humor

CANADIAN CLUB—an appropriate response to a day at the PNE

We bears had the house to ourselves all day yesterday. Meanwhile my parents were observing carny people—not just the blue-shirted PNE ride operators, but other, more interesting people, squeezed into all sorts of unfortunate outfits, bouncing along feeding themselves corndogs. My mum saw a woman with four nipples, arbitrarily arranged beneath a stretched-to-the-limit-of-physics tanktop. And when she took the girls to the bathroom she met a new mother dressed as a stripper.

Needless to say, they had an awesome day, although they spent a great deal of our alcohol funds on PNE-priced items such as, well water, at $3.50 for a half-litre bottle.

Now who needs water?

The only time we really need water is when we buy CANADIAN CLUB instead of CROWN ROYAL. Which we did out of curiosity today. We had just chastised my dad for buying—at the PNE—a pan-flutist’s CD for $20, which was ultimately my mother’s fault because she spent 15 minutes coursing through the PNE prize home while my dad waited on a bench being wooed by the pan flute. My mother heard it too; he was playing “Unchained Melody,” and the teenagers behind her were grasping for the artist. “The Righteous Brothers,” my mother said, which they either ignored or didn’t recognize, then the girl told her boyfriend she was sure she’d heard her mom playing that song, which netted her some noises of disgust. And she added, she would never have a white kitchen, although the wine rack beneath the deer’s head was pretty dope.

My mother didn’t mean to buy CANADIAN CLUB today, but the liquor store is right beside the bank, where she had to go to spread a small cheque between two separate accounts to cover such liquor-unfriendly things as her gym membership and the car insurance. She was trying to be nice by buying a cheap mickey of rye so she could sip something guilt-free instead of getting into the more expensive CAOL ILA 12 my dad brought back from Vegas. She was trying to do a good thing, but you have to admit she just ended up looking like an alcoholic, especially when the mickey fell out of her gym bag at Steve Nash Fitness World.

I’ve come to the defense of CANADIAN CLUB many times, especially since it’s typically pitted against fit-for-royalty CROWN ROYAL, which is a nice, smooth rye. If you order a rye ‘n’ seven at the bar, the bartender will usually try to pass off CANADIAN CLUB on you for economy’s sake. And with 7-Up or gingerale, this is perfectly reasonable. CANADIAN CLUB is plenty rough compared to CROWN ROYAL, but who cares when you’re mixing it with pop? Neat, or even over ice, it’s a different story.

When I drink CANADIAN CLUB, I feel like a ruminant. I can taste grass and hay, along with some jagged alcohol, which I like. What it lacks in nuance it makes up for in straightforwardness. With a sweet, fizzy mixer, I actually prefer the rougher-edged CANADIAN CLUB; it asserts itself better, and the pop hides its earthier tones.

If I were a cow, like the one the kids observed giving birth at the PNE, I’d wonder what the hell humans were doing with grains, making things like CANADIAN CLUB. I’d also wonder why there was a set of crowded bleachers right beside me while a farmer stuck his whole arm inside me, tied a rope around my calf’s leg and yanked it out. (Miss P and Miss V did enjoy the whole business, but they thought it took too long.)

There are a lot of weird things at the PNE. It makes Walmart seem downright sedate, and apparently it takes a lot of energy to spend 10 hours there with a four-year-old and a six-year-old. I’m delighted it drove my mother to drink, even if it was just CANADIAN CLUB.

Win a house, win a car…win a deer’s head

We bears had the house to ourselves all day while the family went to the Pacific National Exhibition. They did not buy a ticket for the showhome, despite its having a wine cellar in the freaking foyer of the house. They said it also had a deer head in the foyer, which could just have easily have been a bear’s head.

I don’t think it’s even a real deer’s head. I could live with it, even if Chuck Testa couldn’t.

WHITE BARK Wheat Ale—The start of a good party

My Fellow Inebriates,

This morning, in a moment of disloyalty, I tried to stow away in Christine’s fabulous canvas bag. Yes, Christine had arrived the night before bearing wheat ale, red wine, and—treasure of treasures—Glenmorangie 18.

We kicked things off with the wheat ale. WHITE BARK is a traditional Belgian-style ale brewed by BC’s Driftwood Brewery. Intended to be cloudy, WHITE BARK pours a hazy golden hue with a fine off-white foam that settles down quickly. It announces itself to the olfactory centre with a wheat-borne flood of coriander, clove, and citrus notes—in some aspects (perhaps I have gin on the brain) channeling Bombay Sapphire down to the very bottle, which sports a similar vertical row of tasting-note glyphs.

As we inhaled WHITE BARK we noted a strong yeasty backbone, which played out on the palate along with Belgian-style fruitiness and malt. Refreshing at ice-cold temperature, the ale became slightly cloying as it warmed and the flavors cut loose. The carbonation was prickly and pointy, urging WHITE BARK toward mainstream Pop Rocks quaffability even as the intriguing fruit notes insisted that no, it was not in any sense an ordinary beer.

And it wasn’t. But you have to really like wheat beer to appreciate an ale like WHITE BARK. It’s crisp and dry but still belongs unmistakably to the fruity-yeasty-wheaty camp. There’s a lot going on in it—sort of like a party that splits off into several factions, one of which decides to chuck a seven-foot cactus off the roof into the pool while the rest continue their obliviously sedate conversations. Which is to say I liked it, although I might not buy it again immediately.

And that was when I noticed, one of the compartments contained not booze but paper towels. Paper towels!!

Finishing the WHITE BARK bottle left a compartment empty in Christine’s canvas bag. (We didn’t get to the red wine, although some other, magnificent booze was shared.) When I peeled myself off the counter this morning, the first thing I saw was that empty space—just roomy enough for a little bear. So I climbed in.

And then I started to worry. My initial thought had been: Every time Christine comes over, she brings tons of booze! But my worry was this: If Christine has tons of booze, it’s because she saves it, and that means she doesn’t drink it very often. OMG!!!

At that moment my mum found me and helped me out of the bag. She said I had a blog to write, and some cheap crap to drink later—hooch so cheap we can drink it every day.

I’m right where I belong. (But Christine is welcome to come and live with us.)