Day: June 27, 2008

Categories
Trips

Weekend Update: St-Jacques de Leeds

On Friday night after going to the gym, I headed over to Vero’s place where we waited for her sister Anne-Marie to show up.  She was coming down for a week of fun and we were excited for the festivities.

She arrived, we had some excellent stew made by the lovely Vero and then we hung out on the balcony for the rest of the night.  Judging that a storm front was coming our way for the entire weekend, they decided to reschedule their skydiving plans from the Saturday until Wednesday.  It was a smart move on their part considering the monsoon that hit us.

We decided to head out into deep Quebec to visit their grandmother and family.  We hit the road around 10:30AM and even though we were running a little late, nothing could stop what would be a great impromptu road trip.

In Alfred we stopped in a yard sale and I scored an entire box of comic books for $15.  I was perusing the box and picking out a few Wolverine comics that caught my eye and after ten minutes this guy comes up and says “Tu veux un ‘deal’?”  I asked him how much and he said $15 for the whole box.  Steal of a deal!  There are quite a bit of older Uncle Scrooge, Flintstones and Yogi Bear type comic books that I’m not OVERLY interested in reading but you never know if someone will be.  I did get a good pile of Wolverine comics and a few Spider-Man comics as well.

We then kept trucking along, hitting some traffic in Montreal and stopped into A&W for a taste of poutine (not recommended).  The trip went by fast as we played Highway Hypotheticals for most of the trip and around Quebec City we got NAILED with monsoon rain for a good half hour.  It was insane.

We took a wrong turn off the highway but it was a blessing in disguise as we stumbled upon a life size replica of Johnny 5!  What a coincidence that we had been talking about it the week before!  Vero jumped out of the car and got a picture with the only robot she will associate herself with.

After readjusting our navigation, we rolled into St-Jacques de Leeds to find her grandmother in good spirits.  I ended up taking a nap before Vero’s cousin Valerie showed up with her baby Gabriel.  We then had supper along with Valerie’s boyfriend Stephane who is always a good time.  After a few drinks and watching some wedding videos we let their Grandmother sleep and we headed over to Valerie and Stephane’s place for a night cap and watched their great video from Cuba.  It was quite the miserable night outside due to the weather so I was fine with hanging out inside for most of the night.

The next morning we awoke to find that their grandmother was still asleep even though she had told everyone breakfast would be on at 9AM!  I perused my comic book finds and then Vero and I took a drive around the country which turned out to be a little longer than we had planned but we didn’t have a map with us and got misdirected.  I really love this area of Quebec as there are rolling hills and forests all around for miles.  It’s quite nice.

We arrived home and we started helping out with breakfast when Vero’s aunt, uncle and cousin showed up for breakfast.  It was a good feed and we chatted for awhile and then around 1PM we figured we better hit the road soon enough as it’s a five hour drive back to Ottawa.  Along the way, we stopped into Alfred to get a poutine and Vero ended up buying this amazing leather biker jacket at a yard sale!

It was a fast impromptu road trip but it was nice to go see her family again.

Categories
Reviews

Review: Eric Clapton’s Biography

31re2j9oxl_sl500_aa240_.jpgI have about 20 pages left in this book to read so I figure I can review it faithfully (unless it turns out that Eric Clapton was a woman all along and I don’t find it out until the last page).

Eric Clapton, guitar extraordinaire decides to tell us about his life up until this point.  Like most biographies, it starts with some pretty dull stuff about growing up as a kid and hunting for frogs.  The real meat of the book comes in the earlier chapters where he starts playing guitar in clubs with various bands and having a good time.  It’s written very innocently, in that in my eyes, jamming with the Stones is awe-inspiring, when he talks about it, it’s not that big of a deal, and I guess it wouldn’t be as they are just buddies.

You don’t really get a feel of his greatness until he mentions offhand that one day he noticed the words “Clapton is God” on a side of a building.  He is very humbling and doesn’t think of himself in that way.  Meanwhile, I realize that all this talk about playing in clubs and having a good time is actually the moment where outsiders of Clapton’s mind are literally making Clapton into a guitar god-like figure and that he’s making his mark on the world.  I found it strange to be reading the autobiography and not getting a true sense of his mark on the world.  I guess anyone wouldn’t feel that they contributing to something big until later on.  So it was just a matter of fact to him at the time.  He was simply playing guitar.

The book is pretty amazing with the stories of playing guitar with George Harrison, BB King, others…I thoroughly enjoyed the points where he is in the Yardbirds, Cream, Derek and The Dominos.  The story about him falling in love with Pattie Boyd is an interesting one but I must admit he’s a little frustrating to take considering he pretty well gives up on Pattie as soon as he gets her.

The later half of the book deals with his realization that he has a drinking problem and then it talks about his time in rehab and his eventual return to grace.  At sixty years old, he seems to have things in order with a new wife, three kids and a sober life.  I personally didn’t find the later half of the book TOO interesting but it is what it is.

All in all, I didn’t know much about Eric Clapton before reading his book.  I think I would have preferred to read a biography instead of an autobiography at this point and then follow up with the autobiography.  I would receive both viewpoints then.  However, the book is chock full of ‘WHOA!’ moments when you see he is jamming with some of my rock idols or simply having a good time with them.  If you are an Eric Clapton fan, pick it up, otherwise, I guess you can get by with reading the first half of the book for some awesome classic rock stories.

Categories
Uncategorized

Finish a (Good) Book

books.gifLast night I was showing Trish my new collection of rock related books to read that I received from Troy and Mike mentioned that he’s interested in reading the Tom Petty biography.  I made the comment “Just another one to add to the pile.” meaning that I’ve lent Mike a few books over the past years that I’ve noticed he never finishes.

He then explained the reason that he never finished a variety of them is that it just didn’t hold his interest so he didn’t feel like finishing them.  Both Trish and I realized that we don’t operate in this manner.  We finish a book even if it is a hard read or loses my interest.  I don’t know why Trish does this, but I guess I do it because I wonder if it will end up becoming mindblowingly amazing once I’m done it.  I liken it to the first time I saw 12 Monkeys in the theatre and I thought the movie was so boring that I was ready to leave the theatre TWICE.  But in the end, the movie was actually very clever and I’m glad I sat through it.

Granted, reading a book should be more of an investment than watching a 2 hour flick, but anyhow, that’s how I roll.  I read the entire book.

So Friday’s poll is this: Do you finish every book you read, or do you give it a try and if it’s not keeping your interest, you set it aside?

iplaying: Life’s Been Good – Joe Walsh (But Seriously Folks…)