One Gord still with us... one not

The news about Gord Downie caught us all by
surprise. The subsequent news that the group
would nonetheless tour this summer caught no
one by surprise. That's how Canadians roll...

It seems recent weeks have seen for more bad news than good news for Canada. It started on May 24 when iconic Canadian rock band, The Tragically Hip, announced on their website that singer Gord Downie had inoperable brain cancer. The outpouring of grief, sympathy and support was instantaneous by 9 a.m., washing across the land from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.

For the past 30 years, The Hip (as we call them here) and their music has been woven tightly into the Canadian social fabric. For most Canadians, aged 20 to 60, they have been the penultimate Canadian band, a musical touchstone for each subsequent generation from their debut in 1987 until now. As such, the band may mean different things to different people; different age brackets but in the end, there is universal agreement from every age that they are Canada's band. To very deliberately steal from Molson's, they... are Canadian.

However, that bad news was coupled with some good news from the band. In the same announcement came the news that they would be touring Canada this Summer, likely their last tour at Downie's request. A week later, this good news announcement came with some bad reality. Every ticket for every show in every major Canadian marketplace was sold out within a minute of their release, 99.9% of which were snapped up by scalpers.

Did you know that Canada Post had issued a stamp
honouring The Tragically Hip? No, of course, you didn't!
Really, when was the last time you actually mailed a letter?

Now calling scalpers "vultures" is pretty unfair, not to mention callous, to the scavenger bird who acts only on its hard-wired instincts. Scalpers are like two subcultures below that bird. Down there with the lawyers and pimps. By posting them on legal sites, such as StubHub and kajiji (sites created to make scalpers' jobs even easier, thank you very much), the tickets have jumped from a face value of (I believe) $125 to $175 to well over $500 per and in some cases, up to nearly $5,000. Somehow, Beer Bro Glenn pulled some magic out of his arse and lucked into one for $166 during a pre-sale.

Now radio deejays did not take the scalping very lightly and in many cases, called the scalpers to ask them on-air if they were proud of how they made a living. The answer from every scalper I heard could be summed up in five indifferent words: "I don't give a shit."

And then, we lost a Gordie. On Friday, June 10th, 
Gordie Howe, definitely the biggest name ever in
hockey (sorry, Gretzky, but it's true) passed at the
age of 88. While stem cell treatment was able to
help Howe fully recover from a severe stroke, it
seems they have less luck against the hands of time

But one deejay, Jesse from hard rock station HTZ-FM in St Catharines, Ontario, got a big one back for the hurtin' Hip fans. Calling a scalper, he inquired about a pair of $850 tickets. The guy says, sure, I have them. So Jesse asked if he can drive them to St Catharines from his city of Mississauga, a distance of 92 kilometres (57 miles) and the scalper balks. So Jesse sweetens the pot, saying he'll pay $2,000 for the pair. Since that distance is maybe $20 in gas and the scalper stands to gain an additional $300, he quickly agrees and they decide to meet at the city's super mall, Pen Centre. Once the scalper arrives, he calls Jesse, still on-air, who then tells the asshat to go screw himself. The scalper was livid - hilariously so - and started in on a bleeped-profanity-filled rant. Best Punk'd of 2016. Well done, Jesse! At least something funny came out of all this.

But let's not turn this into a eulogy for Mr. Downie. Hell, the man is still happily with us and ready to hit the stage. The problem is my way of thinking is that eulogies, wakes and celebrations of life tend to happen after the person's passed and can't hear it. I say let's joyfully, gratefully and vocally celebrate Gord's life while we still have him. Sound good?

You see because while one Gord is still here, less than three weeks later, Canada lost its biggest Gord ever - Mr Hockey, Gordie Howe at the age of 88. The news rocked us.

A statue of Gordie Howe outside the Sears in
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan pays tribute to his skills
with the elbows but begs two questions. If you live
outside Canada, yes, Saskatoon and Saskatchewan
are actual places but two, who knew Sears was still
around? Thought they left long before Gordie did.

The word of his death spread like wildfire on social media that morning and it seems that many of my high school mates had crossed his path at some point. Although I appear to be the only one lucky enough to have a picture taken with him, there were no shortage of meeting-him stories. All of them had a common element - for all of the bruises he left others with on the ice, he was, in person, one helluva nice guy.

Kevin Callaghan noted that Gordie was at a large breakfast meeting with him. "Despite a long line, he took the time to talk to me when I asked him to autograph his book. Such a nice man." A pioneer in Oakville women's hockey, Annie Oakes "played against him once." So did "Uncle Frank" Galati. (Years ago, he posted something on Facebook that his nieces and nephews were all commenting on so I joined in, calling him Uncle Frank just as they were. Shitty-ass uncle, by the way. Never buys me anything.) That said, Uncle Frank tells a great Gordie story. "When I was 28, a few friends and I joined the Gordie Howe Hockey League for Adults... a beginner's league using Gordie's name to market it. Midway through our season, as we were getting ready for a game, Mr Hockey entered our locker room with his duffel bag." Gordie just nodded to them, putting on his equipment with them while they sat there, staring at him like slack-jawed yokels. On the ice though? "He skated circles around us. He took me against the boards and rubbed those enormous elbows against my face. He had fun with us." For the record, Howe would have been in his late-50s by then.

No, Cheesy never got a picture of himself with
his idol, Gordie Howe, but at Howe's funeral in
Detroit, hockey's royalty, past and present, were
in attendance and he managed to get one with
some rink-rat named Wayne Gretzky. Not bad.

Granted, the one guy we all thought of instantly was Greg Cheesewright, aka Cheesy, who grew up idolizing Howe and well into adulthood, continues to do so. The news clearly would have gutted him. I recalled his tale of how, already having a Red Wings emblem and the number 9 tattooed on his lower left calf, he saw Howe at a book signing once and got him to sign his name in marker just below that. The second he left, he called his tattoo girl and had it permanently etched in. In fact, as a successful local businessman and hockey coach, Cheesy is so well-known by the Detroit Red Wings organization that he was invited to attend Howe's private funeral on June 15. It was likely the only funeral ever attended by more past and present hockey stars than civilians.

Even Beer Bro and college buddy, Stevil St Evil, watched the Howe funeral on TV from his perch in Wellington, New Zealand with a sense of awe. "Wow, lots of hockey greats at this funeral! All of them, I guess. I bet every guy still alive who played against Gordie has a memorable bruise somewhere. Like if you asked any of them, 'Hey, remember playing against Gordie?', I bet they rub a shoulder or a jaw or a hip, wince and say, 'Oh yeah! Hell of a guy!'"

Despite the fact it was planned a week prior, when Beer Bro Glenn popped into Donny's Bar and Grill for an afternoon and evening of craft-beer-drenched debauchery on June 11, it too ended up being a mini-wake for Mr Hockey as the Toronto newspapers he brought along had literally dozens of pages of stories about Mr Hockey.

Beauty and the Beast. Glenn holds up a Smuttynose
Finestkind IPA, one beauty of a beer out of New
Hampshire. You can guess the beast element here.

Settled in with our beers, Glenn quickly noted that despite calling a goal, an assist and a fighting major "a Gordie Howe hat-trick", the man himself only achieved it twice in a career that touched five decades (1946-1980). The Howe hat-trick was meant to be more of a testament of how fluidly he combined innate skills with Prairie-boy toughness.

But hey, this little horse-and-pony show is supposed to be about beer, not rock singers or hockey legends, so let's raise our mugs to Beer O'Clock at Donny's Bar and Grill. As he always does, Glenn did one of his infamous Beer Runs into Niagara Falls, New York, to snag some stellar American beers and he came back with a trunkful. We happily spent the afternoon and evening, noshing away on the many IPAs in my fridge - Flying Monkeys' Smashbomb Atomic, Collective Arts' Ransack The Universe, Smuttynose Finestkind, Muskoka's Mad Tom and of course, fresh growlers of my homeboys Nickel Brook's Headstock. But when he left, he gifted me with a nifty little Mix-Six of American treats and a gnarly 650-ml (22 ounces) bomber of a dessert beer. The remainder of the contents in Glenn's trunk? Yeah, that's gonna take him a while - let's just say, he makes his illicit trips well worth his while. And here's the best part: when coming back, the border guards ask him what he has, Glenn always tells the truth and half the time he pays duty but the other half? They just wave him through. One time, a guard asked incredulously, "What? No beer in Canada?"

I got your Independence Day right here, American friends,
with some Stone Enjoy By 07-04-16 IPA. Fireworks, man!

So over the next couple of days, I enjoyed some American influence in my Canuck fridge. While I am a huge proponent of drinking locally (meaning Ontario), my fridge is less staunch about it, having no borders, no walls and since it plays an intrical role in my life, I do not argue with my favourite appliance. Now Glenn will not return to my pad from a USA sojourn without a Stone Ruination Double IPA as it is my number one Yankee beer. He didn't want to buy a sixer of it so he slipped one into a six of Stone's Enjoy By IPA. Sneaky, yes, but I got my Ruination. With its Centennial, Citra, Simcoe and Azacca hops, this 8.5%, 100 IBU (international bitterness units) head-basher is always deliciously tropical fruit on the nose but a pine and orange finish on the tongue. When it comes to Stone, out of Escondido, California, Glenn and I have a shared phrase: Stone can brew no wrong. (You can use that, Stone. Contact me and we'll come to reasonable terms that will involve more Ruination.)

Oddly, I am not a pineapple fan and think
anyone who puts it on their pizza should be
shot on sight. Somehow when it lands in a beer,
I always enjoy it. Ballast Point does it again!

A few visits ago, Glenn brought me a Stone Enjoy By IPA and it was very date-specific - Enjoy By 02-14-15, my birthday last year. This round's batch was a nod to America's Independence Day - 07-04-16. This is the 26th batch of Enjoy By and the rules are always the same. You have 37 days to enjoy it... or else. These things don't last 37 minutes in my fridge so not an issue. Stone uses ten hops in this brew so there everything on the nose - citrus, grapefruit, pine, mango - followed by all that plus some orange and malt backbone on the tongue. The 9.2% ABV is so fruit-saturated that it's not even discernable. But that 90 IBUs? Oh yeah, you know you're drinking a premier IPA. Always outstanding and very much enjoyed by... me. Twice. My little Mix-Six had a deuce.

Oddly, in real life - so the one-quarter that's non-beer - I shun pineapple. It's bumpy, has weird leaf-hair and frankly, I have an innate fear that one day, a pineapple will fall on my head and kill me. That said, I faced my fears and tried the Ballast Point (San Diego) Pineapple Sculpin. I have had their Grapefruit Sculpin in the past (also courtesy of Glenn) and this is the same idea, except they used pineapple puree in the brewing.

Glenn crossed the USA border, hoping to
score a Stone Enjoy By Tangerine IPA but
couldn't find one so he happily settled for this

As it turns out, I do like pineapple in my beer... yes, I do, Sam-I-Am. I got a whiff of it and caramel on the nose of this 7%, 70 IBU beer and much more pineapple on the tongue. For the record, Glenn got citrus on the tongue and no pineapple but he lives on lava-hot Pizza Pockets so his taste buds were fried 20 years ago. (Said the smoker.)

Ironically, Glenn's entire purpose for crossing the border was to find Stone's Enjoy By 05-30-16 Tangerine IPA. He struck out. Let's assume they were all enjoyed by May 30th. But he did find Uinta Brewing's (Salt Lake City) Hop Nosh Tangerine IPA so close enough. I had the regular Uinta Hop Nosh IPA in Las Vegas and found it quite enjoyable. This tweak to it meant much more orange and tangerine on the nose with pretty much the same on the tongue. At 7.3% and 70 IBUs, this was a very nice little beer. Not quite Stone level, perhaps, but very few are.

The last time I had a beer from New Belgium Brewing out of Fort Collins, Colorado, it too was an offering from Glenn, their Ranger IPA. I remember it like it was yesterday - Easter Monday 2014. And that is all I remember from that day. This time, it was their Rampart Imperial IPA and with its Mosaic, Calypso and Centennial hops, this is a definitely step up from the Ranger. All grapefruit on the nose, a dry citrus tang on the tongue, this 8.5%, 85 IBU was a dynamite car explosion of taste.

This picture (not mine) says it all. What does 24
Carrot Golden Ale taste like? Look at the glass.

Every year, Stone Brewing holds a local homebrewer challenge and last year's Mutt Brown Imperial Brown Ale was the winner that Glenn and I thoroughly enjoyed. This year, the top honours went to homebrewer Juli Goldenburg who collaborated with Stone head brewer Mitch Steele and San Diego's Monkey Paw brewmaster Cosimo Sorrentino to create the 24 Carrot Golden Ale. How did it taste? Exactly like liquid carrot cake, which ironically tastes nothing like carrots. Or anything other vegetable. This 8.5%, 40 IBU dessert beer was all cinnamon on the nose, sweet ginger, vanilla, some raisin and well, pretty much carrot cake on the tongue. It was a delicious and sweet break from all those IPAs

Okey-dokey, that's it for this round but I will be back this weekend with a tribute to another man, George, a regular at Rib Eye Jack's Ale House, who also passed away recently. (Seriously, 2016, enough already.) But I did notice that when Glenn visits, he always checks my parking lot carefully. First, he once got a ticket here. But more importantly, he scans the area for other familiar cars. His concern is that this might not be an afternoon of tasty beers but rather, an intervention. Believe me when I say, this is absolutely the wrong locale for that. But guys and dolls, that's it, that's all and I am outta here. Until next time, I remain, as always...