Lookah at the Hookah!

To celebrate the occasion of my acceptance of an excellent job offer, J and I were accompanied by our friends JPhB and AP to a local shisha bar, Cafe Gitano. I admit that I had been eying the lovely pipes in the window since we moved to Montreal, but had never ventured in. The time had come for some deliciously flavoured tobacco shared amongst friends.

JPhB and AP savour every last trickle of Double Apple smoke.

Apparently, the up-tick in hookah bars is not just a local phenomenon, and is being reported by one of the U.S.'s trashiest broadsheets. The hookah (Hindi), also known as a shisha (Arabic), is a water pipe device for smoking, and originated in India but has gained a great deal of popularity in the Arab world. Unsurprising then that there are a number of shisha bars in Montreal, since roughly 2% of Montreal's population is Arabic. According to a very friendly taxi driver of ours, Arabic is the third most spoken language in Montreal (after French and English, of course).

But let's get back to our celebration. I have been a rather vehement non-smoker since, at the age of five, I convinced my mother to stop smoking. However, I have turned a blind-eye to the fact that smoking shisha is indeed smoking. It's tasty, and it's fun...

J on sensory overload from the delicious apple-y magic.


I can stop whenever I want. Really. I can.

Better living through tomatoes

If you've been paying any attention to what you've been eating during the past few decades, you've probably noticed what we have: the US's relationship with what and how it eats is unhealthy--and it's getting worse. Stressed by foolish management practices, soil quality in the US has been declining, meaning that the nutritional punch of crops grown in the US has been declining apace. Perhaps as part of a confused attempt to compensate for this decline, agribussinesses have laced the US food supply with a broad spectrum of literally thousands of additives, pesticides, and other toxins. Also, most of what you eat likely contains ingredients which have been genetically modified in a lab. It's become harder and harder to find good food Stateside.

Despite the fact that American food isn't much good, we eat too damned much of it.

When you say, "Super size me!" to a MacDonald's employee, you just might get what you ask for.

And on top of all that somatic nastiness, the collective psychic relationship with food in the US ain't none too good neither. All in all, it's not easy to eat well in the US if you can't afford The French Laundry (often called the best restaurant in the US; currently priced at USD $240 per head per meal).

But here in Montréal, it's different. How different? Very different. With 1.9 million inhabitants and some 12,000 eateries, Montréal can boast the extraordinary per capita restaurant density of 1 eating establishment for every 158 residents. If that seems really dense, it is. Chicago offers a restaurant for every 359 residents; and Paris, surprisingly (since they can claim credit for inventing restaurants in first place) provides only one restaurant for every 742 residents. At the other end of the spectrum, Tokyo offers its 12.8 million residents an almost unbelievable 190,000 restaurants--which yields a mind-boggling per capita density of 67. Few cities of comparable size offer a better per capita restaurant density than Montréal--certainly none in North America do.

But the restaurants are really only an indicator of the culture's interest in and concern for excellent food. The gems in Montréal's culinary crown are its fabulous open air markets, from which the restaurants receive their ingredients. Can't make good food without good ingredients. The market closest to H and me (there are officially four such markets in the city) is the marché Jean-Talon, located near the Jean-Talon metro station.

Nothing pictured here traveled more than 100km to reach you, except maybe the furniture.

J-T (as H and I have nicknamed it) is open year-round, but its late summer offerings are second to none. I'd put its produce up against anything else I've ever seen. Not Paris's--nay, not even Strasbourg's markets can top it. To help you picture it all, I've prepared a little photo tour, a brief exercise pamphlet for your salivary glands, if you will. And remember that the city's master chefs have yet to get their hands onto this stuff. As astonishing as it seems, everything you see here will actually taste even better once they're done with it.

If you can't think of what you could possibly do with all those berries, you're one more victim of supermarkets and agribusiness.


Ever wonder what it might feel like to palpate a rainbow?


You might even learn a little fractal math--if you don't eat it first.


J-T's coup de grace: tomatoes. Lots and lots of tomatoes.


Yes, even the tomatoes come in a rainbow of flavors.


Half-sunny? Half-shady? Who cares, 'cuz it's all tasty.

John, Wayne, and the Cape

There's probably a good quote somewhere on the value of friends who throw fabulous parties, but I'm not familiar with it. And don't give me that reproachful look, either. I know how to use a search engine. Google let me down on this one: number one spot for a search for "quote friends fabulous parties" didn't even land me on the right planet. And it's not like the rest of the list was much good either.

In any case... H and I are lucky in our friends, and we have one pair of friends in particular, JD and JB, who possess the enviable superpower of throwing hugely overambitious, vastly entertaining, sublimely convivial, and wild-but-not-fratboy-wild parties. I don't care whether or not wikipedia's "official" list recognizes the ability to envision, orchestrate, and inspire an epic party as a superpower; I submit that it is.

Superpower: able to strike any camera colorblind at will.

Certainly, I don't know anyone else capable of the same level of mad planning. So when, several weeks ago, JD and JB invited us to their Cape Cod-based, week-long, once-every-five-years birthday party in honor of John Wayne, we didn't think twice. To be honest, we didn't even think once. OK, to be completely honest, we didn't think at all--we just just said, "Hell, yeah!"

On our way down the Cape, we stopped off in Boston to visit friends RM and NH.

Did you bring us goodies from Montréal? Feed us teh goodies!

As all Bostonians known, there's nothing like a late summer stroll through Boston Common to get you in the mood for a party. I mean with all the dancing girls (and boy), we were beginning to wonder if maybe the party hadn't already started without us.

When we asked about the John Wayne birthday party, we were subjected to several Turkish tests for drunkenness, which made everyone feel awkward.

After indulging in an appropriate amount of strolling and loitering downtown, we were finally able to tear ourselves away from Beantown and make our way down to the Cape. In true party superhero fashion, our hosts had landed a spectacular setting for our festivities.

The inlet's still water holds the sky as a bowl holds water.

And what seaside setting would be complete without an Escher-esque dock with a dismaying habit of swaying when you walk on it? Our hosts thought of everything.

Look, ma! No hands!

But of course, this seaside isn't just any seaside. It's Cape Cod. Which naturally means that there's plenty of minigolf nearby. H even won a free game by getting a hole-in-one on the 18th hole. No horsepucky.

J watches in horror as H clinches the win with style.

Still, as with so many grownup affairs--and certainly all affairs in which we're closely involved--it was the the food which crowned the event. Some of JB's sailing friends, who hail from Maine, hauled down an army barrack's worth of fresh oysters, fresh Maine lobsters, and fresh steamer clams for our delectation. And let tell me you, that's an impressive spread of fresh.

The raw oyster: an entire ocean distilled to a single, slippery sip.


Ever see James Cameron's Aliens? Yeah. Serious creature carnage.


Traditional Zen koan: Is bowl full or empty? (Answer: Depend on size of nearby sailor's appetite.)

Probably you've been wondering why it's called the "John Wayne Party." Well, John and Wayne are two of the attendees (yes, two different people), whose birthdays fall close enough together that it constitutes an excuse to throw a single mondo party as opposed to two wee parties. Too, the "real" John Wayne (he was born Marion Robert Morrison, didn't you know?) was born 100 years ago this year. And seeing as his birthday's in May... well that's close enough to count as yet one more reason to throw a mondo party. Not--as you might imagine--that we need much of an excuse. But it has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Oh, and one very important lesson we learned during the party, which we delightedly pass on to you, our dear readers:

Everything--and we do mean everything--is a hat.

Happy trails! (Yes, yes. We're perfectly aware that John Wayne never said that. Close enough.)