Rose's Cantina

When I was a little kid, my mom and uncles decided to make home made beer in the basement of our farmhouse. They bought a kit and a bunch of bottles and spent an afternoon getting "lit" constructing a DIY still. It was all good fun for the rellies, fun that is until a few weeks later. We were sitting around the kitchen table and heard funny sounds coming from below. Pffft. Pffft. The bottles were exploding. For weeks, our farmhouse smelled like sour mash, an odor I can still remember today. It was almost as bad as the time Gramps decided to make sourkraut under the floor boards. As for the product, let's say it tasted like what I imagine beer would taste like when combined with horse pee. Needless to say, it took years for me to warm to the idea of home brew. I always found home made wine to taste, well, homemade. It was too fruity or nasty, particularly the red wine. Sometimes we drank it as kids to get wasted. We might as well have taken up sniffing glue. ...

This episode of Hello Ladies reminds me of my first date with my beloved. Scott took me to a fancy Italian restaurant and let me pick the wine. I chose the Barolo. We had two bottles. He almost fainted when he got the bill. I had no idea Barolo was a 50 buck bottle of wine. It must have been love. Not like this.  

I was driving down Hawthorne Road in search of a farm stall selling corn, when I spied this incredible sight -- an all-night A&W stuck in the middle of nowhere. Man, that brings me back. Growing up in St. Catharines, there wasn't a lot to do if you didn't play hockey or row for your high school. But you could take your fake I.D. and get into a heavy metal bar to watch a band like Thor and the Imps, pictured below with me in their clutches. Hey! I was interviewing them! Anyways, after the bar, a bunch of us would cruise down to A&W for chili dogs, Papa Teen Burgers and some very frosty root beer. We'd crank up the tunes, slide our car windows down and scarf down the best fast food in town. I don't remember girls on roller skates, but I'm told our A&W had them. There were lots of other fast food joints, of course. There was Tim Horton's -- the original Timmies, which was close to the spot on the Queen Elizabeth where Tim Horton met his...

Rob Ford is a nob. We all know that by now. And he's in big doo-doo, too. Nothing new in that statement. But something is different, so that gives us hope. He's stopped washing his Escalade. Now to the average person, that might seem like a detail. But to a person who gets paid -- or not -- to observe life, the dirty Escalade is significant. Rob Ford is a guy who dry cleans. He is also a guy who keeps the outside of his car in meticulous condition. I can't say for the inside. I'm sure the inside is chock full of cigarette packages and fast food wrappers. It likely has the sweet smell of smoke which is nearly impossible to get out. But the outside, the outside is what the world sees, like the impenetrable veneer and armor of a sea turtle. And today, that veneer has a crack in it. The villain Rob Ford as met his Butch Cassidy moment. There is nowhere left to run. Bandito Canadiense has just met the firing squad. Another significant development. When Rob Ford was ...

The only person in the Senate scandal that has managed to stay classy is Nigel Wright . Nigel Wright made an error in judgement, as we know, but he only made one. Wait, maybe two. He should have discussed the possibility of giving Mike Duffy $90k with the Prime Minister before he did it. What if he had? If he had, then Stephen Harper would have told him not to do it. I believe that to be true. But Nigel Wright most likely felt sorry for Mike Duffy. As is evident in the emails released by Duff, Nigel believed that the old windbag was just doing what other Senators had been doing for decades -- fudging the books for their own gain. I'm sure when the Auditor-General has a gander at a few other Senators, he will be not surprised to find that they, too, had abused their expenses and living allowances. Already, the Prime Minister's gal Friday Carolyn Stewart Olsen is in trouble. I suspect, nope, I know a few Liberals who have also used the hallowed office of the Senate to c...

Addicts are wily folk. In public, they are charmers, snakeoil salesmen, shape shifters, attracters of attention. Behind closed doors, they fall apart and decimate their families and relationships. Many of us who grew up in families gripped by addiction would rather see our mothers/fathers/spouses use rather than risk the consequences of seeing them live sober. We cower in closets. We mask our pain with headphones. For children and spouses of people who are alcoholics or drug addicts, sober is a chilling exercise. I was thinking about this when I saw Rob Ford retire to his mom's house in the wake of allegations that he was caught, by a Smartphone, smoking crack, peeing on buildings and walking among the good people of Toronto as a drooling idiot. Oh, my God, is it possible that there was an intervention afoot? Of course not, as Louis C.K. would say. Of course not, they've always enabled his antics before. But maybe. As a weird writer, survivor of paren...

      You know your life is pathetic when you're watching the Hallowe'en shows on daytime television. In my own defence, there wasn't much else to do. The weather was crappy, I'd already walked the dogs and this house is so small, it could almost clean itself. Well, that's a lie. I hate housework, but yesterday, I yearned for the big old house I once lived in and the five bedrooms to clean.   I'm so bored, I'm thinking of a career with Molly Maid.   Thank goodness for the political drama that is playing itself out on the all news channels. Afternoons, which were once filled with All My Children and lesbianic talk shows, can now be wasted watching Amanda Blitz's body swell.   Canadian news channels have more content than Wikipedia these days.   Who needs Joan Collins and Linda Evans, when we have the dueling blowouts in the form of Pamela Wallin and Carolyn Stewart Olson? Then there's Duffy, the walking puffer with his lon...