I love this show! I couldn’t pick a favourite episode if I tried, but this one struck me extra funny because it made me remember swish. Swish is, by technical definition, an alcoholic beverage, but not of the quality you’d find in even the cheap aisle at the NSLC. It’s made by putting water in an empty rum barrel–most authentic if you can steal one rather than buy one–and letting the alcohol leach out into the water for a while (turn the barrel each day–giving it a “swish”, hence the name), and although swish will get you good and drunk, it tastes so fucking bad that you have to hold your breath and turn off your taste buds to even get it down. Once it’s down, all you can do is cross your fingers that it’ll stay down. Except for doing it on a dare, you probably won’t find anyone drinking swish unless he’s an alcoholic, some old Indian on a reservation (okay, same thing…hehe), or a broke teenager too young to drink legally. I have tasted it myself (at the reservation, as a matter of fact) and that was enough for me–that shit would make the Mad Dog seem like a fiiiiiine wine.

Julian’s just returned from jail (forget why he was in this time), as have Mr. Lahey and Randy (now jobless and prostituting himself for cheeseburgers as “Smokey”), and in Julian’s absence, Ricky takes over Lahey’s position as trailer park superintendent. Ricky also came up with a great idea to make some extra money…by selling everything in Julian’s trailer and turning the trailer itself a dope-growing operation. He’s got the inside entirely covered with aluminium foil and grow lights set up–grow lights running on Julian’s power bill. He’s installed several splitters on Julian’s satellite TV, and has been selling feeds to residents of the park for $10 a month. He’s also taken out several credit cards in Julian’s name, but thinks it’ll be okay because he threw the cards in the lake after he maxed them out, and if the credit card company can’t find the cards, then they don’t have to pay back the money (that’s true, right?) There are also fraudulent EI (Employment Insurance) claims made in various names, Julian’s among them. Ricky meant no harm, really; he’s just better at growing good dope and trying to get rich without working than he is at thinking, and Bubbles couldn’t control him the way Julian can. When Julian returns, on parole and determined to stay out of trouble so he doesn’t go back to jail, he discovers he has a $2200 light bill, thousands of dollars in credit card debt in his name, no furniture in a trailer lined entirely in foil, no car, no rum, and no money. In an effort to make Julian feel better, Ricky gives him the park superintendent’s car (an 80s-vintage New Yorker that has no hood or passenger’s door, after Lahey lopped them off a drunken accident), because to Ricky, a car is a perfectly reasonable place to live, and in the trunk of the car, there’s a barrel of swish. Disgusted, Julian decides to leave and “go work on an oil rig or something”. Bubbles goes to find him, driving his go-cart because he doesn’t own a car (Bubbles lives in a chipboard shed next to Julian’s trailer). It’s hard to pick a best quote, but when Erica is working an undercover prostitution sting and finds Julian, she says, “Drunk, pissing on a dumpster behind King of Donair.” That cracked me up–I don’t like donairs, but I have been to enough King of Donair places (usually with a carful of hungry drunks), and probably even to this one (it’s in Dartmouth), and I’ve seen more than one drunk pissing on a dumpster! 😛

(Cool–it worked! I’m getting the hang of video editing on Linux after all. I ripped the file from DVD with AcidRip, then used Avidemux to take a clip and save it as FLV. Yay me–one step closer to an entirely Windows-free computing experience, no matter what I need to do! Oh, and Mike Smith can’t see anything through those glasses, and his Bubbles voice is nothing like his own.)

“I think it looks pretty good. I used to rock those pants.” –Bubbles, after “sobering” Julian with some real liquor (little airline-sized bottles…hahaha!), bringing him back to the shed and finding him something to wear because Julian’s own clothes smell like dog piss from his time living behind King of Donair.