Eurotrip '07 - May 1 - Crepes Are Delicious. Period...Part 2/10

(Originally published May 1, 2007)

(Pictured: Some of the sweet rides on display at Gumball3000)

So Saturday morning was a rough one. Slightly hung over, but hey it happens. Me and Slim made our way back to the Tower of London and did the full tour. It was pretty sweet, most definately my favourite attraction in London. Medieval shit rocks. We also went and did the ride on the Eye of London. We had basically taken care of all the touristy stuff. That night, Chrissy took us out for a nice Italian dinner right on the Thames River, as the next day we would be heading to Paris!

Saturday, we had a train scheduled to leave London for Paris at 3:00 pm. First though, we had other business to take care of as Gumball3000 was kicking off in London that day. You wanna talk about the sickest race/car collection in the world. This is it man. Anyone who's seen this on TV knows what I'm talking about. I mean where else you gonna see three Bugatti's (valued at well over a million dollars each) and rows upon rows of the sickest luxury cars ever. This event draws tons of celebrities and this year there were a few but we only got up close to Xzibit. From there, we took the Eurostar train to Paris, which goes under the English Channel and takes about 2 and a 1/2 hours. We navigated the Paris Subway system and made our way to our hostel in the Latin Quarter section of Paris. After dropping our bags, it was time for some drinking. We asked the guy at the desk where they were selling cheap beers and promptly made our way there. Needless to say, I got slightly polluted and woke up all four of the other people in my room at 2am when I tried to Superman onto my top bunk and missed it. Slim then refused my demands for a boost and eventually, I was able to make the ascent to the top bunk!



Monday morning, I woke up and was covered in beer and found myself cuddling with an empty tall boy of Foster's. I was scared to get out of bed, as I remembered (kind of) what had happened the night before and was afraid of my new roommates, who I hadn't even met yet. We were rooming with a guy from New Zealand who we got along with pretty well and he thought my exploits were rather entertaining. So after promising that that would not happen again, Slim and I made our way to the Pantheon. After taking that in, we made our way over to the Eiffel Tower and then just scoped out the Latin Quarter region of Paris a bit. The next day, we just found out was Labour Day, and a lot of stuff would be closed so we would have to revise our plans a bit.



Tuesday morning, we made our way on the subway over to the Montmartre section of Paris. There, we checked out the Moulin Rouge, the red-light district and Le Cimitiere Montmartre (lots of famous dead French people here). After that we went over to the Basilique du Sacre-Couer, which is the tallest point in Paris and also a pretty sick church to boot! Following that, we hit up another cemetary, le Cimitiere Pere Lachaise which is home to some other fairly famous dead French people, in addition to housing the remains of both Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison. That night i ate some more crepes (as I should!), as they have fast become the staple of my French diet. Bananas and Nutella is the best flavour hands down! That night we took in the Champions League match at some English pub called the Frog and Princess. It was pretty decent, but I was starting to become very attached to my hangout called "The Wall" where the beer was cheap and the music was stylin'-profilin' and I had gone my first two nights in Paris.

Eurotrip '07 - April 27 - Don't Fuck With Footy Hooligans...Part 1/10

(Originally published April 27, 2007)

(Pictured: Don't tell me I look classy in front of the Tower Bridge, cause I already know!)

So what a flight! I get my seat on the plane and the stinky motherfucker beside me decides that he doesnt need to wear any shoes or socks on the plane. What a fuckin' nightmare I tell ya! The guy was walking around the plane with no shoes or socks on, and me and this girl sitting on the other side of this guy were just kind of looking at each other, like WTF!? Also, on these new Air Canada planes, everyone has their own television set where you can pick what you want to watch and low and behold, I get the only one out of about 500 that doesn't work. Meh.

So I arrived in London at about 6:30am on the Tuesday morning a few hours before Slim and made my way to Victoria station to meet him there. And as I'm waiting low and behold my brand new MP3 player dies. I figure it's just the batteries, but the piece of crap actually just died.....Well there goes my music for the trip. So Slim finally shows up like 300 hours later and we navigate the ridiculous London subway (Metro) to his sister's place in the east end of the city. Right away, she makes us eat some curry, or as I like to call it, "a bunch of shit on a plate" (supposed English cuisine). From there, me and SlimJim made our way over to Greenwich where we went and checked out the Greenwich Observatory and a bunch of other crap there. Finally made it to bed that night and slept for the first time in over 36 hours.



So we got rolled out of bed early and were told that there was only one key to the apartment, which believe me made things quite difficult over the next few days. But it was time to check out some of the touristy stuff that makes London what it is. We went and checked out a bunch of the landmakrs such as the Tower Bridge, London Bridge, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben/Parliament, The London At War Museum, St. Paul's Cathedral, and Trafalgar Square. At Trafalgar Square, we couldn't figure out what was going on. There were thousands of people everywhere wasted off their faces and hundreds, i mean hundreds of police officers. Turns out, it was a big pre-game rally for the Liverpool fans who were playing at Chelsea that night. Man those English know how to drink! No matter what time of day it is, it seems that every pub is packed and people are spilling onto the streets. Just my kind of place, alright!



Wednesday night, we decided that we were going to take a train to Brighton Beach and check that out. So Thursday morning we made our way back to Victoria Station (the Union Station of London) and caught a train out to Brighton. Turns out, Brighton is basically the Wasage Beach of England with all the shitty little shops and diners. It started to rain on us pretty bad so we made our way to some pub that was selling cheap beers and all day breakfast! What could be better? Turns out nothing. Slim and I stayed there for a few hours hammering beers and eating fine cuisine and then walked around and played some intoxicated afternoon air hockey in which I sustained a pretty sweet bloody knuckle. Needless to say, it was a nice early evening nap on the train on the way home.



Friday morning we slept in, so didn't make it out into London until the mid-afternoon. By that time, our original plans were foiled (Tower of London Tour), so we just took the Metro up to Picadilly/Oxford Street and just milled around there for a bit in true tourist fashion. That night, we went out with some of Chrissy's (Slim's sister) friends. It was me, Jon, a Brazilian guy, Polish guy, and a dude from Kosovo. What a FOB crew we were. We hit up some pub before going back to the one guy's place and partaking in some more drinking. We then went to the clubs (at this point all well-tuned) but were told we couldn't get in anywhere because it was too late. So we went for some pizza and beer. Goulet! Me and Slim then made our way across London in the middle of the night by bus and taxi back to Chrissy's, which we didn't arrive at until about 4am! Turns out this wasn't the safest route back in the middle of the night. Stupid fuckin' drunk tourists! No fear!

Eurotrip '07 - April 23 - Bon Voyage Party

(Originally publised April 23, 2007)

(Pictured: The floor I would become quite to used to sleeping on while in the metropolis the kids call 'London, England')

So……where to begin, that’s the real question? I’ll just ramble…. First of all I just want to thank everyone who came out to the Bon Voyage Party at the Moreau residence on Saturday night. It was a frolicking good time and we had well over 60 people show up, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 95% of those people so inebriated that it’s a miracle my house was left unscathed other than the one picture in the bathroom that I managed to break. As Wop Burglar would say, “It was the best house party since Grade 11”. I just wish next time that someone would please not let my parents dance like that. Now everyone that didn’t know knows where a great deal of my stupendous character traits come from. Also, that was one hell of a flip cup game. I mean twenty people bombing back beers as fast as humanly possible around a hot tub lid has got to be a recipe for a good time! In fact, we were having such a good time that we apparently alerted my entire street and the cops felt it necessary to make a guest appearance. No fear my Mom took care of them. Goulet. Another side note: CL would have to be the only person who rivals Wop Burglar for most ridiculous human being alive. Thanks have to go out to KM for the delicious cupcakes, KS for the nice card and Barbie doll (which Blowhausen felt he had to repeatedly keep biting the head off of), and anyone else who did something kind for me. Sorry, I also must thank whoever left that delicious looking condom in my backyard for me to clean-up the next morning (nice!) and my brother’s friend for projectile vomiting all over the basement. Quick safety reminder kids, don’t play Skip-It in the house, it usually just leads to shit getting smashed and people getting hit with the rope! After all that, I’m left asking myself one question, what will become of Bradford?

Well Slim and I both fly out tonight (April 23). I’m flying into Heathrow and will arrive in London tomorrow morning. For the first few days, we will be shacking up with Slim’s step-sister who has a pad right in London. From there, we will take our packs and rail passes and attempt to explore as much of Europe as humanly possible. Hopefully for Slim’s sake I keep my arrests/passing outs/ridiculous incidents to a minimum (not likely though). I will try to post up a journal entry on here about once a week, complete with pictures and all that good stuff. Feel free to leave any comments and/or suggestions for me. Until next time, au revoir you limey bastards! (See that nice vocabulary, a little French and English English in the same eight word sentence!)

Brentski

The Moreau Brothers Do Shanghai, China - Sept. 2007...Part 2/2

(Originally published September 25, 2007)
(Pictured: Bike frenzy in the French Concession!) ................................................................







Thursday morning we kind of managed to sleep in a bit, and by sleep in, I mean wake up at a normal time. Full of energy, we decided we were going to scour the French Concession area of the city (the city has distinctive European flare everywhere, as it was heavily colonized by various immigrant groups throughout the last couple of centuries before the folks of Shanghai told them to beat it!). There, we visited amongst other things, the Former Residence of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, the Cathay Cinema, and Fuxing Park. After getting lost from each other in the park (Kiel passed out on a bench somewhere), we met up that afternoon to renew our ping-pong rivalry. It got overly heated, and at one point Drunko in all his wisdom threw a temper tantrum and smashed his paddle in half. Explaining to someone who doesn’t speak a word of your language that you broke their hotel property is highly awkward people. Once the evening was upon us, we decided to head over to this pub/bar, called Malone’s American Café or something to that effect. It was very popular with the foreign business people living in Shanghai. After a few pitchers of Tiger Beer and some good ole North American pub food we were both finely tuned. We spent the rest of the night (although my memory is a little hazy at this point) rocking out Moreau-style to this Chinese band that covered all English language pop/rock music. There is nothing better than people with heavy accents singing No Doubt, mark my words on that one!





Friday morning, and by morning I mean most of the day, we did jack shit. That night we had purchased tickets to check out a Women’s World Cup of Soccer/Football double header. I headed over to Hongzhou Stadium on my own around 4pm, as my 17 year-old brother is still not quite the drinker he thinks he is and takes massive amounts of time to recover. The first game featured Japan playing Argentina, with Japan eventually winning 1-0. I imagine this was the first and last sporting event I will ever attend that did not sell alcohol for consumption. Last I checked, 75% of the reason people go to concerts and sporting events was to get plastered and yell, sing, berate players, etc. So with no beer, I had to settle for a peanut butter and meat sandwich, stale popcorn, and lemonade. My brother finally made his way to the stadium for the start of the second game which featured the heavily-backed, and defending world champions, Germany playing a gritty English side. The game ended in 0-0 draw (side note: there were thousands of Germans there, as for some reason there are tons of them living in China). After the game, we went back to freshen up before heading out to this place called Club Bon Bon. It was similar to a traditional club, oh except for the fact that you paid about $17 Canadian and it was all you can drink mixed drinks and beer! Heaven on earth had been found. Toronto resident DJ Sneak was in town that night manning the decks, although Drunko and I spent most of the night in the hip-hop side room. Actually, Kiel spent the whole night on stage grinding it up with ridiculously hot Asian chicks…as he should! I told him though, next time don’t be giving me the thumbs up in the middle of it, as girls generally don’t find that amusing, even if they don’t speak your language. Ah, to be seventeen! Apparently we found our way back to our hotel via a cab, although I was in full on black out mode at this point. Apparently, once the cab dropped us off, I immediately jumped in another cab and told him to take me to the address I was currently sitting in front of. Some people’s behaviour never changes. Goulet.





Saturday the 15th of September involved some hardcore recovery. Neither of us got out of bed until after 3pm, and I finally managed to drag my ass to Pizza Hut. Sadly it was lined up outside the door and I made my way to the equally busy (although faster moving) McDonald’s. That afternoon I headed back to the French Concession to do some shopping and also picked up some street fruit (think street meat, but fruit!) before going back to the hotel to watch the cinematic classic, “You, Me, and Dupree”. That night, we ate at the hotel restaurant before going to the North Bund Midnight Bar which was located on the 26th /top floor of our hotel and featured vastly overpriced drinks.





Sunday was our last full day in Shanghai, and I still had a lot of crap to see. I headed out on my own for the day, and visited amongst other things People’s Square, the Shanghai Urban Planning Center (which featured a crazy scaled down model of the what they plan for the city to look like by 2020, right down to every little building), the Site of the First National Congress of the Communist Party, and the Xintiandi district which featured shikumen houses (last part is irrelevant unless you’re an architecture nerd!). That afternoon, I finally had my first big break in ping-pong, and was able to pull away from brother and relieve him of 200 RMB (about $30). I love beating teenage punks who think they’re the shit, especially when they whine like little bitches! After consuming some beers after our hard fought sporting event, we decided to check out an authentic Chinese karaoke bar. We found this place called Party World and well in short, it was fucked up. We walked in and stated that we wanted to do karaoke. They then escorted us to a private room equipped with a big screen TV and a karaoke machine. Most awkward situation ever! We had already paid for an hour so we just said “fuck it” and after we got our karaoke machine working (after about 50 tries, because hey, I can’t read Chinese characters) and our beers got delivered we rocked out in our private karaoke room. Sadly the English music was on the cheesy side (good chance we were singing along to Aqua, Backstreet Boys, Bon Jovi, Britney Spears, and Akon among others) but the super low budget Asian videos that accompanied the lyrics on screen were the most hilarious thing I had ever seen. After our bizarre karaoke experience we headed back to the hotel where my brother hit an all-time low. The whole trip, he had been convinced that the massage studio in our hotel was a “rub-and-tug” which I tried to tell him it wasn’t. So since it was our last night, he said he was going to find out, and boy did he get a rude awakening! I told him, that if it did turn out to be a rub and tug, I would fully fund his adventure down to the 4th floor. So half-an-hour after he leaves the hotel room he comes back with a distraught look on his face. I enquire as to how it was, and he states, “It wasn’t a rub and tug”. He then proceeds to tell me that they (by they I here on in mean men) made him take off all his clothes (watching him the whole time) and dried him off after his shower. Following this, they gave him a room with a sauna and a private pool or some shit like that. He said there were Asian dudes walking around buck naked everywhere and after he made it past the reception desk the only employees he ever saw were males! Hahahaha!!! So he got all clammy and told the girls at the reception desk that he was feeling ill. They gave him a partial refund and sadly, he made his way back to the hotel room to spoon with me!





Monday morning, we took a lethally dangerous cab ride back to the airport before trekking on back to the motherland.





Some final thoughts/quips on Shanghai, China coming from Super Tourist Brent Moreau…….


1)You will always, and I mean always be served Coke with your meals in a fast food restaurant and never be given any other options. Never was once.


2)Chinese drivers in China are as bad, if not worse than Chinese drivers in the Greater Toronto Area.


3)My brother set a new record for tipping the bathroom guy in a developing country, or any country for that matter, when he tipped the guy 100 RMB ($15) in his drunken stage-dancing glory at the club.


4)The Chinese people were for the most part, super nice and hospitable and I would recommend this trip to anyone who ever gets the chance. I never got the chance to leave Shanghai, but I will definitely be going back to the country in the near future (although most likely to Macau [Las Vegas of the Orient] to do some heavy gambling)


5)If you play arcade-style basketball, you will draw a massive crowd of specatators every time, who watch you as if you were Michael Jordan himself.


6)Thanks for reading, and stay classy.

The Moreau Brothers Do Shanghai, China - Sept. 2007...Part 1/2

(Originally published September 25, 2007)
(Pictured: The booming metropolis of Shanghai. I lost most of my pictures on this trip as I bought a memory card in China and well it worked like something MADE IN CHINA!)

So, what happens when you set Brent and Drunko (my broski) Moreau loose in the far off Orient aka Shanghai, China. Read on for further details……..



So for once in my life, I decided not to get trashed on a Friday night at my mother’s urging, as we had to leave our house at 5:30am to catch our 14-hour flight to China. I woke up at the criminal time of 4:30am, got ready and then had about 15 minutes to pack. Good idea, not really! I didn’t realize until I got to China, but I forgot to pack underwear, socks, a memory card for my camera, and probably other stuff I can’t recall right now. We arrived a bit early for our flight, and I as I was sitting in the terminal amongst the swarms of Chinese people around me, I heard the funniest thing ever. (Note: If you haven’t seen Russell Peter’s: Outsourced comedy special, skip this next part because it may not make sense to you). So as I was saying, if you have seen it, you may recall that Russell speaks of his visit to China and the fact that people there use the word “nigga” as a fill-in word, much like we English folk use words like “umm” and “ahh”. Well let’s just say this guy sitting beside me must have dropped the “n” bomb a la Chinese-style about 10 times over the course of five minutes. God I’m amused easily! The plane ride over was pretty uneventful, other than the guy sitting in front of us, who took off his shoes and smelled straight ignorant and the fact that for the second time in my last three flights my personal TV was messed up. Oh, and I was decidedly one of the taller people on the plane. No big deal.



So after the lengthy flight and a time change that is twelve hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, we arrived in Shanghai in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday, September 9. Luckily, at the last minute before we left Canada, we had remembered to get the address of our hotel written down by one of my mom’s friends at the airport in Chinese. For some odd reason, most of the cab drivers, didn’t speak a word of English. Guess they don’t teach that in Asian Cab Driving School. After we made our way to the HengSheng Peninsula Hotel via our cab driver who ashamedly took my gratuity (he put his hands over his face and shook his head when I gave him a tip [which he still took I might add]), we checked in and then proceeded to eat all of the chocolate and drink all of the beer in our mini-fridge. Around this time, (and by this time, I mean 4pm) we both passed out as the time change thing caught up with us. Kiel and I then proceeded to keep waking up all night, before proceeding to give up at 5am and just accept the fact that sleep was going to be an issue on this trip.



So the Monday morning, we were up bright and early, and after watching a healthy amount of CNN World, HBO Asia and V Chinese (think MTV2 with about 75% Chinese pop and the other 25% of music consisting of the same 10 English videos), we made our way down to the hotel breakfast buffet where we were surrounded by a contingent of 16 year-old female German soccer players and their parents and coaches. There must’ve been 500 German people staying in our hotel! That morning we decided to check-out Nanjing Dong Lu, which is the premier shopping/tourist street in Shanghai. We quickly discovered that white people are an easy target for people pushing goods on the streets, whose English usually consists of, “watch, DVD, t-shirt, shoes, Rolex, Puma, Nike, Adidas, Reebok”. We checked out a big ass store, which was aptly called “Shanghai’s #1 Department Store”, and contained over 10 floors of ridiculously small clothes. That afternoon, (after wasting two hours trying to find a go-kart track on the other side of the city and just giving up when we realized we were fucked and couldn’t ask anyone for directions), we started what would be a trip-long ping-pong rivalry. Again, the time change was still killing us and we passed out in the middle of the afternoon, but this time managed to wake up for 9pm, just in time to hit the McDonald’s! On our way there, we discovered that at night the street salesmen also add “women” to the list of things they are selling. There is nothing more impressive than a watch/DVD/t-shirt/shoe salesman who doubles as a pimp. Giggity goo! That night we checked out the Bund, which is the famous river that runs through Shanghai and is directly across from the impressive skyline that many people associate with the city. Again though, we were out cold long before midnight, as we struggled handsomely with the time change.



Tuesday morning, we were again up early, feeling the effects of the worst jet-lag either of us had ever-endured. We decided to head over to the Pudong (the rich/business/ex-pat/tourist) district of the city on the other side of the river. To get there, we took the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel, which is this over-the-top cheeseball ride under the river in this plastic ball. Comes complete with flashing Christmas lights, bad music, and all! After we got there, we hit up the Oriental Pearl Tower (Shanghai’s version of the CN Tower) and checked out the accompanying museum that contained a plethora of knowledge on the history of Shanghai. That afternoon, we also checked out the (again aptly named) Supermall, which featured over 10 floors of shopping, as well as the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped to pick up what had already become the staple of our Chinese diet: our good friends Mr. Budweiser, Tsing Tao, Heineken, and Sapporo. After some vast alcohol consumption, we decided to hit the hotel pool for some early evening swimming. In all my wisdom, I accidentally stepped in the wading pool in my running shoes, which wrote those off for the remainder of the trip as they now smelled like pool water. That night, I managed to last until the ultra-late hour of 6:30pm before passing out. All I can say is that this sleep thing was starting to get a bit ridiculous!



The next morning was more of the same (up early with a healthy dose of CNN/HBO/V Chinese). I decided to trek out on my own without my trusty sidekick Drunko, as too much of a Moreau is just not a good thing. I checked out the Nanjing Xi Lu area of the city, which included the Jing’an Temple, Paramount Theater, Shanghai Indoor Stadium, and like everywhere in China some shopping! In true tourist form, I decided to pick up some knock off purses, as well as some cheap designer socks and DVDs complete with Chinese subtitling. That night (after another intense ping pong match), we hit up some authentic Asian cuisine in the form of Pizza Hut. After we tried to find this bar we had heard about that had really cheap drinks. This just led to us walking in circles for a while before retiring to the hotel room and us setting a new late night record of 10:30pm! So sad, so sad indeed…

New York City/Rock The Bells Festival - July 26-29, 2007

(Originally published August 6, 2007)

(Pictured: The Kwik-E-Mart. Yes, you read that correctly!)....................................................................

Long ago, there was a band known to the masses as "Rage Against the Machine". In the year 2007, they decided to reunite and kick out the funk. Myself, Blowhausen and LapDawg took it upon ourselves to travel to New York City to catch one of their few performances this year.........

So due to lack of advanced planning, we ended up having to drive down to New York City, which is not something I would recommend to anyone. We packed up our stuff into Blowhausen's truck and hit the road at about 10:30pm on Thursday night. MapQuest said it should take about 8.5 hours to get from the Moreau residence to our hotel, which was located one block from Tiimes Square. I was asleep within a half hour and left Hausen and Dawg to navigate. Bad idea number one. Blowhausen in all his wisdom got lost before we even got out of Ontario! The we hit a highway detour in Pennsylvania. Long story short, it took us just shy of twelve hours to get to the hotel, by which time my two amigos were so jacked up on energy drinks and coffees, they were shaking like Michael J. Fox in a haunted house.

Friday morning after watching some quality episodes of American Gladiators, we went on foot to explore the city. We checked out some of the sights and neighbourhoods, including Times Square, the World Trade Centre sight, Madison Square Garden, SoHo, Little Italy, Chinatown, etc. That night we hit up the Hard Rock in Times Square for dinner. Quite the pricey affair, considering how crappy their food always is. But hey, sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet and eat those $20 cheeseburgers. After that, we went back to the hotel (Blowhausen and LapDawg had been awake for two straight days at this point) and were all promptly tucked in and fast alseep my 10:30pm. Lame, yes I know, but hey it happens!

Saturday was the day we had been waiting months for. After getting some much needed rest, we got ourselves out to Randall's Island in Northern Manhattan for the Rock the Bells festival featuring Rage Against the Machine, Wu-Tang Clan (all eight members together), Cypress Hill, Public Enemy, The Roots, and a shitload more. After sitting through the heat all day and drinking $7 beers, Rage finally hit the stage at about 9pm. Now I've been in some mosh pits in my day, but this was just absolutely nuts! Zach and the boys performed like a well-oiled machine and had the place in an absolute frenzy. We all managed to survive the concert (although Hausen almost died on about three separate occasions during the day due to dehydration) and made our way back to the hotel just drenched in sweat and stinking like, well for lack of better words, ass! That night, after we tucked Captain Dehydration into bed, LapDawg and I went to check out the Empire State Building and also this 7-Eleven that had been converted into a Kwik-E-Mart. Apparently they did this with about ten 7-Elevens across North America (only Canadian one is in B.C.). Let me tell you. A Squishee tastes waaaaaaaaaaaay better than a Big Gulp!

Sunday, we just did some shopping and then headed on home. The drive home was not too bad, as it only took nine hours, and I got some delicious and well-priced beer and Backwoods from my fine friends at the Duty Free! There is nothing quite as delicious as Border Beer. I mean nothing!

How To Survive A Week With Brent! - Hawaii - May, 2008...Part 2/2- Balloon Hats are Not As Cool As You Think!

(Originally published May 13, 2008)

(Pictured: Lots of drunk people having a good time on the boat cruise. Look at them go!)................................................................................

Thursday morning I returned the windowless-easy-access Jeep, which surprisingly made it through the night unscathed. Later that morning, we hit up an American institution for breakfast, the International House of Pancakes, or IHOP as it is now known by all the slicksters. That afternoon we took a shuttle bus over to Hanauma Bay for some snorkelling. Hanauma Bay is famous for its beautiful coral reefs and colourful (and very human friendly) fish. We snorkelled around for a bit before we were ushered off to go parasailing with our new found friends Mike and Stormie from Arizona (yes, her name really was Stormie!). Parasailing was pretty tame, as we had both done it on previous occasions, and Lou informed the boat operators not to get us wet after witnessing the soakers they gave the couple before us. She’s the boss. Period. For dinner, we visited every tourists’ favourite restaurant wherever they go, Planet Hollywood! Nothing helps me sleep better than overpriced drinks in souvenir glasses and poorly cooked hamburgers! Later that evening, we had to change rooms as they must have been having mechanical troubles on top of the building, causing a loud ruckus in our 17th floor (top floor) room. We had to pack up all of our belongings and boogie on down to the 14th, where we found a queen bed awaiting us as opposed to the king we were growing accustomed to. I cried, and then I ate some Cheetos and felt better.

Friday, I slept in probably the latest I have all trip. We spent the afternoon lounging around the pool and drinking delicious beverages from its accompanying bar. After catching more sun than a pasty white boy like me should, we went back to the room and readied ourselves for our dinner cruise that night. We got picked up on our bus to take us to the boat for the cruise and discovered that it was us and all, and I mean all, Japanese people who spoke no English! Eventually we were joined on the bus by a couple other people who spoke our native tongue. We arrived for the cruise around 5:00pm, and it lasted for about 2.5 hours. We sailed on a giant catamaran a couple miles off shore in the lovely Hawaiian night and ate a respectable dinner. Lou spent the whole night worrying about her skirt blowing up, as the winds were quite strong and the perverts (me included) were out in full force. The drunken people were all singing typically awesome songs like Macarena and YMCA and such and keeping the more sober birds like me entertained. After getting bussed back with Horoki, Sushimi, Nintendo, and the rest of our rich Japanese comrades, we retired to the room for a little R & R, or in my case flopping on the bed and sleeping in my clothes.

Our last full day, was more of the same from the day before. It consisted of a lot of time spent around the pool and its bar and yada yada yada. That evening we vowed we had to go and booze it up, as it would be our last night on the island. So, after drinking throughout the day, we drank some more in the room and then made our way over to a bar called ‘Da Big Kahuna’ where we indulged in a wide variety of drinks, including the world’s largest fishbowl (or pretty damn close). In our perfectly sober state, we then went back to the pool/hotel bar for some more drinks and to be entertained by some third-rate clown who made the worst balloon shapes ever and had problems with his fire-eating routine. Comedy folks, comedy, especially when you can’t see straight. Lucklily, the clown and I both barely survived the night.

Sunday, May 11, was our last day in paradise (place truly is the closest thing on this planet) . As our flight did not leave until 11:00pm, I caved and paid the extra dough to keep our room until that night. That day we didn’t do much, and just lounged around the pool (I left, the woman got hit on....again). At least one of us is good looking! After leaving Hawaii Sunday night at 11:00pm (5:00am Toronto time, Monday morning), we made it back to Toronto by 5:30pm Monday night and it was back to reality, although reality would have to face me with my new, improved tan (not half as good as Lou’s tan though)!

How To Survive A Week With Brent! - Hawaii - May, 2008...Part 1/2- Beep Beep Who's Got Da Windows To My Jeep!

(Originally published May 13, 2008)
(Pictured: The Galapagos Reef Sharks waiting to snack on me. DON'T PET THE SHARKS!)

Today, Saturday, May 3, my girlfriend Lou and I set out on our adventure to get from the mean streets of Bradford, Ontario to Honolulu, Hawaii. We left bright and early at 7:30am, as we had to go downtown to collect some monies owed to me (male prostitution) before heading to the airport for our 11:30am flight. Everything went okay on our flight, and we made it to Vancouver in about 4.5 hours (4:30pm Toronto time, 1:30pm in Vancouver). We had a ridiculously over-the-top gay flight attendant who proceeded to buff his nails in front of us....Interesting fellow that Calvin was. He also proceeded to place his hands all over Lou after a water spilling incident. Scandalous to say the least. We had a bit of a layover in Vancouver before leaving for Hawaii so we passed the time in Milestones. Our flight finally left at 6:30pm and arrived a mere 6 hours later in Honolulu, for a local time of 9:30pm island time, or 3:30am if you were still keeping score on Toronto time. We shared a ride from the airport to our hotel with some couple from Calgary in this limousine that looked like it was straight out of some 70s porn shoot. Classy, San Diego, classy! We finally made it to bed at about 1:30am, our as I like to say, 26 hours after I first woke up that morning!

Sunday morning we were both still jet-lagged (actually I was jet-lagged the entire trip) so we decided to take it easy and head for the world-renowned beaches of Waikiki. We lazed around there for a while, and I realized just how afraid of crabs I really am. Frightening creatures, and definitely on par with E.T. as far as nightmares are concerned for me. That afternoon, we decided to walk to Diamond Head, which is probably one of Hawaii’s 3 most famous landmarks. It’s a big volcano/crater/former naval lookout that looks over the south end of the island of Oahu. One problem though, we never made it! Due to the fact that I`m an idiot, we got lost and walked forever before finally giving up. Only I could get lost on my way to a mountain. On the way back from our failed voyage, we visited the Waikiki Aquarium, which is one of the oldest aquariums in the United States, and maybe even this Solar System! Surprisingly, after all of this, Lou had not yet killed me and decided to join me for a pig-out fest at Chili`s that evening for dinner. I then took my bloated ass back to the room and passed out by about 7:00pm. Party like a rock star!

Today I decided it was in our best interest to take the bus to Diamond Head. After waiting forever for the bus to arrive, we finally caught it to the crater and started our ascent. The hike is about 2.2 km round trip from the base to the peak and back again. Lou managed to do it in her Crocs, although I was afraid I was going to have to piggy back her for the last 2.15 km! After finishing our life-threatening journey, we chowed down on some shaved ice (Hawaiian delicacy, although to be quite frank it was just a glorified Sno-Cone). We waited for the bus to pick us up forever, but eventually caved and just split a cab with a bunch of other people after we realized there were some major problems on this particular bus route! Seeing as how it was Monday night, we decided it would be in our best interests to get a little bit drunk on our hotel balcony with cheap wine and beer and then go out for some late night dinner at Round Table Pizza. So we did just that, and I was tucked in fast asleep dreaming of Tuesday before 10:00pm even rolled around.

Tuesday morning I kicked the trip into high gear. Today I had booked a trip to the North Shore to, how do you say this, swim with sharks! I was picked up at about 7:15am at my hotel and was on a boat heading out to sea before 9:00am rolled around. The tour thing was called Shark Encounters and was pretty bananas. How it works, is they take a group of you out (there was 10 of us) about 3 miles off shore in about 400 feet of water, where they have a shark cage (8 ft. X 8 ft. X 12 ft. deep) set up in the middle of the ocean. You jump in and they proceed to feed the sharks from a nearby boat and you think about how cool and ridiculous the whole experience is! While I was out there, there were about 15-20 Galapagos Reef Sharks circling around and snacking on meat and human ligaments! In the winter months, they get Tiger Sharks almost every day, and they are also the only people to ever film/see a Great White Shark in Hawaii (occurred in 2005 and made headlines around the world). One dude who was about 300 pounds and covered in tattoos puked overboard. Guess sharks made him nauseas. While I was having my crazy adrenaline rush that morning, Lou was back in Waikiki working on her tan like a real trooper should be! That afternoon after sleeping off my morning adventure, Lou and I decided to head on over the Ala Moana shopping centre, which is the largest open-air market west of the Mississippi (albeit, very west!). First though, we had to stop in at America’s favourite institution, Wal-Mart to pick-up a new digital camera as we broke ours the previous day on our trek down Diamond Head. I also picked up some stylish threads at Macy’s. The new wears definitely brought out my gangster appeal while accenting my luscious eye lashes and sophisticated gray beard. Goulet. That night we went for a nice stroll along the beach where my travelling companion was more fascinated with the homeless people and high-class hookers than the views! Oh and I set a new bed-time record of 11:30pm! Oh yeah!

May 7, 2008 will go down as the first day in history that I drove a Jeep and watched a TV special on Barbara Walters. This morning we rented an ’05 Jeep Wrangler and set on our way across the island. When we rented the Jeep, the roof was not on, which led to some major problems upon our arrival at Pearl Harbour. When we went to put the roof on we noticed we had no clue what we were doing and no windows in the Jeep to boot. Crap! Anyways, we left the Jeep in the lot and checked out the USS Arizona Memorial and some of the other stuff at Pearl Harbour. From there, we got back in our not-all-there Jeep and headed to the Dole Plantation. The Dole Plantation is home to the world’s largest maze (we struggled even with a map. Thank God for those punk kids everywhere helping me cheat) and delicious pineapple ice cream. Following that, we took a scenic drive up to the North Shore and then down the eastern coast (Windward Oahu as it’s known to those in the know). It was a very beautiful drive until we got caught in some rain with the roof down. After half-assedly securing the roof, we then had the roof almost rip off of the Jeep as we held on for dear life in the rain. If one positive did come out of the rain storm, it was that we did see a Hawaiian rainbow and had some good laughs after it was all over. That night Miss Lou and I stayed in with our good friend Mr. Chardonnay and watched some television. Official Brent pass out time: 10:15pm. Shit’s weak.

Life and Times of A Degenerate - Las Vegas - March, 2008...Part 2/2 - Look Mom, It's Nelly Amongst the Degenerates!

(Originally published March 31, 2008)
(Pictured: The Bellagio, aka my home-away from home while in the classless heart of America, Lost Wages [or as some call it Las Vegas])

The morning of March 27, I woke up bright and early (by my standards at least) and made my way over to the MGM Grand to play their 11:00am $65 craps tournament, errr poker tournament. These tourneys are a joke, as they have next to no play and the skill level is borderline non-existent. Anyways, I managed to go pretty deep, finishing 11th/84 people, but as Momma once told me “that don’t pay the bills fool”! I hung around for a bit, playing a little $1-2 NL Hold’em, again nothing really brewing and I took a small loss of about $20. I decided to make my way over to the sports book to place some coin on that night’s NCAA Sweet 16 games. I bet $100 on a 4 game parlay. I bet on Western Kentucky (+12), Xavier (+1), and also Louisville and North Carolina to win outright. I watched the early games and won both of them, but then we HAD to go and watch Carrot Top. Anybody who knows Carrot Top knows that this guy is the master of prop comedy, and rather bizarrely he’s quite muscular. Makes for a weird combination to say the least! Either way, the red-mopped comedian put on a good show, although I’m not too sure it was worth the $60, but then again nothing in Vegas is worth what you pay for it. When we emerged from Carrot Top, I booked it straight to the Sports Book to find out the results of the late games. Turns out, I hit all 4 games and my bet paid out a nice $698. That means one thing, keep on gambling! I wasted away the rest of the night in the Luxor Poker Room, and won $105 playing $1-2 NL Hold’em, but promptly lost it as I blanked in a $65 and $55 tournaments. Can only mean one thing....time to go back to Bellagio tomorrow!

Friday was to be our last full day in Vegas, so I had to take full advantage as far as getting my money into action! I slept in late, and made my way over to Bellagio around noon and sat down at the $15-30 Limit Hold’em. I caught some hot cards early, and was up over $1000 at one point in under 2 hours at the tables. Eventually, Jon came to get me around 3:30 to go out for breakfast/lunch/dinner and I cashed out ahead about $740 for the afternoon. As we were leaving Bellagio, Slim noticed that none other than Nelly was sitting in at a poker table like 2 away from mine. While he was wearing a ridiculous hat, he was sadly not sporting a band-aid, although it may have been in his 6’10”, 600 lb. bodyguard’s pocket! That afternoon, Slim reported that he had also seen Criss Angel walking through the poker room at the Luxor. Then he disappeared. Goulet. So Super Slim and I made our way over to Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville for some food, and well margaritas! We both slightly over-indulged from a food standpoint and had trouble getting back to the hotel as we both felt violently ill! We managed to make it back, albeit barely and I put another $100 on a 2 game parlay, where I bet on Kansas (-12.5) and Memphis (-5) before retreating to my bed to recover for a couple of hours. Both games hit again for me and it paid out $360. So in true Brent Moreau fashion, I took the dough over to Bellagio and lost $540 playing $15-30 Limit Hold’em in less than 2 hours. Should’ve stayed in damn it! After, I went back to Luxor and played some drunk $1-2 NL Hold’Em with my homeboy and dumped off $250 playing really bad poker until the wee hours of the morning.

Saturday was pretty uneventful, involved me flying home and contemplating my life. God, I’m such a deep person. Cough, cough. Anyways, for the whole trip I booked a ridiculously small all-around gambling profit of around a couple hundred dollars (thanks NCAA, boo poker). Guess I can’t quit my day job just yet!

Stay easy peoples, and keep on truckin`!

Life and Times of A Degenerate - Las Vegas - March, 2008...Part 1/2 - Hey hooker give me a room key!

(Originally published March 31, 2008)
(Pictured: Damn it feels good to be a gangster. How tough do I look holding that Uzi? Bitches beware!)

So....It's been a while since my last trip report, as I've been living the dream and working construction outdoors in balmy southern Ontario all winter. God I love the weather here. Anyways, Slim and I decided to head on out to Vegas for 5 nights to do some gambling, drinking, and more gambling. This is my 3rd trip to the great state of Nevada but it would be Super Slim’s virgin voyage.

So Monday morning rolled around, and I was up bright and early to catch my flight to Vegas. Slim would be travelling separate and not arriving until late at night as I was travelling Air Canada and he with West Jet. Anyways, I made it into Vegas by about 10:30am local time (after another flight with a non-functioning TV) and dropped my bags off at the Luxor (big pyramid hotel for you CSI people!). By 12:00pm I had made my way over to the beautiful confines of the Venetian poker room. I promptly lost $200 playing $1-2 NL Hold’em and $4-8 Pot-Limit Omaha (lots of poker talk in this story. For those not interested in poker/gambling, when you start to see numbers, skip ahead!). Not the greatest start to the trip, so I decided to try my luck over at the Mirage. Turns out the Mirage tigers were not there (renovations) and neither was any decent action in the poker room. This left me to turn to the comfy confines of the Bellagio, my favourite! Bellagio has always been my favourite place to play in Vegas for a couple of reasons: 1) higher stakes action 2) great poker room 3) possible celebrity sightings 4) It’s Bellagio come on! Anyways I saddled into an $8-16 Limit Hold’em table and proceeded to make $600 over the next 12 hours playing drunk poker (common theme throughout my trip, the drunk part, not the making money part!). By 2:30am when the game finally broke, it was me and 9 Asian guys at the table. Who says Asians aren’t degenerate gamblers? Not this guy! So I stumbled back to the hotel and was supposed to meet Slim at midnight, but was 3 hours late. When I couldn’t find him, I asked this skinny white dude who was with this big black hooker if they could swipe their room card into the elevator for me to get up to my room. They told me to politely fuck off. Eventually I found my Ukrainian counterpart and promptly crashed. Happy times in Sin City!

Tuesday morning I woke up and discovered that I had fallen asleep in a shallow (albeit very shallow) pool of $100 bills. I had always dreamed of doing this since Uncle Scrooge had that swimming pool full of money on Duck Tales. Slim Jim and I made our way over to the MGM Grand for a $65 tourney at 11:00am and were both promptly eliminated. On the positive side, we had fired up the beer train during the tourney! I spent the next few hours playing $2-5 NL Hold’em at MGM but couldn’t get anything going other than beers down my throat. I ended up down $75 for the session, which was a big disappointment considering there was this old, rich dude at my table who dumped off over $3000 to the other players. All I can say, is at least he had a hot, younger wife! God Bless America and all it stands for! That afternoon I put $100 on a parlay bet for the Maple Leafs to beat the Boston Bruins and for the total goals to be over 5.5. Slim and I made our way over to the ESPN Zone restaurant to watch the Leafs game, but turned out they were showing every NBA and NHL game except for that one. We stayed anyways for some pints and grub and found out the final score was 6-2 for Boston, and the Leafs were eliminated from the playoffs. My day of hard boozing and gambling made me tired and I KO’ed by like 8pm. Shit’s weak.

Wednesday started very early for me, as I woke up at midnight from my nap. Slim was fast asleep so I left his sorry ass and cabbed it down to the Bellagio for some late night/early morning action. I sat down in a $15-30 Limit Hold’em Game. I took some pretty sick beats, including a guy flopping a straight flush on me, while I turned an Ace high flush, which equalled a nice payoff for the other dude. I ended the session a $407 loser, but on a more positive note, I did get a chance to see Men ‘the Master’ Nguyen playing that night. For those of you who are ill informed, he is one of the greatest poker players of all-time and has won more ‘Player of the Year’ awards than anybody. Period. After my not so stellar session I stumbled my ass back to the Luxor and crashed by about 6:00am before re-awakening at about 11:00am. That afternoon, Slim and I went to check out this place called ‘The Gun Shop’ where they let you fire guns. It’s pretty weird. You go in and basically just pick a gun off the wall (everything from pistols to rifles to machine guns, etc) and then you get your ammo and pick out a target (we both took the picture of Osama, seemed to be the overwhelming favourite amongst the gun-loving masses there). I chose to fire an Uzi, while Slim chose the M16. I definitely felt like more of a man after the experience. Kids, if you want to make a lot of money, open a gun shop in Nevada, place was crazy busy. That afternoon, I played some $1-2 NL Hold’em at the Luxor and dumped off $200 playing really-bad-drunk poker. That evening, Slim and I decided to check out the Comedy show at the Tropicana, which was a good deal, as it featured 3 comedians for $20 and a free drink. It wasn’t quite as good a deal though as the $7 steaks and $2.50 beers we had beforehand at Excalibur. Mmm Mmm good! Anyways the comedy show was funny (not influenced by alcohol at all by this point) and the beer was cold. After the show, I decided I needed to buy a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts and consume as many as I could on the spot. Six donuts later, and let’s just say our toilet didn’t like me too much the next morning. Is the box half-empty or half-full?! I don’t know, but you have a better chance of guessing how the porcelain was! Haha!

Montreal In December = Genius Idea - December, 2007

(Originally published May 27, 2008)

(Pictured: The "O" so famous hotel door. Pardon the bad jokes. I'm a tool.)

What does a good boyfriend do, I’ll tell you. He takes his girlfriend to Montreal in the middle of December for a “vacation”. Sucker.

So we left Bradford in my beat-up-piece-of-shit-Corolla-circa-1998-with-the-blue-interior on Friday, the 14th of December and headed east towards Montreal. Luckily, the weather held up for us and we made it to the land of poutine and frogs by the late afternoon (I’m just kidding, I love French people!). Seeing as how it was the winter months, we were able to get a decent price on a nice hotel, and we stayed at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth right in the heart of the downtown area. It is a beautiful hotel with a great deal of history, and is ranked in the top 500 hotels worldwide or something like that. Actually I believe it was listed at number 379, right behind the Bradford Inn. That night was viciously cold, so naturally I made Lou navigate the city with me, by foot! We went to a restaurant for some delicious eats and then hit up the convenience store for some beer and wine. Can you say two-person hotel room party!?

Saturday was equally as cold as Friday (hovering around I believe -20°C). So with my brain firmly not intact, we again decided to walk for some eats. We had a delicious brunch, and then did a little shopping, Eskimo style! That afternoon, while milling about the hotel, we made an interesting discovery.....We were staying on the 17th floor, which was the same floor that John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged their famous “Love-In” on. So I promptly went and took a picture of the door of the room where they stayed, which was conveniently marked for jack-asses like me. That night, we had the privilege of taking in a Hockey Night In Canada Game, as the Toronto Maple Leafs were in town to take on the Montreal Canadiens at the Bell Centre. The fans in Montreal are way more passionate (and entertaining) than in Toronto, although the drunks were usually all Leafs fans! The game ended with the Habs slaughtering the Leafs, by a score of 4-1, with Saku Koivu breaking out of his scoring slump to go off for a couple of goals. After the game we hit up the Peel Pub (yes it’s as seedy as the one in Toronto) for some pizza and brews. I love drinking away my sorrows and then stripping naked in the bar while singing Ricky Martin and Aqua.

Sunday, December 16, 2007 is a day that I will always remember. I awoke that morning to discover outside of the comfy confines of my hotel room laid the worst snow storm ever. After crashing my car earlier in the week while going 120km/h and hitting black ice, my winter driving confidence was bordering on non-existent to say the least. So with that in mind, we packed up our stuff and headed back west. We didn’t make it more than a kilometre from the hotel when we realized what we were up against. The motherfuckin’ Oprah Winfrey of all storms! We made our way to the 401, only to discover that part of it was closed due to blackouts. About 7 hours , 1 wiper blade, a couple of cheeseburgers, and numerous near spin-outs later, Lou and I decided to call it a day, as the driving was too treacherous and my nerves were shot. We stopped in a little town called Brockville that wasn’t even half-way home! Oh well, I was alive and able to catch some of the late football games! That night, we watched the season finale of Survivor (my first episode since that whole Romber fiasco a few years back) and starred in amazement out the window at the continuing onslaught of snow. Sugar Plum Fairies indeed.

Monday morning, after chowing down on the hotel breakfast we headed back towards the motherland. Only interesting thing to note here was the amount of cars and tractor trailers that had been abandoned overnight in ditches. Over the course of those two days I must’ve seen over 50 cars/trucks in the ditches. In the end though, we made it home and I’m not sure Lou will ever trust me to take her on a vacation again! Next vacation might have to be Nunavut in February!

I Eat GSP For Breakfast - Montreal - April, 2008

(Originally published June 29, 2008)

(Pictured: The Bell Centre in Montreal that fateful night. Craziest/most intense/drunkest sporting event ever!)

So the weekend of April 18, 2008, marked my third trip to Montreal in the past 19 months (Leafs game in December and Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in October 2006). This time, it was for another event at the Bell Centre....UFC’s Canadian debut! Unfortunately they wouldn’t let me get into the ring however, for fear of the fighter’s being injured by my devastating knock-out power.

So Friday I decided to be a hero and go to work until 1:00 pm, which turned out to be a rather chaotic decision, as I had to jet home from downtown Toronto, pack my bags, and then turn around and get to the airport for my 5:00 pm flight. All told, I made it on the plane and was touching down in Montreal an hour later. My friend Black Adam and his two buddies Track Star 1 and Track Star 2 were scheduled to meet me there a bit later in the evening as they were taking the train in from Toronto. They won their free train tickets in a running race apparently. Who needs trophies when they’re handing out round-trip train tickets to Montreal!? Upon my arrival at the Travel Lodge hotel, I was quite perturbed to discover that we in fact had a room with only one double bed. Good thing my floor sleeping skills are legendary, albeit alcohol usually plays a big factor in helping me to get into comfortable floor sleeping mode. So after the amigos arrived, we cranked up the cheap hotel room drinking in preparation to hit the town for some more expensive establishment drinking. Adam, Track Star 2, and I then hit up Rue Ste Catherine for some drinks, followed by an always necessary visit to McDonalds in the wee hours of the morning. During my visit to McDonalds, Black Adam and I found it necessary to call my girlfriend back home and inform her that there was a wealth of Chinese people inside the restaurant. Why this was necessary, I will never know.

Saturday morning I awoke from my floor sleep and promptly got cleaned up to make my way to the casino, solo style. I took a cab out to Casino Montreal, which cost me a solid 20 bones. Once inside I B-lined it for the poker room, which was a totally different animal than anything I had ever seen here in Ontario, or abroad for that matter. All of the tables were electronic, thus eliminating the need for poker chips or dealers. Quite interesting to say the least. Anyways, I hung out there for the afternoon, playing a couple of $115 tournaments and some $1-2 NL Hold’Em as those were basically the only games they were spreading. I broke out even for the afternoon and cabbed it back into Downtown Montreal to get ready for the UFC. Back at the hotel my other roomies insisted I had to go and eat some “steamies”, which are basically just the most disgusting yet delicious little hot dogs in the world. Knew I was gonna be feeling that in the morning. Soon after, it was time to head to the Bell Centre. Track Star 2 and I went earlier with his other friend Greasy Greek who had just gotten in from Toronto and was going to the event with some broad he met the night before! Haha. We watched all of the preliminary fights, before Black Adam and Track Star 1 showed up for the later fights. Black Adam showed up in good spirits to say the least and the rest of us weren’t far behind. Molson Export= even when grossly overpriced, still delicious. The fights were pretty solid all around, with George St. Pierre pulling a hometown hero move and pummelling Matt Serra in the main event. I’ve been to a lot of different sporting events in my life, but this was by far the craziest crowd I have ever seen. After we hit up some bar that I don’t really remember and I then proceeded to go back to the hotel and party with some other randoms before security whisked us all off to our own rooms. Sweet dreams indeed.

The next morning I awoke to discover that there were six people sleeping in a room that couldn’t even fit two people comfortably. I was wedged between the wall and the bed on the floor. Definitely not what I remembered signing up for, but you win some, you lose some. That afternoon, we went to the pub to catch the Raptors playoff game before jetting/training it home. Montreal defeated me yet again, but I’m sure I’ll be back for more!

I'll Do One Stampede, Chief - Calgary - July, 2008

(Originally published July 20, 2008)

(Pictured: Real men [and women] riding in style. Look at all the pussies in the stands....just like me!)

Seeing as how I`m a real hardcore authentic cowboy-type fella, I felt it urgent that I go out to Calgary to take in what is dubbed “The Greatest Outdoor Show On Earth”, The Calgary Stampede. Below is the tale of a real cowboy, and by cowboy, I mean suburbanite in a ridiculous hat and shirt. It’s what I do.

Originally I had planned to travel to Calgary on Thursday, July 4, but seeing as how I was travelling stand-by, I ended up having to go a night earlier on the Wednesday. So I made my way to the airport for my 11:00pm flight to Calgary, and in the line-up for security I noticed that the guys from the band illScarlett were in line just ahead of me. As I was standing there imagining what it would be like to be a rock star, I concluded that they were probably going to Calgary also, as I had remembered seeing them in the line-up of bands performing at the Stampede. Sure enough, I was right, cause hey Brent Philip Moreau is never wrong! On the flight I ended up getting bumped up to first-class because there were no open seats in the back with all the common folks and I was just so damn gorgeous. A couple of the guys from illScarlett (who were all sitting with the poor folks in the back of the plane) decided to place their guitars in the overhead storage area at the front of the plane, which the flight attendant did not approve of. I told her, that they could do what they want as they were rock stars. She in turn told me that she had heard this so many times before, yadda yadda yadda, and I just kind of let it die. About a half hour later the same flight attendant approaches me and starts asking me all about the band and I start spreading my useless knowledge on her like A-Rod on Madonna. I passed out for most of the flight and when I awoke a few hours later the flight attendant came up to me all giddy and showed me her freshly autographed CD for her daughter and some contact information from the band manager that was going to get her daughter backstage the following night at the Stampede. She also told me to wait around after the flight, as the band manager wanted to meet me and would also give me the backstage credentials. Beyond awkward, but like I had a choice. Anyways, sure enough I got introduced to him, we shot the shit for awhile and then he introduced me to a couple of guys from the band. I really didn’t want to hassle them too much as it was now after 3:00am Toronto time and everyone was tired. So after a couple of brief chats, I just kind of drifted away and never even took the manager up on his backstage crap. I had more important places to be like the Stampede Casino! Seeing as how my friends Slim and Chief weren’t arriving until about 10:00am on Thursday morning, and it was only like 1:00am, I had some time to kill and made my way to the casino for an all-night poker session. They only had two tables running (it was the middle of a Wednesday night after all) but I managed to get in and catch fire. We played a split Pot-Limit Hold’Em/Omaha game, before switching exclusively to Omaha. After about an 8 hour session, I cashed out up about $1150.00 and what do you know my whole trip and then some was now paid for as long as I didn’t go back to the casino (which I shockingly never did for the remainder of the trip!). Slim and Chief finally arrived and were picked up at the airport by Chief’s friend from college, known simply as Fish (real name as fas as I know), whom we would be staying with. They told me to just walk over to his house from the casino, but naturally I got lost, ended up in Chinatown on the complete opposite side of Calgary and had to fork over some of my hard earned dough for a cross-town cab ride. Insert me sleeping for the next few hours to gear up for a rowdy Thursday night.

After rising in the mid-afternoon, we decided to head over to the bar-restaurant where Fish worked at, which if I recall correctly was named Original Joe’s. We downed some fine foods and ales there before heading back to the house that Fish shared with his five other roommates. Next it was time for them to invite a bunch of people over for a big house party that started to get real sloppy when it turned into a big-time flip cup tournament. My team ended up winning like seven games in a row and we were off to the races. Around this same time, my mind starts to get really foggy, but I do recall us all going to some bar (name unknown) in a large fleet of cars and cabs. All I remember is drinking (a lot of Jager bombs and shots), some guy wanting to fight me over a game of pool (I think I was too drunk to play) and a cover band playing hard rock. Sounds like a good night at least!

Friday, we all were crashing hard and the three drunk amigos from Ontario did not awake until well after 1:00pm. We just kind of lounged around the house until Fish got off work at 5:00pm. From there, we amassed the troops and made our way over to the Stampede fairgrounds. Right when we got there, it started to torrentially downpour like it was nobody’s business. After emerging from our hideout, we made our way over to one of the beer gardens for a few beverages, but not before I bought myself a shiny new cowboy hat. I figured the hat would be wrecked by the end of the weekend, as I have a knack for destroying western apparel. At the gardens, Slim and I decided to stray from the group for a bit, and ironically decided to head over to the Coca-Cola stage and check out a performance by none other than illScarlett. Standing amongst the masses, I was now kicking myself for not following up with their manager a couple of nights earlier. Oh well, shit happens, quite frequently in my case. After the show, we met up with our long lost friend, Miss Mo-Mo (she cries a lot) who now lives in Calgary as she attempts to make something of herself. Good for you champ! We headed back to meet up with our ever-growing posse, but sadly had to leave Mo-Mo, as her friends were waste-cases and in no state to roll with high-class citizens such as us. Solid ten minute reunion if I ever saw one. From there, we all (about 20 of us now) decided to brave the massive line to get into Nashville North, the Stampede’s hallowed drinking/partying grounds. We had to wait in line for over two hours, during which I lost $20 playing rock-paper-scissors against some annoying swamp donkey. Fuckin’ skanks. When we finally made it to the front of the line, our posse had shrunk considerably as many had given up and gone elsewhere. Let me tell you though, it was worth the wait as it was a rocking good party with a solid country cover band and enough hillbilly posers to make up 30 casts of Nashville Star. It took us forever to get home after, as cabs were impossible to come by, but eventually we made it, new chapeau included!

Saturday, was by far my most productive day on a few fronts. See: shopping, rodeo, clinical drinking, moshing, finding phones. Stampede Saturday in Calgary consists of one of the, if not the world’s largest pub crawls with over 25,000 people. Chief and Fish decided to partake along with just about everyone else (this was after we went to Original Joe’s for breakfast at 10:00am and were already boozing), while Slim and I decided to sally out and headed over to Stampede grounds. That afternoon, we took in the day’s rodeo, which consisted of a variety of events including bull riding, steer wrestling, calf roping, bareback riding, etc. It was actually quite entertaining and we even got to sit next to an authentic native family. I believe the father’s name was Chief Itchyballs (no relation to our pal Chief). After the rodeo, we did a little souvenir shopping and both bought ridiculous honky-tonk shirts, so that we could blend in with the locals. Classy is my middle name. After grabbing some dinner, Slim and I decided to meet up with the always extensive posse at the last stop on their pub crawl. We managed to sneak in to the bar, as there were thousands of people just everywhere. After staying there for a bit, we decided to head over to this rock bar called the Back Alley. And let me tell you, what a solid decision this was. The dance floor was basically a mosh pit for most of the night as they played a spot-on selection of some of rock’s best music. A few elbows to the face and few hundred dollars later, we left a sweaty, filthy mess, all agreeing that it was basically the best rock bar ever. Like I mean, ever!

Sunday morning, I woke up to discover that I had some random dude’s cell phone and keys in my pocket. And then it started coming back to me how I had found it on the dance floor and pocketed it the night before. Anyways I got a hold of the guy, who was apparently in as good as shape as I was the night before. That afternoon, a couple of Fish’s roomies were nice enough to drive me to the airport for $20, as a cab ride was about $50. I boarded my plane home feeling sick to my stomach, as binge drinking for a few days straight will do that to you and arrived in Toronto on Sunday night. Only problem was my luggage never arrived! I also made the mistake of packing my car keys in my checked baggage, so I had to convince my brother to come and deliver me a set at midnight on a Sunday night in exchange for my ID (he’s only 18). My baggage arrived the next day, and my brother got my ID taken away a mere five days later, never to be seen again....the end!

I'll Have A Samuel Jackson! - Boston - October, 2008

(Originally published November 2, 2008)

(Pictured: Enjoying the sweet, sweet nectar coutesy of my friends at Samuel Adams)

So for some bizarre reason, my girlfriend Lou still agrees to be seen in public with me. I’m not really sure why you would travel to another country with me, but that’s neither here nor there. For our latest little foray into the world of not-so-exotic travel, we decided to head to Boston, Massachusetts for three nights, or as I like to call it, the only place in America where people still give two-shits about baseball.

We both rose bright and early on Wednesday morning, the 22nd of October as we had separate flights to catch around 9:30am. As usual, I travelled on Air Canada using my family airline passes and the ole GF flew on American Airlines using the Air Miles she had accumulated (although somehow her FREE FLIGHT still cost her north of $200.00!). Once we met up in Boston we decided that we weren’t going to wait 45 minutes for our hotel shuttle to pick us up. Bad idea! The cab ride to our hotel in Saugus (airport region/town outside of Boston) ended up costing us $45.00US, which with the current sagging dollar is the equivalent of about $4,405,678.28. Once we arrived, we found out our room was not ready, and the gentleman at the front desk suggested we go and check out the “Freedom Trail”. So we hopped on board the subway, for what would be one of many public transit rides we would take. After searching around for the Freedom Trail for a bit, we finally decided to ask a police officer where it was. His response was (in a heavy Boston accent), “you’re standing on it. There’s not really much to look at”. I felt like a jackass, but then again when don’t I? So we walked the Freedom Trail through Boston’s North End, which included stops at Paul Revere’s house, Cobbs’ Hill, the USS Constitution, and bunch of other patriotic-Americana-New England-tourist shit. After our little adventure we headed back to our hotel for a bit before heading out to the Mexican-Cajun restaurant down the street called the Border Cafe. Me and the lady ended up closing the place down at about midnight over some Dos Equis and Coronas and sauntered back to the hotel, passing a hockey arena and the world’s largest (unofficially) steak house sign. No word of a lie, this neon steak house sign was a solid couple hundred feet tall!

Thursday morning, we didn’t role out of bed until lunchtime, so our window to see things was fairly limited by the time we made it into the city. We decided to head over to Fenway Park to take the tour of the world’s most (arguably) famous baseball stadium. The Red Sox had just been beaten out of the playoffs a few days earlier, so there were quite a few disgruntled employees and fans. The tour was pretty cool, and included stops in the press boxes, the oldest seats in baseball, the Green Monster, and the shag pad in the back where Babe Ruth would take hookers after the game for a pop and some lines of coke (all true except maybe that part about Babe Ruth). Following that educational experience we headed over to the Boston Public Garden for a granola feeding frenzy with the ducks and squirrels. Rather conveniently, the bar that the TV show “Cheers” was based upon was right there, (ok maybe we were heading there and stumbled onto the park) so we popped in for a beer and some eats. It looked nothing like the one on the show, but I still got to sit under a picture of Ted Danson, so I was happy nonetheless. Next stop of the day was the TD Banknorth Garden to see those loveable losers the Toronto Maple Leafs take on the Boston Bruins. On the way, I had to stop at a McDonald’s to take a piss, but when I went to go pee, a cleaning lady came in and started cleaning right beside me like it was normal. Naturally I got stage fright and couldn’t urinate with this large Mexican woman standing beside myself and Brent Jr. (everyone names it right!?) so I ended up going to the Dunkin’ Donuts next door. Upon entering the arena, I was told that I could not bring my backpack in which was a big hassle. I ended up throwing it out and cramming as much shit as I could into my pockets. The hockey game itself ended up being pretty entertaining, as the Bruins had a 2-0 lead before the Leafs stormed back and won the game 4-2. The highlight of the game was definitely seeing Mike Van Ryn get checked through the glass about 20 rows in front of us! After the game, we went out for a couple more brewskis before heading back to the hotel to gear up for Friday morning.

The next day, we again did not rise until lunch time, and ended up scrapping our original plans of heading over to the town on Salem due to time constraints. Instead, we hopped on the subway (Or “T” as those in the know like to call it) and headed over to the Jamaica Plains neighbourhood which was home to the Samuel Adams brewery. We did the tour of the brewery and got lots of free beer which was cool. During the whole tour, I just could not stop thinking about the Dave Chappelle “Samuel Adams/Samuel L. Jackson” (Drink my mothafuckin’ beer!!!) sketch. Best marketing they ever got! Following the tour and tasting, Lou and I headed over to this pub “Doyle’s” for some lunch/dinner. It was the first pub to ever serve Samuel Adams and was also featured in the movies “21” and “Mystic River”. From there, we dragged our now very bloated asses over to Harvard University to soak it all in. It was highly uneventful, but we had to go there just to say “we did it”. Nah mean? On that note, it made me feel very unedumacated being surrounded by the future of America in the form of a lot of Asians in their late teens and early twenties. That night, we again hit up the Border Cafe for some pops and food (try blackened Cajun chicken some time people) before finishing it all off with a shot of tequila!

Saturday morning was home time. I did have another “C” list celebrity on my flight (two trips in a row!), as Mike Milbury was sitting near me. For those who don’t know, he is on Hockey Night in Canada, was a coach and GM in the NHL, and as a player once climbed into the stands and beat a fan with his own shoe! Best part about it, was the fact that his fly was wide open. Nice comedic ending to a far-too short vacation.

Until next time, stay classy kids.