BC Road Trip: The Weather's Here, Wish You Were Beautiful

Every time I visit Victoria BC, it's a different city. A different, yet still completely crazy city. A constantly evolving kind of crazy, so that I am never able to get my bearings, to feel comfortable or oriented, despite a mostly shared culture and language. I've felt more at home in Tokyo than I do in Victoria.

My last visit to Victoria was among the most depressing holidays of my life. We saw a show at a club that shall remain nameless to protect the pathetic, a Stygian hole featuring the musical stylings of the clinically depressed bartender, who sang about his part-time job working in a retirement home in a manner that was neither funny, nor plangent. It was the most horrifying exhibition of talentless narcissism I have ever had the misfortune to witness. I cringed on his behalf, even as I longed for him to slit his wrists on stage, in order to put us all out of his misery.

This visit was better, for the most part. I had a poutine of duck confit over truffle fries at The Office (the fries were tasty enough, but there was too much duck in the confit and the curds were more like half-melted cubes of bland mozzarella), and Hermann's Jazz Club, self-billed as "suitable for ladies without escorts," is a terrific venue.

I approve of clubs that keep the lights just bright enough for me to write by, in general, and I doubly approve of female bartenders, experienced and mature cocktail waitresses (hat tip to Wendy, who kicked names and took ass), baby grand pianos kept well-tuned, and drinks that contain the customary quantities of alcohol. The only drawback to Hermann's as a venue was the rather awkward seating arrangements, but the stage was well-placed, so everyone was able to see the show, no matter where they happened to be sitting.

Tragically, on the night of Danny Michel's performance, Hermann's was visited by a merry band of idiots: a quartet of extremely obnoxious young locals who managed to hide their advanced state of inebriation until the second song of the set, at which point they lost all modicum of common courtesy and proceeded to inspire murderous hatred in the room at large, through their various exploits.

I'm not exaggerating even slightly. Strangers were bonding over homicidal mash-notes written on cocktail napkins and passed around for everyone's input (photo). Joel Rezewski* and his harem (their words, not mine) managed to shatter the last tenets of faith that I've managed to hold onto in my life: that Canadians are both polite and able to hold their liquor. I don't believe in gods, leprechauns, luck, fate, or ethical Republicans, but I believed in Canadians. Now I am without anchor in a chaotic world. Misera sum!

* If you don't want to be mocked, whether in print or on the internet, don't wear your ass as a hat, and then tell people your name. He even spelled his out for me: R-e-zed-e-w-s-k-i.