The new Queens of the Stone Age album is coming out like tomorrow or something, and this is their first single. You can find the real video off youtube, but this one is crazy. Anyways, It’s an awesome track with Julian Casablancas from the Strokes providing some vocal backup.
They also have another track released a little while ago called “Era Vulgaris”, its a pretty “sick” track featuring Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame.
And as for regular blogging…i’ll get around to it
This past weekend I went up to Ottawa and it was my first time back since I lived there over two years ago.
It started a week ago when Rob W suggested we go on a road trip to the capital to experience the Stanley Cup fever in person. I had been wanting to go back to Ottawa ever since I left because I love the city and all my friends from back home live there as well. Daveed was down for my birthday and it wasn’t hard to convince him to come with us so the plan was set. My friends in Ottawa were all available for the weekend and last Thursday I also found out that Meghan was going home for the weekend so it was shaping up to be a great trip.
Rob came down to Waterloo late Thursday night and we stayed up pretty late. I was working on a new feature for Delilah and Rob was doing something a little less productive. Morning soon came and I had a pretty hard time getting up. We were planning on leaving by noon to pick up Daveed and Rob’s friend Dave in Toronto and it was now 11 am. I ran downstairs to wake Rob up. His words to me were something along the lines of “I’m not getting up. I’m going to sleep in til 2 pm.” After some physical threats he agreed to get up and we managed to leave my house by 12:30 so we weren’t too far off target.
Rob drives a Prius. It’s like from the future or something. I’m quite certain of that. We used the sweet, sweet GPS to guide us to find Dave and Daveed in Toronto while listening to Sirius satellite radio. I’m starting to sound like a commercial, but travelling in a car like that is pretty damn pleasant. We quickly realized it was going to be confusing with two Daves so we took to calling Rob’s friend Mark-Dave instead (Mark being his middle name).
Leaving Toronto was another matter. Given that Rob’s future-car couldn’t actually fly, we were bound to the reality of traffic jams. At 3pm. What the hell? Driving was painfully slow. Daveed repeatedly screamed out the window “What are you all doing?! Why aren’t you at work?!” to no avail. Nobody was listening. Damn commuters. Why don’t they take the Go Train? Seriously, it was ridiculous seeing all the single-occupancy cars. What ever happened to car pooling? We are hopeless.
We coped by listening to the wonderful commercial-free radio and dancing to classic 80’s music. I also successfully executed the decades-old maneuver of the air-honk. You know, trying to get truckers to honk their horn by motioning them with your arm out the window pretending to pull the horn. The trucker had a cowboy hat so I thought sweet, this guy’s old school. He’ll do it. I stuck my arm out and busted my move. He looked at me with a sad look on his face and shook his head. I think they get in trouble nowadays because it distracts drivers. But then a look of “what the hell” came over his face and he blew his horn. I was pleased. I think it’s a dying tradition. But I’m keeping the dream alive.
We were a little past Pickering when Mark-Dave suggested we take back roads to Ottawa. Less traffic and more direct and shorter route towards Ottawa. But we’d definitely go faster on the 401. We weren’t sure what to do so we designated Daveed as The Oracle. He chose the back roads. The Oracle had spoken. We stopped by a McD’s soon after we got off the 401 around Peterborough. I calculated my meal out to 1500 calories. I figured that’d keep me satisfied until we reached Ottawa.
We were greeted with a damp, wet rain as we arrived in Ottawa and after dropping Mark-Dave off at his house and then our things at Arjun’s place, we went up to the market for food and drink. We checked out Heart and Crown but there was a line-up so we settled on going to the Aude Dubliner and chilled there for a while. Arjun and Tony joined up with us and then we visited Zaphod’s for a bit.
At Zaphod’s we met up with Arjun’s roommate Mark who referred to Rob as Rob Zombie. We tried to get Arjun to bust some moves but he was being all shy and boring. Beat It came on and we forced him to do some MJ dancing which lasted 10 seconds. Daveed challenged him to a dance battle but I think Arjun was afraid.
We spent the rest of the night hanging out at Arjun’s apartment and we were up until the wee hours of the morning. We all got up around 11 on Saturday and sat around all tired and lazy. We had a good breakfast at Cora’s to get things started.
Daveed, Rob and I headed over to Elgin to visit Tony, Nana and Uzo and proceeded to wander down Elgin to watch the Sens game. The streets weren’t too busy but every table at all the bars were taken so we decided to test our luck in the Market. We ventured back up to Heart and Crown and to our surprise there was plenty of room so we took our time scoping the place out and settling on a good table.
The next 6 hours or so was spent eating, drinking and watching the game. It was one helluva game. We also ran into a bunch of people from Belleville and some of my dad’s old karate students.
Meghan didn’t end up coming out with us because the lucky girl ended up watching the game from a box, for free, with free drinks and food all night AND with The Trews. Ahhh so jealous. I won’t bother getting into details but Meghan wrote an account on Delilah.
After the game we went over to the Brig where I was supposed to meet up with my friend Andrea and her friend Lori. We worked across the street from each other back when I worked at NRCan during my Ottawa days. I told the guys to go inside and start drinking while I waited outside for Andrea. So there I was, waiting around, and I was about to call Arjun to give him an update since he didn’t come out with us when I was attacked from behind. It was a sneak-attack hug from Andrea. My ninja senses failed me. I thought I’d be prepared but I clearly haven’t been training enough. I blame it on the alcohol.
The rest of the night was spent drinking at the Brig and I made it home around 2 am. Actually I have no idea when I got home but 2 am sounds good as far as this story goes. Although Daveed had headed home almost an hour before I did he wasn’t at Arjun’s place. Rob was missing too. I tracked down Dave and he had apparently taken the bus back to Arjun’s but missed the stop (at Lees) and ended up way out at the St. Laurent mall. He eventually made it back safe. As always when he’s drunk.
Sunday we slept in a bit and confirmed that Rob Zombie had gone to Mark-Dave’s place and crashed there. Rob, Dave and Mark-Dave left just after noon and I stuck around in Ottawa. I spent the afternoon hanging out with Andrea and then later visited Nana, Tony and Uzo.
Today I caught a ride back to Waterloo with Meghan and thus my weekend journey came to an end. This was definitely one of the best weekends of this year and I look forward to going back to Ottawa again.
