Doggy detox

I've been a bad, bad dog. First Coun. Dog (sic. hah.) Thompson hires trappers to run me outta Dodge - um, okay, Greely. They catch a couple of my slower eastern brethren and bring down all manner of vigilante doofuses (doofi?) on moi's frisky tail.

Okay, I know it's gettin' hot. I scoot the Top Sekrit Furtress of Solitude over to Richmond. Where, suddenly, like, Coun. Jan Harder jumps onto the anti-coyote bandwagon and gets all, like, "you are so not allowed here, either!" What's wrong with these people? Don't they know that a semi-mythical coyote on a heavy chocolate jag is uncatchable?

It's not all bad. A small, vocal pro-coyote lobby is spamming the Petfinder, explaining that ya don't leave small pets and food outside, unsupervised, for long periods in semi-rural areas. (Letters with pix of highly photogenic Alberta coyotes... Yoohoo! Over here, mister shutterguy!) Others kindly and correctly note there's way more than one kind of rural predator checking out the daily specials on the menu. And wonder exactly who's unbalancing the ecology more here, anyway, coyotes or people? I have my opinions.

Still, despite the joy of a good chase, certain of the Irregulars worry. When they finally catch up to me Saturday night, snarfing Hershey's on the curb outside the Mac's on Gladstone, the IO suggests I've been really pissy lately. The Short Guy says I should lay off the chocolate and let my kidneys recover. Aggie fixes me with a gimlet eye -- maybe two, hard to tell because she's a teensy bit unfocused -- and urges me to get the hell out of town and lay low for my own good. A spa retreat, I ask? A nunnery? Hopefully...

Nope. This is intervention, big-time. Those rat bast... ummmmm, friends, concerned for my safety and well-being... jump me and slam me into a travel crate. And ship me to detox. In Sudbury. Here, I languish, jonesing in a lockdown facility. Coyotes have no pockets in which to smuggle in their chocolate stashes. Grim.

It's not all whacks on the nose with newspapers, though. I'm apparently recovering in record time. Heh. The counsellors (No nuns in sight. None.) are very impressed with my progress. If I'm a good dog, they'll let me go on the field trip to the nickel mine. If I'm a really good dog, they might persuade the tour guides to let me spell out my name in glowing slag... and how cool is that?

Another Friday Night with Fourth Dwarf

"Care to see a flick Friday night?" a pretty pixie asked me this week.

Always liking it when the lady makes the first move, I happily agreed. "What are we going to see?"

"There will be Blood," she told me.

"Gee, sweety," I said. "I don't like vampire movies."

"Don't worry," she said, "it's not a vampire movie. You'll like it, I promise."

"Oh, ho!" I thought. "It must be a pirate movie!" (Wrong, but I'm getting ahead of myself.)

Dinner at the Buffet Moni Mahal

The Buffet Moni Mahal has the best Indian buffet in downtown Ottawa or the Glebe. (I've tried them all unless a new Indian restaurant has opened in the last month.) The price is lower than most and it has a wider variety of items. In fact, at least double the number of dishes you'll find at Haveli or the East India Company.

There is always butter chicken. There is always egg plant. There is always spinach.

We both enjoyed our meals. The staff said nothing about the number of plates I used.

Moni Mahal Buffet
164 Laurier Avenue West, Ottawa, ON K1P 5J4
Tel: 613-234-8882

[Many online references have the Moni Mahal on Laurier Ave East. This is wrong. And may embarrass you if you take a taxi from Slater Street.]

There will be Blood

It's not a vampire movie and it's not a pirate movie. It's a mining movie! To be specific, it's about the early days of oil drilling, but it starts in a gold pit. It brought me back to my youth, I tell you.

I was fascinated because I've had little experience with oil. Sticking mostly with salt, coal and of course, the precious gems and minerals. But I can tell you, the scenes in the pits were realistic.

The movie also had lovely music from the London Philharmonic except that a lot of the time you could tell that something horrible was going to happen just because the music was so loud and screechy. Can't they hear those violins? Don't they know that she's about to blow?

Favourite quote: "I'd like you better if you didn't treat me like I was stupid."

Noteworthy credits:

• Standby Greens - Ryan Bust [He has an entry on IMdb; And this article says "The greensman is a specialist who decides how and where to place plants and greenery in the film scenes."]
• Albert Chi as himself [How can a movie set between 1899 and 1929 have someone playing themself? But on IMdb, I see that he is listed as "assistant: Mr. Anderson" and Paul Thomas Anderson was the Director.
  
• "This motion picture was carbon neutral" [Which is quite an accomplishment given that they had an oil well fire and some cool explosions. On the other hand, Industrial Light and Magic had lots of credits, so maybe that was all animation. Still, I had to wonder, if ILM was involved, why couldn't they make it look like the wheels on the old cars were rolling forward instead of backward?
  

All About Bob

Icemaking, Rideau Canal

Friday night with Fourth Dwarf

Being the generous fellow I am, I took a break from meta-blogging Friday evening to give a young lady a night on the town. Overall a fine evening

#1: Pub-Blogging the Atomic Rooster

"Let's try this place," I suggested figuring the name indicated a chance I could get a well-cooked chicken. My companion spotted a veggie burger on the menu she thought she could get along with.

A responsible restaurant reviewer would give the Atomic Rooster a few more tries, but I'm neither a restaurant reviewer nor responsible.

The food: Being not so hungry, I only ordered half a chicken with Garlic Smashed Potatoes and grilled vegetables. To my surprise they gave me the front half of the chicken. A white meat fan would be pleased by this, but I'm not a white meat fan. Alas, when I pointed this out to the waitress, she told me that it was all the cook had and it would take too long to cook a hind quarter. Have I been ordering whole chickens so long that I've missed this new trend in half-chicken cooking?

The Garlic Smashed Potatoes were not well-named unless a fellow named Garlic did the smashing.

The grilled vegetables were tasty.

My companion reported her veggie burger was ho hum and the salsa tasted like it came in a bottle.

Decor: Nice bright paintings on the wall. But something was missing. Can't quite say what. The space felt too much like a cafeteria. And nothing said "atomic" to me.

Extra touches: Other diners apparently had nice napkin rings and received free grapes after their meal. We did not.

Verdict: Not a replacement for the usual spot.

#2: Sexapalooza

Waiting in line to get in, a young security guard checked everyone's identification. Other adults in the line thought this inappropriate, especially for me with my long beard that has a touch of grey in it. "No, no," I explained to the incredulous attendees, "if we look like we may be 25, he has to ask."

For $15 each, we received a coupon for 30 minutes of free adult movies from the internet and had the opportunity to wander around the crowded basement of Lansdowne Park and see:

• Various items for sale that I understand are readily available in several downtown and suburban locations;
• Fully dressed woman disinterestedly demonstrating a form of dance that relies on a vertical pole;
• Other woman standing on stage and impersonating Meg Ryan at the delicatessen in
  When Harry met Sally; and
  
• A large woman tapping the naked breasts and stomach of a smaller woman who was strapped to a wooden frame. ("Very nice breasts," my companion overheard another woman say to her friend.)

In short, it was a waste of $30 because I don't need to go to Sexapalooza to find any of that. "What they needed," suggested my companion, "was lots of semi-clad beautiful men and women walking around handing out free samples."

#3: Celebrity Night at Spins'n'Needles

Aside from yours truly, I didn't spot any actual celebrities at this event. But the art was all about them. For people who didn't bring their own project to work on, the organizers had supplies for:

1. Celebrity paint by numbers
2. Celebrity collage
3. Celebrity finger puppets

I probably don't need to tell you that both my lovely companion and I decided to make finger puppets. This was a special treat for me because it was my first time using a glue gun. Wow!

People sitting near us did puppets, but also the paint by numbers. The results were stunning although we couldn't tell if the woman was Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan and the man was either J.F. Kennedy, Matt Damon or Brad Pitt.

No question about it, Spins'n'Needles was the best part of the outing.

Denouement

On the way back to the cave, a woman who got off the bus behind us called out, "Excuse me, you dropped these, do you want them?" She held up the adult movie coupons from Sexapalooza. They had been in my coat pocket with my mittens.

"Um, uh, yes." I took them from her. "I guess they fell out of my pocket when I took out my mittens."

"I thought maybe it was your way to invite me to a movie," she said.

"Ha, ha, no," I said. "Unless you want to go to a movie..."