Posts Tagged ‘vacation’

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99 Red Balloons Go By

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

I generally don’t like to talk about Paige’s father very often – it’s complicated and messy. But just so y’all know, he is a musician and has been in at least 5-6 bands over the last 20 years. I only bring this up because while we were up in Vancouver, CB and I went to see some shows. It made me realize how much I miss going to them and of course, how much of a fool I’ve been for not going to see more.

You see, being a girlfriend of someone in a band could quite possibly kill any pleasure you get out of music – like it did me. Honestly, it was probably the combination of bad relationship (you what? you just bought an amp?!? we just had a baby!) and my low tolerance for repetitive things (like band practice). At the end of our 2ish years together I had had enough of the incessant guitar riffs and bass lines and misplaced priorities and everything else that I broke up with Paige’s father and music all at the same time. Down with love! NO MORE MUSICIANS – EVER! To hell with music!

13 years later, my life is not governed by so many absolutes. Plus, dating a writer right after a musician just about killed me and in hindsight the musician seemed like a cakewalk in comparison.

But I digress.

For shits and giggles, CB and I got tickets to see the Stone Temple Tribute Project and Girls and Roses while we were in Vancouver. A quick word on tribute bands or cover songs, they generally fall under one of the following three categories:

  1. So awesome, they sound just like [fill in the blank]! Think Arnel Pineda and Steve Perry comparison.
  2. So talented that they reinterpreted the music and it still sounds good! Maybe even better! Think David Cook from American Idol singing “Always Be My Baby” by Mariah Carey. Pop to Grunge. Not a big fan of either artist but it was the first example that came to mind. Think Chris Cornell singing Billie Jean by MJ.
  3. Bad. So bad. This is wrong. So wrong.

In this case, Girls and Roses was #3. In fact, we couldn’t even sit through the entire set. We ended up heading back to The Railway to salvage our evening.

While out on the deck we met Siobhan Duvall by happenstance. She is the lead singer of a band called Duvall Star (pictured above) and was completely adorable with her pink Chuck Taylors and pink Debbie Harry t-shirt. She told us a story about how she did a cover of 99 Red Balloons and how it randomly sold around 100,000 copies on iTunes and how it was a nice chunk of change for a while. Being a skeptic, I had to check to see if she was serious and sure enough, there it was in all of it’s iTunes glory.

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Posted in Daily | 7 Comments »

Holy Cannoli!

Friday, March 27th, 2009

If you have ever read the book Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, you might recall a passage about a pizzeria in Naples called Pizzeria da Michele. Liz’s friend Giovanni (or Dario, I can’t remember) recommends this place to her and says:

“Order the double mozzarella. If you go to Naples and don’t eat this pizza, please lie to me later and tell me that you did.”

If you are ever in Vancouver, you must take the skytrain from downtown and head east to Commercial Drive. About halfway up the 22 block shopping district is a place called Fratelli Bakery. It’s on the west side of the street.

When you are there, do not get sidetracked by the neopolitans or biscotti. ORDER A SICILIAN CANNOLI. And good gravy, do not get it mixed up with a regular cannoli – it must be the Sicilian one. (It’s the one that is stuffed with orange peel scented ricotta and chocolate chips.) You cannot even imagine how good this is. CB suggested that we share one and I almost peed myself from laughing over the thought.

If you go to Vancouver and don’t eat this cannoli, please lie to me later and tell me that you did.

holycannoli


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Posted in Daily, Foodie | 9 Comments »