Theatre at Sea Cruise: Top-Notch Actors and the Amazon

by Jamie Rhein on

Lately, I’ve been thinking I ought to go on a cruise. Geek Cruises perked up my interest. So did finding out I could get credit to renew teaching certification on another. Here’s the cruise of cruises–possibly the right combination of reasons to take in some luxury, see the world and have a wonderful time being entertained by the best.

Regent Cruises has an intriguing option for taking a vacation and maximizing a holiday experience. Theatre at Sea Cruise (a venture between The Theatre Guild Broadway and the cruise line) involves traveling 1,000 miles of the Amazon in Brazil (plus trips to Barbados, Puerto Rico and Dominica) with stars like Edward Asner, Patricia Neal and Eli Wallah who put on plays at night–one at the 1890s Manus Opera House. From what I read, the cruise on the Regent Seven Seas Mariner (February 21-March 4) sounds like the line between audience and actors are blurred. The actors don’t disappear between the times the curtain goes up and down. Instead, the after the play parties are for everyone. The thing I also like about this cruise is that Brazil is an integral part of the experience. Along the way, the tour takes in ports beyond just the usual beach and shopping fare–there are two stops at indigenous villages, although I do wonder what the people in the villages think when a bunch of tourists traveling by luxury liner descend on them.

If you are looking for luxury and creative energy that crackles, this might be it. When I opened the email from The New York Times Ticket Watch expecting to find discount tickets to a show on Broadway, I sure felt energized finding this offering instead. If someone can swing this, I say, go for it. If you can’t make this one, how about the Around the World Tour on the Queen Victoria in 2009?

Big in Japan: An Ode to Sake

by Matthew Firestone on

I really love sake.

Now, I know exactly what you’re thinking. Sake?!?! That cheap, indiscernible clear-liquid that they sell at the supermarket for six dollars a bottle. That foul-smelling, foul-tasting garbage that wasted college students love dropping into their beer glasses to the tune of ‘Sake Bomb!’ That gut-wrenching, eye-watering swill of a beverage that they serve at cheap Japanese restaurants across North America.

Well, let’s just say that you don’t know sake like I know sake!

Forget everything you think you know, and allow me to explain to you why real sake is like nothing you’ve drunk before.

Sake (???), which is pronounced sa-kay (not sa-key), is a traditional Japanese alcoholic beverage made from rice. Proudly regarded as the national tipple of Japan, sake is commonly referred to in Japanese as nihonshu (?????????) or quite literally ‘Japan alcoholic beverage.’ To the Japanese, sake is revered as the most exalted of beverages, much like the French swear by fine wines, or like Americans swear by a cold Budweiser.

Commonly referred to in English as ‘rice wine,’ sake is actually more like rice beer. Unlike wine, which is made by the single fermentation of fruit (typically grapes), sake is produced through the multiple fermentation of grains. While beer consists of the holy trinity of barley, hops and malt, sake consists simply of rice.

Mind you, it’s not just the sweet delicious nectar itself I love, but the refined drinking culture that surrounds it. As with most things in Japan, there are unwritten rules that need to be followed.

For starters, sake is typically served in a special flask known as a tokkuri (徳利), and is poured into a tiny cup known as a choko (猪口). Interestingly enough, good sake is nearly always served either cold or room temperature as heating the beverage is a way of masking the undesirable flavor of a cheap brew. With that said, hot sake hits the spot on a cold winter day, even if it isn’t exactly the most traditional way to drink it.

As foreigners quickly learn in Japan, it is considered rude to pour yourself a glass of sake (or any alcohol for that matter). Instead, it’s good form to refill the glasses of those around you, and wait for others to repay the favor. If you want to acknowledge a friendship, or pay tribute to someone of lower status, you can also raise someone else’s glass and take a small sip.

Also, never underestimate the power of a loud kampai (cheers, かんぱい)!

Although sake has somewhat of a less refined status in the West, that doesn’t mean that the drink doesn’t have its own associated drinking culture. As any college kid can tell you, balancing a choko of sake on a pair of chopsticks straddling a pint glass before slamming the table with your fist and yelling ‘Sake Bomb!!’ is the best way to start (or end) a night quickly.

Of course, there are more sophisticated ways to drink sake, such as in an expertly mixed cocktail.

Here are some of my favorites:

Saketini

2 ounces of dry sake
Splash of dry vermouth

In a shaker over ice, add the sake and vermouth. Shake well and strain into a chilled martini glass. Garnish with grated lemon peel.

Sake Blossom

2 ounces of nigori (unfiltered) sake
1 ounce of orange juice
1 teaspoon of fresh lemon juice

In a shaker over ice, add the sake, orange juice and lemon. Shake well and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a curled lemon peel.

Lychee-infused Sake

720 milliliter bottle of sweet sake
3 cups of peeled and pitted lychees

In a glass pitcher, combine the sake with the lychees, and refrigerate overnight. You can serve the infused sake straight up or as a base for a cocktail.

Getting thirsty? Go wild in the bar, and feel free to post some recipes here.

** Special thanks to Flickr users rick (sake bottle), est_bleu2007 (amazake) and rick (sake cocktail) **

Odd Statues from Around the World

by Brett Atkinson on

Weird statues are usually the end result of a city councillor with too much time and other people’s money on their hands. Some of the planet’s oddest statues include a giant Optimus Prime from Transformers and the kids jumping into the Singapore River outside the Fullerton Hotel.

Check out those and other odd and offbeat constructions here, and let me know any that have been overlooked, especially from your neck of the woods.

Some of most poignant and imposing statues I’ve seen are at Statue Park in Budapest. While other former Communist countries destroyed their statues of Lenin, members of the Proletariat, and brave Socialist soldiers, Hungary moved them to a park on the egde of Budapest.

Click here for an article I wrote about Statue Park, or read more travel information about Budapest.

News via Oddee and pic of Statue Park thanks to nicol_b on Flickr.

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Greetings from Crete: The Best of Myths

by Iva Skoch on
Ok, so you first heard this myth as a kid: the great King Minos (of Crete) gets a beautiful white bull from the god Poseidon. He’s supposed to sacrifice the bull, but decides he’d kind of like to keep it. And, unsurprisingly, it angers the god. Bad idea.

So the god makes Minos’ wife fall in love with the bull. That’s pretty rough. But, now, here’s where it gets weird. Really, really weird. (But, yes, you did hear this first in your elementary school class, and your parents were glad when you did well in Greek mythology.)

The wife decides she wants the bull. As in: wants to be with the bull. Bad enough to have an architect build a wooden cow for her to squeeze into…so she can have the bull. And she does. And her white bull love child? The Minotaur.

The Minotaur: half-man, half-bull. (The ladies are saying, ‘hey, isn’t that most men?’) He lived in the labyrinth of the famous Minoan palace of Knossos and ate Athenian children every nine years (another story). Until an Athenian, Theseus, came to slay the Minotaur.
I’m not sure what the moral of the story was supposed to be, but I can think of a few. The legend does leave out the later marital problems we assume must have occurred with the royal couple, after the coupling.

When not building crazy sex contraptions for the queen, the architect built Knossos for the king. I’ll give you a dispatch from the ruins of Knossos later this week.

Band on the Run: Kitschy, Classy Drake Hotel is Toronto Arts Beacon

by Ember Swift on

Ember Swift, Canadian musician and touring performer, will be keeping us up-to-date on what it’s like to tour a band throughout North America. Having just arrived back from Beijing where she spent three months (check out her “Canadian in Beijing” series), she offers a musician’s perspective on road life.


If the merging of kitsch and class together is on the agenda for a place to stay in Toronto, The Drake Hotel is perfect. Each room is unique. The furnishings are retro and modern combined. The artwork is compelling. There’s even an antique photo booth machine that shares a room with an electric saddle ride.

But we didn’t stay there.

Honestly, it’s a bit too pricey for the musician’s salary, but it’s one of those urban hotels that are worth splurging for on a special occasion because it would be a memorable and unique night’s stay. And, well, it’s a happening place in the city and surely the entertainment within its walls would be worth absorbing. This week, for instance, it’s one of the social hotspots for the Toronto International Film Festival. Well… there’s something.

(Which film stars will be riding in that saddle, I wonder?)

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I was in Toronto this weekend for a jam party and some rehearsals. I love this city. I spent nine years living here up until 2004 and I still feel like it’s my urban home. The thing that has struck me so much since I left, however, has been the rapid changes that urban landscapes undergo. One of those changes is Queen Street West and its push towards upward mobility from artist and low-income eccentricity.

Gentrification. It’s heading west in Toronto. At least the eccentricity hasn’t been completely vacuumed away. The Drake is evidence of that fact.

Places like The Drake have popped up all along this stretch. It’s not as though this hotel wasn’t here when I lived in Toronto. In fact, it was a dive that most people I knew stayed away from. It has been around since 1890 and used to house the railroad workers that came into the city. In the eighties and nineties, it was a rough punk bar and just seemed like a seedy establishment that one hurried past if walking by late at night.

The current owner bought it in 2001, gutted the place and underwent several years of renovations before opening the space as an upscale hotel, lounge, rooftop restaurant and live music venue in the basement. Since it’s opened, the traffic to this part of the city has increased, as have the number of art galleries, cafes, and loft-dwellers in nearby newly constructed urban condos. It’s remarkable how quickly neighbourhoods transform.

Their website describes The Drake as “a democratic hub and cultural pathfinder, in the midst of a re-energized indie art gallery district.”

I can’t quite swallow the democracy here, since it’s out of many people’s price range if you’re not actually looking to stay, but I do concede that it’s a hub. It’s central to new growth and feels like a beacon of change. What’s more, it does unite rather well with the diversity of the neighbourhood as though its spot “in the midst” of so much art hasn’t been lost on the designers. They hang local artwork on the walls, have commissioned canvasses and expensive sculptural displays flanked by refurbished couches and squeaky vinyl diner stools. Indie musicians file through the basement venue while a sushi bar and yoga den take up the upper levels.

It’s definitely full of contradictions that succeed at representing a neighbourhood in the throws of change, on the cusp of new identities, on the eve of new beginnings without a desire to erase the past.

When I walked into The Drake this weekend to check out the second stage of renovations – I had been told that it had transformed into a more 30’s style kitsch look in the past year and I was curious – I spoke to the smiley front desk clerk about the hotel and its story. He seemed to smile out of every pore as he showed me the flyers and flashed white teeth in response to each of my questions. He had me smiling back, to be sure, but I wondered how happy he really was.

He spread his arms outwards to sweep in the whole of the building when he told me I was free to walk around and take pictures. Another grin and he went back to work without a word. In fact, no one seemed to mind my presence in the least. I felt a bit like a fly on the wall as I strolled into rooms I hadn’t been in for several years and took pictures and looked around. I listened in on a few meetings, a lover’s spat and a heated political discussion over a late lunch.

When I returned to the lobby, the smiling host looked up from his word asked if I had any other questions about the space and if I wanted to reserve a room. He explained that I wouldn’t be able to view one because they were all booked out (there are only 19 rooms), but he brought out room brochures that showed their diversity. As I mentioned, every room at The Drake is different. It’s not themed, per se, but several top designers were hired to design the rooms and each took a different approach. Some rooms have hardwood, some have carpeting, some have exposed brick walls and minimalist decoration and others have walls filled with unique art pieces. No art in the whole hotel is repeated, actually (sigh of relief) and each room boasts different furnishings, colours, layout and overall decorating style.

I looked at the brochures with genuine interest and told him that I’d be back in touch in the future. After all, anything’s possible.

Maybe, if nothing else, I’ll come back to socialize and get my picture taken in that old black and white booth.

Right after I’ve ridden in that saddle!