When they see the four large robots through my window, the skateboarders nearly drop their cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and along with it, their sangfroid.

I spend a lot of time peering out the window at the parking garage across the street. The top level is used as a public park for cycling, fashion shoots, picnicking, tailgating and skateboarding. But this is the first time anyone from the park has looked back through my window.

And when they see robots, brightly coloured red (Hot Rod), pink (Arcee), purple (Rumble) and blue (Soundwave), plus a hardhatted construction worker (Spike Witwicky), they grin and wave and snap photos with their phones.

“What are these rectangular blocks that humans hold up to their heads?” asks Hot Rod.

Though they often seem unfamiliar with earth customs, the Transformers do arrive with gifts: a white narcissus plant, a bottle of bourbon, homemade Turkish delight (the closest thing to Energon that humans can digest, they say) and a vinyl copy of the Transformers: The Movie soundtrack.

The album is almost exclusively what they play when they perform together as a band, the Cybertronic Spree.







Unable to process our earth food, they prefer to stick to alcohol, which fuels their systems. With some help from bartender/writer Sarah Parniak, we get started with a round of gimlets.

“Ba weep gra na weep ninny bong,” the robots cheer the universal greeting as they clink glasses.

Sitting on the sofa proves difficult, most of them preferring to lean. Prone to endless digressions, it takes 30 minutes to peel from them the story of how they formed the band.

“After the success of Transformers the movie I felt like a star,” says Hot Rod.

Slight fact check. The 1986 movie (which my guests consider a documentary) was a commercial failure. It’s a cult classic now.

While Michael Bay’s more recentTransformers movies would probably be successful even without the nostalgic hook (hard to go wrong with machines blowing up cities), the robots that changed into cars and planes were immensely popular to ’80s kids.

Each year, Hasbro marketed their new toy lines by introducing more characters into the widely watched cartoon. But in the 1986 movie, they decided to push the new characters by killing off the old ones, as violently as possible. Imagine if Elmo had made his debut on an episode of Sesame Street where Big Bird is fatally shot through the chest. That’s what I saw when I was 11, the hostility ramped up by a heavy metal soundtrack.

As a result, I have no memory of late ’80s music. I missed it all: Madonna, U2, Rick Astley, Guns ’n’ Roses, Falco. From 1986 to 1989 I only listened to this soundtrack, on auto-reverse.

But while it made a huge impact on me, the movie was largely ignored at the time, the final performance of Orson Welles going unappreciated.

“They didn’t renew us and we faded into the background,” remembers Hot Rod. “We did what any self-respecting stranded robot would do in hard times. We all got jobs. Arcee was in law enforcement. Rumble and Spike were in construction.”

They were making a living, but things were not going well.

“I was pretty much living out of my car, transformed,” says Hot Rod. “Just going where the free parking was. Toronto’s not so good for that.”

At some point, one might expect these robots to remove their heads and reveal that they are actually humans in disguise. But no. These are robots from another planet. And for two and a half hours of cocktails, they never break character.

I was going to keep serving but Parniak, seeing that we’re quite involved, slips into bartender mode and pours the negronis we’ve pre-batched. Once those have been consumed, I mix everyone an old fashioned Canuck. The purple robot with the slight New Jersey accent drinks from a straw, or else something else in his hand occasionally leaks liquid on to the floor.

“I put the word out, getting the band back together,” Hot Rod returns to their origins. “We thought we’d just do it for one night.”

Initially formed for Nerd Noise Night 2013, there was no debate over what Cybertronic Spree would play. No one argued for smooth jazz, ska or hip-hop.

“You’re sort of expected to play the hits,” says Hot Rod, still under the impression that this music is fondly remembered.

They make so many digressions from my questions, you’d think I was asking about drone strikes in Afghanistan, and not whether they also perform Vince DiCola’s synthesizer score.

“Of course we do perform pieces of the score,” Hot Rod answers my badgering. “We do the Autobot Decepticon Battle.”

It’s a niche audience that embraces a long prog rock instrumental from a fight scene in a children’s cartoon.

“If the Autobot Decepticon Battle is our ‘Stairway to Heaven,’” says Rumble, “then the Unicron Theme is the ‘Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida.’”

I suggest that may not be a collection of references familiar to the Toronto Star reader.

“Let’s talk about Rob Ford (open Rob Ford's policard)!” shouts Rumble, squirting booze from his wrist.

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COCKTAIL RECIPES

These are classic starter cocktails. Master these before getting fancy. They come with a little help from my friend and drink writer Eric Vellend.

Old-Fashioned Canuck

2 ounces (60 mL) rye whisky

1/4 ounce (7 mL) maple syrup

2 dashes Angostura bitters

Orange peel, for garnish

Place rye, maple syrup and bitters in mixing glass. Add ice and stir until cold. Pour into glass over one large cube. Garnish with orange twist.

Negroni

1¼ ounce (37 mL) dry gin

1¼ ounce (37 mL) Campari

1¼ ounce (37 mL) sweet vermouth

Orange peel, for garnish

Place gin, Campari and vermouth in mixing glass. Add ice and stir until cold. Pour into glass over one large ice cube. Garnish with orange twist.

Gimlet

2 ounce (60 mL) dry gin

3/4 ounce (22 mL) fresh-squeezed limejuice, strained

3/4 ounce (22 mL) lime syrup (recipe below)

Lime wedge, for garnish

Place gin, limejuice and syrup in cocktail shaker. Add ice and shake until cold. Pour into chilled glass. Garnish with lime wedge.

Lime Syrup

Makes enough for about 10 gimlets.

4 limes

1 cup (250 mL) demerara sugar

1/2 cup (125 mL) water

In a small pot, bring sugar and water to boil. When sugar is dissolved, set aside to cool. Grate limes and add to syrup. After 10 minutes, strain, pressing down on zest to extract excess liquid.