Happy.

Aaah, shaddup. So it's a new year. Yo yo ma, don't call ME about it. Shaddup. New, blue, scmoo, who

Cares?

'Cept me. Okay, what did you do today? Huh? What did you eat for breakfast? Huh?

What did you have for lunch, ya shnook? Huh? Huh?

WHAT DID YOU HAVE FOR DINNER? HUH? HUHHHH?

Well, there's one thing I'll bet. YOU DIDN'T HAVE A HOT DOG MADE BY BRIGITTE.

You lousy, lying, posturing HOUND.

YOU  did NOT have the absolute BEST HOT DOG ever CREATED by humankind. No, you nasty pretending little sneak, you DID NOT have a BRIGITTE hot dog. Lie, lie, lie, liar.

Okay so no one was ever ready made for brains. In case you didn't know, shnook, a BRIGITTE hot dog blows EVERY OTHER FUCKING DOG OFF THE PLANET. Excuse me for the little bit of Hebrew, there, but I'm allowed.

Imagine this very carefully: a grilled dog -- not just a dog, but a FRANKFURTER, hey, no shit, NOT FROM SEVEN ELEVEN, oh-so slowly char-broiled and served baking hot on a moist submarine bun with an insane combination of condiments . . . okay, okay, you're halfway there.

Sometimes you just have to ditch everything. Just give it up. Fuggedabout it. Because there's always going to be SOMEONE BETTER THAN YOU.

Jaysus Chris'. Me and my lip. Me and my food lip. Me and my goddamn pretentious gorgonzola lip.

How someone can escalate a hot dog to something floating 100,000 feet above your head and FURTHERMORE paint it in a shining gold colour you've never seen before . . . well, all I can say is HAPPY GODDAMN NEW YEAR.

Ouch! I Become a Film Critic

Not a site you wants to see.

But occasionally, something gets my dander up when I'm watching our little flickering motion pictures.

Let me start at Quentin Tarantino: I hate the fucking guy. I have no IDEA how he started making films.

So let's just start at that. Then, narrow the field to people making serious films. Already, Quentin Tarantino is several times removed. The guy is a clown and would be the absolute first to admit it.

Now take Serious People making films about Nazis. You're getting down to a really, really small pool here. A pool that Quentin Tarantino has come up to his over-sized ears in. Uhh . . . how can I put it . . . Quite Likely to Drown.

And drown he does.

They're All Dead

How dare they be all dead . . . John Lennon, Joe Zawinul, Jaco Pastorius . . .

HOW DARE YOU ALL DIE BEFORE US.

Oh, Hell!

Ahhh, those sultry -20º days 'twixt Christmas and New Years'.

Last night we were in characteristic loll mode (the real word, not the crude Internet-ready acronym) so we ordered Indian food from the folks at Maison India (who comes up with these unique names?)

Brigitte ordered her usual butter chicken, and since I've been deprived of spice of late, I ordered the hottest thing available (of course!): the Chicken Bangalore Phal (cue ominous chorus of swarthy demons) (I count a modest 40 chilies in this recipe).

Now before you get up on your horses and exclaim that I just do it to be "macho" let me tell you that I spent 10 years at the beginning of my life being "macho" in Calcutta, India. Yep, if I wanted, tomorrow I could go down to the Indian embassy and order me up a citizenship.

And Bangalore Phal was invented in England, anyway, for the drunken louts who'd come in to the local Indian place and brag in front of their friends "Gimme the 'ottest fing on va menu."

Oh, it's hot. I must admit that in my earlier days (some would call it youth, but I reserve that for the period I'm going through now) I used to AUTOMATICALLY tell the friendly waiter "Make it as hot as the chef can make it -- I was born in Calcutta!" but now I exercise a little more self-restraint. A LITTLE more. I realize from my own cooking adventures that all you have to do is chop a few habaneros -- the closest things to radioactive vegetables that I know, since I have yet to obtain the truly dreaded Naga Jolokia -- and dump them in anything and immediately 99.98% of people on the planet will probably have to check in to their friendly ER for a barium enema and a week-long bath in seltzer.

So I don't do that any more with my cooking. It's a cheap trick.

But back to last night.

My son, Taishi, nicknamed Tai-chan ("chan" is a diminutive or an endearment in Japanese) is here from Japan for three weeks or so. Japanese food is the blandest on the planet, even behind British food. Most Japanese have seen a pepper only in their dreams and real wasabi is like a mild taste of a babbling mountain brook rather than a rolling gout of lava. Christ, most Japanese think onions are spicy.

But I happily digress! Food arrives, Brigitte unpacks, I try to unglue my eyeballs from some dreck on the 500-channel Universe and soon I'm happily munching away on some naan, basmati and Chicken Bangalore Phal.

All of a sudden, as I'm watching Rachel Ray wrestling Giada di Laurentiis in a pit for "Top Chef: Mud-wrestling edition" (and winning, the little skank!) I hear the most ungodly scream from the back room, where I thought Tai-chan was watching the marathon of "Transformers."

Turns out Brigitte thought what goes on in the family, runs in the family.

Tai-chan came running out into the living room in one of those Chuck Jones cartoon moments -- you could swear he was leaving a trail of smoke behind.

"Oh no," I said to Brigitte between happy chomps, "you didn't give him the Bangalore Phal, by any chance?"

Dumb, de Dumb Dumb DUUUUMMMMB

God, looking back on the oh-so-many years of technology promises and punditry . . . in my case, starting right about ‘round 1957, the year I was born,  it all just seems to get old. Sure, there’s stuff — the Internet is one — that actually lives up to the hype — but there’s far more stuff that ends up just being snake oil.

I put it thus: yes, there ARE 17,808 titles at the video store, but how many of them do you actually want to watch? Okay, sorry, now if they were all FREE how many would you actually want to watch?

Thought so. Subtract eight from 17,808 and you have the nutshell of human stupidity.

Thus we have this: yet another reminder that we just should all go back to bed and watch the sun rise tomorrow (or not, when we listen to these people).

The Genius . . .

 . . . at the Genesis of his craft.

It's amazing. You don't see that childish gap-toothed grin here when he realizes he's just been photographed. You just see the true portrait of a craftsman.

The Uselessness of Nothingness

Consider Nothingness. No, really. The "there" before you were born.

Got it, Amateur Einshteen? NOTHINGNESS. The Absence of Something. I bet that in the entirety of your poor, sorry, hungry life, you have NEVER EXPERIENCED NOTHINGNESS.

So leave it to your Dear Leader to explain it to you:

NOTHINGNESS is someone who thinks they can cook, but in a perverse paradox, cannot. They, by all the powers available to them, which we all share in abundance, lest I appear above The Flock, are CONVINCED that THEIR WAY to cook something is THE ONLY WAY to cook something (Sorry to repeat myself, but I have to get through to THEM and this seems the only way).

But if all that is past; all that is present; all that IS TO BE is considered, NOTHINGNESS IS STILL NOTHINGNESS. YOU CAN

NOT

MAKE

SOMETHING

OUT

OF

NOTHINGNESS.

Yet, Flock,

Nothingness fills their brain. Nothingness delights in its freedom and flies like a million butterflies in a newly-mown hay field; NOTHINGNESS IS KING.

I, of all people, my dearest, dearest flock, in this, our Kwanzaa-enriched season, appreciate the Nothingness which is within EACH and EVERY ONE of us. NO MISTAKES FROM NOTHINGNESS.

Excpet me, of course.

'Tis the Season to Shut the Fuck Up

Every year, during that slow news period between Christmas and New Years', when the Taliban are busy roasting small animals and presidents are having lewd sex with diplomats, the news media trots out the "The Year in Review."

FUCK The Year in Review.

I know what The Year in Review was like because DUHHHH, I WAS THERE. What is this, History Blind Lemon Chitlin 101?

GET A FUCKING OTHER JOB.

Yes.

Well said, if I may say so myself.

Seeing as how this room is empty, I can SHOUT ANYTHING I WANT.

In' SHALLLLAAAAAHHHH!

See? I'm feeling better already.

Kwanzaa Testament 2010

Flock. My flock. How I have failed you! In recent days, nay, weeks, nay, months! how I have neglected my adoring flock. Nary an update, no, nary a nary. Not a hair off a horse’s hoof, not a bleat of a lamb’s breath.

No, I have said shit for about three weeks.

But I return not harmed, nor perturbed, nor even hungered.

Just fucking pissed off!

I joketh, of course, my adoring pilgrims of The PoxLips. Thy Father never sayeth a word in verity, be it under thine bovine oath.

(Aaaaaah, KEE-RIST. What a goddamn last few weeks. Let Me Not Get Into Grand Detail. LET ME NOT UTTER PROFANITIES AGAINST THE LORDS OF GI JOE).

Uhh . . how to summarise. Trip to Japan: uhh, how to summarise. Uhh, trip to Japan: Uhh, how to summarise. Uhh . . .

Words. Planes. Nice people. Okay people. Late planes. run. Run. Run. Bag slamming against calf. Run. Gate 34 C. Gate 123B, Terminal B. Run. Run, bag slapping against thigh. Pain. Run. Hunger. Gate A9, Terminal H, West wing, Run. Seat 34B, annoying seatmate. Sleeping pill, double bloody mary. Wake up. WAKE UP! Run. RUN! Gate 54H, seat 46C. Where sunglasses? WHERE $200 sunglasses? Call home. Wait hotel! Destination. Shuttle! Can chu-hai. Hot bath! HOT BATH! HOOOOTTTT BATH!

Wake up. Unhappy. UN. HAPPY.

Sleep again.

DO ALL OVER AGAIN AT 6 O’CLOCK IN REVERSE.

D O  I T  A L L  O V E R  A G A I N 

AGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINAGAINA

Home.

Merry Anything!

Major Konig says "Gott fürgives alles!" (The lying bastard, I will burn him first)

Sorry, no quote due to Stolichnitis

He grows an angel every single moment I see him

Off to the Wild Blue Yonder

It's another wild trek to Japan starting at 5:30 a.m. on Friday, flock. Wish me luck. Wish that I don't lose my latest $200 pair of glasses, misplace my credit card or have to land the plane when the pilot eats some poisoned chickenorbeef. (I've been busy on my flight simulator, taking off from Dorval airport and aiming the plane into St. Joseph's Oratory, then buzzing downtown and clipping the Big O before turning around and landing on Runway 24L, in 747s, 707s, 737s, Phantom F4s, A380s and my favorite, the Concorde).

All you have to do is follow my progress. 5:30 a.m. at Dorval on Comair to Detroit. Detroit to Seattle. Seattle to Osaka (11 hours and 45 minutes!)

Two nights at the airport hotel. Back on Monday via Seattle and Minneapolis with the Tiny Tornado in tow.

We are going to rock the world of aviation (Tai-chan's almost as good as me on the flight simulator, and he's only nine!) and I can pretend to be an Air Marshall the whole way, staring down all swarthy-looking types in First Class who are nervously fingering their prayer beads while pretending to read "Oregon Fishing Almanac."

So keep checking in with Breaking News and follow my trail of mayhem and derring-do and I'll be sure to give you a full report, with pics, on my return.

Uh, on my projected return.

Here's one of our adventures from about 2005.

Tai-chan Malmsteen

Found this snippet of Tai-chan playing the electric guitar I bought for him this summer. Whaddya think? He'll be shredding in no time.

The Boxes

I hijacked this old post to post these photos of my boxes.

The Jude Law figure

Zaitsev the Sniper Joins the Boys!

Just received the latest addition to Bock's Misfit army: the sniper from Stalingrad, Vasily Zaitsev, made famous in the movie Enemy at the Gates with Jude Law in the sniper role.

This is an amazing piece of plastic. Those Chinese really know how to do things. If you look at the closeup, you can see reflections in the guy's irises, as well as the amazingly lifelike stubble. Sure is a far cry from your old-time GI Joe. (Click on pictures to enlarge).

You should see the wardrobe that came with him -- coats, boots, hats, belts, rucksacks, alternate hands etc. Totally worth the $90 or so I paid for him. Can't wait to get to page 2 of the adventure!

I Finally Outdid Myself

Am I crazy, making ten pizzas in an afternoon when only one person was coming over for dinner? Well, yes and no. Ten pizzas is slight overkill, but I've got it down to a science.

For instance, making your own dough is a no-no, unless you plan on devoting an entire day to it (it's not hard to do, but it's time-consuming, not to mention messy).

I get mine ready made from the pizza place at Atwater market. For $4.50, you get enough dough to make four large (14") pizzas or six small (12") pizzas. It's great dough, with lots of air inside to give you that puffy wood-fired crust look.

So the key here is to do all the prep the day beforehand. I bought three different kinds of salami (they sell them whole in paper in various flavours these days in most supermarkets), Tuscany ham, kalamata olives, 6-year-old cheddar, Jarlsberg and Mozzarella di Bufala and added the usual suspects: red onion, red pepper, goat cheese, and to my intense joy/regret, two $6 heads of Ail de Provence (garlic from Provence, France. Watch it, it's the most powerful garlic on the planet and will make your whole refrigerator smell like a garlic buffet).

The next day, you bring out the dough to get it to room temp and you clear the battlefield. You preheat the oven at 550º for an hour with the pizza stone within. I recently bought an oven thermometer, the kind that has a wire that goes into the oven with a digital readout outside, and was disappointed to see that the oven never went any hotter than 489º no matter how long I preheated it, and when I started cooking, frequently fell below 350º. That meant that the stone didn't get hot enough to give a char before the top was ready, but no matter -- these pizzas are designed to be frozen and then frypan-reheated, so I wasn't too worried about it.

Anyway, then you make your chart with ingredients for each pizza so you don't forget a step on one of them, in the order of ingredients (oil, sauce -- I made a homemade one with San Marzanos -- cheese, garlic, onions, peppers meats, more cheese, mushrooms, olives etc.) and then divide your dough into balls for each pizza, wrapping them all in plastic wrap so they don't dry out, then roll 'em out one at a time, putting the toppings on, shoving them into the oven for 8 minutes or so on broil, turning once halfway, then peeling them out and putting them on cooling racks.

That's it. One by one. Believe it or not, it only took about two hours to make ten pizzas, and nary a misstep.

Cleanup's a bit of a pain, but no sweat. Then you just cut all the pizzas you want to freeze in half and put them in plastic containers between wax paper and they'll stay good for at least three months. Reheat them in a nonstick skillet and they'll taste like they just came out of the oven.

Voilà. Pizza for three months. Next time you're all invited, if you all bring a bottle of wine each.

Ten Dollars an Inch? The Impossible Dream?

Six years ago, if you walked into, say, Costco, and saw a 42" plasma TV, you would have seen beside it a sign saying "$5500."

Well, today I walked into a Future Shop and saw a 42" plasma TV selling for $499. That's almost a 90% price drop.

I could afford three of them -- one for each room in the house, whereas six years ago I could have bought a car for the cost of three of them.

I also saw a Blu-Ray player at Walmart for $88. Two years ago, a Blu-Ray player would have run you $1,000 or more. Today I saw a color inkjet printer by HP for $18. The first inkjet printer I owned cost me $600.

But a question lingers . . . do you still use your VCR?

I know I do. In fact, I just bought five new blank tapes today.

Some things will never change.

Nick's Rule # 23

Never go anywhere official on a Monday. No bank, no post office. No clinic, no hospital. No driver's license bureau, no doctor, no dentist, and yes, not even the grocery store. Unless you dearly love twiddling your thumbs.

In fact, just stay in bed and watch Bugs Bunny.

Salting Cucumbers

I know it seems counterintuitive to salt cucumbers; you really don't want these limp, salty bits of junk in your salad (or sandwich) but believe me, it works.


The point is to draw the water out of the cucumber so that it becomes crunchy, doesn't go limp in ten minutes, and generally makes for a better salad.


So what I did, according to the research I did on the Web, was to first clean and slice the cucumber (I use English cucumbers because they have far fewer seeds than regular) very thin, with a Japanese mandoline, then salt them in a bowl with about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon or regular salt, then put them in a colander above another bowl, and weight them down with a bowl of water (you can use a Ziploc bag -- I just didn't have any).


You wouldn't believe it -- a drop of water comes out of them practically every two seconds. I watched. I counted.


You leave them for an hour or so, then rinse them very briefly and they'll hold up for hours or even days without becoming limp and slimy.

Hard to see, but I have a plastic bowl full of water pressing down on the cucumbers, which are dripping water at a rate of about two drops every four seconds

 

 

Try it sometime if you like cucumbers.

Fock Caspar Gomez an' the Diaz Brothers! Fock 'em, all!

Say hello to my new li'l fre'n!

40 Followers

What? What's up with that? FORTY followers? You read my random crap day in, day out?

Sometimes I post about food but it's more usually some rant or rave about some non-sequitorial topic. NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH FOOD.

What are all you guys doing? DON'T YOU HAVE A LIFE?

You know I love each and every one of you.

YOU

ARE


MY 


FLOCK.

Let's All Move To Juarez!

Juarez! The new Côte d'Azur of Mexico.

Hey, you fucking thought Scarface with Al Pacino was an exaggeration, let's all vacation in Mexico. Have you ever seen a cockroach or ant-infested house? Things scuttling under cupboards when you turn on the lights?

Well, that's Mexico. The "administrators", and I say that with a laugh, are arm in arm with the murderers.

Cuba was annoying.. But sometimes dictators can prevent anarchy. And hey, I wouldn't be bookin' a vacation to Cancun any time soon.

Lessin' you want to be kidnapped and have your head cut off.

here

Steve Purcell

The other night my old friend Steve Purcell came to Montreal. I hadn't seen him for twenty years. We both went to CCAC (now called, pretentiously, CCA) and he went on to work with ILM, Marvel and now Pixar.

We went, Brigitte, Steve and I, to L'Express, because I could only think of that as the quintessential Montreal eatery. It was a great evening. Here are some of the pics. It's so bizarre that he had the same hat as me, just tan instead of black. But it was a blast.

Brigitte and Capo di tutti capi

Steve giving his "Forever" stare

We gon' hoit you

In another life, they coulda bin a couple

The Steve trademark "Sidelong glance"

Whaddya lookin' at?

The two muscleteers

Sometimes meeting old friends is a real drag, but Steve, the creator of Sam and Max, which happened to be his weekly strip in our college newspaper, of which I was the editor, turned into a phenomenon. And it wasn't a drag. You know how meeting old friends after many years can be awkward; you have nothing in common any more, just the old stories, but Steve isn't like that. He was a consummate communicator back then and he still is, even though he shirked his writing assignments for the paper and instead sent in these mad comics. That's called canny. You really owe it to yourself to get a copy of Sam and Max -- I had the privilege to watch him draw it. A lot of it will go over your heads, but that's Steve.

It's weird. I'm surrounded by people that I knew, sometimes very well, who went on to dynamic careers -- my old friend Mike Mignola, with whom Steve and I shared a friendship -- and who went on to make the Hellboy movies.

And here I remain, on shallow ground. But Flock, I bought some folding chairs for my next GI Joe vs. Gumby installment. You should be proud of me for that. Next episode: The Briefing. And the introduction of the evil Spymaster, Pokey. I may never make Pixar, but I'll sure get even with Gumby. I'll bend him into a green pretzel with bullet holes in it.

I Want a Rat.

I want a rat. Cage included. A young rat. Under $20, please.

("Where did he go. Where did he go")

What Will It Be

This is not a lyric for a song, just a poem I came up with.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

What will it be
When I am gone in a song
I won't hear your tears
But they will be long.

After I've gone
The trees will still grow.
The sun will still shine
And that you should know.

It's not me but you,
Who'll mourn my demise
And for that I have sorrow
For Hell has no fries.

Just beer after beer
But you will not know
That it's hot down the pit
But I'll enjoy it.

So don't waste your tears
Just save all the pain
And keep it inside
I'll see you again.

Christ, 155

I weighed myself today and I weighed only 155. At 5/9. This is impossible. I used to weigh 188 15 years ago.

I don't seem to do anything differently that I did 15 years ago, still eat the high-fat Caesar salads, pizzas, cheeses, carbs up the wazoo, steaks . . . what on Earth could be going on?

I don't work out. The most I do is go to Metro to buy food and beer. A ten-minute walk every day, maybe twice a day, maybe a little further some days.

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?

I'd say leukemic prostration with hyper-elevated triglycerides. Wouldn't you?

Prescription, please.

I Remember The Little Boy

I was basking in the Russian River in Northern California on a camping trip, and a little boy, maybe 9 years old, came to the shore. It was odd, because he was bald. There was no one with him. So I asked how he was doing, and he said "I have brain cancer."

At the time I didn't particularly like kids, but I felt like crying. He said it so matter-of-factly.

I never saw him again.

Another time, I took Tai-chan, who was about 3 at the time, to ER in Oakland, California because he was vomiting. He had Norovirus. But we stayed there only about seven hours. But during that time I saw a little boy in the corridor with his parents; he was screaming in pain, relentlessly, but there seemed to be nothing broken, as he could walk fine and wasn't holding, say, a broken arm.

I was horrified, because he wouldn't stop screaming.

I get so traumatised by kids in distress that I could never be a pediatrician.

But I remember that little boy at the river's edge. I wonder if he survived.

Boys With Toys

Oh, the boys like to play, don't they? Automatic rifles, IEDs, RPGs . . .

Well, my opinion is that the states of Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia should be bombed into smoking craters all at the same time. Oh, toss in North Korea for goodwill.

It would just take, say 20 bombers to do the job.

 

Bye Bye, terrorism

No more Al Qaeda. No more Jihadis. No more cockroaches scuttling on this good green Earth.

Yep, that would all assemble their twenty virgins at the same time. (How do the women suicide bombers get twenty virgins, anyway?)

Curry Dreams

I don't know what it is with me lately, but I don't eat much during the day. No breakfast at all, very rarely any kind of lunch, and usually a peck at any dinner, restaurant or otherwise.

God, that looks good

But at 6 a.m., the dreams come. Like my sushi dream (below) I had an intense curry dream tonight. I think it was a shrimp curry, but I was making up the recipe, step by step, thinking about just how I was going to do the rice, all the way to sprinkling on the cracked papadams, and as Brigitte says it, "Kusbarah" (Cilantro).

It was as real as if I were in the kitchen actually doing it.

So what did I do? Wake up and heat me up a slice of lousy pizza from the restaurant down the street that we'd ordered the night before.

Okay, formally on my to-do list:

Christ, I could use one now

A Caesar Salad, big, with ALL the trimmings. I might even consider sardines.

Curry, preferably shrimp, with fantastically prepared basmati rice and papadams and a nice sambal-cucumber salad.

Sushi, glorious sushi, the best in the city from god-knows-where.

Smoked salmon on a bagel with cream cheese and capers, as only Brigitte knows how to do it.

Pizza, done my way, not the loser mozzarella-laden-crap you get from the restaurant.

This is the stuff of 6 a.m. dreams. Learn, Flock, what dreams may come.

AND THEN ACT UPON THEM.

 

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Nutrition Labels

The trouble is with them, they all lie. You want to know how much sodium is in a can of Campbell's chicken soup? Well, they fudge and hem and haw and generally try to confuse you.

The recommended daily -- DAILY, for a fully-grown adult -- sodium intake is 2300 milligrammes.

I don't have all the info, but just TWO TEASPOONS of Bovril chicken broth is 930 mg. About two and a half times that is your entire recommended daily intake.

Fat content -- let's not even go there. A packet of potato chips, salt and vinegar, comes out to a whopping 341 mg of sodium and 14 grammes of fat for THIRTY ONE CHIPS.

A single can of Coke contains 45 mg of sugar -- that's ELEVEN TABLESPOONS OF SUGAR IN A CAN.

But the numbers lie. They always disguise it as "per portion of xx mg" which always confuses the average consumer. 17 G fat on a can of soup, but when you read the fine print, that means a quarter of the whole fucking can. FIFTY-SIX GRAMMES of fat for a single can of soup. That's more than two Big Macs with the cheese piled on.

It's like airline advertising. $120, Montreal to New York! What they don't mention is the extra $230 taxes, nav fees and airport taxes, per person.

It's fucked and I don't like being taken for a sucker. We should take the fuckers down like the cockroaches they are.

Generic bag of barbeque potato chips This is a kid-sized bag

Okay, Frogs Are Lower On The List

They're much lower on Nick's fuckwad watchlist because they're defying fucking Osama Bin Laden. They might be Frogs, but sometimes they have balls. Sarkozy may be a womanizing cretin, but banning burqas certainly ranks up with my measurement level of balls.

Score today on the level of assholes:
#1 North Koreans
# 2 Germans
#3 Japanese
#4 Russians
#5 Frogs (Up in the rankings!!! No, sorry, DOWN in the rankings!)
#6 Brazilians
#7 Americans (Yes, I'm one of their sorry asses)
#8 Chinese (well, they just can't help themselves)

Of course you don't count monkeys like the Taliban and Jihadis. They don't count here. They're always at the top of the list of assholes -- no bother to ever change that.

Gino Vannelli: Rock Concerts.

Gotta admit, I was psyched for this one. Gino doesn't come to Montreal too much any more and I wanted to catch him.

Mistake number one: paying $160 for two in the the top tier.

Mistake number two: Salle Wilfrid Pelletier.

Mistake number three: Brigitte not really being into Gino.

Mistake number four: a lousy assortment of crappy songs performed completely differently from the originals, and a crappy band with stupid horns.

Mistake number five: high-school students ordering me not to go in or out during songs.

Mistake number six: bar closed. Bar closed at Salle Wilfrid Pelletier.

Mistake number seven: finding out our favorite bistro was closed after leaving halfway through the boring concert.

Non mistake: Kissing and making up after a disastrous evening. I will never go to a rock concert again.

Sushi Dreams

The dreams, the dreams . . .

What is it about food dreams? They just blast you like some subliminal commercial. God, I have hot dog dreams. I'm looking for a hot dog, but it isn't there. Totally random.

Last night I had a powerful, almost Earth-shattering sushi dream. I was slavering over these dishes and I'm sure I was murmuring in my sleep . . . "Tobiko . . . hai, tobiko to maguro . . . tekkyumaki (combination tuna and cucumber) . . . wasabi oi (lots of wasabi) . . . chuu-hai kudasai (a vodka-like drink with vaguely lime-juice) . . .

I swear, the dream wouldn't go away. Just kept repeating itself.

So I guess I'm not quite done with Japan just yet. But since my favorite sushi place in all of Montreal just up and moved away I'm at a loss.

I guess meanwhile, the dreams will just have to do.

Germans

Dein bundesvolk. Ich liebe nicht dem Deutschlanders.

I know I'm mangling the language, because I never really learned it, but deep in my bones, I hate the Germans. So the ranking now is Germans, the Japanese, and the French as a close third.

The Italians really haven't annoyed me as yet. In fact, I quite like them, even though they were turncoats in the Second World War. I mean, Mussolini? How about tagliolini? I don't know quite what it is about Italians . . . a general pleasantness that is the complete opposite of the French, a suspicious bunch who are likely to turn traitor as a wolverine with a buddy mouse.

I used to denigrate the Québecois because of their ridiculous accent, but I found out from my months in France that the French are more ridiculous. The posturing, the elitist attitude. Québecois are much more friendly, personable and generally nice.

So here's the score: Québecois win, hands-down; Germans are at the top of the hate list, followed very closely by the Japanese, and the Parisians gaining ground.

I'll update you as the race goes on.

John The Brave

by Nicholas Robinson

There was in olden times a road
That led through vale and glen
T'was marred and cracked by battle scars
And feared by mortal men.

But on it one day rode a steed
Whose rider, dark and tall
Feared naught but Heaven's fiery wrath
And that not much at all.

He rode upon a dangerous quest;
And all around the land
His name was known as John the Brave
For he only had one hand.

T'was said it had been lost long since
In battle with his brother
And in this fight his kin had cut
The fingers from his other.

But one good leg had John the Brave,
And being strong of mind
T'was less than an annoyance that
Sir John was also blind.

And though he could not speak or hear,
And could not move his head
It mattered not to John the Brave
That some men thought him dead.

And though his steed was made of wood
And could not move an inch
It mattered not to good old John
It mattered not one pinch.

So on his wondrous beast he sat,
Croaking wordless wit
While village children ran around
And pelted him with shit.

Frogs! They Hop, They skip, They jump! Frogs!

Ribbit

Upon Getting Old

Did you know that in the 1700s, the life expectancy for men was 47? Well, I'm five years past that.

But maybe we were designed to die at 47. Despite all the drugs and fixers: Lyrica, Crestor, Metformin blah blah blah, we just have to admit that we're old.

Maybe we should just be lined up against a wall and shot.

Gotta Love Third World Countries

If there weren't third-world countries, where would true entertainment be?

My Own Shamu

I have a pool in my building. Don't you think I could "bonsai" a killer whale and keep him really small so I could go swimming with him and feed him with regular fish food, since freeze-dried seals are hard to find nowadays?

I want a pet, and I want a killer whale.

Clothes for the Dolphins

Have you ever thought about how dolphins don't have clothes? Chimps, raccoons, lizards -- go through their entire lives without clothes? Don't you feel in the least bit guilty about that?

Look at those bastards, the Salvation Army. Did they even ever think about a sweater for an elephant? Elephants get cold, too. Why isn't there a Value Village for chickens? Huh?

No sweaters for chickens. No hats for kangaroos. Just because they can't speak even pidgin English, don't they deserve the same things we enjoy?

Laptops for wallabies. Just what is wrong with that scenario? We're just so greedy that we keep all these things for ourselves. Don't you think that a sardine wouldn't mind an evening at a good restaurant, with champagne and a warm fire and a wool blanket and a nice movie after?

I'm a Physickist

The back bedroom

Flock, you didn't know it, but I built a small version of the Large Hadron Collider in the back spare room. Those fools. You don't need 59,000 kilometers of cables and tubing to catch one hadron.

I caught one on the first day but I let him go because he was too small. Such is life. I'm looking forward to getting a bigger hadron, however, and am immersed in my cookbooks deciding just how I'll prepare him.

I'm thinking Gorgonzola cream sauce, with Pastis, lightly flambéed. Just what a particle-acceleratorized hadron needs. Simple, keep it simple.

Hadrons can be delicious but unless you have a Small Hadron Collider you're unlikely to pick one up at the local farmer's market.

I'll email you the specifications, but beware, they're 130,987 pages long! And you'd better have a good electrician.

The New Chimpanzees

I don't know and I don't particularly care why these people were killed but it just points to the arbitrary and horrific behaviour of third-world peoples. Oh sure, drive-by shootings are rife in Cincinnati, but the police don't beat people to death, like the PUBLIC did when I was in Kinshasa in the 70s . . . you accidentally run over a civilian, you're beaten to death.

Well, see for yourself the incredibly sadistic behaviour of these so-called "men-in -arms."

The perps may have been Taliban murderers but they at least deserved life in a Pakistani jail and not death at the hands of a crazed mob. Frankly, I'd choose the former.

Uhh, on second thought, Pakistani + jail is not a good solution, really is it? Maybe these guys are with their twenty virgins, like they deserve.

My Ass

My ass is killing me.

No, no, no my silly flock, not because of the Sambal Oelek that I added to my curry last night.

 My donkey, Bertie, whom I purchased not one week ago.

He likes to snuggle on the bed between Brigitte and me and he doesn't fit in the elevator so we have to take the eight flights of stairs every time we go for his walk. And he insists on going in the car every time we go out. If I refuse him, he kicks me.

My Ass

It's downright killing me. Silly ass. Brigitte, what made you think that he'd make a great Halloween decoration? I mean, honestly.

Better Shepherd's Pie Than MINE?

I'm outraged, frustrated and furious. Brigitte's "Pâté Chinois," which is Québecois for Shepherd's Pie (or "Cottage Pie," as Blork likes to call it) is BETTER THAN MINE.

It's a damned outrage that it tastes better in ever way, is leaner and meaner, less shamelessly salty and just overall WAY BETTER THAN MINE.

I didn't marry someone just so they could show up my poor cooking skills but that's exactly what seems to have happened.

I took a picture but stupidly did it before it was cooked. But you get the picture. And, as usual, no, she won't share the recipe with us earthly folk.

I'm very, very angry. But it was very, very tasty.

Getting a Driver's License in Quebec

No matter that I drove for 20 years perfectly fine in California 20 years ago and can still drive perfectly fine.

They have no records of my license in California after this long -- the clowns -- so now I'm faced with $800 worth of driving school and a 13-month wait.

What happened to the Crackerjack box that I thought all Montreal drivers got their license from?

Incredible.

Ode to Yemen

Yemen, Yemen

I want to go to Yemen, the land where the camels fly free.

Terror, terror, I want to see some terror,

A place where I can finally be me.

Yemen, Yemen

An AK-47, breakfast at the local water hole

‘Sama, ‘Sama, I want to meet Osama

And nail him from his toenails to a pole.

Yemen, Yemen,

I wish it rhymed with "semen"

'Cause all it does is rape the world

Yemen, Yemen

And you can count to seven

Because that's about how many seconds a 600-megaton bomb would take to make Yemen just a big goddamn hole where a smaller goddamn hole existed before.

A Monumental Waste of Time

Imagine this: little Taishi lives behind his shack with his mother, because his father has died of AIDS. He's only four and he's probably going to die of AIDS as well.

Or imagine Lema, a child of 14. He's infected with a virulent form of malaria.

Imagine Umami, a mother of four in Tanzania that is dying of sleeping sickness because she can't come up with the $4 per week to buy the medicine.

Then imagine this fuck, who takes the time out to polish 100 million porcelain seeds. Yes, you read that right.

My honest and only message to him: "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on."

The Day Has Come!

The day has finally come when I officially can make better Indian food than restaurants, better Italian food, better pizza, better hamburgers, better Pho and minestrone and sushi and BLTs and turkey and chicken-you-name-it  . . . the day has finally come.

We ordered from Maison India last night and I can officially say -- their Bangalore Phal (the hottest dish on the menu) and their rice were shit. It's Brigitte's favorite for their Butter Chicken but MY butter chicken kicks its ass with a Sidewinder missile. My Chicken Jalfrezi is on Wikipedia and receives several referrals a day

My pizzas are incredible, not laden with so much tasteless cheese or substandard ingredients it more resembles something out of a freezer carton (which it probably is) and I lust after them (as everybody else does) even after the aforementioned weeks in the freezer. There is not a single restaurant in Montreal who could make a better pizza than I do (Challenge! You and me, head to head! I'll win hands-down).

My pastas are to die for. Except for Basi, at Jean-Talon Market, I make the best pasta in the city.

I make the best spicy refrigerator dill pickles -- a recipe I had to shut down because it was causing so much traffic to the site -- the best sausages, the best fresh pasta, the best cucumber salad, the best soups, the best compound butter, the best parmesan crisps, the best POTATO CHIPS from scratch, the best chili-cheese dogs, the signature "Nickburger" . . .

But Brigitte is the undisputed Queen of the smoked-meat sandwich. I don't even want to go there. Not approach that with a ten-foot pole and a SWAT team behind me.

I'm good at what I do, but she's better at what she does . . . and combined, we kick Montreal's restaurants into Kingdom Come.

Of, course, I say that without prejudice or bias of any kind.

Hit "The Hit" Hitler

Good

Better

Oh, come on, people. Even though he personally managed to put 55 million people to death, he was a good guy. Look: he had sex with Blondi, his devoted Alsatian dog, and pretended to have sex with Eva Prawn while secretly having sex with his dog and Himmler. Now wouldn't that be someone you would like to shoot for dinner?

And look at that face. Isn't that the face of the Immortal Beloved? Can you imagine vinegar mixed with sauerkraut mixed with hydrochloric acid? Did you know that his doctor slapped his mother the minute he came out?

Good ol' Dolfy. Really, people, he MEANT well!

(Okay, okay, I admit to a Hitler obsession. I just want a time machine so I can go back and torture him for a very long time -- I'm thinking three months of penny nails through fingers, Nine INCH Nails on the speakers 48 hours a day, and The Bold and The Beautiful on his prison TV 24/7).

Jealous

You can't believe how jealous I am of Brigitte. She speaks three languages with equal ease without even thinking. She's speaking 90% Hebrew right now on the phone with her brother, but it's so mixed up with French and English that my head is spinning.

I admit that my Japanese is pretty good, my French also, but I just can't babble like Brigitte. Amazing!

Luzzo's

Upon Nazis and Chowhound

You know. You want to chime in in a discussion about food. Or you want to post an observation of your own. On a discussion board which supposedly represents your area.

But then some asshole, called a "moderator" (are these people actually paid, or do they just troll the Internet, night and day, with their cokes and rice krispies?) deletes your comment and you get an email telling you so. "Off-topic."

Well, I'll tell you what's "Off-topic," you tinsel-chested self-appointed dictator of a small state: You're a fucking tinpot imaginary general sitting in your room with a Domino's pizza slice, staring at your old cathode-ray tube while the dog barks outside and your mom shouts at you to pick up your clothes and you're lecturing ME on what to post.

I just have three words for you: "FUCK YOU."

Happy Tanks Giving

Fuck 'em all. Yes, fuck 'em all. Last (Canadian) Thanksgiving we invited eight people and only one showed up.

So this year Brigitte and I decided to just go it alone. Fuck them all. No one EVER invites us to anything, when they come they bring nothing but their sorry asses and I'm frankly fucking sick and tired of it.

Hello, can you say "recluse?" Well, it's only because of the amazing amount of retards out there. What is there difficult to understand about "free, amazingly tasty, expensively-made meal, good times, good wine" that people don't understand? Maybe they just don't like my face. Well, fuck you. Happy fucking Thanksgiving, people, because Brigitte and I had an amazing one. And thank God you weren't here. Too bad for you.

Turkey breast studded with rosemary and garlic

Turkey breast and celery and carrots and potatoes and onions: Done!

Shredded and done