I dropped into the Cecil on...

I dropped into the Cecil on Saturday afternoon with a couple of guys from work after we'd grabbed lunch at Vera's, one of Vancouver's best burger joints. The crowd was sparse but mostly out to have a good time and there were plenty of seats in gyno row, so we took our seats while a maybe-twenty-year-old, very hot little blonde with high quality aftermarkets danced to the kind of music popular with maybe-twenty-year-old dancers. The talent level on a Saturday afternoon was not up to what you'll typically see here on the night shift but, with one exception who might've appealed to some guys, it was a lot better than I'd expected it to be. The waitress was cute and quick, and the massage girl was getting work but not from us. However, it's the DJ who's the real story of this review.

Now, I don't like strip club DJs as a rule: there's the occasional exception who'll be good at his job, mildly entertaining and mostly silent but the majority are simply annoying at best and can drive me out of an otherwise good club at worst. The DJ at the Cecil this afternoon was what I usually hope for in a DJ, which is mostly silent, but his tune selection was just bizarre. In Vancouver clubs there's a wait of 2-4 songs between dancers, that's just the way it is, and in most clubs the DJ will counterbalance the pop/dance/trance music the dancers' pick with some rock in the classic or modern vein. Well, this particular afternoon, after the hot little blonde steps off stage the DJ treats us to a song by Leonard Cohen (For those of you unfamiliar, LC is a Canadian "singer" who basically recites his own poetry to music. He's good and I like the occassional song when it fits my mood, but his style can best be described as "music to commit suicide to."). So the three of us think this is kind of uotside the box for strip club music, but what the heck. Then he plays a second LC song, and we're wondering if he went to the loo and missed the end of the song or if his girlfriend just dumped him, but we're having a laugh and one guy keeps running his Moto Razr phone across his wrists. This is followed by, you guessed it, another LC song, at which point I'm out of my chair and on my way to the booth. I thank the guy for supporting Canadian artists then ask him if he's trying to drive away the audience so he can have the girls to himself and let him know that some of us are a little worried about his mental state. He laughs and says he'll change the music, and before I'm halfway back to my seat he's spinning some Audioslave; still not that upbeat but a definite improvements and anyway it's the last break song before we get to see some titties again. Except that after that dancer and between every set for the next two hours until we leave all he plays (can you guess it) is nothing but Audioslave. If we hadn't found it all so funny it would have cost this review a point or two.