourhood of Ortaköy on a Sunday afternoon. It serves as a fitting end to my week in Istanbul.

Ortaköy is located along the Bosphorus a few kilometres north of the Dolmabahce Palace. It is a charming little neighbourhood with a long board-walk, colourful apartments and plenty of places to eat and drink. It is the destination in Istanbul for yuppies looking to see and be seen. As I found out, it is also the most likely location in Istanbul for a heart attack. May I introduce to you - Kumpir.

Kumpir - a heart attack in every potato!

Despite the abundance of restaurants and food options in Ortaköy, everyone is there to eat Kumpir. There are rows upon rows of Kumpir stands, all selling exactly the same thing - a baked potato stuffed to overflowing with a wide assortment of goodies, each specifically designed to clog one of your arteries.

Pick your poison

Kumpir stands for as far as the eye can see

The process is quite simple. First you pick your favourite Kumpir vendor, then you start pointing to the myriad selection of toppings located in bins under glass. Next, you stand back as they heap your choices all over a baked potato. They finish it off by covering the whole thing with a few litres of mayonnaise and ketchup.

I couldn't decide which toppings looked best so I just asked for some of everything. My vendor raised an eyebrow, shook his head and started piling. I can't believe I ate the whole thing. Unbelievably delicious!

But don't take my word for it, see what a local has to say. This little girl was pretty apprehensive as her parents encouraged her to try Kumpir for the first time:

Now that is a happy Kumpir customer!

Almost Famous

2011-04-29T23:36:00.000-07:00

Here's a look at Almost Famous, my favorite bar in Pai (Northern Thailand). It's one of those funky eclectic bars that could be almost anywhere. There are a few giveaways, however, such as the "no stupid farrangs" sign (farrang is pronounced fallong and is Thai for foreigner) and the lovely Lazy Angel mixing cocktails (she also taught us a Thai cooking class). Keep an eye out for some other fun stuff like cartoons, phrases and even a Quebec licence plate!

A Tale of Two Tours

2011-04-03T04:12:00.000-07:00

When the guide handed me body armour and told me to put it on, I began to worry. When he did a full safety inspection of my mountain bike, especially the brakes “because I was going to need them”, I became seriously concerned. And when we wheeled ourselves to the edge of an incredibly steep mountain slope and looked down a trail that plunged over boulders and through trees, I couldn’t help but ask myself “What kind of insane tour have I signed up for this time?”

Tours are the traveller’s paradox. No one wants to be cooped up on a bus with a bunch of tourists being led around by some overly friendly lady holding up a flag. But at the same time, travellers are in fact tourists, and tours offer a convenient way for tourists to economically experience a place. If you’re travelling, you’ll end up on a tour at some point. It’s inevitable. The trick is to do some research ahead of time in order to identify the tours that suit your particular travel style and personality.

Chiang Mai’s idyllic location in the mountains of Northern Thailand makes it a mecca for travellers and a hotbed for tour operators. During my visit there I figured I had done my homework appropriately and signed up for two tours: a guided mountain biking ride and a bus tour to the golden triangle. Mind you, as I sat on that bicycle precariously perched atop a mountain, my homework skills were in serious doubt.

The tour company offered a variety of rides for cyclists of all abilities, from beginner to maniac. I had picked what the brochure described as an intermediate ride. But when I looked at the three other guys in my group, intermediate looked pretty hardcore.

I was old enough to be the father of each of them. I think the guy closest to my age was 22. They were all extreme sports enthusiasts and had the scabs and scars to prove it. On our ride from the shuttle bus to the start of the trail they were doing wheelies and jumps like the guys you see on Mountain Dew ads. As a kid every time I tried a wheelie I’d fall off my bike, much to the merriment of the entire schoolyard. Not in the mood to relive any traumatic childhood events on this day, I kept my head down and secretly wished I had gone with the fat guy and the family of four who were on the beginner ride.

There was no time for hesitation (or quitters). Our guide let out a yelp and with a fancy rear wheel fishtail he was gone. Within seconds so were the other riders. They were out of sight before I had my feet on the pedals. This was going to be a long day.

I began to carefully pick my way down the trail at a considerably slower pace than my fellow riders. It’s not that I’ve never done any downhill riding before; it’s just that I know how long it takes my body to heal. One mistake and my trip could have been over.

A good guide is integral to the success of any tour, particularly one where there is very real potential risk to life and limb. Our guide was a very skilled rider (having done the trail more than 100 times probably helped too), but where he excelled was in passing his knowledge on to us. He’d give us tips about how to get through a technically challenging part of the ride (“Dave, maybe you should walk down this part”) as well as advice on how to be better riders. With his guidance my confidence increased and I managed to hold my own, if I do say so myself.

They were still faster than me and would have to wait from time to time for me to catch up. It seemed they would usually choose to wait at the bottom of a particularly gnarly stretch, giving them a clear view of my descent. They’d give a big cheer when I’d arrive in one piece, which I assumed meant they were happy for me and not because my arrival meant they could finally get going again.

It was all going famously until the point where, after a fairly steep section of switchbacks, I rode up to them, stopped, and proceeded to fall over and into a ditch. It all happened in slow motion. First I went over, then my bike on top of me. For good measure I rolled one more time after having almost stopped. I was inextricably tangled up with the bike and covered in mud. Once they could stop laughing they were quick to help me up, which certainly sets them apart from those kids I went to school with.

The trail became more technically challenging as the ride continued. The guide repeatedly reminded me to keep my butt way back on my bike and to avoid using my front brakes. The purpose of this advice was to keep my weight to the rear of the bike and avoid a tumble. It worked really well for me as long as I had time to think about what I was doing. As soon as my body would act instinctively, I was in deep trouble. It became clear that my instincts were not well in tune with downhill riding because when they would kick in they overruled everything he had told me. On several occasions I found myself heading chin first over the handle bars directly onto whatever particularly nasty bit of trail had frightened me into slamming on my front brakes in the first place.

As a result, when we had finally finished and were sitting beside a lake having a few beers, I had by far the best war wounds to show off. The other guys had hardly broken a sweat, while I was covered in mud and bleeding from various extremities. If that isn’t an indication of a successful tour, I don’t know what is (which as I reread this sentence is a distinct possibility). I had pushed myself to the limit and felt much better for it. My first tour had been a resounding success.

The second tour began early the following morning with me feeling a little worse for wear, the result of trying to keep up with the boys in the pub as well as on the trail. I was looking forward to some coffee and a greasy breakfast to help deal with the situation. Unfortunately, the staff in my hotel restaurant, normally so over attentive as to be oppressive, chose that morning to be aloof. They had taken my order by the time the tour van showed up, but I doubt if they had cracked an egg.

So with an empty stomach I piled into a passenger van with a bunch of strangers and we headed off to spend a day exploring the mountains to the northwest of Chiang Mai. The tour brochure said we were going to visit hot springs, a white temple, the golden triangle, the

Myanmar

border and other places of interest. I’m not usually a fan of bus tours, but that sounded like a pretty interesting agenda. “How bad could it be?” I had mused.

A major factor in the level of enjoyment of any bus tour is, of course, the bus itself. I probably should have been wary when I smelled the stale cigarette smoke as I got in our van, but I was too busy looking for a seat. Being last on the tour pick-up route meant that I got last choice of seat, which inevitably meant I was sitting in the very back. People in Asia are small so leg room in an Asian vehicle is already at a premium. But when sitting in the back of an Asian van you are sitting over the back wheels. Thus my legroom was inconveniently taken up by the wheel well.

We didn’t drive very far before I realized another drawback to sitting over the back wheel, as the shock absorbers in this van had seen better days, probably back in the 70’s. I could feel every bump we hit. It would vibrate through the entire length of my spine. Larger bumps resulted in double spine compression, as my head would hit the roof soon after my tail bone had taken the initial blow. This van was not helping me to overcome my general apprehension for bus tours.

Nonetheless, I was willing to let that slide as long as the tour lived up to its billing. A great guide like the previous day could certainly have helped. Count that as strike two for this tour. Our guide’s “fluent” English wasn’t. As best as I could tell, she was going back and forth between Thai and English to accommodate the mix of people on the tour. That would have been fine if I could have deciphered which was which. I soon gave up and put on my iPod.

That’s when I got my first whiff of vomit. We hadn’t been on the road for an hour when a young Malaysian woman had her head slumped over a plastic bag. I have started to recognize this as a regular occurrence on SE Asian road trips. The woman sitting next to me on my bus trip from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh threw up for seven hours straight, although somehow she managed to control the odour. We weren’t so lucky in the van on this day. On the bright side, at least I wasn’t being offended by the stale cigarette odour any more.

The first stop on our agenda was at the hot springs, which turned out to be nothing more than a rest stop along the highway. There were two small man made cement pools with steaming stinky water and lots of garbage in them. Otherwise there was plenty of room for tour bus parking and lots of stalls selling trinkets for tourists. Our guide informed us that we had 20 minutes to look around. I had finished looking around before she had finished talking. I was beginning to have some serious doubts about this tour.

Two hours of driving and vomiting later we arrived at the White Temple. This temple looks like all the other temples you see in Thailand, except instead of lots of gold and bright colours, it is entirely white. Oh, and this one also has cardboard cut-outs of the guy who is building the temple so you can get your picture taken next to “him”. That’s right; it’s a new temple being built by a civilian in, as far as I could tell, his own honour. Some of it was interesting to look at, especially with the garish futuristic touches he’d thrown in, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about L. Ron Hubbard. This particular Thai man was obviously rich enough to pay all of the tour companies to bring their customers to his temple. I can’t think of another explanation as to why we were all there.

We pushed on to the Golden Triangle, the primary feature of the tour, where we were to be treated to a VIP boat trip. The brochure indicated that the boat would take us for an informative look up and down the Mekong River, and then make a stop in Laos on the other side.

The Golden Triangle is the confluence of two rivers which form the borders of the three countries that meet there - Thailand, Laos and Myanmar - hence the Triangle. The history of the area is quite infamous, as it is steeped in the mystique of the opium trade. Opium was brought down from the surrounding countryside and exchanged along the rivers for gold, thus the Golden. In the middle is an area called no man’s land, a notoriously lawless stretch where many a murder has occurred over the years.

I learned all of this from Wikipedia, not the commentary on our VIP boat trip. I had naively thought that the commentary would provide us with some insight into the geography and history of the area. Silly me. We had two commentators while on the boat. The first was what the Thai people refer to as a lady boy who giggled his way through some bad jokes about opium and, once he realized no one was laughing, sulked and pointed out some casinos. The second was a woman who sang Thai songs to us, like she was doing “a capella karaoke”. It was all very weird.

As for the stop in Laos, we were charged 20 Baht (around 60 cents) for the privilege of wandering through a bunch of stalls selling tourist trinkets from Laos. It was on a small island in the river so there was absolutely nowhere else to go. We were stranded there for 45 minutes.

It’s not that there wasn’t anything to see in the area. In fact, our tour guide spent quite a bit of time highlighting places that probably would have been well worth seeing. For example, we passed a rather stylish large complex that she made sure we all noted, and then explained “That building the Opium Museum. Very interesting!” We didn’t as much as slow down.

After a buffet lunch at a restaurant filled with tourists from bus tours, we drove to a border crossing between Myanmar and Thailand. I still have no idea of any significance of this particular crossing, but I do know that lots of the merchants selling trinkets to the tourists there were also selling black market Viagra and Ciallis for a “very good price”. I know this because we had been dropped there for 30 minutes and the van left to get fuel so I couldn’t just climb in the back and sleep. Instead I had been left to wander amongst the stalls. Apparently a six foot tall middle-aged guy with gray hair walking in a decidedly cramped fashion makes a pretty obvious target for Thai people selling erectile dysfunction medication.

That pretty well sums up the tour, although it did make one final stop at a makeshift traditional village where women with long necks pose for pictures, but I chose to not partake in the spectacle. There were, however, plenty of stalls selling trinkets to keep me occupied while the others went to gawk.

It was probably the worst tour I have ever been on. A more complete waste of my time I have never been subjected to. I can’t over emphasize how horrible it was.

And yet, quite shockingly to me, the other people on the van absolutely loved it. After every stop they piled back in the van laughing and chatting, arms filled full of shopping bags and junk food. Even the sick girl got into the act. They couldn’t have been happier with their choice of tour. It was exactly what they wanted.

A tale of two tours? My two tours certainly were. They were as dissimilar as could be. Yet the experiences of the passengers on the bus tour were just as dissimilar. You might say it was a tale of two tours in one.

Such is the challenge that presents itself when a traveller considers a tour. Even with all the advance preparation in the world, your experience may not live up to your expectations. Not to worry, though. No one back home wants to hear about your wonderful hill trek anyways. It’ll just make them jealous. You really need the odd story about bedbugs or bus trips from hell to keep them interested.

Hmmm… Come to think of it, maybe I’ll book one more tour while I’m here. How bad can it be?

Sometimes It’s Hard to Eat Local

2011-03-17T01:50:00.000-07:00

One of the delights of traveling is sampling the food from the various locales you visit on your journey. At least that’s my opinion. I’m always surprised by the numbers of people who don’t subscribe to this. Tour groups are the worst, opting for food as close to home as possible, although I suppose that can be expected. But what about other travelers who choose to stick with only the familiar? If you’re going to put out the effort to venture half way around the world, wouldn’t you want to at least sample what the locals eat?

Eating where the locals eat is one of the best ways to experience the flavour of your destination. In SE Asia this means eating at food stalls, either along the street or at the market. It can require a bit of an adventurous spirit, but brings you face to face with locals, and isn’t that what travel is all about? My preference is to just dive in with arms waving and fingers pointing, and see how it all turns out. Usually it comes off without a hitch, but sometimes, it can be hard to eat local.

Take today, for example. I spent the morning cycling around Siem Reap, Cambodia, running some errands, and as I was about to expire from the heat and lack of sustenance outside coffee, I spotted a bustling market area. Counting myself lucky I waded through the piles of fruits and vegetables and headed straight for the food stalls. It was midday and the place was alive with locals having lunch. I picked a stall that looked busy and had a series of soupy looking dishes on display. I pointed at a rather innocuous looking one and was directed to take a seat.

And that’s when things got interesting. People in SE Asia are small, and seats at markets and street stalls are accordingly tiny. Westerners are often seen squatting uncomfortably on them, with their knees up around their ears. The people in Siem Reap didn’t look any smaller to me, but judging by the seat they gave me they are the smallest people on earth. I may as well have been sitting on the floor.

Everyone else had the same stool, though, and they weren’t complaining so I did my best to relax and wait for the food. That’s when I tuned in to the racket going on around me. Over and above the usual market din I was in earshot of at least three televisions and a couple of stereos. People in Asia only watch TV or listen to music at one volume – 11! I was being inundated with the dubbed soundtrack to Free Willy, an Asian martial arts flick and as best I could tell a bad horror film (judging from all the screaming). All that, plus duelling Asian “Top of the Pops”. So much for relaxation.

A smiling, nodding woman, not the one I had ordered from, approached with a tray of food strangely dissimilar to that I had ordered. She placed in front of me a plate of rice and a bowl with whole eggs, spinach and meat products. I pointed back questioningly at the stall where I had ordered, a stall which had only vegetable dishes on display, and she continued to smile and nod.

Knuckles Never Tasted So Good!

Accepting my fate, I proceeded to pick through my plate of assorted goodies. It gave the term “mystery meat” a whole new meaning. I’m not sure what animal or cuts the bits with actual meat came from, but they all had knuckles. The other morsels were gristly, tripe filled and/or congealed.

I looked around and noted that everyone else was eating sort of similar stuff, and no one was laughing at me, so figured this was legit. I dumped the whole bowl over the rice and feasted. This proved to be less of a challenge than I had feared. First, I ate whatever meat parts could be broken down, which amounted to about 10% of it. Following that I mushed up the eggs with the spinach (I’m assuming it was spinach), broth and rice and kind of slurped it all down. Other than the bone shards, this was quite easy and surprisingly yummy. Again, no one was laughing at me so I guess I didn’t look too ridiculous. Mind you, Cambodian people are notoriously polite.

About the time I was polishing off my last spoonful, I started to become aware of the unmistakeable aroma of shit. I had noticed wafts of it earlier, but now it was pretty strong and seemed to be getting even stronger. There was no sewerage or toilets around, so I started to worry that I had stepped in something. I was only off by a couple of inches.

Under my table was one of the mangiest dogs you have ever seen, and it had curled up right at my feet. My guess was it had started farther away and inched closer as it realized I was otherwise distracted and wasn’t going to whack it over the head like probably everyone else at the market. Even so, once I saw and smelled it I swung around on my chair (no small feat when your knees are at eye level) and waved frantically for the bill. I had reached my limit.

Ah, the bill – the other reason to eat with the locals. My total for the meal, including two iced coffees with sweet milk, was $2. That’s a far cry from the price in town, by more than an order of magnitude. I felt much better about it as I rode away. Now, the only remaining question is whether my stomach will feel the same way.

My lunch spot, complete with ghoulish TV figure!

Honk If You Love Vietnam!

2011-03-14T02:00:00.000-07:00

It’s there as you first start to wake, lurking somewhere on the edge of your consciousness. It’s been infiltrating your dreams, yet as you stir and open one eye, it’s still present. You pause for a moment to get your bearings and only then does it occur to you. It’s honking. A lot of it.

Still, the morning is yours, and you take your time sipping a cup of tea in your hotel room before starting your day. It’s when you step outside and are enveloped by the sweltering heat (or freezing rain if it’s March in Hanoi…?) and have to immediately step aside to avoid a speeding motorbike, and then avert your gaze so as to not show interest to the three motorbike drivers calling after you. It’s then that it finally hits you. You are in

Vietnam

This isn’t to say that all there is to Vietnam is motorbikes; there’s so much more, like rice. Nevertheless, Vietnam and motorbikes are inextricably connected. The place is full of them, and they’re either honking or being honked at. Take Saigon for example. (No one calls it Ho Chi Minh City except bureaucrats, bankers and foreigners.) The city has between 8 and 10 million inhabitants and almost that many motorbikes. On the average workday, many outsiders (Vietnamese word for people from the outer ‘burbs) come into the city on motorbike, so the number of motorbikes actually exceeds the city’s population by a fair amount. That’s a lot of motorbikes

The rest of the country follows suit. From other large cities like Hanoi, to the remotest village in the mountainous north, motorbikes are everywhere. They are at the center of Vietnamese life, as probably the most identifiable status symbol. Put simply, everyone must have a motorbike. It is considered plebeian to walk anywhere, even just a block down the street, so the Vietnamese ride their motorbikes everywhere

Entire families will ride on a single motorbike, with mom and dad up front, two kids on the back and baby riding the handlebars. Students socialize by riding around on their motorbikes. When they decide to stop, they all just hang out on their bikes before they start them up and move to another location to hang out on their bikes again. I’ve seen everything imaginable being transported on motorbikes, including a full sized couch, large live animals and full grown trees; in rush hour traffic no less. I’ve even had to dodge them in the heart of crowded markets where there didn’t appear to be room for a chicken, let alone a bike.

The abundance of motorbikes leads to some interesting traffic patterns, because even though they dominate the road, they aren’t the only thing on the road. Whether in a city or rural setting, motorbikes have to share the road with trucks, cars, cyclos (bicycles with seats over the front road driven by unscrupulous crooks – a story for another day), bicycles, livestock and, lowest on the totem pole, us pedestrians.

At first glance it would appear that there are no driving rules in Vietnam. Traffic comes across as complete chaos, with traffic lights and road signs being ignored in favour of incessant honking. Take a closer look, though, and there are certain patterns that suggest a kind of underground set of rules. I’ll do my best to explain them as I understand them.

The first rule seems to be that in Vietnam size really does matter. The bigger the vehicle the more damage it could inflict on anything else in its path, so it has the right of way. This results in things like large trucks pulling out into a busy road regardless of red lights, stop signs or children playing.

The second rule is to continually honk if you see another vehicle of any type ahead of you. This rule causes a lot of noise in urban areas, because there are vehicles everywhere. However, it is necessary because it results from a debilitating condition inherent in almost all Vietnamese people, that being the inability to turn their heads. This is true. I swear.

Since they can’t turn their heads, they can’t look to see if someone is coming when they want to pull out into the street, or do a shoulder check when changing lanes. (Who am I trying to kid, there are no lanes in Vietnam. Let’s say they can’t do a shoulder check when they decide to inadvertently swerve back and forth, or decide to exit to the right at the last second when they are way over on the left.) The worst culprits by far are the motorbike drivers, which is surprising because they stand to lose the most if they get hit by a large truck. Despite this, motorbikes are constantly pulling out onto main roads without even a glance to see if anything is coming, and cutting in front of whomever they please.

So the honking rule often trumps rule number one. For example, truck drivers may be aggressive, but they don’t really want to kill anyone. So, even though they are bigger, their only recourse when a backfiring motorbike cuts them off is to lay on the horn. They could run over the imbecile, but the paperwork would be endless. So they send out a warning honk and the motorbike usually clears off to the side. However, once warned the motorbike had indeed better get the hell out of the way because now the truck driver has followed rule number two and can at this stage run the motorbike over without guilt if its honks are ignored. That’s rule number three: if rule number two is ignored, go back to rule number one.

And that’s pretty well it, unless, of course, you’re unfortunate enough to be a pedestrian. Pedestrians are the lowest of the low. If you’re on foot, you’re on your own. Just stay out of the way and hope for the best. This goes for streets, sidewalks and anywhere else a motorized vehicle could be. They’ll warn you with a blaring of the horn, but you had better be prepared to duck into a doorway or dive into a rice paddy because they are not slowing down.

Despite all of this, there seems to be very few accidents in Vietnam. The best I can tell it's the result of all the honking and nothing else. The motorbike drivers may be maniacs that never look anywhere other than forward, and no one seems all that interested in traffic signs, but none of that matters. If someone’s in your way – honk. If you hear honking - get out of the way. It’s as simple as that.

Whatever You Do, Don’t Touch Your People Making Stick: Vietnamese Cooking 101

2011-03-02T08:56:00.000-08:00

What Is Going On Here?

If there’s one thing you’d never associate with my sister and me, it’s cooking. When I want to eat at home I don’t open the refrigerator, I pick up the phone. (My refrigerator is reserved for storing stale dated condiments and booze.) Beth isn’t much better. So what came over us to sign up for a full day deluxe Vietnamese cooking class at a fine restaurant in Hoi An? I blame Beth. Whatever the cause, it’s the reason we showed up bright and early the other morning at a café in the heart of the old town, prepared for the worst.

The Red Bridge cooking school offers two single day classes; one a half day session for folks who are marginally interested in cooking, while the other is an intensive all day affair for master chef wannabes. Beth and I obviously intended to take the half day class, but upon arrival at the meeting place we saw a room full of gray haired, dour faced seniors from Germany. We were not pleased with the prospect of having to spend the next 4 to 5 hours with that humourless lot.

Fortunately, we spotted four much younger folks sitting at a table in a corner having a lively chat about traveling. I strolled over to see what they were doing there in geriatric central and learned that they were the only ones who had signed up for the full day course. Hmmm… A half day with 20 bitter Germans, or a full day with four fun Australians? We didn’t have to think twice.

Herb and Spice Garden

The agenda for the full day course consisted of several stops around town to pick up supplies followed by the class at a facility on the outskirts of town. Our guide Su packed all eight of us (including herself and the driver) into a taxi and we headed to a local herb and spice garden. It was a beautiful setting where herbs and spices have been grown organically for many years.

We strolled through the plots while our guide introduced us to the myriad of flavour accents available to the Vietnamese cook: Asian basil, several kinds of mint, dill, chives (grown for the tourists, the Vietnamese hate the stuff), sawtooth coriander, lemongrass, turmeric… It was quite an astounding array.

“Yum!” one of the Aussie girls exclaimed while taking in the aroma of some freshly crushed Vietnamese basil. “No say yum in Vietnam!” our guide cautioned. “It mean you horny. Even if you horny, not polite to say to Vietnamese people.” Beth and I decided it would be particularly bad form for her or me to use the Y word. The couples could potentially get away with it. But just to be sure between she and I, everything was “tasty” from that moment on.

A Man With Dual Talents

The herb gardens are still watered by hand. An older gentleman was more than willing to show off his well honed technique of filling two large watering cans from a well, then swinging them in unison to evenly water the rows of herbs. My guess is that as soon as we left he lit a butt and picked up a hose. Even so, it was still entertaining all the same.

At the garden’s main house we watched women prepare some Vietnamese specialties, including shrimp and pork rice pancakes, and then we were offered a refreshing mint drink. Our hosts of course didn’t tell us that the little floaty bits were frog eggs until we had all downed our beverages.

NameThat Vegetable

The next stop was a local market where we would load up on food items. Vietnamese markets are similar to those in most other Asian countries. They’re crowded, noisy, open air affairs with yelling vendors competing for the attention of hoards of pushy little shoppers. Everything is on display and in your face, from exotic fruits and vegetables to raw fish and meat (a disturbing amount of which is still alive).

Recently Among The Living

We followed Su through the ramshackle maze of stalls while she introduced us to the various ingredients we’d soon be preparing. We had an introduction to rice noodle making, and were filled in on the finer points of rice paper and rice pancakes. She showed us an incredible variety of exotic vegetables and fruit, the names of which I will never remember. (I was too busy playing a game of “guess what part of the animal that is?”)

None of us had had breakfast, so we were offered a Vietnamese specialty - duck embryos scooped straight from the eggshell. FYI - they look revolting, have assorted crunchy bits, and taste (not surprisingly) like chicken.

Mmmmm! Baby Duck!

We picked up the bulk of our produce from the same woman, leading one of the girls in our group to ask Su how Vietnamese shoppers choose which purveyor to buy from. To us they all seemed to be selling the same stuff. “Simple” she replied. “This woman has nice smile. Looks honest. I buy from her. Don’t buy from that woman. She ugly.” We were learning so much.

Our Torture Chamber

Armed with bags full of herbs and food, we once again stuffed into the taxi and drove to the Red Bridge Restaurant and Cooking School. Nestled amongst exotic ferns and trees along the river, it couldn’t have been located in a more beautiful setting. The open air teaching kitchen was situated next to an inviting swimming pool with plenty of refreshing breezes providing respite from the heat and humidity. If only the whole spectacle didn’t have to be ruined by a cooking class.

But cooking was our focus, so cooking was unavoidable. The menu looked delicious, if not a tad formidable: Hanoi Beef and Rice Noodle Soup, Lemongrass Shrimp Wrapped in Banana Leaf, Clay Pot Fish with Fresh Dill, and Grilled Chicken and Banana Flower Salad. The other students were all amateur chefs and welcomed the challenge. I was looking for a stand-in who never showed.

Yours Truly Making Rice Paper Under Het's Watchful Eye

To ensure that Beth and I would be particularly humiliated by the whole process, we had an instructor whose demeanour was a cross between Julia Childs and Adolph Hitler. Her name was Het and her playful foodie banter was often accentuated by “achtung” like orders to stir more vigorously or pay attention. She’d demonstrate a procedure faster than a carnie doing the pea in the shell game, then hand the implements over to one of the students and slap our hands when we didn’t do it right. Beth and I still have the bruises as proof.

Exotic Foreign Cooking Implements

Stir Faster!

Perhaps Het’s most poignant instructions came after we had all chopped up some particularly hot peppers. We had some pretty lethal firepower on our hands (literally) and she had only our most precious interests at heart. She wasn’t worried about our eyes or anything as rudimentary as that. No, she ordered us all to head straight to the bathroom to wash our hands, and cautioned only the men to “Remember, whatever you do, don’t touch your people making sticks!” I was liking her more and more as the day progressed.

Cooking Goes Better With Tiger Beer!

I liked her even better when after an hour or so she announced “Cooking goes much better with beer!” At that point she unlocked the cooler and the Tiger Beer started flowing. It’s not like I was counting or anything, but I believe the tally was four beers down before noon, and at least seven or eight each consumed before Het realized that she had some serious problem drinkers on her hands and promptly re-locked the cooler.

In the end, the class was a huge success. Our group had tons of fun being ordered around by the cooking nazi, especially when we realized her methods were actually working. Before we knew it, she had us making rice paper and noodles, grinding spices, folding banana leaves and generally emulating Vietnamese chefs like we’d been at it for years.

When it was all over, we sat down to enjoy the fruits of our labour. I’m quite serious when I say it was some of the best food I had during my entire time in Vietnam. Each dish was packed with flavour, something I can’t say for most of the meals I have ordered in restaurants. And those flavours were exquisite; beautifully balanced and absolutely bursting on our taste buds. If the end product was any indication, we had passed our cooking class with flying colours! Now, if only I can remember half of what we learned when I get home so I can replicate it all. Oh well, not to worry. I know there are plenty of Vietnamese restaurants in Vancouver that deliver.

Best Pho EVER!

Best Salad Ever? Probably!

You Call That a Banana Leaf?

Rush Hour on the Mekong Delta

2011-02-26T03:31:00.000-08:00

In stark contrast to the chaotic streets of Saigon, the Mekong Delta provided plenty of opportunity for cycling through rice paddies and little villages. Oh, and meeting new friends, too...

Crossing the street in Ho Chi Minh City

2011-02-21T18:39:00.000-08:00

Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Perth anymore...

Gone are the wide open spaces - beaches without another soul and roads without another vehicle. The laid back attitude of Western Australia is long behind me.

In its place - the semi-chaotic world that is Ho Chi Minh City (still Saigon to pretty well everyone who lives here). There are over 10 million people in HCMC, and as far as I can tell over 20 million scooters and motorbikes. It has taken a while to become comfortable with some of even the most basic tasks that I normally take for granted, like crossing the street, for instance. More thoughts later, but for now, a short video clip just to give you a taste of the sights and sounds involved with getting to the other side of the street...

Who The Hell Did Australia Piss-off?

2011-02-18T02:11:00.000-08:00

Australia is indeed a magnificent country, not only because of its sheer magnitude but its incredible variety as well. I’ve managed to see a lot of it over the last 7 weeks, traveling many miles, meeting lots of people and taking heaps of photos.

My schedule has been pretty wide open, which is just how I like it, but for this journey it simply couldn’t have been any other way. No matter where I’ve visited, I’ve ended up fleeing floods or evacuating before cyclones or running from bush fires. It would appear that Australia is under siege, beset by plagues of biblical proportions, leading an ex-workmate of mine to quite aptly ask “Who the hell did

Australia

piss off, ‘cause they’re sure getting their ass kicked?!?”

Melbourne was a great way to get the trip started; visiting good friends, watching the tennis and keeping a relatively slow pace accented by many “flat white” coffees and a few beers. I also threw in a long weekend in Sydney to visit some of the sights and compare the two cities. The weather was “unseasonably unstable” as my friend liked to say, leading to our cancelling a drive along the

Great Ocean Road

where sections were washed out due to heavy rain.

I lingered longer than planned in the south because next on my agenda was Queensland, which as far as I could tell from the news was completely under water. The floods weren’t directly affecting the Great Barrier Reef, which was my destination, however the cyclones that were bringing all the water most certainly were. So I watched the weather forecast carefully and when about a week long window of sunshine finally appeared between deluges, I flew straight to Airlie Beach.

About a week was all mother nature granted. My signal to fly had been when Cyclone Anthony weakened and headed out to sea. Unfortunately, it sat about 700 kms offshore, brooded for a while, then decided to grow and turn back on Australia. So, while I was on a delightful 3 day / 3 night sailing trip to the outer reef, the captain was carefully monitoring the radar. Not only was Anthony on its way, but just behind was Yasi, promising to be much, much larger.

Even so, the sailing trip was superb, offering awesome snorkeling and breathtaking views of the Whitsunday Islands. One of the highlights was a visit to pristine Whitehaven Beach, an uninhabited coastline with miles of white sand and meandering estuaries. The ripple patterns in the sand were the stuff of impressionist paintings, with schools of rays hanging about to make the whole thing that much more magical. Luckily our group arrived first, because in no time boatloads of backpackers arrived, shattering the picture postcard and turning it into Coney Island. Some Aussie boys even started a game of Australian Rules Football, a rough and tumble bastardization of rugby sure to ruin any good stroll along a deserted beach.

Snorkeling along the Great Barrier Reef wasn’t bad either, as I swam with turtles, marvelled at brightly coloured corals and fish, and came face to face with a white tipped shark. Yet, as soon as our sailing vessel returned to Airlie Beach I had to make plans to flee. Anthony was less than 36 hours away.

It was earlier than I had planned to leave the reef. Next up on my agenda was the coastline of Western Australia, starting with a visit with friends in Perth, but I had a few days before they were expecting me. So I looked at a map and drew a line between Airlie Beach and Perth to see what was in between. It turned out to be about 4000 km of absolutely nothing. Nothing, that is, except for one rather famous large rock sticking out of the desert in what can only be described as literally the middle of nowhere. I booked a flight to Ayers Rock.

(Like in many parts of the world, the name for a location given by European explorers has been changed to the name used by the indigenous people of the area. We see this in my hometown of Vancouver as the signs from the city to the Whistler ski resort are now full of unpronounceable native Indian words, often including the number 7. Today, Ayers Rock is known by its Aboriginal name Uluru. I’m not sure how to pronounce the underlined letter, but when I call it Ayers Rock, travellers look at me like I’m swearing and Australians look at me like family. Strangely, the local airport is still called Ayers Rock, so when someone accuses me of being insensitive to Aboriginals by not saying Uluru, I simply claim to be referring to where my plane landed.)

Uluru is everything you’ve heard and expected, but so much more. It’s an icon that we’ve all seen in pictures, but they just don’t do it justice. It’s magical in its dimensions, colors, and more importantly, its presence.

At the same time, you don’t get labelled as one of the wonders of the world without attracting the odd tourist, and attract them Uluru does – in droves. Sunset and sunrise “viewings” are standing room only, with every language imaginable chattering away in the background. Yet somehow Uluru manages to hold your focus, even when annoying tourists from England are trying to convince the Germans they’ve just met that Wimbledon is so much better than the Australian Open because, “well, it’s just more British, isn’t it?”.

(Sometimes I’m glad I only speak one language. I’m not sure I could handle overhearing any additional inane chatter. Even conversations about Lady Gaga’s nail polish sound exotic in a foreign tongue.)

The desert around Uluru had been receiving much more rain than usual, so the landscape was considerably greener than normal for the season, leading to some stunning photo ops. The rain had also brought an unseasonal explosion of insects and bugs. My ridiculously overpriced room was a bit of an entomologist’s wet dream, especially when turning on the light to head for a late night pee. I eventually decided it was better to just wander about in the dark and not think about the crunching noises under foot.

My wallet couldn’t handle another night at the Ayers Rock resort, so I carried on to Perth. My timing couldn’t have been better. According to the news in Perth, Alice Springs (the closest town to Uluru at a mere 5 hours to the north) and environs had been hit with massive rains. Alice Springs itself had become a swimming pool, complete with unhappy, newly homeless, poisonous snakes.

Perth brought a welcome reprise from the traveling life, as I stayed with friends in the city’s northern suburbs. Mind you, suburbia in Perth isn’t what you might expect. Our days were spent riding bikes to the local beach and having a dip before the surf came up. We’d watch the surfers in the calm of the morning and kite surfers in the afternoon winds. In the evenings we’d barbeque and listen to the various exotic birds sing song overhead. Yup, it was pretty good and not a cyclone in sight.

On the weekend we did what any city folk would, we drove out into wine country and watched polo. Now isn’t that the life - sitting on blankets sipping Sauvignon Blanc and cheering on the ponies?

There was just one small complication. As we looked back over the horse prep area, we couldn’t help but notice large billows of smoke. In fact, we could occasionally smell the smoke over all the horse sweat and shit. We inquired and the landowner informed us that large sections of the Swan Valley were beset by out of control bush fires! Some were quite close, he mentioned in a typically understated Australian fashion, but we were protected by “The River”. Further prying resulted in us realizing that said river was a creek at best, and was located about 100 meters away. We decided that it didn’t look like a very good bush fire barrier to us, and high tailed it out of there.

All told, more than 90 homes were lost to the Perth bush fires, and with polo playing types living in the area, you can imagine the scale of the homes. The premier had declared the area a state of emergency, a concept that seemed lost on our polo pals at the time.

I could tell an omen when I saw one, and decided that was my indication to leave the comforts of the ‘burbs and head out on a road trip. This time my destination was north up the Western Australia coastline, a region resplendent with white sand beaches and turquoise water. I had a rental car, credit card and about 11 days to kill.

I’ll spare you the details as I don’t have the time to write them all down and I know you don’t have the patience to slog through them. However, there were certainly some highlights worth mention:

- the Pinnacles: curious limestone features poking out of sand dunes, absolutely stunning at sunset

- Kalbarri: home to the Murchison River gorge where I joined a canoe trip deep into the canyon to observe the brilliant red cliffs

- Monkey Mia/Shark Bay: a world heritage site boasting some of the only stromatolites remaining on earth (exciting to geologists and no one else) and dolphins that swim into the bay every morning to show off and to be fed (exciting to everyone else)

- Coral Bay/Ningaloo Reef: the world’s largest fringing reef, meaning some of the most spectacular snorkeling and diving in the world is only 30 to 40 meters off shore

Coral Bay actually deserves some elaboration. The town is so small as to not even be incorporated, consisting of some accommodation and minimal services, but it serves as a great access point to the reef. I snorkeled with manta rays, watched sharks get their teeth cleaned by small fish that I dubbed “dental hygienists”, and marvelled at some of the brightest coral I have ever seen.

I planned to spend my last days in Australia at Coral Bay, snorkeling every morning and relaxing in the afternoons when the winds came up. There was just one small problem. On the drive up from Monkey Mia there had been major flooding, with water flowing over the highway in many locations. Each evening I was in Coral Bay, thunderstorms provided brilliant light shows, but also dumped huge amounts of water on the region. Rumours began to circulate that the road, the only connection back to Perth, would soon be closed.

So, rather than be stuck in the North when my non-refundable flight to Vietnam left Perth, I again changed my plans and left Coral Bay a day early. There weren’t as many river crossings on the return trip, but there was one pretty hairy spot. The flood indicator on the side of the road showed a water depth of 0.4 meters and the current was strong. At one point while crossing I could feel the car begin to lose grip and shimmy sideways with the flow. I envisioned my little compact being washed away into the Outback (and me with it), but it managed to find traction and I was on my way.

That’s the benefit of being flexible with travel plans. I had an extra day on my hands, so did a quick flip through the Lonely Planet and decided to drive past Perth to Rockingham, home to about 180 wild dolphins. The attraction to this location is that the dolphins love to play with humans, providing an opportunity to swim with them. It was a glorious way to spend my last day in Australia. The dolphins whirled around us as we swam, squealing all the while (us and the dolphins). As our boat sped back to the dock, they swam along with us, performing acrobatics in our wake. Afterwards, I made a quick stop to visit an island with rare little penguins and then headed for the airport, confident that I had squeezed everything I possibly could out of my last hours in Australia.

While driving to the airport, I heard a weather warning on the radio. Coral Bay was bracing for a cyclone. The community, and many others in the region, were on alert and expected to be evacuated within days. “It figures” I thought to myself. “This country is surely cursed! Everywhere I go there’s been storms, flooding, fires…” And then it hit me – I wasn’t happy to be leaving Australia, but then again, perhaps Australia wasn’t too sorry to be seeing the last of my ass?

You Turn, I Turn, We All Turn!

2011-02-17T06:21:00.000-08:00

Driving in Australia ain’t easy. Trust me. I had to make five u-turns today while driving through Perth. And it isn’t just because they drive on the left side of the road here. That’s actually the least of your worries. Let me explain by means of a few “lessons learned” from my last 11 days on the road in WA.

They hide the road signs. It’s not that they hide all the road signs, only the ones you need. You’ll be driving along the freeway, merrily counting off the kms until the town you want to visit, when suddenly you realize your destination is no longer listed on any of the recent road signs. It turns out that to get to your destination you wanted to exit on Thomas Road. The only problem is, there is no sign to tell you that you need to exit on Thomas Road! It’s only when you’ve already exited and are at the top of the offramp that, if you’re lucky, there’s an arrow pointing you in the right direction. That’s gotta be worth at least a couple u-turns a day.

The road signs are pretty well useless. Even if you are lucky enough to see a road sign, chances are it’s of no use to you. This is because Australian road signs don’t use helpful notations like direction (i.e. North, or South). Instead, they just list off random town names that happen to be in that general direction, and point. The road you’re about to take may not even go to any of those towns!

Even worse, they seem to choose which towns to post in a frustratingly haphazard manner. Your destination may have been good enough to make the previous sign, but what to do at a roundabout where lots of towns you’ve never heard of and can’t see on a map are listed, yet yours isn’t? You eventually make a u-turn. That’s what.

Road numbers don’t matter. You would think that once you are on a road major enough to warrant a road number that you’re pretty safe. However, you would be wrong. Australia assigns lots of numbers to lots of roads. But Australia also reserves the right to remove that number at any time and without warning. It’s not that you missed a turn or anything, the number just ceases to exist. Even more exasperating, half way across the city the number simply reappears! No explanations are given, no excuses made. You simply curse the numbers and make yet another u-turn.

How about street names? See road numbers, but assume even more randomness. Turn around.

You can’t turn left on a red light. Who knew? The officer won’t be very sympathetic either when you tell him that at home in your country you are free to do the equivalent, a right turn, on a red light. This doesn’t necessarily result in a u-turn, but it certainly adds to the frustration.

So there you have it, the main reasons for me having to complete six u-turns today. I know I said five earlier, but I missed my turn driving home from dinner and had to make another one.

Sydney vs. Melbourne

2011-02-03T00:06:00.000-08:00

Sydney and Melbourne: it’s hard to imagine how two cities in the same country, located reasonably close together and in similar geographic settings, can be so different. But alas, how different they are! The causes are numerous, and include history and politics. Yet these are well documented and a little dull, so rather than analyze the why, what follows are my observations as to how.

If Sydney was a high school kid, she’d be the good looking one who excels at everything, from scholastic pursuits to varsity sports. She’s brash, confident and bound to succeed. As if in direct response to Sydney’s clean-cut image, Melbourne has decided to be one of the cool kids hanging out by the smoking doors. With her edgy personality and self-assured funkiness she turns out just fine too, thank you very much.

Opera House

Sydney has the harbour, and oh what a harbour it is! As the saying goes it’s all about location, location, location. Sydney has more waterfront than I’ve ever seen. A tour guide alleged that there’s 56 km of it within the city. Whether true or not (this particular operator regaled us with Whitney Houston, Britney Spears, and Billy Ocean as we toured the harbour, which to me discredits anything they had to say), there’s enough to provide ample opportunity for stunning vistas and seaside activities. And as if the harbour isn’t enough on its own, Sydney has thrown in The Bridge and The Opera House just so there’s absolutely no debate as to who is the fairest of them all.

Melbourne Skyline over the Yarra River

Melbourne has waterfront, too, with much of it quite beautiful. But the city isn’t centered on the ocean; rather the CBD (central business district) has built up around the winding Yarra River. The Eureka Tower is the obvious landmark. Standing 297 m above the banks of the Yarra, it is visible from many miles away and is easily the tallest "inhabitable" building in the southern hemisphere? (A tower in Queensland is taller by means of a radio antenna on the roof. Hardly comparable.) It is the centerpiece of a very pleasant, modern central core where skyscrapers meet bike paths and café culture. Still, no matter what Melbourne’s best efforts could be, as far as location and natural beauty are concerned, Sydney gets the nod.

Central Quay is the hub of Sydney harbour, teaming with charming yellow and green ferries connecting many of the outlying neighbourhoods to Sydney’s CBD. The harbour is a constant coming and going of ferries of all sizes, with the odd cruise ship added to the mix for good measure. The quay is alive every day of the week, with tourists and business types alike, creating the perfect location for street performers and mini-marts that charge exorbitant amounts of money for a 0.5 l bottle of water.

Harbour Bridge from Central Quay

Melbourne’s alternative to the ferries is trams. The entire city is connected by a network of trams that run on tracks down the center of most major roads in Melbourne. Some of the trams are modern, while others date back to the days of wooden slat seats. It’s a comprehensive, if not painfully slow, means of getting about town. The trams have a certain aesthetic appeal, yet my vote would likely be for the ferries - save for one peculiarity resulting from the trams that is completely unique to Melbourne: Hook Turns.

Now remember that Australians drive on the left side of the road, so a right hand turn crosses the path of oncoming traffic. Anywhere else in the world, a right hand turn would be done by pulling into the right lane, or right turn lane, and yielding until it’s safe to turn. But in Melbourne the trams take up the middle of the main roads and they have the right of way. Thus on these roads (and to complicate matters, only on these roads) an alternative had to be devised.

Enter the Hook Turn. Instead of occupying the right lane when they want to turn right, Melbourne drivers pull over to the curb lane and wait until the light turns yellow. At this point, once they determine it’s safe to do so, they crank the wheel to the right and dart through the intersection across all the lanes of traffic. I don’t think I’ve got the nerve to do this as it seems to me there would never be a safe time to dart across 4 to 6 lanes of traffic, not to mention two tram lines, in the middle of an intersection. I would probably either keep driving straight and go somewhere else, or opt for the “three lefts make a right” strategy.

Regardless, because of the funky Melbourne Hook Turn, I call ferries vs. trams a tie.

Eating and drinking in Sydney is done on a large scale. Restaurants tend to be of a very expansive open area style. They’re modern, busy, loud and expensive. It’s that brash confidence coming out. Drinking establishments tend to be the same way. Everything’s a big beer garden. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because when it’s on, it’s on!

Melbourne is all about cool. Restaurants trend towards small bistros, as opposed to Sydney’s sprawling brasseries. Likewise, the pubs and bars in Melbourne are just that, pubs and bars. Large beer gardens are present, but not the norm. Thus, Melbourne’s numerous eating and drinking establishments are generally small and free to try whatever they please. In fact, they need to be unique and creative to attract patrons. This breeds creativity and style, something those kids at the smoking doors seemed to possess in abundance. The result is something that, in my opinion, Sydney lacks; variety. And after all, variety is the spice of dining and boozing. Melbourne is my choice for a meal or libation.

So far we’ve established that both Sydney and Melbourne have their own distinct personalities and inclinations. So who wins, and why?

For me, the winner needs to possess something completely unique that sets them apart, from not only the competitor in this little tilt, but other cities around the world. And for me that thing is Melbourne’s laneways. I don’t know what substance they were smoking at the smoking doors, but it inspired Melbourne to reclaim most of its CBD alleyways and convert them into a maze of pedestrian walkways, lined with shops, cafes, restaurants and bars. Some are posh, others are covered in graffiti, but it all seems to work in a way that brings vitality and energy to the city’s core.

Laneway Art

I’m not saying that Sydney doesn’t have an energy and vitality of its own. It possesses ample individuality amongst its myriad neighbourhoods. Still, so do many other great cities. What none of them have is the laneways. Sydney vs. Melbourne? I say Melbourne.

(Oh, and I almost forgot. Another area that sets Melbourne apart is the live music scene. It’s no secret that I love live music, and Melbourne is full of live music venues. It’s got heaps of small clubs and bigger venues. What do you think the kids at the smoking doors were doing while the other kids played sports? They were in a dark basement somewhere learning how to play guitar. So it only makes sense that Melbourne would have dingy places down grimy alleyways for the bands to play. Melbourne has had a vibrant music scene for years, something that has been strangely absent from Sydney. Nick Cave over the Opera House? In my books, absolutely!)

Full disclosure: Before you think this was a completely unbiased comparison, I must admit to having a number of good friends who live in Melbourne (with whom I’ve stayed with on more than one occasion) while I don’t know a soul in Sydney. If I had chosen Sydney, I’d have never heard the end of it, and would probably have been banned from ever setting foot in Melbourne again! My hands are tied…

Have You Ever Been To Sea, Davie?

2011-01-29T17:00:00.000-08:00

“Have you done much sailing?” asked the agent, “because she’ll be a wee windy out there.” I was in the process of booking a day long sailing trip from Airlie Beach to an uninhabited little island about 45 km offshore. “The sailboat’s a bit small, but the skipper’s really good.”

Now, the extent of my sailing experience has been on small vessels in and around Vancouver, usually on days when there wasn’t enough wind to fly a kite, let alone sail a boat. It was merely an excuse to knock back a few cold ones and putter about. But sailing is what you do in Airlie Beach. It’s the gateway to one of the most famous sailing destinations in the world, the Whitsundays. I booked the trip.

The following morning I met our skipper and his boat. Both had been around for a while. Reg (the skipper) was 65, originally from Holland, and apparently got his initial sailing cred with the Ancient Mariners. His pride and joy is the S. V. Domino, a 36 ft cruiser that he had purchased in Auckland many years prior. Reg had sailed her across the notoriously dangerous Tasman Sea from NZ to Sydney harbour, so he assured us we would easily make the sail out to ominously named Black Island, even in rough seas. Besides, he reminded us more than once, his excursions were now rated number two on Trip Advisor. He wasn’t about to risk that.

The BOM (Australian Bureau of Meteorology) website had forecast windy conditions in the morning, calming off in the afternoon. I’ve been using BOM since I arrived in Australia. So far, the closest it had been to being correct was a day at the Australian Open when they predicted sunny and 30. It turned out to be 19 and rained all day. I was optimistically hopeful that BOM had it right this time, but wasn’t prepared bet on it.

Despite the assurances of both Reg and BOM, I couldn’t help humming the Gilligan’s Island theme to myself, over and over.

After a quick safety discussion, which basically amounted to instructions on how to not fall out of the boat, we were off. Windy it was. No sooner had we departed the protection of the harbour than the winds picked up to 20 knots, regularly gusting to over 30 (that’s ~55 km/hr to us landlubbers). Despite being partially protected from open seas by the Whitsunday Islands, the water was very rough. The wind was blowing against an unseasonably high tide, creating frighteningly large and uneven swells. The two other passengers and I looked back and forth at each other trying to appear calm, which is difficult to do when you’re white knuckling the railings.

Regardless, Reg proved to be a very confident captain. He skipped about the boat trimming sails and performing lots of other sailing-type tasks as if we were on land, all the while regaling us with stories from his life at sea. We were pushing the Domino hard, he informed us, and he wouldn’t have taken us out if the winds were any stronger, but as long as we kept heading forward to the island we’d be fine. That explains why when my brand new, ridiculously expensive, Australian Open hat blew off my head and into the water, it became a sacrifice to the sea gods. There was no turning back.

The same could not be said for when the rope pulling the dinghy snapped. A sailboat without a dinghy is like an airplane without landing gear, and our landing gear was disappearing out of sight behind us. Reg swore and leaped into action. We had to go back for it. We “came about” (essentially meaning we turned around – I’m a sailing jargon expert after my one day at sea) in a less than elegant manner that threatened to toss at least one passenger overboard, and made off in the direction of the dinghy. Reg chose to ignore my request to fetch my hat while we were at it, even after I threatened to leave nasty comments on Trip Advisor.

It was a remarkable display of skill, with Reg managing to steer, grab the raft, tie it up and turn us back around completely on his own. In fact he had ordered us to “sit still and not touch anything”, which was probably to the benefit of everyone involved.

We eventually reached Black Island (the tourist books have started calling it Bali Hai Reef in an attempt to stop frightening travellers) in one piece. We decided Black Island was quite appropriate, all things considered.

Despite the BOM forecast, the wind continued to howl. We had a short go at snorkeling, but couldn’t see much through the choppy murky water. We had our “relaxing picnic lunch on the beach” huddled together in an attempt to block the wind, and still ate as much sand as anything else. We abandoned our “leisurely 2 ½ hours to relax and explore” early and got back on the boat.

The sail back to Airlie Beach was more of the same, but with an exclamation point! Storms had blown into the area, and our route was dotted with dark clouds and rain squalls. When one particularly bad one hit, I thought we were done for. Reg went silent and thrust his jaw into the wind and rain. The others appeared to be praying. I kept repeating “a three hour tour, a three hour tour…”

Shakily sipping beers with the other two passengers at the Marina Pub back in Airlie Beach later that afternoon, we were surprisingly non-challant.

“Great day for sailing, wasn’t it?”

“Awesome time, eh? Would do it again in a second!”

And so on. Still, I can guarantee you that not one of us was having those thoughts when the winds reached 40 knots in the driving rain during our return sail (thanks for the warning, BOM). If not for the efforts of the fearless Reg, the Domino would surely have been lost.

Thanks to Reg for an exciting day at sea. The experience was certainly exhilarating but perhaps not quite as bad as I described, as you will undoubtedly see in the following video clip taken on Black Island.

Random notes from Australia…

2011-01-29T15:44:00.000-08:00

Mullets – Mullets are everywhere. Guys wear them seriously, not for some Movember-like gag. It isn’t just back country hicks, either, but footballers and surfers. I’d do a photo essay, but fear for my life of ever being caught.

El Caminos – Remember the old half car/half truck called the El Camino? Ever wonder where they all went? Here.

Heels – As in the ones on women’s shoes. Impossibly high ones. It’s a phenom I’ve only observed in Sydney (save for a couple of Vietnamese hookers in Melbourne) and is often accompanied by an impossibly short skirt. All the girls are wearing them, for work and leisure. Note to self: there will be extremely high demand for podiatrists in Sydney in about 10 years time.

Classic Rock – At present I’m in a hip little café on the strip in Airlie Beach, surrounded by young backpackers, listening to “Sweet Home Alabama”. This, unfortunately, is not a rare occurrence in Australia. It’s the norm. WTF?

Inane Chatter – Not something restricted to Australia, but prevalent amongst twenty something backpackers from all over the world. Like, I’m not, like, totally against the word “like”, but when it’s used repeatedly while discussing whether or not Kanye West is an asshole even though his music is soooo good, I just have to get up and leave the room (which can be hard if you’re, like, on a 3 day sailing trip). And when did guys start like-ing more than girls? I’m beginning to understand how people like me become old curmudgeons.

$13 pints – Really? $13? For a beer? And you say that with a straight face? (Also applies to $6 small lattes.) Sydney is indeed expensive.

Spiders – Yowza! I knew Oz was famous for the buggers, but you gotta see ‘em in real life to appreciate just how big they are.

2010 - The Year in Music

2011-01-18T20:08:00.000-08:00

My past year in music was all about live shows. Three festivals and a slew of gigs led to a very memorable 2010. As a result, what follows is a bit of a departure from my usual format for the annual year in music review. Instead of a top ten list counting down my favourite albums or singles, this is a brief run-through of my hi-lights from a very busy year in concert going. Along the way I’ll mention some of my favourite releases from the past year.

2010 started “down under”, as in January my buddy Gary and I headed to Melbourne for some Australian Open Tennis, some sunshine, and the odd beer. An extra bonus turned out to be the 5^th annual Laneway Festival. What had started as a few bands playing in the alleyways of Melbourne’s CBD (central business district) has now become a full fledged festival playing all the major cities in Australia.

I was disappointed to learn that 2010’s headliners Echo and the Bunnymen had cancelled due to “sudden illness” (c’mon Ian, you drink a bunch of booze and you get a splitting headache – you should know that by now), but the rest of the line-up was still strong.

It was my first chance to see The XX (whose single “Crystallized” made my list last year), and despite a pronounced lack of stage presence they played an enjoyable set.

I had also been looking forward to seeing buzz band Mumford and Sons, but apparently so had everyone else. The festival grounds were arranged so that each stage had a relatively small viewing area, so it wasn’t set up for every last person in attendance to try and jam into the band’s set. I got close enough to see what I thought might have been the actual stage and heard some muffled Mumford coming through the crowd noise before I gave up and headed elsewhere. Not to worry though, I’d see them later in the year.

It seemed that the Laneway Festival was not prepared for such a large crowd period. They ran out of food by mid day, and with “no ins our outs” we left early. We still managed to see some good performances by Frightened Rabbit, Hockey and Dappled Cities, but missed The Dirty Three and Daniel Johnson.

Back in Vancouver, the concert season got going in earnest when Black Rebel Motorcycle Club hit the Commodore in March. These guys are often dismissed as nothing but Jesus and Mary Chain clones, but I love that band and they hung ‘em up long ago so if someone else is going to step in and carry the torch, more power to them! Their 2010 release “Beat The Devil’s Tattoo” was on heavy rotation in my various music players all year long. A very strong release and an equally satisfying show. I even gave myself a bit of whiplash with all the head thrashing.

The May long weekend has been home to the Sasquatch Festival for a decade now, and 2010’s line-up wasn’t only the best in the festival’s history, it was one of the better line-ups I have ever seen anywhere! I won’t bother listing the bands, but suffice to say I wanted to see almost every one, which led to many scheduling conflicts. If you’re interested, below is a poster from the festival listing all of the acts. Click on it to enlarge and start cursing that you weren’t there.

Sasquatch is held at The Gorge, a natural amphitheatre in a stunning setting along the Columbia River in Washington State. There’s a main stage, two smaller side stages and a DJ tent. This year’s headliners were My Morning Jacket, Massive Attack and Ween. You couldn’t find three more dissimilar bands, yet all put on great shows that kept capacity crowds entertained right to the finish of each night. My Morning Jacket played an extended set of their energy filled anthems, while Massive Attack offered precision renderings of old and new material. (Their new album Heligoland was one of my favourite releases of 2010.) And Ween? Ween was just Ween. Sloppy. Stoned. Awesome!

There were too many great performances to mention, including sets from Laura Marling, Mumford and Sons, New Pornographers, The Hold Steady, Band of Horses and on and on. Two of the crowd favorites from a “get yer dance on” standpoint were Miike Snow and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. The bands are a contrast in styles, with Miike Snow leaning towards pop-synth while Edward Sharpe belts out hippie tinged rock, but both had massive crowds bopping from start to finish.

Many people’s choice for best performance (including mine) came from LCD Soundsystem. Their latest release This Is Happening is undoubtedly one of my favourites from 2010. Their live shows have become legendary, combining James Murphy’s personality and sharp lyrics with unparalleled beats. They had the entire amphitheatre at Sasquatch dancing and screaming along as the sun set behind the stage. Utterly brilliant.

And a shout out to Deadmou5. I’m not an electronica dance guy (hell, I don’t even know what the current terms are for categorizing dance music), but his midnight show was a visual extravaganza. I planned to watch for a song or two, but stayed for the whole set, mesmerized by the visuals and light show while the young kids danced their faces off.

One considerable drawback to the Sasquatch Festival is the accommodations. Your choices are camping, camping or camping. Even though we were in the “VIP” area, it was still over crowded, with line-ups for showers starting at 5 AM and the inevitable disgusting toilets. I’m not sure I’d do it again without a luxury motor home. Still, many thanks to Shannon for bringing along all of the camping gear. Without her I may not have survived!

A striking juxtaposition to Sasquatch is the Austin City Limits festival, held annually in September in Zilker Park, Austin, Texas. Whereas prospects for food and comfort are abysmal when the music ends at Sasquatch, ACL is in the heart of one of the great towns in the US, so the end of a day at the festival is only the beginning.

The 2010 ACL headliners were anything but inspiring. I suppose Muse is bearable, but the jam-band guitar wank of Phish is anything but. And The Eagles? Are they still alive? Those bands couldn’t get me out of bed, let alone thousands of miles away to a festival. Yet that’s the beauty of ACL. The festival is full of other interesting bands to keep you occupied during the day, and when you leave the park, the city of Austin awaits with its great restaurants and bars. Even better, many of the bands do aftershows, providing the opportunity to see them doing a longer set in a small club.

A couple of standouts from this year were Beach House and Broken Bells. I mention Beach House primarily on the strength of their 2010 release Teen Dream, a beautiful collection of atmospheric, dreamy pop. It may very well have been my most listened to release this year. (Either it or the new BRMC – toss up.) Unfortunately, their live performance didn’t quite live up to the album, but hey, the lead singer is a stunning French woman, so how bad can it be? Broken Bells, on the other hand, played a set that was at least as interesting as their strong self titled 2010 release. The album is by the Shins' James Mercer with producer and Gnarls Barkley member Danger Mouse, and it’s a fun if not slightly melancholy pop record. They perform live as a full band, providing for lots of opportunities to stray from the album and mix it up, which they did wonderfully at ACL.

There were a number of repeats from the Sasquatch festival at ACL, plus many other good performances from the likes of The Flaming Lips, The Soft Pack, The Black Keys, Nortec Collective, Richard Thompson, Spoon and many more. Sonic Youth played a loud late night set at a small club, just to round out the weekend with a bold exclamation point.

The fall concert line-up in Vancouver was truly great (including a Black Angels/Black Mountain double bill), but the two shows I’ll finish with happened south of the border in Seattle. The first was Gary Numan (yes, THAT Gary Numan) playing the entire Pleasure Principle at a small club called Neumo’s. Now, most people only associate Gary Numan with “Cars” his electronic hit from 1980, but seeing him live shows that many of today’s artists, from Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson to Moby, owe a lot to Mr. Numan. The man has been prolific over his 30 year career, and many artists claim to have been influenced by his heavy, synth driven style.

His Seattle show was rather appropriately on Halloween night, so an audience that would have already been a bit freaky was downright out there. The concert was full of energy, extremely loud, and had probably the brightest light show I’ve ever seen in a club. And because of that, I must give full kudos to Renee, who only four days earlier had undergone major invasive eye surgery, yet made the trip to see Gary all the same. She is a huge fan and knew this was an opportunity not to be missed. Her Halloween costume was perfect. She dressed as a patient who had recently undergone major invasive eye surgery, complete with hospital blues and eye patch. Probably not the most appropriate interpretation of medically ordered convalescence, but well worth it! Right Renee?

And lastly, a New Years Eve show to remember – X at The Moore Theatre. I am normally Scrooge on NYE, preferring the comfort of an intimate dinner party over drinking bad champagne with hordes of people who otherwise never go out. But it took the coaxing of my buddy Dave to remind me that this was in fact X, with the original line-up, doing their 1980 album “Los Angeles” from start to finish. So, despite the fact that I was leaving the country for six months in 4 days and hadn’t packed or cleaned, and was hosting a party in 2 days, I did what any sane person in my position would do; I hopped in Dave’s car and went to Seattle.

And so the year ended, with me in bliss singing along with John Doe and Exene Cervenka to every word of each song they played. They may be getting older, but those guys will rock into their hundreds. (Mind you, Exene was diagnosed this year with MS, so the days of X shows may be numbered.) They played as hard and fast as they ever have, blistering through “Los Angeles” in about a half hour, followed by an extended set of their greatest hits. A suitable end to an amazing year of live music…

For true X fans only, attached are two videos I took at the show. Apologies for the poor sound and video quality, but you get a sense of just how stoked the crowd was, as was the band for that matter. And if you listen carefully, you just may hear yours truly, as well, in utter ecstasy.

Modern Gadgetry

2011-01-09T22:17:00.000-08:00

Traveling sure has changed since the last time I hit the road for an extended period. Mind you, back then I was a horny teenager jumping from youth hostel to pub across Europe in search of, well, let’s just say Cathedrals weren’t at the top of my list. Today, I’d prefer to experience a better rounded sort of trip, and take the time to remember more of what I see and do along the way. I also want to share my travels with friends and family, so modern travel gadgets for communication are a must.

Still, my selection of travel gadgets as I hitch hiked around back in 1983 was pretty cutting edge. I had a cassette tape Walkman with 5 tapes to choose from (and I can assure you I will never listen to any of those albums ever again), a Canon Sureshot automatic camera with 25 (that’s right, 25!) rolls of slide film, and a six month supply of AA batteries. I was as connected as it gets, which wasn’t much at all, really.

For an example of just how rudimentary communications were back in those “dark ages”, consider what it took for a traveller to call home from Europe. It would start with a trip to the central post office, where the only international phones outside of the major hotels could be found. (You had better have been in a larger center as many of the small towns only provided public access to local phones.) Once inside, the would-be caller was undoubtedly confronted by a long, painfully slow moving line. Getting to the front wasn’t guaranteed, but it also wasn’t the end of the ordeal. The receptionist had to take down the number and transfer it to an operator who would place the call, but only when one of a limited number of phone booths came available. It was often an all day affair!

In my case, being connected when I called home didn’t necessarily assure that I would have the opportunity to speak to my parents. I always called collect, and apparently calls were expensive.

How the world of communications has transformed! I don’t consider myself an overly tech savvy individual, but check out the list of gadgets accompanying me on the 2011 version of Dave’s adventures (along with why I need each item):

· SLR digital camera with 32 GB memory card

o because I can’t carry 5,000 rolls of film and “point and shoot” cameras are for amateurs)

· “point and shoot” camera

o because I’m an amateur

· Flip HD video camera

o because standard video doesn’t cut it any more

· 16 GB iPod Nano

o because I need 7000 songs to choose from

· capsule loudspeaker

o because the people in the next room need to hear “good” music

· quad band Blackberry mobile phone

o because I haven’t been to

Thailand

yet to buy an iPhone

· 500 GB portable hard drive

o because I need the capacity to store an additional 50,000 songs, 2000 movies, and 100,000 photos

· Netbook computer

o to pull it all together and take up all of my time

For a more detailed description check out this video (shot in HD, or course):

Remarkably, all that gear takes up less space than my humble load of gadgets from back in 1983. However, I’ve noticed it does weigh a tad more. Or is it perhaps that I’m a tad older?

On Buying a Netbook

2010-11-18T12:27:00.000-08:00

Rare are the events in life that change everything.

That's a good thing, too, because such radical change can be a pretty traumatic experience. Trust me. I know.

These are the life experiences that result in major upheaval in people's lives; large scale epiphanies that lead individuals to rethink fundamental life choices.
I have recently had just such an experience. My life will never be the same. I bought a Netbook, and everything has indeed changed.

For those of you not in the know (like me until about a week ago), a Netbook is a mini laptop computer. It has all the basic functionality of a standard computer but in a much more convenient size. Some computer weenies turn up their noses at Netbooks claiming that they are insufficient for certain activities like online gaming. However, since I'm not a 15 year old Asian male I suspect I'll be just fine with a Netbook.

After all, my Netbook has a reasonably fast processor, a large hard drive and a bunch of accessories like a web cam so it's perfect for important things like blogging, Facebook, emailing, Skype, managing photos, etc. It has also been "ruggedized", which is supposed to mean that it can withstand a little more rough-housing than your average electronic gizmo. It's a perfect travel companion.

As a result, I am well prepared to turn my back on over 20 years of a professional career and hit the road. I've had a job my entire adult life, but now I've chosen a different direction. Ah the freedom! No more "bored" meetings. No more last minute panic sessions trying to realize additional revenue before month end. No more regular paycheck. (Hmmm. Perhaps I should have thought that one out a little better...)

Regardless, starting this January me and my Netbook are going travelling. We'll be on the road for over six months - seeing old friends, making new ones and visiting an incredible variety of destinations. It'll all be happening here at Dave's Digglings, too. So please feel free to follow along, or better yet, participate! After all, these sorts of events don't come 'round very often.

(OK, truth be known, certain other events have occurred in my life that may have also had some more than minor influence on this new direction. Like, for example, immediate termination of employment from a large multi-national corporation. But hey, it's my blog, and if i say it's all about buying a Netbook, then it's all about buying a Netbook!)

Disposable Music: Dave's Top Ten Tunes for 2009

2010-01-13T17:13:00.000-08:00

Is it just me, or is production a thing of the past? Now, I’m not suggesting that we return to the self indulgent over-produced world of Alan Parsons or anything like that. Good God no! But, did you happen to listen to the 2009 release “Horehound” by Jack White’s latest project The Dead Weather? The sound is appalling! I realize Jack is a fan of sparse production, but the cymbals sound like someone hitting rice paper with a spoon and the recording levels are pushed so high that what should be an ear splitting wall of aural pleasure ends up sounding like the shitty speakers in your Dad’s old K-car. And Jack’s not alone. Bad production seems to be the trend in popular music. What gives?

Well, I have a theory, and it goes something like this: you get what you pay for. Those “masterpieces” from the 70’s cost millions of dollars to produce. Even with today’s advanced recording techniques, some basic sound engineering goes a long way to producing a good finished product. Yet it all costs money, and in today’s digital world music is basically free. Anyone with a kindergarten level understanding of economics knows that you can’t earn a living by investing lots of money in something that you give away. The music industry is no exception.

So I think Jack has it right - throw an album together as fast as you can, screw the production and tour like hell. At least people still pay to see bands play live. And with that, here in no particular order are my top ten tunes for 2009:
(Sorry Jack, I just couldn't bring myself to include The Dead Weather. Great live show, though!)

British Port Authority – He's Frank
How is this not the single of the year? Combine Fatboy Slim’s beats and sense of humor with vocals by Iggy Pop and you’ve got an instant summertime pop classic. Roll down the windows and let the sun shine in!

The XX – Crystalised
The first single from this London quartet (now a three piece) is a perfect example of their dual vocals and indie pop style. Worth the hype.

Atlas Sound – Quick Canal
When I first heard Quick Canal I had no idea Atlas Sound was the solo project of Deerhunter’s (whose Microcastle was on my 2008 Top Album list) lead singer Bradford Cox. Doesn’t matter. Quick Canal is a succulent stunner, with just enough background noise to keep me interested.

Spoon – Got Nuffin
Another great track from Austin’s veteran hipsters.

Modest Mouse – Satellite Skin
Ok, gotta admit, I’ve got a soft spot for these guys. Still, No One’s First… is an EP with as much variety as any of their albums. It’s like they didn’t feel the pressure to create a cohesive album, so just compiled some tracks on a long EP. Works for me.

Animal Collective – Summertime Clothes
Man these guys are weird! Ain’t it great?

School of 7 Bells – Wired For Light
Twins! What more can I say?

Fever Ray – When I Grow Up
Has anyone ever heard of a Swedish band called “The Knife”? Me neither, but all you ever hear about Fever Ray is that it’s a side project of The Knife’s lead singer. Regardless, after listening to the album Fever Ray, I’m afraid for her two children. Very afraid. This is dark stuff.

Cymbals Eat Guitars – And The Hazy Sea
They do a pretty good job of filling a very large hole that was created when Pavement ceased to exist. “And The Hazy Sea” opens their debut as well as Stephen Malkmus could have ever hoped.

Kasabian – Underdog
Got their groove back on this one, sorta. Sounds like the boys are still popping pills, which is a good thing for us.

A Place To Bury Strangers - Lost Feeling
Nothing new here, but thank god someone out there still makes music with loud fuzzy guitars and distorted vocals. The Jesus and Mary Chain would be proud.

Obits – Milk Cow Blues
Nothing new here either, but thank god someone out there still likes to rock. April Wine would be proud.

Now, for those of you who were counting, that is actually twelve tunes, not ten. Let's call it "Dave's Top Ten Tunes Plus Two for 2009". And, as a reward for those of you who have been patient enough to read all the way to the bottom, here's a link to where you can download each of these fine tracks for your listening pleasure: http://www3.telus.net/public/diggling/ . (Download the zip file DigglingMash2009, unzip, and enjoy!)

Singles Going Steady

2009-02-03T20:48:00.000-08:00

Hey Everybody,
Interested in hearing some of the best songs from 2008? Well, download the following file and treat yourself to 18 of the finest tracks from the past year:
http://www3.telus.net/Digglings/DigglingMash2008.zip

editor's note: I had written a clever introduction for this post which included a list of the tracks, but in my rush to bring it to you, I managed to lose it in cyberspace. So instead, it's short and sweet for today's post. Enjoy!

A Year of Great Songs: Dave’s “not-exactly” Top Ten List for 2008

2008-12-31T14:02:00.000-08:00

The past year in music saw releases from a wide variety of artists in all genres. From newcomers like MGMT and Vampire Weekend to veterans such as Alejandro Escovedo and Beck, there were plenty of new songs bouncing about between my ears. 2008 was indeed a year of great songs.
However, 2008 presents me with one slight problem. My annual Top Ten list is for albums, not just songs. I like to recognize artists for compiling an entire record (is that word still relevant?) of songs that works as a whole from start to finish. Listening to an album is all about appreciating the artistry of a musician or group of musicians, experiencing the ebb and flow of emotions that they have captured for your senses and enjoyment. Repeated listens become like a visit with an old friend.
For me, this was a rare occurrence in 2008. I found myself all too regularly hitting the “skip” button to avoid certain songs, or even more commonly I’d listen to my favorite two or three tracks and skip the rest of the album. Great songs, but a great album? Not so much…
This year’s list has been adjusted accordingly. I’ve divided it between “great albums” and albums with “great songs”. And as if that wasn’t enough, I’ve thrown in an extra category “just because”. Enjoy!

Great Albums – the Top 2:

The Seldom Seen Kid by Elbow
The boys from Manchester have most certainly hit their stride. Guy Garvey’s smoky vocals are once again at the forefront of the band’s self described “prog without the solos” style. Hands down my album of the year. The critics apparently agree as The Seldom Seen Kid is this year’s recipient of the Mercury Prize – the annual award for the best in British music.

The Golden Hour by Firewater
Returning from an extended trek through Thailand, India, Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia (which he chronicled on his blog Postcards from the Other Side of the World), lead singer and mastermind behind Firewater Tod A has used recorded music from his travels as the backbone of the very world wary “Golden Hour”. The combination of a Joe Strummer-like lyrical style with such influences as Klezmer and Indian wedding music results in perhaps the most satisfying “socially conscious” record since the early Clash.

Great Albums – the rest:

Microcastle by Deerhunter
Deerhunter have abandoned their uneven experimental noise from the early 2000’s for a fuller, more accessible sound on Microcastle. The release has been criticized by their hardcore fans for being too pop oriented. I say lighten up hipster snobs and enjoy this blissfully melodic breakout release!

Jean Lee & the Yellow Dog by Ed Kuepper & the Kowalski Collective
The grandfather of Australian rock has been silent for a few years. But finally, there's this ambitious loose concept album, based on the only hanging of a woman in Australian history, in 1951 of prostitute/alleged murdered Jean Lee. Long, varied, constantly and effectively surprising and involving, it's just plain fabulous.

Rook by Shearwater
Wow! How much emotionally charged songwriting can you fit into a 38 minute record? The answer lies in Shearwater’s expansive “Rook”.

Real Animal by Alejandro Escovedo
Ok, perhaps not a perfect album, but Real Animal stands as testament to one of music’s most underrated performers. From his early days with punk pioneers Rank and File (when he lived alongside Sid and Nancy in NYC) through to a recent battle with Hep-C, Alejandro has written an extensive catalogue of music straddling a wide variety of genres. This album pays homage to his past, and looks forward to a brighter future as the world seems to have finally caught on.

Great Albums – honorable mentions:

Mission Control by The Whigs
Guitar based indie-rock, for those who like it served straight up.

Attack and Release by The Black Keys
Nothing new here from the Keys, just another satisfying blues romp. What’s wrong with that?

Albums with Great Songs:

Consolers of the Lonely by The Raconteurs
To be honest, this should be in the great album category because it really is pretty strong throughout. Jack White has taken over the band, and Consolers is full of his characteristic riffs and screeches. It also casts a nod to some of Jack’s influences (most notably Led Zep) and boasts some musical diversions not seen on the band’s first effort. However, there are a couple of songs that I can only describe as absolute stinkers, and am never able to get through. Thus, the skip button comes into play every time. Sorry Jack.

The Very Sexuals
Delicious Bowie-like harmonies abound on this rookie release from Holland’s Very Sexuals. It’s too bad they only keep it up for the first three songs. Still, the album can be downloaded for free from their MySpace page, and for those three songs it’s well worth the effort.

Oracular Spectacular by MGMT
In 2008 these new darlings of the indie circuit have gone from playing half empty bars to sold-out arenas, all on the strength of Oracular Spectacular. It’s well worth the hype, containing perhaps the single of the year (a toss-up between “Time To Pretend” and “Kids” – you decide which is better).

Vampire Weekend
They’ve spent the year battling it out with MGMT for the most hyped band of 2008. I still love “(Who Gives a Fuck About an) Oxford Comma” (how brilliant is that?), but found the rest of the album lost my interest after only a couple of listens.

Feel Good Ghosts by Cloud Cult
In a year without a release from the Flaming Lips, at least we have Cut Copy. (What’s that? There was a Flaming Lips release? Who knew?) Like The Lips, Cut Copy is all over the map, with sometimes theatrical extravaganzas, other times simple ditties. Hear both on “When Water Comes to Life” from Feel Good Ghosts. I’m listening to it now, and have stopped typing so I can lead the orchestra.

Exotic Creatures of the Deep by Sparks
Included here solely on account of the Queen-like harmonies and laugh-out-loud funny lyrics of “Lighten up Morrisey” and “Photoshop (Me Out of Your Life)”.

Modern Guilt by Beck
Not up to his usual standards, yet Modern Guilt still produced two of the best songs from 2008 – “Gamma Ray” and “Profanity Prayers”.

Album Title of the Year:
When Life Gives You Lemons You Paint That Shit Gold by Atmosphere

Civilized Wilderness – Sea Kayaking in Sechelt Inlet

2008-08-20T18:17:00.000-07:00

To some, embarking on a three day kayak trip into unpopulated areas of British Columbia’s west coast would be considered a rugged backcountry experience. To others, it’s simply another excuse to eat and drink exorbitantly, while providing just enough physical exertion to be categorized as an outdoor activity. I’m most certainly in the second group, as demonstrated by our kayak excursion this past weekend.

Now don’t get me wrong, the BC coastline is home to many wild animals and the chances of encountering a bear are pretty good. The closest shower and electrical outlet are many miles away, and (thankfully) there is no mobile phone coverage. You don’t have to go far to be pretty remote.

However, traveling by kayak provides one distinct advantage over more traditional back country options such as hiking, and that advantage is storage. So, despite the remoteness and somewhat rudimentary means of getting there, the kayaker can bring along a reasonable array of creature comforts. For me, those comforts revolve around food.

Before you write me off as a complete sloth or nut bar, tell me how this sounds? After a day of paddling in clear water surrounded by mountains and forests, you return to camp for a cocktail and appetizer. Then, as the sun sets you recline against a log on the beach and enjoy a glass of wine while brilliant colors dance across the sky. As darkness approaches, it’s time to light a fire and prepare a gourmet feast. You eventually retire to your tent with a belly full of fine wine, and slip into a deep sleep to the soothing sound of waves lapping against the shore.

Not so crazy after all, huh? I call it “Civilized Wilderness”, and even though I’m bound to hear loud protests from the extreme sports crowd, I’m convinced there is no better way to experience nature.

On our weekend we paddled with dolphins, saw countless jellyfish and multi-colored starfish, and stared in awe at some stunning scenery. We also swam in the surprisingly warm ocean at a number of uninhabited beaches. Meanwhile, we enjoyed cool late afternoon Gin and Tonics, lightly seared sushi grade ahi tuna, melt in your mouth tenderloin, a variety of spicy Indian curries, assorted grilled vegetables and even brownies with steamed milk and Bailey’s Irish Cream. Not to be overlooked were beautiful bottles of wine to accompany every course.

Good friends, great food and stunning scenery! Indeed, what more could one want?

Iqaluit Bound: A Photographic Venture Into Canada's Arctic

2008-04-30T20:03:00.000-07:00

The bumper sticker said it all. I certainly wasn't in painfully PC Vancouver anymore. I had embarked on a journey into a world so different from my own it's hard to believe it's still in the same country. Mind you, this is Canada after all, and you can travel a long, long way without crossing an international border. It took me longer to fly to Iqaluit way up in Canada's northeast than it would have taken for me to fly to Bali. That's far.

What follows are a few snapshots from my trip accompanied by some impressions from this ice-covered wonderland.

The first thing that hits you as you step off the airplane is the cold. My flight was greeted by temperatures dipping below -20 Celsius, and winds gusting over 50 km/hr. The conditions were such that the plane was forced to stop on the tarmac about a two minute walk from the terminal. Seasoned northern travellers are prepared for such occurrences by keeping their winter clothes on board as carry-on. I walked to the terminal in my light sweater and t-shirt, shivering and cursing the entire way. By the time I got inside, my right eye had frozen completely shut. My guess is that the locals were mocking me by loudly discussing how wonderful it was that spring had finally arrived. I kept my mouth shut and attempted to defrost my face.

The sun does shine in the Arctic (quite often, in fact), and when it does the stark beauty of the place is stunning. Shown here is Iqaluit from the neighbouring village of Apex, looking across Frobisher Bay. Mind you, without the clouds the temperature drops. It was -34 one deceptively sunny morning.

The ocean freezes in the northern winters, and the combination of tides and wind results in an incredible mish-mash of broken ice, with striking, twisted shards forming beautiful modern sculptures.

Nature isn't the only artist in the north. The Inuit people are famous for fine soapstone sculptures. This carving of a traditional hunter was perched atop a traditional weaved basket, and fetched a whopping $3,000 at an auction I attended.

Other indigenous art includes fashion, utilizing local furs such as seal, caribou and polar bear. These would probably not be practical in rainy Vancouver, as persons wearing such fashion would immediately be shot by someone who lives between Commercial and Victoria Drives.

Still, Lord knows how I love to shop, so I picked up two of these outfits...

The north also presents some startling contrasts, and with that some difficult social issues. On the left is the first Hudson's Bay trading post in the region, established on Frobisher Bay in 1620. It's quite remarkable that western explorers came to these harsh environs that long ago. But what's even more awe inspiring is that the Inuit people had called this rather uninhabitable land home for many previous generations.

The resulting meeting of cultures has not been a smooth one. Today, Iqaluit is the land of snowmobile cadavers, like the one shown on the right. The town boasts two snowmobile dealerships, and no snowmobile service centers. The locals have no need to service them. The government buys the Inuit new ones every two years so the machines are basically driven until they stop, then abandoned.

Amazing what a government will do to try and make up for the sins of the past.

And so Iqaluit evokes a wide variety of emotions along with its barren landscape and occasional discarded tire...

...or boat left to the mercy of the ice.

The conditions are pretty harsh for any living creature, including the dogs and crows...

...although I certainly wouldn't want to be a local polar bear!

Even so, there's still time to play some outdoor recreational sports, like hockey and basketball.

Where does it all lead? Hopefully not here!

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Kopite Scorned

2008-02-20T17:27:00.000-08:00

Sports fans are an unruly lot. Poke your head into a sports bar during pretty well any sporting event and you’re likely to witness all sorts of rowdy behavior. From yelling at the plethora of TV screens and constant “high fiving” (a predominantly North American trait), to swilling and spilling beer, the sports bar crowd is a unique, primarily male microcosm of our society. And, it is just such a mob that I found myself firmly planted amongst for hockey viewing yesterday evening.

It all started harmlessly enough. A couple of buddies and I met up after work at a downtown Vancouver sports bar to down a few pints and take in a Vancouver Canucks telecast. There were several hockey games on the various screens, and plenty of people on hand to cheer on all the different teams. In typical Canadian fashion, there was some polite competitive jawing going on between fans sporting an assortment of jerseys, but it was all in good fun.

However, as the evening progressed I couldn’t help but notice an increasing number of another sort of jersey. Unlike the pullover style hockey sweater, these jerseys had collars, and all of them were red. That’s when it dawned on me: red means The Reds, as in the Liverpool Football Club. It’s mid-February, and the second round of the UEFA Champions League is just getting underway. The bar was most certainly filling up for an international football match, which on a world scale far outweighs the significance of a hockey game.

Still, I was puzzled because the matches are played at night in Europe, which means the live broadcast in Vancouver should be at mid day. One member of our table turned out to be a fellow from Liverpool (I suppose I should have known by his flipped-up collar and, well, accent…), and he explained that he had been in the same bar earlier that day to watch Liverpool take on arch rival AC Milan. He was now back in the bar to watch the rebroadcast of the same game. He also pointed out a few “blokes” who had watched it with him, but had remained in the bar since that time. They also planned to watch it all over again, provided that they could keep their heads up off the bar. Such is the dedication of the average football fan.

As such, football fans, especially the English, are a whole breed apart from hockey fans. You’ve probably heard the term “English football hooligan”. It is more or less interchangeable with the term “English football fan”, and refers to an unbridled passion for a specific club (and the English national team) as well as a general state of drunken disorderliness. English fans are notorious for violence at matches both home and abroad, and as a result have actually been barred en masse from attending World Cup games involving their beloved English squad. Liverpool fans, who refer to themselves as “Kopites”, are some of the least reputable, as displayed in the 1985 European Cup final against Juventus F.C. where they essentially killed 39 Italian supporters.

Which brings me back to the sports bar last night, and the growing presence of red clad Kopites. Our pal from Liverpool felt quite at home, especially since he already had 5 pints or so under his belt and posses the prerequisite accent. Meanwhile, my buddy Gary and I were starting to feel strangely outnumbered by Liverpool football “fans” in our hometown establishment. So when we looked up from yet another deep hockey oriented discussion to see our pal chatting with a rather large, crooked nosed skinhead in a red jersey, we wanted to do our best to fit in. Since he was sitting right next to the guy, Gary put on his best face, stuck out his hand for a shake and exclaimed “Hey buddy, nice win today!”

Just like that, our lives were in grave danger. Well, not necessarily mine, but most certainly Gary’s. I had some lesser sort of guilt by association, but Gary had committed a mortal sin.

Almost immediately, this massive Kopite dropped Gary’s hand and slowly backed away. His face grew redder and the veins in his skull began pulsating to the extent that I was sure they would soon explode. He glared unflinchingly at Gary as his mouth began to froth a little around the corners.

“Why you f*ckin’…!” he began before his voice trailed off.
Finally, after much hyper-ventilating, he thrust his chin forward and shrieked, “I’m going to kill you!”
He then turned on his heels and charged off to a nearby table where he started gesticulating wildly to a group of red jerseys, occasionally turning back towards our table and pointing at Gary while nodding menacingly.

Unbeknownst to us, the fellow had just been telling our pal from Liverpool that he had gone to great lengths to get through the entire day without learning who had won the match. He was just about to sit down and watch it with his mates who had all accomplished the same feat.

But fate was not on his side. Gary was. And his perfectly orchestrated plans had been dashed right before his now glazed eyes.

An idle death threat, you ask? Something not to be taken seriously, perhaps? Well, maybe you should pose that question to certain Italian families? I for one wasn’t sticking around to find out. A woman scorned has nothing on a Kopite burned, and I was headed for home before this one unleashed his fury.

Oh, and if you’re curious, I did receive a text from Gary this morning, so I’m assuming he survived the ordeal. In the end, if I know Gary, he probably had them all charmed in no time, and has been invited to join in with them for the airing of the next match. Just like a Liverpool fan, Gary never seems to walk alone.

Confessions of a Sports Junkie

2008-01-25T15:30:00.000-08:00

Sport - a particular activity (as an athletic game) so engaged in
Junkie - a person who derives inordinate pleasure from or who is dependent on something

Thus defined, a sports junkie would be an individual who is mad about playing sports. In terms of physical and mental health, this generally wouldn’t be considered such a bad thing.

In our society, however, the term has morphed into a description of an individual who is mad about watching sports, primarily on TV. A sports junkie is therefore some sort of extreme sports fan, as in fanatic.

Fanatic - marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion

One could certainly draw into question both the physical and mental health of just such a specimen. (For those interested in carrying out any scientific study, I would recommend doing so on February 3, when essentially the entire male population of Sports Junkies will be glued to their televisions and couches, gawking in awe at the Mecca of all Sports Junkie events – The Super Bowl. The much rarer female Sports Junkie may also be present, although sitings of the female are scarce indeed.)

I’ve never really thought of myself as a Sports Junkie, although a number of my close friends, especially my sister, would beg to differ. My thinking has been that I actually have other hobbies and activities that keep me occupied, so my entire life is not spent in front of the tube watching sports. In my mind, that makes me a casual sport watching enthusiast.

That said I’ve been known to watch 3 NFL football games in a row on a Sunday. Regardless of the fact that this is done as part of an exclusive “Haute Cuisine NFL” club, where we consume high end food and drink and discuss politics and philosophy while cheering on the Seattle Seahawks, some would say this makes me an addict, and thus a Sports Junkie. My sister finds the behavior appalling and in need of an intervention. I find it charming, amusing and quite, well, normal.

Nonetheless, an event occurred last night that I’m afraid leaves no doubt in the great Dave-as-Sports Junkie debate. For last night was the Men’s Semi-Final at the Australian Open. (That’s a tennis tournament for those of you not in the know, one of the four major annual tournaments). It promised to be a memorable match, with Roger Federer, the world’s number 1 player, taking on his most likely eventual successor at that lofty designation, Novak Djokovic.

Federer has been number 1 for as long as anyone can remember, but Djokovic has been closing in on him; beating him in some minor tournaments, and challenging him at several majors. Last night’s match promised to be something special, and I was determined to watch it – live.

There was just one small complication. The Australian Open is held in, where else, Australia (Melbourne, to be exact). I live in Vancouver, Canada, where the live feed started at 12:30 in the wee hours of the morning. If I were a sane person, a “non-fanatic” as it were, I would have set the VCR and watched the match at some reasonable hour over the upcoming weekend.

But a true aficionado of sport is not satisfied with day-old product. No, a true fan needs to see the match as it happens, with no chance of finding out who won prior to watching the events unfold. It’s almost as if the knowledge that the combatants are actually engaged in competition as you watch means that you’re a part of it. Sure, you’re half way across the world as you jump and scream during set point, or gnaw your nails to the bone during a third set tie breaker, but that’s the excitement of watching sports on TV when it’s live. Doing the same to a taped version of the same event would just be silly. Right?

So last night as I went to bed around 11, I set the alarm for 1 AM and promptly fell asleep. It was rather difficult to shake off the cobwebs when the alarm pulled me out of a deep sleep, but I managed to find the match on TV and propped myself up to watch history unfold.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the five set marathon match I expected, but rather was a three set dismantling of the world’s number 1 by his younger opponent. There was some great tennis, but in the end, it was no contest. Djokovic had prevailed in less than three hours and the clock had yet to strike 4 AM. This was in its own way good news, because it meant that I could squeeze in another three hours of shut eye before my alarm would go off a second time, signifying it was time to get up and head to work. My late night sports watching plan didn’t seem so crazy after all.

There was just one small unforeseen problem. After the match I couldn’t sleep. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself otherwise, I was wide awake. Consequently, instead of merrily snoring away for the few hours I had left to do so, I all but finished reading Billy Bathgate, channel surfed and essentially watched the clock slowly march on towards dawn...

Thus, I am here before you to admit that, in certain cases and according to some people’s interpretation of the definition, I am indeed a Sports Junkie. I must be. The dark, puffy circles under my sunken eyes are a telltale sign, as is the incessant shaking of my hands and the odd head twitch I seem to have developed. My co-workers have been whispering about me all morning over at the water cooler. And, as with many other addictions, it has led to harder stuff. I’m currently on my third double espresso of the day. Sports Junkie, meet Coffee Junkie!

Dave's Top Ten for 2007

2007-12-17T10:20:00.000-08:00

Wow! 2007 – What a great year for music! Paring down this year’s releases to ten titles was indeed a chore. After much deliberation, I used the “heavy rotation” method, which simply means I chose the albums that spent the most time in my CD player and on my iPod. The ten that made it to the top are listed below. A few of the releases that almost made the grade follow.
Here goes:

But wait, not so fast. First, an oversight from 2006 that deserves mention.
Bobby Bare Jr.'s Young Criminals Starvation League - The Longest Meow
The son of a country legend, Bobby Bare Jr. has a long and uneven catalogue, but with The Longest Meow, he has produced an offbeat, country tinged, heartfelt masterpiece. (OK, not quite a masterpiece, but it deserves a listen!)

Now, on with the main event!
The 2007 Top Ten (in no particular order…)

Blanche - Little Amber Bottles
The ultimate “evil twang” album. Film noir meets alt-country in a most tasty way.

Shearwater – Palo Santo
Rerecorded, repackaged and re-released for 2007, this sadly overlooked release from last year sounds even better now. Soaring tortured vocals, art house instrumentation – certainly not background music.

The White Stripes – Icky Thump
Clapton is God? Sorry Eric. Jack White IS God.

PJ Harvey – White Chalk
PJ strips it down to produce a haunting, keyboard dominated release. Best listened to well after dark by candlelight.

The National – Boxer
PASTE magazine’s top album of the year could very well be mine, too.

LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver
Hey North American Scum! James Murphy’s beats will have you dancing long into the night.

Great Lake Swimmers - Ongiara
I never thought anyone could “out folk” Iron and Wine, but Tony Dekker et al have done just that. In a word – gorgeous.

Eddie Vedder – Into The Wild
It appears Eddie has grow’d up, and we all benefit. A smart, mature effort highlighted by an incredibly addictive cover of Indio’s “Hard Sun”.

Oakley Hall – I’ll Follow You
NY’s Oakley Hall (Papa Crazee from Oneida) have released their finest country-rock-hoedown to date.

Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
The most accessible album yet from Austin’s indie darlings. They have all it takes to break into the mainstream, from tight edgy grooves to an extremely charismatic front man (Britt Daniel), but do they really want to?

Honorable Mentions:
Grinderman (Nick Cave)
Caribou – Andorra
Lee Hazlewood – Cake or Death (album title of the year)
Low – Drums and Guns
Queens of the Stoneage – Era Vulgaris
The Purrs – The Chemistry That Keeps Us Together
Heavy Trash – Going Way Out With Heavy Trash
Soundtrack – I’m Not There (Dylan Covers)
The Twilight Sad - Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters

Airbound Again: Random Musings from Columbus

2007-12-06T12:39:00.000-08:00

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is a metal detector. It therefore detects METAL. If you are wearing, carrying or otherwise have anything on your person that IS metal, it will detect it."
Yes, certainly patronizing, but then again, surprisingly effective!

You know you're flying a low cost airline when their slogan is "Hungry? Thirsty? Bring cash."

When was the last time the national security level, as designated by the Office of Homeland Security, set to something other than "orange"? I fly a lot, and I don't recall if there even are any other colors. As we are constantly reminded by annoying loudspeaker broadcasts, the orange designation indicates a "heightened" level of security due to an increased "threat". However, they neglect to elaborate on the exact nature of this threat, choosing instead to implore us to report any "suspicious activities" to airport personnel. Are we destined to remain in this state of orange for ever? I pine for the good old "mauve" days...

You know you're flying a low cost airline when they wait until your scheduled departure time has passed before informing you that your plane will be delayed by at least an hour.

I like Christmas carols.
This may come as a bit of a shock to you, given my track record of general disdain towards many of society's norms and traditions. But don't worry, it came as quite a shock to me, too. Let me explain.
As I sit in this airport waiting for a delayed departure, my fellow passengers and I are being inundated with Christmas music. Now, my first reaction to this invasion of my privacy was in keeping with my usual conditioned response to all things pertaining to Christmas, or as I prefer to call it, the greatest display of rampant unbridled consumerism known to mankind. This would explain the sneer on my face as carolers sang of mistletoe.
However, moments later as my thoughts wandered elsewhere, I was surprised to notice that a smile had appeared on my face. Upon further investigation I realized that the smile had nothing to do with something humorous, or was the result of some cute girl smiling at me (remember, I'm in an airport in Columbus, Ohio and school is out - any cute girls have left the state). No, the smile was the result of the Christmas Carols and there was nothing I could do about it.
"But why the smile?" I asked myself. "I hate Christmas Carols!"
Or do I? It's true, I really dislike Country stars crooning away about Bethlehem, and could certainly live without another Norman Rockwell styled muzak interpretation of a holiday standard.
But, the truth of the matter is that Christmas Carols make me think about my mother, and she LOVED Christmas, carols included. My mother was a woman who started planning for Christmas in February, and was buying little thoughtful gifts for people each year before spring had even sprung! And Mom loved to hum and sing along when Christmas carols started playing on radios and in malls (and probably in airports, too). They made her happy, and brought back memories of her family.
So, for this moment, I'm happy, too. And it's because of the memory of my mother, and yes, because of Christmas Carols.

2010 Olympic Mascots from Hell!

2007-11-27T15:27:00.000-08:00

It was a very big day up here in Vancouver, host city to the 2010 Winter Olympics, for today was the day our esteemed Olympic organizers announced the official Mascots! That's right, just like every Wal-mart has its greeters, every Olympics have their Mascots.

For the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary it was the unforgettable "Hidy" and "Howdy", cowboy hat wearing polar bears that were conveniently mass produced into cuddly little stuffed toys for all the delegates to expense and bring home to their children. Sheer marketing brilliance!

Not to be outdone by our fellow Canadian Olympic city to the east, the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver will have not one, not two, but three official mascots…and a marmot friend named Muk-Muk.

Each of the critters has a "west coast" feel. Miga the "sea bear" is a combination of an orca whale and the Kermode spirit bear. (What the...?!?) Quatchi's a sasquatch and Sumi is a mythical thunderbird spirit who loves to snowboard. Their side-kick is a marmot named Muk-Muk (thankfully not pictured here).

I can't say I've ever been more embarrassed to be a Vancouverite. Those "things" are absolutely horrific and we are so PC it's ridiculous. By trying to include every possible ethnic and spiritual group represented in BC we have created characters that are so ugly they will frighten small children!

But maybe it's not too late. Maybe we can quickly rescind those abhorrent characters and replace them with a single, all encompassing mascot that not only represents every PC cause we can think of, but also provides ample cuteness for the obligatory stuffed toy market.

And, of course, far be it from me to pass up an opportunity to make a suggestion. Here goes...

Let's scrap Miga, Quatchi, Sumi, (the damn Marmot, too), and produce a character that makes us all proud!

Yes, the new mascot should encompass:
West Coast Indian art,
Indian spirituality ('cause you just have to),
Japanese "anime" characters,
an Indian (from India) God or two,
some sort of Chinese letters,
a cutesy bit of West Coast pagan folklore (Sasquatch is good, Ogopogo would have done, too),
an Orca (what could be more West Coast, maybe a whale with eagle's wings?),
and most importantly we should stuff a joint in it's mouth to represent the true spirit of West Coast winter sports!

Now wouldn't that be much more applicable and child friendly?

And finally, maybe we could name our little beast something like, oh I don't know, how about Dave?

Who lives longer and why?

2007-10-26T16:53:00.000-07:00

Discussion Topic Number 2: Article in the Economist claims that females live longer than males because males use up all their energy attracting, competing for, and hanging onto their women. That's the way it is in the animal kingdom, the article suggests, so that's gotta be the reason for the same in the human race. My response to a friend who sent me the article follows. Anyone else have anything to add?

So, the point is that women live longer than men because men use up all their energy chasing, and keeping, their women?!?
Apparently that's what we have learned by studying the animal kingdom, although for this specific subject animals represent an imperfect test group. Thus, the leaders of the study discussed in the economist feel that to prove the hypothesis they need to take those lessons learned from the animal kingdom and apply them to a test group that generally dies of old age, namely us. If humans show a trend whereby women outlive men, then it is somehow inverse proof that this is a relic of our animal ancestry.
Hmmm...
To prove their hypothesis scientifically, the next step should be to look at specific subsets of our human test group. We should compare generations of men who have married early and lived family life without much challenge (with respect to "defending" their women) from society, to generations of men who remained single longer, competed for a fair number of partners and so on. If there is a definitive age discrepancy between these subsets, then we may have something to help support their hypothesis.
Still, my guess is that in both groups men would still die younger, and at about the same average age. Why? Well if it's strictly a matter of we humans being animals, as put forward by the study, then it's simply "built in" and has nothing to do with our day to day lives as human beings.
I think that's bollocks. In my opinion there are two major factors as to why women outlive men:
1) physiology - Women's bodies are built to last longer than men's. Call it the child rearing factor.
2) life style - Men are dumb testosterone filled pigs. Many more of us are killed off in our teens trying to ride our bikes or cars over canyons. How many Darwin awards have you read that were about women? If we live through our teens, men tend to drink, eat poorly and generally take part in unhealthy activities to a much higher degree than our female counterparts, and we do it for many, many years. Just compare how long men spend on the toilet on a Sunday morning compared to women (and the lingering odors that follow) and you'll "catch my drift". Add up all that abuse on the male body and later in life it spells heart attack, stroke or whatever other ailment that finally does him in.
If there is any difference between the two male groups discussed earlier, it is probably that the longer one remains single, the more opportunity he has to do irreparable harm to his body, and perhaps that could lead to a slightly lower life expectancy. Now that's worth studying, although I suspect slinking out to the shed to avoid yet another badgering barrage from the spouse probably leads to some harmful habits as well, which would tend to even things out.
Either way, when it comes to the life expectancy competition, men don't stand a chance. Whether or not males in the animal kingdom exhibit the same pattern, perhaps due to competition for mates, really has no bearing. However, if we change the rules a little in our human test group, and call it a FUN competition, we men may actually come out ahead...

Where Will The Water Come From?

2007-10-24T14:27:00.000-07:00

Hi all!
I've been having some interesting email discussions with friends over the last few days, and figured I'd share them with the Digglings in hopes of starting some virtual conversations.

The first topic results from the "state of emergency" declared by Georgia's governor with respect to water supply issues. I hold this topic close to my heart as it is a large part of what I have done in my career over the years.
So here goes, discussion topic number 1:

The US is literally f*cked when it comes to water supply issues.

The SW has been in trouble for years (too many people living in the desert for crying out loud!!!), Florida's problems have been well documented (as the Everglades rapidly dry up and what used to be Lake Okeechobee is presently on fire), and now places where water seemed plentiful are being affected, like Georgia. It should really come as no surprise because part of Florida's woes result from increased usage by those ahead of them, namely Georgia! The problem is simply moving upstream.

Now, I apologize for going all Naomi Klein on you here, but it is very much related to the "disaster politics" she refers to in her Harper's article last month. She describes the dismantling of public agencies and utilities that are in charge of basic infrastructure, things like highways, bridges and levees, and how private companies are now profiting from the resulting catastrophes. Consider the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - the US contracted out even the most basic aspects of emergency recovery in New Orleans (they actually contracted the very contracting!) because the Federal Agencies are no longer equipped to do so.

Now some may suggest this is a good thing (profit and all that, I get it), however the well being of our precious natural resources, the ones that humankind relies upon for our survival, can not be left up to private enterprise. Corporate mandates do not include exemptions for the folks downstream. They don't involve putting a little something aside for a rainy day, or in this case for a day when the rains don't come.

The purpose of Federal and State water agencies is to oversee the use of water, and protect the resource. Unfortunately, they no longer have the money (which inevitably restricts their power) to do the job. The result is we see PGA golf courses being built in areas suffering from ten year droughts, and huge housing developments in similarly sensitive locations. Do this enough times and the result is the governor declaring a national water emergency for a state once famous for it's heavy rains.

Go figure.

9/11/07?!?

2007-10-09T11:52:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since the Digglings had a political post, but for those of you who thrive on that sort of thing, the wait is over.

What follows is a short thread of correspondence resulting from a friend sending me one of those "In memory of all those slain in the twin towers on 9/11, pass this on to everyone you know, but if you don't care and don't stand for freedom, go ahead and delete it" emails. She sent the email asking "What do you think?" I responded to her, then got another friend to comment as well.
The exchanges are as follows. You'll note that my other friend is obviously much more level headed than me.

But first, the original message:

Thought you might be interested in this forgotten bit of information..........

It was 1987! At a lecture the other day they were playing an old news video of Lt.Col. Oliver North testifying at the Iran-Contra hearings during the Reagan Administration. There was Ollie in front of God and country getting the third degree, but what he said was stunning! He was being drilled by a senator; "Did you not recently spend close to $60,000 for a home security system?" Ollie replied, "Yes, I did, Sir." The senator continued, trying to get a laugh out of the audience, "Isn't that just a little excessive?" "No, sir," continued Ollie. "No? And why not?" the senator asked. "Because the lives of my family and I were threatened, sir." "Threatened? By whom?" the senator questioned. "By a terrorist, sir" Ollie answered. "Terrorist? What terrorist could possibly scare you that much?"
"His name is Osama bin Laden, sir" Ollie replied.
At this point the senator tried to repeat the name, but couldn't pronounce it, which most people back then probably couldn't. A couple of people laughed at the attempt. Then the senator continued. Why are you so afraid of this man?" the senator asked. "Because, sir, he is the most evil person alive that I know of", Ollie answered.
"And what do you recommend we do about him?" asked the senator. "Well, sir, if it was up to me, I would recommend that an assassin team be formed to eliminate him and his men from the face of the earth." The senator disagreed with this approach, and that was all that was shown of the clip.

By the way, that senator was Al Gore!

Also: Terrorist pilot Mohammed Atta blew up a bus in Israel in 1986. The Israelis captured, tried and imprisoned him. As part of the Oslo agreement with the Palestinians in 1993, Israel had to agree to release so-called "political prisoners." However, the Israelis would not release any with blood on their hands. The American President at the time, Bill Clinton, and his Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, "insisted" that all prisoners be released. Thus Mohammed Atta was freed and eventually thanked the US by flying an airplane into Tower One of the World Trade Center. This was reported by many of the American TV networks at the time that the terrorists were first identified. It was censored in the US from all later reports.

If you agree that the American public should be made aware of this fact, pass this on.
Subject: 9/11 Do Not Break - it is 3 years strong
This has not been broken since 9/11/01, please keep it going...This has been kept alive and moving since 9/11. In memory of all those who perished this morning; the passengers and the pilots on the United Air and AA flights, the workers in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and all the innocent bystanders. Our prayers go out to the friends and families of the deceased.
Send this to at least 10 people to show your support.
PLEASE DON'T BREAK IT!!!!!!

OK! OK! I get it. Pass it on already.

Oops. Sorry. Didn't mean to be so opinionated in my introduction. Still, couldn't help it.
Regardless, here's my response to my friend's question asking "What do you think?":

Hmmm...
What do I think of that?

Well, here goes:

I think that the Republicans should get it through their heads that 9/11 is over. Americans, and the rest of the world with them, will never forget the terrible events of that day. However, American political policies need to be based on something other than fear related to the twin towers.

I think that finding a way to somehow blame 9/11 on the Democrats is idiotic. Bill Clinton's sternest warning to George W when handing over the White House was to be wary of Osama Bin Laden. George went on record saying he was more concerned with Iraq.

I think the debacle of Iraq, and the blood of each dead or maimed soldier, should be slung like a noose around every Republican's neck. Marching into Afghanistan to depose a Taliban regime that was harboring Bin Laden and was in support of the 9/11 attacks? Yes, and that's why the international community supported those efforts. But, to deflect money, resources and lives into a misguided grab for oil in Iraq? That's abhorrent, and those behind it should be held accountable. Instead, they are all making big bucks off their stocks and royalties as the war machine profits the likes of Halliburton and Lockheed Martin. (Dick Cheney really is the Anti-Christ)

I think any senator who goes on record suggesting that we send an assassination team after a suspected terrorist is nuts. That's against international law, and can be prosecuted as such. Al Gore is no idiot. Poor little Ollie North IS AN IDIOT! Watch the entire hearings and tell me that he was intelligent or trustworthy. True, he was the fall guy for those who told him what to do, and that is unfortunate. But he's no saint or martyr, either.

I think the Israelis have an effective way of sneaking into "enemy" territory and killing individuals as they see fit. Perhaps that would have been an equally effective means of eliminating Bin Laden, but I doubt if that would have prevented 9/11. Besides, somehow justifying the bloodshed done in the name of Israeli "self defense" in order to defend current US efforts in the Middle East is naive and misguided.

And finally, I think that email propaganda such as this, much like the supposed boat brigade email claiming that John Kerry was practically a terrorist himself, is propagating hate and misconceptions to the minds of the gullible and moronic. Unfortunately, just such a message, one that continues to promote the concept of fear to the American people, can be surprisingly effective.

So, as you can see, I really don't have much of an opinion...

And finally, the much more appropriate and human response of a very good friend from the States:

I read the Osama bin Laden related message and reply. What a wonderful world this would be if there were only a handful of “bad guys” (as Republicans call them) and their motives and guilt were obvious and beyond question. But, of course, it is a dangerous oversimplification to think that, Wow, if somebody had followed Ollie’s advice then the world today would be shining and safe. BS. Oliver North was a criminal and an idiot. Should he have been “rubbed out” by people opposing his views? No.

My stand is that there are bad people in this world, evil ideas, dangerous cults, and destructive philosophies. There are also good people, positive ideas, productive groups, and constructive philosophies. There is also the gray area in between, where we have all ventured and where we continue to stumble into every now and again no matter how much we don’t want to. Assassination squads are evil, no matter who they target. Torture is evil, for whatever purpose. Killing and destruction in the name of promoting peace or in God’s name does not ring true. Yes, I believe in self defense and in people defending their values, but I also believe that people should lead by example and take care of each other. Take the high road, or at least strive to do so. Terrible situations and destructive people are always around us. They always will be. Sometimes they are us. Strive to be on the side that promotes kindness, not pain. But, be prepared to endure pain. It is part of life. That is my stand.

My Left Foot: Hobbling Through the ACL Festival

2007-09-26T17:11:00.000-07:00

Fire Ants. I hate them.
Two weeks ago I didn’t even know what a fire ant was, but today, they’re at the top of my most hated list. Sure, there are other unpleasantries in life, like rope burn and slow drivers in the passing lane, but they don’t even come close.
Yup, fire ants. I hate them.

My first encounter with these nasty insects occurred several weeks ago while in Texas for the Austin City Limits (ACL) Festival. ACL is a huge music event hosted every year by the organizers of the TV show of the same name. The festivities are held in Zilker Park, a beautiful 15 acre green space located in central Austin, and include over 130 bands on seven stages in a three day weekend. I’ve been to the festival four years in a row and have seen some amazing bands. This year’s lineup promised to be equally impressive. For a music fan like me this is as good as it gets.
I love this festival.
I hate fire ants.

First on the agenda in Austin was to hook up with my buddy Scott and play a round of disc golf. Disc golf is an addictive activity (I can’t bring myself to call it a sport) that attracts primarily males in their 30s and 40s. Most of them are retired ultimate players whose bodies have finally cratered after years of hurling themselves about a field chasing Frisbees. Ultimate is a real sport, disc golf is kinda like shuffle board in comparison.

I met Scott and his friend Ken at the disc golf course on Wednesday evening. We stuffed the obligatory 12 or so beers into a cooler and teed off. The game of disc golf is similar to standard golf in that you direct an object, in this case a specialized Frisbee, towards a target some distance away. In golf the object is to get your ball into a hole. In disc golf, the target is a metal basket. The player has a specified number of throws to land the disc in the basket in order to make par.

About half way through the round of 18 holes my tee shot landed in some tall grass. The rule is that you play your next shot where the disc lands, so I stood in the grass, lined up my next throw and let it go. No sooner had I begun to stroll towards where the disc had landed than I found myself leaping about with sharp stings on my left feet. I looked down to see a bunch of little black ants feasting on my foot and ankle.

They were fire ants! One moment I had been blissfully strolling through the park, the next I launched my beer into the air and shrieked as a troop of these insidious little buggers attacked me in unison. Fire ants don’t bite randomly. That would give their victims a fighting chance. Instead, they have a remarkable ability to get in position and assault their victim at precisely the same instant.
It’s true. I looked it up on the Internet.

Fire ants also possess particularly odious venom that they inject into their prey. I looked that up, too. It’s a heinous toxin called alkaloid venom (piperidine). According to wikipedia “For humans, it produces a painful sting, which leaves a sensation similar to what one feels when he gets burned by fire — hence the name fire ant — and the aftereffects of the sting can be deadly to sensitive individuals.”

Are you ready for some foreshadowing? I’m a very sensitive guy.

None of that mattered to me Wednesday night on the golf course. I was a few beers into the round and intent on not completely embarrassing myself in front of my buddies. A few ant bites weren’t going to ruin my first evening in Austin. I hastily crushed all the ants I could see and stormed off after my disc.
At this stage I did not hate fire ants. I merely disliked them.

Thursday was a new day and with it came an opportunity to participate in a grand ole Texas tradition. Scott and some of his cohorts had scheduled a float on inner tubes down the “mighty” Guadalupe River, and they had invited some friends and me to join in the fun. I met up with Alec and Katherine, two other pals from Vancouver who were in town for ACL, and we went about getting geared up. (Of course in Texas “gearing up” means filling the car with beers.) The trauma of the fire ants and humiliation of being trounced on the disc golf course were already a distant memory.

Our drive to the Guadalupe wound through some beautiful Texas hill country between Austin and San Antonio. This year the region had been unseasonably rainy, so the shrubs and grass were as green as in springtime. As it turned out, the extra precipitation also resulted in spring water conditions for the Guadalupe. It was considerably higher than its usual September trickle. We were in for a fast, fun float.

We spent several idyllic hours drifting along the river bathed in hot sun, watching the beautiful limestone riverbanks go by, spotting turtles and, of course, swilling beer. Each of us (ten in total) had our own tube, and as a group we had two extra tubes with special bottoms on them for holding our beer coolers. These cooler tubes served as the center around which we tethered our individual tubes. We even had a mascot, as Kyle brought along his dachshund, stylishly outfitted in a wiener dog life preserver. These Texans certainly know how to float in style.
Time was of the essence for the drive back to Austin. After all, I had four tickets to see Spoon play a sold out show in a small club Thursday night. That’s right, I was about to embark on a three day, full-on music festival and was spending the night before it began by watching a live band!

Each year ACL gets under way at noon on Friday, and I’m there to welcome it like the old friend it has become. At least that’s normally where I am at noon on the opening Friday of ACL. This year there were slight complications, complications involving some rather irritated looking bites on my left foot. The bites had been uncomfortable on Thursday, but nothing that worried me. By Friday morning, however, the bites were worsening and my left foot was beginning to swell. So, instead of greeting the festival with my usual fervor, I spent the morning at a pharmacy getting antibiotic ointment and Band-Aids. This year I met ACL in a somewhat aggravated fashion at around 1 PM.
Most of my friends were already there, however, and I soon forgot about my increasing disdain for fire ants as we raised a round of Heinekens and headed off to see the first of many bands.

It’s one of things that make ACL so great; not only are there lots of bands to see and discover, but the outdoor stages are all easily accessible so you can see as many of the artists as you desire. Other festivals have long lines to get into venues, or are so crowded that it’s a hassle to move around. ACL overcomes this by limiting the total number of tickets to a manageable number, thus providing festival goers with the ability to run back and forth between stages to catch glimpses of different shows, even if they happen to be on simultaneously.
Friday’s musical line-up was full of old favorites as well as opportunities to see new bands. I managed to catch (in this order) Joseph Arthur, The Heartless Bastards, The Del McCoury Band (the king of Bluegrass with his band, all dressed in full suits despite the sweltering heat!), Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Peter, Bjorn and John, Blonde Redhead, Crowded House (you’d have been singing along, too), LCD Soundsystem, Queens of the Stone Age and The Reverend Horton Heat. Despite all that coverage, I still missed some notables, including M.I.A., The Killers and Bjork.
The hi-light was certainly LCD Soundsystem. Their albums are primarily the heavy electronic musings of DJ/producer James Murphy, but their shows are 100% live interpretations played by a full band. The crowd bounced, danced and pumped the air through the entire set. Also of note was the Reverend, who seems to have found some new inspiration since the last few less spirited shows I’ve attended. The musical history that he and his band mates put together, including covers of Greensleeves, Bill Haley and Black Sabbath, was truly memorable.

It was dark and had been a long day. The festival was winding down, so we did what any sane group of exhausted concert goers who had just spent 8 hours in 100 degree heat would do – we hopped in a taxi and headed downtown to see another show. We were treated to a noisy, countrified set by Brooklyn’s Oakley Hall.

By Saturday morning, things were getting serious with my left foot. The throbbing had kept me awake throughout the night, and it was now noticeably larger and redder than its counterpart. I overheard some kids calling me “elephant man”. Several adults were somewhat more constructive, suggesting I should “get it looked at”. Well, the festival had hardly started and I was not going to be slowed by some stupid ant bites, so I iced my foot for a few hours by the hotel pool, and was back in Zilker Park by 3:00 to see Steve Earle.

Steve has become somewhat of a protesting troubadour these days, and his acoustic set was not lacking for anti-Bush sentiments. The line “Just another poor kid fightin’ in a rich man’s war” pretty well sums up his attitude. St. Vincent, a solo female artist who also plays in the Polyphonic Spree, came on next and had probably the best song title of any artist at the festival with “Jesus Saves, I Spend”. The only other notable for me from Saturday was Brooklyn’s Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah. Preferring more devilish topics, they had the crowd singing along and boogieing to such indie pop tunes as “Satan Said Dance”.

The reason for my somewhat limited music exposure on Saturday was that I was no longer running, or even briskly walking for that matter, between the stages. I had been reduced to a rather awkward looking hobble, which when paired with the bright red tree trunk that had replaced my left foot, really impressed the ladies. A visit to the festival medical tent had merely resulted in a few Benadryl tablets and a suggestion to lay down for a few hours with my foot elevated.

I took that advice (and the drugs) and headed into town that evening to see Queens of the Stone Age play an incredible gig at another intimate Austin club. It was a show I had been looking forward to for a long time and had bought the tickets months previously. Those nasty ant bites weren’t getting in the way of this one. My sister Beth chose not to go as she figured it would be a testosterone fest. She was right. As my buddy Dave put it, it was the first show he had attended where he felt small. He and I are both six feet tall and have seen countless shows, yet it was the first time either of us had struggled to see over the mass of bulky figures that pressed towards the stage in front of us. Still, it was a magnificent wall of sound produced by QOTSA that did not disappoint. The pharmaceuticals, the beers and the band had me completely oblivious to the state of my foot, at least until on the way out when one of the testosterone crowd lost his balance and stepped back onto it with his shit kickin’ cowboy boot. I literally cried my way home in the taxi.

Sunday promised probably the best line-up of any day at the festival, and everyone was ready for a full on ACL experience, everyone that is except for me. If my foot had looked gnarly on Saturday, Sunday morning it was, well, gross. We hummed and hawed about what to do about it until I insisted that the show must go on. So, we headed back to the park just in time to catch Yo La Tengo assaulting the crowd with a 13 minute guitar based dirge from their latest album “I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass”. They are without question one of my favorite bands, partly because of how they effortlessly shift from this kind of noisy affront to silly pop tunes and even beautiful love songs. Their back catalogue is packed with more gems than Sonic Youth.

We took a quick peek at a thoughtful Irish singer songwriter named Fionn Regan before checking out another Brooklyn band, The National. For a band whose albums are characterized by slow, sometimes folky yet tortured songs about loss and struggle, their live show is surprisingly loud and powerful. The torment and angst are accompanied by frantic electric violin and heavy rhythm guitars. All of it is there to support a lead singer who literally leaves himself, body and soul, on stage. He was so exhausted after their set had finished we couldn’t imagine him performing another song.

Unfortunately, once The National was finished, so was I. As they had worked their way through the set, some tell-tale redness had started to work its way up my ankle. My sister had seen enough. She grabbed me by the ear and pulled me off to an emergency medical clinic. It was quite a heart warming show of concern for her brother (or complete exasperation with his stubbornness, I couldn’t tell) that she was prepared to give up her afternoon to accompany me to the emergency ward. She had only one stipulation – she had to be back to the festival in time to see Bloc Party at 4:30. Brotherly love has its bounds, after all.

There’s not much to report from the hospital visit, other than that the doctor’s first words when he saw my foot were “Ew! That’s pretty disgusting!” He diagnosed it as an allergic reaction to the bites that had turned into an infection from all the dirt and sweat encountered at the festival (and possibly from the Guadalupe River float). His recommendation was some heavy antibiotics and bed rest. He was not impressed when I asked him if it was a problem to get dirt in the dressing and bandages he had carefully applied. He knew where I was going with that, and replied “I guess that’s a choice you’ll have to make; it’s either your foot or your festival!”

Almost as if to spite me, he called the nurse and got her to stick a great big needle in my butt for a tetanus shot.

Solely to appease my sister, I agreed to accompany her back to the festival so that she’d arrive in time for Bloc Party. The sacrifices I have to make to preserve family ties – truly remarkable! We paid our cabbie an extra big tip and got to the park in record time. Sure enough, we had just found a good spot near the front as the band came on stage. Beth danced her face off and sang almost every word as I sort of swayed about and sweated.

Their performance was energetic as always, but I was tapped out. The rest of the evening is more or less a blur to me now. I seem to recall seeing some combination of Wilco, Regina Spektor and Ghostland Observatory, all from afar sitting in whatever reasonable facsimile to a chair that I could locate. With huge regrets and in a lot of pain, I hobbled out of ACL before the headliner, Bob Dylan and his band, had played a single note.

To add insult to injury (literally), that night a wonderful Austin artist named Alejandro Escovedo was performing a midnight set at the legendary "Continental Club" across the street from our hotel. The rest of the gang had a few more beers and went to see the show while I lay in my hotel room - mumbling, sweating and feeling much like Marlon Brando at the end of Apocalypse Now.

It was a memorable ACL, but not necessarily for all the right reasons. Monday morning found me in the airport on my way to San Diego, bandaged foot elevated for all to see and smell. I had begun to murmur in a slightly delirious fashion and would not have looked out of place with all the homeless folks in downtown Austin. The murmuring took on a regular pattern, almost mantra-like. If anyone had come close enough, they would have been able to make out the words as I repeated them over and over:
“Fire Ants. I hate them.”

Blinky Swims Among Us!

2007-09-04T15:39:00.000-07:00

WEST GLACIER - For five miles downstream of the Boulder, Colo., sewage treatment plant there are no male fish. In Pacific currents off the Los Angeles coastline, fish are too lazy to hunt, too laid back to bother with breeding. In south-central Asia, vultures are dying of drug overdoses. All because what goes in must come out.
“All domestic sewage, regardless of your location on the globe, will contain pharmaceuticals,” said Kate Miller. “If you can find a human being, you'll probably find pharmaceuticals in the environment.”
Miller works for the Montana Department of Environmental Quality as an engineer and a hydrologist, but she sounds more like a chemist - what with all those crazy long compound names in the parts per billion. Recently, Miller was asked to go on a hunt for fecal contamination - sewage, basically - in Helena Valley groundwater. She was to use certain microbial markers, such as E. coli and coliphage, to sniff out the presence or absence of fecal taint.
But the more she read about sewage-borne contaminants, the more she became convinced that more modern markers would make for a more interesting study. And so Miller added 28 man-made chemicals to her search target, including pharmaceuticals, endocrine disrupters and personal care products. On Wednesday, she presented her findings to the Flathead Basin Commission, a multi-agency commission charged with protecting water quality in the Flathead River drainage and Flathead Lake.
Miller's is a compelling story - 32 of 35 drinking water wells tested positive for the chemicals, and of the 28 compounds she chose to look for a whopping 22 were found. Some were 425 feet down, in rock from the Paleozoic Era, a time when Miller is fairly certain there were no pharmaceuticals. Conclusion: It must be long-term contamination from the surface. “They act like pesticides,” Miller said of the contaminants. “They're big, long-chain molecules.” Which means they're persistent and tend to stick around for a while.
“If a cancer patient lives above you and is on chemotherapy drugs, and your neighborhood is on septic, then there's a good chance you're on chemo drugs, too,” she said. Albeit at very, very low doses. Doses, in fact, that probably don't pose much of a health risk. Probably. “The fact is,” Miller said, “no one knows.”
Neither does anyone know how low-dose drugs might affect fish and wildlife, or how a cocktail of drugs, even at low doses, might combine to cause some surprising cumulative effects. The pharmaceuticals - both over-the-counter and prescription drugs - make their way into water systems because they are flushed (think leftover or out-of-date prescriptions) or because they pass through us and then are flushed. The endocrine disrupters - mostly hormones and birth-control drugs - pass the same way, and are known to disrupt endocrine systems in fish and birds, just as they do in humans.
(That's why there are no male fish in the waters below Boulder's sewage treatment plant. They've all been feminized by estrogen, Miller said. The laid-back Pacific fish are happy on Prozac, and the Asian vultures are overdosed on anti-inflammatory drugs, pumped by local farmers into their water buffalo herds before those animals die and become vulture food.) The personal care products - musks and perfumes and sunblock - enter the system through shower drains, then continue on through septic systems or municipal treatment plants.
“None of these systems have been designed to remove these things,” Miller said. “The possible impacts are very poorly understood.” What will a trace of steroid do to an insect, or to a fish? What will traces of many drugs combined do to those same animals? “We don't have a lot of answers yet,” Miller said.
What she does know is that the combined action of several compounds can exceed the sum of the individual parts. And the longer an organism is exposed, the more sensitive it can become to the contaminant. And some compounds - think antibiotics - definitely overlap between species. And most drugs have multiple side effects, both known and unknown.
Fish, Miller said, are especially vulnerable because they swim steeped in the stew 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “That's key, because they can't get up out of the river and walk to a new spot,” Miller said. “They're captive.” There's no escape. Even if the compound has a short half-life, it's constantly being replenished into the system, offering no relief. The questions are so far beyond the answers, Miller said, that science often doesn't even know what to ask. She tested just 28 of the 800,000 or so known chemicals that could pass through our systems into ground - and later surface - waters.
Antidepressants are affecting shellfish reproduction, she said. Blood-pressure drugs are reducing sperm counts in aquatic organisms. Anti-seizure drugs cause neurodegeneration in fish. Arthritis medicines affect fin growth. “This is something that's only been recently uncovered in the United States,” Miller said, “and as a body of scientists we're still trying to get our arms around it. We may have to start regulating the way our wastewater is treated.”
And not just in the Helena Valley, where her study was centered. According to Miller, Missoula-based researcher Bill Woessner found acetaminophen, caffeine, nicotine, codeine and antibiotics in his backyard groundwater. Others have repeated the results around the globe. Miller stresses that the amounts found are astoundingly small - measured in half-parts per billion - and that the effects to human health, if any, are by no means clear.
But she also notes that antibiotics were found in 80 percent of her test sites, “and I do worry about antibiotic resistance when I see something like this.” She also worries that breast cancer and prostate cancer could be on the rise in part due to hormones leaching into drinking water. It's just a hunch, but she's not alone. Her immediate prescription is to stop flushing unused drugs, and to stop overusing drugs in general. Miller recommends taking those unused medicines - be careful, though, with narcotics - and zipping them in a plastic baggie with a handful of kitty litter. Then drop it in the local landfill, which is lined to contain contaminants.
Canada has an even better solution, requiring drug distributors to collect any unused pharmaceuticals and dispose of them properly, at a facility designed to filter out the contaminants. Another answer might simply be better sewage treatment plants, “but we're still trying to figure out how to do that,” Miller said. That would, she admits, be expensive. “We're very early in the research here,” Miller said, “and there are so many things we still don't know. But we've begun looking, and that's an important start.” http://www.missoulian.com/

Potting Harry Potter

2007-08-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

Warning: Do not read this entry if you are a Harry Potter fan and have not yet read the latest book "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows".

Unfortunately, Harper's Weekly did not provide such a warning before they gave away one of the book's big surprises. Apparently, reader response has been overwhelming. Here's a sampling of what some of them had to say.

FROM JOSH RICHARDS: Shame on you for giving away even a
small detail of the new Harry Potter book, buried mid-paragraph, with no warning. Shame.
FROM KEN KOONTZ: It's the totally gratuitous nature of the Harry Potter spoiler that bugs me. How lame.
FROM KATIE BOMBICO: Thanks for ruining the book for me.
FROM D.H. PRESCOTT: I found your action to be indicative of a flippant and condescending attitude.
FROM REBECCA EWING: How mean-spirited of you.
FROM PAUL LARSON: Bad form.
FROM JOE WINTER: That's just rude.
FROM PATRICK DEVITT: I would think that a magazine published since June of 1850, as you advertise, WOULD UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF A "SPOILER"!!!
FROM BARBARA CORNETT: Paul Ford is an asshole for telling that Hedwig dies in the Harry Potter book. Nobody does that sort of thing. Who does he think he is. What makes him above everyone else so that he does not have to abide by the rules and at least warn people if he is going to spoil a book or movie by telling things about it that the writers intended for readers and movie goers to experience and not some asshole like Ford to spoil for them. I hope a wizard puts a hex on him and his dick falls off.
FROM LEVI FULLER: Fuck you very much, assholes.
FROM: CYNTHIA PATRICIA: I am writing because I am extremely upset by Paul Ford's Harper's Weekly, in which he blatantly gives away a spoiler in the final Harry Potter book. I'm not sure how dorky I sound here, but it's the kind of thing that you just don't do. It had no relevance to the sentence whatsoever, and I find it in poor taste to send it out to all the subscribers who generally enjoy reading the review but who haven't gotten around to getting a copy of the book yet, even if it's been over 48 hours and 8.3 million people know what happened already. Let's hope Harper's wont make it a habit to follow the poor judgement and standard of the Times.
FROM HENRY ROLLINS: Good on ya, Harper's!

(OK - I admit, I made the last one up. Sorry. Couldn't resist. If you have ever listened to any of Henry's spoken word, you probably know that he has thrown dates out of his car when he learns that they're reading Harry Potter. He likens it to listening to Nickleback. Now, I'm not much of a HP fan myself, but I wouldn't necessarily go THAT far. Still, a word of advice: put down the damn book and go outside. It's summer for crying out loud!)

And Jesus Wept...

2007-07-27T10:05:00.000-07:00

Hey, has anyone been following the ongoing Catholic church scandal in LA? The church is being forced to sell off property and possessions to pay out the portion of the court settlement from events that occurred before they had sexual abuse insurance.
Sexual abuse insurance?!?
Who knew there was such a thing?
How about they jail any priest found to be a molester, just like they would a layperson?
How about yanking tax-exempt status from any church whose leaders molest children?
"Sexual-abuse insurance".
And Jesus wept...

Aborted Occupations

2007-07-24T12:27:00.000-07:00

More from NYC still to come, but for now...
This just in (from Harper's Weekly):
Former congressman Tom DeLay gave a speech about abortion to a gathering of college Republicans in Washington, D.C. "If we had those 40 million children that were killed over the last 30 years," said DeLay, "we wouldn't need the illegal immigrants to fill the jobs that they are doing today."

I suppose the aborted babies could either have done as Tom suggests, and grown up to be out there earning minimum wage with leaf blowers and kitchen hair nets, or they could have been added to the US armed forces so we could properly occupy both Iraq and Afghanistan and still have bodies left over with which to seriously threaten Iran, Syria and North Korea...

Yankees Go Home!

2007-07-06T15:18:00.000-07:00

Pabst Blue Ribbon really is awful stuff. You don’t tend to notice this when you’re actually drinking it, because the fact that you are indicates that you’re already inebriated to the point where you think drinking cheap swill is a good idea. No, the moment you realize that Pabst Blue Ribbon is awful stuff is the moment you open your eyes the following morning. Trust me.

Our Saturday thus started rather slowly. It was to be another day packed with discovery, yet I was having trouble getting past exploring the inside of my eyelids. Beth managed to get me up with the promise of good coffee, and a reminder that our day’s agenda was to start off with a true New York experience – an afternoon matinee game at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.

When we started planning this trip, a Yankee game was high on my to-do list. Once we decided on the weekend, I immediately checked out the schedule and was thrilled to find that Major League Baseball would be in the middle of inter-league play. Not only that, the American League Yankees would be playing their arch cross-town rivals, the National League’s New York Mets! It was being billed as the Subway Series 2007.
OK, my apologies to the non-sports oriented reader. Please feel free to ignore the previous description full of nonsensical sports jargon. All you need to know is that to a sports fan, this was a big deal. Unfortunately for me, the world is full of sports fans and that game had been sold out since the season began. In the weeks leading up to our trip, tickets were going on eBay for hundreds of dollars apiece. Beth and I had decided to save the cash and try our luck at buying scalper tickets the day of the game.

In keeping with the series name, we headed to the subway to get to Yankee Stadium. The subways were under construction and over the weekend it had sometimes been hard to figure out which train was going where from what track. For this day’s destination, however, there was no question. The station was full of Yankee pinstripe jerseys. We just had to follow the masses.

The streets around Yankee stadium were alive with activity. Hoards of fans, even an occasional thick skinned Mets fan, filled the streets and local bars. Booths and street touts were on each corner selling everything imaginable to do with baseball. Everything, that is, except tickets. There were no scalpers in sight. We circled the entire stadium in search of someone selling tickets, and never saw a soul.

Our first stop once out of the subway had been the Yankee Stadium ticket office, but all they had to offer were some box seats for $280 a piece. Not even I am crazy enough to pay that kind of money for a baseball game. It was close to time for the game to begin and I had pretty well given up when Beth suggested we try the ticket office again. I rolled my eyes at such a ridiculously futile idea, but accompanied her to the window just the same. Sure enough, the agent clacked away on her computer for a moment, then announced that they had just released some tickets down the left field line for $55. We couldn’t hand over our cash fast enough. In no time we were at our seats, beer in hand.

Yankee Stadium is more than a sports venue; it’s a shrine to baseball fans not only in the Bronx and New York, but all across America. It’s the last of the remaining old ballparks. While all the other teams have built mega stadiums with corporate names, vast concourses and midway like gaming areas, Yankee Stadium goes on as a comparatively cramped has-been. Still, it’s the past that earns the stadium its place in history today. It is home to the most storied, and valuable, sports franchise in history. From “The Babe” to Willie Mays and Joe DiMaggio, they all played and won here. It has also almost single handedly kept the Bronx from turning into a third world slum. As a destination for people from all walks of life around the greater New York City area, Yankee Stadium has focused attention on the Bronx, and brought in much needed dollars, since 1923.

Sitting in our seats waiting for the first pitch, I took a deep breath to fill myself with the aura of Yankee Stadium. Unfortunately, I was greeted with sensations not exactly commensurate with the reverence that these hallowed halls deserve. First off, Yankee fans are not ones to dress up for a game, or bathe, for that matter. It was a hot and humid day in The Bronx, and the majority of the fans were, for lack of a better term, ripe. Secondly, since the stadium has been around since the 1920’s, that means Yankee fans have been spilling beer all over the place for more than 80 years. This day was no exception. They don’t give lids at the concession stands, so you’re lucky if you’ve still got half your beer by the time you make it through the crowded corridors and back to your seat.

The “House that Ruth Built” is being replaced in 2009. Construction of the replacement is already underway in an adjacent lot. The Bronx will still be home to the New York Yankees, but Yankee Stadium will not. Like Astroland on Coney Island, another New York area icon is about to fade into memory. My nose was telling me that for Yankee Stadium, it’s about time.

So there we were, in our left field seats, about to witness our last game in Yankee Stadium, and likewise probably the last “Subway Series” to be held there as well. Our surroundings weren’t so pleasant, but the significance of the event was not lost on us. It was only then that we first heard it. “Deh-wick! Deh-wick!”

I couldn’t believe it. By some cruel twist of fate, we had been seated in front of the loudest mouth in all of The Bronx. Not only that, but his Bronx accent was so thick, and his voice so squeaky, that he sounded just like a young Elmer Fudd!

“Aw c’mon Deh-wick Jetah! Hit a home wun fer yer goilfwend!”

I kid you not. Beth and I both had to turn around to be sure that he wasn’t packin’ and out to hunt wabbits. No, instead we were confronted with a very fat, very red faced fellow in his mid-thirties, completely decked out in Yankee’s gear.

We consoled each other with the hope that he couldn’t possibly keep up that volume for an entire game. We were certain that he’d run out of things to say, or his vocal chords would finally give out. We were wrong. I had to hand it to the guy, for what he lacked in intelligence and originality, he made up for in stamina. So, other than a short distraction from a group of large black gang bangers trying to pick a fight with a frat boy Mets fan, our game was overshadowed by young Elmer and his never ending babble-train of consciousness.

He would yell “SUEY!! SQUEAL LIKE A PIG!!” every time Hideki Matsui came up to bat or touched a ball. Apparently, “Awex Wadweegez” kissed his cousin one day. Or was it Jason Giambi? He couldn’t really remember, so that story was repeated over and over with the name of whatever Yankee happened to be at bat. The barrage went on, but the crescendo had to be when the field crew came on and “YMCA” was blared all over the stadium. That was his signal to leap to his feet and run down the aisle (ok, waddle quickly) and lead our section in the hand motions to the song. Unfortunately, young Elmer wasn’t a very good speller, so his routine amounted to a series of whoops and yips while frantically waving his hands in the air.

Thankfully, there was a rain delay in the seventh inning, and Beth and I were in need of a good hosing off before heading to a Broadway play that evening. As we headed to the exits we noticed that pretty well every other person from our section out in left field was doing the same thing, except for young Elmer, of course. I’m sure he was there until long after the game was over.

Oh, I almost forgot. There was a ball game that day. It was actually quite entertaining. The Yankees won 11 to 8. Both Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez hit home runs, apparently for their “goilfwends”.

A Long, Long Weekend in NYC (Pt 1)

2007-06-19T17:04:00.000-07:00

There is no place on earth quite like New York City. It possesses an indescribable energy that derives from a unique mish-mash of concentrated humanity and vibrant history.

To truly get to know New York City would require a lifetime of experience. Even then it would still be impossible to eat at every restaurant, see all the shows and take in the incredible diversity of culture, not only in Manhattan, but in all the boroughs, too. Regardless of that fact, I wanted to do it all and I only had one weekend. I’d apparently have to hurry.

To help me with the Herculean task of fitting as much of New York as humanly possible into a single weekend, I drew on the services of a few special individuals. My sister Beth is a regular visitor to NYC. She volunteered to be my primary guide. Her friend Allison, an actor who has written her own guide to the city that is almost as widely used as the Zagat, was flying in for a day and agreed to join us. And, Beth’s friend Todd, who was living in New York at the time, felt he was up to it as well.

The plan had been to arrive at La Guardia at 4 PM Wednesday and start off with a big dinner in the city. Unfortunately, the friendly skies weren’t, so instead we arrived at our rental apartment somewhat haggard around 11 PM. Luckily, Beth had chosen our base camp carefully. It was a funky little 5th floor apartment on 4th between Bowery and Lafayette, straddling Greenwich Village and the East Village. That meant we were close to all the hipster action, but also happened to put us directly above the Bowery Bistro where that night I devoured a double cut pork chop the size of New York State. Add in a few cocktails and some red wine and our trip had officially begun.

We started off Thursday at a café in Greenwich that has no name (how NY is that?). All I can tell you is that it has yellow awnings and is located at the corner of Bleeker and MacDougal. Oh, it also happens to be one of the few places around that sells Intelligentsia coffee. Absolutely brilliant! I started each day with two of their large lattes. Hey, if you’re not going to sleep, you’ve got to have a contingency plan.

Allison met us at the café and led our group out to Brooklyn where we spent the afternoon haunting old foundries and antique shops. We followed our day of wacko discovery with dinner at an equally eclectic restaurant called Freeman’s, nestled away at the end of Freeman’s Alley on the Lower East Side. It’s an exceedingly low-profile restaurant that boasts a taxidermist's dream of a dining room. The food and atmosphere were fantastic, but the true highlight was the “devils on horseback”, or as I call them “heaven on a toothpick”. Imagine prunes stuffed with Stilton cheese wrapped in bacon and grilled until crispy and drizzled with some sort of wine reduction. Sounds bizarre, but tastes magnificent.

With bellies full of fun, we bode adieu to Allison, and went for a wander through the stores and bars of Greenwich. The standout for me was a place called “Cake Shop”. It’s a cool record store in the back, with a full cake shop in the front, and a bar in the basement. How perfect is that? I mean, I can’t count how many times I’ve been in a record store, flipping through the vinyl, when I get a hankerin’ for a big piece of cake. And, no sooner have I finished the cake when I get a crave on for some live music and a few drinks. How did they know?

Our next stop was the Bowery Ballroom, recently voted one of the top 40 live music venues in the country by PASTE magazine. It’s one of my favorite venues because of the incredible sound and great sight lines, a perfect combination for this evening’s show which featured Earl Greyhound. The Earls are a three piece from Brooklyn formed out of a musical collective. Their album “Soft Targets” was on my best of 2006 list. Based on their show at the Bowery, I’d say they’re better live than on record. I bounced about and pumped my fists in the air (they have Sierra Nevada on tap, what more can I say?) as their wall of sound blew away the audience.

It was now 2 AM, but our night was hardly over. As we polished off our last drinks in the Bowery Lounge, I was approached by some NY music scenester who wanted to know how I pulled off not dying my hair. He was so relieved to hear that there's still life after letting your hair turn gray naturally, that when we were finished chatting, he invited us to the band’s private aftershow. That’s right; my gray hair actually got me into a rock n roll after party! Take that all you young dudes!

So, our Thursday was topped off downing cocktails with the Earl Greyhound entourage in a sweltering private club just off Houston. When Todd and I were almost busted for peeing in a doorway down the road (there were huge line-ups for the only toilet in the club), we knew it was time to call it a night.

Thursday had taken a lot out of me, but it was now Friday AM and officially the weekend, so we had to get motivated. That’s where the two lattes came in handy. From a rather extensive list of possible activities to choose from, we decided to spend the day at Coney Island. It was an admittedly odd choice, but then again, 2007 is the last year of operation for Astroland, the amusement park portion of this icon of Americana. It would be my last chance to sneak about the rows of tattered sideshow games, calling “Warriors… Warriors… Come out and play!”

Coney Island today is almost an insult to its former glory. What was once a proud example of what America could accomplish has become an eyesore representing in some ways what America has become. The world famous “Wonder Wheel” and “Cyclone” roller coaster are looking worse for wear, and are dwarfed by a back drop of tall brick projects. The amusement parks, at least those that remain open, are home to as many gang bangers as they are to families.

We took it all in from the top of the Wonder Wheel, before risking our lives on the rickety, bone jarring tracks of the Cyclone and finished up by strolling along the boardwalk. It was quite a smorgasbord of sights, sounds and smells. There’s supposed to be a huge 1.5 billion dollar facelift planned for the park, including new condos, hotels and rides. I wonder if these will do a better job of obscuring the projects from the view of tourists?

From Coney Island we headed to a more modern freak show, that of Washington Square Park back in the Village. We grabbed falafels from Mamoun’s world famous shop (the best two dollars I have ever spent!) and lounged for an hour or two watching the jazz performers and all the crazy spectators who were hanging around the fountain in the sunshine.

Flipping through a copy of Time Out NY, we spotted a free jazz concert that evening at the summer soundstage in Central Park, featuring Cassandra Wilson. New York is a very expensive place to live or visit, but it also has plenty of free stuff to help you stretch out your hard earned dollars. We made it to the venue just in time to catch the sunset, while grooving to Cassandra's soulful stylings.

We had a late dinner that night at Peep, a marvelous Thai-fusion restaurant in Soho regularly frequented by Todd. Walking in the door it's immediately obvious that you've entered a hot spot for hip scenesters and foodies alike. The look is sleek and modern, which fits the patrons, while the food is relatively cheap and extremely yummy, which suits me just fine.

However, there was one niggling detail that had to be solved before we left. Why in the world do they call a Thai fusion restaurant Peep? The answer was provided by, of all places, the bathroom. The entire wall of one length of the restaurant was done in mirrors. That's not a bad design idea because all of the rather good looking crowd of primarily female patrons could catch glimpses of themselves. The doors to the two bathrooms, also mirrors, were set flush along the mirrored wall. Women in line were thus able to give a fair amount of attention to themselves while they waited. The trick was that the main wall of the bathroom, including the door, was made from two-way mirrors. As a result, the bathroom occupant was able to observe the entire restaurant while sitting on the throne doing his or her business! A much different sort of "Peep-show" than those offered at Coney Island.

It was getting late, but our bellies were so extended from dinner that we needed to work off the calories before calling it a night. So we wandered through Soho for a few hours, finally ending up at another of Todd’s faves - a downstairs hovel called Fat Cat’s Pub. This place is a basement’s wet dream; a never ending supply of pool tables, foosball, and most importantly, ping pong tables. The style is 70’s family den, complete with old couches and chairs, only they up the ante with live jazz bands to entertain the patrons. And, as I found out, the cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon were disgustingly cheap. Thanks to Todd, I always had one in hand as I challenged the local kids to foosball and embarrassed myself on the pool table.

After getting our fill of heaven’s basement, we stumbled out into the night. Two days down, two to go, and I was still alive. Saturday and Sunday would be no problem, right?