Bitchitorial
(The view from the Editor's Chair)
May 19, 2003
It's been a helluva long weekend here in Canada. In celebration of a
monarchy whose relevance has long since faded, but is still the subject of
endless debate, we get a 3 day weekend in May every year. I think we
just wanted to be able to celebrate like the American's do on Memorial
Day, so we picked something suitably benign. Queen Victoria's Birthday.
She's been dead for 102 years, but hell, it's a reason to set off
explosives and party, so why not? As luck would
have it, our HBI Movie Editor, Barbara, (my wonderful host for the Webby
Awards last year), arrived in town for a two-and-a-half-day blitz as
part of what has been dubbed the "East Coast Bitch Tour 2003". Thank goodness
it turned out to be the long weekend - I needed today just to begin my
recovery. Barbara
arrived in the company of her charming and sweet friend Denise, whom
Barbara is grooming for HBI-dom. On our first night
out, I thought I would introduce them to something different, something
somewhat Canadian, so I took them to a place we refer to as the "Mall O'
Beer" - a series of Irish style pubs all interconnected, known
officially as the Irish Village. It's a Tardis - it's bigger on the
inside than it looks on the outside, and it never actually ends. You go
through twisty little passages and tables and booths, to MORE twisty
little passages, and tables and open spaces with bands playing. There
are at least 3 connected outdoor patios, and more twisty little
passages. Anyone who has ever played Adventure would feel right at home.
I know what you are thinking, how is this
"Canadian"? Well, Beer, and lots of it, is definitely a Canadian
pastime, and the bands were from the East Coast of Canada. There is
significant Irish heritage in the Canadian Maritimes and it is reflected
in the music - there is always at least one fiddle and usually an
accordion involved. In Barbara's opinion, people
weren't actually dancing- "It's like an Irish Mosh Pit - except instead
of a black eye, you get bruised shins!" - but then she'd never seen (or
heard) a jig or a reel, so the entertainment extended to more than just
the band. Merely watching the revelers was sufficient to have them in
stitches. I explained that in places like NewFoundland, there were
basically 3 things to do - Fish, Fuck and Fuddle (drink heavily), and
unfortunately lately, there isn't much fishing going on. Barbara noted
that the words "Whisky" and "Fuck" seemed to be a requirement in each
song, but I think that was mostly improvisation on the part of the band.
Periodically throughout the night the band would sing a single chorus of
"Sweeeeeet Care-O-Line", after which the audience was to yell "Suck My
Balls" instead of the requisite "Bup Bup Baaaaaahhhh"... Barbara went up and suggested an alternate phrase to the lead
singer that involved portions of the female anatomy. I kept referring to
her as my Unrestrained ID. She was a hoot. We
punctuated the night with various rounds of shooters, the best of which
was a "6/49" - named after the most famous of Canadian lotteries - and
it's never the same from bar to bar - they go down the bar and take 6
bottles from one shelf (in consecutive order) and 4 from another shelf
(in the opposite direction, in consecutive order), mix, and pour into
shooters. (Obviously it only works well if you have a lot of shooters to
mix). Apparently, part of Denise's indoctrination included hardening her
liver. (She may someday forgive us.) By Irish standards, however, we
were featherweights. Just ask The Morrigan about drinking in Sligo.
By the end of the night we were singing The Black
Velvet Band at the tops of our lungs with the rest of the crowd. As
the lights came up some guy who had been eyeing Denise all night,
finally decided to make his move. And what a cheap move it was - Wait
until her friends get her drunk (that way YOU don't have to spend any
money), and THEN move in. Unfortunately, for him, Denise had US to shore
up any lapses in judgment that the alcohol (and our involvement in
bringing it on), may have caused. I was also mildly amused by the
attempted come-on disguised as a chat-up about my cell-phone (while I
was sending a text message). Though we were
quite ready to pour ourselves into a taxi as the lights came up, a good
friend of mine (who dances a wicked polka) graciously gave us a ride
home. He tolerated our inebriated antics and running commentary with a
look of wry amusement. Though I don't make a habit of drinking
outrageously, I do like to have fun, and this is not the first time he
has seen me home safely from a night of revelry.
When, half awake the next morning, I asked my sweetie if we had woken
him when we got in, he looked at me with that piercingly sardonic gaze that he does so well, and said,
"You're joking, right?". Oops. The recollection suddenly flooded back,
and realized that we likely woke up people in neighboring municipalities.
To his credit, he was always ready with fresh
coffee, yummy food and a sharp wit. We managed to drag our furry tongues
and sorry asses out of bed around noon. My sweetie made a brunch feast
for us, and we headed out into the Byward market for the afternoon so
that Denise and Barb could see a bit more of our fair city and take advantage of the favorable Canadian
exchange rate. Barb couldn't get over how "cute" the money was (She should
see Australian money) and how cheap everything was compared to places around SF. She was talking about
how reasonable the housing prices were until I reminded her of the -40F
winters.
I made sure they had a chance to try eating Beavertails, which
they greatly enjoyed. Let your imaginations run wild, folks. Anyone
who's ever been to Ottawa will know what I'm talking about. And for those
of you who do, it was a Killaloe Sunrise.
That night I thought we'd try some of the trendier dance clubs because I
didn't think our shins and livers could take another night in the Mall
O' Beer. We tried three clubs before we settled on the Mercury lounge.
Barb is convinced that we need a squadron of the Fashion Police to
descend on Ottawa because people that badly dressed shouldn't be that
uptight and full of themselves. I mean, if you are going to have ATTITUDE,
at least dress the part. At least she didn't see "model girl" - a 20-something
woman at a club a few weeks ago who was wearing a strapless scarf-top which required her
to practically pin her shoulder blades together and dance in the most
ridiculous chest-jutting display imaginable. Even the guys with us didn't enjoy
it because there wasn't much chest to jut in the first place. We figured she
was holding herself in that ridiculous pose because if she moved
any other way, the top would fall down... Unfortunately, some people
don't realize that the true cost of being a slave to fashion is the loss of your dignity.
We had fun, none-the-less, until a young man (for whom English was not a first, or even apparently a second language), started putting the
moves on Denise. At first we weren't sure what was going on, but then it
became clear that Denise was trying to indicate that she wasn't interested
in his attentions. It took bodily intervention on the part of Barb and
myself to convince this young man (and his friend) that groping *this*
particular woman on the dance floor was NOT acceptable - particularly in light
of the fact that she had protested and made it clear (to us at least) that she wanted him to stop.
Their apparent inability to understand English didn't help, but our body language didn't require an interpreter.
I am convinced that if Denise spends another few months in the close company of Barbara,
SHE will be the one managing such situations, without the need for
anyone else to intervene or assist.
Unfortunately, that night more than one person in that bar had taken a
stupid pill. A short while later, another asshole, this one blindingly drunk,
started attempting to grope women on the dance floor and at one point
had unzipped his pants. I found out afterwards that at least three of the women in our group had
either physically pushed him away or told him to back off.
God knows where the bouncer was. I didn't realize what was going on
until a near altercation started. For some reason, a female friend of
this loser decided to take exception to Denise - and she wasn't even the one
being the most blunt and harsh with the jerk.
Not wanting to get into any kind of cat-fight, Denise pretended she
didn't speak English, and kept saying, "Como esta?! Como esta?"
Don't ask me why she chose this particular phrase (perhaps she
learned it from the young man who so recently pushed her boundaries?), but it frustrated the hell
out of the psycho, diffused the situation and had us in hysterics. At
that point I suggested we get the hell out and go for food before things
got weirder. Of course, as we walked to the all-night diner all we
could say to each other was "Como esta? Como Esta?", and dissolve into a
fit of giggles. I tried to get Barb to order Poutine (a
Canadian after-the-bar culinary tradition consisting of fries, cheese curds and gravy), but she graciously declined ("That's disgusting").
Though I'll concede that the fact that you can hear your arteries hardening as you eat it may have been a bit off-putting for her.
We spent all day Sunday working on our recovery - the weather was gorgeous, Barbara came with us for
Dim Sum with some good friends of mine, and Denise
finally made her way out of the bedroom around 3pm... After a bar-b-que feast of generously
marinated dead cow, fiddle-heads (tender fern sprouts), salad, potatoes, and all the fixin's, we sat back with some tasty beverages
and watched a movie. I drove them to the airport early this
morning, and with any luck (and a fair bit of water and ibuprophen) they
will be fully recovered before they hook up with Fabulana in DC.
Of course, it may take a bit longer than that for me. Much to the annoyance
of my housemates, I keep bursting
into hearty refrains of "And her hair hung over her shooooooulder....." and
muttering "Como Esta?! Como Esta?" for no apparent reason...
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