Breakfast in Victoria for $3.99

This isn't a review, it's a public service announcement.  The Fresko Cafe at 642 Yates Street, between Douglas & Broad, formerly the site of Great Cannon Pizza and several other unspeakably bad pizzerias, is offering a $3.99 ham, eggs, hashbrown & coffee breakfast special.  You read that right - $3.99 for a greasy spoon breakfast in the heart of the Garden City.


The Fresko is a small, low-budget affair but the food is perfectly serviceable and the menu extends beyond breakfast with hamburgers, omelettes ($5.99) and donairs, to name a few.  They're open until 3am on both Friday & Saturday night although you're not going to get late-night breakfast unless it's a slow night.


Check it out before it's gone.  Not that the special is a limited time offer but rather it's likely to soon be replaced by a condo, ladies-wear boutique or maybe a timeshare made out of fair-trade coffee beans.

In Pictures: The 2011 Mr. Olympia Expo

"I can't remember which makes you bigger.  I'll go ask Alice."

Visiting the floor of the Mr. Olympia Expo was like being part of an organized tour to another planet; one where all food comes in powder or pill form, the water is electric blue and actually makes you thirsty, and all the natives have bodies straight out of comic books or the magazines I hide under my mattress.

Click "Read On" to see my full photo set from the expo

In Pictures: Occupy Victoria

Today in Victoria, protesters came out in support of the Occupy Wall Street  movement.  My good friend Dan Eastabrook of Real Life, Real Light photography was on hand and has provided some of his photos for us here:

So You Think You Can Write

This year I decided to participate in the Victoria Times-Colonist's writing contest.  The first round was a free-form submission (poetry, prose, fiction, non-fiction) of no more than 500 words, due by September 9.  From the pool of entrants, judges would select four finalists who would be given four assignments over the next month (1 per week).  Each batch of assignments would be judged weekly and the winning entry printed in the Sunday Edition of the Times-Colonist.

My entry was a story about two brothers growing up in rural Tennessee, a fictional piece I put together the night before deadline.  Fiction is new to me, so it was a challenge but the characters had been rolling around in my head for about a year so when I finally sat myself down to the work it wasn't as hard as I'd expected.

Almost immediately after this my trip down to the Olympia Weekend in Las Vegas (article forthcoming) and I more or less forgot about the contest.  Then, while at a truck stop in southern Nevada on my return journey I received a call from Denise Helm, acting Editor-in-Chief at the Times-Colonist, informing me I had been selected as a finalist!

My first assignment arrived immediately and so I began work while making my way home, using my voice recorder to take notes while driving during the day and transcribing those notes in motel rooms at night.

As of today the contest is two weeks in and my third assignment was submitted yesterday.  The judges notes will be sent back Thursday and I'll know by Sunday whether or not my piece was chosen out of the four on offer.

Readers are allowed to vote for their favorite piece on the newspaper's web site and the author deemed "Reader's Choice" wins an iPad classic.  Overall winner receives a trip to a writer's festival next year on the Sunshine Coast.

Read my submissions and vote for me (Brennan Storr, in case you were unsure) as "Reader's Choice" at www.timescolonist.com/writingcontest.

Meet Your Olympians: Jay Cutler

This is the beginning of my coverage of the 2011 Mr. Olympia Competition. Further updates will be published on largelythetruthmrolympia.wordpress.com

Current Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler is exactly the kind of person you want as the spokesman for your sport – he’s conventionally handsome, personable and capable of assembling words into sentences that express thoughts more complex than “protein!” and “woman!”.  Granted, many of those sentences concern either the mechanics of lifting heavy things or plugging the various supplements for which Cutler is spokesman, but then this is the sport of bodybuilding and not the National Poetry Championships.  That’s not to say Cutler isn’t intelligent – he has an Associate Degree in Criminal Justice & has invested his contest winnings into real estate rather than, say, an Escalade made out of cocaine – it’s just that erudition and business acumen are not what get him on the cover of Muscle & Fitness.

What gets Cutler’s name in lights is the fact that he looks the way Pinocchio would have if Gepetto had been wishing Sherman tanks into life instead of wooden children.  In an interview given two weeks ago he gave his current weight at 275lbs, which at 5’9” and with a body fat percentage he claims gets as low as 3% (the bastard), means that Cutler is more or less the human equivalent of the marble statues Miami drug lords buy to decorate their atrium.

Born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1973, Cutler grew up in nearby Sterling and attended Wachusett Regional High School where, at least by his own account, his teen years more or less resembled the happier parts of Friday Night Lights.

Football, along with working on the family farm & in his brother’s concrete business meant that Cutler had a well-developed physique even before he started bodybuilding on his 18^th birthday.  But, apparently it wasn’t enough to look like the proverbial brick shithouse, he wanted to be able to life one too. 

It didn’t take long for his competitive drive to take over and in 1993 Cutler won the National Physique Committee’s (NPC) Teen Nationals Middleweight competition.  In bodybuilding, the National Physique Committee is the organization which governs amateur athletes & in order to progress to professional status in the IFBB (International Federation of Bodybuilders) an athlete must first win an NPC pro qualifying national contest.  With help from mentor Bruce Vartanian, a Worcester businessman and bodybuilder, and diet guru Chris Aceto, Cutler swept the 1996 NPC nationals and turned pro.

Since then he’s been top dog in 15 other competitions, including 3 wins at the Arnold Classic, the Golden Globes to Mr. Olympia’s Oscars, but it wasn`t until he claimed the Mr. Olympia title from reigning 8-time champ Ronnie Coleman in 2006 that Cutler became king of the bodybuilding world.  After a surprise loss to Dexter Jackson in 2008, Cutler came back to win 2009 & 2010 and heads into the 2011 Olympia the defending 4-time champion.

The $200,000 Mr. Olympia prize purse is just the beginning of theperks that accompany winning bodybuilding’s top title – there’s also opportunity for product endorsements (Cutler reps for MuscleTech, among others), guest posing spots (paid, non-competitive appearances onstage at bodybuilding events), and merchandising (Cutler’s online store sells his line of apparel and a host of other products).

It`s well that there are other ways for a championship bodybuilder to earn a buck, as the title does not come cheap – in an interview with Muscle Mag, Cutler claimed to spend $30,000 a year on massage therapy alone.  His dietary requirements, between 4,000 and 7,000 calories a day including a full 5lbs of fish (which he despises), translate into an estimated $100,000 annual food budget and in a 2009 interview with the blog Vegas Deluxe, Cutler joked, “I am single-handedly supporting CostCo.”

Showing the kind of foresight one rarely sees in professional athletes, Cutler acknowledges that his career as a professional bodybuilder has an expiration date and he has planned for his future, “I have invested in real estate. I have contracts and sponsors that I continue with even after I retire,” he tells Vegas Delxue.  “I will still promote bodybuilding to the best of my ability.”  He says too that while he intends to continue weight training, his retirement will mean the end of the intensive training he goes through for the Olympia, “I am going to shrink down,” says Cutler. “And I’m going to throw the fish out the window.”

Die-hard fans have said that going into the 2011 Olympia Weekend Cutler looks confident and happy but based on the few interviews I’ve seen I don’t know that I agree.  Physically he looks good but he seems tired and unenthusiastic, but then maybe it’s difficult to summon energy when a camera is shoved in your face shortly after you’ve finished throwing around a few hundred pounds.

One imagines that if Cutler were to lose this year’s Olympia to a contender like Phil Heath or Kai Greene we could see his retirement announced shortly after the Sheru Classic in Mumbai, India, on September 23-24. Bodybuilding is a heavily political sport, however, and the IFBB could certainly use a spokesman like Cutler for a few more years.

Time will tell.

Other Meet Your Olympians profiles:

Kai Greene
Phil Heath

Jay Cutler at the 2011 Mr. Olympia:
Thursday Afternoon Press Conference GalleryFriday Night Prejudging GallerySaturday Night Final GalleryPhil Heath is the New Mr. Olympia

Largely the Truth @ the 2011 Mr. Olympia Competition

You read that right.  Less than three weeks from now, on September 9, I will be firing up Etta, my sleek, silver Corolla S, and driving 2100km down the Veteran's Memorial Highway to Las Vegas for the 2011 Mr. Olympia Bodybuilding Competition.

The culture of bodybuilding has fascinated me since I started lifting weights six years ago.  The behavior I've seen in the gym, from simple preening to grunting that would make a rutting bull in the next room say, "There must be something serious going on over there", is as strange as it is hard to ignore.  Documentaries like Pumping Iron & books like Harrison Pope's The Adonis Complex - presenting as they do a world teeming with insecurity, neurosis and human bodies pushed to extreme - have only cemented that fascination.

Now I've decided to take in that world's biggest event - the Joe Weider Olympia Weekend 2011 at the Orleans Hotel & Las Vegas Convention Center.  My Silver VIP Package (keep your remarks to yourself) secures me access & reserved seating as follows:

• Early Entry to Meet The Olympians - Thursday, Sept. 15, 7 PM
• Olympia Weekend Expo - Early Entry - Friday, Sept. 16, 9:30 AM - 5 PM
• Olympia Weekend Expo - Early Entry - Saturday, Sept. 17, 9:30 AM - 5 PM
• Fitness / Figure / Bikini/ Ms. Olympia Judging - Friday, Sept. 16, 10:30 AM
• Fitness Olympia Finals/Ms. Olympia Finals/Mr. Olympia Judging - Friday, Sept. 16, 7 PM
• Olympia 202 Showdown - Reserved Seating - Saturday, Sept. 17, 10:30 AM
• 202 Showdown / Figure Olympia Finals / Mr. Olympia Finals - Saturday, Sept. 17, 7 PM
• Olympia Victory Gala, Saturday, Sept. 17, 11 PM

From my base of operations at the Circus, Circus Hotel & Casino I will be blogging events, uploading photos and generally trying to make sense of it all at largelythetruthmrolympia.wordpress.com.  You can also keep up with events via my twitter account @largelythetruth.

Meet Your Olympians:

Jay Cutler
Kai Greene
Phil Heath

Riptide, Body Condoms & the Jealous Sea - Surfing for Beginners

Come into my web, said the spider to the fly

The oceans are vast, cold, unknowable sirens that have called to men since the day we left the garden and as with all distant maidens we are drawn back each time in the vain hope that they will soften - that they will show us and only us some tiny token of affection.

Instead of affection, however, all the oceans have ever provided are krakens, tidal waves and a place for barrel-chested fishermen to avoid their wives, sometimes permanently.

It wasn't affection that I was after this past weekend as I stepped into the sea at Vancouver Island's Long Beach for my first day of surfing. Instead I was trying to figure out exactly how I had ended up in that spot, with my considerable bulk squeezed into a wetsuit, a rented surfboard under my arm and the vicious expanse of the Pacific Ocean before me.

Though I own a gym membership my day to day fitness regimen consists mostly of walking back and forth between the sofa and the fridge, so when my friends enticed me to join them on a surfing holiday I was apprehensive.

My first concern was the wetsuit - after all, a 260lb man in a neoprene body condom was the sight for which the word "ridiculous" was devised. And I did look ridiculous as I stood there on the beach, the hot Tofino sun beating down on my shiny pate, but then so did almost everyone else. Unless you're built like Armie Hammer the wetsuit will seek out your every imperfection and broadcast it to the 

Don't look directly at it

world whether they want to see it or not - like ugly people making out on a Jumbotron.

My other, more pressing concern was the sea itself.  In addition to being an ardent H.P. Lovecraft devotee I have seen Wolfgang Peterson’s The Perfect Storm several times and reason that if something can be both home to mighty Cthulu and executioner for bands of rugged seamen led by George Clooney then maybe it’s a bit beyond me.  Perhaps, I suggested to my friends, the surfing experience could be approximated by covering me in cling film and having me sit in a tub of cold water. 

The suggestion was pooh-poohed and I was accused of being “dramatic” but my apprehension remained and every time the sea hurled me end over end like a discarded cigarette butt I wanted to scream, “See what you’ve done, you bastards!  It took Swooney and now, for my hubris, it will take me too!”  That I survived is a testament not to the mercy of the sea but to the pleasure it takes in toying with its prey. 

The capriciousness of the ocean was confirmed when, once I’d gotten the hang of walking my board against the current and even managed to catch a wave or two, I noticed that my friends seemed to have swum a great distance away from me, and, strangely, so had the beach.  After a great deal of furious paddling failed to remedy the situation I realized that I had been caught in a riptide, which sounds like a sea-faring G.I. Joe villain but is actually an ocean current that pulls hapless idiots like me away from the beach and into Cthulu’s clutches. 

I don't know how but it looks hungry

I vaguely remembered being told that if you are caught up in a rip tide the worst thing you can do is try to swim directly towards the shore, against the current, and so, clinging to my board I tried to move diagonally towards a patch of ocean not intent on my murder.  My frantic movements brought me no closer to safety and the coldness of the water slowly gave way to icy tendrils of panic that worked their way up my spine. Every mouthful of seawater became harder to expel than the one before it - hoisting myself up on the board was only a temporary solution because the movement of the waves and my total lack of balance meant I could only stay atop for a few moments.  Suddenly I regretted paying in advance for two nights at the hotel.

It was then the sea tired of its sport and I felt a wave pushing me towards shore.  After reaching an area shallow enough for my feet to touch bottom a warm wave of relief washed over me and I heaved a great sigh standing there in the waist high water.  I was still standing there when the sea delivered one bracing final bitch slap and I decided to break for lunch.

Afterward I hesitated to go back into the water but eventually realized I didn’t have much choice; the final wave had knocked out one of my contacts and without it I couldn’t eye up toothsome young bathing beauties without closing one eye and squinting the other so I that I took on the aspect of a lecherous pirate.  Defeated, I pulled out my other lens then hauled my board and bulk back into the waves.

The jealous, frigid sea had made sure she was the only woman for me.

Run the other way, you idiot

Recession? There's a Wicker Man For That

Alan Greenspan's early policies were his best

An update for those among you who are either wilfully ignorant or living in a system of caves near Peshawar: we are now in the midst of an economic recession. To the uninitiated, me included, this didn't sound so bad at first. After all as children recess was a frolicsome time free of supervision. When you learned whether you were going to spend your life being picked first, second, third for kickball or whether you were going to be more or less permanently pinned under the monkey bars by Booger the school leper. So I confess that when economists started bandying around the "R" word I got a little excited and started looking for my knee shorts and bobby socks. Then I learned that recess is different for adults: the kickball team doesn't take resumes and Booger's too busy repossessing cars to return your calls.

Despite having investments I am trying to pay as little attention as possible to these most recent stock market fluctuations.  If I wanted to tear out what little hair I have left trying to control things that are inherently impossible to control I would have had children.  Also, my understanding of the stock market has always been terrible, so my comprehension of the current situation is that US Debt & the Tea Party have hopped into their Fleetwood Brougham and driven off across the badlands of the NASDAQ taking potshots at lawmen and your 401(k). 

Really, I don’t even know what a 401(k) is other than it seems to serve the same purpose in your life as a dog in a country song: it’s the last thing the world takes from you before you decide to see what 9mm ammunition tastes like at speed.  I would love it if most newsreaders and television pundits currently discussing “the markets” would be as honest. 

Ben in simpler times

From everything I’ve heard, “The Markets” sound like the financial equivalent of a circus bear known for flying into unprovoked rages:  everyone tiptoes around the subject and keeps their voices low so as not to set it off but in the end they have just enough time to tell “Gentle Ben, no!” before another clown is sent to the big top in the sky.  The sole difference is that you can tranquilize the bear if “The Market” gets a wild hair it can easily bring down the whole circus.

The only other comparison I can think of is that of a pagan god – except even they could be sated with sacrifice.  If Poseidon was battering your ship with waves you could toss an ensign or two overboard and soon enough the sea would smooth out.  If your island commune had a string of failed crops you just duped Edward Woodward into a giant wicker man then set the bugger alight.  If the trees still didn’t bloom you called Nicolas Cage and did the whole thing again. 

It seems that there's no calming the market, however; no matter how much you rub its feet or bring it breakfast in bed it still won’t tell you what’s wrong, because “if you have to ask then you’ll never understand.” 

Despite this irrationality, the people in my television talk about the situation, dropping terms like “Chinese bond market” and “fiscal irresponsibility”, as though they have any more idea than I do about what’s going on or how to fix it.  There is a chilling vacancy in the eyes of those spinning bullshit about important things.  The next time you watch a news report about the economy, remember back to when your parents said, “...but mommy & daddy still love each other very much” and try not to spit out your Mr. Pib when you realize they all have the same look on their face – a mixture of fear, regret and the deep hope that we’ll all get out of this intact.

And we will.  But let’s build that Wicker Man just in case.  Does anyone have Nic Cage’s number?

Don't forget the bees.

Hot, Fast, Dirty: Fast Food is Good for the Soul

Come check out my new project - Hot, Fast, Dirty:  Fast Food is Good for the Soul - news and reviews from the independent fast food scene (with a few good words from the big boys thrown in).  

Largely the Truth will still be updated regularly but HFD offers a tighter focus in a shorter format - (all reviews are 500 words or less) so it will be a nice change of pace.  

I'm aiming for it to be a more collaborative effort as well, so if you've got passions for fast food, writing and humor then click through to HFD and let's talk.

So far places reviewed include some here in Victoria (La Fiesta Cafe) some from B.C.'s interior (Donut King - Kamloops) and some from the good ol' U.S of A (Donut Storr - Westminster, CA).

Follow Hot, Fast, Dirty on Twitter (@hotfastdirty)

At the Vancouver Island Music Fest

CFUV 101.9FM, the University of Victoria campus radio station, has seen fit to turn me loose on another event.  This spring they had me cover the first Victoria Spoken Word Festival and I must have managed to mix just enough insight in with my dirty jokes for them to trust me with covering the Vancouver Island Music Fest in Courtenay.  The event runs from Friday, July 8 to Sunday, July 10 and features headlining acts like hip-hop legends Arrested Development and (my personal favorite) Randy Newman.  I'll be updating the CFUV VIMF blog with posts several times a day and have so far been keeping up a steady stream of photo updates on The Twitter.

All the photos are now up on the Largely the Truth Flickr account if you don't feel like wading through Twitter,

Post I:     Tomorrow's the Big Day            All that boring, "getting to know you" stuff
Post II:    The Road to VIMF                   The old man & the motorhome
Post III:   Getting Started                          The girls in their summer clothes
Post IV:   Oh, the Baton Twirlers              MarchFourth...marches forth.
Post V:    In the Evening                           Folk, blues, hope springs eternal
Post VI:   Arrested Development              Like Public Enemy without the alarm clocks
Post VII:  Saturday Begins...                    Hamburgers, jazz & an inferiority complex
Post VIII: Jon Anderson of Yes               The Long Distance Runaround
Post IX:   Of Roots & True Love      Sunburn & my forbidden love
Post X:    Randy Newman Live!               Taking a good long look at Randy
Post XI:    Sunday Morning Coming Down Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys
Post XII:   Albert Lee, John Jorgenson...    Guitarists extraordinaire
Post XIII:  Holly Cole                                Smoky classics just before the finish line
Post XIV:  David Crosby                          Goodbye to All That

Pieter Vorster of Continual Palingenesis Social Media Socials (I don't know either) shanghaied me into doing this interview. To Stephen Colbert: your window of opportunity is past.

The Moon Under Water Pub & Brewery | 350B Bay Street | Victoria

Update February 26, 2013:  The Moon Under Water is still open but under new management.  I haven't been in a year and a half so can't say how this has affected the quality of the food and beer.

There is no end of talk here in North America about the “English Pub Experience”.  We imagine quaint little buildings in the country where rumpled men in patched jackets talk about the weather, the footie, and make off-color jokes about their wives.   Where a barman with rolled-up sleeves serves pints of nameless “lager”, “ale” and “bitter” from great brass taps and sets them down on the dark, polished bar.  If a disagreement should arise it can be settled with a game of darts or, if absolutely necessary, a gentlemanly bout of fisticuffs outside after which the winner helps the loser to his feet and then buys him a drink.

Come in, have a laugh, get stabbed.

When I was living in England with Nicky the television liked to remind us that “country pubs” were closing at about the rate of one a day.  In the pubs that remain you are more likely to find teenagers in short skirts screeching football songs than you are anyone who wants to talk about the weather.  The barman is still there but he’s pouring out pints of Budweiser, Carling and Strongbow Cider to ratfaced men with wispy moustaches and the social graces of fire ants.  If he can be bothered to put down his mobile phone long enough to work the taps, that is.  Disagreements, if they arise, are settled with a knife in your back, or if absolutely necessary, a savage kicking outside by a group of hoodied jackals, one of whom will use his mobile phone to record the event for posterity. 

It makes me wonder where The Moon Under Water fits into all this - advertised as an “English-style” pub it doesn’t look or feel particularly English and the menu is caught somewhere between the Old & New Worlds.  It’s neither Coronation Street nor Clockwork Orange but the food is hearty and filling and their session ales are the best English beers I’ve tasted in the three years since coming home.

Fernwood Bites

...but in a good way

Bacon notwithstanding, I am no great fan of pork.  Maybe because my grandmother – God rest her soul –served us pork chops coated in that tasteless sawdust called Shake N Bake roughly three times a week while growing up.   Or maybe because I have heard a number of my friends and acquaintances who work in emergency services compare the smell of cooked human flesh to that of pork.  It could also be that pork does not digest as easily as other meats, that cannibals refer to human flesh as “long pig” or that I have seen Babe:  Pig in the City 12 times.  Whatever the reason, I spend sleepless nights staring at the ceiling of my bedroom thinking, “I don’t understand what they’ve got against foreskins but I think the Hebrews might be right with this ‘pigs’ thing.”

Considering all this, most of the pork options available at Fernwood Bites, Fernwood’s second-annual celebration of local artisan cuisine, were of little interest to me.  The lone exception was the Cuban-style pork with orange cilantro aioli being offered by The Little Piggy.  It had a wonderful orange zest with a prominent but not overpowering heat.  Though other items on offer caught my eye I have to say that this was my favourite.  It was so good that even Yahweh might sneak a bite while his wife’s back is turned.

Under the Sea We Off the Hook, or Why I Want to be a Hermit Crab

We got no troubles / life is the bubbles
Under the sea!

I have a pet theory, one that I dreamed up during moments of great reflection –usually while sitting on the toilet or waiting for traffic lights to change.  My theory is that this world is the spiritual equivalent of a rock tumbler.  The rough, jagged gemstones are new souls: immature, wild and unaware of the damage they do to others. 

Through the love and hardship of a thousand lifetimes the rough edges are worn smooth and we emerge from the other end as wiser, kinder old souls - polished gems - and we make our exit.  I haven’t gotten as far as figuring out where the stones come from or go to but if you’re looking for hints I always recommend the “Three B’s” - Bible/Bhagavad Gita/Battlefield Earth.

The reason I mention this is because I recently moved apartments and with the hassle involved in moving this middle-class circus from one fairground to another I have decided that in my next life I want to be a Hermit Crab.