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.