Hopefully this doesn't antagonize my Northern friends, but today was probably the first 'cold' day we've had in Montreal this winter. I had a 'shortage of coal to mine' mandatory day off from work and was planning on getting up early to get myself to a walk-in clinic by 7:30 a.m. so I could score some direly needed face drugs sometime before sun down, but the cold had infiltrated my shoddily-protected room and I couldn't get myself out of bed despite using every one of my tricks (10 more minutes, one more song, count down from 100 and... we'll stop there.)
Finally I felt brave enough to leave the cocoon four hours later and I thought the wall below my shitty, thin window felt a little colder than usual. I checked the Weather Channel site and it was -22C - and that's about ten degrees chillier than I remember it being here so far.
Anyways, I did some grocery shopping today and I was waiting for a light at Papineau and Rachel during the after-work, rush hour and this lanky, tall, bearded guy sort of pops up from beside a bus stop and walks towards me. He looks at me and tilts his head, while also appearing to stuff what look like three perfectly spherical tiny oranges into his jacket. I avert my eyes because I figured this dude was just typical Montreal crazy.
(You really do see something that makes you stop and scratch your head every single day here, whether it's someone stuffing a tree into a telephone booth, or a dude loudly claiming he's Malcolm X at at Metro stop or bizarre aerobic moms pushing their strollers through Parc Lafontaine while shooting an arm in the air and then a leg and then jogging on the spot, while a lady in a parka three sizes too big,runs up and down the line chanting encouragement. I got stuck in that line on my way to work last Friday and walked inside this throng of moms for about 10 minutes, sipping coffee from a travel cup and trying too hard to look comfortable.)
Where were we? Oh yeah, crazy bearded guy with the oranges. Anyways, the light changes and I start crossing the street. It's a piercing -22C (it really does feel colder than the dry Arctic -22 version. It's the humidity. For real.) and I see the guy out of the corner of my eye (using my peripherals) and it looks like he's running up to drop kick me in the back. Huh? I turn around to realize that, no, he's actually just running out into the intersection and jumping up comedically to greet his helpless, commuter customers (commustomers?) before going into a juggling routine.
I stop at the other end of the street to watch out of curiosity. Juggling? In this weather? Really? Is this how you make it in Montreal, bra?
I've always had a little rant about jugglers, about how expert and skilled they are at hurling these balls different ways and keeping them from hitting the ground and why they chose to spend all that time being so good at it. They unquestionably spent countless hours honing their talents, learning how to throw the objects behind their backs and how to incorporate different and dangerous instruments and elements. And that's fine. But when a juggler is out there asking for money, I always ask why this person didn't spend the time they used flipping around these balls to read a book or learn a craft like carpentry, that could eventually pay the bills. I get it, juggling is fun and they probably smoked a lot of weed, but no one sees me running around Montreal, challenging people to games of EA Sports NHL-series (except that was a gainful venture that one winter in Cow-Town... YEAH!!!) or to quoting the Simpsons for coins, even though these were the useless abilities I spent countless hours perfecting during my youth-adolescence-extended adolescence-this morning.
But to each his own, I suppose. This is, admittedly, a hard fucking place to find work and I guess if someone is willing to shell out a few cents to watch some poor schmuck juggle balls in the dead of winter while waiting for a red light, who am I to argue.
(TERRIBLE SEGUE ALERT!!!)
And here's a guy who made a shit-ton of money but walked away from a HOLY SHIT-ton of money because he would have had to sell out himself and his values in order to sign his name to the cheques.
He's been outspoken against the subtle - and not-so-subtle - ways that Hollywood and the powers that be tried to change him and his act and he's been called crazy and dismissed as a nut because of it, but we are - and certainly he is - better for what he did.
Here are some recently released bits from Chappelle's show that I stumbled upon last night. Glad to see that Dave Chappelle is still doing stand-up and is still funny as ever.
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