Die Hard Three

Hello everyone I’m back to travel blogging (my favourite kind – and yours I hope). This time it’s a quick sixty-seven hour visit to New York City to catch a taping of the Daily Show with Jon Daily. If you recall last time I went to the show it was all standby but this time we actually have tickets. They have not yet announced the who the guest is and I’ve been anxiously stalking Twitter for the past week looking for some indication of which historian will end up crushing my lifelong dream of seeing a celebrity in person.

So stay tuned for various updates on my adventures. Or not. I don’t really care. Unlike most writers I’m pretty indifferent about the quest for blog hits. The other day I did an experiment to boost my ratings by posting a nudie picture of myself and not one person clicked through. Not even the Google web crawler. Oh well.

I was never one to follow the rules (I was supposed to list ten items) so here are 12 random things you may or may not know about me. If you “like” this post I will give you a number and then you can make your own list and post it on your Facebook wall.

1. I don’t actively cheer for any one sports team – I cheer against specific teams. Ottawa, Vancouver, Portugal, and others.

2. I have the world’s largest collection of promotional material from the Die Hard films. I do not know exactly how much money I’ve spent on this over the past 25 years but it’s probably more than $3,500 CDN. The collection is uninsurable as there is only one person on planet earth to whom it is worth anything.

3. I’m happiest when I’m traveling and I’m second happiest when I’m building, designing, or writing something. I’m actually happiest when I’m doing all of these things at the same time while enjoying a beer.

4. When I was 24 I wrote a full-length movie screenplay that I recently reread and found to be terrible but I remember the 24-year-old me was really pleased with it.

5. Back in high school some friends and I were going to play pool one night and there was no space in the car so I went in the trunk and on the way there we got pulled over by the cops.

6. I rarely shave my face with a razor and when I do it’s never lip or chin. I’ve shaved my entire face with a razor exactly four times in the past 15 years and I know the exact dates of each of these four times.

7. When I enter or leave any building that has a foyer and the weather is extreme (very hot or very cold) I wait until both the interior and exterior doors are closed before proceeding so that the heat or cold does not escape.

8. I’m competing with my brother to see who can go longer without owning a car. He’s winning but only because he’s older than I am. He’s not aware of the existence of this competition.

9. I’m a bit dyslexic (self diagnosed) and this condition has given me the power to see both sides of an argument or situation.

10. I once solved a 1000-piece Ravensburger jigsaw puzzle in just under six hours. I did not take any breaks for food or bathroom or internet.

11. I once built a portable, life-size 13-foot (4-metre) crucifix that was taken to Europe in a ski bag and used to mock-crucify a lesbian vampire on a beach in Cannes France to promote a movie during the film festival. The wood I used was pressure treated and (at the time) was illegal to export outside of Canada. I never told this to my friend who transported it.

12. When I was in grade school I saved up the proofs-of-purchase from all my GI Joe toys and mail-ordered a not-available-in-stores working parachute kit for the figurines. I took it to school strapped to Snake Eyes and the first time I threw them in the air it worked as advertised but it landed on the roof of one of the portable classrooms. It’s probably still there. I never saw Snake Eyes again.

Hello everyone. It’s that Movember time of year again. For those of you who are not aware, Movember is a month-long fundraiser for men’s cancer (not promotion, the defeat of). Participants are supposed to clean shave their faces on November first and then grow a moustache for then next thirty days. A proper moustache can be any size but it must be a physically separate island of upper lip facial hair not touching the sideburns or chin whiskers. The idea is that while a full-on moustache is a beautiful thing (witness the awesomeness that is Ron Swanson) the growing phase is… let’s say, awkward. And it’s this awkwardness of visibly sporting terrible facial hair that will help raise awareness and money for a good cause.

For the past two years I’ve participated in Movember, and participated well. But I always found something to be a bit lacking. I think it’s the idea that a terrible mo can only start from a clean shave. So this year I’ve decided to take my Hallowe’en costume (Alan from the Hangover Part 2) and build a terrible moustache from a full-grown beard.

I feel like an idiot

I did a quick survey and confirmed that I do indeed look ridiculous. So here is what I propose:

if I get $300 CDN in the next 24 hours (before 16:00 Ottawa time on Friday Nov 15, 2013) I will keep this terrible mo until November 30, 2013. Otherwise it gets removed.

You can donate here. And James, your move.

For my Australian readers, birthplace of Movember.

And one more

I think $290 would be a nice amount.

Here is the final post for my trip to Boston. I had a great time. Got to see a Bruins game. My good friend Bill Linehan was reelected handily in District 9. And I also took a tonne of photographs. Some of my readers like looking at the pictures I take on my vacations. I have no idea why this is. I think they’re kinda boring. Anyway, here they are.

Here’s a picture of me with a no parking sign.

One of the buildings we tried to visit was not open.

Street parking is complex in Boston.

I tried to turn on a red and was almost arrested under a state-level statute.

One can only go straight here.

Some of the parks were off limits.

Sometimes parking is only allowed for film vehicles only.

Danger lurks under every sidewalk – every hollow sidewalk.

One of the locations where cat burglar Malloy buried his treasure.

I was not authorized.

Does it surprise anyone that the horses get lunch *and* water breaks?

I was asked to give a speech on the rights of women and minorities. “Asked?” Okay, I volunteered. 

The end.

I’ve recently become a huge follower of municipal politics. I used to be into federal and provincial / state-level elections but they’ve gotten so boring lately, it angers me to even have to mention them (even if it’s just to deride them). Local is where it’s at. Witness the rise and downfall and then re-risening of Rob Ford, mayor of Toronto Megacity. Week after week he’s out there, working the streets, providing his constituents with hundreds of hours of top-quality, reality-based entertainment. Contrast that with our federal-level representatives in the Senate. Their latest “ratings-grabber” is that a couple of their members incorrectly filled out their TPS Reports. My God I’m falling asleep just writing about it. 

One of the reasons I’m here in Boston is that the local elections are next week and I want to help out my good friend Bill Linehan in his reelection bid for Boston City Counsellor (District 9).

Go Bill! We believe in you!

Bill is all about progress and he knows what progress is. His opponent in this election has been campaigning on a slogan of

If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards.

Have you ever heard anything more absurd? Simple logic dictates that it’s completely reasonable for a non-forward-moving person to be going sideways or standing still. What about the z-axis? Up and down are both distinct possibilities. What if you started facing the wrong direction? Or what if your train is stopped and the train next to you starts to leave the platform and it only appears like your train is moving and when the other train pulls away that you realize you’re not moving at all? What if the map you were given is from 1965 and all the roads have changed?

None of this matters. What matters is that Bill is going to continue to fight for the things that matter. He doesn’t know what they are right now because *you* haven’t told him yet. So please leave some words in the comments describing some stuff you need done and Bill Linehan or one of his staff will read them.

Bill Linehan for City Counsellor!

(if you guys don’t believe that’s a real live politician with me in the photo, notice how he’s trying to adjust his jacket so that his name is visible in the picture)

I expect nothing less.

.

Boston is an historic city and while the United States of America was not born here per se, this is definitely the place where she was conceived. Like a horny teenager discovering how great freedom is, it was in Boston where she moved out of her parent’s house against their wishes saying, “You don’t control me! Whatever! I do what I want! I do what I want!”

Contrast that with the birth of Canada which followed a more traditional path where permission was sought in advance and the parents granted independence to their offspring (at the age of thirty) and even helped him move out of the house into the one-bedroom apartment a few minutes drive away from the family home.

The most famous tourist attraction and historical thing here in Boston is the Freedom Trail. It’s a walking path through the city that passes sixteen landmarks commemorating events that led to the creation of the greatest nation on Earth. In my research I was shocked to discover that while thousands of books, articles, and pamphlets have been written about the Freedom Trail no one has ever written anything about the actual Freedom Trail. Which of course leaves me once again to pick up the slack that should have been picked up by someone a lot more qualified.

Let’s begin.

The Freedom trail is 2.5 miles (4.02 kilometres) in length and is comprised of inclines in both directions (up and down).

It starts with this marker.

I’m not sure why they chose an image of a squid being stabbed as their logo. Must be a maritime thing.

And then you follow these red bricks.

Sometimes because of limitations in the surfacing it’s not possible to use bricks the whole way so they use paint.

Crossing a terrifying bridge made of metal.

Sometimes there’s a cover for some utility infrastructure in the way

but nothing can stop freedom!

Sometimes the bricks are camouflaged.

So pay attention!

If there’s someone stopped on the trail you have to wait patiently until they move.

I had to wait was about fifteen minutes for Gandalf and his friend but in the end,
I
did
pass!!!

We almost got lost when the trail ran into some sort of freedom fruit and vegetable market.

I’m not sure if this is what the farmers of the constitution had in mind.

The trail branches off in two directions a couple of different times.

Be careful. At stake is your freedom
trail experience.

And the trail ends with this marker. Watch for it.

You can tell cause the trail goes in but it does not go out.

So there’s your Freedom Trail. Next time you’re in Boston, be sure to check it out.

I still think Americans are the friendliest people in the world even though on Friday the bartender made me cry. And by “the” bartender I mean the guy that was tending the bar where I was having a beer two days ago. The United States is a nation with over 300 million inhabitants – there’s no way a single individual could serve drinks to all those people. Even Superman with all his speed would still have to wait for the mortals to place their orders.

Um, yeah. I think I’ll have something with lemon in it?

Anyway, here’s what happened. The GF and I are in Boston for the weekend and on Friday after the long drive from Ottawa, all I wanted to do was talk to some random stranger about baseball. I’d been growing my playoff beard for about eight weeks now and was eager to try it out (the baseball finals are on right now and the local team is playing). So we’re sitting at the bar of some random watering hole in Boston’s South End (sound’s dirty I know, but it’s not) and I casually ask the dude behind the bar, “So, other than the Red Sox, which baseball team is closest to here?” to which he immediately replied, “the Montreal Expos.”

I had expected this to be a happy trip and without warning this complete stranger brought back some of the saddest memories of my life. As a single tear rolled over my cheekbone and got lost in my beard, I explained to him that the Montreal Expos moved to Washington a few years ago. And he was all like, “Oh, yeah, I used to go up there all the time but I don’t follow baseball that much any more.”

In 1994, about six weeks before the playoffs were to begin, the Expos with one of the lowest payrolls of any team had the best record in Major League Baseball. Never having won a World Series title, this was to be their year. And then there was a strike, they cancelled the playoffs, and the following season they lost all their players to free agency or trades or whatever happens in baseball after all your players have career seasons and you can’t afford to pay them and then the team moved to Washington.

Ugh.

Think Moneyball but with five players being selected for the 1994 All Star game. And I’m still sad.

Most times bribes are illegal but this one isn’t. The trick is, before you offer the gift, publish the plot’s details in an open forum (like this blog). Once it becomes publicly known, it cannot be used against you because for bribes to be effective they need to be kept secret. The police officers conducting the interview are going to look pretty stupid demanding answers to questions that can be found with the simplest Google search.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=die+hard+three+blog+bribe

On that note, tomorrow my parents are driving to Southern Ontario to visit with my brother and as I previously mentioned, two of the pies I made last week will be used as bribes to get him to watch the movie Avatar with me.

These pies are rolling and there’s no stopping them.

Thanks mom and dad for taking them down. I’m publishing all this in order to prevent any possible prosecution. If I don’t post this, you could both be arraigned on charges of assisted bribery, conspiracy to commit bribery, and conspiracy to commit conspiracy. I know that last one sounds redundant but it’s an actual law. You should really go read some of the criminal code changes the government enacted during the Vancouver Olympics (or as I like to call them “the Great and Expensive Taxpayer Distraction”).

Dad, remember to email me and let me know when the “package is delivered” (if you can’t remember what that means refer to the card I gave you this morning – the green one with all the codewords).

On Tuesday I took a break from my daily practice of waking up without an alarm clock so I could get an early start on my plans for the day – baking apple pies. The previous Saturday the GF and I invested almost sixty Canadian dollars and two hours of our morning acquiring eighteen kilograms of fresh apples from a local fruit farm. My favourite autumn food is apple pie and I was *not* going to let this year pass with only token handouts of leftovers from Christmas / Thanksgiving / Easter supper.

So with the apples all purchased I ventured out to Orleans to learn from my mom the secrets of building delicious apple pies.

Now most people would keep secret something as important as the instructions for the perfect apple pie. Information is power and power is money and money is happiness and all that. But me, I get happy from eating pies (apple and rhubarb, not meat pies – these make me the opposite of happy – whatever that is) – so if more people are building apples pies *properly* it increases opportunities for me personally as I am more likely to benefit from the increased supply.

“What of the existing supply?” Well, right now Big Apple is focussed on quantity not quality. All the commercial suppliers construct their pies using robots and to save money they use every part of the apple (cores and all).

Everyone knows the best pies are made by highly-trained humans in a kitchen – not by some minimum-wage-earning robot in a factory somewhere. But the media has distracted all the voters (like they do every fall) with made-up scandals involving the end of the world. Last year it was the Mayans and this year the Republicans. I wonder what they’ve got planned for 2014? I bet you ten dollars it involves Toronto mayor and real-life walking-Onion-news-article Rob Ford getting his hands on some sort of bio weapon. “I think he just has gas.” That only proves my point – no one is going to click through to read a news story about a boring trip to the doctor. And all these print media outlets have to pay their bankruptcy lawyers somehow. So yeah.

Anyway. Here’s the step-by-step for making world-class apple pies. Call me if you need any help with quality control.

1. Sort your apples in a 6×10 grid on your kitchen table.

Remember to put your laundry out before you start baking.

2. Make sure you have all your ingredients – bleached white flour, bleached white cane sugar, sixty Courtland apples,

and a cocaine-sized baggie of cinnamon.

3. Peal and cut the apples into cubes about the size of my thumb. Take a pie tin and pour the cut apples into the tin to measure out the correct volume.

4. Take one half cup of white sugar and add three lines of cinnamon.

like this.

5. Then take two tables spoons of white flour and add it to the cinnamon sugar mixture.

Like this.

6. The final product should look something like

this.

7. Next mix the sugar-flour-cinnamon in with the measured-apples.

Like this.

8. Once the apples are mixed, you need to make the crust. Get your mom to prepare the pastry and roll it out into a circle.

Like this.

9. Take the circle and fold it in half.

Like this.

10. Cut some air vents in the lid to prevent the pie from exploding when it’s baking.

like this.

11. Pour the apples into the crusted pie tin.

Like this

12.  Next add as much butter as you can. The more butter, the more delicious the pie.

Like yummy!

13. Add the lid and bond the top and bottom crusts by pinching them with your fingers all they way around. Remove the excess dough with a table knife.

Remember to laugh at your foreign roommates when they try to pronounce the word “dough”.

14. You now have a finished pie. It just has to be cooked.

or launched at someone.

15. Put it in the oven.

like this.

16. Set the oven for 15 minutes at 430 degrees F (to cook the crust)

like this.

17. Then 35 minutes at 350 (to cook the filling).

Like this.

18. At the end you should have about nine pies.

Thats’s six short of the stated objective for the day.

“What are you going to do with all these pies?” Well, that’s obvious. I’m going to bribe my brother to get him to watch Avatar with me. He’s got a sweet tooth and I know he’s powerless against delicious apple pies. Most people are.

As was revealed by the existence of several blog posts describing the hike, my co-campers and I survived our two nights the Ontario wilderness even though it was touch-and-go there for a while. At the first night’s campsite cellphone reception was sporadic and it rained for a couple of hours. The second evening’s events were punctuated by several dozen chemical explosions – the origins of which remain a mystery, even to this day.

But we made it. The total distance hiked was about 23 kilometres (14 miles) (estimate). Average pack weight was about 40 pounds (18 kilograms) (estimate).

Our route.

On the hike back to the car we encountered a group of four brothers who were doing the whole 75 kilometre circuit (the complete Killarney trail is a loop). These guys looked to be in their late forties and early fifties and they told us that this was their thirty-second annual camping trip together. Think about that for a moment. Every single year for the past thirty two years these four brothers have gone (without fail) on a week-long hiking / camping / canoe trip together. Thirty-two times. I find that to be a remarkable example of brotherly solidarity. Remarkable because with my only brother, all I want to do is watch Avatar. Just once.

I really liked this film and I think he would really enjoy it too.

A hike around the full Killarney Trail takes on average about seven days to complete (plus the drive to and from the park). Contrast that with James Cameron’s Avatar – if you skip the closing credits you’re done in a brisk two hours and thirty-five minutes – a real bargain.

I think this Avatar proposal is a great one and should be accepted immediately. I promise not to give any pressure to watch the upcoming sequels (which will be awesome – because James Cameron is the master of the sequel – T2, Rambo: First Blood Part 2, Aliens). And please don’t consider my claim of “awesome” to be a form of pressure to watch the sequels – it’s more like an historical or scientific fact – an inherent feature of the universe if you will.

And there’ll be no extended edition. No making-of specials features. No watching it a second time to hear the fascinating director’s commentary. We don’t even have to discuss the content of the film afterwards. We can talk about its effect on the world of international copyright trade embargoes or whatever you want. Or we can simply not speak at all – quietly parting ways, acting like nothing happened. But that will be impossible because it’s such an awesome movie that it will be the only thing we will want to talk about for the next several years.

I understand you’re a busy guy. But this isn’t opening night of Terminator 2: Judgment Day at the Famous Players Gloucester 5 Cinema. There will be no waiting in line for five hours to get a decent seat. I’ll have the BluRay disc already preloaded into my PS3. The annoying, unskipable menus and copyright warnings will have already been displayed and all I’ll have to do to start the movie is hit play.

And I’ll even let you pick the time and date (provided it’s before the first Avatar sequel is released theatrically in Canada). I’ll also make sure to provide plenty of your favourite snack foods and beverages. I’ll even pay for your return transportation* from within a 600 km radius of Ottawa.

There are other bonuses too. Think about the cultural benefits – you’re surfing around on the Internet and you bump into this guy – after you watch Avatar you’ll be able to understand what’s going on. Your standing in society will increase tenfold.

So what do you say, bro? You wanna watch Avatar with me?

*Greyhound Intercity Bus only, 14-day advance purchase (or credit towards a rental car or train ticket equal to the cost of a 14-day advance purchase Greyhound Intercity Bus ticket)