BaN is back

Bare with me

Top 10 Alley Oops for the 2009 NBA Season

I don’t care, I still hate Vince Carter.

My old local pub is for sale (or, you can’t go home again and expect to have a good time)

Word that the Old York Bar and Grill is up for sale gave me pause earlier today. It was my pub for about 5 of my 8 years in Toronto and a source of a lot of good times during those years. Now I know how Obi Wan Kenobi must have felt when Alderon got Death Starred.

If you’re going to install a hangover,  you should do it somewhere where the people are cool, the music is good and you’re not constantly surrounded by  douchebags. The Old York didn’t always offer all these qualities – but for a long while I lived across the street from the place which forgave the odd surly bartender or “smooth jazz” performance.

I guess it was inevitable. The bar owner said she didn’t know what she was going to do when I told her I was leaving town – unless we could work out some sort of barimony payment arrangement. If only I had socked away all the cash I spent on pints at the place, I’d probably be able to afford two of them.

Of course, the place isn’t gone yet. In a period of recession, owning a bar is like having a license to sell gold-plated skinny jeans to hipsters.

Hard times call for hard alcohol, as I like to say.

Not only that, the place has a lot going for it.  Situated a few blocks off King St. West near downtown Toronto, it’s in the heart of a pretty choice neighbourhood. It’s got one of the best patios in Toronto -  as long as you can stand the stench of death that emanates from the abattoir across the road every now and then, or the occasional sewer backup on rainy nights. And it’s now surrounded by condos that are chuck full of transplanted suburbanites from the 905. Sure they’re douchbags from places like Burlington and Pickering, but their pockets are lined and they rarely ever sit at the bar.

This isn’t an obit for the Old York, but I do fear for what could happen to the place if it falls into the wrong hands.

Old York Tapas and Tea Room. Ew.

About “I’m Yours”. Jason Mraz has to be stopped.

I know “I’m Yours” is not a new song, but I just saw the clip below tonight. I’ve heard the song all over the place for some time, but I’ve never actually heard Jason Mraz speak. Now I can’t sleep because I have one of my famous sarcasm ice cream headaches.

Songs like this serve a purpose.  Hollywood needs them to play during the credits of Kate Hudson and Sandra Bullock movies. Guys need to learn how to play them so they can get laid on camping trips. And the singers themselves need them so they don’t need to resort to male prostitution to buy Bed Head hair gel and wool toques to wear in southern California.

But these vapid male singer-songwriter types shouldn’t talk. They shouldn’t open their mouths and let words like this come out:

“I know I close my eyes sometimes when I sing. That doesn’t mean I’m shutting you guys out. It just means I’m going to someplace in my imagination for a while. “

Shit, I’ll bet even Stevie Wonder would want to clock him after hearing that. But he continues:

“As soon as we can get some technology to broadcast what that image is in my head, we will. Don’t worry. We’re working on that.”

Cool. I’m down As long as the thing they invent right before that is a douchebag detector/disposal unit.

Watch the clip and decide for yourself. Oh, and Jack Johnson can get fucked too.

Video: Jay-Z – D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)

This is my first post in way too long, but it’s a gooder. Watch for the Harvey Keitel cameo (what!)

Jay-z – D.O.A.

If you ask me, Molson’s doing its retirees a favour

News this week that Molson Canada is cutting off 2,400 retirees by axing their free beer for retired workers program has people crying foul over how far companies will go to save money in these tough economic times. But if you ask me, it’s a win-win situation

Molson will save $1 million and the retiress won’t have to spend their golden years drinking the carbonated iguana urine that Molson calls beer.

If you actually like the beer, I guess it’s a pity to lose the perk. But I still don’t think these guys are being hard done by. I’ll be lucky if I get a free kick in the nuts when I finally retire and I work at a Consolidated Nut-Kicking Industries plant.

The unions should see it as an opportunity to transition newly-retired workers into a better life-beer situation. Just as a retiring worker at a Ford plant should get a Beamer to spend the rest of his days cruising around in, I say retired Molson workers should consider upgrading to a tasty Bavarian import of their own.

Sure they’ll have to pay for it, but that just makes them like the rest of us. Or, they can spend retirement like I intend to getting tooled up on Cutty Sark on my front porch, yelling at teenagers and complaining about the declining quality of internet porn. (”Back in my day it was made out of metal and you had to walk three miles in the snow to the interwebs to find it.”)

Can’t wait.

The Calgary Beerfest was shitty

Hey beer fans. Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I’ve been distracted by research and hangovers and lacking in motivation to blog.

But I just attended the Calgary Beerfest at the weekend and it inspired me to publish something. But not before thinking a few days on just the right headline.

Anyway, I wouldn’t even call it a beer festival. It was more like a beer flea market. There was a lot of crap that vendors were trying to sell for way too much money. The place was full of sketchy people and you left feeling dirty and ripped off.

The good thing about a flea market, however, is that you don’t normally see dudes just bend over and lose their lunch in the middle of the aisle. But, that happened a few times while I was at roaming around the Big Four building. I guess that makes Calgary Beerfest cool, if you’re in the cast of Jackass. Otherwise, it’s a sign that people aren’t drinking responsibly.

It’s a bad omen for a beerfest when the biggest lineups are for a brand like Corona. I worked in the industry before, and believe me when I say it doesn’t take much to get big guys like Labatts or Molson off the couch and at your event. They don’t necessarily make good beer, but they bring legitimacy to events like this. Otherwise you’re on a used car lot full of Ladas without a Toyota or Honda in sight. But I guess the big brewers are as picky as I am.

I tried a few good brands that you don’t see a lot of around Calgary, like Half Pints (Winnipeg, MB), Grizzly Paw (Canmore, AB) and Cannery Brewing (Penticton, BC). But otherwise it was the same stuff you can get anywhere in Calgary – Big Rock, Wild Rose, Brew Brothers – or previously unknown European brands that probably should have stayed in Austria or Belarus or wherever they came from.

Anyway, I don’t think it was worth the $25 they charged to get in or the $2.00 most vendors charged to fill you’re little beerfest collectors mug. But I’ve been wrong before.

Someone’s been a bad beer blogger…

Wow, it’s been a while since my last update. Afraid I’ve been focusing more on research than writing lately. I blame nice weather and bad economy.

Anyhow. Some new posts are on the way including some on new beers and perhaps a few pub reviews.

stay tuned…

Review: Bulmers Original Cider

I’m not a big cider fan. It’s the perfect patio drink on a piping-hot day, but otherwise I leave if for Scottish girls looking to get into trouble on a quiet night in Edinburgh. And yes, there is a story there.

It looked like a new beer in my pub’s fridge and as usual, I was keen to sample the new addition. It wasn’t until it was open in front of me with a glass of ice that I realized it was cider. Not one to turn down a chilled, brown, alcoholized beverage, I dug in and enjoyed. And boy am I glad I did. Unlike a lot of super-sweet ciders, this one has a serious apple taste with a crisp, not too dry  aftertaste. If you can resist, it tastes best after it’s been left poured over ice for a few minutes.

I don’t know if it’s worth the $10 they charge for it, but then again it comes in a big bottle that fills a pint glass of rocks one-and-a-half-times.

Overall, a delicious, albeit pricey change from my regular hops-based picks. Perhaps now I’ll try out my “cider a day keeps the doctor away” theory.

I hear these guys are touring this summer and I just can’t wait

Man, the Jayhawks used to have a song on everyone’s summer playlist. We used to go up on the roof, put in “Tomorrow the Green Grass”  and jam all night. And this track below was one that every insecure boy put on a mix tape for the girl he liked the most. Heck, we sure did.

Anyhow, the two frontmen for the band are supposed to be re-united and touring the festivals this summer, so you can only hope they come to an open-air shit-kicker near you. Otherwise, here they are on Austin City Limits.