• tonight: possibly our last Fieramosca dinner with CBGB, as they’re about to move to another city;
• next week: a visit to Midfield Wine Bar with our buddy Kaylea, a Zinfandel tasting with T-Bone & The Sof, and the kick-off to a six-day trip to Arizona (including Phoenix, Sedona and the Grand Canyon);
• final week of May: CBGB’s going-away housecooling (is a thing, yes?) party, and a Canadian Beer News Dinner at Smokeless Joe.

June isn’t looking too shabby either, what with a Picasso exhibit at the AGO, a long weekend in Prince Edward County, the Flaming Lips playing (free) at Dundas Square, Session 99 craft beer festival and a 5-day trip to New York.

Also: today was the first beer-on-patio day of the year!

Life? Good.

By the way, we only watched The Grey last night after trying to watch Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (imdb | rotten tomatoes) but giving up 35 minutes in. It was terrible. Seriously, terrible. We both wanted to keep watching to see if it got better, but it was just so annoying. One shudders to think how many bloody horse heads must have been slipped under Hollywood bedsheets to get that piece of crap on Oscar’s best picture shortlist. Blech.

• I’m just kidding, it was Rob Ford. The man’s not a good mayor. The man’s not even a competent mayor. The man’s a sideshow. He’s a goddamn Jerry Springer episode. Welcome to Toronto, Canada’s largest city and one trying to earn consideration as an alpha city, where Chris fucking Farley is the mayor. (CTV)
• I’m ashamed that I’m a member of the same race that came up with the word breastaurant. Not to mention the concept. (Macleans)
• This woman…why would…surely she must know…I mean, she’s fully orange. I just…I can’t even. (CBC)
• Quebec university students, just zip it. Your average tuition is half that of students in the neighbouring (and perennially economically depressed) Atlantic provinces, and yet you’re still throwing a giant provincial hissy fit about a planned five-year increase to bring tuition in line with the rest of the country. I don’t expect you to be happy about paying more, but I’d expect that you’d admit that you’ve gotten a sweet deal for a long, long time and that it’s unreasonable to expect it to continue. (Canadian Press)
• I’ve been in and around enough vendor selections (not of anything resembling an order of fighter jets, admittedly) to know that if the purchaser can’t explain their criteria for selecting a certain product, it’s because they a) didn’t have any, or b) don’t want to admit what they were. (Macleans)

.:.

Luckily there were wonderful things buried in my news feeds too, like how marvelously Norway is responding to a monster like Anders Breivik, or this campaign poster for Prince Joffrey, or the tweets and blogs of Umair Haque, or this fantastic folk-y/bluegrass-y cover of one of my favourite Arcade Fire songs, or these pictures of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, or this short film featuring Bill Murray.

Whew. Hope restored.

The Imposter (imdb | flixster | hot docs) was carrying a lot of buzz from an earlier appearance at Sundance, and it didn’t disappoint. I was impressed with all three facets: the story, the style and the shooting. The story was so bizarre that it could only be told in a documentary…it would have seemed ridiculous in a typical film. The style involved a lot of recreations, a la Errol Morris, which Nellie hates but I saw as crucial to the story…with no actual footage, you needed some way to put yourself in these situations being recounted more than ten years later. The shooting itself was pretty remarkable…as the director himself said during the Q&A afterward there were influences like Morris and David Fincher, but I got a lot of The Usual Suspects in the mix as well. Overall, a fantastic start to the festival.

It only got better with Brooklyn Castle (imdb | hot docs) on Sunday. Focused on a middle school in Brooklyn that focuses on cranking out amazing chess players, but extending into their personal lives and struggles at school and the state education budget sword of Damocles, it was engaging and worrisome and funny and encouraging all at once. The crowd applauded several times during the film; I rarely stopped smiling for the last half hour. Also: there’s a certain kind of subject that documentary filmmakers must just flip out when they stumble on; in this film his name was Pobo. Once you watch the film — and you really must watch it, just as soon as you can — you won’t forget him, or the other kids, or the teachers, or the stories. This won the audience prize at SxSW, and I’d have to think it’s a favourite to win the audience award at Hot Docs as well.

Unfortunately, with that screening still fresh in my mind, it was inevitable that Fists Of Pride (imdb | hot docs) would be a letdown. The subject matter — Burmese kids living in a boxing camp along the Burmese/Thai border, trying to fight their way out of poverty — sounded compelling, but we never really got to identify with them, or see them fight for more than a few moments each, or find out what happened. It was like a story that just couldn’t find a conclusion. Not bad, but nowhere near the league of the two we’d seen to date.

We already know we’re missing scheduled documentary #4 (The World Before Her) on Wednesday; if we’re lucky we’ll get to see Sexy Baby on Friday. Even if we can’t, our first weekend of the festival was worth the price of five admissions.

But then I saw the reviews. 90%+ on Rotten Tomatoes. Okay then.

So yeah, I saw the movie. And now I know that the dumb, formulaic slasher film is exactly what they’re playing off. It had elements of that by-the-numbers, but it presented them as if to suggest that all the rote procedurals you’ve seen before have been the work of an off-screen deus ex machina. So it was clever.

It was also really, really goddamned funny. Probably the most I’ve laughed in a movie theatre since Bridesmaids. Putting Brad Whitford and Richard Jenkins — two actors of way higher calibre than you’d expect in a movie like this, which probably should have tipped me off — in their roles and letting them run was a great move. Of course, the script had to be good, and Nellie pointed out at least eleven times before we watched the movie that it was written and directed by Drew Goddard — ex of Buffy, Alias, Angel and Lost — so this was clearly in his wheelhouse.

Make no mistake, it’s a violent movie too — incredibly, and actually comically so at times — lest you think bringing your kids along is a good idea. But if you like self-referential + self-aware (kind of like winking at the very fact that it’s winking at the audience) genre films that make you laugh, and don’t mind some ridiculously savage violence mixed in, this is your new jam.

It started out in the very same way: leave work late and head straight to Midfield Wine Bar. I’ll be honest, we made dinner reservations in the area that Tuesday when we decided we wanted an excuse to go back to Midfield. Anyway, we sat at the bar and were greeted by Chris as warmly as if we were regulars and not just second-timers. Peckish, we ordered a board (much the same as last week’s, but with Serrano ham and an excellent clothbound Red Leicester cheese this time) and let him start picking wines. I had a white from Vouvray that I don’t quite remember, the Santagostino Nero d’Avola/Syrah I’d enjoyed so much the previous week, the Castello di Verduno Basadone (I’d never had a wine like that before) and an 04 Chateau Lescalle from Bordeaux. All excellent, especially the reds. Nellie had a Stratus Tollgate white, a Sauvignon Blanc of some kind and two more reds which have since slipped her mind.

Midway through our drinks & eats, our friend Duarte showed up. Socialite that he is, he knew all three couples sitting at the bar, even though none of us knew the other. I think it’d been a few years since we’d seen him face-to-face so it was good to catch up with him while he waited for his friend.

We had dinner reservations for 10:00 just down the street at Enoteca Sociale, erstwhile (just) hotspot and still darling of the Toronto dining scene. We usually try to wait until some of the scene-buzz has worn off a place before trying it out, so the time seemed right. I don’t know if the food is better or worse than when it first opened (note: if it were much better I don’t think I could have stood it) but I think the vibe was more to our liking now than it would have been then. It was charming and efficient, and classy and tousled, and just the right level of noisy. All of which to say, it was completely unlike our experience at Salt the previous weekend.

Now then, down to the important stuff: ze food. I’m copying and pasting straight off the menu*:

• Starter: Spicy barese sausage, grilled artichokes & shishito peppers, pecorino fresco
• Dan: Aglianico del Vulture “Liscone” 2008 DOC, Cantine Madonna delle Grazie, Basilicata
• Nellie: Frascati Superiore 2010 DOC, Casale Marchese, Lazio
• Dan’s main: trecce, pork sausage, charred broccoli & tomato peperonata
• Gutturnio “Fermo” 2010 DOC, Roberto Manara, Emilia Romagna
• Nellie’s main: lobster spaghetti, tomato, chili, basil
• NV Franciacorta Brut DOCG, Majolini, Lombardia
• Dessert: sticky toffee pudding, cardamom syrup & vanilla bean ice cream

My trecce (braided pasta) was really good. So was Nellie’s spaghetti, though there was so much lobster she couldn’t finish it. But my god…my god, that barese sausage. It might have been the most flavourful meat I’ve ever tasted. And if you took a bite with some of the shishito pepper? Goddamn! Unreal. I wanted to run back into the kitchen and steal the rest. I composed an ode to barese sausage on the spot. I considered nominating that sausage to be named to the order of Canada. So yeah, I liked the barese sausage.

Sigh…clearly, with Midfield and Enoteca being three blocks apart, this wallet & waistline problem isn’t going away.

* Seriously, restaurants who publish their entire menu, with wine pairings, on the website (not in a PDF) are a blogger’s best friend.

Midfield Wine Bar is a new spot on Dundas West that we liked immediately. The decor feels a bit rugged and minimalist at first, but it’s not an oversight — it’s by design. Everything here is dead simple. Small tables, simple chairs, cash only, a healthy bar, a brief menu (charcuterie, oysters, terrines, bread) and a well-curated wine list. I’m trying to remember everything I had…I remember the Stratus Charlie Baker Riesling, some Sangiovese or another, and a fantastic Santagostino Nero D’Avola/Syrah. Our charcuterie board was fantastic too…smearing some honeycomb on the spicy sopressata was the smartest thing I did all day. It’s not the place to go if you’re looking for a ginormous meal, but if you love interesting wine (and maybe fancy a snack) then make your way to Midfield. And let them pick the glasses for you; it’s just more fun that way.

Alas, it was time to leave Midfield. We had a dinner reservation down the street at Salt Wine Bar (sense a theme?) at 9:30. In retrospect we should have just stayed at Midfield and ordered a second board. It’s not that Salt was bad…it was just a rather soul-jerking shift to decamp a truly authentic place like Midfield for a minor outpost of Ossington hipster-douchery. It was the usual loud/cramped scenario in there. Our server was nice, but she couldn’t tell me a thing about the wine list; I don’t remember what bottle we ended up with or how it tasted. Food: the lamb tacos and lobster risotto were just okay, but the scallops and pork belly were both pretty good. So considering we got a pretty modest amount of food and wine, the bill felt outsized. It’s not a strict avoid in my books — that is, I wouldn’t warn somebody away from there if they wanted to try it — but I don’t see us making a return trip anytime soon.

.:.

Thankfully, after all that wine we had a beer respite (note to self: copyright the term beerespite) on Saturday. We met up with CBGB at Beerbistro for our friend Lisa’s birthday, in an attempt to turn her — an avowed disliker of beer — into a fan of the suds. Thankfully Beerbistro offers flights of three small glasses, and groups their menu by type of beer (and orders it roughly from lightest-to-strongest), so I did the picking and began the indoctrination.

• Flight 1:Blanche de Chambly, Bitburger Pils, De Koninck. the Blanche was a hit. The Pils and De Koninck weren’t quite as well received, but they weren’t rejected either.
• Flight 2:Weihenstephaner Hefe Weiss, Innis & Gunn Oak Aged, Muskoka Mad Tom IPA. The Weihenstephaner was also well received, though not quite as well as the Chambly. The Innis & Gunn went over better than I thought too, probably because of the sweetness. The Mad Tom, however, produced a response best summarized as “Ewwwww!!!” and was quickly given away. We had hit on it: the enemy, then, was hops.
• Flight 3:Affligem Blonde, Young’s Double Chocolate Stout, Paulaner Salvator. The Affligem sits in the same category as my beloved Maudite, which I happened to be drinking just prior to this round. Since the birthday girl had tried a sip and not liked it, I opted for the other ‘spicy’ beer; luckily the Affligem fared better than La Maudite would have. The Young’s was a gamble, since serving stout to a professed non-beer-drinker seems antithetical, but the chocolate might have just salvaged it. I believe the Salvator was the least popular of this flight, but still wasn’t met with the venom shown to the Mad Tom.

So, if nothing else we showed our friend last night that she doesn’t have to resort to drinking the bad house wine at a pub if they have a weissbeer on tap. Mission tastily accomplished!

• I actually watched Margin Call (imdb | rotten tomatoes) on the flight to New Orleans, pre-sickness. It tells the story of a thinly-veiled amalgam of a few financial institutions (especially Lehman) involved in the 2008 meltdown. Where I found Too Big To Fail interesting because it’s what was actually happening at the highest levels of government, Margin Call was interesting because it portrayed a single company’s take on it. From a low-level analyst to the Chairman, and every position in between, all the maneuvering taking place once people realize their ass is on the line, and the frustration of those who just don’t want to play the game. Judging by the box office numbers this film was heartily ignored, but I’d say the acting talent involved makes it profoundly overlooked.
• The Muppets (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was, admittedly, something Nellie wanted to watch more than me. OK, OK, I get it already…you have a crush on Jason Segel. Anyway, the movie seemed sweet and well-paced and funny in parts, but I suspect there was more than a little nostalgia at work for it to have a 96% rating.
• The Descendants (imdb | rotten tomatoes) is another one for which I didn’t quite understand the rating. It was good and all, but…89%? Really? George Clooney seemed woefully underused to me, not the kind of classic character and performance that we saw in other Alexander Payne films like Sideways or About Schmidt. Maybe Payne deliberately toned it down, or maybe it was that he offset the bitter or moving with something saccharine once too often. Like I said, good film…but I think I was a victim of inflated expectations on this one, given all the Oscar buzz.
• Game Change (imdb) was made for TV, so no RT rating, but I give it a Dickinson thumbs-up. It’s hard to know whether this behind-the-scenes-of-power look at how Sarah Palin entered the public consciousness in 2008 is accurate, but it’s certainly damning to Sarah Palin. Watch it for yourself, and Marvel at Julianne Moore, and decide whether you think it felt slanted or not. To me, the most interesting undercurrent in the film is the notion that only a celebrity can win an American presidential election now…whether it’s Palin’s camera appeal resurrecting McCain’s campaign (at first, anyway) or Obama leading from post to post because of his popularity and media savvy. I find the idea depressing, but impossible to refute. Also, there’s a great moment where we watch Julianne Moore pretending to be Sarah Palin watching Tina Fey pretending to be Sarah Palin. I was picturing the real Sarah Palin watching that scene at home and wondering if somewhere there was another Sarah Palin watching her.

Friday

I’d been dreading our American Airlines flight. The last time I took American (>10 years ago) I told myself I’d never fly with them again, but we didn’t have a choice this time. But it really wasn’t too bad at all…our flight left on time and got us to Dallas in plenty of time to eat a pretzel and tacos, lounge on some recliner-ish airport chairs, and make our connection to New Orleans.

Our hotel, the Avenue Plaza Resort in the Garden District, ended up being bigger than we thought too, and not quite as ugly as the website’s pictures suggested. So the low-expectations part of our trip had both turned out pretty well. So far so good!

It was already pretty late, so our plans that night were simply to try out the Avenue Pub just down St. Charles Avenue. How lucky that our hotel was five blocks from one of the best beer places in North America. CBJ+M — our traveling companions — staked out a little table upstairs, and we drank our fill of excellent beer, ate dump truck fries (waffle fries with pulled pork and cheese) and red-beans-and-rice wontons, admired the cool art and saw our first of many “Free Sean Payton” shirts. If you don’t know who Sean Payton is, this will help.

And then, boom…we crashed.

Saturday

Late to bed, late to rise. We gathered in the morning to test out the Trolley Stop Café, just a few steps from the hotel. It was already busy, and got busier before we left. The place was fairly famous on Tripadvisor for having big portions of yummy, cheap food. And Tripadvisor was not wrong. I had bacon and french toast and country sausage and eggs and grits (for the first time ever) for $6.75. Seriously. We all stuffed ourselves and were well-entertained by our server.

We jumped on the St. Charles Streetcar (don’t call it a trolley, no matter what the cafés tell you) and headed for the Central Business District, and walked from there into the French Quarter. At this point I should point out that Saturday ended up being a near-record high temperature for that time of year in New Orleans. Sunday and (part of) Monday were the same. And I should also point out that all I’d packed were jeans and dark tshirts. So walking around was getting a little toasty. Anyway. We deliberately avoided Bourbon Street; Nellie had never seen it, and we wanted her to experience it in its full glory that night. We did see a bit of Royal Street, Chartres (which is not pronounced how someone might think if they’ve been to Chartres, France…which I have…so I mispronounced it all weekend), Decatur and more. We saw ESPN setting up their analyst studio and walked along Jackson Square before splitting up. Nellie and I walked along the river, cooled down with a pint at the Crescent City Brewhouse and then walked along Royal and Chartres some more and checked out a cool little shop called Idea Factory. If we’d had a little more time we would have checked out Faulkner House Books as well. Both were recommendations from the Rather guide to New Orleans. Seriously, if you’re visiting a city for the first time and want to find interesting places, buy one of these books.

We met back up with CBJ+M for a late lunch at the Napoleon House, a building which, so the story goes, was to be a home for Napoleon if a plot to extricate him to New Orleans had gone off, and has been a bar since prohibition — by the looks of things the decor hasn’t changed much since the 30s. But the food (jambalaya for me, po’boys for everyone else) and drinks (Pimms cups, mainly) were tasty. We sat on the leafy back patio next to the koi pond and thanked the maker for the giant fan blowing directly at us.

At this point it was time to get to our real reason for being in New Orleans: the NCAA finals. Or, more accurately, the semi-finals on that evening. All day we’d seen fans walking around in Kentucky, Louisville, Ohio State and Kansas shirts; on the walk to the Superdome they became the norm and I, wearing a black Crywolf shirt, stood out. It obvious from the mass of humanity headed for the games that the stadium was huge, but I still kind of wasn’t ready for it. I sat down in my seat (after a long, steep climb) and took it all in.

Huge, right? 70,000 people were in those seats by the time the game started. Anyway, the games were fantastic: Kentucky/Louisville is a rivalry that’s hard to explain unless you’ve sat in the middle of it for two hours, while the huge Kansas comeback win over Ohio State was a classic game. At the end of each game, disappointed fans from the losing teams hurled commemorative seat cushions onto the crowd in the lower levels…luckily they hadn’t given out commemorative letter openers, or commemorative D-cell batteries. In retrospect we should have used our seat cushions to smack either the astronomically shrill Kentucky fan behind us (my ears are still ringing a week later) or the drunk Louisville chick in front of CBJ, who insisted on standing for the last seven minutes of the — very tense — game. On the plus side, we sat right behind a guy wearing, of all things, an Expos hat.

Seat cushions or no, our asses were sore after sitting for 6+ hours, so were happy to stand up and walk out of the stadium. We re-joined the mass of humanity and made for the French Quarter. Nellie was very excited to see Bourbon Street; about seconds into our trip down Bourbon Street she was very excited to leave. Seriously, it’s one of the most awful places on earth unless you’re a) an olympic-calibre drunk, b) a bead manufacturer or c) a street preacher.

We fled down Bienville to the corner of Decatur, where we found Industry Bar & Kitchen. It was an oasis in the ridiculous clubland that is the Quarter at night: a calm bar with great beer selection, early 90s alternative music on the speakers (okay, that might be more exciting for me than for others), and pizzas made and sold in the far corner. We stood at a table, drank our craft beers (NOLA Hopitoulas and Delirium Nocturnum for me, if I remember right), watched the hilarity of the quarter unfold outside the bar, and enjoyed the scene of the bartender building a tower plastic of cups on the head of a guy who’d passed out at the bar.

Tossing our beers in go-cups (you can walk around with open liquor, as long as it’s not glass, but even that doesn’t seem to be enforced) we walked over to Canal to catch the streetcar home. When that failed we tried to catch a cab. That wasn’t easy either, but we finally managed to snag one and bombed home.

Sunday

Something we noticed after seeing the omnipresent New Orleans beads strung from every wire and railing on Bourbon Street was that they’re actually strung all over the city…any trees or horizontal edge along a Mardi Gras parade route is strewn with beads.

We didn’t have another giant Trolley Stop breakfast in us, so we grabbed a bite at the nice little Avenue Cafe next door. The food was good, and the wifi password was ‘bestcoffeeever’. I didn’t try the coffee myself, but…cute. Full, we jumped on the streetcar; three of us jumped off at Lee Circle and walked down Andrew Higgins Drive to the National WWII museum. You may recognize Higgins’ name — he was the man who designed the landing craft used during the Normandy landing and throughout WWII. The museum itself was very good: informative, well presented, with a good flow through the sequence of events that led to war, to America’s involvement in Europe and the Pacific, and to the conclusion of each. The end of the Pacific section, with pretty music playing over looping footage of Enola Gay loading and dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, was particularly moving for me. I wish we’d stopped our visit there instead of heading next for Beyond All Boundaries, a 48-minute “4D” film produced by Tom Hanks. It was an interesting concept, what with the fake snow dropped on the audience during the Bastogne scenes, or the guard tower rising from the floor during the prison camp sequence, or the blinding flash of light and rumbling chairs representing the atomic bomb detonation, but…it was also pretty cheesy. Far more jingoistic, too, than the museum proper had been. Museums are meant to educate, not celebrate; the museum did the former, but Beyond All Boundaries felt very much like the latter.

By this point we were getting hungry, so we continued south from the museum to the corner of Tchoupitoulas where we found Cochon. Or rather, Cochon Butcher, the smaller and takeout-ier sister to Cochon, which was closed. The place was rammed with locals, always a good sign. The ladies stuck to salads, while CBJ and I each got a BBQ pulled pork sandwich (so! good!) with potato salad and a beer. I’ve had a lot of pulled pork sammies in my life, but that might have been my favourite…the quality of the meat was so good they didn’t even have to soak it in sauce, they just stuck some cole slaw in it. And the soft egg bun and the OOOOOOOOOOOKAY I’m drooling. Time to stop reminiscing.

The next step in the day’s plan was to walk back over toward the Quarter, and so we took a long shortcut (longcut?) through the Riverwalk, a cheesy indoor mall designed for cruise ship passengers but whatever…it was air-conditioned. Once we spilled out onto Canal we parted ways again, with CBJ+M heading off in search of some shirts and Nellie and I just wandering to the east. We checked out Bourbon Street again, just to see it in the daylight…yup, still awful. We tried some alternate streets, still heading east, and eventually reached the Marigny neighbourhood. We were close enough to Frenchmen Street to stop by another Beeradvocate-recommended bar: D.B.A.. They were temporarily closed for filming (fair enough, it was 4:00 on a Sunday afternoon) so we checked out the upcoming lineups at neighbouring bars (Kermit Ruffins? John Boutté? Clearly Frenchmen Street was a good place to hear live music; alas, not for us that night) and rested our tired feet in Washington Square before returning. And D.B.A.? Such a cool place. Obviously great beer selection, but good vibe with locals (the guy sitting next to me at the bar was named “Barnaby”, because it was New Orleans and of course he was), and swing-dancing class happening in the next room, and a pregnant bartender, and a sign that said “No Miller, Coors or Bud Lite. Get over it!”, and ‘drinkgoodstuff’ for a wifi password. Again…cute!

We were supposed to be meeting up with CBJ+M again soon, back at the Avenue Pub near our hotel, so Nellie put her remaining beer in a go-cup and we went outside to find a cab. As luck would have it one drove by the second we stepped outside. I ran to climb in, while Nellie — conditioned by years of banned public drinking — chugged her remaining beer and ran to the cab. The cabbie calmly informed us that it was perfectly okay to bring a go-cup into the cab, and Nellie cursed her cautious drinking habits (ha!) as we drove west. Through a funny string of conversation (in which Nellie learned where Kansas is) we ended up chatting with our cabbie quite a bit, who advised us on the best time of year to visit New Orleans (about 2 weeks after Easter, says he) and the ridiculous inconsistency of New Orleans street name pronunciation. He dropped us at the Avenue where we staked out a brilliant spot on the balcony and drank cold beer (my ginger-infused Japanese weissbeer was particularly good) in the heat of the late afternoon, waited for CBJ+M to arrive and tried to figure out a way to stay in that very spot forever.

We got cleaned and spiffied a bit before dinner at Coquette, a wine bar in the Garden District. What a find. We started with drinks (a phenomenal bacon-infused bourbon for me, a champagne/gin/lemon French 75 for Nellie) before getting on with the incredible food. My starter was pickled baby beets with burrata and duck ham (which is exactly as kickass as it sounds) and my main was duck breast with fennel & peas. Nellie, meanwhile, had fried gulf oysters paired with a glass of Chardonnay followed by cochon de lait (aka sucking pig), which my forkful or two (or six) told me was outstanding. I honestly can’t remember what CBJ+M got, except that CBJ got a cocktail called the Mutiny (blackstrap rum, spiced rum, lime, Angostura bitters, hot sauce) which was damned tasty. Our mains were paired with a 2008 Emeritus Pinot Noir from the Russian River. Then came an entirely unnecessary dessert of milk chocolate mousse with salted caramel and peanut butter sorbet. Nellie, preferring to drink her desserts, had a glass of Bordeaux instead. It was an incredible meal, one of the best we’ve had in ages, and it cost less than half of what we would have paid in Toronto. Which somehow made it taste even better.

Monday

We started packing Monday morning, knowing we’d have to get up at 3:45AM the next day (boo! hiss!) and not having much time that evening. But by late morning we were on the St. Charles streetcar one more time, this time jammed in like sardines, heading over to Canal. I stopped at one of the dozens of pop-up stores selling team tshirts and made a rare find: a) a Kentucky tshirt (there were only a few left anywhere) which b) wasn’t the same as the generic shirts being sold all over the city and c) fit me and d) was super-thin (which came in handy on a hot day like that). Score! We grabbed a little lunch and cooled off at Crescent City, then walked east along Decatur and west along Royal, stopping in the odd store and art gallery along the way.

Once we’d had enough shopping we decided to finally check out Bracket Town, part of the NCAA celebrations. We walked over to Poydras Street, then walked all the way back through the Riverwalk thingy, and then the whole length of the convention center (which is, like, half a mile long, goddammit) to Bracket Town. We thought there’d be some stuff in there that we’d enjoy. We were wrong. We regrouped after about 10 minutes, long enough for Nellie and I to toss down a couple of free Coke Zero samples, and then decided to go back to the adult part of town. But, uh, in a cab. We got dropped off at Café du Monde, ate some delicious & messy beignets as all good visitors to New Orleans must, and watched with concern as some storm clouds rose on the horizon.

Knowing we’d eventually have to walk toward the Superdome, and having confirmed that the weather forecast called for severe thunderstorms soon, we began walking back toward Canal. We stopped at our old friend Industry just in time; ten minutes after we arrived the rain started, and then it really started. Then came the lightning and thunder, some of which was so loud and so sharp it sounded like a gunshot. Seriously, the bartender came out of the back room when he heard it, ducked low to avoid flying bullets. We stayed out of the rain, drinking and eating pizza until most of it had let up. Still, it was time to go and the rain hadn’t stopped completely, so we knew were going to get wet. We ran to the Canal streetcar which took us most of the way there, but we still had to run the five blocks to the Superdome and…well, yeah. Wet.

The staff ushered us in through the underground parking ramps, high-fiving us as we ran in. You can imagine the humidity in a concrete parking structure during a thunderstorm in New Orleans, so it was pretty sporty in there. But hey, it was dry. We got to our seats in decent time, took in the pre-game excitement, and watched Kentucky storm out to an enormous lead over Kansas. Kansas made it close down the stretch, but Kentucky held on and took the championship. We watched with 70,000+ other people as fireworks exploded and confetti fell, as the team was interviewed and cut down the net, and (more or less) as they played “One Shining Moment” with the video montage. Pretty. Damn. Cool.

The walk home was nearly as wet as the walk there, so when the opportunity came to jump in a cab we took it. It was all-out piracy in the city by then; mysteriously, every cab meter in the city was malfunctioning and they could charge whatever they wanted. Whatever; we were home, and drier than we otherwise would have been. We packed our remaining stuff (including some very wet clothing, unfortunately), watched the ESPN highlights and commentary and tried, post-game high notwithstanding, to go to sleep for a few hours.

Tuesday

Our alarm went off at approximately stupid o’clock AM and we dragged ourselves into action. We’d pre-arranged a cab…or at least we thought we had. We actually ended up squeezing into an SUV with six other people, all bound for the airport. Turns out a lot of the cabs were making so much money into the wee hours of the previous night that no one was reporting for duty on Tuesday morning. Anyway, we thought leaving for the airport at 4:30 for a 6:00 flight would give us enough time, but as it was we just barely made it. My Nexus/Global Entry pass got us into the expedited security line, and from there we walked up to the gate with maybe five minutes to spare. If we’d been stuck in the (enormous!) standard security line we’d have missed our flight. Our flight to Miami was uneventful, apart from being full of Kentucky fans who look like they’d not bothered to go to sleep the night before. Also: wi-fi! I paid for access on both legs, MSY -> MIA and MIA -> YYZ, and will happily do it again if I ever get the chance.

We had originally been scheduled to return via Dallas; when American changed our flight to a 6AM departure via Miami we were pretty pissed but left with no alternative. However, we were pretty thankful when we arrived home and saw that all flights out of DFW — including CBJ+M’s flight, the one we were originally meant to be on — were canceled due to tornadoes in the area. So suddenly an early flight time didn’t seem like such a big deal.

.:.

We’ve been thinking about and planning this trip since last August when CBJ+M found out they’d won the Final Four tickets. Now that it’s over, we’re already thinking about when we’ll go back to New Orleans. We want to enjoy the city when it’s not full of tens of thousands of basketball fans. The food, the drink, the architecture, the friendliness of the people, the history…it all adds up to give the city so much character, and we want more of it. New Orleans, we’ll see you again soon.

Oh, and…Free Sean Payton!

I have lots to say about our trip to NOLA, believe me. I just have to find the time and energy to write it all up.

Note: we may or may not actually visit the Treme, but you get the idea.

Naturally I was dubious. For Canadiens fans (which I was, as were this friend and his kid brother) Roy was practically royalty.  We’d watched him talk to his goalposts on his way to a surprise cup in 1986 as a rookie. He’d won three Vezina trophies in four years. I didn’t know it yet, but I’d soon watch him win another cup in 1993, another upset for which he’d win his second playoff MVP award. Of course, I watched him leave Montreal in a blaze of ego, and then suffered through watching him win two cups (and another Conn Smythe trophy) with the Colorado Avalanche while my Canadiens foundered. He elevated a team with loads of talent which just couldn’t get over the hump, and delivered two cups to Colorado. When he won his fourth cup I considered him the greatest of all time.

But even then I know he might have a challenger. Brodeur won the Calder trophy as top rookie in 1994, and won the cup the next year. Brodeur was never as dramatic as Roy…no fiery exits from New Jersey, no winking at a forward he’d just robbed…just 18 seasons of all-star play. Four Vezinas (one more than Roy), two Stanley Cups, and the all-time records for wins, shutouts, and single-season wins.

I had posters of Roy on my wall. I had his jersey, and wore it to school the day after they won the cup in 93. I think I still have his rookie card somewhere. But when the CBC asked yesterday, “Is Martin Brodeur a better goaltender than Patrick Roy?” I had to say yes.

One never wants to decide between his hero and the man who knocks them off the perch, even on a topic as silly as hockey. But, unpalatable as that was, I realized how lucky I’ve been to watch (and see live, in Brodeur’s case) the two best goalies in the history of hockey play at the same time.

While the media seems intent on comparing it to Twilight (all the squealing teens don’t help) anyone who’s so much as glanced at the books knows they’re nothing alike. Granted, I didn’t read Twilight, but the brief snippets I’ve caught on TMN suggest that I’d hate the movies (and would probably therefore hate the books) because the characters seemed spectacularly annoying. I was hopeful The Hunger Games screenwriters wouldn’t do that to their central characters and, judging by early reports, they did not. I think Matt Brown summed it up nicely:

“Katniss never swoons for a boy or falls into suicidal fantasies in an effort to annihilate her self for the good of the establishment. I could do with five or ten minutes of her punching Bella Swan in the face.”

Right, then. Let the odds be ever in our favour of not being stuck next to too many spastic teenagers tomorrow.

*** UPDATE ***

So we saw it on Saturday. I thought it was pretty good. Didn’t melt my brain or anything, but I knew what I was going in to, and they did what they were set up to do: make an interesting, entertaining movie without ballsing it up as I’m sure the studio tried to make them do. The actors did very well and made us care. They made me want to see the next…I dunno, seven movies, or whatever they split the final two books into.

Side note: the theatre was the new AVX at the Scotiabank, which had comfier seats which you could reserve online so there was no standing in a queue to fight for a not-shit vantage point. Well worth the extra 3 quid. Oh, and the crowd wasn’t annoying at all…no squealing, no talking, and only one teenage girl on her phone during the movie, which I’ll take as a win.

Side technical note: they did a good job of portraying the violence without making it overly graphic; I still wouldn’t recommend bringing your nine year old (as some people in that theatre did) but if a kid read the book and has played a FPS or too then I don’t think the movie will freak them out.

Side asshole note: apparently some people are upset that they made the black characters, you know, black.

My day started out just fine…great weather and a canceled afternoon-long meeting led me to hit the Real Sports Bar early. I emailed my team back at the office, telling them all to go home, and staked out a spot for CBJ+M (and, eventually, Nellie). We landed decent spots with a good view of the 2-acre TV. The fuzzy picture below just doesn’t do it justice. Just for scale, the smaller screens to the right and left are actually composite screens made of four 42″ plasmas each.

The food was decent for a sports bar, if rather overpriced (much like their neighbour, E11even). The beer list was entirely pedestrian, and it got a little douchebaggy later in the evening (douchebags are easy to spot, by the way: they drink Bud Light from those cobalt blue bottles), but there’s no question that it’s a great place to watch sports. There are screens everywhere, including over each urinal in the privy. We had a free round sent over by some friends at another table, and reciprocated with tequila shots; thankfully the niceness arms race stopped there. We were also about to place an order for medium chicken wings when our server showed up, asking if we would like a free order of medium chicken wings which had accidentally been ordered for someone else. Either we were very lucky, or we were momentarily able to make things appear at our table just by thinking about them. I tried thinking about Mila Kunis carrying a bottle of 1982 Chateau Margaux but it didn’t work. Still, we were having pretty good luck and enjoying ourselves a great deal.

But then things went from bad (Ohio beating Michigan) to worse (my Duke Blue Devils losing to #15 seed Lehigh). The nuclear-level problem was Missouri losing to Norfolk State; I had Mizzou going to the final four. Granted, so did a lot of other people in my pool, but my day overall — 5 and 11, after going 13 and 3 the day before — shot me to the bottom quarter of the standings.

Nellie, on the other hand, is near the top. She always does better in the pool than I do; I should just stop entering and save myself the $20 each year.

• Trade (or, worst case, buy out) Scott Gomez. His 0.297 points per game for $7.5 million just doesn’t work. You can’t play him ahead of Desharnais or Plekanec, and you’d be holding back Eller’s development (not to mention Louis Leblanc’s) if he’s not the #3 centre. Unless Gomez wants to take a pay cut and become a defensive specialist (hee!) on the fourth line he needs to go.
• Try to get something — anything — for Kaberle, Campoli and Nokelainen. At the very least let Campoli leave town.
• Move Rene Bourque to the 3rd line. Bourque, Eller and Travis Moen (if they can keep him around) would be a very good, very physical 3rd line.
• Use some cap room to sign a second-line winger to play with Tomas Plekanec and Brian Gionta. A scoring winger with some size would give the Canadiens a second scoring threat to compliment the Pacioretty-Desharnais-Cole top line. Add the afore-mentioned third line and an intimidating fourth line featuring Ryan White and Brad Staubitz (if he re-signs) and your forward lines are actually in pretty decent shape, I think.
• With P.K. Subban, Andrei Markov, Josh Gorges and Alexei Emelin the core of the defense is solid, if a little fragile. Assuming Kaberle and Campoli leave town, Montreal would need a veteran 5th D-man to bring along prospects like Raphael Diaz and Jarred Tinordi. Yannick Weber seems to be a spare part under coach Randy Cunneyworth, but having a guy who can play D or forward is helpful.
• No help needed in net: Carey Price is it.

I’m sure I’m missing a bunch of nuance, but at least if Mr. Gauthier calls me in the off-season I’ll have some conversation-starters ready.

Wednesday: after a long day in the office we met for tasty deliciousness at Beerbistro. I introduced Nellie to Dieu du Ciel’s Dernière Volonté.

Thursday: I took some co-workers to Fieramosca. It was, as usual, delicious. At some point (probably after the fifth shot of Limoncello) I was a little worried about how I was going to feel the next morning. Especially since I had an 8AM meeting. Also, this was my second visit to Fieramosca in less than a week; the previous Saturday Nellie and I took our friends Kaylea and Matt there to celebrate their engagement.

Friday: Nellie had after-work drinks with co-workers, which meant I had a night to myself. “Solo Dan eve” involved shooting a lot of XBox Russians (<– not a euphemism, by the way, dirty!), eating pizza and blasting The Dandy Warhols.

Saturday: errands, errands and more errands, followed by a few hours in the office, but it took a decidedly more positive turn when Nellie and her fancy new haircut met me on the way to visit our friends CBJ+M. We picked up barbeque from The Stockyards, watched basketball and did some New Orleans trip strategizing.

Sunday: it was too gorgeous to do anything but get outside, so we walked to Gilead Cafe, checked out some new furniture in the Distillery District, ogled a Montauk sofa, did some clothes shopping (!) and had a few glasses of wine and a prosciutto pizza at Paese. We came home and opened our windows for the first time in months, got the smell of spring in the place, and eventually picked out two bottles of wine with which to finish the day: a 2008 Hidden Bench Felseck Vineyard Chardonnay from Niagara, and a 2008 Pirramimma Petit Verdot from McLaren Vale to pair with our Cumbrae’s steak. Both were fantastic.

So as fun as that all sounds, I would just like…I don’t know, a salad or some quinoa or something.

What he said.

That is all.

So, the next day, we did.

E11even, not far from our place, is a newish restaurant that I keep forgetting about. It’s next to the Air Canada Centre, under the new Le Germain hotel and near Aria, but it never found its way on to my to-go list. But then I read Bruce Wallner’s review on Winefox, and it was still fresh in my head that evening when we booked in.

As soon as we walked in we could see there was a lot to like: the decor is great, the ceiling is a dark-stained wood which makes the whole room seem warm, and the bar at the front of the room looked pretty inviting. We also had a lot of fun playing with the iPad-based drinks list. I wanted one for home; my Google Spreadsheet wine inventory seems rather mundane now.

Our food was really terrific. Hot, tasty bread with herbed butter will never go uneaten at my table. Nellie had the crab cake starter, which we both found tasty…and I don’t even like crab cake. My prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella starter was great, but HUGE…I think it was meant for more than one person. We both ordered steaks from the grill: Nellie the petit filet and I the dry aged ribeye, both medium rare. I think they caught one corner of mine a little more than they meant to (it was medium to medium-well) but most of it was very tasty indeed. We did admit, though, that after having the Wagyu and Jacobs & Co a few weeks ago all other steaks seem to pale in comparison.

If we had one big complaint about the place it was the timing. We’d ordered a glass of wine (Carmenère for me, Prosecco for her) when we sat down, just while we settled in and perused the menu. Our starters (and accompaning glasses of wine) came out almost immediately after we ordered them, while we still had more than half our original drinks left. It’s hard to fault the kitchen for being speedy, but it made for a bit of glass-juggling. Speaking of wine, we’d asked the sommelier to suggest pairings for our starters (which he did: a Chablis for Nellie, a Pinot for me) and to pick a bottle of red to match our mains. He said he’d be back with options for the bottle of red. But we waited, and ate our starters, and waited again, and were still waiting when our steaks hit the table. No sign of our friend the sommelier. When our server returned he noticed the lack of red wine and flagged down the sommelier; who returned a few minutes later. The bottle he brought us — a 2009 Charles Melton Nine Popes GSM — wasn’t bad, but a) it hadn’t had any time to breathe and still tasted tight, and b) it was marginally over the upper limit of the price point I’d given him. It certainly seemed to us that he’d just forgotten about us and grabbed something quickly under pressure. So…not a huge deal, but when we’re spending over $100 on a bottle because we want it to match our food nicely, we were kind of expecting a little more care.

I mentioned our server, Shane — he really did save the evening. He was helpful, attentive, funny and apologetic when he noticed the sommelier’s oversight. Moreover, he quickly appeared with a decanter so our wine could open up faster. He gave us whisky suggestions at the end of the evening, which somehow led to discussions about Cape Breton and PEI and Alberta and how much better Calgary’s mayor is than ours.

So, not a great outing, but there was enough good there that it probably warrants another try. Maybe we’ll just sit at the bar. Or if we do have a full dinner, I’ll probably do something I’ve never done before, and ask to sit in a particular server’s section. You should too if you try it.

• The Ides Of March (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was really, really good. It would have been pretty depressing to anyone who wasn’t already cynical about politics, too. And man, what a cast…Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, George Clooney (barely in it, by the way; busy directing), Geoffrey Wright, Marisa Tomei…it’s worth it just to watch them work.
• I’d always wondered someone could turn a book like Moneyball (imdb | rotten tomatoes) into a movie, let alone a good movie, let alone an Oscar-nominated movie. Turns out you give it to screenwriters like Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin. Despite all the hype I was kind of expecting something clunky and forced about baseball statistics, but it really worked. It worked because of the script, it worked because Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill (and others, especially — again — Philip Seymour Hoffman) sold it and it worked because they really highlighted the underdog angle. I’d also like to think that at least a tiny part of why it worked was the excellent score selection: strains of “The Mighty Rio Grande” by This Will Destroy You recur throughout the film to great effect. Filmmakers, take note: using Austin(ish)-based instrumental rock bands to score your sports-related films is never a bad idea.

* Yeah, so right after I wrote this I double-checked the Oscar best-picture nominee list and somehow The Ides Of March isn’t on it. War Horse (77%) is on it.  The Help (76%) is on it. Even Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (46%) is on it. What the balls, academy?

• 5+ hour flight to SFO, during which I watched Se7en (for the quillionth time) and several episodes of Portlandia (for the first time)
• 6+ hour vendor meeting, which actually went better than you would normally expect with a 6+ hour vendor meeting
• Dinner at L’Appart, a fantastic French restaurant up in San Anselmo. I had Shrimp Napoleon and cassoulet and crème brûlée, and shared in the flowing bottles of Bordeaux and Cotes du Rhone. It was like being back in Juilley.
• Heavy, zonked, lights-out sleep at the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins in Nob Hill
• Relaxing morning, including a walk around the city (and by ‘a walk’ I mean ‘climbing up and down a million hills’), a Starbucks stop and returning to my room to sit in the window, drink my coffee and read the New York Times
• 5+ hour flight to YYZ, during which I watched Patton (imdb | rotten tomatoes) for the first time. I’ve always put off watching it because it’s so long, but when you have five hours to kill a 182-minute movie comes in handy.

I would have loved to spend more time in the city, or take a side trip up to Napa, but it just wasn’t happening. Still, 24 hours in northern California in February is better than no hours at all.

Diamonds. Diamond earrings, to be exact. She was more than a little bit happy about that.

Steak. Three years ago, shortly after our escape from vegetarianism, we went with friends to Jacobs & Co. Steakhouse for Nellie’s birthday. We had such a great meal that we always planned to go back. And go back we did, last summer, but it was an ill-advised visit as we’d had far too much to drink before we arrived, making it a wasted and wasteful visit. However, another birthday seemed just the occasion for a proper return, and so we booked our spot for her birthday Thursday. We had a drink first at Crush, then skipped just around the corner to Jacobs and strapped in. We each had a drink to start (bubbles for Nellie, naturally) and then got into things with the lobster bisque and a chard that I just don’t remember. For our mains we decided to go big, each ordering a different 10 oz Wagyu to share. We paired it with a 2009 Caymus Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon which tasted like chocolate with the steak and like vanilla on its own. Maybe one of the best flavour combinations I’ve ever had in my mouth. Neither of us had room for dessert but our server did talk us into a glass of port, and sent us on our way with muffins for Friday’s breakfast. None too soon either; Jersey Shore-lite sat down at the booth next to ours just as we were sipping our port, and we wanted out of there. But even their cheesiness couldn’t tarnish a delicious (triumphant, maybe?) return to Jacobs.

Friends. Nellie wanted to do something with friends, so we invited everyone over to ours for a Saturday evening. No agenda other than just to drink some drinks, eat some eats, and laugh some laughs. We braved the shite weather to pick up a bunch of little snacks and beer (Beau’s Lugtread, Rogue Dead Guy Ale, Garrison Porter) and Prairie Girl cupcakes and Cumbrae’s pulled pork with slider buns, and we spent a little time coming up with an Ontario-focused wine list, ’cause that’s what we like to do.

• To start: 13th Street 07 Cuvee Rose, Appleby Lane 10 Sauv Blanc (the “house white”), Dowie Doole 09 Shiraz (the “house red”)
• Whites: Five Rows 09 Riesling, Lailey 08 Old Vines Chardonnay, Norman Hardie 09 Pinot Gris, Thirty Bench 10 Riesling
• Reds: Colaneri 08 Cab Sauv, Le Clos Jordanne 08 Petite Colline Pinot Noir, Southbrook 09 Triomphe Syrah, Staff 09 Cab Merlot

I think the last couple wandered out some time after 2AM, and we got to bed around 3. We spent Sunday lazing on the couch and finishing off the pulled pork, I think the pulled pork put us over the top, as Nellie declared this the best birthday ever.

• “Ball And A Biscuit”
• “Fell In Love With A Girl”
• “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet)”
• “Jimmy The Exploder”
• “Lafayette Blues”
• “Let’s Build A Home”
• “Let’s Shake Hands”
• “Stop Breaking Down”
• “There’s No Home For You Here Girl, Go Away”
• “When I Hear My Name”

You’re welcome.

By the way, I nearly picked “Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine” solely because it has maybe the greatest name ever in the history of song names.

To me, it felt like Stephen Soderbergh was echoing his own film The Limey, except instead of Terence Stamp the main protagonist was MMA fighter and first-time actor Gina Carano. What she lacked in acting skills she made up for in fighting ability, and so the numerous fights felt more like real brawls than set-pieces…combatants were awkward and knocked into things, not whirling dervishes of perfectly timed punches and blocks. They felt like struggles, not like highlight reels.

The movie itself wasn’t anything terribly new, and the plot was a little thin, but Soderbergh’s style and Carano’s charisma* gave it enough to make it a very good film overall. And probably not at all what 54% of people were expecting when they want to the theatre.

* and by “charisma” I mean that she’s unbelievably fucking hot. Just saying.

On Sunday we had a bottle of 2007 Le Clos Jordanne Claystone Terrace Chardonnay. On Monday we had a 2009 Twenty Twenty Seven Featherstone Vineyard Riesling. On Tuesday it was a 2009 Thirty Bench Triangle Vineyard Riesling. Wednesday was a 2009 Le Clos Jordanne Village Reserve Pinot Noir, and on Thursday (after I had two pints by Great Lakes at Volo, the Katy Brown Ale and the Karma Stoutra) we had a bottle of 2009 Tawse Misek Riesling to go with our Thai takeout.

By Friday we’d decided we’d done our part for the Ontario wine economy and branched out somewhat. We had a few glasses each at REDS (2008 Foreign Affair Conspiracy, 2009 Nuestro Ribera del Duero and 2009 Jean Luc Colombo Les Abeilles Cotes du Rhone for me; 2008 Flat Rock Chardonnay, 2008 Foreign Affair Conspiracy and 2008 Rubrato Aglianico dei Feudi for Nellie) before strolling down to Wellington Street and trying Trevor for the first (!) time. We appeared to be the only non-Winterlicious people in the place, and the bartender expressed his appreciation when we ordered a full bottle of wine; I think we may have been the first to do so that night. We warmed up with a 2008 Bogle Zinfandel (me) and 2010 Bogle Chardonnay (her), and drank a bottle of 2010 McManis Petite Sirah with our mini Kobe burgers, tempura shrimp and truffle goat cheese poutine.

Yesterday we slept in (obv) before picking up supplies for the week, including a bunch of Garrison beer, one of our Halifax favourites which happens to be on feature at the LCBO this week. Last night we had a pretty disappointing dinner at a pub near the theatre where our movie was playing, so we made it up to our taste buds with a visit to Paese before the screening. I know I had a Malbec and a Foreign Affair Cabernet Sauvignon, while Nellie had an Amarone (in fact, they recognized her from the last time we were in and, remembering her affection for the last Amarone they sold by the glass, immediately poured her their new one) and a California Chardonnay; I don’t recall the details beyond that.

All in all it was a smashing good week of wine drinking, punctuated by the odd burst of beer and decadent food. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to the gym.

Shows that I still watch pretty regularly, but if they went off the air tomorrow it wouldn’t really bother me: The Big Bang Theory, The Daily Show, Modern Family
TDS is still the best news/satire on TV, but it’s got to be wearing on Jon Stewart to keep beating his head against this wall. At this point I think it’s wearing on me. Modern Family makes me laugh, but more often than that it makes me miss Arrested Development. And really, at this point the only funny things on The Big Bang Theory are Melissa Rauch, Mayim Bialik and Kaley Cuoco.

Shows that are basically just playing out the string now but I still feel compelled to watch: 30 Rock, The Office
Jack and Liz are no longer funny enough to offset my hatred for Tracy and Jenna. And The Office is liked a corpse, shocked momentarily by the EMT paddles of Mindy Kaling, Creed Bratton or James Spader.

Shows that I’m still watching, but which are on a very short leash: Californication, The Killing, True Blood, The Walking Dead
Californication has always won because of the dialogue and the sweet relationship Hank has with his daughter, but now the other shit is just out of hand. The Killing was yanking my chain halfway through the first season, fer chrissakes. True Blood used to be at least mildly interesting with the politics and the interesting Russell-inspired mayhem, but now it’s just Twilight for old(er) ladies. And The Walking Dead had me in the first season, but lost me in the second season right around the time it put me into that coma.

Shows that I wish would just freaking come back from the off-season already: Breaking Bad, Game Of Thrones, Mad Men, Nurse Jackie, Sons Of Anarchy, Treme
Breaking Bad, Game Of Thrones and Mad Men are pretty much the best things on TV right now. Nurse Jackie, Sons Of Anarchy and Treme aren’t quite in the same weight class, but they’re still better than most of the dreck that happens when I stray outside south of channel 1300 (TMN) on my guide.

New shows that I just started watching, and have pretty much written off already: Alcatraz, House Of Lies
I wanted to like the both of you, really I did. But House Of Lies, you’re so smug and intent on showing us this quirky world of consulting which, let’s face it, is nothing like that you portray…and I hear quite enough of that doublespeak from consultants at my day job, thank you. And Alcatraz, you’re just formulaic.

Shows that I just started watching, and love: Homeland, New Girl
Let’s be clear, I’ll watch anything with Damien Lewis or Zooey Deschanel. But so far (we’ve only watched the first 8 episodes of Homeland, and the first half-season of New Girl) both shows have been really good. The question for both will be whether they have any staying power.

Shows that I just started watching, and love, but are already off the air: Party Down
Dammit!!!

Shows that I’m expecting to like, but haven’t started watching just yet: Justified, Luck
I don’t even know what Justified is about, but it’s a recommendation from a pretty trusted source. Luck is directed by Michael Mann, written by David Milch and stars Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte. I don’t care if they break into song each episode, it’s getting a least a season with me just based on that pedigree.

We knew they’d have generic beer and great wings, and that we’d have lots of laughs. What we (or, at least, I) didn’t know was that Saturdays at the Crown & Dragon are standup comedy night. And the mic was directly next to our table, in a…um, storage nook. Auspicious!

So we did wolf down many, many wings (14 pounds all told, I believe) and a bunch of meh beer, and we did have some laughs…though it looked shaky at first. No disrespect to the first couple of comics, but it was a little painful. But then it got better, and the host (who was quite funny) kept things moving and kept our party’s heckler in line. Some of the comics who came on later were very strong, especially Arthur Simeon and K. Trevor Wilson, who did a longer set to close out the evening. Wilson delivered what was, to me, one of the two funniest lines of the night: “It will be a thrust-kick of respect.” That won’t make a lot of sense out of context but it was damned funny. The other top line for me was delivered by Ryan Horwood, one of the pub’s very over-tired waiters who did a set but didn’t get too many laughs…and the awkward silences after his jokes led him to describe himself as “like, a big condor of weird.” That got a spit-take out of me.

Since one of the other comics (Becky Bays) was celebrating her birthday that night, at the end of the show they called Becky, Matt and some other comic whose name escapes me up to the mic where we sang Happy Birthday to them, and then all shared birthday cake. It was a nice little night. It was like serendipity, but with frosting. Four of our group left shortly after that, but MLK joined Nellie and I for one last pint so that we could introduce them to the Rebel House. We sat at the bar; M and I chatted about business strategy and east-coast life (as we often do), and who the hell knows what Nellie and L carried on about. We finished our pints and walked into the snow, wishing M the happiest of birthdays.

Cheers, buddy.