Spotted: Lonely Boy at Joey's BBY

Another week gone by and though we were still kind of feeling the repercussions of Portland,  drinks were definitely in order.

Earlier in the week we had many discussions on where we should take the team, and then I recalled a friend of mine telling me a few months ago about the Academic, another Donnelly Group establishment on West Broadway. It was another one of those “there’s tons of men there” deals, and I was beginning to become very wary of people proclaiming this to me because yet has this statement come to fruition. Anyways, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, based on the name Academic I was going to assume that there would be some wicked smaht people there - that’s my Boston accent in case you were curious – due to the name, and from hearing through the grapevine that there were a lot of university bros there. Now that I’m thinking about the location, there might even be some doctors in the house as well. Hmmm...

Well color me disappointed because we didn’t actually make it to Academic. Guess where we did make it to again though? Joey’s. Yup, back for more sliders and the like, we headed to Joey’s in BBY for a redo. The reason for the location change was due to a workplace group drinking effort... One person tells another person, that person then tells someone else, and next thing you know we’re all taking over the lounge at Joey’s. The group turned out to be mostly men, me and my fellow talent scout LM. Sounds good right? Well it’s not, because pretty much all of the men that I work with are married. Or are getting married. Or have been married way too many times. So clearly these weren’t our best laid plans, but it’s hard to pass up a good group drinking session, and if you’ve read the other posts, we can never say no to Joey’s. We had also declared that we would be back on a Thurs or Friday after work to see what the crowd was like, so here we were fulfilling our part of the bargain.

The group was pretty fun, minus the people who weren’t drinking because they were a) on a diet and b) had to go for a run...couldn’t you have taken care of that earlier in the day?

The only kind of running we’re interested in is if it’s to the fridge to get more wine. Or, with the Devil.

Upon my arrival I had asked Runner what he was drinking and he said cranberry juice, and of course in my kind tone I said “Why, what’s your deal?” And so the running story was brought forth. When LM arrived she introduced herself to Runner and said “Hey I met you a year ago. You’re Joe. Your new name will now be Year Ago Joe”. Surprised that LM could remember his name and not call him HEY YOU, he went from Runner to YAJ. Since LM does not work with us, introductions were made and she had the immense pleasure of meeting and experiencing the best looking man our workplace has to offer. As previously mentioned, of course he is married but that should not stop a person from indulging in dreamily staring at him. It’s almost offensive how good looking this man is, and if I had to describe one thing about him it would be his hair – I have a strange obsession with great hair, hello Robert Pattinson – it’s very Trevor Lindenesqe. Funny how Trevor pops up in so many of these posts, I guess he’s our go to guy for a lot of things in life.

Unrelated but in regards to TL, I just bought a sweet t-shirt off Ebay with a picture of Trevor circa ‘94 that says “What would Trevor Do?” Exactly. What would he do?

Well he would probably be staring at McDreamy as well, it’s THAT good. Aside from all the dudes we were with, the lounge was again packed with the same kind of offerings that we had on our previous visit. We decided to ask our waitress - who was awesome by the way, mad props to Joey’s for hiring such lovely and friendly girls at your BBY location - what kind of crowd this lounge gets on certain days. She was very specific, and told us that you definitely want to come here at noon on a Friday, it’s packed and there are no women. Only men. And according to her some pretty good looking ones as well. She was excited to give us this good news and we were excited to hear it. I’m pretty sure I can pencil in a nooner on an upcoming Friday, and mostly likely not return to work. It will be an epic afternoon I’m sure.

After dropping those words of wisdom, our waitress finished off her shift and we got another excellent waitress in return. Joey’s was really moving up on our list; we had sliders, vodka supernovas, imperative information...life was good. The one downside about this particular Joey’s is the location of the washrooms. They are so far from the lounge, so far that they’re actually almost in the Joey’s in Coquitlam. Poor planning on the designer’s part, but not a big enough issue to keep me away. But girls need washrooms to be close. That’s just kind of an unwritten rule that establishments should be aware of.

Moving on, my co workers slowly evaporated, but not before we got to hear the single best Vegas story we’ve ever heard in our lives. Truly amazing. Thanks JPEI for making us feel like we were there, you have excellent story telling skills. Work people gone, we made room for our late arriving Mancouver crew.

The lounge was bustling at this point, and a lot of the people were the same people that had been there since we arrived. They were in for the long haul just like us. Here’s where we noticed the intriguing guy sitting at a table behind us, we’ll call him Lonely Boy for all the Gossip Girl fans in the house...ok, well maybe just for me. Anyways, there he was all by himself, nursing his beer and reading the Province for what was probably a good two hours at this point. I don’t know anyone that reads the paper from start to finish, perhaps there were some classified ads that he was really interested in, I don’t know. But we were about to find out all about Lonely Boy.

Apparently we weren’t being as quiet as we thought we were while discussing what Lonely Boy’s story was, because our waitress, who obviously has super sonic hearing, stopped at our table to give us the goods. She told us that he can often be found in the lounge, always by himself, usually reading a book, and sometimes has been there for her entire shift.

That’s a huge commitment staying at a lounge for that long, by yourself no less, and wouldn’t you want to go and read your book somewhere with less dance music and more why aren’t you just at home reading your novel?

Curiosity now off the charts, our superstar waitress waited a few minutes so that it didn’t look conspicuous, then casually went over to Lonely Boy to delve more into the mystery surrounding him and his affinity for Joey’s lounge. She came back with the knowledge that not only does he love reading, he is also there working on a novel about a man who is cheating on his wife, all while leading a double life. We don’t know if it’s an autobiography, but we do know that it takes place in Vancouver. At one point our waitress was super stoked and said, “Look, he’s on his iPhone, I bet he’s editing the story right now”.

Amazing. Our waitress - sorry we didn’t catch your name and that I keep referring to you as waitress! - did say he was very nice and that he always tipped well, so if Joey’s is the place Lonely Boy wants to write non fiction, then all the power to him. It’s pretty awesome there.

The night soon came to an end after our discussion of the details of Lonely Boy's novel, which then somehow moved on to telling stories about ghosts and the haunted places of Vancouver. Seems like that’s something we’re going to have to be blogging about in the near future. Mancouver, Halloween edition.

Scared, we left Joey’s in good spirits (pun intended) and made our way home to catch something else that would frighten us tonight – the Charlie Sheen special on TLC. Between his face in HD and the ghost talk, I knew I would not be sleeping well this evening.

To finish up, Joey’s you were spectacular once again; we can’t wait to venture out on a Friday at noon to see what the what is. Thanks to both of our fabulous waitresses, you were a cornucopia of information, to the sliders and yummy Italian flatbread that we put into our mouths, it was just what I needed, and to Lonely Boy – I hope your novel is a success.

Many apologies to the Academic house, we had big plans for a visit, we will make it up to you two fold!

Do you have any Irish in you? Would you like some?

Although it’s been almost a week since St. Patrick’s day, I thought I should give a shout out to two of my favourite Irish spots in Vancouver. Though I did go out for a few Guinness’s on the one day of the year where everyone and their dog is Irish, it was an early night due to the fact that we had to get up at the crack of dawn for our Portland trip the next day. This was probably for the best, seeing as we started drinking at 8 in the morning anyways. Or maybe we should have just stayed out and continued drinking? Now we’ll never know…

Anyways, since Irish accents are one of the three soothing sounds I like to hear in my ears, I’m always on the lookout for where this happens in our fine city. Look no further than Johnnie Fox's Irish Snug on Granville Street. If you’re looking for something a little less intense, and a little less Australian than Doolin's, wander across the street, find yourself a seat at the bar and have bartender Dave pour you the best Guinness Vancouver has to offer. Once you get into your second or third beer you will soon notice that you will shortly become a minority in this bar, because all of the Irish people in Vancouver? Yah they’re at Johnnie’s. You won’t hear any complaints from me about this, the Irish are a pretty great crowd, they just want to drink and be merry, tell you tales and by the end of the night, have drunken sing a longs. Where is the wrong here? There isn’t.

It can get pretty busy on a Saturday night, but you won’t even notice as you’ll have made a few new friends that would be more than happy to share their table with you. But probably not their Yorkies. Those things are delightful and delicious, and you will probably want an additional order just for yourself. Now you’re probably intrigued. Go there, order them and enjoy!

My second favourite spot is the Irish Heather in Gastown. Though it was a little bit more special back in the days of it’s former location, most especially the freezing back room that was host to an epic Bon Jovi “I’ll Be There for You” sing a long – this is a reoccurring theme at Irish establishments in case your were wondering. From here to Dublin – the new location is pretty great too.

Thought it’s not as full of Irish people, it does entice the likes of Bono & The Edge as I’ve been told by a friend of mine who had the luck and pleasure of crying in front of them there. I was also told to go there the last time U2 was in town, but apparently I was being a dumb bitch that day and did not listen. I could have been crying in from of them as well. REGRET.

I haven’t tried a lot of things on the menu, I’ve mainly focused on putting Guinness into my mouth, but what I have tried has been pretty tasty. Their pot pies are outstanding, I’m fairly certain the last time I was there everybody around me had one on their table. They also have quite an extensive list of whiskies, bourbons and the like if that’s what you’re into. The Shebeen Whiskey House across the alley would have much more information on this than I do; it’s not quite my forte. Except apparently when I’m in Ireland and I drink it by the very large glassfuls. Not one of my better ideas.

You can also enjoy live music here on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a co worker of mine plays there on Tuesday nights, sometimes with his very hot son. Tall, dark hair, blue eyes and a musician? Yuck right.

He’s pretty young, so it’s probably best to just go and admire him from afar, but trust me when I say your eyes will thank me. 

Slainte! 

 

Shamwrong shake (Portland, the home stretch)

On Sunday morning we woke up to a war zone of cheeseburger wrappers, empty wine bottles, clothes strewn everywhere and last but not least, a message waiting from Claude. LM and Kathy grabbed a cheeseburger, settled back into bed and we delved into the mysterious world of Windbreaker. 

We found out that he was just chillin’ at “Mansion” and when he asked what LM was doing, she proudly said “Eating a cheeseburger”. Claude actually had an amusing response with “Not sexy, but whatever you’re into” followed up by “Come over here”.  I must admit it takes a certain kind of guy to still be intrigued after all of the ridiculous and unrealistic messages that were sent to him, and then to still want a girl to come over after munching on McD’s cheeseburgers while in bed at 10 in the morning. My guess? Windbreaker probably paid his bill and he probably got those drugs. 

But it didn’t stop there, Windbreaker stayed with us for pretty much our entire trip home. We didn’t get a picture of “Mansion”, but we did get a picture of a bedroom complete with working fireplace and the caption “Still in bed”.  We know WB, obviously your DJ profession doesn’t require you to be out until late, late at night... I’m going to say it was probably a picture of someone else’s bedroom...and it was most likely the poor, unfortunate soul that he picked up the night before. We also found out that he was going to make us dinner at “Mansion” had we stayed in town another day. Deciding to let that one ride for a little while, we stopped for breakfast in the very god fearing town of Woodland, Washington. 

A little nervous with our surroundings – we were all afraid we would burst into flames just by being in the town - we strolled into the Oak Tree Restaurant that featured all your gift shopping needs and a Sunday buffet. There’s nothing like inspirational postcards and ceramic crosses to go with your bacon and eggs. Instantly worried by the thought of a breakfast buffet, these never usually turn out well, I was beginning to think that I should have held out for that dinner at “Mansion”. Turns out all the food was fabulous, including the buffet that the sister’s par took in, while we enjoyed our turkey sandwiches, hot and cold ones respectfully. Just another great recommendation for the good old US of A. 

Back on our way home again, it was decided that more shopping needed to be done so there was a quick stop in at the Seattle Premium Outlets, and the Tulalip Casino for me as I had met my shopping quota. The girls soon found out that the Supermoon was still working it’s wonders, as the crazies were still out in full force ready to celebrate the impending full moon with the casing of cars in the parking lot, letting their screaming kids manhandle all of the glasses at Sunglass Hut and taking a discussion about whether or not to go into Juicy to the next level of annoying. They came to collect me at the casino, and back on the road we went. 

BUT...not before our last trip to McDonalds. Wanting to make it an even three on our visit score card, we were mostly going to see if they had the elusive Shamrock Shake still kicking around.

And there it was in all its green glory, beckoning to us on the order board. Super stoked, we pulled up to the drive through with much more excitement that was probably needed, but hey these things only come out once a year, and not always to every McD’s. It anything, it’s a delicacy. 

We rolled up to the order board and here’s where we turned McDonald’s world upside down. We asked for 3 shakes, HALF Shamrock, HALF Chocolate. Holy shit, can you handle it!? Well McDonalds couldn’t, because after a lengthy pause we were told by the clerk that they aren’t able to do this transaction. Not wanting to go down without a fight, my sister explained to the clerk that we had just done this at another establishment two weeks ago and it didn’t seem to pose an issue. She was NOT having it and stood her ground, a ground that was made of lies and deceit because it CAN be done. I’ve experienced it. Now I haven’t worked at McD’s, but I’m pretty positive that the shake distribution is done with the pressing of a button, and then by pressing that same button, you stop the process. I could be wrong, so if there’s a former employee in the house, please let me know. Regardless of this clerk’s baditude, we were still going to enjoy our chocolaty mint beverage, so we placed an order for two chocolate shakes, one Shamrock and an extra glass. We would deal with this shit ourselves. 

Shakes divided up, we finally made our way back to Canadaland. During the last home stretch we got back into the Windbreaker chronicles. We realized that we had never asked what was for dinner. We soon found out that we were going to miss out on a “Bomb azz stir fry”.  The response to that was “Oh. Well we wanted steak and lobster”. Guess what? Claude Windbreaker is STILL communicating with LM. Nothing can break this guy’s stride.

I want to thank the city of Portland for providing us with more fun than most people could handle, a shout out to Claude Windbreaker and “As Bono” for making my future a little brighter, and to the girls – THANKS for being hilarious. 

Seacrest out

As Bono (Portland Part Deux)

Armed with massive hangovers from the champs and non pizza, we knew that getting to breakfast was extremely important. After a lot of giggling about Windbreaker, whom we decided needed the first name Claude as he is obviously from the French speaking region of Brussels, we amazingly got ourselves clothed and went on the most likely impossible quest of finding out where to go for breakfast.

Turns out it wasn’t too impossible, the girls at the front desk did know how to provide this information for a change, granted we were once again told about an exclusive place over the bridge…far travel was not an option on this morning, I had a funny feeling no one was going to be saving any lives on this day without some breakfast in them first.

We were told to grab the free tram and go downtown to The Original, a 50’sish diner with hands down the best orange pop we’ve ever tasted. It was a fancified orange pop all dolled up with some vanilla bean, and would have tasted exceptional with some vodka. But no one wanted vodka. No one.

At The Original we delved into some conversation that was not appropriate for the breakfast table, or most tables for that matter. Not really sure how or why the topic came up, but on this particular morning we were most curious about the process of fisting. Yes I think you heard me correctly. Fisting. Many questions were posed, and many hand diagrams were used in the guessing of the answers to those questions. Stumped, we decided the only ones who could provide us with the knowledge we wanted were our new found friends Mo and Em. We put that in our pockets for later, but not before deciding that LM’s new last name was going to be Fister. First name Iwona. And that she was going to be introduced to someone with this name later on as her punishment for repeatedly singing an annoying song to us that our hangovers did not want to hear.

Immature? Definitely. Worth it? Absolutely.

We finished up our breakfasts, which I know is hard to believe after that conversation and the fact that I was majorly feeling the repercussions of that god damn champagne. Yes I will blame that, and not one of the other 150 drinks I had the day before.

The food was pretty good, and thank god they had poutine on the menu, at least we could safely know that would be taken off the drunken 2 in the morning food topics discussion.

Bill paid; we then went on a search for donuts. Yup, we just ate and now we needed donuts as well. In case you don’t remember, we were all about glamorous and fine gourmet foods this weekend.

The donuts came into play because while at breakfast we kept seeing people cruise by with delightful looking pink boxes of something called Voodoo Donuts. We asked our waitress – yes it was a mistake – where we could find said donuts and she obviously gave us the wrong directions. On our way down to the donut shop we definitely noticed that we were entering an area very similar to something one would call the skids, and this is where we came across Dante’s.

The night before I think that we were dressed in a way that said we don’t want to hang out on the downtown eastside, so I’m not entirely sure why Luke had suggested this place to us when we said we wanted to go for more drinks and some dancing. We didn’t want to do the crack dance Luke, come on man. This is also probably where Adrienne wanted us to end our night as well... Brightside? Dante’s advertises many things on their signage, including salad. That’s exactly what I was thinking of ordering if I ever go there.

We finally found Voodoo Donuts after asking yet another person for directions, this time we got the right ones, probably because he was a normal civilian and not someone working in the hospitality industry in Portland. We were sad to see that there was a HUGE line up to get into this place. Apparently it’s where all the people in Portland where, because the downtown did seem eerily quiet. We opted not to wait 45 minutes for a donut, the champagne wouldn’t allow for it, but we did stop someone with a box of them just to taunt ourselves with what we were missing. They looked incredible. I would call them a trendy donut, as they were made of different crazy concoctions like bacon and maple, NyQuil infused, peanut butter and rice crispies, etc.

When we asked the guy if they were good he looked at us like it was the most obscene thing he’d ever heard. Okay dude we get it, no need to be offended about the donuts. And thank your lucky stars we didn’t ask you about fisting as well.

So we were a little sad about the donuts and we decided we’d try again the next day (we didn’t try very hard). We then traveled up to where the mall was to get our shop on. No one wants to know about this, so I won’t bore you with the details, but during this time is when we received the first of many truly amazing messages from Windbreaker. Get ready, cause here it is... “Wassszuperrrrr”. What????? After laughing our asses off we decided to cut all ties with him, no one should ever respond to someone who intentionally uses a hello in the style of many years past Budweiser commercials. However, that didn’t last long because just in case we didn’t receive that message, he sent it via text as well. Not even knowing how to respond to that in the frame of mind we were in, LM decided to save it for later. 

During the shopping portion of our day we finally found some more useful people, the very pretty and fun sales girls at the Betsy Johnson store. They even took the time to write down the names of places AND the directions, the correct directions to boot, and provided us with the wonderful suggestion of going for beers and chicken wings. Not really sure why that was the exact combo that we needed at this point, but it sure did sound fantastic. The place the girls told us to go for wings was you guessed it - over the bridge - but luckily there was another wing place down the street just waiting for us. I didn’t realize Portland specialized in wings, but I’m not complaining that’s for sure.

Exhausted from our wild goose chase for donuts, Windbreakers greeting and the remnants of yesterdays booze we made our way over to Buffalo Wild Wings for a taste explosion in our mouths, and the first of many tranny sightings that was a feast for our eyes.

We were definitely enjoying our frosty beers and outstanding honey BBQ wings – I would have taken a bath in that sauce – and highly recommend the order of these tasty boneless delights should you ever be in the vicinity of a Buffalo Wild Wings. This also turned into an inappropriate discussion of wing sauce on boobs, and a newly coined saying “fingerbang the chicken wing”. What’s wrong with us? Anyways, not really sure why we thought this would be a normal afternoon, how stupid of us, but this is where we come across Deborah Louise – not his/hers name at all, but fitting we thought. It was as if he/she was gift from above, Deb just seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Not sure why Buffalo Wild Wings was he/she’s hangout of choice, though I wouldn’t begrudge anyone of the wing sauce, it seemed like there could have been a better place for Deb to chill dressed the way he/she was.

We weren’t the only ones in on the Deb joke, men that were using the bathroom with him/her kept coming out with huge smiles on their faces and we were like I know right?! Why is this happening at Buffalo Wild Wings?! The thing is, to each their own, baby you were born this way. If that’s what you’re into I totally have no problem with it at all, but it was the fact that Deb was at BWild in the midst of March Madness, where I’m thinking no one else that was his/her type was at, and that Deb had the full lady ensemble on but decided to forgo a wig. Instead he/she opted to put a tiny pink headband, with a tiny pink bow onto his/hers comb over. Not the best choice Deb. Now if he/she went with a pink baseball hat instead, perhaps things would have been different. Totally jazzed by Deb, we packed up our leftovers to add to our growing food supply and made our way back to the hotel to change, and of course have more drinks.

Here’s where the most amazing BBM transaction EVER went down. Deciding to answer the question “Wassszuperrrrr” with “I don’t know what that means”, a series of other great gems were fired at us as well. I’m just going off memory here, as I am unfortunately not the owner of these truly amazing pieces of BBM art:

LM: What are you doing?

WB: I’m at Mansion

LM: What’s Mansion?

WB: That’s what I call my crib.

LM: Why?

WB: Cause it’s in like the Hollywood hills of Portland yo

LM: Do you live with your parents?

WB: I have two roommates

LM: Are they your parents?

And so on. This went on for a good hour, firing back ridiculous questions to Windbreaker such as “Why do you live in a mansion?”, “Do you have a boat?” and when he said he used to but he sold it, answering it with “You should buy one”. When LM asked for a picture of “Mansion”, Claude suddenly went dormant. The only answer we got back to that one was “Its dark”.

Interesting... Seems to me that “Mansion” probably doesn’t exist. Is there no lighting at “Mansion”? Is that why you can’t take a picture? Did you blow all your money on champagne, therefore making you unable to pay your electrical bill at “Mansion”? Color me confused.

But fear not, this would not be the last we heard from dear Claude Windbreaker.

Dressed and ready to rock for another night on the town, we departed for Kell’s Irish Pub. There was a weekend long St. Patrick’s Day festival that was going on there, and much to our delight, there was also a U2 cover band playing that evening. Yes there was.

Enter U277, and most especially the lead singer who is listed on their website with the moniker “As Bono”. At first everything seemed pretty good, the band was doing what seemed to be a pretty good job, “As Bono” was really getting into his role, as were the many ladies surrounding the stage trying to get a piece of his action. I don’t know if they were aware, but it’s “As Bono”, not “Actually Bono”.

We needed to get closer to all of these shenans, so we made our way up to the stage and planted ourselves front row. Surrounding us up there were couples fiercely gyrating, horny cougars touching themselves while filming “As Bono” filming himself, and lot’s of other drunken messes who were singing along, but didn’t actually know any of the words. Being up this close, it seemed the band didn’t know a lot of the words either. He played a good fake out, but “As Bono” didn’t fool me. Being a dedicated U2 fan for almost the entirety of my life, I do actually know the words, so I’m not easily tricked by mumbles and snippets of songs that “Actual Bono” likes to throw into their live stage show. Impressive as it is that “As Bono” actually knows those snippets, he should first learn the proper words. It’s important. Other than that, we enjoyed our time with “As Bono”, and he became a fixture of conversation throughout the evening, next day and probably a lot of our future conversations as well.

We finally got to implement the use of Iwona (pronounced Ivana) Fister at Kell’s as well. Unfortunately it wasn’t with “As Bono”, but it was with a fellow named David – actual name for once! I wasn’t there for the initial presentation, but I was told it went down like this:

My sister doing the introduction of LM: This is Iwona Fister

Kathy: It’s spelt I-W-O-N-A. It’s Russian

David: Your last name is Fister?

Exactly. After David told us about what kind of car he drove (?) and took a picture with us on his phone from 1997, we were ready to eject ourselves from Kell’s and meet up with our friends Mo and Em for drinks, and hopefully some dancing.

Good thing our new friends knew exactly what we needed at this point – dancing and lots of it. They took us to an awesome gay bar called CC Slaughters, where the drinks were cheap, bartenders were few and kind of mean and everyone had the time of their lives.

We also had the pleasure of running into Deb part 2, aptly named Jennifer, who worked in forestry and did not have the nails to prove it. Jennifer had french manicured tips with lots of sparkle, and was wearing a sassy black velvet number to go with them. The only way to celebrate this was to buy him/her a jello shot. And that we did. Along with everyone else in the lineup for drinks. They were $2; I mean they were pretty much giving them away with that price. You couldn’t not buy 1 – 10 of them. After the jello shots, things got silly. There was an excessive amount of boob grabs, we finally confirmed all of our questions about fisting, we were told to take our shirts off on the dance floor numerous times, there was a Gaga, Britney, Ke$ha dance explosion and plenty of gay boyfriends made. It was almost too much fun. Almost.

Because we forgot to eat dinner, we were suddenly hit with a wave of the vomits and needed to leave stat. We sadly said goodbye to our new friends, but I have a sneaking suspicion we will see them again. This time around when we left we finally got a cab driver that wanted us to have food after the bar, and though he had really good intentions, the place where he dropped us off was a little bit of an odd choice. It was called La Merde, and it wasn’t really a place for drunk people. It was a place for people who probably wanted to eat in peace, but were now not allowed too due to us being there. For some reason they seated us right next to some poor couple, but then again maybe they weren’t that sad about it as they did ask us if we wanted to go to the strippers with them when they were leaving. Why would a guy and a girl presumably on a date want 4 girls to hit the strippers with them? Prostitution ring. I know it!

I also felt sorry for our poor waiter because he too was called HEY YOU, and when he asked Kathy what she wanted to order she said “Do you have McDonald’s cheeseburgers on the menu?” HEY YOU of course says no, and Kathy says “Okay. I’m good then”. And went back to drinking her water right out of the pitcher. We on the other hand shared a delicious bowl of macaroni and cheese, which LM did not want anything to do with until it came to the table and then proceeded to eat most of it.

Throwing some money down for our bill, we asked HEY YOU where the nearest McDonald’s was so Kathy could get her cheeseburger fix, like as if he told us a street we’d all of a sudden be experts on where things were in Portland. He didn’t really know, surprise surprise, but he did call us a cab that took us on an $18 adventure to find the one lonely McD’s in the downtown area, patiently waited in the drive thru with us while Kathy decided on not 6, but 8 cheeseburgers. I’m going to tell you that we didn’t need those 8 cheeseburgers, but they definitely got added to our food collection.

To say that this day/night was epic would be true. It was. Once we arrived back at the hotel we had a pretty long discussion on “As Bono” and what we thought he was doing at that exact moment, and what we thought Windbreaker was doing at “Mansion”.

As it turns out we would find out one of those answers the next day....

And scene.

Portland - Put a bird on it

**Please note that names have been changed because: 
A) privacy blah, blah, blah and,
B) no one could remember them**

This past weekend we embarked on a mission to Portland that started in a McDonald’s parking lot, and we would soon learn that it would come full circle and end there as well.

Four lovely ladies were traveling down - my sister, my partner in crime LM, her sister in law and of course, me. Both sisters are married, but they were more than happy to be involved in the formation of this weekend’s blog post.

We kicked off the road trip by picking up some Timmy Ho’s coffee and lacing it with Bailey’s…the time? 8 am. Not wanting to mix drinks in the Timmy’s parking lot, it’s too classy for that, we decided to move on over the McD’s and do it there. I’m almost positive that Ronald approves of mixed drinks in the morning, but Sidney Crosby most likely does not.

Drinks secured, we were off to the USA.

Our first point of interest was the epic Wal-Mart in Mount Vernon, Washington. Obviously we needed some road pops and other various fattening snacks for the trip, so the only place to do this without having to get the Costco size year’s supply of everything is the Mart.

$70 later we had 5 bottles of wine, 12 beers, a cooler bag, ice, pretzel M&M’s and a huge bag of beef jerky. Little did we know this would just be the start of a collection of fine foods we gathered this weekend. And guess what else? Those beers had to be replaced just a few hours later.

Cracking our first beer at 10 am and throwing on the magical 1995 – 1999 inclusive playlist that I made, we were on our way once again. In case you were wondering, the playlist’s name is Semi Charmed Kind of Life, so just from that you can probably guess what kind of treats were on there. It was a little bit awesome and a little bit depressing all at the same time. What were we thinking back then in the later years of the 90’s?

Consumed with that question, we cruised into Seattle for some breakfast at the very delicious 5 Spot restaurant in the Queen Anne area of town.

This is also where we got into the third beer of the morning. Everybody’s food was fabulous, I was told the corn cakes were mad delicious and the hash browns are out of this world. The perfect amount of crispiness and also a little spicy. Yum. The seasonal beer that we probably didn’t need was also quite tasty.  

Look this place up if you’re in town, you won’t be disappointed. They change the menu and décor monthly, highlighting different regions of the USA. This time around we were taken to Kansas, and I can tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed the giant paper mache tornado; it must have taken someone a long ass time to make that. They also have late night menu specials, all for $5.55 and $1.11 PBR’s after 10pm. It would be rude if you didn’t indulge in either of these things.   

Bellies satisfied we were off again, and this is where all the fun started and from there, never ended. We first had to make a shady deal in Olympia – my sister had purchased U2 tickets off of Craigslist and we had to meet the guy, his name will be JJ, down there to make the exchange. Everyone knows how this could have turned out, but thankfully my sister had been conversing with JJ’s girlfriend for a week or two now and everything seemed as though it would work out for the best. Meaning, no one would get sold into a prostitution ring or be murdered in one of the many scary looking trailers we saw on our drive that day.

On route to meet JJ we had polished off the rest of our beer, so thankfully we were meeting him at an AM/PM so we could pick up more and make yet another bathroom stop. One of the highlights for this portion of the day (beside’s the playlist) was that a Culligan water delivery man took the time to write out a note on a sticky pad to tell us that one of our tires was low.

That took a lot of dedication because he was driving like 120 and where in god’s name did he find that sharpie and pad in such a hurry? Thanks Culligan Man, you probably saved our lives. The funny thing about that is this wasn’t the first time someone’s live would be saved on this day. More on that later.

Finally arriving at the AM/PM, there was JJ and boy was he in for a real treat. We were pretty loud and obnoxious at this point, but not enough that JJ didn’t want to join us for the rest of our trip. Not only did he provide us concert tickets, he was kind enough to deal with the missing air in our tire situation. Though when we first pulled up and got out of the car we may have said to him “You’re going to need to put air into our tire, it’s low. Nice to meet you by the way”.

New beers secured as well as a garbage bag for our stupid leaky cooler bag – Thanks A LOT Wal-Mart – we were ready to rock again. We said our goodbyes to JJ

Finally after more bathroom stops, a playlist change, scary statues and being mesmerized by the half train for what seemed like the entire length of Washington – So many questions about this. Why did it look like it’s sliced right in half? Why is it still on the tracks?  How long has it been there? – We made it into Portland.

We were staying at the Hotel Modera; it was in the downtown area, NOT over the elusive bridge that people would later keep telling us everything else was over. It seemed promising and it had a great looking fire pit that you could sit and have drinks at, though it would be best used in the summer months. Fire and rain should usually just be saved for James Taylor.

Our room was also lovely, bonus points for the furry throw blankets on the bed that would very much come in handy for the next night when people were simultaneously freezing and wanting to barf.

We had made the executive decision earlier that we should get right to business, which meant getting ready, throwing back 3 bottles of wine and going out for dinner. Surprisingly this went a lot faster than you would think.

Having already looked up some places to go, we had an idea of what we wanted to do but thought we would ask the hotel staff what their recommendations were. Boy was this the wrong avenue to go down. Here is where we would learn the first bad thing about Portland. DO NOT ask anyone where to go for pretty much anything, nor for the directions on how to get there. They don’t know.

First we asked the girls at the front desk where they would go for dinner and drinks. Nothing. Just a lot of umms, ahhhs, just go down this street…what street? Which way? Where abouts? Remember when we booked this room because we’re not fucking from here? And the infamous “I’m not really sure where that is”. Okay, thanks. Super helpful.

Next we asked the door guys where we should go. We told them we were thinking of Saucebox, a sushi restaurant that was also a lounge that I had researched, and they agreed, but also brought up a few places that would be the beginning of “it’s just over the bridge”. Not wanting to figure out which of the 75 bridges they were talking about, we decided to give Saucebox a go.

This is where we met the world’s worst cab driver. He was probably one of the angriest people I have ever had the pleasure of coming across and you know what else? He didn’t know where anything was. So now that makes for three different kinds of people in Portland who didn’t know where anything was, but they sure should have. It’s kind of in their job requirements.

He definitely didn’t want to converse about his day, or smile, or do any of the other things that cabbies usually need to do. Things got heated pretty quickly, and when he dropped us off there was the always amazing throwing back of money used to pay for the shitty cab ride and a lovely exchange of words that ended with “get the fuck out of my cab you fucking bitch”. This transaction led us to the start of people in the city of Portland who would hate my fellow man hunter LM.

Saucebox was pretty busy when we got there, so it seemed like so far so good on the recommendation I made to myself no thanks to the staff of Hotel Modera. We were seated right away and here’s where we were about to meet the some of the few people who knew where the fun was at in Portland – our new same sex friends Mo and Em, and Luke the waiter.

The lovely ladies that we were sat down next to were actually on their way out, but we stopped them to ask where they thought we should go to find the men of Portland. They played for the other team, but they were a wealth of knowledge on where to go! Obviously they need to know these things as those are the places they don’t want to go to. The less penis the better.

They told us about an Irish pub called Kell’s which I had also looked up, and that we were already going to check out the next night so good for us, and then rambled off a bunch of other places that I don’t remember. They were intrigued by our man hunt and there was an exchange of numbers so we could have some drinks the next night to find out if we were successful on our mission.

This is kind of what always happens when we go away, we find the gays and they know where to go. Its simple enough math I think. And it’s never a bad time.

After enjoying a few more bottles of wine, sushi, tapioca dumplings and the badly named Pu Pu platter, we decided to try our hand at again asking a staff member in Portland where they thought we should go out that night. This is where Luke came in. Though Luke was with us the whole time catering to our wine needs, shooter demands and answering to the name HEY YOU from LM who was quickly deteriorating before our very eyes, this was really were he was most helpful. He gave us a few suggestions, though none of them were more offensive then Dante’s as we would find out the next day after walking by this establishment and demanding to know why Luke would want to send us there, he did tell us about the Nines. And this place was actually exactly what we were looking for.

We paid our ridiculously cheap bill and headed over to The Nines, a hotel that was also in the downtown area next to Pioneer Square, which featured the rooftop restaurant/lounge Departure that we were going to attend. Arriving at The Nines involved a comical walk that included the takeover of someone’s reservation desk outside of a hotel, which the porter Anthony did not think was funny. Anthony did not like jokes. Just another person to add to the list of people in Portland who hated my friend.  

It was a pretty excellent lounge, though we were soon worried that they had the same music mix as the Cactus Club. We grabbed a booth next to the DJ, which he soon regretted as we barraged him with questions and threats about what kind of music he was going to play. He also didn’t enjoy LM sitting in his area and wanting to touch all of his equipment. Guess what? We had to add him to the growing list of haters.

Turns out though, he was a pretty good DJ, tossing out R&B gems from the past and present. This is where I met my two R&B soul mates, Carl – totally not his name - a lovely fellow from Calgary (weird I know) who kindly put up with my yell singing lyrics into his face all night and Angel – also not her name, but that’s what she was – who was sadly ripped from my grasp after our Regulators sing off tribute to Nate Dogg, by her evil friends who clearly didn’t want us to hang out and be friends forever. A super angry friend rolled up to our table and said “We’re going” to Angel and not in a nice way at all. And here’s the thing. They didn’t leave, just moved a few feet away from us and continued about their business. Why?

And that was just the start of the series of weird shit that was about to go down. Blame it on the alcohol, blame it on the Supermoon, but it was about to get funky.

The lounge was bumpin’ and had pretty much the same clientele that we get in Vancouver… you know - dads, douches and the like, but Vancouver had nothing on the dude we were just about to get introduced to. The guy that changed our whole weekend. He provided us with some amazing comedic conversations, laughs and memories that will probably last for the rest of this year, maybe even our lives. I know what you’re thinking, this sounds awesome, finally you found the guy. Oh did we ever. But what you don’t know is that all of this entertainment? It was at his expense.

Here’s where Windbreaker comes in. Since no one could remember his name, he got dubbed with Windbreaker because that’s what he chose to wear to the bar that night. Not sure if he just finished a round of golf or if it was a nod to his love of sailing, but it seemed like an odd choice of bar clothes.

He was smug, he was ridiculous and he was exclusively drinking champagne which made me introduce myself to him with the kindly toned “Hi. You’re not seriously drinking champagne in here right now are you?” Well he was and sadly enough, later on I did as well. This was something that we all regretted the next day, as we’re pretty certain it was a vintage bottle of Baby Duck circa 1994. Awful. I may never get the taste out of my mouth.

Windbreaker soon latched on to LM, who didn’t really even know her name at this point in the night, so we weren’t about to find out his name anytime soon. Had he not made my sister so ill with his douchebaggery that she had to send herself back to the hotel, we probably would have known. All we really knew was that he was apparently a DJ and that he liked shitty champagne. He also had with him a friend, we’ll call her Adrienne, that looked like tweaking was her profession and was the second life that was going to be saved on this day. For some reason LM and her sister in law ‘Kathy” got dragged into the bathroom with her where she A) wanted to put makeup on Kathy and B) wanted them to do drugs with her. Neither of these things sounded appealing to them, so Kathy booked it back to the table and LM pulled Adrienne into an after school special conversation for a lesson on drugs, which then prompted her to come out proclaiming that she was a life saver.

I’m going to go ahead and guess that Adrienne did indeed do drugs that night. I know this because when we were getting ready to leave she told us “You guys better settle your bill or you are not getting any drugs!” Hmmm. Weird options, but I think I’ll go with paying my bill and getting the fuck out of this looney bin of a lounge. Aside from Carl and Angel, it was getting kind of scary in there. We were also dying of hunger at this point, the PuPu platter was not holding up our 12 plus hours of drinking any longer. The only thing that could soak up some of this booze was pizza.

Don’t worry; we didn’t leave without getting Windbreakers info, that was imperative. So BBM pins exchange, we piled into yet another angry taxi and attempted to hunt down the after bar tasty treat of cheese, sauce and bread. Forgetting that no one in Portland knows where anything is, I don’t know why we thought the cab driver this time around would be any different. We asked to get pizza and he clearly heard “Drive us down to China town, stop down a random road, point and say over there, get out”. I don’t even get out in China town in my own city, so I didn’t think that Portland should be the place to start this tradition. So back to the hotel we went and were hoping that perhaps the front desk would at least be able find us pizza in this god forsaken town. They weren’t stoked about it that’s for sure, probably because our piercing voices weren`t the best, soon to be confirmed by my poor sleeping sister who had to deal with our drunken shenanigans when we got up to the room.

Not really sure what happened between the lobby and the room, but once they called up and told us the pizza would be 45 minutes, the whole thing was called off. Instead we talked about it on volume 100 for the next 45 minutes. And poutine. That was talked about as well. And Windbreakers general ridiculousness. Who called at 3 in the morning. Unfortunately for us we were asleep. But we would soon find out that this would not be the end of him. Or all the fun we were having.

Tomorrow was another day after all….

1001 Nights

Because one night out clearly wasn’t enough, we decided over a much needed greasy breakfast courtesy of the Slocan Family Restaurant that we should venture out to 100 Nights at the Opus Hotel.

Having heard a few people sing it’s “there’s lots of men” there praises, I figured what the hell, I can have a nap and do this all over again right? Yes a nap is sad but necessary because partying like you’re in your 20’s isn’t as easy as it used to be. This whole getting old thing? Not cool or thoughtful.

After my refreshing nap, we decided on the Cactus Club in Yaletown, seeing as we would just have to walk across the road to 100 Nights. And let me tell you after dancing like we’ve never danced before the previous evening, this short walk was a blessing.

Now is it me, or is 100 Nights an awful name for a lounge? No one seems to be able to actually say the name right, I’ve heard it called 100 Days of Night, 1001 Nights, 1000 Days...so note to self when opening a lounge or club, try to steer clear of numbers. Apparently it confuses the shit out of people.

We soon arrive at the Cactus Club and thanks to some fellows who could actually answer the question “are you guys leaving” with a proper answer – to the other people we asked, it’s not that hard to do, a simple YES or NO usually suffices -  we acquired one of the rare lounge booths. These booths are extremely hard to come by because everyone wants in on the prime lounge seating, as they’re the best place to check people out in a creepy, I can see you but you can’t really see me kind of manner. Also it’s no secret that Trevor Linden likes to frequent this particular Cactus Club lounge, so going there and banking on a TL sighting is a much added bonus. Yah we’ve seen him there before. No big deal.

So lounge booth secured and armed with yet another vodka drink, we scouted the room. Now I’ve been to this particular CC many a time, in fact it was host to one of the most random nights I’ve ever had in my life, complete with one of the staff members having to run out and get another bottle of Dom because the apparent ballers we just met cleared them out of the one bottle that they did have. Tell me, if you only have one bottle, why is it even on the menu? Does a person really need to order this? They probably don’t, but you bet your ass I’ll drink if it’s put in front of me.

Upon careful consideration, it was clear to me that there were hot men here. How had I not noticed this before? Was Trevor Linden clouding my judgment? And as luck would have it we weren’t the only ones who knew this, because it was pretty good ratio of women to men in there. But we can’t begrudge these women of this, once you find the men you must keep coming back to see if there are more!  Perhaps this was the location we’ve been looking for all this time. So while enjoying the eye candy, and our delicious meals – pesto chicken quesadillas and the Creole chicken 

are just divine – we did notice that there was one thing bringing our moods down. The music.

IT. IS. HORRIBLE!!!

Thinking back I do believe this is probably why we didn’t attempt to speak to any of these good looking guys, as we were too distracted by the sounds of ambient bass grooves that were raping our ears. It was truly bringing us down, why, WHY must restaurants play the same kind of variations of music over and over and over again? I’m begging you, just throw one song on with actual words in it in between the house music mega mix, volume 12. Please and thanks.  Talk about ruining the mood, because that is exactly what happened. Much like a whiskey dick, this music wasn’t doing anyone any favours. 

Because the music was making me homicidal and someone else had told us to head to 100 Nights before 11, we decided that it was time to stroll on over to our next venue.

We’ll be back to this lounge, because it is really, really good for people watching, hot men ogling, and I imagine (or I’m praying) the music isn’t mind numbingly terrible all the time.

Now here’s where I was reminded that I’m clearly not cool enough for Yaletown. We walk up to 100 Nights and the doorman tells my friend that they are only letting people in that have reservations. She then tells him “I’m confused because I was just here last week and I’m pretty sure we walked right in”. This statement is double confirmed by another friend of ours who was on route to meet us, as she too was also there previously and walked right in.

Well apparently this was not our night to shine, these bouncers were having none of it, and we were quickly cast away like the peasants that we are. Fine then Yaletown. You win this round.

Ultimately we decided that we were pretty exhausted from the night before (it was a big one okay!), so we had one last night cap at Joey’s on Burrard...the OTHER one this time and then walked down to Granville to await our ride.

Thank god we did, because this is where all the magic happened. Three amazing and magical things: There was the casual ass grab, to which when my friend asked “did you seriously just grab my ass” and the guy said “yes, yes I did” and just as casually walked away. There were the sightings of many, many a girl in a shirt no pants combo, some of who were barfing on the sidewalk next to the Roxy, tits down and ass up. And finally the amazing double finger salute from a I’m guessing 16 year old who asked us if we wanted to go home to smoke pot and make out with him and our answer to this was laughing in his face, hence the double finger.

What a great end to a night full of laughs and fingers crossed on what happens further on the discovery of where some of the hot men are hiding in this city. Until next time!

It's dental, it's mental

This week we had some friends in town from Calgary, they were here for the annual dental convention that happens every spring, and they were ready to party. No stranger to the convention ourselves, we have attended for the last four years with our friends, albeit more as party crashers than anything else. The only thing that I knew about teeth was that I broke mine in a fight with the dance floor during one of my finer moments at Cabo Wabo. What I did know for sure is that it would be a ridiculous amount of fun and make for a great story. I was not wrong. 

We met up with our friend and for privacy’s sake we’ll call him Dr. Dance, at the Fairmont Pacific Rim lounge. If you are looking for perhaps the busiest place in Vancouver after 4pm, this might be it. It might have been to due to the fact that almost every convention in the western hemisphere was being held in Vancouver this particular weekend, but damn the place was hopping.

If I were going to make a pie chart of how this evening was going to play out, I would say that my night would be 90% focused on hanging out with dear Dr. Dance because I only get to see him once and year, and the other 10% to be used for scouting the talent. We were only at the PR lounge for a quick drink, and when I say quick I mean that I had to chug the last little bit of my wine, though I’m not going to lie this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done that and it certainly won’t be the last. However I will definitely be back to give the lounge another go, hotel lounges are always a melting pot of business men and out of towners, plus as an added bonus there was an amazing acoustic musician providing the soundtrack to people’s future hook ups, and I am sold on anything acoustic.

Which then leads us to the time of the night where we get our party crashing panties on. We depart for Dr. Dance’s annual University of Saskatchewan alumni party, an event we’ve now crashed for the past three years and I’m pretty sure for all of those three years we have repeatedly gotten the same foul looks from people year after year for crashing their “prestigious” event. Not one to let a foul look stop me from drinking free vodka, I have always fully supported the crashing of this party. Upon our arrival it seemed that Dr. Dance hardly knew any of the people there, so who’s to say they didn’t know that I’m not a dentist. I could own U Smile, I Smile Dentistry, and could also very well be Dr. Bieber. How would they ever know? The only disappointment here was that we didn’t sign the guest book...Dr. Bieber shall be back next year alumni committee!

The party was in full swing when we got there and thanks to Paul the bartender’s honesty and heavy handed pours, we were most definitely the funnest people in attendance. Score one for the class of 98 (our obvious year of graduation from dental school)! One thing that’s a guarantee with this event is that most of the men are married and the ones that aren’t are like 12 years old, as they are the most recent graduates.

As previously mentioned, the only reason for going to this party is for the free booze and to apparently make it appear to other party goers that Dr. Dance has a harem. I had the joy of overhearing a gentleman asking him how he always has so many beautiful women surrounding him every year at this event. Score two for the class of 98! We were on a roll.

We soon found out that Dr. Dance’s other friends ditched him to go to another party, which was pretty rude if you ask me, here I had thought we were all in this together. It seemed the only way to pay them back was to crash that party too. Yes we did.

The next part of the evening took us down to the Lamplighter. Always a big hit for hockey games and frat boys, though only one of these two things could be found here this evening. I suppose the frat boys took the night off. Or maybe there wasn’t any room for them due to the hostile dental takeover. Side note – since when does it cost $6 or any amount of dollars to go to a pub on a Thursday night? Damn you Donnelly Group, why do you have to own almost every bar in Vancouver, therefore making me give you all my money almost everywhere I go?! And willingly give it to you as well, because dammit, your pubs are good. Unfair.

This is where the night starts to take a real turn for the worse, as we have only consumed vodka for dinner up to this point, with a tiny splash of cranberry juice. Just a splash! How many times did Paul the bartender have to hear that in the hour that we were at the other party... I wonder....

Anywho, the Lamplighter is pretty foggy to me, but I do know there was extensive discussion on the sexiness of Dr. Dance’s room at the PRim. We made a brief stop in there and my gawd those rooms are fiiiine. Slip on some smooth jazz, take a bath in the ginormous tub and most likely get your groove on because that’s what those rooms were made for. However much of our discussion was aimed at the fact that Dr. Dance was sharing this sexified room with a fellow dental friend of his. Many distasteful jokes were made, but were in all in good fun I would say. Some others would not say this, but then again if you don’t like the joke – go home!

So the question is, where does one go after drinking almost a forty of vodka? The answer? The Roxy. Never a let down, the Roxy was legendary amongst the dentists. They have proclaimed it the best bar in the world after all. And I’m not I disagree with them. Of what feels like about a million times being there, I can’t say I’ve ever had a bad time. This time around wasn’t any different.

We danced for our lives that night and probably should have been dancing away from the creepy dudes that were surrounding us left ,right and center. I don’t know if there was a full moon out, but it sure seemed like it.  The freaks come out at night? Yes, yes they do. More vodka drinks seemed to surround us too, it was almost like they were multiplying gremlin style. One of the creeps bought us all drinks, and even Dr. Dance had to declare “these drinks are for sure roofied”. So you can tell where this is going on the men front, and yes perhaps the Roxy isn’t the place to pick up men....or is it?

Looks to me like it was, as my fellow man hunter scored her first number of the mission. Obviously we will go out for drinks to celebrate.... Haha. He was tall, blonde, had a Bieberish hair do and quite possibly could have been 22, but age aside went balls out by grabbing her hand and wisking her off to the dance floor. No introductions, no questioned asked, just the language of dance. Since he was so forward, we all assumed that she new young Bieber, but as luck would have it she did not. As it turns out the Biebs isn’t 22, but he IS definitely from Langley. Stay tuned on how that pans out, we hope to hear more on that after a date is setup.

As for me, not wanting to let the Roxy down on its Charlie Sheen #winning streak of picking up dudes, I would soon find out that dentists do indeed do it better. Now I’m not one to kiss and tell, but I will tell you this. There was a hotel room, a cameo from the dentist’s roommate and of course, a cab ride of shame at 3 in the morning to the other hotel where my friends were staying.

To sum my thoughts on this evening, here is a demure text conversation between me and a friend of mine in Toronto the day after:

Me: I wonder how many different hotel rooms you and I have seen collectively.

Her: Haha. Too many

Lovely.

It was quiet a night. Many thanks to the dentists for another rockin’ year at the convention, to my friends for having that other room downtown, ghosts notwithstanding, and of course to the Roxy for keeping it real year after year.

For my recommendations, I do not recommend drinking almost a forty of vodka to yourself, but I do recommend adding a splash of cranberry when you can.

Props also to the Hotel Vancouver concierge for saving everyone’s lives the next morning and having that emergency pizza number on hand. I’m pretty sure it’s called Johnny’s and I’m pretty sure it was delicious.

Mexi-No

Needing to escape the eastern Canada weather that was making a guest appearance on the West Coast that turned into a multi episode arc, it was time to pack our bags and head south of the border.

This highly anticipated trip started out with a bit of a glitch seeing as the trip planner, an alleged friend of ours from Calgary, sent a text on the day we were leaving containing the most casual bow out of a vacation I’d ever seen or heard.

Before we get into that let’s rewind and get everyone up to speed on how this all came about.

In January our “friend”, let’s call him Terry, got everyone on board to head down to Playa Del Carmen. Now we were pretty set on going to Cabo, as any place that is home to Cabo Wabo is immediately awesome and having been there many times already, we know it and we love it. However, we were willing to give Playa a try if a group of people were going, who are supposedly fun.   

As we are not ones to be wishy washy about going on vacations, hotels were researched and flights were booked.

Fast forward to the middle of February. Terry still hasn’t booked his flight, but assures us he’s waiting for the best deal as he is using his Aeroplan miles. Fair enough.

Terry then talks a big game about going all inclusive golfing with my brother in law, how we were going to have such an awesome time, that there were tons of cheap food and beer to be had...note to readers, the next time someone boasts all of these things to you, tread lightly. They could be spinning you a web of lies.

Except for the cheap beer. Mexican Wal-Mart yo!

This is where things start to get shady. It’s now a week before we leave and collectively we’ve all been trying to get a hold of Terry to see if he’s booked his flight. Do you think he responds? No he does not. Not to texts, not to emails, nada.

Finally it’s the day we leave. Time to cue up the most casual vacation cancellation via text message ever... “Didn’t book a flight. Many apologies”

What’s that now son? Come again? Just those two sentences were enough to cover the entirety of this fuckery? Yah it was super, super cool of you to plan this whole vacation and then not even go on it.

I can’t even place enough WTF’s in here to explain just how furious this made me. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that the one thing that pisses the majority of people off in this crazy thing we call life are people who bail out of shit at the last minute. In the immortal words of Jennifer Aniston – Uncool.

Hey Terry? You suck at life. Catch you on the flip side. 

So with the bitter taste of bad friend in our mouths, I sent that message to text heaven and we were off to Playa Del Carmen and we were going to make the best of it.

And that we did. But I bet you’re wondering what the man scoop is, as that’s what this is all about after all! Well hold on to your hats, because it’s about to get real.

Going into this one would think that Mexico would filled to the tits with men, as it is vacation season after all and everyone knows what happens to people when they go on vacation. Much like Poison, they want action.

And usually Mexico is the perfect place to engage in this Russian roulette game of future STD’s and unwanted pregnancies. But nay.

On our first venture out into Playa things seemed potentially good, or maybe that was the Sol infused with lime and salt (why) altering our perception as well as our bellies. Side note – salt is not sexy. True story. Through closer inspection it appeared that what seemed like a ton of men around soon turned out to be a ton of men hunting for other men. What we did not know about Playa, but learned about a week too late was that it was home to one of the biggest gay communities on the East Coast. On top of that, not only did we have dude on dude all around us, the other key element making single people here a minority was couples. They were everywhere!!!

There they were strolling down 5^th in the most awkward walking situations I’ve ever seen, more like a wrestling submission hold than a hand hold. They were doing some glorious face touching and same side of the table eating next to us at dinners. They were rubbing down each others bodies and naked old lady boobs at the beach, not to mention one couple that added a skin crawling bonus by doing some finger bang pantomiming. To sum it up, this week was doomed for any chance of meeting a single man.

Double fingering the sky and cursing Terry’s name, clearly the only way to make up for the lack of men and not feel like the only single person in Playa was to drink my weight in margaritas and do an inhuman amount of tequila shots.  

To condense the week, here are some of the highlights: right of the bat I received an amazing forehead sunburn once again, most likely sealing the fate of my future health, deciding that we needed to kill our terrible case of lime and salt beer in one night, the introduction of the Criminal Minds drinking game which turned out to be a bad idea, creamy tequila shots in the flavors of strawberry and mango do not feel good after the 15^th use of the word UNSUB.

Tasting almost every variation that Playa had to offer of the lime margarita, finding the perfect substitute taco to mend our broken Taco Loco hearts - We love you Cabo, sorry we cheated on you! – perfecting a signature dance that can be altered for any type of song, you only need to use you arms, so I suppose it’s more of a seated dance than anything. Hilarity definitely ensued.

The introduction of the hipster glasses that are sure to be used many more times this year, finding out that wine really can save your life, the sightings of more than one tattoo of a double dolphin jumping over the moon, ocean, sun, etc and declaring everyday to get one ourselves after all the tequila we drank kicked in. And last but not least, teaching the fine art of shot gunning to the locals with many thanks to Scott and Kale from Calgary. We had a blasty blast that day, and yes the Flames still suck!

I’m going to say that there was much more, but my mind just isn’t what it used to be my friends.

We definitely had a lovely time, it was nice to finally see the sun, and the salt water always does great things to your hair for that I just rolled out of bed look, though I guess that was a waste. I hope that the gays enjoyed it at least!

Can’t say that I would return to Playa, but as usual there are two recommendations – lime margaritas make everyone’s life better, and there are no lack of good ones there, and we had the single most delicious fish tacos in our lives there as well. If I could remember the name of the place everyone would win here, but alas I cannot.

As for the conclusion to the Terry story, it might be possible that he has alztimers as just last night I got another way too cash text, 3 words, all of them sending my irritation level to infinity and beyond.

Drum roll please... “how was playa”. That’s it. No capitals, no punctuation necessary.

It must be nice live in a world where not much else matters except being drunk and pretending you didn’t book vacations to go on.

Word.