Addendum

Here I forgot to mention Pretty Girls Make Graves' album Elan Vital as a solid choice Runner Up for the best of '06, if only because its the only album I heard all year that had songs about both union organizing and pirates on it.

Oh come on.

Talk about a nice, slow one right over the plate:

Over 250 sickened after eating at Olive Garden


Like, do I even need to make a joke here?

(h/t T-Bogg)

Idea?

Since everybody on ze internets seems to have the exact same taste in music, perhaps it's time to re-evaluate this term "indie"?

To totally belabour the point and drain it of whatever humour or impact it has, I'm saying there's nothing particularily independent about all these bloggers picking the same 12 albums. Get it? GET IT?

Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar, well, he eats you

Yesterday I had a job interview. The job itself was pretty interesting, though a bit of a lateral/slightly downward move. But that doesn't matter since I totally made a balls of the interview. I'm shit at interviews at the best of times, but this was bad. Five minutes in and I was a sweating, stammering nervous wreck, my carefully practiced answers turning to lead on my tongue. I was lost. I fared no better at the subsequent written portion. Basically, I shit the bed.

But, lo!, though the Lord taketh away, he also giveth. Last night, my indoor soccer team won its second game of the season and I scored my first goal of the year. It was a beauty, too: a quick first-timer from the middle of the box right into the top corner. This is awesome because the only other goals I've scored in my soccer career have been garbage; easy tap-ins into open cages, that sort of thing. It felt good to get a real goal and help the team win. See, as a kid, I never got to play sports. I wasn't that interested and my family wasn't big on the whole "encouraging kids to try different things to help them become well-rounded individuals" thing. Presumably, that was the TV's job. I didn't complain at the time, but as I've grown up, I can see I missed out on some of the social and character-building that team sports can provide. Like sportsmanship (I am the worst sport ever). So it's kind of nice to experience a bit of what I missed, even if it is a bit late.

It’s over now and I can’t go there anymore

Crap.

These boots are made for fucking things up.

Over at Hullabaloo today, we find this photo of a whole family of criminals, idiots, drunks, fuck-ups and proto-facsists past and present all done up in their Christmas Holiday Christmas finest.

Take a careful look at the ape-like creature seated in the front. Take note of the footwear. Now take a moment to let that sink in. Yes: those are, in fact, black cowboy boots emblazoned with the Presidential seal.

Now, not only are they pretty much the fucking tackiest thing ever (well, at least as tacky as the codpiece), but the booties speak volumes about Bush's approach to the presidency. He's not interested in responsibility or leadership (a blessing, I suppose: imagine how much worse off the world would be if he actually had ideas): he just wants to play dress-up.

Which reminds me of one of the Gee Dubya nicknames that's been circulating in progressive circles for these past few dark years: "Little Boots". As for the origin of that one, well...

As a boy of just two or three, he accompanied his parents on military campaigns in the north of Germania and became the mascot of his father's army. The soldiers were amused whenever Agrippina would put young Gaius in a miniature soldier's uniform, including boots and armor; and he was soon given his nickname Caligula, meaning "Little (Soldier's) boot", after the small boots he wore as part of his uniform

It gets worse.

Lately, the usual local media suspects have been all atwitter over the issue of violence in the Whyte Avenue, this after a slew of stabbings on the strip over the last few weeks, including one fatal one. The stabbings are, of course, on top of the regular and unreported punch ups, sexual assaults, alcohol poisonings, vandalism and public urination that has, sadly, become par for the course on the Avenue on the weekends, as assholes from all points of the compass succumb to the lure of cheap highballs and cheaper skanks, hop into their jacked up truck or dad's SUV and head on down for a little ultraviolence. (Whyte Ave's troubles and a solution to them is covered quite nicely by The Journal's Todd Babiak: Leduc represent!)

The only thing I would add to Babiak's concise and pointed column is that a greater emphasis needs to be placed on pointing the finger at the dirtbag motherfucking profiteers who are the real root cause of Whyte's decline and fall. Unmitigated scum like bar mogul and Old Strathcona Hospitality Association honcho Mo "don't blame the bars" Blayways. These pricks and their relentless pursuit of profit at all costs are the culprits, folks. Two examples: Blayways recently purchased the Savoy, a cool, modern lounge on a prime piece of Whyte Ave real estate. The Savoy was once the destination for young and well-coiffed hepcats, but its fortunes declined as those same cool kids grew tired of being called fags by the ever-growing douchebag contingent and began staying away in droves. So Blayways (who owns numerous local "boom-boom rooms") snapped it up and plans to transform it from an upscale martini lounge into a goddamn sports bar, filling a niche that has clearly been left empty by the no fewer than 14 other Whyte Avenue bars (trust me, I counted) that show sports on a regular basis. This development came to light over dinner on Saturday at Milan's, a charming little central European bistro that, we learned, has just been acquired by new ownership who plans on-wait for it-converting the place into a bar.

Is nothing sacred? (Don't tell me: I know.)More importantly: do these guys have any fucking imagination whatsoever? Is there anyone who could look at the Ave right now and say "Hey, I know what this place needs: a top-40 bar where people can watch hockey on obnoxiously large televisions. Betcha no one has thought of that." Has the thought of doing something different simply not occurred to them, or is the size and spending power of the douchebag demographic so large and so bottomless that the only way to make a go is to cater to the lowest common denominator? Lack of imagination or simple marketplace considerations aside, one thing is clear: Whyte Ave will suck and suck hard for as long as the booze merchants with their horrible homogenous vision are allowed to roam free. Yeah, there need to be seating caps, minimum drink prices, zero-tolerance and all that stuff. But I'd be just as happy going old school and seeing some of these fuckers (asshole patrons and owners alike) swinging from the cutesy decorative lampposts on the Avenue, their stiff, grotesquely contorted corpses serving as a chilling warning to others.

Ech.

I'm told that these are hipsters. Not just any hipsters, either, but New York hipsters, which makes them pretty much the hippest hipsters in hipland. And yet this entire tableau could just have easily emerged from a really fuckin' bitchin' Saturday night at the P.O. after "Power Hour", albeit without the ridiculously bad, expensive clothes and hair. The P.O. crowd, I mean.

This is why I'm retiring from nightlife.