i'm thinking about getting metal legs.

just some randoms:

-otis day and the knights aren't (at least aren't supposed to be) a real band. apparently, "my man" otis was a random character actor named dewayne jessie, who got hired to play the tiny role of otis. immediately following the movie, the popularity of his two scenes had booking agents from all over the country booking the fake band at clubs and frat parties. to this (otis) day, the knights are still touring the country. this leads to a few conclusions: 1. apparently being able to play "shout" and "shamalama ding dong" over and over and over is apparently more profitable than singing glam metal songs about big butts and dwarven druidian monuments, hence otis day is still playing and spinal tap is not. 2. if i ever have another party, the knights are gonna play.

-those HP commercials saying "the computer is personal again" are the biggest loads of crap. apparently all other computers aren't personal because you cannot watch a DVD without booting up or etch labels onto CDRs. the fact that a huge company spent lots of money to make commercials that only ignorant assholes would ever fall for leads me to believe that there must be many more ignorant assholes than i had originally predicted. i can just imagine someone in best buy looking at a dell pc and saying to the salesperson, "no, i want one of those HPs...they're more geared to my personal needs." and now i just threw up in my mouth a little.

-i don't know why people take percocet for recreational purposes. i was on it (3 pills every 4-5 hours) for about a week, and never felt the euphoria people talked about. the only time i felt a really nice feeling was after my surgery when they gave me four doses of demerol and two percs all at once (yeah, i have a high tolerance). in fact, i actually stopped using the percocet early in order to be able to drink beer again...not really sure what that says about me and my habits, but it wouldn't have been the obvious choice for someone who just had a tendon ripped out of their knee then screwed into their bones.

-i watched one episode of nip/tuck and i saw: a breast-fondling dwarf male nurse, hash-brownie fueled visions of a satan personification fucking an 18 year old girl, a husband killing his dog after finding out his wife was lathering her clam with peanut butter to get the dog to take care of her biznass, and lesbian organ thieves. i don't know whether this means i should never watch it again, or that i should rent all the last seasons and catch up.

-physical therapy sucks. especially when the session begins each time with a hamstring deep tissue massage that makes me bite my finger to the point of drawing blood. i have a really high tolerance for pain...i voluntarily stopped the percs despite the constant pain...i caught a running circular saw in my thigh when i was 14 and finished the day of work at the construction job...i ran almost a mile with a dislocated elbow and two sprained ankles...but this is close to unbearable.

time to ice the knee and have some more beer.

ripping the shit out of my knee, and other poems, by Maya Angelou

currently, i'm sitting at Dieu Du Ciel drinking a 2 and a half year old Belgian Abbey Quadrupel (that is fuckin' spectacular) and mulling over the past week or so. to keep everyone (all 7 of you) up to date, let's start at the beginning.

monday. went to Jay Peak to snowboard on their 28 inch dump over the weekend. halfway through the day, me, Doug, and Stacy were almost to the bottom, and went to hit the tabletop jumps that are always there. my confidence on them has been increasing each time i've gone this season. as some of you know, i've been riding since 6th grade, and am seriously skilled when it comes to steeps, trees, etc. but never have been a "pipe and park junkie". i can hit jumps, but i was never one for big air. anyway, on this run, i hit the first, and got some air, and felt great about it. so, as i approached the second, i was about to slow down, but thought, "i feel good about this...i'm gonna really hit this one". so, i hit it, not realising that the fuckers who designed it made the kicker too steep and the tabletop section too long. i got some serious air, and on the way down i see the indented section of the tabletop flat where everyone had been landing. so, in a moment of "oh shit, i'm gonna land on a flat" panic, i did the complete opposite of what i should and i straightened my front knee. yep. i'm a genius. i landed. and dropped to my knees in pain. i slid down to the base, and felt this extreme pain in my knee, but couldn't pinpoint it. so, in the macho, id-driven, "i can deal with pain" mentality, i decided to let my knee cool off in the tram before we get to the top of the mountain and take on some serious terrain. well, to my surprise, it felt fine at the top. so i started riding in the "waist deep powder" that we were told existed up there (thank you jackass on skis without a jacket...there was almost no powder up there). everything seemed fine until i was riding in a trail called "Hell's Woods" near the bottom. i was surfing through some nice powder, and i kicked out my right leg to stop on my heelside and take a breather. well, as soon as i did that, i felt my left knee stretch outwards with two back-to-back "pops" in it. fuck. i lit up that glade with so much profanity that the fucking pine needles dried up and fell off all the trees in a rigor mortis-y fashion. i managed to get up after some down time and made it to the base. drank some beer at the base, then went home. i was NOT going to wait 8 hours that night to go to the hospital, especially on trivia night, so i got Dave and Jen to take a cab with me to Brutopia for the night. we just barely lost the first round, and lost the second round in the tie-breaker, but i had plenty of beer and shots, so my knee was feeling grrrr-eat! (where's Tony the Tiger when you need him??). cab home (after scoring some Boustan). get to the emergency room at 10am the next morning, with no more than 4 hours of sleep, and wait for 4 hours until i get called into a room. then 2 hours go by until they give me an x-ray (even though i knew it wasn't broken and x-rays can't see soft-tissue damage), then another 1.5 hours goes by until some med student comes in and tells me that "it's not broken" (thanks copernicus) and "we're not sure if you tore any ligaments, so here's some tylenol with codeine and a referral to mcgill sports medicine". the name of the painkiller is deceiving...it's called "Empracet"...doesn't that sound like "Percocet"? well, it's not. i learned that when i broke my elbow a year ago. they put so little codeine and so much acetaminophen in these pills that you would have to overdose on acetaminophen in order to get enough codeine to feel anything resembling pain reduction. i took two tabs (double the dose), a pill of Naproxen, and washed it down with a beer and still felt no effect whatsoever. jerks. so, to sum up, i got to sports medicine and they believe that i have partial tears in both my ACL and my meniscus. so, no more snowboarding for yours truly.

i guess that brings us to wednesday. got my second edition of Junior Mints 'n' Bosco into the carboy to dry mint it with 2 oz of spearmint leaves and a bunch more chocolate. my altbier, Falter, is ready to drink and is very tasty, though i might submit it to the National Hombrew Competition under the Strong Scotch Ale category since it resembles that more than an altbier. i met with the Dieu Du Ciel master brewer to discuss the finer points of going from homebrewing to professional brewing. it was nice to hear that he still loves it. i was also offered an all-expenses-paid trip to Boston on the first weekend of April to oversee an experiment involving live emotional expression tracking with the Boston Philharmonic. i'm pumped about that for so many reasons.

thursday. nothing happened. eh, whatever.

friday. filmed a new segment about the Formula 1 rule changes for the 2006 season with WatchMojo. that should be up this weekend. while many of you have seen the best way to pour a pint, i'm happy to say that my segment on the difference between ale and lager has finally surfaced. keep watching that site for some really cool content. for instance, all sports fans should check out the latest edition of the whip/around. this guy know sports like i know drinking. and you all know how well i know drinking.

so, now i wait until the subaru station wagon that brings my brother and our friends to montreal rolls in (later than planned) to kick off a nice, hearty, drunken bachelor party. and with the severity of the rain outside and my lack of an umbrella, i think i will probably wait here, in the bar, until that happens.

bar hopping, maxin' and relaxin', theatrical excursions, & super bowl viewings

what a blast this weekend has been. usually my weekends are filled with pretty normal events (a bar or two, random drunken fun, etc.), but this one just stood out amongst the rest. to kick it off, Caitlin and i hit some bars on friday including one of the better Montreal brewpubs, a really cool whiskey bar, and eventually Bifteck (gotta stick to the roots). L'Amere a Boire has some good beer, nowhere near the craft-brewed delights of Dieu Du Ciel, but nevertheless a chill place. i can't remember what the name of the whiskey bar was, but it was a great place, with probably 90 different whiskeys. we tried two different whiskeys...the names are kinda lost to me at the moment, but they were damn good. the music was great too, bringing back some 80s music memories, but we called it quits there when ABBA made its first appearance. bifteck was solid, as usual...cheap pitchers and 5 shots for 10 bucks. another upside of that place is that when you know all the staff, you get treated a lot differently, e.g. when Mike (the bouncer) is yelling at everyone to leave 'cause the bar is closing, he makes a point to politely come to our table and say "hey Nick, we're closing up soon, so just finish your drinks when you can." ya gotta love bar hopping.

saturday was a lazy day for most of it, but definitely a welcome break from the hectic week. i hung out with Caitlin during the day watching Arrested Development episodes (that show fucking rules) and HP: Prisoner of Azkaban. randomly bumming in front of the tv can be awesome. later in the afternoon, i headed over to Jenny's apartment for her early birthday party. her parents were up for the weekend, so they cooked dinner and everyone brought beer. dinner was really good, and her parents were cool, and most of the riff-raff ("buncha fuckin' amateurs!") eventually headed out leaving a core group of Dave, Jenny, Alex, me, and a few friends of theirs. drinking games led into trivial pursuit (as usual), which led to me, Dave, and Alex playing "Scarborough rules" (gotta get every question right on the last card to win) until Dave triumphed at 6:10am. 20 minutes later, i was stumbling back home (thankfully only a block) to get some sleep before the morning.

sunday morning. still a bit buzzed from hours before. drag myself over to Theatre St. Catherine to see Tecumseh as a Doorstop thanks to Dave and Jen's rabid enthusiasm for the play.

wow. it was simply amazing. i know that i'm not an authority on theater (very far from it), but this hit home so much. it basically surrounds two americans and two canadians that are living together in NYC on the day of the 9/11 attack. it was hilarious, powerful, emotional, intellectual...the list could go on. it spoke about the meaning behind the attacks and our interepretations, both from canadian and american perspectives, as well as about communication within and across cultures and personal relationships. i identified with it so much, mostly with the main character's reaction to the attack, which was the looming question of "why?", instead of the vengeful anger and blind patriotism that immediately spilled forth from the open wound that the attack inflicted upon the US. the acting was flawless and as convincing as i've ever seen. it's only too bad that the show is now closed. hopefully, it will open somewhere else, because i know a lot of people who would really appreciate it. i'll keep everyone posted if it does.

soon after, i met up with Dave to go to Brian's house and watch the super bowl. that was a lot of fun, with the steelers taking a well-deserved championship title and Hines Ward pulling out enough sick catches to get the MVP award. afterwards, i finally got to check out the highest rated depanneur (in terms of beer selection) called Rahman, located on Laurier, just west of St. Urbain. this. place. rules. it's a little expensive, but they have, what seems to be, the full selection from every single microbrewery in all of quebec. it's the first place that came even close to reminding me of the selection back in the states. and those who know me will fully understand how happy this made me. so, i've got 4 beers in my fridge to try (3 which aren't even rated on Beer Advocate!).

and so, the weekend of fun comes to an end as i sit here typing and watching the director's cut of Donnie Darko. this cut is far superior to the theatrical release, with one exception: they replaced the Echo and the Bunnymen song "The Killing Moon" in the beginning (as he rides down the mountain on his bike) with some other tune that, imho, does not even come close to having the same effect and link with the visual and thematic progression of the scene. now i've gotta hit the sack...gotta get up way too early to fill wire conduits in the new music building with sandbags in time for a 10am acoustical test in the labs. blah.

more than a little disappointed

alright. i'm back in NJ now. everything is fine and normal here. i really enjoy hanging out with my parents, so that's cool. i'm working, and making cash at the same time, so that obviously evens out that equation. Chris and Windee (and their lil' puppy, Mellow) are gonna be here in two days. so, everything seemed great. especially, since i was looking forward to ending my last day in the states, before going back to a grueling work schedule at McGill, with all of my friends on nye. a team Beerz reunion on or above the scale of Bomz' birthday in february. but something is amiss.

here's the backstory: Bomz, king of all bashes, informs everyone in the gang about a month ago that he's going to have a nye party in nazareth, pa. for me, that's over 8 hours from my current living location, and about 2 hours from my home in nj. for the people in media, pa, it's about an hour and fifteen away. with no hesitation whatsoever, i jumped in and told Bomz that i'm in. of course! to me, it doesn't matter where we are, what we're doing, as long as we all get together to hang out. anyone who's partied with team Beerz knows that the locale is unimportant...there will always be shenanigans and tomfoolery (i'm an adult now, i should use adult words, shouldn't i?). well, anyway, it seemed all set up to me.

little did i know that certain media folk don't agree with this. despite the fact that only and best reunion we've had was thrown by Bomz himself, some people "just don't feel like driving an hour" to hang out with a bunch of old friends. instead, they want to hang out at the house of the girlfriend of some tool that they know from high school or go to a crowded bar full of drunk strangers. if there was nothing else going on, i'm 100% down with that (the former at least)...we'd take over the party and make it our own. but when there is a perfectly good and well thought-out reunion in the works, for over a month, by one of the key members of team Beerz, to me, there should be no question.

maybe it's because i'm sick of bars, after living in montreal: the land of all bars, no parties. maybe it's because i haven't seen my best friends in more than 6 months. maybe it's because i want to live in the past once a year or so and have a full-on, reckless, blow-out reminiscent of undergraduate days. maybe i just thought that a really tight group of friends cared more about catching up and hanging out than about the superficial element of the location at which it happens.

well, i guess we'll see what happens. i'll be in nazareth. not only did i already tell Bomz that i was in, i know for sure that it's gonna fuckin rule.