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:
- So awesome, they sound just like [fill in the blank]! Think Arnel Pineda and Steve Perry comparison.
- 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.
- 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.
Tags: duvall star, siobhan duvall, vacation, vancouver
Posted in Daily | 7 Comments »
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.
Tags: food porn, Foodie, vacation, vancouver
Posted in Daily, Foodie | 9 Comments »
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
We can either go forward or backwards in the evening but the Friday that we spent in Vancouver was good test of my endurance.
After our train ride up from Seattle, CB and I had lunch at the hotel restaurant, took a long walk down Robson Street and then headed towards Yaletown. There we had beer and oysters at Rodney’s (which had a bartender so cute that it hurt me a little), espresso at Raw Canvas and then headed to dinner at Bin 941 (which served this duck breast with pancetta, goat cheese and truffle oil salad that was so good that it hurt me a little too).
After dinner we headed towards a place called the Railway Club. While we were there, CB and I happened to strike up a long conversation with a Day Trader and a Finance Regulator (of all people). The latter called bloggers the “scourge of the earth” and said that bourbon was disgusting (which by the way, is something akin to insulting my mother). I wanted to hate him but it’s so rare that you find someone who describes themselves as “Beautiful Mind smart.” (Seriously, he said a “Beautiful Mind smart!” More than once!) How could you hate such bravado? What an asshole.
The Day Trader was a bit dull, but then again I am dull, so what the fuck do I have to complain about? I wanted to “almost” hate him too but he was too cordial and kept shelling out for cabs and beers and such. With that in mind, I will have to call him top-notch. TOP NOTCH! (Even if he did suck down Red Bulls and vodka like an Olsen Twin.)
We all ended up going to two more bars, of which I can’t remember the names of because our new Canadian friends took us there. (You know, because I’ve worked through all of my trust issues in therapy and I now have graduated to trusting complete random strangers to take me to places that I’ve never been to.) As I recall, one place had a hockey jersey as the centerpiece of the mahogany laden bar (Canadians love their hockey!) and the other place was brightly lit, sported these Ikea stools and had a lot of flat screens playing 80′s music like Def Leppard and Bon Jovi. If any of you Vancouver readers can enlighten me, please do.
In order to gild the lily, we were whisked away to the Edgewater Casino for a night of craps table fun, but in the end CB and I decided to ditch the gambling scene in order to drink some more and people watch. To our good fortune, the casino bartender was completely adorable and young and irreverent which made the younger me completely fall madly in love with him for a FULL HOUR because of the fact that he was completely young, adorable and irreverent. How could you not?
At the end of his shift he handed me a piece of paper and said out loud and clear, “Here is the number for the VD doctor that you asked for.” He did this while there was some jackass talking to me about his Native Pride and about how he was a descendant of Genghis Khan and about how responsible he was and how he took care of his women … yada, yada, yaaaaaawwwnnnnn. All I could think was, “What’s a VD doctor? What does that mean?”
Since I am so pathetically out of touch with dating it was not till waaaaaaay later did I realize that it was actually his number. That he was trying to imply that I had a venereal disease so that the Son of Genghis Khan would leave me alone. He was also implying that I should call him because he is young, adorable and irreverent and that perhaps I am two out of three of those things … and that maybe we should get married or something like that because after an hour of me sitting there punch drunk, I MUST BE IRRESISTIBLE, RIGHT?
Or perhaps it was more like, let’s skip all of that falling in love and marriage talk and at least get to practicing making babies part. You know, cause he is a hot, young bartender.
Oh God, I am so bad at this.
Viva la Canada!
Tags: Dating, vancouver
Posted in Daily, Dating | 10 Comments »
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