Toronto City Life » beer

Who Let the Sickness In?

Katherine — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 10:50:46 +0000

Guess what I did on Friday night?

I went bowling. It was Jess’s birthday on Wednesday (Happy Birthday Jessi!) and she wanted to go bowling. So we saved it for Friday and off we went. It was good too, because the week I had had made me want to throw things into other things and knock everything down.

There just might be a few people at my work place who drive me insane. Not going to go into why, just know that if you took everything that irritates you in the world and times’d it by a million, that’s how much these people irritate me. I ran out of there at 6PM like my ass was on fire because I needed to down the biggest beer I could find. Did that, and felt much better.

I won at losing. I choose to see the glass half full, thank you.

I love people watching at bowling alleys. You get all kinds. Apparently Friday night is date night. There was an older couple beside us that kept full on making out EVERY SINGLE TIME THEY HIT A PIN. Hey, I am not one to poo poo a cute love fest, but when you are practically taking each other’s clothes off, it’s time to leave and move on to the next part of the date man.

And then a young couple took their place once the older couple left to go bowling in bed, and you could tell it was the first date for them. SO AWKWARD. She kept doing this weird little dance every time she hit a few pins and he kept ignoring her and texting someone else. HE WILL DO THAT TO YOU FOR THE ENTIRE RELATIONSHIP, SO GET OUT NOW. Aren’t I just a dear Abby tonight?

Crazy face! I was drunk here. I was drowning my work woes, along with the fact that I was starting to feel crappy (and the full on sick hit me when the beer wore off), and the fact that it was FREEZING outside. Raining and windy and really, really cold. I felt winter in my bones people. Tonight is going to feel like -1 degree Celsius (30F). Brrr….so what do you guys say? Snow Watch 2011? Is it on?

These lights kept tripping me out. I kept seeing them out of the corner of my eye and I kept thinking that bowling balls were flying at my head. I kept ducking. A cool combo of the beer and my sick, spaced out brain was causing me to be delusional.

This is awesome, I know.

And then we stole someone else’s bowling thingy. I was Betty. That means I am hot.

On the way home, we decided to stop into a convenience store and pick up some ‘food’. I had to take a picture of this box of Cornflakes that was on the shelf because it is CREEPY. That kid is less cutesy and more Gage from Pet Semetary. How old is this box? Or is Kellogg’s (my nickname in high school) doing a throwback to the 60′s?

This hot dog was the only thing I wanted today. And then it made me want to barf.

I woke up today feeling like ass. Thanks people in the office who all got sick! I thought I would be able to fight this one off, but nope. My sore throat kept waking me up in the middle of the night. That only happens when I am really sick. I won’t go down easily though…vitamin C, echinacea, garlic pills and lots of herbal tea are my soldiers.

Sometimes when I am sick and delirious, I wear a bag on my head. Because that is how awesome I feel.

Look at this freaking cat. Cool way to sit. Her paws could punch you out.

I went and helped my sister at her new place today. I was supposed to help her move and it didn’t happen. She told me not to worry about it and just come by to help her later, so I did. Well, I didn’t so much help as stare at things and breath deep overwhelmed sighs all evening long. I would open a box, sort of shuffle the contents with my finger and decide it was too hard to sort through. This is what being sick does to me, I can’t deal. Normally I plow through shit until it’s done.

So tonight is all about my fuzzy slippers and video games. That is pumpkin beer you see there as well. I tried to drink it and just couldn’t stomach it.

I look like an old person who has never played video games before. ”Oh ok, like this deah?”.

Sunday’s agenda consists of coffee, bacon and eggs, a new book and pajamas all day. It’s going to be cold and rainy…a perfect day to stay inside.

Happy rest of your weekend!

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This just in….:

SarahD — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 23:51:32 +0000

Katie Roy June 17

British actor, Twilight star and all around “cute guy” Robert Pattinson sent hipster hearts aflutter on the Ossington strip last night. Dressed in his best nondescript Forrest Gump gear (white T and a blue ball cap), Pattinson held court at the Crooked Star with a few other folks, trying his best to be a super normal guy. He was relatively successful, as he merely received appraising side-way glances from all the ladies, and no shirt-ripping, screaming, or self-mutilation in the name of Edward occurred. As he’s in town filming David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, this intrepid reporter predicts more sightings, but it’s best not to look for the sparkle.

love, Katie!

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Home of the frigid jerk

Patrick — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 03:32:28 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, a few Torontonians got all sorts of feminine undergarments bunched up in their crevices when they learned that Coors had mentioned Toronto in one of their ads in B.C. “Colder than most people from Toronto”, was the exact phrase.

I wouldn’t have even mentioned it because the whole thing barely warranted it. What, like thirty to forty people complained? TCL gets that many visitors in a month, easy!

However, on my standard route this afternoon I found another one of their ads:

I read it. Then again. Then one more time.

I still don’t get it.

I mean, I like to think I’m kinda hip when it comes to this social media stuff. I may never have become a Facebook addict because I found it to be a cheap high, I never did have much use for MySpace because I already have my space, and while YouTube has been an endless source of painful (in so many ways!) hilarity, I can only digest it in twenty minutes sittings. But I digest (YES!! FINALLY GOT TO USE IT!!). I do it to stay with it. Like I said, hip. *thumbs up*

So this Coors ad … what the heck is it supposed to mean? Is it a reference to an online chat room where someone pokes you to get your attention? With a beer? I’m just not stoned enough to appreciate that, I guess.

My next thought was troubling; did someone just imply inserting a cold beer into my anus?! And what about the option for ladies?! — Hopefully that was not the message.

Could it be that someone has just physically poked you, with a beer? Does that make the beer more appealing in some way? Maybe has it touched a variety of sweaty spots during the poke and is now ringed with savoury body salts? Not with my beer, thank you kindly.

It just seems like the Coors people are having some trouble getting their message across. Look here:

So what’s so bad about this? On the surface, nothing. You have a beer that’s so cold that it’s been frozen to the bus shelter. The whole thing has, in fact, become a giant ice box. The image of a super-cooled beverage was probably intended to convey how you’d just turn to a chunk of solid ice the moment that baby hit your lips – it’s that cold.

The first problem is that it’s a lie. A visual lie, I mean. You walk into that shelter on a sweltering day and it’s not a bit cooler than it is outside. In situations like that, the “ice” becomes “condensation” from the heat, trapping the sheltered travellers in a sweltering sauna! Or at least it seems that way.

The second problem is that it’s it’s such an extreme image, all I can think of is the pain of anything ice cold hitting the back of my throat on a hot day. Some people get brain freeze, I get this; either way, I don’t want anything that cold to drink. A voice box that can be shattered with the tap of a hammer is not refreshing to me, I don’t care how many calories it has.

Finally, you got the snow on top. That’s Toronto for a good chunk of the year; summer is when most people try to forget about it.

The message was supposed to be Coors: cold and refreshing, but to me it came across as Coors: deceptive, painful, and upsetting.

I don’t even have anything against Coors. Not a beer I care for but I’d give it a hand if it fell in the street. You know, live and let live sorta thing. Besides, other beer companies have subscribed to strange advertising ideas too. Take this Stella Artois ad, for example:

The weird square in the middle is an UpCode tag. What you’re supposed to do is to download the UpCode application to your mobile phone. When you run it, it uses your webcam (at a very low resolution) to scan the code in, like the UPC scanner at supermarkets, and it opens up the web page it reads in. An automatic, no-type web address, if you will.

If you’re bored, you can read the UpCode from the photo above (the large size works better) on your own phone; just tilt it a bit to flatten the square in your display.

Anyhow, the whole thing seems like a long diversion, doesn’t it? And what does it link to?

Hopefully they’ve fixed it by the time you’re reading this, but you’d think they’d get their act together considering the poster is, like, out there.

They could’ve used that spot in the ad for a nice-looking model doing enticing things with a beer bottle. Instead, it sports an ill-conceived brick.

I believe in the modern interweb lingo, this is called advertising FAIL. (sorry, not sure if I’m supposed to italicize that)

At least Coors got the part about Torontonians being frigid jerks right.

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A fermented, non-crap alternative

Patrick — Wed, 27 May 2009 00:45:53 +0000

Breasts, bikes, and beer; the triumvirate of alliterative seduction is now complete!

At around this time last year, the Rickard’s beer company (one of a number Molson‘s subsidiaries), introduced a white wheat beer that I had absolutely no interest in. It’s not that I don’t enjoy beer but my interest in it wanes, much like my interest in full-time employment. Currently, it’s waxing.

Usually I imbibe my alcoholic beverages with deep political convictions; a pint of Guinness with a sipping shot of B52, for example. Rickard’s White, though, doesn’t really make a statement other than “I taste good” — which it does.

White ale, if you’re not familiar with it, is an unfiltered beer (hence the cloudiness), that has orange peel and coriander added to it to produce a slightly citrusy flavour. Unlike lager, ale is fermented more quickly and at room temperature (lager’s kept cold).

I’ve poured all sorts of fermented crap down my gullet and this drink is truly inoffensive. The slice of orange (sometimes lemon), shown in the photo is how it’s served at various pubs around Toronto. Friday afternoon’s tart and bitter post-work bitch-outs at Shoeless Joe’s just wouldn’t be possible without it.

I’m hardly a scholar of beer and it’s fair to say that the term “enthusiast” wouldn’t apply to me, but I can recommend this one. It’s the gateway drug of the legal alcohol world.

If I could leave just one parting note to our American neighbours, I would point out that Canadian beer tends to contain a man-level of alcohol (5.5%+), so take your time. And for the rest of you who may be wondering why this entry is uncharactersitically short, you will find your answer at the bottom of my pint glass.

Cheers!

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