Good day, eh? And welcome to the next blog post.
And yes, this is yet another non-Disney post though it is a post that is part of a blog journey towards Disney. So you should be ok with it. I’ve just accepted this is happening. So should you. Dude. It’s a blog. Relax.
And this is yet another “stop” post – meaning that this post is associated with an actual stop on our cross-country trip. I mean, does that make it more exciting? No, probably not. But that statement and my reflection on it just gave me a whole other paragraph to write and you a whole paragraph to read.
This, my friends, is the blogosphere. Do people still say blogosphere? Spell check accepts it. So I do too.
Cross-country trip: Day 2 (Afternoon/Evening)
After a 4.5 hour or so drive from Cooperstown, we plan on arriving in Niagara Falls somewhere between 1 and 2 PM. We will have probably grabbed lunch on the road so the plan is to get right to our hotel. We are staying on the Canada side so, yay, we get to use our passports. We will def check out both sides of the falls, but we will be staying at the DoubleTree in Ontario. AND we booked a room with a falls view so I mean…water.
That night, I am not sure where we will be having dinner but there are a ton of options. And for sure, we will have some poutine at least as a starter because I mean gravy and fries. And curds, eh? After dinner, we are going to be taking a Hornblower (formerly Maid of the Mist) evening cruise into the falls.
This should be a super fun day. NONE of us have ever seen the Falls so this will be Day 2 of completely new experiences for all of us.
So, being that we were crossing over into Canada, we (and by “we,” I mean “I”) decided to watch a classic piece of Canadian cinema – Strange Brew. I realize many people reading this probably have no idea what Strange Brew even is, but I mean you should. It’s beauty, eh? Summary below. So take off.
The food
Given that we would be viewing the falls from both the New York and Canadian side, we figured we should have a mix of both cuisines. So we had buffalo wings…
AND homemade poutine. Which was surprisingly good, given that this was the first time we have EVER made poutine.
Of course, we had to have some Molsons. The weird thing was the liquor store down the street didn’t even have Molson Goldens. So I had to go XXX. I mean, I had to. They weren’t bad. So now I know what we can drink when we have our Vin Diesel night.
And for dessert, we had doughnuts, which are a pretty big part of the movie. Unfortunately, we only had glazed. I know jelly would have been a more true choice. We also didn’t feed our dog any though, so accuracy was just not in play here, eh?
The activity
I mean. Hockey. But because we had such a busy day that Saturday, we decided to play some NHL on the Playstation. We could only pick Canadian teams. I played Owen and Nickie played Myles. Winner of each game got to play in a deciding game. I lost and so did Nickie. So Myles ended up playing Owen. And they started arguing with each other. So we had to put a stop to the game.
So….it was pretty much like every other Saturday.
The movie
OK a quick summary for you hosers. Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas play Bob and Doug Mackenzie (characters they originally played on SCTV.) Bob and Doug really like beer. And doughnuts. And they say “eh?” a lot. They get a job working at Elsinore brewery and stumble on this nefarious plan to use drugged beer and music to control people’s minds. Oh and the brewery’s previous owner mysteriously died and his brother is now married to his ex-wife. It’s pretty much Hamlet.
Watching Strange Brew with three people who have never seen it before was something I was looking forward to experiencing. I love the movie. But I grew up watching reruns of SCTV on Nick at Night so the Mackenzie brothers were familiar to me already when I first saw the movie. And man, I think this movie is hilarious. And I mean, you would be hard pressed to find a more Canadian movie in that it pretty much captures everything Canada – hockey, beer, um… – well, hockey and beer.
The movie is super low-budget and the premise makes pretty much no sense. And both of these are not meant as criticisms. In fact, it’s probably those two factors combined with the awesomeness of Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas that make this movie so great. The super meta opening alone, where Bob and Doug are screening a movie and have to run from an angry mob thus setting the wheels in motion for the rest of the movie, is worth the price of admission.
Also, their dog can fly so.
It’s hard to say how this film would play to those unfamiliar with these characters though. Nickie hated it. The boys said they liked it and laughed at parts (well, Owen did…Myles never laughs.) But for me, watching a movie like this is like taking a trip back to my childhood. There are so many movies I watched during those years that I can still watch and still hold up great. But movies like Goonies, or Gremlins or Ghostbusters don’t seem all that dated. This movie does. And again, that’s not meant as an insult. It actually makes you miss when they would make movies like this.
WeHeartDisney 