Ringing in the New Year, Victoria-style

We are in the twilight of another year, that brief break in the ryhthmic breath of the universe when we pause to consider the mistakes we made in the last 12 months and prepare to repeat them.  As always, everyone will ring in the new year in their own way.  Some will already be in bed when the big moment comes, some will be off their face on Jack Daniels and glue, some will be hurriedly packing their mountain caves with ammunition and tinned ham in preparation for the big showdown in 2012, when everyone's favorite feathery serpent will rain down the kind of destruction we haven't seen since Y2K.

I Gave Up My Bus Pass For This? - Driving in Victoria

Until this August it had been seven years since I’d driven an automobile.  In some circles this declaration would be cause for games of celebratory hacky-sack and lengthy speeches about how everything cruel and savage in this world is powered by the internal combustion engine.

I’d like to say that my reasons were ideological.  That I abstained because of some objection to the way Mother Earth has been viciously subjugated by the demoniac heralds of that brutal warlord Henry Ford.  This would be a craven lie.  In actual fact, for years I have simply been too lazy to take a driver’s test. 

West Coast Tap House | 829 McCallum Road | Langford

Note:  This article was meant to be accompanied by photographs but the shots I took were so awful that you, dear reader, do not deserve to have them inflicted upon you.  Trust me.

It’s a sad fact that at this point in my life I prefer coffee shops to bars.  Not because I suddenly crave the company of self-important anorectics hardwired into their MacBook pros, but because in a coffee shop one may enjoy a drink in relative peace.  The loudest thing you’re likely to hear is light jazz and the soft tap of a keyboard as someone in a turtleneck writes bad poetry about the pale, distant girl who left them when their sweater went out of style

Remember, Remember, the Reason For Movember

"I'm like, a hero, man."

Let's get this out of the way now: I cannot grow a proper mustache to save my life. So does that mean craven envy is what drives me to say Movember is a monthlong reminder that we have lost the ability to be honest with ourselves? Not at all. What drives me is the notion that some people have decided that neglecting to shave for 30 days somehow makes them noble.

Last Call: Render Unto Caesar

Last Call is a new feature.  Every two weeks a new story, 300-500 words, usually taking place in a bar, pub, or nightclub.  They're true enough but names have been changed to protect the innocent.  And the not-so-innocent.

Kamloops, B.C.  Cactus Jack’s. 

The place is choked with six-foot cowboys wearing hats the size of Dobermans and belt buckles like satellite dishes.  Pop-country blaring from the speakers.  Wilson dragged me here.  I don’t know why.  A waitress in jean-shorts and a crop top walks past.  I look at Wilson.  The Beard nods.  I get it.

I Get Around

In the last few weeks Largely the Truth has turned up in a few new places around the web and in print.  I was profiled by Colin Newell on his CoffeeCrew Blog and submitted the guest blog post "Telus, Like Rock N Roll Dreams, Comes Through" to Russ Lolacher's customer service blog "The Upsell".

CBC Victoria did an audio feature on food blogs and alongside it listed a few from Vancouver Island.  It's only a list (and we actually had to submit our own names) but it bears mentioning.  You can find the list here.

On the print side of things I've been working as part of the start-up newspaper "Diversity Reporter".  Most of my contributions to DR are and will continue to be behind-the-scenes, doing things like editing articles for length and clarity, but my name will pop up on a byline from time-to-time.  The first issue, released this past week, includes a condensed version of this site's Cabin 12 review.

Diversity Reporter is a free, bi-weekly newspaper aimed at connecting with Victoria's ever-growing immigrant community.  It's available at grocery stores, coffee shops, mosques, temples and other locations all over the city.

Diversity Reporter is also on Twitter at @divreport

Bobtoberfest! | Heater Allen Brewing | 907 NE 10th Avenue | McMinnville, OR

Heater Allen brewmaster
Rick Allen

The original Oktoberfest was planned by the German government as a celebration of their decisive victory in the Second World War.  By the time they saw which way the wind was blowing it was too late to get their deposit back from the caterer so they went ahead and the celebration, unlike a lot of Germanic practices at the time, caught on around the world.  The old-timers at your local Edelweiss club would probably give a different answer.  Maybe something more to do with the horse-race organized to celebrate the 1810 marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig to Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen.  The Germans prefer that story and since they throw a good party in the latter half of September I see no reason not to humour them.

Heater Allen Brewing, at 907 NE 10^th Ave in McMinnville, Oregon, celebrate every Oktoberfest with their signature Bobtoberfest brew: a smooth, malty, beer named in honour of brewmaster Rick Allen’s late brother Bob.  This year I happened to be in Portland visiting friends on the weekend of September 10^th and 11^th, the same weekend Heater-Allen hosted Bobtoberfest at their McMinnville brewery. 

Johnny's at Fife | 5211 20th Street East | Fife, WA

You mean I have to walk there?

When I arrived in Fife, Washington after a ten-hour, 600-mile drive from Butte, Montana, the first thing I wanted was a nap.  After checking into a Motel 6 by the highway I accomplished just that and upon waking the next thing I wanted wasn’t going to happen until the next time I saw my wife, so I settled for something to eat.  The immediate area had no shortage of fast-food mainstays but I try to avoid places like that whenever possible.  Instead, as my regular readers know, I prefer to seek out locally-owned restaurants, some of them thriving, some of them barely hanging on against a rising tide of bland chain restaurants. 

The Village Idiot Bar & Grill | 306 Mackenzie Avenue | Revelstoke, B.C

What’s in a name?  That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.  But just look at a rose: it’s lovely, red (I know there are other colours, but those are only for your grandmother), and it can buy you out of almost any trouble you’ve caused.  This is based on a sliding scale, from a single rose “just because”, to several dozen, “just because I crashed your car while playing slap and tickle with your sister”.  The rose is invincible to degradation, even if you call it “Duane Allman’s gangrenous foot”. 

Other things are not so lucky, and were they to have their names changed, their image would suffer accordingly.  Imagine, for instance, that during a moment of intimacy with your lady, you glance downward and ask if she wants to meet “The Ringing Disappointment”, or “Fester”.  Will her answer be a breathy “Oh yes”, or would your bed empty faster than a church pew when Father Flynn passes the plate?  If you named your restaurant “The Village Idiot”, would anyone take it seriously?

Every Man a King, Part III - Back Home, If Someone Kills You They Have a Reason

This is the third part in an ongoing series that covers my visit to New Orleans in summer 2008:

My room at the Dupre wasn’t noteworthy in any way except for the vast beige curtains.  Normally neutral colors are able to mask the most fantastic things; put Godzilla in a beige pantsuit and he could destroy all of Japan without anyone so much as stopping to ask him for the time.  In the case of these curtains, even beige couldn’t conceal their being the size of several football pitches.  There was enough fabric on display to reupholster the sofas of every grandmother in Florida, with enough left over to make Gojira that pantsuit.  Whichever humanitarian had last cleaned the room left the air conditioning on so that the pleasing glacial air I had enjoyed in the lobby was to be found here as well.  I dropped my bag, magically four-hundred and seventy-two pounds lighter, on the king-size bed and changed out of clothes that were sweat-stained into clothes that soon would be.  My nod to futility finished I turned my attention to the rest of the afternoon, and my checklist.  

The Quarter

I have an informal checklist that I generally adhere to when I arrive in a new city.  The items are in no particular order and while it’s not vital that I get to all of them I do try.  So far today I had already accomplished two: “Find the hotel without getting mugged” and “humiliate myself in front of a woman”.  Since I’d started dating Nicky I had been able to retire a few items from the list, like: “Strike out at the bar and come home alone, but not before buying some Jim Beam on the way” and “wake up in the tub”.  Not all of the items are related to alcohol, at least not specifically, but it was late afternoon and so logically the next item to be checked off had to be “find a bar”.  I don’t make the rules.

Original Joe's | 2525 Cambie Street | Vancouver

UPDATE, January 2011: There is now an Original Joe's in Langford. Since Langford fills me with the same kind of malaise as watching soap opera re-runs at my grandmother's house I have never bothered to go.

By the time they reach adulthood most people have given up on things like magic. The notion of conjuring something from nothing is relegated to the worlds of fantasy and conservative economic policy. Yet I, in the midst of all this doubt, am a living example of magic’s possibilities. I can, through my mere presence, bring rain to any region of the world simply by appearing there without a coat or umbrella. My most recent trip to Vancouver came at the end of weeks of sunshine, and so I foolishly felt safe in bringing only the essentials: socks, underwear, undershirts, shoe shine kit. The collection of umbrellas I have accumulated by making this mistake time and time again hung, unused, in my office at home. True to form, the skies opened, and my plan to walk downtown for dinner disappeared into the rain like Rutger Hauer’s tears. Instead, I decided to keep close to my room at the Plaza and Original Joe’s pub, a place I had been to a few times, fit the bill perfectly.

West Coast Grill | 850 Douglas Street | Victoria

Update: I'm sad to report that the West Coast Grill has now closed it's doors.

So many things in life would be easier if they were dealt with honestly.  Dating, for example, would be simpler if, when you walked into the bar, men and women alike came out with what was really on their mind.  When the peroxide blonde with the washboard stomach dancing on top of some speakers caught your eye she would say, “Keep moving, droopy.  I’m drunk, not the Make-a-Wish Foundation.”  When a sculpted Adonis in his finest Tommy Bahama shirt put down his Jagerbomb to make time with the shy brunette in the red dress he’d say, “You seem vulnerable.  Can I help you get drunk enough to make a mistake that I can tell my friends about at brunch tomorrow?” 

Every Man a King, Part II - On Getting Shot in the Face During Breakfast

The taxi driver was an elderly black man with a closely-cropped head of gray hair and whose deeply-lined face betrayed very little expression aside from boredom. I gave him the name of my hotel, the Chateau Dupre, and he nodded his head slowly: “Mmmmhmmm. Da Dupre. Mmmmhmmm.” He signalled and slowly pulled into traffic. “I had planned on walking”, I said for no reason in particular, and after just enough time to think I was being ignored he said back, “Hmmmmmmm.....why you wanna do a thing like that. Too hot to be walkin’ ‘round. Mmmhmmmm.” Thrilled to have my laziness validated, I settled back into a seat that smelled of Old Spice and older cigarettes and watched the Crescent City roll by.

Paul's Place Omelettery | 2211 Granville Street | Vancouver

The English language is in trouble, dear reader.  Not grammar - that arcane set of incomprehensible rules governing the architecture of speech is just as disregarded now as it has ever been.  The foul odour of corruption is wafting to us from the building blocks of the language itself: words.  Made up solely of Latin, German and things Marlon Brando said in his sleep, English was, for years, as comforting and rigid as religion, with the dictionary as its bible.  Just like that good book, once upon a time the dictionary was seen as the final word; if Merriam and/or Webster said that something was so then it could be used anywhere, be it in Scrabble or the blazing put-down of another man's mother.  For a brief, shining season the glory of the word was like devouring fire on the top of the mount.  Then we began to stray; popular usage superseded common sense and soon the peasantry thought they could just make up words without the help of Heintje, Caesar or Marlon. 

Give It a Name

You know what bothers me about the internet?  Well, a lot of things, but you know what's near the top of a list that includes Armand White and advertisements offering me physics for my grim, yellow teeth?  Miserable, hairy-knuckled trolls hiding their nastiness behind the internet's warm, huggable cloak of anonymity.  For the last few months I've been waffling over whether or not to continue allowing anonymous comments on this site; after all I receive few enough, and most of them are funny jabs from my very own Topo Gigio (He knows who he is).

All the same, reading this brief article on NPR (will open a new browser window) and a longer piece in the Boston Globe (will open another browser window) has finally swayed my opinion and I've decided to drop anonymous commenting on principle.

I love hearing your opinion, The Internet, but now you've got to own up.  Except you, Topo.  I look forward to seeing comments from reallyBIGshoe@somewhere.com.

And don't worry, faithful readers, I haven't forgotten about you while busily curtailing your freedom.  I've been out of town for a few weeks, but plan on having some new articles up soon.

Brown's Social House | 809 Douglas Street | Victoria

Back in 1991, when U2 were still releasing albums worth listening to, Bono wailed on about a young woman who was “even better than the real thing”, which the band said was meant to reflect the 90s obsession with instant gratification.   It’s been ten years since I bought my last U2 album and I’m more impressed with the 130 square metre bedroom Bono added to his Dublin home than I am his recent musical output, but I’ve got to admit that the little Irish devil had a point.  As it turned out the 90s were only a signpost on the road, ever since then the cultural landscape looks like it has been trampled by the Persian army as led by a metrosexual, yuppie, Xerxes.

All the World is Green - A Walk on Victoria's Lochside Trail

The desert sits and ponders
how it will murder me.

I lay no claim to the title of Outdoorsman.   Some people, my good friends Scott & Rose, for example, are at home in the natural world.  They run for fun (for fun!) and voluntarily spend time sweating under that awful orange ball in the sky photographing savage, toothy things whereas I am most comfortable somewhere quiet and air-conditioned where the most savage thing I’m likely to encounter is a poorly-made daiquiri.

The most vivid memory I have of the hiking trip Scott & I made in Joshua Tree National Park last spring is the sound of a rattlesnake communicating his displeasure at my proximity.  Scott grew up in the desert and so being used to these kinds of things said only, “That’s a big snake”.  I am a child of the mountains, where the things that can kill you are much larger and more easily avoided so my response to standing directly over a predator was one that came naturally:  bowel-loosening panic. 

Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em - The 2010 Highland Games

2010 Highland Games or the
scenes to "2012"?

It's the May long weekend, and that of course means half the city has gone camping.  For those of us left there's no shortage of things to do: there's the Steampunk Convention, the Highland games and, of course, my favourite pastime, wondering how, with half the population hiding in the bushes huddled over portable ranges from MEC, there is still a thirty minute wait to get into the Blue Fox.  Last year was my third in the city and our first attending the Highland Games at Topaz Park.  Under a pitiless sun we drank beer while Nicky and our friend Joline drooled over men that looked and sounded like Shrek.   This year we'd planned on checking out the Steampunk Convention but last weekend's walk on the Lochside had left us a bit tanned and thus no longer pale enough to fit in amongst fans of Victorian England, alternate-reality or no.

Tom & Jerry's Restaurant | 2828 East Hastings Street | Vancouver

5 bacons + egg.  That's my
kind of math.

There’s something about a greasy spoon diner that speaks to me. I don’t know if it’s the waitress impatiently popping her gum because she’s got places to be or the diners who nurse their coffee for hours because they don’t or if it’s the food that manages to simultaneously take years off my life while provoking awkward stimulation in my marital area. Whatever the reason, I’m forever dragging my friends and family to places like the Grade A Restaurant on Granville, where seven dollars gets you bacon, eggs and hashbrowns, or, if you’re feeling continental, hashbrowns and an Eggo waffle fresh from the toaster. An extra dollar-fifty gets you a mug of coffee with a residual taste of bleach to prove that the tableware is scrupulously clean. When it’s time to go, the chef himself will ask you how you enjoyed your meal - he’s able to do this because he’s also the person handling the cash. Once your transaction is completed you can watch him skip over that handwashing nonsense and immediately return to work scooping handfuls of shredded potatoes onto the grill.  With his bare hands.

John's Noodle Village | 823 Bay Street | Victoria

Update - July 10, 2011:  John's Noodle Village has closed. 

In a line-up of the world’s major nations China tends to stand out.   Sure, Canada is bigger, meaning we get to swagger around the U.N. locker room proudly drawing attention to our Maritimes but would it topple the American economy if we sold our government bonds as revenge for allowing Kate Gosselin back on television?  I think not.  Russia is larger still and has an impressive stockpile of enormously powerful weapons that are in no way compensating for anything, but has their cuisine taken the western world by storm?  Not unless I missed an episode of The F Word where Gordon Ramsay shows you eighteen different ways to prepare potatoes, vodka and sadness.  So that makes China the world’s fourth largest country that has the third by the short hairs with a million-man army to make sure they don’t squirm too much and a government that has managed to keep out Richard Gere since the late nineties.  Sounds like a major player on the world stage to me.

Every Man a King, Part I - Seattle, New Orleans and Riding the Rails

(Author's note: This is the first of a series on my visit to New Orleans in Summer 2008. A restaurant review is coming, I promise.)

Union Station, Chicago

When I stepped off the train onto the platform at Chicago’s Union Station the first thing I said was “God it’s hot.” The humid afternoon air made my clothes fall limp, beads of sweat prickle across my forehead and my duffel bag felt thirty pounds heavier than when I had boarded in Seattle. I heard a laugh behind me and turned to see Ed, a jolly, potbellied auto mechanic I’d met in the dining car the night before. He was on his way home to Gary, Indiana from the Land of a Thousand Lakes and even in heavy work jeans and a t-shirt didn't look like the heat affected him one bit. “Hot, huh? And you’re going to New Orleans?” He removed the toothpick from his mouth, tossed it on the ground then shifted the strap of his backpack from one shoulder to another. He chuckled again, “Friend, you’re gonna die.”

Putting on the Dog

When I'm not working or trying to shoehorn jokes into what are supposed to be restaurant reviews I also sporadically write music reviews for the Technorati site Blogcritics. In the last two weeks the website for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer picked up two of my reviews, the first for Dethklok's The Dethalbum and the second for the White Zombie anthology Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, both via the Blogcritics RSS feed. They regularly carry BC content but this is the first time they've carried anything authored by yours truly. Click the album titles to read the reviews on the P.I. site (will open new windows).


The handful of other reviews I've written for BC can be found here.

Rhythm is a (Bus) Dancer

The experience of public transit is very much like that of life itself; interminable right up until the end at which point it seems to have only just begun.  Unless you're very lucky you're likely to face conditions that are crowded and unpleasant and the whole time you'll be forced to endure the company of a great many people you would rather have avoided.

Il Terrazzo | 555 Johnson Street | Victoria

For someone who grew up in a town with a population that was, at the time, predominantly Italian, I know very little about "Il Bel Paese."  For a long time most of what I knew came from the Godfather films and Friday dinner at Tony's Roma and I naturally assumed most Italians were hirsute, husky-voiced men who knew their way around a kitchen and to whom I should avoid owing money.  Even after six years of working in Bocci's, our specialty delicatessen, which at first was aimed toward attracting the town's aging Italian population, I was only able to expand my knowledge of Italy in two areas: cheese, which while invaluable gave me little insight into the country and its people, and finance.  It seemed impossible that anyone could owe money to an Italian since it meant the Italian would have to have parted with it in the first place.  Every Sunday while we sat around a table laden with pasta, sauce and meatballs, my Italian relatives would speak of the old country's verdant, rolling fields and simple way of life in such loving tones that I assumed it to be an Eden filled with olive groves and young men whose refusal to move out of their mother's home was based on devotion and not at all indicative of serious character flaws.  

Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye

During the early afternoon of March 20 I had lunch with a friend, hunted around for a pair of steel-toed shoes and picked up a handful of CDs at Lyle's Place; it was, in short, a very usual Saturday afternoon.  That evening Nicky & I had dinner with our friends Mike & Alicia and 10:18pm were part-way in to watching a film with them when my phone rang and a very usual day became one I wouldn't forget.  When I saw that it was my mother calling from her home in Campbell River, I went cold with apprehension.  We usually speak once a week but rarely in the evening and never past ten, and I instinctively expected bad news.  Bad news didn't quite cover it.  She had called to tell me that three hours before, my uncle Jim, a fixture of my life since birth and, in the absence of my own father, someone who had come to occupy that role in my heart, had died suddenly while on vacation.  Details were scarce at this point, the only certainties being that he was gone and that his wife Susan, my aunt, was now alone in Tehachapi, California, without her husband of thirty-five years.  We didn't speak long as other calls needed to be made, and shortly thereafter my phone rang again and didn't stop until long past midnight.  One call was from my aunt Susan, who sounded frighteningly adrift when she explained that Jim had simply gone down to the pool for a swim and never come back.  The doctors initially guessed he'd had a heart attack but the final word would have to wait until an autopsy had taken place; as of this writing we still do not have a definitive answer.  She was alone but the responding officer had gone out of his way to make her as comfortable as possible and two of Jim's brothers, Dennis & Bryon, and Bryon's wife Linda, would be arriving into Bakersfield first thing the next morning.  I hope to never again hear the voice of someone I love so dearly sound so empty, and so lost.  After we hung up Nicky & I both tried to process the idea that this vibrant, loving, outgoing man was, after only fifty-five years on the planet, gone forever.  We have both lost family members over the years but never one so young, or so quickly.

The Office Lounge | 759 Yates Street | Victoria

It's been two years since I was beaten by schnitzel. The scene was a small, crowded bar in Cologne, Germany. I had been in town a few days visiting a friend when we were invited out for dinner and drinks. As we made our way there my friend explained that the bar we were headed to was a much-loved local, known for its convivial atmosphere and generous portions of schnitzel. Until that night I'd been completely unaware of the German capacity for understatement. Surely you've heard of the Goliath Bird Eating Spider? It's a venomous, burrowing, arachnid that lives in Venezuela, Suriname, and other humid places I intend never to visit. It grows to 10-12" in diameter and uses both venom and fear to paralyze prey.  It is the most terrifying creature on planet Earth and the schnitzel I was served was large & merciless enough to eat it and then send pictures to the spider's family afterwards, just for laughs.

Work? I've Got Enough Bad Habits

A quick update for you, faithful reader. Recently I've contracted a condition known as "honest labor" that has thrown off my update schedule but I hope to have things back on track soon and my next review, The Office Lounge, will be up Sunday night, Monday at the latest. I'll see what I can do about divesting myself of this work habit so we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Hey Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

March is Fundrive month at CFUV 101.9 FM, campus radio station at the University of Victoria. From Democracy Now!, a social change chat show, to Aloha From Victoria, a fun tribute to Hawaiian music, CFUV broadcasts a range of volunteer-driven, community based programming and their annual Fundrive helps pay for the replacement, repair & acquisition of equipment. This year's target is $25,000 and after a two days of phone-in and web pledges they've crested $3,000. Why do I care? Because I like Hawaiian music. Why should you care? Because I like Hawaiian music. Donations can be as much or as little as you like but gifts of $25 or more get you a trip into the CFUV "Little Room of Big Prizes", with lots of CDs & other prizes available.

Best of all? Call in to pledge tomorrow at 250-721-8700 between 1 & 2, or Thursday, March 18 between 6 & 8pm and you'll get to speak to yours truly. That's right, you read my self-important ramblings on the internet, now you can listen to me droning in your ear.

Cup of Joe Cafe | #1 - 230 Menzies Street | Victoria

A close friend of mine once spent most of his time and even more of his money trying to win over the office ice queen, a tall blonde named Annette whose head was as empty as her brassiere was full.  Presents, cards & little favors, he punched all the spots on his sucker card trying to win her affections and after a series of chaste dates had gotten absolutely nowhere.  It finally ended at the office Christmas party when he found her in the stairwell frantically exchanging DNA with the copier repairman.  My friend was crushed and Annette’s explanation didn’t do anything to ease the sting:  “His name is Vincent; he has great arms AND a Mustang!  I thought you wanted me to be happy?”  For him that was the end of the office party and he left, miserable, priapic and bound for home thinking it was the end of his night too.  But then a funny thing happened to remind him of a lesson we all forget from time to time:  sometimes the things we want most have been right here all along.  Her name was Brenda and she lived two doors down.  Now and again they had run into each other in the laundry room but until this moment, when they arrived home at the same time and her smile cut through his misery and loneliness, he’d never really seen her.  Never noticed the twinkle in her blue eyes, the way she wrinkled her little nose when she laughed, or the curve of her...well, curves.  They talked until they didn’t need to anymore and my friend disappeared off the face of the earth for a while.  Once he’d come back down from the clouds he invited me out for breakfast at Cup of Joe to tell me the story, to brag more  than was strictly necessary and finally, to ask for a favor. 

Meatman, Beef, & the National Sport of South Korea

Last spring was a difficult time to find work. My first year living in Victoria I'd earned my daily bread working for the provincial government but an ailing economy meant government work opportunities had shrank faster than a fifteen year old in ice water. Eventually my wife got sick of me staring out the window and making armpit noises so she suggested I take up volunteering again. We had both been volunteers while living here in 2007 and I had also volunteered while abroad in 2008, so I suppose it was the next logical step to take if no work was forthcoming. A few e-mails later I was accepted as door security for the “Island Open Championship”, which I incorrectly interpreted from the website as being a Mixed-Martial Arts competition. When I arrived, not entirely prepared to deal with pot-bellied failures hollering while steroid beasts tenderized one another, I was relieved to learn that the event was actually an all-ages Taekwon-Do competition. That meant the testosterone factor would be a fraction of what I’d expected and I would probably not be vomited upon.

Cabin 12 | 3111 Cedar Hill Rd | Victoria

Update 3/14/2012:  Hey there, loyal readers.  Cabin 12 has relocated to 3111 Cedar Hill Road near the Hillside Mall.  It's a bit of a hike but worth it for the friendliest restaurant in town.  This review refers to their former location at 607 Pandora Street but I stand by my words.


To get to the new Cabin 12 by transit take the #24 bus from downtown.  It'll let you off a stone's throw from their door.  Otherwise there are a number of buses that take you within walking distance, including the #4, 22, 25, 27 & 28.


Sometimes you just know that you're not going to like something.  In early 2005 I was going through a prolonged breakup when two close friends got tired of me drifting from room to room in my house like the ghost of Miss Haversham and dragged me to out to the movies.  Living in Revelstoke we had only one film on offer, the romantic comedy Hitch and I fought like mad against going in there; after I Robot there were a dozen things I'd rather do than watch Big Willy "Hell, yeah!" his way through more nonsense, but my friends prevailed.  

Funky, but in a good way

Two hours later I emerged from the cinema feeling better than I had in months - over the course of the film I had come to realize that I had great friends who really cared about my well-being.  That's a rare thing.  But take away that affirmation and you're left with a film that was, as predicted, absolute rubbish.  When I came across it on cable recently I felt an almost irrepressible urge to channel The King and fire my .44 into the television.  All the positive memories clustered around seeing the film couldn't change the fact that I knew I would hate it going in and felt no different coming out.  


I knew I wasn't going to like Cabin 12 because I'd heard it was "trendy", "funky", and "hip", three words that make the hair on my neck stand up, but I thought I'd give it a try - it only seemed fair.  Sometimes you just know that you're not going to like something.  And sometimes you're wrong.  I enjoyed my lunch at Cabin 12 more than any in recent memory and if this is the way that owners Corey & Dan always run their ship then I've found my new favorite restaurant.

It's Love, By George!

There are certain discussions that every couple eventually has:  Will we have babies?  What inappropriate, trendy name will we give them?  How many people have you been with?  How many?  I feel like I barely know you, I'm going to my mothers!  These are often pivotal moments in a couple's history, determining in one languid moment of pillow talk whether he will produce a ring from a bedside drawer, or whether she will casually mention that if this month doesn't have thirty-two days she's missed a pill.  In a recent moment of intimacy Nicky & I cautiously approached one of these questions, slowly and with great delicacy because it is through such thin ice as this that the walrus of discontent bursts through to devour the penguin of happiness.  The question?  If you could spend the night with one celebrity - who would it be?

Credit Where It's Due

Recently I've started keeping an eye on the amount of traffic that comes through here and after a week I've learned that the Victoria Burger Blog is our second largest source of hits, so thanks to DK for the link!

The Podium Sports Grill | 531 Yates St. | Victoria

Athletics are not my bag. I don't know why exactly, maybe because I enjoy the same level of fitness as a stack of pancakes or that I refuse to tolerate any level of physical discomfort and to enter the world of athletics is know nothing but. Once, because I'd been told it built character, I went for a run around the neighborhood and after thirty minutes, with every joint howling in protest and my knees threatening suicide, I suddenly recalled an article in Omni about recently discovered links between character, humorlessness and responsibility and went home to spend more quality time with the sofa. I find the watching of sports to be an equally joyless enterprise - hockey, football and basketball all seem to involve minor variations on a theme; chemically-enhanced cavemen, all of them rich as Croesus, running back and forth perpetrating acts of violence against one another while a stadium full of drunken thugs howl encouragement. No wonder then, that I almost never bother going into sports bars, and a small wonder that I bothered with this one. I'm glad I did.

Al-Sultan Restaurant | 1813 Douglas Street | Victoria

In the bottom drawer of my desk, tucked behind the Emergency Whiskey and a stack of unopened fan mail, there sits a book. Large and lovingly bound in exquisite leather, it is a comprehensive list of the things in this world which annoy me. Some of the entries are more detailed than others, the most thought-out being calmly expanded upon in iambic pentameter using my finest calligraphy set:

"Pompous weird-beards who mope their way around
parties until someone says, 'Is that your
guitar?' and they look shocked, almost as if
to say, 'Oh this, this vast wooden thing slung
across my back that hits Bren in the arm
each time I walk past him? I had almost
forgotten that I had it with me, bro',
then play the first four bars to 'Stairway' while
all the other moonheads gaze on rapt and
the rest of us remember that we have
work in the morning and must be leaving."

Others are hastily scrawled in a pygmy rage using half-chewed golf pencils and considerably more four-letter words. These typically involve things that bother me about work, whatever slang is currently en vogue and things I see on television. Television is a scourge, particularly the advertisements, and several pages of my manifesto are devoted entirely to things like:

"Slap Chop Man: I wish that hooker had bitten off your tongue"

"Viagra: There is nothing at all wrong with your penis. It has retired from active service because it understands you to be too ugly to attract a partner the old-fashioned way and your income stream insufficient to acquire one via the same means as Slap Chop Man."

"Billy Mays: That God took you and not Anthony Sullivan or Slap Chop Man proves that He takes some kind of demented joy in our suffering."

Earls | 1199 Government Street | Victoria

There are a lot of reasons why it might seem pointless to review a chain restaurant:  the recipes are mostly the same at every location from San Francisco to Jacksonville, and, as a friend pointed out, if a formula is successful enough to generate franchises who am I to argue?  Well, over the years I've eaten at Boston Pizza, Red Robin & Ricky's All-Day Grill, and the only thing they do well is back up what H.L. Mencken said about getting rich by underestimating the taste of the American public.  The quality of a restaurant depends more on the competence of those preparing the food than it does on recipes alone so if the folks behind the scenes have as much enthusiasm for food as I do honest work then your dining experience will be as much fun as mopping the floors in an adult theatre. 

Almost any franchise that opened up in my hometown of Revelstoke over the years has either folded or maintained a consistently execrable standard, the only obvious reason being the available pool of listless halfwits willing to work for the wages on offer.  Paying peanuts will most assuredly get you monkeys.  Dan has always been a devoted fan of the Earls chain, for which I've hassled him endlessly but his ability to ignore me is almost unparalleled.  Only my wife does it better.  So when Dan informed me that Earls would be the chosen venue for his 26th birthday I figured there was no point poking fun and that inferior factory-prepared food would vindicate my snobbery.  And you know what?  The bastards made us a great meal and I barely had enough room left to eat my words.

I Want to Take His Face - Off!

A quick word before I post this week's review - I'd like to thank my good friend Dan Eastabrook for putting together our new logo.  The original shot was taken by another good friend, Scott Horton, while we were on vacation in southern California and Dan kindly took the time to doctor the image according to my needs.  That included removing an awful reflection of myself, which is sitting in an attic somewhere growing older.  Thanks again to both of you!

Cafe Brio | 744 Fort Street | Victoria

For the longest time fine restaurants held no appeal for me. Growing up in Revelstoke, most of what I learned of upscale restaurants I learned from the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air". I came to associate fine-dining with soft music, portions scarcely bigger than my thumb and DJ Jazzy Jeff being thrown through French doors. The details of eating in bistros or brasseries, like "salad forks", seemed weird & impenetrable, like French, and having to wear a jacket and tie just to eat dinner seemed diabolical. A jacket inside? And a necktie? Hell. Neckties are the miserable invention of some secret pervert with an interest in auto-erotic asphyxiation. You can't use them to sop up gravy, blow your nose or wipe your....er...nose, so I ask you - what does that leave?

Once I started paying for my own meals I headed straight for the type of place that didn't have dress codes. The best amongst them actively discouraged the wearing of anything hinting at affluence. Were you to enter the Central Station Pub in Kamloops wearing a suit, or even a pressed pair of trousers, the night would end with you upended in an alleyway trash-bin. Now and again, though, there are times when I want a quiet meal somewhere I won't be rolled for my pocket change. This weekend our friend Joline stopped in while on vacation from the U.K. and we decided to take her to one such place, our favorite "nice" restaurant, Cafe Brio.

Helser's on Alberta | 1538 Northeast Alberta Street | Portland, OR

Flying is idiotic.  Not all flying of course, I'm well aware that without the power of flight bumblebees, herons and the like would have a hard time getting around.  Human beings however were not born with the benefit of wings and are not particularly aerodynamic so we've spent the better part of our history tottering about on two legs, trying not to fall from high places and doing just fine.  A pack of maniacs who women tend to avoid decided that their free time would be best spent trying to defy nature and eventually, after much tribulation, we had the aeroplane.  The start of the airline industry meant that ordinary folks like you and me got to experience the immediacy of mortality courtesy of a flimsy metal tube hurtling across the sky at 500 miles an hour.  Because government bodies thrive on misery the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 was passed, which gave airlines & passengers carte blanche to stop caring about anything. 

From then on ordinary folks like you and me still got to experience the glory of the Skycoffin but now with two hundred other people dressed in sweat-pants, all with whooping plague, enjoying the same level of comfort offered in a cattleyard.  Add in turbulence and the looming possibility that some resentful virgin who spends too much time on the internet has hidden explosives in his underpants and air travel for fun makes as much sense as trying to kick a bear in the testicles.  The only time I will consent to air travel is when time is short, such as this weekend past when Nicky & I visited our friends Rose & Scott in Portland. 

Flying in the Dash 8 aircraft used by Air Canada for short hops like Victoria-Vancouver & Vancouver-Portland is to feel like you've been packed into a Port-a-John and launched by catapult.  I'm not normally a religious man but but if the almighty has an answering machine then by the time I got to PDX I'd filled the tape.   It was all worth it though, to see good friends, have good times and eat good food.  Portland eateries have almost never disappointed me and Helser's comes in at the top of what was already an esteemed list.

Lully's Sandwich Bar | 732 Broughton Street | Victoria, BC

Update, March 28, 2012:  Lully's is no more, replaced by the Cleopatra Hookah Bar.  As of this writing the hookah bar is not yet open to the public but, according to a source, hopes to be soon.

Like any good origin story the beginning of the sandwich is the subject of some conjecture:  are they a super-intelligent race of aliens rendered mute by their entry into our atmosphere?  Ancient texts that have the misfortune of tasting like Montreal smoked meat?  Both tantalizing theories, both unlikely ever to be properly investigated.  

The origin of the sandwich is lost to time and that may be for the best.  Scholars everywhere would never have recovered from learning that all their lives they've been using their lunch hours to masticate what's left of the Alexandrian Library. What is known about the sandwich is that name itself comes from John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich .  An inveterate gambler & gourmand he demanded of his servant something that wouldn't require his Highness to shift His bulk away from his beloved card game.  A full-turkey is a bit unwiedly to eat whilst gambling away the manor house so a piece of salt beef, wait for it, sandwiched between two toasted bits of bread fit the bill nicely instead and soon Montagu's fellow gambling addicts would order "the same as Sandwich!".  That makes our most commonly eaten modern foodstuff named after an obese gambling addict.  

A New Look?

Over the next few days we'll be experimenting with a few new looks here at LTT so bear with us.  If you have any suggestions feel free to fire them off to one of the addresses on the sidebar.

Cirque du Agincourt

Recently my wife Nicky informed me that she finds frustrating the Canadian habit of avoiding direct answers.  I’d never given it much thought, nor had I ever considered England, her home, to be a place full of assertive, Type-A personalities shooting from the hip.  As a nation aren’t they collectively known for being ineffective and evasive?  I don’t recall any scenes in “Notting Hill” where Hugh Grant stops stammering, bangs his fist down on a table and says “Dammit Julia, I am sick of being charmingly befuddled.  Get your kit off and bend over that sofa.”  Certainly in times past the British could be counted on to speak their mind; in his 1835 “Minute on Education”, Thomas Macauley expounded “[a] single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia”.  This was about the time that the empire had decided to “help” the Punjab by taking it over.  But in modern Britain?  Aside from Gordon Ramsay, who can be written off as an anomaly, and Simon Cowell, who is most certainly Satan, there was no evidence of this directness.  Then I recalled His Hughness’ 1995 arrest for the solicitation of a Los Angeles prostitute and I realized it had been there all the time!  Instead of making himself miserable by submerging his manly desires, getting a divorce or forcing his lovely wife Elizabeth Hurley to engage in lewd and no doubt un-Christian sexual acts, he found himself a hooker.  Rather than waffle about what to do, or worse, sulk, Hugh took the initiative and made sure that the sun wasn’t the last thing to go down on the British Empire.  That’s shooting from the hip – rule Britannia.