Famous Canadians—William Shatner

 William Shatner, from Montreal, leads off my new and periodic salute to famous Canadians. Bill gets this honor simply because I happened to catch his cover of Pulp's  1994 song, "Common People" last Saturday on Radio Paradise. It's pretty good, as you can hear below, thanks in no small part to Ben Fold's production and the backing vocals of Joe Jackson.

Unfortunately, because of copyright issues, you have to go to the YouTube site for the video below. Also check out the animated video mashup version.

Mr. Shatner was also known more infamously for his rendition of Elton John and Bernie Taupin's "Rocket Man", which he delivered, without a hint of parody, at the 1978 Science Fiction Awards show.

A more recent picture of the rather well-preserved octogenarian.

Food redux 1: Golden Sichuan Restaurant in Richmond. We thought we should give this place another try as we do love our Chuan Cai (川菜).

This time we ordered the veg version of Ma Po Dofu. Quite yummy and they didn't spare the sichuan peppercorns when they found out we didn't pa la (fear hot 怕辣).

These string beans, with chunks of garlic and peppers, were quite flavorful albeit a tad over cooked.

This time we got an over-sized bowl of salt and pepper peanuts generously loaded also with Sichuan pepper powder, perhaps because I spoke Chinese to our Sichuanese waitress. She was so happy to talk about Sichuan and was clearly homesick, having been in Canada for four years without returning to visit.

This sign, which originally read "Come in harry" made me think we were actually in China for lunch.