Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Monday, March 28, 2005

Sports Night quote of the moment*:

Jeremy, after winning a friendly bet with a woman about how many homeruns Ken Griffey hit in a particular year.

Jeremy: Well you should doff your cap to me.
Jenny: I'm not wearing a cap.
Jeremy: Well then you should doff something else.
Jenny: What did you have in mind?
Jeremy: What?
Jenny: Uh oh, did I just take it to the next level?
Jeremy: I'm not sure.
Jenny: Well if you're not sure I must not've done it very well.
Jeremy: That's not entirely true, I'm not that good with these sorts of things. Usually a girl has to hit me over the head and make me a sign.


*Get used to these, there might be more coming if a certain thing suits my mood, and because I like the show to an admittedly psychotic extent.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Normally, I don't think much of horoscopes and the kooks who write them. But today I happened to read mine in the paper and I kinda liked it.

"Somewhere, deep inside, you posses the qualities you think you lack...Tonight, you will find love away from the noise."

Reminded me instantly of this conversation from Sports Night, when Dan wants Casey to ask out a particular woman, and he's too afraid:

Casey: I can't be this thing that I'm not.
Dan: You are this thing that you're not.
Casey: No I'm not.
Dan: She thinks you are.

(You didn't think you were gonna get away without a Sports Night reference did ya?)

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

:: Frustration in 1,000 words or less ::

My life right now is incredibly frustrating.

For a few reasons, I suppose, but mostly this: Work.

Now, in the grand scheme of things, work is going fine. There's not any problems, I'm doing a good job, etc etc, and I got an honourable mention and 4th place for Top Sports Feature Story of the Year at our company's awards last weekend.

What's frustrating is that it's taking up far too much of my time. Since starting last May, I've been fairly lucky (compared to the working conditions/hours in Alberta) - I haven't had to work too many weekends, evenings - maybe once a week at the most, and often once every two. With exceptions of course, for big events.

But for the past two weeks I've done nothing but work - and I'm missing out on a lot of stuff that I value a helluva lot more than a paycheque. Two weeks back, I missed a big party for Kelsey's birthday because I was in Toronto (not work related, so I'm not complaining...Toronto was rad). But this past week I missed another one - Jer's. I've missed Jeremy's birthday the past three years because of work. That's a shitty track record for one of my best buds.

Last weekend - last Saturday to be more precise - I skipped an Eagles' playoff game because I was at the Agrodome in Vancouver covering high school basketball, when I was supposed to be in Richmond at the awards, but really wanted to be at Shark's Club for an important person's 21st birthday.

See? Chaos.

Tomorrow, I just realized moments ago, will be no different. I have two fairly lengthy interviews scheduled for 4:30 p.m. I figured I'd get home a half hour or so late...no big deal. But now I'm goin to have to rush through those interviews, race out to Chilliwack for a fucking hockey game that I won't get home from until after midnight.

Then I'll need to be in the office by about 6 a.m. Thursday to write all three stories before our 9:30 a.m. deadline.

I find myself so incredibly frustrated with work right now it just makes me want to punch a hole through a door. I just feel trapped, like there's nothing but work on the horizon and I can't do anything about it. It just keeps piling on. And on.

Due to our stupid early a.m. deadlines, I've had to start going into work hours early to finish stories I didn't start til late the night before.

I don't get any sleep. I end up skipping lunch most of the time to fit everything in. And I miss out of tons of non-work related stuff after everyone else is done work for the day.

What a great life I lead. It's night like this that make me wish I had a typical 9-5 gig. Why the fuck'd I sign up for this anyway?

To top things off (and complain some more), I'm most likely working some nights this long weekend.

Kelsey wasn't exaggerating much when she told me the other day I'd probably end up missing my own birthday. (Which is next month for those who want to shower me with gifts).

I know this post is rambly and not that witty or interesting, which shows just how frustrated I am right now. When I started writing this I thought maybe it'd be profound or funny or something. But it's not.

It's just frustration and anger, in 1,000 words or less.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

**EDIT: Here are the pictures from Toronto. More will probably be added later.

The Big Smoke

So, as you already knew from the previous post, I'm back from my 5-day trip to Toronto. I went there with my dad, who was there for business. I saw a lot of stuff while there - Hockey Hall of Fame, toured the Air Canada Centre, went to the CN Tower, University of Toronto, Queen Street, MuchMusic...While my dad was in meetings, I basically wandered from one end of downtown to the other, and I've come up with one decisive conclusion:

I like downtown Toronto a helluva lot more than downtown Vancouver. Sure, it's colder, maybe not quite as picturesque, but it's a lot more pleasant for someone walking around. I walked around for the better part of 4 days, and I probably saw only 4 or 5 homeless people. And those I did see weren't annoying, pushy, meth heads. They were usually pretty nice, and there were those I'm still not convinced are even poor, but more on that later.

Sure there are parts of TO that I'm sure are less than pleasant, but from what I saw (and I saw a fair amount), I can't say much bad about it...except for crazy taxi drivers who seem to honk at just about every person they see walking, and continue honking until you wave them off.

Some other observations about Toronto:

1. It's expensive to eat downtown but cheaper to drink. No matter where we went - from the pricey cajun restaurant, Big Daddy's Crab Shack, to various pubs, the food was pretty expensive. Probably not any different than it is in downtown Van or any other Canadian city, but since I don't eat at a lot of city restaurants here in Langley, it seemed to be more.
It was, however, cheaper to drink. I don't know why, but beer is just cheaper - not by a whole lot, but still cheaper. I think the most expensive beer I bought was $4.40 instead of the usual $5 or so. And in a lot of places in Vancouver you're looking at over $6.

2. The best food award: The aforementioned Big Daddy's Crab Shack and Oyster Bar. I'm not a huge seafood lover, but the jumbo shrimp was fucking delicious, and we had cajun fried Alligator for an appetizer...tastes like chicken, except more chewy. Also, while on the topic of food, some of the best fries I've ever had were at Wayne Gretzky's restaurant, which turned out to be about 15 steps from our hotel on King St.

3. what restaurant doesn't have free refills in this day and age?

4. There are a lot of business people-types on the streets of downtown TO. None of them have cell phones, apparently. I saw more than a few business people dashing to payphones to make important calls. I know they were talking business because I could hear them talking about things like "The Galileo Project" and things of that nature. I think that if you can afford a $600 leather overcoat, you can probably pay 35 a month for a phone. Just weird, is all.

5. Back on the subject of restuarants, the award for best name goes to the place down the street from our hotel called, Fred's Not Here. One afternoon while I was chillin' in the hotel, I decided to call them.

Me: Hi, is Fred there?
Girl: Uh, Fred?
Me: You know, the guy who owns the place?
Girl: Ooh, uh, he's not here.
Me: So then, it's not just a clever name?
Girl: Okay, bye.
(click)

Swear to God, that's exactly how the conversation went.

7. CBC's Coach's Corner tv studio(which is in air canada centre) is far far smaller than you would think. Probably no bigger than my living room.

8. The Hockey Hall of Fame is quite possibly the coolest place on earth. We were there forever.

9. Speaking of the Hall, I've scored more goals on Ed Belfour this year than any NHLer.

Two.

At the HHOF, there's a thing you can play where you shoot orange plastic pucks at a white drop-down screen. the screen has a projection of belfour on it, and he reacts to where the puck is shot. I got two past him. Maybe I've got a future as a replacement player.

But probably not.

10. On my way home Sunday, I've never been happier to be off a plane in my life. We were in the second last row of seats, right in front of this "Hardcore" Indian kid who would not shut the fuck up the whole way home. He started off my just talking loudly and non-stop to his buddy next to him about absolutely anything. And to make it worse, he talked really fast and constantly repeated himself.

Instead of just saying "Yeah." it was "Yeahyeahyeahyeahyeah!" or "Coolcoolcoolcool" or "Heyheyheyhey!"

I felt like I was in the middle of a fucking Outkast song for four and a half hours. Then, to top it off, this moron (after boasting for an hour about what a "hardcore" drinker he is) drank a whopping total of two Scotch-and-sevens before puking all over himself.

Two.

(also keep in mind these two were in those tiny, plastic, airplane cups.)

What a fucking pussy.

He also felt it was his duty to talk to EVERYONE that went to the bathroom, or walked past him for some reason. A typical conversation:

Idiot: Goin' to the bathroom?
Person: Yup.
Idiot: I was gonna go a minute ago but I let some lady go first. You know, ladies first right?
Person: Yeah.
Idiot: How bad to you have to go? Cuz you can go before me if you want.
Person: You aren't even in line, you're just sitting there.
Idiot: Yeah well I don't have to right now.

Guys like that are the reason the term "douchebag" was created.

And as for the not-so-homeless people I alluded to earlier, here's my story.

We ordered a pizza on Friday night, and my dad walked down the block to pick it up. While waiting for the light to change, he had this conversation with a homeless beggar.

Homeless guy: Got any spare change pal?
Dad: Sorry, I actually just spent it all.
Homeless guy: What you got there?
Dad: A pizza.
Homeless guy: A pizza eh? That sounds like a good idea, I think I'll go get myself one of those.

Then he proceeded to go get himself a pizza. Sure seemed like he was hard-up for cash. To further illustrate my point, I saw one homeless lady wearing jewellery and a fur coat that probably was worth more than my car. I don't know who she thought she was foolin'.

Speaking of furs, Spadina Ave. is the fur capital of the country, I think. In one 5-6 block stretch, there were the following stores: Alex Furs; Discount Furs; Spadina Furs and Wool; Uptown Fur Company; Yukon Fur; and my favourite, the clearly upscale establishment with the sign that said, simply: FUR.

I know it's cold there, but who needs that much fur anyhow? Other than homeless women of course.

Sunday, March 13, 2005

I'm back from Toronto now, got home about an hour ago. Much to post, many pictures to download from my camera. But I'm too tired to do it now, nor would I be able to put my thoughts into coherent, amusing posts. So more later...

Sunday, March 06, 2005

Following Mike's lead, here are the first 25 songs that came on when I put all my mp3's into WinAmp (897 in total) and clicked "Shuffle".

1. Sloan - Rest of my life
2. Rolling Stones - Miss you
3. Tom Petty - You don't know how it feels
4. Me first and the Gimme Gimmes - Mandy
5. System of a Down - Sugar
6. Dandy Warhols - We used to be friends
7. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Fortune Faded
8. Silverchair - The Greatest View
9. Stone Temple Pilots - Vaseline
10. Gob - Everybody's Getting Hooked up
11. Tim McGraw - Back When
12. Presidents of the United States of America - Peaches
13. Third Eye Blind - Semi Charmed Life
14. Nirvana - Dumb
15. Gob - For the moment
16. Moxy Fruvous - The drinking song
17. Matthew Good Band - As long as you're mine
18. Beatles - Here comes the sun
19. Beck - Loser
20. Counting Crows - Good Luck
21. Cake - Guitar
22. Jay-Z - 99 Problems
23. Aaron Pritchett - Consider this
24. Hot Action Cops - Fever for the Flavour
25. Funeral for a Friend - Red is the new black
This is what happens when Ian gets too drunk...

Tonight, because of lack of anything better to do, me and Ian went to Fort Pub and started drinking at like 6 oclock. We had a few beers, then Rachel, Sean and Kelsey came down and we soon ended up at Rachel and Sean's getting fucking plastered...

Ian, who won $106 playing Keno at the pub, was in fine drinking form. By 3 a.m. he was absolutely incoherent. And I got the pleasure of driving his drunk ass home, since he lives right behind me.

After a few punches to face (both given and taken) Ian finally got off the couch and into my car. Then it was a helluva adventure to get him home, despite the short distance. For starters, he kept rambling about god knows what. Then I dropped him off at home, and actually stayed in his driveway to make sure he got in the house, (thats how drunk he was). Instead of making his way in the house, he mooned me and did some gay little dance, and then just as he opened his door, and i thought I was free to go home and sleep, he ran back to the car, to ask me this life altering question:

"hey nick, you don't happen to have a giant Twix on you, do you?"

Then it took some more coaxing before he'd go to sleep. Forbes, you are a moron.

Saturday, March 05, 2005

:: Friday Five ::

1. If you were a designer of a brand of clothing, what would the name of your brand be? Classic Times

2. What individual article of clothing do you most often wear? Black Record-Gazette hoodie, or my blue UCC one. Also, my white adidas shoes.

3. What's the oddest (not ugliest!) piece of clothing you own? I have three: An argyle-ish Mr. Roger's style cardigan that doesn't even fit me. A homemade t-shirt with "Sifton Ave. Mischief" printed on it. An Edmonton Oilers Stanley Cup Champions beret-type hat from about 1985. (oddly enough, Mike is responsible for all the aforementiond articles of clothing).

4. What's your favorite kind of condiment? Mustard.

5. What's a piece of clothing you wouldn't be caught dead in? I don't know. (I'd say trucker hats too Mike, but I've got a whole entire box of them here...thanks).

Thursday, March 03, 2005

"This is like the greatest Thursday ever." - Ian, drunk on the way home from Slapshots. (for the record, he was the only drunk one)

"I was in there, without even being there." - Ian again, this time after Kelsey told him she had a dream where the two of them were making out.

Couple other funny moments on a pretty amusing Thursday night. Number 1: A joke Melissa e-mailed me, that's too long to post right now...maybe later. Then there was this joke Jer told me tonight:

Q: How do you be polite at a gay bar?
A: Push somebody's stool in.

We all had a good laugh. Also, this picture is pretty fucking hilarious too.