Slingin Lingo

It feels like I'm cheating, but...

2011-09-01T20:27:00.001-06:00

Another post over on that other blog...

http://threeheadedblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/the-man-got-you-down-well-fuck-the-man/

I figure, we're getting fucked anyways, so why not...

awesome band names #92,392 and #92,393

2011-08-16T21:19:00.002-06:00

New post at threeheaded blog:

HERB IS NOT SO GOOD AT THINGS!

Except awesome band names:

How about Rockin Taco Party or Scintillating Scotoma.

what the...

2011-07-21T08:49:00.001-06:00

NEW: http://threeheadedblog.wordpress.com/

Like Razor said, "it's just for fun, chico..."

find some v on craigslist?

2011-07-10T15:55:00.002-06:00

Probably, but not here.

As the ad says, "cannot be used as a replacement for an actual vagina."

the most interesting neighbour in the world

2011-07-06T21:04:00.013-06:00

Granted, I've only been on speaking terms with him for the past month or so, but I'm starting to think my neighbour in the apartment here might just be the world's most interesting man.

I first got to know him one Saturday afternoon this spring, when Fitz, Tamoobs and myself stopped in at my place to grab a thing or two before heading out to (or was it back from?) the park. We were a beer or two in and Collective Soul-voice (which is the precursor to the Creed voice, which in turn spawned the Nickelback voice. Did the Metallica voice start all of this?) singing a few of their mid-1990s classics. We'd seen my neighbour on our way in and we did the perfunctory head nod. He lives above the street on the main floor and spends a lot of his time on his balcony.

On our way out of my place, Fitz is singing "...hu-what's the hu-world I-hi hu-know..." and my neighbour pokes his head out his door. We get outside and I'm talking about my stationary non-stationary bike and my myriad problems keeping the tire filled (yes, I've changed the tube multiple times and ground down the rim edges where the hole was.) My neighbour starts asking me about the bike and gives me his bike pump and tools and doo-hickeys galore, suggesting likely problems, and pointing out other issues on my bike, like he's inspected it multiple times. I should say, my neighbour is, I'd venture, in his late-50s or early 60s, and he speaks French with a thick Eastern European accent. He lends me all sorts of gear and I tell him, well, I'm kind of busy now, but I'll give it a fix tomorrow. He says he'll give me a hand and then he tells me, in French, "you know, I grew up 30 minutes from Dracula."

I laugh, but he's one of those guys that doesn't know when he says something funny - or else, he doesn't dispense with the laughs very easily. I tell him that's interesting, but we have to go. And we go and I thank Fitzy for singing.

I forget to get home to get a new tire for the next day and I don't see him for a while. When I do, we talk about my bike. He doesn't understand why I haven't fixed it yet. I can't give him a legitimate answer other than, I work, I play baseball, I hang out with my girlfriend and friends and... He shrugs and gives me more advice. He says he needs his bike to get to his girlfriend's place. "Ma blonde," he calls her in his accent. It sounds more like "moh blond." He says there is a guy - likely some enemy who has a crush on his girlfriend - who he knows has punctured his tires twice with a pin when he stays over at her place for the night. He is sympathizing with my plight. I appreciate that.

The next time I see him, he tosses me a new brake line for my back tire and gives me more advice. It's a Sunday afternoon and it's hot as hell and I go out equipped with a cold Corona, but inadequate tools to replace the brake line and it's humid and it's not happening. The tube in the tire is shot to hell again. Here I thought I'd remedied the problem after discovering two brand new tires lying on Sherbrooke the night before. My neighbour is watching me from his balcony the whole time. I can feel his eyes on me, but for some reason, I can't ask him for help. Once I find out that he's gone inside, I slink back in with my tire in my hand and drop it on the floor. My apartment now looks like the Yellowknife dump - ripe for scavenging. There is junk everywhere. Coolers, tents, bike parts, bed shrapnel, Christmas lights and a Christmas tree...

I go to my computer to watch a video on bike repair and my buzzer rings. I answer it and go to my door and there is my neighbour, dressed in his biker shorts and jogger's t-shirt, with a bike skeleton in his hand.

"Where did you get this?"

He was on his way to visit his 'blonde' when he saw a bike - minus its front tire - in an alley. He brought it back and was offering it to me. I laughed and grabbed it and added it to the collection. He said I could use his bike pump whenever. His son would be up.

I didn't fix the damn bike, though. I went to sleep, sprawled on top of my blanket in my undies with my fan billowing warm air onto me. The next night, I got home late and ran to the supermarket to get a frozen pizza and I walked by his apartment and could hear lively accordion coming from inside. I walked to where he wouldn't be able to see me - partly ashamed at still not having fixed my tire - and listened for a while. It sounded really good.

Tonight, I got home with some more takeout food and I saw him on his balcony, as usual. I asked him about the accordion and he said it had been him playing. He said his father was very good and that he had been taught the instrument when he was young. He plays now for fun. Of course, my French isn't the greatest, and his accent is one that I'm not used to, so I'm not entirely sure of all that he said, but the guy seems like he is full of stories.

His father died five years ago in Romania and left him a lot, including that accordion. Now this is where I can't tell you exactly what he was saying, but apparently, his home country wouldn't send him the accordion for some official reason. But he has a friend who is a judge and he got a special exemption from this rule and received the accordion.

He said he used to work in aerospace before he got sick. He said he's been in Montreal for 19 years and has never left the region - he has stayed within the area from "St. Hubert to Mirabel." He said he feels like an exile. He's only been home once since he left. Yet he has family here and different visitors all the time. He speaks a bunch of languages with these visitors. (Allegedly) he's got a more robust sex life than most of my friends, despite being old enough to be their grandfather in some cases.

I've talked to him a half dozen times and he's told me he comes from Dracula's land, he plays an accordion in the dark, he feels my bike pain and his tiny apartment is seemingly a storage space for bicycle-related gadgets and gizmos.

I told him we should have a beer on his balcony sometime. I want to confirm my suspicion that he might be the most interesting man in the world. He's definitely the most interesting person in this apartment.

productivity burps

2011-06-27T17:24:00.007-06:00

Judging by where I woke up Sunday morning, it didn't figure to be a productive day.

After a Friday evening, where I imbibed a tad too liberally, I woke up in full-hermit mode Saturday afternoon and shunned invitations to pick up beds and watch fireworks, in favor of trudging down Papineau to Ontario to find some kind of nourishment before visiting my girlfriend's cat, which I said I'd do last week.

I found a delicious Portuguese bakery and, with corned beef sandwich, cheesecake and Coca-Cola in tow, I marched toward my destination, to visit a cat that had been meowing at passerbys at her window since being left to herself Thursday evening. When I arrived, the grey-black enigma, which has so far treated me in a very hot-and-cold fashion, followed me around like my shadow as I dumped some kitty chow into her bowl and blew my allergies into a kleenex in the bathroom and then turned the lights on. I laid down and started into my sammy, sharing pieces of beef with the culinarily curious kitty. I opened a book, stared at the words for five minutes, before opting for some Planet Earth. After the Future disc, I went to Great Plains and, after that, the Pole to Pole one and then Caves. I could hear the fireworks, but I didn't want to think about them or anything. I wanted to marvel at the world's greatest and most inspiring creations, while simultaneously retreating from them inside a small, black apartment with a cat that just wanted to lay next to something. (It's debatable whether I did more for the cat than it did for me.)

Nine hours of Planet Earth later: I woke up crusty-eyed (no allergy pills) and hacking, nearly fully-clothed (always too hot to wear a t-shirt inside here in the summer) sometime around dawn, on an improvised duvet, not meant for sleeping on. I laid there, reluctantly coming to terms with the upcoming day, debating whether I should turn off the Planet Earth menu, which ended up playing on a 15-second loop for probably about three hours. (At one point, I had each of the 18 shots memorized in sequence. These are things I probably shouldn't be telling anyone.)

After a day where I literally laid on a couch with a cat, I couldn't fathom how I'd be able to muster the energy to do all the things I had to do - ie. haul a bed frame home at noon, fix my bike tire... and that's it. That's the state I was in.

When the menu had driven me to my breaking point, I got up, turned it off, gave the cat one last pet and one last treat, threw on my shirt and hoofed it home. From there, I received a call from the Fitz, asking when I'd be by to pick up the bed frame. I called my buddy Jones and he said he'd be there at noon. I started off. I got there. We taped up the bed. Jones arrived and we hauled it painstakingly from West of St. Laurent, down Sherbrooke, to my place East of Park Lafontaine, to the amusement of nearly everyone we passed. That's how I roll. Stubbornly.

I was tired, but I felt good, knocking something so important off my list of ever-expanding things to do. Hey, it only took me 8 months to acquire a bed!

We called up Heee-Ren and went up to a Vegan spot to eat some lunch. (Who does this Herbiberous think he is? Don't worry, it gets better.) On our way up there, I spy a garage sale of sorts and say, hey boys, we should go check out what they've got.

Good call.

Turns out these kids are selling a record player. "How much?"

"Oh everything's cheap. Five bucks?"

"It works?" I asked, shocked.

"Yeah, I think it just needs a new needle."

Sold. I look over and beside the turntable, they've got a stack of records. Sgt. Peppers, Dark Side of the Moon, James Bond themes....

"How much for the records?"

"Cheap. 50 cents each," the chick says.

I look at the boys and we start to laugh. Score.

We throw her $15 and now I own a record player with a burgeoning record collection.

(Aside: If you're keeping track at home, this now means that I'm a fixed-speed bike and smoking habit away from becoming a fully functioning Hipster. Actually, I also need an ironic moustache, since part of my hermitude on Saturday morning had me shaving off my faux-handlebar nose-neighbour in disgust. I'm clean-shaven for the first time since before St. Patricks day. A girl at work called me "little boy" today.)

So, how's that for productive? We have a healthy lunch (for a change.) I had a vegan BLT, with the bacon substituted for bacon-smoked coconut chips. If you're through Montreal, check this place out - Aux Vivres. You eat these huge wraps and the food just floats inside you. You don't feel heavy at all.

With the boys heading off to baseball, I decide to try for a trifecta of sorts: let's get this damned bike fixed.

So I walk all the way from Mont Royal and St. Laurent to the Canadian Tire in Hochelaga. By this time, the chafe has set in. My inner thighs are like two slightly moist pieces of rubber rubbing against each other. My balls are sandpaper. I'm in pain. But I press on. I've been walking all day. I get to Canadian Tire finally at five after 5 p.m. and, somehow, on a Sunday, the store is closed. Shake of the head. Wag of the finger. Tears for the ballsack.

Oh well. I get home and have a rest and wait for Fitz to call, as he's got some more stuff for me. Eventually, he rings back at around 10 p.m. and I set out again and, after a glass of vino and a semi-goodbye, I'm back out the door with a electrical fan in my right hand, a plant in my left and a bookbag packed with various knick-knacks that I may never need.

I got home last night and dropped the new apartment accoutrement on the floor and I barely recognized my place. It reminded me of that skit in the Simpsons were Homer takes advantage of Flanders' financial troubles and buys all his furniture from him at a bargain-basement price and then he's sitting around outside, watching TV, drinking beers and BBQ-ing with Flanders' stuff. I'm living in the Casa del Fitzy, right now.

This whole episode taught me that life is all about balance. Well, balance for normal people. And for me too, in a way, in that I'll probably always wind up at some median level of ambition, energy, etc., but that I ride the peaks and valleys hard... and with a vengeance.

Sadly though, this story also illustrates that Montreal has lost another hero in the gradual, but seemingly endless exodus of great folks from the city. Fitzy and Tameens, I'll see you guys in July, but I've had a grand old time getting to know you guys over the last year or so. I'll tell you that in a much more intimate and slurred way this time next month.

awesome band names #18,939 and 18,940

2011-06-23T07:35:00.003-06:00

I assure you that, at some point, I will respond to the Canucks playoff run. The post is coming but it's sprawling and it hurts - like a snake that just ate a hippo:

"Wait for it... wait for it... OH GOOD CHRIST!!!"

Anyhow, my boy Patch came up with an awesome band name the other day: Kinipshinfit.

He thought it was a good metal band name, but when I hear Kinipshinfit, I'm not going to lie, I hear Swedish dance-pop duo.

But I was just reading an article on colorectal cancer and came across a line that I thought would make an epic metal band name: The Fecal Occult Blood Test.

there are things that happen...

2011-06-07T19:37:00.005-06:00

You think I'm going to get on here to start huffing and puffing about my temporary disillusionment with the Vancouver Canucks and how it's turning a poor young-middle-aged biberous into a jittery, nervous, bipolarized crack pot, don't you?

Well, if I had any energy after last night's 8 - 1 fisting, I probably would have, but cooler (read: sweatier and better fed) heads did prevail and even though my emotional journey this last month would have made for must-read drama, I am far too friggin superstitious to get into any of it right now.

(Brief tangent: The old man and I speak carefully like polished politicians when discussing the Canucks' chances these days. Whenever I've been away from Yellowknife for any length of time, the Nucks have dominated our phone call conversations to the point where we'll argue for 30 minutes about whether we think Cody Hodgson is a defensive liability or not. (For the record: I say he isn't.) In recent calls home though, talk of the team is limited to a scant sentence or two: "We're in the Finals." "Yes, it certainly is exciting..." "Ah... (one of us will say before the other gets too worked up) but Boston has a good team, let us not forget." "Indeed." We both twirl the corners of our moustaches.)

So I'm left to shrug it off and hope for the best tomorrow night. I will say that I didn't do my part by getting obliterated at the Sports Station, like I did before/during/after games one and two, so I'll be pulling up a seat to one of their beer tap tables tomorrow night to muck it up for the boys. (Yes, beer tap tables. The taps are built into the table and you pay by fluid ounce or something.)

All I'm going to give you right now is my immediate reaction to Game 3:

"Shea Weber did have a beard."

And don't think I don't remember that Happy Gilmore, one of my childhood heroes, is a Bruins fan. Happy? We're on hiatus, brotha.

Don't take it personal. I had to boycott Neil Young during our San Jose Sharks series. And we're cool, right?

Note: The herbiberous beard is at shaggy, patchiness never before seen and, as a result, I've gained a new respect for bearded folk. Unless you've dealt with one of these things before, you have no idea how often you get sauce or crumbs or boogers caught in there and there's no way to tell they're there unless you get all Howard Hughes about it.

Rant time:

There are things that happen to you as you get older: you find yourself only thinking about sex around 4,000 times a day; your back is sore, but when you crack it, it's still not fixed; you can get boogers stuck in your beard; and, unfortunately, you start becoming a little too serious about your life and what you're doing with it.

Now, my hiatus with this blog has nothing to do with Happy Gilmore superstitions or excuses. It has more to do with my inability to process the past month or two into any relatable narrative, since I still feel weird about everything.

Here's an attempt:

Long story short: I went up to Fort Simpson, NT to work for my old newspaper company for two weeks and then went home for three days and it was there that I realized how much things had changed... or more accurately, how much life had gone on.

I felt like an obsolete data processor trying to deal with all the information I was being fed: houses, weddings, babies, projects. It was overload, but in a fucking awesome way really, in that I saw all my best and closest friends in the world - my brothers - becoming adults or, I should say, men.

I was so proud looking at Slader, with his baby girl (a future Canucks fan! kidding) splayed out on his stomach, while we watched hockey. Brook was barely six weeks old at the time and Slader looked like he'd been a dad for time eternal. We had two dinners at Mindy and Mindy's new house, which is a perfect spot and I was so impressed - even when Mindy showed off the entertainment centre he made in Charlie's woodshop. Patch made us a gigantic, improvised fish dinner from scratch that 10 of us couldn't polish off. Feltch was talking new house and relationship and dog and bringing over home brews. I seriously sat in awe at all of these guys, whom I inexcusably hadn't seen in more than a year, and how they'd grown and matured into these people.

I was only back for three days and I tried to have a good time and connect with everyone like the old days, but I felt really distant, in that I knew I would soon be leaving again with return unknown, without a suitable explanation as to why I was heading back to Montreal. I felt like it was the elephant in the room and I felt insincere, not being able to say why I was leaving all these people that I care about and who care about me, when I don't really have a career or something keeping me down here.

The thing is, I love Montreal. This city is what all organized conglomerations of people should aspire to become and I invite anyone to come visit me here. On a summer day, the parks are full of people picnicking, drinking beers and wine, the streets are closed for festivals, there are free shows and festivals everywhere and things are cheap. I've seen a ton of shows, ate some scrumptious food, met a lot of new people with wild interests from around the globe, including some like-minded writerly-comedy types.

Montreal hasn't lost its luster yet.

Since I've been back, I've wanted to start getting something going for myself down here, mostly fueled by my own dissatisfaction with my current work situation, but also, pathetically, in a small way in order to partially justify my move here. (A girl, who I had only met for one night, boiled me down to two words: "sensitive and restless." Yep and yep.)

Where this blog rant fits in? Because I've wanted to start freelancing stories or articles or whatever, I've viewed the blog as a roadblock, as a venue where I was writing goofy things for free that I could maybe pitch to a magazine or paper or website for some $$$ or at least publication. And that's what happened, really.

And you want to know what happened, really? I stopped writing altogether. This isn't to say that the last month has been a complete loss or anything. Quite the opposite, actually. I've met a girl who I'm really getting on with (and who I may be guilty of doing the 'don't talk about it' superstition stuff with) and it feels like I'm busy doing something every night/day.

But that writing stuff has dried up like a turd in the sun and that has got to stop.

And I know I shouldn't have to explain myself for what I want to do and I know all my buddies are happy for me, but because I am who I am and because I over think everything, I wanted to get this off of my chest. We'll always be brothers, brothers.

(And you have to put up with these crazy rants every once in a while on here. You should know that by now.)

2011-06-02T01:13:00.000-06:00

Today is going to be sunny with a chance of showers.

thoughts that have possessed me today

2011-05-30T22:59:00.002-06:00

Is there anything that screams 'I'm trying to be cool' louder than someone riding their bike with no hands?

Where did the last name Sexsmith come from? I've heard of blacksmiths and shoesmiths, but if you go back a few thousands years, were the original Sexsmiths a bunch of hoors?

clay davis + deerhunter's bradford cox = 30 seconds of heaven

2011-05-11T16:49:00.000-06:00

SHEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIITTT-Lia

fast five: or ocean's eleven for dummies

2011-05-10T21:41:00.003-06:00

I just got home from Fast Five and I've got to say it was the most entertaining movie I've seen in a while, in that it was so gloriously and rapturously terrible.

Basically, every incarnation from the Fast and Furious franchise reunites for an Ocean's Eleven style caper to steal $100 million of drug kingpin money from the heart of a corrupted and heavily protected police headquarters in Rio de Janeiro.

The thing is, the plan to steal the money is atrocious (at one point, it involves getting one of the hot chicks to walk up to the kingpin and getting him to put his hand on her ass in order to get a handprint ID for a scanner replication later on) and the only thing more ridiculous is the fact that the gang abandons what they spend literally an hour of the movie doing to prepare for the heist to just wing it, video game cheat style by bursting though barricades and walls with an armoured truck.

It really was Ocean's Eleven for people with ADHD.

Vin Diesel and Co. also probably spent more than $100 million on cars, guns, warehouses, GPS-trackers, flights and a gigantic safe just to steal the $100 million.

In all, it was a beautiful, beautiful thing to behold.

And, thinking back, the only way the plot makes any sense is if you imagine that every time a scene ends or the camera cuts away from a character, they start doing crazy amounts of blow... I mean, Carlito's Way's David Kleinfeld type blow.

"Hey, we just stole four cop cars so that we can remain unnoticed... (SNIFF) but I bet you $1 million in money I don't yet have that I can beat you to the three of you to the next stop light."

"Hey, I'm the drug kingpin and Vin Diesel and his gang are being taken back to the US by the Rock and therefore they are now unable to steal my money... (SNIFF) but he burned $10 million of my money (by the way, I make $100 million a week) so I better ambush the FBI convoy and kill them and hope it doesn't somehow come back and wind up biting me in the ass."

"Hey, I'm Jordana Brewster's character and I'm pregnant... (SNIFF) and RAIL thin."

Honestly, I can't wait for the next edition.

Favourite lines:

The Rock, as the FBI Agent: "These guys are dangerous and for God's sake, don't let them drive cars."

Tyrese, after balking at the audacious plan and then hearing that the planned target is worth $100 million: "That's a lot of vaginal activity."

Vin Diesel, breaking up a fight between Paul Walker's character and a guy who looked like a cross between Zack Galifianakis and a UFC fighter: "Walk it off!"

craigslist: why even bother?

2011-05-08T21:44:00.005-06:00

I found this in the free section:

Who would want this? Really?

Nah, scratch that. I think it's more important to consider that there is someone in Montreal who thinks that there is somebody else out there who might desire a puzzle with 20 missing pieces. What kind of person could believe that? Probably somebody with 20 missing pieces, right?

Even more puzzling... here's the puzzle itself:

AHHHHH!!!!

That's fucking horrifying! I was all set to go to bed, too. Now I think I might have to stay up and watch Happy Gilmore or something to distract me from the soulless doll visages that have been seared into my consciousness.

I'm wondering if there might be some mental illness involved in this posting. What kind of person openly tries to pass along something as useless, incomplete and borderline terrifying as this puzzle... and for FREE? Why waste the effort taking the picture and typing up the description. It's a demented puzzle and it's not even complete. This person could have used that 3 minutes for something more productive, like burning the flesh off the face of the last person who took a puzzle from him/her, in his/her basement with a vat of acid...

God, I love craiglist.

unsigned hype

2011-05-05T18:09:00.002-06:00

Unreal footage of the next great Canadian basketball star!

Thanks, Mindy

UPDATE:

quick thought to munch on

2011-05-04T21:57:00.003-06:00

So so much happening around the globe and in the life of your friend here these past few weeks, but don't think I forgot about you.

To prove that, here is a little thought to tide you over with until herbiberous stops moving for long enough to spew out a few more words on where he has been this last month:

Without gravity, cups would serve no purpose at all.

True story.

live-cam of herbiberous watching game 7 tonight

2011-04-26T17:33:00.000-06:00

Email to pops: game 6 round 1: vancouver 3 - chicago 4 (OT)

2011-04-25T08:35:00.000-06:00

Strong men also cry.

Strong men also cry.

northern twist to musical staples part. 2

2011-04-21T23:05:00.004-06:00

Like I think I mentioned some time earlier, I'm back North of 60 working at a newspaper and I'm calling people all day long in all sorts of awesome communities and, based on the workload and the amount of time spent on my lonesome, I'm developing a bit of that talk-to-yourself psychosis.

Anywho, there's a community just south of the the Mackenzie that I've called a couple times this week and each time I do it, while the phone is ringing, I start humming... "duh-da-da duuuh-da-duh-da-duh... duh-da-da duuuh-da-duh-duuuuh... duh-da-da duuuh-da-duh-da-duh... da-da-da-da-duh-duh-duh... Kakisa..."

Not ringing a bell? Just substitute Tequila with Kakisa

Don't these humans somehow look like puppets from Fraggle Rock?

Email to pops: game 5 round 1: vancouver 0 - chicago 5

2011-04-21T22:41:00.004-06:00

I feel like a victim of spousal abuse. Why do I keep coming back?

I know we're still leading this series, but really... what the hell is going on?

As Andre 3000 once said: "stack of questions with no answers."

Sedins have to stop being little perimetre ninnies. Seriously, playoff hockey boys! Come on, now!

I'm just sad. And scared. I don't even want to talk about what could happen here.

Canucks' theme song these past two games:

I don't wanna do your dirty work no more

Good: Grief? Hodgson, Schneider

Bad: Feeling about this...

Pops... STAY IN AUSTRALIA! Seriously.

You don't want to see this right now.

herbiberous

Email to pops: game 5 round 1: vancouver 0 - chicago 5 (so far)

2011-04-21T22:04:00.002-06:00

a novel way to annoy

2011-04-20T14:39:00.003-06:00

I've talked a lot about the frustrations I sometimes have walking around and being accosted by folks on the street/outside bus stops/in the Metro, coming up with elaborate stories and excuses for some of my hard earned pennies.

So imagine my shock (and amusement) when I got this plea as a comment in past post:

Get outta here!

This is the cyber-equivalent of the guy outside the bus station who says "I only need $2 more so I can get a ticket back to (insert city name)." And then you see him three days later, he tugs your shirt collar and comes up with the EXACT same story.

I bet you the person who wrote that comment did it from le Grand Bibliotheque on Berri and Maisonneuve. Just a hunch.

Email to pops: game 4 round 1: vancouver 2 - chicago 7

2011-04-19T22:04:00.006-06:00

WAKE UP!!!

First of all:

I just want to thank Jannik Hansen, Christopher Higgins, Max Lapierre, Christian Ehrhoff and Alex Burrows for being the only hockey players dressed in Canucks jerseys to show up at the United Centre tonight.

Second of all:

Third of all:

Everyone is going to jump all over Roberto Luongo after this one, but really I don't see it. I mean, he did let in 6 goals, but I don't see how he could be blamed for many of them.

First goal: Bickell makes a beauty move, out waits him and tucks the puck past his outstretched leg.

Second, Third and Fourth goals: Cluster-canuckle-fuck of Canuck d-men doing their patented, we-are-shook-let's-back-up-and-not-do-anything routine, screen him on three shots from the point or the slot.

Fifth goal: Nice move by Frolik on clear-cut breakaway

Sixth goal: Unstoppable one-timer by Sharp on powerplay.

Really, there is not much Bobby Lou could have done tonight... which isn't to say that I thought he played excellently or anything. He did that goofy, acting hurt thing at the end of the first and I'm starting to tire of it. Just play the game, Bobby Lou. This one wasn't your fault, though.

Fourth of all:

Sedins? Kesler? Edler? Where are you guys? I know it sounds crazy to rip on a guy with six points in four games, but Daniel and his brother Hank have had a pretty mediocre, heartless series. I'm serious. How many times did they give the puck away tonight? How many lousy passes did they make, or weak dump ins to change? I don't know if they were trying to match-up against another line, but they looked SOFT. And I've watched them game-in, game-out these past four years and one thing they aren't is soft anymore. I don't know what's up, but it looks like they don't want to take charge of this thing. And they are turning into HA-YOOOGE liabilities defensively.

Kesler, you've got to make something happen. You can't defer to other people. You're a star now. You've got to put the team on your shoulders. You're a 40-goal scorer. Start shooting.

Fifth of all:

We looked two-dimensional tonight, in the geological sense. The Hawks would blow and we'd fall over. That has to stop. We can't wait for the refs to bail us out, Obama-style. We need to work hard, grind and dig like we did all season.

Sixth of all:

Championship teams bury their opponents when they are weak... They don't dig them up and attach jumper-cables to their near-rotting corpses. God damn, we could have ended this thing tonight... Now stinky Kane and stinky Keith and stinky Hossa and stinky Campbell and stinky Sharp have their mojo back. Stinky Toews, too.

Seventh of all:

This hasn't been funny at all, has it? It's not intentional, I'm just wiped after a night of little sleep and a furious deadline day where I had to put a zillion things together for a newspaper and all I wanted to do was lay back and watch the Canucks oust Toews, Kane and those damn, dirty Hawks.

Eighth of all:

Canucks started doing that frickin thing where they just back up and keep backing up and let the opponent walk right in. Somewhere in Australia, a few of my old man's hairs went grey.

Ninth of all:

Something that really isn't funny: 6-pack of beer, 12-Pepsi, bag of chips, 2 apples, 3 bananas, 2L milk, box of Cheerios and a small tin of Nabob coffee = $53 in Fort Simpson. Yeah, I'd say cost of living is an issue in the North. By the way, I stood in line at the Northern store while a guy beside me put through his items. It was at $338 by the time I was gone and he wasn't even finished.

Tenth of all:

At least it's officially spring: The Canucks dropped a turn sandwich in the playoffs!

Good: Hansen, Lapierre, Higgins, Burrows and Ehrhoff (the only guys who showed any heart)

Need to get better: Henrik Sedin, Daniel Sedin, Ryan Kesler (You guys can't be looking at other people to get the job done. This is your team... Wow! Who do I think I am, eh?)

Pops, I'm glad you didn't have to see this one. It would have ruined your vacation.

Punch a koala in the face for me, would ya?

Sleepless in Simpson,

herbiberous

Email to pops: game 4 round 1: vancouver 1 - chicago 5 (so far...)

2011-04-19T19:53:00.004-06:00

another instance in the saxophone resurgence

2011-04-18T23:56:00.004-06:00

As mentioned on this here blog - right here - Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound fame prophesied a reemergence of the saxophone in popular music.

Sax Roberts Band?

Eh? Eh?

Also... NEW SAM ROBERTS BAND!!!

Email to pops: game 3 round 1: vancouver 3 - chicago 2

2011-04-18T00:41:00.005-06:00

Abridged version:

I apologize.

I was working tonight, covering an all-candidates (read: some-candidates) forum for an upcoming federal election that no one would vote for and that no one may vote in.

That's besides the point, but that is my point: you see, I was tied up at the meeting and recording the issues and trying to think up questions and by the time I got home, the first period was over. (There was a guy in the rec centre - where the forum went down - who was decked out in a Blackhawks uni and he told me we - as in the royal we, as in the Canucks we - were down 1 - 0.)

I got home, turned off my brain for two hours and watched the Canucks come back (it definitely wasn't storm back) and take the game. Sa-weeet!

Quick thoughts: I don't know how we are doing this but it's not like we are dominating games or anything. Sure, we have had a few good bounces, but that's not it either. I think this Canucks squad is just a group that buries and capitalizes on chances. On more than a half-dozen occasions tonight, Pat Kane or Pat Sharp or Frolik or Hossa could and should have potted a gino. But they didn't. And when Sammy had an open cage, he backhanded it home. No sweat. It's an opportunistic team, this one.

Anything else? I didn't think Torres' hit was too dirty, since the puck was there and it wasn't like Seabrook was hit from behind or had his head targeted. I think he just got caught - viciously - with his head down. This is one of those 'grey areas' that people who get paid a lot of money to talk incessantly on television go on about.

Good: Luongo (mostly based on what Jim Hughson and Craig Simpson were saying), Jim Hughson and Craig Simpson (why not? They are a pleasure to listen to - and I fully realize that Hughson is a huge Nucks homer) Canucks defensemen, Canucks' stick-checking

Need to get better*: Manny Malhotra

*Hallmark need-to-get-better style... you know what I'm saying.

GO NUCKS

Umm... Oh yeah.

Catch any big waves, Pops?

I'm sorry I can't write more, I'm tired and tomorrow is a big day.

Take care,

herbiberous

Email to Pops: game 2 round 1: vancouver 4 - chicago 3

2011-04-15T22:36:00.005-06:00

Sweeeeeeeeet Georgia Brown!

Ooooh boy. Not going to lie about that one. I was a wee bit nervous there in the last six minutes or so. (I think 19,000 Vancouverites might have been too.) But, you know when you're fighting history and demons and bad voodoo and Kane's mullet, you realize things won't come easy and there will be a metaphorical wall that you'll have to symbolically break through.

As was beaten into us by the announcers (like social norms by society at a young age? Nope, that's terrible...) all night, the Canucks had surrendered leads to the Blackhawks in game two of the last two series and lost both games. You could feel Vancouver was battling that. You could just feel it. And when Danny scored that goal with 10 minutes left in the third, it was like everyone in the crowd just started to breathe again and it was just ubiquitous cheer in the building... until that little Pat-Kane-wannabe Smith scored. (Patch's new favorite player?)

I thought the Nuckskis did a good job of weathering that storm tonight. Even though you could see that the Hawks were going to throw all they had left at the Canucks, we were able to punch back enough - and land a couple knockouts - to keep them at bay. Man, metaphor overload. Get back to the real world.

Real world: Jannik Hansen was our best player again tonight. The Great Dane is just flying out there and he seems to be taking on some of the responsibilities that would have fallen on Malhotra's shoulders. Hansen's potting his chances, but not just that: he's murdering every Blackhawk who even thinks about touching that black disk and he's backchecking like a beast. (If I was going to use a literal BackCheck metaphor, I'd say his productivity was like at Uncle Jedidiah levels, for those of you in the know...) Man crush developing.

Raymond and Higgins were solid again, as was Kesler, who had a beauty shorthanded shift with Burrows in the second period. The chemistry is kind of off with Kesler and Raymond right now. Kesler is always looking to shoot, but when that line had success, he was more of the set-up guy. Raymond is always going to look to shoot and it looks like Kes is getting a little frustrated at times. I like when Maestro Kes Wes looks to pass though, because he rarely makes the wrong decision and he's got a knack at finding super-open, non-obvious teammates.

Burrows had an average game but - and I might sound crazy - I still thought the Sedins could be better. Granted, they combined for five points, so you can't really get on them, but they didn't seem to be clicking again tonight like they were for big stretches of the season. I'm not sure if it's because they're trying to be more physical, but when one Sedin has the puck, it seems to me like the other one isn't where the puck handler expects him to be. Also, they don't seem to be doing much in their own end, especially when Henrik just let that little Smith bugger pop the first goal out front tonight. If we're up 2-0 in the series with two games like this from Hank and Dank though, I think we're going to be alright.

Hodgson continues to impress, as does Glass. (Wasn't that one Hodgson shift with Daniel at the end of the second period fun to watch? Could Hodgson be a future fit for that line? He doesn't freak out and he's smart with the puck. He's good positionally and he has above-average hockey sense. Could be interesting.)

Defense played strong again, I thought, although they were responsible for that second goal as they got a little lackadaisical. (<---- Did not spell that word correctly without the spellchecker.)

Edler's been a beast and I'm so happy to have him back, but it was odd because every replay they showed of a Blackhawk goal, Edler was rushing to the shooter or trying to get in position. Oh well. Ehrhoff and Hamhuis were pillars back there and Salo, Bieksa and Ballard didn't make any glaring mistakes.

Luongo has had better games.... but he's also had far worse games (see: playoff history vs. Chicago Blackhawks.) I will take tonight's game, especially with our history against this Blackhawks team in game twos.

We didn't drop a number two tonight, so I'm elated.

Good: Hansen, Ehrhoff, Edler's physicality, Kesler's penalty killing, Glass/Lapierre/Oreskovich bruising

Bad: H. and D. Sedin defensively, Kesler-Raymond chemistry

Notes: I don't know how much longer Chicago's big dawgs (Toews, Kane, Seabrook, Keith and Sharp) can keep up these minutes. They've got to be wearing down worse than my ten-speed's back tire.

The announcers have been making a big deal about the Canucks' advantage in the depth department so far this series. (And man, I'm definitely not complaining about the announcing: Hughson and Simpson are the best tandem on CBC by far. If it was Mark Kelly and Kevin Weekes doing this series, I'd be rooting sweep... either team.) And then I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down the Hawks starting 12 forwards last year:

Byfuglien - Toews - Kane

Hossa - Kopecky - Sharp

Ladd - Bolland - Versteeg

Eager - Burish - Brower

JESUS! That's frickin deep. That's Mariana Trench deep. That's first Matrix movie deep. That's the reason why they won the two previous meetings vs. the Canucks. The deepness, bra. Chicago Deepdish.

Speaking of pizza, Mark Donnelly, have you lost some weight?

You be the judge:

2008

2011 (FFWD to 4:04. P.S. Kevin Bieksa looks like a killer from 4:43 to 4:51)

Just in closing, I wanted to give props to Mr. Donnelly for his little signature on the last line of the anthem... I sing along to it every time: "We stand on guard... fo-ah-ah-oh-oh-or.... theee...."

And mad love to Richard Loney too. I feel like he'll still be singing the American anthem when I look like he does (and by the way I'm eating, that might not be too far off actually.)

LET'S GO! GAME THREE!

uh.... oh yeah. Forgot again.

Hope you're having fun in Australia, pops. Throw a boomerang yet?

Give mom a hug for me,

herbiberous

Email to Pops: game 1 round 1: vancouver 2 - chicago 0

2011-04-13T23:23:00.006-06:00

I hope this makes sense:

I’m a devout atheist, a burgeoning cynic and someone who thinks voodoo and black magic and auras are for wackos.

However, I’m just about the most stubbornly superstitious carbon-based life form when it comes to jinxes and sports-viewership. Example? My old man and I used to dress my mom up in a Canucks jersey and seat her beside the TV on the couch during the playoffs because, we noticed, that whenever she was sitting there, we would score. (Unintended results? I’ve never seen my father more chivalrous. My mom’s tea mug would be empty and he’d see her start to get up. “No, honey…” he’d shout, jumping off the couch, “I’ll get it.” My mom was almost as disappointed as we were when the Canucks were bounced.)

Why do I bring this up? Well, I believe I am a Vancouver Canucks jinx. Yes, I said it. Whenever I write about the Canucks on this here blog, bad things happen. (ie. Bad things = Chicago Blackhawks.) I tried to write recaps for each playoff game for each of the past two years and, well, we bowed out like a page leaving the Legislative Assembly (obscure reference? Check.)

So why now, herbiberous? Why would you come back and start writing about the Canucks when you abstained all year – ALL YEAR – and they won their first President’s Trophy, as best team in the NHL’s regular season. Why would you tempt fate like this? Why would you pipe up, just as things are getting serious? Why would you perturb the team’s aura?

Well, you see how much nonsense this is? I love this team and I love writing about them and I’m not going to let some silly superstition stop me…

…err… actually, I think I’ve just come up with an ingenious loophole to, at the same time, talk about my squad’s run for Lord Stanley, while also appeasing the hockey gods. (I didn’t say I was a hockey atheist. I suppose I’m a hockey polytheist.)

You see, my old man, come to think about it, is in Australia, where it’s like 4 a.m. on Sunday or something right now. He’s in the middle of the outback. How is he supposed to keep up with his beloved Canucks? I don’t even think there are TVs in Australia. So, as a good son, I think it’s my job to let him know what happened and who looked good and who looked not so good.

Official purpose of blog post: To write my father an email about the night’s game. (If it is posted on this blog, well, that’s just a more public way of emailing I guess.)

So...

Blackhawks again.

They look they same, but they just don’t look the same.

They’re missing that gritty, hard element to their team that murdered our defensive corps last time around. Not that I’m complaining. (And neither is Alex Edler.)

Tonight, I thought Bobby Lou played like a beast. And I thought he had to. No one has heard more about playoff failure that Luongo has and I thought that, although it was only one game, he answered some of his critics – to use the cliché of our time.

That’s one thing that Canucks fans have to live with too: no matter how great our team played this year and how good we felt, someone would always take the wind out of our sails (man, another cliché) with the ‘they’ll choke in the playoffs’ retort.

Well, maybe that’s why I’ve stayed quiet for so long, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t get excited during that first period. I probably had the neighbours calling the police here in Fort Simpson, the way I jumped off the coach, squatted down low and let a yell go with my arms out, like Crosby did in overtime in Vancouver 2010. It felt like that goal was a good 12 months in the waiting.

Really though, thought the Canucks did a good job in the first, but really let the Hawks back into it in the second and were bailed out by some luck and some Lou for the rest of the game.

The new additions looked really ready for the playoffs. Higgins and Lapierre weren’t afraid to use the body and I thought Higgins, in particular, looked strong on the puck. Hodgson, despite my initial worries about him not being able to keep up in the playoffs, did not look out of place, as I think Craig Simpson mentioned, and I thought Raymond played a decent game tonight.

The Sedins had an off night, but I don’t expect them to on Friday. It looked like they wanted to play a more physical game – and I really liked how Henrik skated right into the crease at the beginning of the first and didn’t move until he was pushed away. The twins are like a highly calibrated instrument and when the parts are firing just a little bit off sequence, the effectiveness of the product is diminished. (For an example of that analogy, please see that analogy.)

While Kesler had a decent ten-minute stretch in the first, I thought he looked a little overwhelmed. He has a lot of responsibility on this team now with Malhotra gone and I felt like for the first five minutes and then for a good span of the rest of the game, he was floating and looking for other people to make plays for him. He’s got to be the hardest worker on the ice and hopefully that message will get pounded into him.

Samuelsson still scares the bejeezus out of me when he’s got the puck. I feel like someone could make a suspense thriller about him dangling and turning around in his own zone with the puck.

The defense didn’t make any huge mistakes and I thought Hamhuis, Edler, Salo and Ehrhoff stood out. I was shocked when Salo flew out for an open ice hit at one point and just prayed he would break in half. Appreciated Edler’s physicality too.

Best players: Luongo, Hansen, Higgins, Lapierre, Edler

Need to get better: Daniel and Henrik, Samuelsson, Burrows

Alright boys, 15 more!

Oh yeah, I mean.... How’s Australia, dad?

Anyways, take care,

herbiberous

village life

2011-04-11T22:17:00.006-06:00

I made it back North of 60 intact.

Nothing of note on my way home, except that my delicious microbrew gift for the Minduses (Mindi?) was confiscated by Montreal CATSA screeners.

"Really, I can't bring this delicious microbrew six-pack through security? They're not going to blow up or anything."

"No, sir. I can't let you do that. You do have time to go back to the front counter and get them to send them separately. You do have time."

I had the time, but I didn't have the time, you know what I mean? Man, these terrorists are winning. They really are.

Spent a really nice day with the Mindys back home before setting out to Simpson, Sunday. I'll probably have something more substantial to write about being home when I'm home for longer than 19 hours. As it was, we just shot the shit and had some laughs like always.

I landed in Fort Simpson yesterday and the first thing I noticed was the trees. They're bigger than the standard NWT fare. I noticed them from the sky, actually, where each one looked like a single hair and, when, clustered on hills, surrounded by white snow- and ice-covered rivers, looked like small pelts of fur.

Got in and was greeted by the editor I'm replacing. She's been super friendly and even more helpful as I get back on the metaphorical horse here. It was funny, when we were walking out of the airport, she passed an RCMP officer who congratulated her. She smiled and thanked him back and I kept walking and thought it odd that someone would get praised about going on a vacation. A few seconds went by and I said that she must know everyone in the village by now - it's a village officially, not a town - and she responded humbly that no, she doesn't know everyone, but that the police officer had just congratulated her on her recent engagement. She pointed to her ring finger. I smiled and duly congratulated her myself.

"How recent?" I asked.

"Yesterday," she replied.

We drove back into town... er... I mean, the village, and stopped in front of a large, two-storey house.

"Here we are," she said and opened the door.

I've got to say, it's a magisterial office, or a Belinni sculpture of a workplace, if I was to steal a few words from Ray Hudson. It reminds me of a ranger outpost: it's wide-open and sparsely furnished, with but a few desks glued to the walls, a couple shelves holding up decades' worth of newspapers and a small, plaid-cushioned couch sitting in the corner. It's ideal, in a word.

Another thing I've noticed about Fort Simpson is the blue sky. Maybe it's the time of year, but I feel like the sun has this rejuvenating effect right now. This place has big windows and it's like the sun gets into every corner of the building.

One unfortunate part of the timing of this trip is that all the ice bridge crossings are closed or will soon be, meaning I won't get out to visit any of the surrounding communities, which are only accessible in the winter via the ice roads or in the summer by crossing the river in a ferry. I'd kind of pumped myself up to drive to some of the smaller spots, but I guess I'll have to do that some other time.

Anyways, life in the North, with its slower pace and tight knit communities, isn't all Wild Roses. Namely, the cost of living is high, but you forget that until you find yourself spending just under $22 for 2 AAA batteries, a small pack of Black Forrest ham and a 2L container of milk. Damn. There were $9 boxes of cereal and a 4L tub of milk was nearly $10, too. You forget these things when you leave and you realize why... it's for sanity's sake.

Also, I almost screwed myself tonight for dinner, since I'd started working on a couple things and it was quarter to seven before I'd realized it. My colleague asked if I wanted to eat some dinner with her and her fiance, but I said I'd just run down to the Northern store to get some food. She said it may be closed. I called and luckily I had ten minutes to get there.

I'd completely forgotten what it was like to be in a place where you couldn't access basic food items at any hour of the day or night. I ran down the street and got some brown beans, some green beans, some Ichiban packs, some bread and a couple of cans of peaches. Wait, does that even qualify as basic food?

I'm a little sleepy, so I'll just say that I've really enjoyed getting back into the saddle. I spoke to a judo coach about a clinic that he took some of his students to over the weekend. Actually, we first heard about it when we were at the school talking to some kids for a little feature that the paper does every week and these kids were all beaming and glowing and gabbing about judo. "Did you go to judo in Hay River?" they kept asking me.

I tracked down the coach - Okay, I'm lying. My colleague, who is like a regional encyclopedia, threw me his work number, home number and likely hours I could reach him. I tried him at lunch and she said, "I think he goes home for lunch," before adding (with effect) "if you look out the window, we'll probably see him drive by in a few minutes. He drives a blue truck." Noted - and we talked for a good hour about the program he wants to set up and how he believes the sport will grow in popularity, as it allows the kids to be physical, but in a heavily rule-based environment, while it also instills discipline and teaches leadership. He said, since the more experienced students mentor and teach the younger students, they gain maturity and learn how to guide and lead others. Another thing going for the program? It's free. And believe me, that's huge.

Like I mentioned earlier though, life isn't all Wild Roses. From what the coach was saying, it sounded like these kids had a transformative time: "I watched these kids come alive," he said - and the pictures he gave me from the event seem to indicate this. The sobering return home, though, was indicative of the heart ache that some of these kids endure.

While the kids were bubbling with pride in the car, eager to tell their parents about the fun times they'd had and ready to show them the silver participation medals they'd all received, the coach said that only one kid he drove back in his vehicle went home to a parent in the household: the other kids did not know where their parents were when they got back.

home movies

2011-04-05T20:46:00.008-06:00

During my summer in Iqaluit, a friend and I started talking about putting together a claymation movie. I wanted to document my fruitless fishing forays in a comical way and we began coming up with ideas for a plot... and music. I was staying in an apartment not far from the airport and my neighbour had an old electric organ that she let me borrow. I lugged the thing across the hall and into the apartment, sliding it up against the wall. I plugged it, super excited about coming up with a soundtrack for our little movie. I spent hours goofing around on that thing and, unfortunately, due to my almost-luddite-level ignorance when it comes to technology, what I have below is pretty much all that I was able to record. Since I didn't know how to record the noise I was making, I just used the GarageBand feature on my macbook to record the audio through my laptop's internal microphone. To play it back, I found it was best done using the iMovie feature, but I could only listen to it if I put actual movies alongside to accompany it, as the music would stop once the movie footage ran out. So I uploaded every last movie clip I had on my camera - the camera that can't record audio - and then I was able to listen to my 4:44-minute slice of schizoid heaven.

The claymation movie, like so many of the things I get excited about, never moved passed the imagination phase.

Tonight though, I found the original, for-recording-purposes-only video, and I honestly scratched my head/giggled hysterically while it played. There appear to be little snippets from Yellowknife, Grace Lake, Rossland, Iqaluit, Egypt, Chicago, London, Vancouver, Calgary, a couple some stops along the road... and a whole lot of me walking drunk with my trusty, beat-up, pocket-sized Panasonic.

Note: A couple of the movie files were corrupted, so I had to take a long piece from Egypt and sub in a shot of fireworks at a White Sox game and a ferry ride across the Mackenzie on January 2 in -40C.

Here it is:

kids these days

2011-04-02T13:01:00.011-06:00

Dispatches from McGill:

Last night at a show, I met a former McGill hall fellow (think dormitory RA) and got a brief and blurry glimpse into the drinking culture - and game of choice - of some of Canada's future leaders (or maybe, more accurately, the almost-grown children of Canada's current leaders.)

Apparently, when a group of McGillers get together, it's not to drink Millers. They have come up with a concoction/tradition called the BLC (or Big League Chug) and, from what I was told, this ain't your gramma's drinking game. (Ginochle? Vod-canasta? I'll stop...)

They'll take whatever they're drinking that night - rum, gin, tequila, vodka, sizzurp? - and pour six - yeah, SIX - shots of it into a cup and then top it off with whatever they were using as a mix. Then, BAM, down the hatch.

BLC, bitch.

Well, from what my source said, this appears to be the common chronology involved with the BLC: 1) kid will slam said BLC, 2) jump around hooting and hollering, 3) eventually sit down and get nauseous, 4) barf, 5) ask for another BLC, 6) repeat steps 1 through 5.

Also, I have heard that there are some that can only do a three-shot BLC and this is called a PBLC (you guessed it, a Pussy Big League Chug.)

A BLC ritual gathering is usually populated by males, but I guess the ladies do partake on occasion, as well.

Now we used to drink pretty hard in high school and college at times - I'm thinking Man Ram chugging mickeys back at the sand pits and the multi-beer funnels and keg stands - but what happened to a good old fashioned beer shotgun? It was dramatic, sufficiently macho and it got the job done - especially if followed with another and another.

This BLC seems a little like overkill to me and I'm thinking some of the girls - and guys- I used to party with would probably be spraying BLCs or PBLCs all over the place after a while.

Frickin kids these days...

UPDATE:

PROOF! POOF! There's a facebook page!

http://www.facebook.com/bigleaguechug?sk=wall&filter=2

According to the official BLC page, 71 percent of viewers are males... Food for thought

get used to it: election time

2011-03-30T19:23:00.001-06:00

metaphor/analogy

2011-03-20T02:42:00.003-06:00

The symbol of our generation is the empty plastic bag stuck on a tree branch.

WATCH

2011-03-20T02:32:00.003-06:00

It just dawned on me tonight that we can blame everything that's irreparably terrible with music on Cher. It's not that I heard a song of hers today or anything, but when I met a friend at the stinky Banana Republic earlier - hey, I know, totally douchey... and anytime I enter an establishment and someone is employed wearing a headset (and is folding clothes nonetheless) I know it's douche central - and heard nothing but lousy - and I'm talking lousy - dance R&B shit with autotune, I realized it was fucking Cher that turned that SHAT autotune into commercially viable music.

You all know that piece of garbage I'm talking about, 'If you believe in life after love'....

I would never defile this blog with that song. Come on now.

I posted the South Park version above. I think this video clip validates Matt Stone and Trey Parker for their good sense to lampoon autotune ten years before it started boning us dryly in the auditory ass.

WATCH. I called this post WATCH because I think Cher is so fucking horrible that we should start a charitable foundation called We All Think Cher's Horse-Shit and try to collect money to teach children that making music like Cher's is just a detriment to society.

For example: Elvis had an amazing career and then he made a song called 'Suspicious Minds.' In that song, he sounds EXACTLY like Cher. Shortly after he released that song, he died. Ergo, Cher killed Elvis.

WATCH 1, Cher 0

mildly innocuous yet bizarre homosexual song lyric by an otherwise heterosexual songwriter

2011-03-20T02:29:00.002-06:00

1:24 (and a bunch of other times)- "I thought the Major was a lady" -- Paul McCartney

P.S. Good luck ever trying to get this song out of your head...

random thoughts

2011-03-16T20:25:00.006-06:00

My brother Slader just became a father yesterday, giving birth figuratively to baby Brooklyn. I say figuratively because Steph was the one to actually birth Brooklyn. Good work, Steph and I can't wait to see the little bundle o' joy.

One thing though, Slader: I think Brooklyn may be trying to tell you something. She decided to pick March 15, 2011 as her day of birth. Now, on the surface, that's an amazing day: the sun is starting to make real inroads into the day again, the Snow King Festival is in full force and, hell, the playoffs are almost at our feet. But, I have a feeling that Brooklyn is trying to tell you something by having picked March 15, 2011.

She's gonna be a Canucks fan, dogg. It's right there to see-din....

Brooklyn was born during the afternoon of March 15, 2011, when the Edmonton Oilers were dead last - DEAD LAST - in the NHL with 55 points and the Vancouver Canucks - for the first time in franchise history, this late in the season, I might add for gravitas - were 1st in the league with 101 points. If that isn't a message, I don't know what is?

Now when I told DA the news, his immediate reaction was that you were bringing Brooklyn into the world at the lowest point in franchise history so that she wouldn't remember these times and she'd only start to really get into things as guys like Eberle, Hall and Paajarvi were nearing their primes and Hemsky was in his, but I don't know if I buy it.

I think she might just be a Canucklehead. Don't take it too hard, Slader. It could be worse. She could be a Flames fan.

I'm kidding guys. Can't wait to see y'all.

With this in mind, here's a little random time capsule of March 15, 2011 - one day late...

GOOD: The seagulls are back. I always love the sound of seagulls in March. It means this shat we call winter is almost over. All that snow that murdered my shoes five nights ago has basically been eroded away to sad little outcrops of greyish-ice by two and a half days of WARM rain. Still, the City of Montreal managed to wake me up at 3 a.m. yesterday by clearing my street with alarms, loaders, snow-blowers, dump-trucks and flashing lights, even though it was raining and the snow was trickling into the storm drains.

BAD: St. Patrick's Day is approaching and one unfortunate symptom of this yearly pissfest in Montreal is how the McGill/downtown area is invaded by douchebag American 18 to 20-year-olds here on Spring Break. I've been here for less than two years and noticed that the young drunks are louder and more abrasive during this week/weekend than other times of the year. While I find it annoying to have to walk to work through the crowds of shade-wearing guys and girls -talking about even more inane things than I talk about - who hang outside the Hilton on Sherbrooke because they all have money and can afford to drop hundreds per night to get shit-tanked in a foreign city while they are in school, I can't fault them because, if I was 18 and could get drunk legally in an awesome student city three years before I could at home, I'd be there as often as possible.

Still doesn't excuse the douchiness.

GOOD: Nothing funnier than watching a down-and-out white gangster complain about his lot in life. Extra points if he's a ginger.

BAD: Nate Dogg died. He died of lung cancer, right? Yeah? Okay, so as a legacy project, his family should go back through his entire catalogue and edit every song he's ever done to try to persuade kids from smoking.

"Hey Hey Hey Hey......... Smoke-free every day."

No?

GOOD: McGill girls. Seriously, I wish I'd come here for school. Like I said about girls at Columbia so many years ago (okay, 18 months) McGill girls have their own look: They are like between 5'2" and 5'5", with black hair and slightly tanned. I feel like I could point out a McGill girl from a suspect line just based on this stereotype. Yep, I'm officially a weird, old guy.

BAD: Losing that hour this weekend. Didn't this feel like the shortest weekend ever? Really, it was 5 p.m. Saturday before I'd even taken a breath. And that was before Spring Back.

GOOD: As a result of that lost hour, the days are ending later and I've actually walked home from work with the sun at my back a couple times this week. It's mad how amazing it makes me feel. It's bringing this weird kind of depth back to things, like I looked at an apartment complex that I walk by on Berri every day and it just looked different... like maybe it was the fact that I actually looked at it, instead of rushing past it in a cold hurry. Anyways, I'm about a month away from hanging out in parks again. I can't be happier.

BAD: CBC Montreal. I check out their website at least ten times a day at the coal mine and, lately, it's just been sad. They've had stories about the city going on a pothole blitz and it was one of laziest, most useless things I've ever read. It was like they rewrote a press release. And I've been applying there for every opening they have and can't even get a response and it just makes me sulk. Come on, guys. Give me a shot!

But today takes the cake: They had a BREAKING NEWS story about an earthquake striking the Montreal-area. We all know that earthquake stories are big business right now, but come on, this thing registered a 4.3. That's like a fart in a bathtub. We really are pussies here in Canada.

What's happening in Japan is horrifying. It really hits home, I find, because this disaster occurred in probably the most prepared and well-organized society on the planet and all the planning and precaution still couldn't forecast something of this magnitude.

When I saw the videos of the tsunami slowly but relentlessly invading the towns and cities in Japan, I couldn't help but think how small and trivial humans are in the grand scheme of the universe. A tremor in the earth just overwhelms land with water, carelessly and without reason, like a kid splashing around in a puddle and regardless of what we do, the wave can't be stopped and houses, cars and lives just get swept up in the ceaseless wave. It's just all so bizarre.

I've worked with a bunch of great people from Japan and I'm hoping that the situation quickly becomes controllable again and life starts to get back to some sort of normalcy again.

awesome band name #14,472

2011-03-12T19:08:00.001-07:00

In honour of a drink I can't remember inventing, I hereby present awesome band name 14,472:

Shaken Jesus Syndrome.

dilla's motown beat tape is back up on youtube... REJOICE!!!

2011-03-12T18:32:00.007-07:00

FYI: J Dilla's epic Motown Beat Tape is back up on youtube.

Some highlights:

CCR anyone?

Thank you, thePHATbeats, for posting these. I don't know why I didn't find this sooner. I've got to make sure I grab this CD wherever it's hiding the next time I get home because I can't be without it any longer.

twill anger a few

2011-03-10T23:54:00.009-07:00

herbiberous is fully aware that he should not antagonize his friends living in an area where the thermometre sunk to -40C today, but...

he is going to...

I'm not lying when I say something like: I would prefer -30C right now to the snow storm then rain then snow storm then rain pattern we've been getting here. Keep in mind that I have holes in my shoes and every time I walk to work, my feet are basically reenacting that scene from Disney's Alice in Wonderland where that door knob chokes up water and drowns and Alice flows through. And just pretend that water is like slushy and icy cold.

I spend entire days with wet feet and, right now, I really just want to thank my heart for being strong enough to pump blood through to my feet to keep them warm and to keep me from getting sick.

Tonight, Montreal is a fucking mess. You're basically living out a video game walking on the sidewalks - and the less popular the street, the more difficult the level. You hop from ice chunk to bare sidewalk if you find a good street. You jump from puddle to deeper puddle on the shittier streets. Every dang crosswalk has turned into a minor waterway. I basically gave up at one point, walking home on Rachel, and started walking down the middle of the street, like I would have in Yellowknife. But I got honked off the road by waves of impatient motorists pushing up bigger waves of slush water and so I wound up in the murky, icy Parc la Fontaine sidewalk swamps.

This evening, we walked to a show to find out the show was almost over and so we walked to another show. I pretty much endured an hour long frozen soaker. I could tell that my feet were drenched, but I would keep from trying to drift into the puddles anyways to keep them from getting wetter and I could tell when I did soak deeper when my poor feet went from warm wet to icy-fucking-cold-wet.

Seriously, I'll take -30C over this. The ground is stable. It's predictable. You can dress for it. You can walk around. In the most articulate way I can put it, this shit sucks shit. Period. I just sneezed. Uh oh....

charlie sheen = chuck norris

2011-03-10T07:50:00.003-07:00

Charlie Sheen's so hot right now that when he's literally on fire, flames jump off him to stop, drop and roll.

etc...

ottawa in 28 hours or less

2011-03-07T21:49:00.005-07:00

Since it was kind of a tradition on this blog (man, am I getting nostalgic about a blog?) to have me come on here and write my impressions of a city after I visited it, no matter how trivial the observations and how tiny the sample size, I will give you my thoughts on Ottawa, after spending just more than 24 hours there this weekend.

Surprisingly, it was the first time I'd been out of Montreal since June and my first time out of the province since I was at the union of Mindy in Tofino. That's fucked!

I drove out with the Wind Ups for their show at Avantgarde Sunday night. I'm officially a roadie. We set off at 5 pm Saturday. I got home at 2:30 am this morning.

First, there may not be a more boring non-Prairie drive in Canada than Montreal-Ottawa. Especially in the winter. It's trees and snow and Petro Canadas, Tim Horton's, Ultramars and a restaurant named Herb's, out in the middle of nowhere. The Lazer says: "Is there a non-boring drive in Canada?" The answer: British Columbia and Southern Alberta from what I've seen. He's right.

Next, people in Ottawa are rule followers. They shovel their driveways immediately after a snowfall. The street we were staying on was a study in civil obedience, as even the scruffy neighbours next door, who were obviously still partying residually on Sunday morning, got out and did a half-ass clear job of their stairs and sidewalk. Our host told us that Ottawa was recently named the snitch capital of Canada, or more formally, a poll was conducted and people in Ottawa were the most likely to report their neighbours or coworkers to officials for doing something illegal. They were also the most likely to tell their neighbours to turn down music or complain about dog turds in their yard and things like that. Maybe to offset this, we drank and dashed at the one of the half dozen Royal Oak pubs in town. After being forced to listen to the same Taylor Swift - or was it Miley Cyrus? - song six times in a row (no joke) at a so-called Irish Pub, we kind of had enough. When the surly, track suited manager came to kick us out, we did as he said. No questions asked. It felt good.

I noticed something about the pub patrons that night though - and the breakfast patrons the next (er... morning?) brunch time at the Rochester Eatery - people in Ottawa kind of have that government kind of comfort and safety. They dress conservatively and sort of formally all the time, like they can be called into a meeting at any time. They laugh loudly and take pictures at pubs and make big deals about ordering - and drinking - shooters. Their lives are very easy, it seems. But it also feels like not much happens. Like a spark is missing. Like going to the pub is like putting on slippers and petting an old dog that lays at their feet. They have expanding guts.

There was a guy outside a bar who just started ranting to us, unsolicited: "I hate Ottawa. I want to go to Montreal. I've been here for ten years and it sucks. Anywhere you go in Montreal is packed." That's not true, we thought. Then we thought, why don't you go to Montreal? It's two hours away. He kept talking. "I'm from Haiti. I'm bilingual." Why don't you go to Montreal, we think. He talks about how everything is a party in Montreal. He asks where we are from. We say we all live in Montreal. He says "oh..." He stops talking for the first time. He puts out his smoke. "Have a good night."

Do I have anything else about Ottawa? Not really.

The Barefoot Hostel looked really nice from the two minutes I spent there drinking wine and warming my cold, wet feet on the heated floor.

Yeah, that's about it. I'd like to go back in summer. I'm sure I'd leave with a better impression. I hear there are less politicians around at that time of the year and therefore the douchebag-per-square-kilometre ratio would be diminished.

attaboy kes

2011-03-07T18:34:00.003-07:00

Kes enjoyin some good za. Who cares if he's slumpin? What a guy...

good/bad

2011-03-02T16:34:00.008-07:00

Unless you're Charlie Sheen, I've come to realize that life always seems to find a way to level you out. If you're feeling too great, something will knock you down a peg and vice versa. I come to look at this as a universal law.

Minor example:

A friend had asked me to check the Smith Westerns show with her last night, but I felt I really needed to get some things done after a hectic two weeks. I came home feeling particularly zombie-ish, after another 8 hours at the coal mine, knowing that there was work to do. For instance, there were two years of income taxes to be submitted, some medical forms for prescription rebates that needed to be sent, an apartment that required tidying for a pending dinner guest (ooh la la) job boards that had to be searched, a bunch of story ideas that were asking to be hashed out, an even bigger pile of stories that begged to be completed, a few travel plans for upcoming events that required some coordination, and a future that probably necessitated a second look, if not a complete overhaul.

So like I said, there was work to do.

I made some dinner quickly and then set to filling out the tax forms until I realized that I didn't have my 2010 info printed off and - more importantly - I didn't have the tax forms. They'll have to wait. I then got out my prescription receipts - for the old foe, rosacea - only to discover I'd completely filled out the form I had to send in six months ago and forgot to send it. Since then, I had collected an additional $32 receipt and - again, more importantly - changed addresses. I'll need to get a new form so... that one will have to wait.

I then went onto the job boards and found the same old, rehashed, phony recruiter, analyst, marketing specialists jobs posted at each site and gave up.

I did find this beauty though:

Uncle Sam wants you... and your clarinet

Since I was on the computer, I thought, why not jot down some of the story ideas that were popping around in my head. Easy enough. I opened an old Word document called 'story ideas' and then added a few to the ever-growing list. These things are like seeds buried in a pot in a dark, dry attic. After seeing all these ideas, I lost hope and lost any energy I had to flesh out some of the partially-watered plants.

So what was I left with? My dishes? Meh... Make future plans? I think about those enough, so because I hadn't slept well the night before and since wanted to tire myself out, I grabbed my hockey skates and stick and set outside for Parc Lafontaine.

Now initially when I moved into this apartment, I was giddy in anticipation of a winter spent on the park's two rinks, as I would only be five minutes away. But with an upswing in general activity (and my hockey homey, Freduardo, also becoming increasingly busy and leaving me with no one to head out there with) I've only found the time to get out maybe a half dozen times. Due to this, every hockey outing has left me doubled over on the ice, sucking wind through burning lungs after only 15 minutes, while dudes twice my age skate circles around me. It hasn't been very enjoyable.

But last night, I walked over slowly, taking in the blue-nearly-black sky and the stars shining. It's sad how little I look up at the sky here in Montreal. The snow was hard from weeks of melting and freezing and melting again and dogs ran on top of it and then fell into it, as their owners stood laughing, smoking and chatting. It felt like I was seeing the park for the first time almost.

I put on my skates standing up and then joined a game. The first time the puck was passed to me, I gave it away immediately, because it had been a few weeks since I'd played. This went on for a while until finally I started to catch up mentally and then I started threading some passes and deking some guys and I got so into the game that I forgot to be tired and forgot to be winded and I forgot my job and my worries and I just played.

We went from four-on-four, to three-on-three, to two-on-two and eventually, taber-knackered (as the Lazer would say) we decided to leave. I was sweating buckets and was completely bagged, but I felt like I'd just had a full-body and mind massage. I felt the cold air on my throbbing face and it was like awaking completely into the moment. I wondered why I hadn't done this every night.

To tie this back to my original point, I got home, threw my skates and sticks on the floor and started at the dishes. Right away though, I felt that something was up. As I dipped my hands into the dishwater, I noticed that I couldn't see them if I kept my gaze at the tap. This temporary blind spot is the first warning I get of an oncoming migraine headache.

I hadn't had one in about a year and four months and I was surprised that my body would choose now of all times to give me one, but when I look back at my history, it makes sense. Whenever I'm stressed out and then I go and have a euphoric workout, my body completely de-stresses and that changes something about my blood pressure or blood flow or something, and that leaves me prone to these headaches.

Seeing as I had a really bad one about three years ago, where I lost feeling slowly from my left foot to leg to chest to arms to hands to face to tongue and had trouble forming a simple sentence, I took care to notice if any of those symptoms were reoccurring. My left foot felt a little funny, but I figured it was just from the hockey. I took a shower and that's when my auras (think of a blind spot that takes a weird shape and becomes like a greyish, twitching and pulsing puddle or blotch over your line of sight) went into full-blown mode. It was like I had the Northern Lights going off between my eyes and the world and I had to try to look through them. It's typically this part of the migraine experience that scares me most because I don't know what causes this to happen and the experience is completely debilitating since I really can't see. These auras were probably the worst I've ever had and so I made my way to bed and turned off the lights and tried to sleep before the pain hit. Didn't happen, when the auras started to subside 20 to 30 minutes later, the stabbing feeling had kicked in right behind my right eye, which is where it always happens. Last night, it was worse than most. It felt like someone was coring into my brain and then injecting something into it that was expanding that core. It felt awful and then I started getting nauseous. I started to recite easy to remember quotes or lyrics to make sure I wasn't having any of the speech difficulties. I was sweating and rolling around in bed and I couldn't take my mind off of the pain. I then decided to get an old movie - Donnie Brasco - that I can nearly remember word for word, and I put it on while turning my laptop screen off, so I would just listen to the movie.

I think I probably fell asleep at 3 a.m.

Anyhow, that's a long-winded way of saying that life always finds a way to sprinkle some bad into the good or give you some good when you're feasting on bad. This might be the only thing I am sure of in life. That's almost how I would define life. ie. When I start to get back into some kind of fiscal comfort and I start planning a short trip or a small purchase I need, a long-lost bill always arrives in the mail. "That's life," I think to myself.

Also, I probably wrote this whole thing because I might have felt guilty for missing work today seeing as I wasn't 'sick' in the traditional sense. I mean, I didn't get any sleep and my head still hurts, but I probably could have gone in if I needed to. Yet, I was sort of suffering from a 'migraine hangover,' where I wasn't really thinking clearly most of the day, evidenced by my foray out for some groceries, where I tried speaking to a grocery clerk in French and I found myself stuttering on a word for a good three seconds.

sober realization

2011-03-01T17:13:00.004-07:00

I just wanted to state publicly and for the record that I'm fully aware that this Charlie Sheen meltdown is being picked up and pollenated all over the land in order to keep us occupied and distracted from examining in detail the historic uprisings in the Middle East and Northern Africa. I realize that in five or ten years, while Canada is nervously watching its Southern neighbour sink deeper into destituteness and disparity and despair, Michael Moore's son will release a documentary about American apathy towards its demise, and he'll look back to when the Egyptians and Libyans took their destinies into their own hands and booted out their bloated, delusional dictators and Moore's kid will scoff - just like his old man - at how Americans just sat around laughing at Sheen while all this was happening.

I know that.

But check this out... IT'S A FREEKIN CHARLIE SHEEN SOUNDBOARD!!!

It's just toooo (toooo should be pronounced the same way Santa Sheen says the "oooooo" in "two smooooookin hotties") much fun.

I'm sorry. I'm a bad person.

irrational hatred: james franco

2011-02-28T20:15:00.008-07:00

Because that James Franco post from last night probably didn't make sense to anybody other than myself, I suppose I should explain where it came from and also, as a consequence, revisit an old gimmick of this here blizzog: the Irrational Hatred file.

Apparently, I like to discuss my irrational hatred during the Olympics, as the two previous entries were Anton Apollo Ohno and Michael Phelps. You probably don't remember them and I most certainly wouldn't, had I not irrationally hated them, but they were gold medal winning Americans with douchiness and arrogance to spare, respectively.

Maybe it's my recent infatuation with Charlie Sheen's epic WINNING meditations that has me reenergized to delve back into this (remember kids, Charlie Sheen says that you have to love violently and hate violently: there's no in between.) but I feel like last night's Oscars was probably the tipping point for this post about my irrational hatred for James Franco.

Yes, folks. James Franco.

I can hear you already: "James Franco? How can you hate James Franco? I love James Franco. James Franco's so, like, cool and, did you see him at the Oscars? James Franco looked like he was high and, like, James Franco seems really nice and like... James Franco James Franco James Franco..."

Well, I'm sorry, but I do hate him. And since you're here and still reading, I might as well tell you why.

For going on a good year, it feels like I have been unable to escape the endless barrage of stories painting James Franco as a renaissance man. Maybe it was just a coordinated effort by his people to get him the Oscars gig, but it felt like every magazine I opened or website I visited had some version of the same story going on Franco.

It goes something like this:

James Franco is not a man: he is a swirling storm of creativity that converts oxygen into art. James Franco is a renaissance man. James Franco doesn't sleep. James Franco is an actor and a fiction writer, who has found the time go back to school and complete a handful of graduate programs in New York. He's got an art collection opening in Berlin and he's probably an astronaut or, if not that, at least a classically-trained 12-string guitar player and a red seal chef and solar energy lobbyist and animal trainer."

I go to nytimes.com for some news and BOOM, James Franco header about how he's attending graduate school and writing a collection of short stories while also acting. He's GQ's Man of the Year because he's so... awesome. He's in the Gazette, the Mirror, the Hour... all the stories say the same thing.

James Franco is playing Alan Ginsberg. James Franco is a writer. James Franco is a renaissance man. James Franco invented chess and churns his own butter.

Well, so what? He's playing Alan Ginsberg in a movie; it doesn't mean he's Alan Ginsberg (someone who I don't irrationally hate, for the record.) I read one of his short stories, which was published in a glowing blog post I masochistically read. The story wasn't bad or anything. It was alright. I mean, it didn't suck, but it's not like I could tell you what the story was about six months later. Something about photographs and a girl and bad memories?

I think that's what I'm trying to get at with James Franco: does the fact that he is merely doing a lot necessitate the kind of acclaim he is receiving?

I mean, I've seen a few of his movies and it's not like I think he's a bad actor. I actually thought he played a pretty good spurned, loner best friend in Spiderman... and I didn't revolt against the 90-some-odd-minute James Franco soliloquy that was 127 Hours (which I again masochistically put myself through.) But the kicker is that people just LOVE James Franco and they absolutely SWOON OVER James Franco and when I ask why that is, it's always... "he was funny in Pineapple Express as that stoner."

That's it.

I feel this comment - which I trolled out from an latimes.com blog about the Oscars - sums up the pro-Franco sentiment perfectly:

A beautiful soul indeed. Thanks Linda...

People love him, but they don't really know why. Maybe my irrational hatred is necessary for the universe, in order to balance out all of that irrational Franco love out there?

With James Franco, are we confusing ambition and potential with achievement here? If so, why do I feel like there's something empty (and almost immoral) about celebrating that?

I didn't watch much of the Oscars really last night - other than to see that bat-shit crazy supporting actress broad from the Fighter go out-of-body during her acceptance speech and also to pray that Kirk Douglas didn't die during his monologue - but the brief glimpses I caught of co-host James Franco had me again questioning what all the hype is about. Sure, he was sort of funny and looked sort of comfortable up there, but I just didn't get it... Was anyone captivated or taking aback by his presence? (Other than good old Linda, of course.)

I think if anything, people should be applauding the talents of James Franco's PR staff for making us all love JAMES FRANCO, when really, he hasn't done all that much to warrant it. Has he? Am I missing something? I feel if Charlie Sheen had James Franco's publicist, we'd all be spewing GNARLYISMS and loving/hating each other violently.

So there, that's my opinion. There's my beef. That's why I irrationally hate James Franco. It's nothing personal (and remember, this is IRRATIONAL hate, people) but it's just something I had to explain, once and for all.

Note: The reason I irrationally hate him could also be due to the fact that he has that inexhaustible reserve of energy that I can't comprehend and because he isn't limiting himself to just one domain. Note for Note: I am a lazy c-word. And irrational hate is easy. Three times a Note: Ironic then perhaps that I would devote an hour to writing/poorly researching a post devoted to irrationally hating someone I haven't met. Fourth Note: I haven't yet decided whether I irrationally hate James Franco with violence. Sorry, Charlie.

santa sheen

2011-02-28T18:41:00.002-07:00

He just keeps giving and giving and giving.

This is the youtube equivalent of that Seinfeld bit where George sneaks the salami sandwich and TV into the sack. Pure GNARLYISMS!

If Santa Sheen keeps on like this, I'm not going to have any option but surrender to WINNING!

this just in...

2011-02-27T21:49:00.001-07:00

James Franco read a book.

He's so awesome!

10 things i learned about sports tonight

2011-02-20T20:34:00.007-07:00

It was a moderately noteworthy night in Montreal sports here, with the TIM HORTON'S Heritage Classic and all, so I met a couple friends at one of the city's best (read: cheapest) sports bars, located in the heart of the gay village (read: correctly.)

It's been a while since I sat down in front of a wall of television screens at the Sports Station for a good ole fashioned night of sports osmosis. We were surrounded by acronyms - NHL, NBA All-Stars, WWE, ATP - and even some bass fishing superstars, as they all scrapped it out for screen supremacy and after my fair share of the brews from our $16 4-L pitchers and a $7 burger combo, I feel like I learned some things tonight and since I nearly died on my way home, with Sherbrooke from Lafontaine to Papineau basically one malicious strip of ice, I realized how fragile life is and, therefore, how important it is that I pass on these vital tidbits.

So with that: a TOP 10 LIST!

10. Canadian tennis fans have a reason to be excited

Even though he lost to Andy Roddick in the finals of some garbage tournament tonight, this Milos Raonic kid really has some juice. Now I know that no one cares about tennis, but if you haven't watched it in a while, well, there's a Canadian who can win a tournament with his serve now. A friend of mine who is a nationally-ranked player has a whole lot of good stuff to say about this guy, so I'm gonna go ahead and co-sign.

9. Two of the NBA's ten best players look like Wire characters

Now maybe you can tally this up to the fact that I've been deep into the Wire these last few days, but while watching the first half of the NBA All-Star game tonight, I couldn't help but think that two of the league's best players look a lot like the leaders of Baltimore's West Side.

Avon Barksdale = Kevin Durant

Stringer Bell = Amar'e Stoudamire

Come on, admit it. I'm right. They both look alike? Don't they?

I couldn't stop seeing the parallels while I watched, but maybe keep in mind that I'm the same guy that said Jacques Martin looks like Fievel from Fievel Goes West and that one of my buddy's mom's looks like Canadian Olympic curler Russ Howard.

I apologize.

8. Lenny Kravitz is still alive

I couldn't believe it either. Somehow he wiggled his way into the NBA All-Star starting line-up intros and it seemed like he was on TV for like 15 minutes. The All-Star game was muted so I couldn't hear what he was playing, but let me guess...

American Woman, followed by Are You Gonna Go My Way, followed by Fly Away.

Either way, the entire time he was on screen we were trying to remember the chick he used to be banging.

7. Kobe Bryant is totally unlikeable

What made him less palatable: the mock sincerity and humility he showed when shaking Bill Russell and Ms. Bill Russell's hands court side or him jacking up like a bazillion first half shots in the All-Star game?

Kobe, we know the game is in your house. We know you want to win MVP in front of the home crowd. We know you are the two-time defending champ. But damn man, let the game come to you and take over later. You don't need to drop 21 in the first half on like 30 shots. People are gonna defer to you later, because they semi-respect you.

Come on!

(P.S. I only watched the first half.)

6. Andy Roddick is bald

Cheap shot, but on the last point of his championship set against Raonic, he dove and his hat fell off. He hit the beauty winner, but it was revealed that he is Ryan Getzlaf/Herc from the Wire bald. I wouldn't have noticed it, except he reacted oddly to the situation. Instead of celebrating a championship won on an amazing winner, he rushed to put his hat on and then got up somewhat hesitantly and put his hands in the air, relieved. All in all, it was very unRoddick-like.

I laughed to myself... until I remembered he's banging Brooklyn Decker.

And then I ordered myself another drink.

5. Mike Cammalleri and Brian Gionta are pansies

Guys, it's -10C, you don't need to be doing the whole balaclava, over-the-ears get-up for the game just because it's outside. I mean, Brent Sutter and Fievel didn't even cover their ears, but you guys felt it suitable to dress like you were skidooers in Yellowknife. I think that right there says enough about the Habs' toughness this year.

4. Jerry Lawler is a face *

Somehow, Jerry "Burger King" Lawler is a face?!?!? WHAT? How could anyone ever cheer for this guy? It's been 18 years and I still don't forgive him for this...

Lawler got what was coming to him tonight though. He got beat down hard by the Miz.

Note: Who would have thought that in 2011 Jerry "the King" Lawler would be capable of a 15-minute main event match and Bret "the Hitman" Hart would be walking around like a fragile relic.

Note #2: WWE, listen to me, you've got to stop doing that Wrestlemania board promo thing. They keep shooting people with this camera angle so that this gigantic Wrestlemania board hanging in the rafters appears behind them and it's so obvious they are only doing it so they can use it later in promos. It probably looked cool the first time they did it, but they're doing it for every match.

Note #3: I realized tonight that the WWE is all about branding. That's it. Catch phrases and finishers and that's it. I bet some of the best and most creative ad execs grew up as wrestling fans.

Note #4: My buddy huuuuuuh-Reeeehn sums up Lawler's old school appeal perfectly: "How ridiculous is the one piece unitard? What the fuck?"

Note #5: Did you know that Triple H has a movie coming out?

Check this:

Is that curly haired kid the evolution of the ginger from the Big Green. Man, talk about a crap sandwich. I actually can't wait to see this thing. Bad Movie Marathon Entry #1.

3. RDS hockey exists with Joel Bouchard's hair

Maybe the most disappointing part of the evening: RDS covered up Joel Bouchard's hair during tonight's game. I didn't think I could watch a Habs game here without seeing Joel Bouchard's rubbery, unnatural doo.

If I had paid money to watch the game, I would have asked for it back.

Apparently the Habs weren't all that impressed either, because they chose to drop that gigantic coiler out there tonight. To be truthful though, it didn't seem like people were all that fired up for tonight's game.

Note: By the way, search 'Joel Bouchard' on google images and I guarantee you will not find a more out-of-er results for a quasi-celebrity. You would expect the kind of 'passed out, looking gonzo' results that come up from a good friend's facebook photos, not from a 'respected' professional hockey commentator.

2. Lebron is illuminati

Or maybe he was just shouting out his boy Jay-Z. Or showing off his favourite geometric shape.

Nah, I'm gonna go with the secret society angle. Oh Lebron, I saw it. You guys were all dancing around during your introductions and you were goofing around until, right at the end, you threw up the diamond sign right before the cameras panned away.

As the message board fanatics say "in before the illuminati shitstorm/"

Yep, we have irrefutable proof that Lebron supports the globalists' agenda, people. Lebron, like illuminati brothers Jay-Z and Eminem and Diamond Dallas Paige, is just a puppet in the Rockefeller and Rothchild plan for global enslavement.

DDP - Drive Down Proletariat?

1. Do not cut from a Habs game to Bass fishing in Montreal

The Sports Station in the Village has about 40 flat-screens pasted to the walls. When I arrived, 90 percent of the TVs had the Habs-Flames game, with the remaining screens showing the end of the Roddick-Raonic match. Once that ended, they all went to the hockey game. At one point, during the second period, the manager of the bar decided to throw the NBA All-Star game on because someone had asked.

Unfortunately, the manager wasn't paying too much attention because he threw on a bass fishing show. I didn't notice, because I was facing a wall with seven flat-screens, but the people facing me starting making a scene since two of their three screens were showcasing a snake slithering through some water.

The manager came over and reassured everyone that he was trying to put on the basketball game, but the bass fishing continued and, with the game still close, people started to lose their patience. At one point, the fisherman's line tensed up like he caught something and we all started to cheer. He reeled the puppy in and his buddy scooped it up in the net. The fisherman grabbed the fresh-water fish and posed with it and we all went crazy. The manager got the picture and he quickly turned the game back on.

Sadly, that was probably the only thing that Habs fans got to cheer about tonight.

* Sports Entertainment tidbit

walking conscious

2011-02-20T10:32:00.002-07:00

If I ever find a serious job, I think I'll have to get it written into my contract that I can't be held responsible for any tardiness, absenteeism or poor job performance caused by the sleep I've lost from viewing the Wire. As an addict would say, I'm powerless to fight it. I just started re-watching it online - at sidereel.com - and ever since, I've been crashing later and later and even getting up super early every morning to check the next episode (you know, cause Megavideo understands the Wire's potency and only allows you to watch it in 72-minute intervals. It makes you confront reality for at least 30 minutes before letting you jump back in again.) Even though I know Kima's going to get shot or Wallace is on his way back to the West Side pit, I can't help sitting through it and that pushes my departure time from the apartment back further and further every morning.

On Friday, I pushed it the furthest I have yet. I didn't even notice what time it was when the episode ended and so when I saw it was 9:40, I nearly lost my shit. I've got a 35-minute walk to work and I was still laying in bed. So I hustle-bustled and was out the door in my gigantic winter coat, forgetting of course that it had rained the entire day previously, meaning it was like +5C and Montreal was a gigantic puddle concealing a sheet of ice.

Being late, I sped-walked to work, but any time I thought I'd save and all the effort I was exerting was wasted on a decision I made to cut through Parc Lafontaine. Terrible idea. The 'snow' was ice, covered with slush and water. It was messy and the sidewalks and paths are all 'code level: orange' dangerous, in Homeland Security talk.

I'm kind of frustrated because I'm late and I'm sliding all over the place like Bambi learning to walk on ice. (obscure reference?) I'm rushing and slipping and worrying about whether today would be the day I caught shit from my superiors, Ervin Burrell-style, but every step I take flushes those thoughts away because the ground is so awkward and potentially hazardous that I have to concentrate on where to drop my feet to make sure I don't fall.

It's really odd to be conscious of walking. It really is. It's something that I take for granted. Each step put me on precarious ground, so I had to use all my conscious thought to carefully navigate each stride. But after a while, I came to the realization that I didn't know how that would help, since I could predict where my foot would land, but there was no way to know exactly how it would feel once it went down and how that would affect my balance. It was like I was trying to be conscious of something that I still wasn't completely in control of because my body was going to self-adjust regardless of what I did intentionally.

It was a bizarre distraction, that I forgot immediately once I got to the thawed and cleared sidewalks.

I can see now though why those robotics engineers have so much trouble creating robots that can walk, because they have to calculate each variable and adjust for that and it's something that's programmed into us without us even being completely aware.

Anyways, I got to work and went from walking on ice to walking on eggshells. No one seemed to know I was late and so I guess I'll be pushing the limit again on Monday.

swag

2011-02-18T07:29:00.001-07:00

d.p.a., baby

2011-02-09T20:40:00.008-07:00

Back when I was still just getting comfortable in my pubes, a few years before the Y2K Bug changed our lives forever, I found myself manning the grill in a McDonalds kitchen, flipping burgers, snacking on nuggets and pickles (try it) and working, unknowingly, as an WWF proselytizer.

I wore a Stone Cold t-shirt (later replaced by an eyebrow-raised The Rock.) I had a WWF hat. I even, embarrassingly, taped as many WWF Raws and Smackdowns (and eventually, WCW Monday Nitros even) as I could and I even went so far as labeling them. Oooh, this smarts.

Anyhow, back then it was all about catch phrases, and one of the best came from Mr. "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. The Texas Rattlesnake (what a name!?!? Shit, am I proselytizing again?) was a paranoid dude and he taught his minions to watch their backs by wearing his patented "D.T.A.: Don't Trust Anyone" shirt.

I loved that slogan and I probably would have purchased that shirt for myself if our Wal-Mart sold it. (And I probably would have ended up on some pre-9/11 version of a no-fly list too.)

I bring this up now because I recently witnessed something in the underground mall beside the metro near work that made me recall that motto.

I'd say I buy lunch about 90 percent of my workdays, usually because I'm too lazy or, more often, too late in the morning to make myself a sandwich to take with me. So me and my rag-tag group of coal miners head down to either the Promenade or the EC (Eaton's Centre) where we try to get in a sufficient amount of commissary in our alloted 30-minute break period (minus the five to eight minutes we burn waiting for the elevator and walking to the food courts.)

This daily walk takes us past the entrance to the McGill Metro station and down a corridor that I affectionately call the "Hallway of Broken Dreams." There are people huddled along the walls in various states of disrepair. There is the guy with the super red face, who is dressed nicely enough that you think he might be a genius, serial killer. (I have actually seen him cash his change in at one of our Promenade food joints, too. He asked for a five like he was going to deposit it in a bank account. For this reason, it has never even crossed my mind to give him any money.) There is the fat, white, balding, bearded guy with face tattoos who I never try to make eye contact with because he's always smiling and he doesn't look like he should legally be allowed to smile because a smile doesn't look right on his face. There is the tall black dude who comes up to you with his empty fast food cup but doesn't ask for money... he just puts out the cup. I'm not really sure why he does it though, because he is typically dressed better than I am and I have to be done up all business casual (BiziCajji.) And then there's the guy right outside the Promenade turnoff who looks somewhat like the professor from Tintin, but sits in his wheelchair, shrinking away, and on occasion, he will summon within me a bit of pity and I'll throw a few coins into his collection cup.

On Monday, Fitzy and I went down to the EC, where we walked past the regulars, right up to the guy in glasses who is always parked at that spot right where the doors open and where thousands of people rush past him every day. He sits in one of those mechanized wheelchairs and just looks out at you sadly. I think he has Cystic Fibrosis or Multiple Sclerosis: I can't tell the difference. (I'm not trying to be insensitive here. It's all ignorance.)

On Monday though, something happened that made me completely reevaluate the Hallway of Broken Dreams and the entire "help me, I'm hungry" racket. Now I'm not the most sensitive guy when it comes to this kind of charity, as you probably know if you have spent any time around this here blog. I've devoted a lot of meta-ink towards the people asking for money and I think I find it offensive for some reason now, since I was so taken in by them and their persuasiveness when I first arrived here as a naive, small-town guy. Maybe I look at this new hard stance as the first trait that I've genuinely adapted from city living.

Either way, what I saw Monday shocked me. This meek guy in the wheelchair, curled up almost in a ball all of the time because his joints are tangled together, starts yelling something that is barely intelligible with the echo in the hall and because of his difficulties speaking. "Gooooooooo oonnnnnnnn...," it sounds like he's saying. "Goooo oooonnnnnn."

Fitzy and I stop. We see the man looking over to his left, towards a slightly-older-than-middle aged Eastern European woman with a cane, quietly and emotionally pleading for money. "Gooooo onnnnnn..." the little man continues. The lady doesn't seem to notice.

Then, the little man starts to move and he's yelling louder. "GOOOO OONNNNNN!!!" His chair is buzzing as he zips off. There are about twenty people watching now as this little man in the mechanized-wheelchair burns over to the lady and, wouldn't you know it, rams right into her. "GOOOoooOOO!" he continues to yell as he bashes her again. The lady is looking around at us all, horrified. She doesn't know what to say.

Fuck the heck? I debate stepping in between them, but fuck the heck again? What would I do? I can't berate a little man in a wheelchair, can I?

The little man bashes her again and then turns back as the woman starts crying and scurries off the other way. Damn, the little man ran her off the corner like she was some West Side kid selling crack on an East Side street corner in Baltimore, MD. That little man was straight gangsta!

Fitzy and I have lunch. He isn't even fazed. I say, "snap out of it, man! Didn't you see what just happened?" He says, "I once had a guy come up to me on the train in Toronto. He had nuts in his mouth and he just walked up to me and started spitting them in my face and he started saying 'No one is doing anything. Can you believe it?' and he kept spitting the nuts. I just walked away.'" He says he can't be bothered by anything he sees after that.

We ate lunch and then we left and we walked past the little man, looking as sad and pathetic as always. We continued walking back to the coal mine and we saw the bewildered lady, still crying, still with the cane, still frazzled, still asking for money.

And it dawned on me that Stone Cold's motto could be altered just a little bit to encapsulate that experience.

So that's why I say D.P.A: Don't Pity Anyone.

craigslist ad du jour

2011-02-09T17:03:00.003-07:00

I like how they are accepting "serious enquiries only."

new strokes

2011-02-09T16:30:00.003-07:00

That's more like it, boys!

potent potables or hip hop quotables

2011-02-08T18:53:00.002-07:00

If we are to believe cliches, then us humans only use 10 percent of our brains. (And also, apparently, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, although I've never held a bird in my hand or tried to sell bush birds. Wait, was that a cliche or an aphorism?)

Frankly, I'm sick and tired of cliches and I know I just used a cliche to say how fed up I am with them. I don't like them because they're just not true all the time. For instance, the 10 percent brain usage proverb is obviously false.

Proof?

Well you can call it a breaking down of awareness -- something akin to a ball of cheese melting in the sun -- from the mundanity of my everyday that culminates, at certain points of the day, in my slipping into at subconscious mental state where I subliminally take every single word I hear and find an example of that word inside some long-lost hip-hop lyric, packed away somewhere deep within the sports stats and Simpsons quote recess of my brain.

Example:

Conversation: ".... Jersey Shore...."

My brain: "my shit is raw/straight from the Panama Shores/if the feds can't catch me then they'll make up a law"

-- Fat Joe on Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz's Cross Bronx Expressway (I MIGHT BE THE ONLY PERSON WHO EVEN REMEMBERS LORD TARIQ AND PETER GUNZ FOR CHRISSAKES! This secretly impresses/scares the hell out of me.)

Conversation: "... I tried calling the reference on his home phone..."

My brain: "I tap into my own zone like it's my home phone/turn the cell off to let my dome roam"

-- Common on Heat from Like Water for Chocolate

And a million other examples...

I'm the kind of guy that can't help but whistle or hum or sing something if my brain isn't being challenged. And so while I type away like a monkey all day at the coal mine, and it may appear as if I'm only using 10 percent of my between-ear-cheese, I am, in fact, working in many realms of consciousness on multiple levels and within various stages of cultural reference, whether I like it or not.

10 percent of my brain? Get outta here!

This experience has provided my with some insight (uh oh... insight just triggered something... My brain: "soaring to a new height of flight/and then fight the night/ with a light to insight/make the competition say aight" -- No I.D. on Common's Check the Method) into brain disorders or abnormalities. I feel for kids who have autism and keep referencing stats and memorizing lyrics or facts that have no relevance at all in the practical, real world...

Like seriously, why would anyone ever need to have a Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz lyric stored away in their head for 12 years? Where will that come in handy? I'm turning into a mental hoarder.

For y'all that don't know?!?!? (youtube won't let me embed) Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz - Cross Bronx Expressway ft. Big Pun and Fat Joe

biggest super bowl story

2011-02-07T19:50:00.004-07:00

It wasn't Troy Polamalu auditioning for an inevitable Invisible Man remake (they're making Thor and Captain America flicks? What's next? Aqualad), or that 400-some ticket holders had their seats taken away upon arriving at the stadium in Dallas, or Aaron Rodgers making millions of Packer fans forget about Brett Favre, or Fergie's terrible karaoke performance or even that this was probably the last NFL game anyone will be watching for the next 16 months.

Nope, the biggest story from this Super Bowl was Christina Aguilera's rendition of the Star Spangled Banner. And I'm sure you're expecting me to comment on how she flubbed the lyrics and that she should be burned at the stake for that or something. But to be honest, I didn't even notice the mistake because I was timing how long she'd been singing the anthem and I was waiting eagerly for her final lyric: "Brave."

This is because several off-shore bookmakers had put odds on Aguilera's pre-game performance. It was one of the more intriguing prop bets out there this year. If you don't know, proposition betting on the Super Bowl is on its way to becoming more popular than gambling on the actual game.

If proposition betting is new to you, I'll explain. Prop bets allow the public to bet on individual - and often trivial - aspects of the game. For instance, you can bet on the coin flip - and this is something I do every year. Believe it or not, the odds were actually on heads, so if you bet tails on Sunday and won, you'd get a better pay out. I bet tails every year. Guess what won this year? Heads. Friggen oddsmakers know everything...

Anyways, prop bets allow you to put money on things like who will score the first touchdown, which player will win the game's MVP award and even goofier things like 'which will be higher: the amount of catches by wide receiver 'X' or the amount of inches of snow that will call in city 'Y'?' There was even one about what colour the Gatorade dumped on the winning coach would be. Yes, this is all true.

American casinos can only put odds on things that happen on the field, but off-shore casinos put odds down for anything remotely game-related. This means that yes, people could in fact wager on the length of time Aguilera would spend singing the anthem and how long she'd belt out the final word of the last line... "and the home... of the... BRAAAAA-AAA-AAVVVEE"

Intriguing, right?

Bookmakers had Aguilera's over-under for the song at one minute and 54 seconds. They also put the length of time she'd sing "brave" at six seconds.

If you watched the game, you noticed that she sang "brave" for like 10 seconds and that one really should have come as no surprise. Of course she would take that long with the last word. That's where these female singers get to show off their pipes. That one should have been a no-brainer. Over.

But the song time is where the controversy arises. According to some, she was right on the 1:54 mark. One site, Bodog, had her timed out at 1:53.20. Making things more difficult, there were a set of jets that flew by the stadium at the end of the song and the camera panned away to shoot them, so you can't actually know when she stopped singing. According to Chad Millman from Bill Simmons' B.S. Report podcast today, Sportsbook.com is paying out both the over and under because they couldn't get the actual time down.

Despite all this, I'm find it absolutely amazing that these oddsmakers can put the line down at 1:54 a week before and they can pretty much hit it on the nose.

Real story: I want to somehow get tied into a prop bet where I have some ability to influence what's going to happen. That why, I'll get in there early and put everything I have on that bet. Imagine if I'm Christina Aguilera's down-and-out brother and I come across this prop. I'm telling older sister that she's singing brave until she passes out.

underrated gross thing of the moment

2011-02-03T22:19:00.006-07:00

I come across a lot of names every day. That's part of the territory when you work in a coal mine (read: call centre.)

The names you see defy logic sometimes. You really wonder if you are actually awake when you see job candidates like Soon See Kok or Debbie Downar, but with the volumes of names we go through on a daily basis, it happens.

This name I'm going to drop on you isn't something that shows up in some one-in-a-million random file, though. This is a name you have all seen before and I hope the next time you see it, you will stop and remember this.

Without disparaging the famous poet, I have to say that Dickinson is the most underrated grossest thing of the moment.

Just break that down and you'll see what I mean.

Dick-in-son.

Think about it: When they were first giving out names, they looked around and said, "Hey, metal-maker, we're going to call you John Blacksmith for tax purposes. Hey, garment-maker, we're going to call you John Taylor for legal purposes. Hey, chap with his penis inside his son's butthole, we're going to call you John Dickinson for the rest of time."

How do you get called Dickinson? Explain that to me. Seriously, Dickinsons, let me know... To me, it's just weird.

Department of Homeland Security is not cool (THEY KILLED ATDHE.NET!!!!)

2011-02-01T18:04:00.005-07:00

Enough is enough...

You know, I haven't been on side with any of these wars in Iraq or Afghanistan and I definitely shook my head in disgust when they decided to bail out the greedy bank execs who brought the world economy to their knees, but the U.S. government has finally gone and done it. They crossed a line by taking something that I cherish dearly.

I just don't know whether I can take it anymore and I know I'm not the only one. Hell, even the Jersey Shore crew is getting out of dodge and moving to Italy.

Who put me over the edge? Well, the Department of Homeland Security did.

The Vancouver Canucks (haven't written about them - or demigod Kesler - during their monumental run these past two months because I'm afraid to jinx them) have called up star prospect Cody Hodgson and he is expected to play tonight. This is a big deal in Canucks-land, because we haven't had a prospect with this much hype and potential since the Sedins were beardless, rosy-cheeked lads.

I'm more than excited to see this kid play and, since I don't have cable, I punched in the web address to my go-to streaming sports site - atdhe.net - to see when the game started. Instead of the turquoise screen that typically loads up, I saw a white screen punctuated by three crests, which all contained eagles in various forms, colours and moods. I thought I'd typed in the incorrect address, as I do about three or four times a day. (Check out this site: http://slinginlingo.blogpot.com. Definitely not what you're looking for.) So I rechecked it and, no, I definitely had it right.

It turns out the Department of Homeland Security has seized the site because it "is unlawful to reproduce or distribute copyrighted material... without authorization."

Well, fuck you DHS! Seriously!

Aren't there bigger fish to fry than a website that provides streaming sports games to people who can't afford cable? Like, wouldn't resources be better spent trying to curtail your country's spiraling debt? Couldn't you wire-tap some swindling CEO? Really, you feel you have to crack down on people watching sports? People who need to watch sports these days to distract themselves from all the problems you are causing? We're still watching the commercials, you idiots. It's not like we're missing the ads that keep these stations on air. The network's ads are actually reaching a larger audience now that they are streaming internationally. Shouldn't this please them?

I don't know what your angle is, Department of Homeland Security. Are you trying to piss off the very people who bury their heads in the sand by getting carried away with their sports teams and,by doing so, are doing everything they can to avoid being pissed off at you?

Are you trying to create terrorists? You take away a man's Vancouver Canucks hockey and what does he have left?

herbiberous from cairo

2011-01-30T10:26:00.004-07:00

I'm sure we've all been following what's been happening in Egypt this past week or so with great interest. It's encouraging to see such an organic and natural movement gain steam against a complacent and seemingly corrupt government. Even more so, it's amazing to hear that the army is not taking a side at this point and is allowing the protests to continue so long as they stay non-violent.

I won't pretend to have an extensive understanding of Egypt's political history and I definitely won't feign insight into the situation, but having said that, I visited Cairo about three years ago and, although I was only there for about a week, I did get a sense of some of the unease and frustration that Cairans had with their lot in life. The many people I met were tired, over-worked and resigned to poverty. The pace of life was manic for Cairans and, from the stories I heard, the fruits of their labour barely fed and kept families from the streets. The seeds of this anger were visible then, in January 2008, even to the untrained eye of a despairing and lost tourist.

I kept a journal while I was over there and, fortunately, I kept it with me. With Egypt unraveling, I had a little read of what I'd jotted down and, alongside the rantings and cravings of a lonely, wannabe writer, I found some passages interesting and others even urgent. Not urgent in an important and critical meaning, but more an immediate sense, like my eyes were opening to a world where life was improvised, where things always felt real and where people lived on the fly.

Since I didn't have a blog at that time, I figured I might as well share some of the more relevant parts here. Like I said, there is nothing revelatory here, but just some observations I made during my eight or nine days in Egypt about the lives of some of the Cairans I met and what everyday life was like through my eyes. Maybe reading this after looking at what's happening in Egypt will help someone gain a particle of a smidgen of an idea of how life was before the uprising, although that's coming from someone who definitely had an outsider's perspective.

A quick note: I took the trip on a whim. I was working for an airline and was dealing with a break-up, so I got as far away from home as I could for as long as possible (A WHOLE TEN DAYS!!!) without making any plans. (I got into Cairo at 4 a.m. without a Visa or a hostel booked. I really was at Cairo's mercy.) I only pass this little tidbit along so that, if I sound like a sad sap and - even more sadly - a little like a solipsist, you'll know why. It was just me and a notebook.

January 11, 2008:

Cairo, man! What a place! What an entirely different world! We, in the West, have sacrificed culture for civility. Where do I start? I'm smoking a sheesha on a side street. I go into the cafe to get it and put my sandwich down on a table outside. When I return, the sandwich is gone. I see a cat running away with it. I've got a mad head rush now from this stuff; it's much harsher than what I'm used to smoking back home.

I wish I could speak Arabic. I feel very ignorant walking around without ANYTHING, but everyone so far has been helpful, even if I'm somewhat weary of the help. I do feel very safe in downtown Cairo, even if I'm the only white face. I've never felt like this: I'm not an intruder, but just an observer, and it makes me very self-conscious.

No one walks empty-handed. Kids are pita couriers; men rush past with long rubber tubes, hoses, bathtubs; they weld without glasses on street corners; they peddle fruit on donkeys. If they're not walking, they're chatting on corners, smoking sheehsa.

If you walked the city, you would think Cairo is comprised entirely of men. No women to be seen. Crowds of men talking at 3 or 4 a.m., wandering the streets with purpose, like there is nothing unusual about doing so at such an hour.

Prayers over speakers at 5:23 a.m. A harmony of hums from various spots, ringing over the city, a holy morning, praising sunrise. Where am I? I wonder in bed, heart-beating out of step with how I want to feel.

I'm an observer. I speak no tongue here. Thank you is all I have. I have already spoken this many times.

I wandered the streets of Cairo with no destination. I found many. And I found my way back. A homing pigeon almost, walking in long lines, getting away and then turning back, down another road, circling and spiraling back among the humanity, and magically, I was back at the hostel, like I knew I'd get there.

The sheesha made my head spin. I stood up and stumbled, walked for ten minutes like I was on wooden limbs, teetering and tripping on cobblestone.

Baskets dangle down on strings from windows, looking for money. Others contain money, which is exchanged for products from stores. Does this explain the lack of women? Are they at the ends of these strings?

There is no mice problem (that I've noticed.) No pigeons either. It's cats. Cats everywhere. Some hungry, searching for food in trash cans. Some meagre, weak, cowering against buildings, dying.

No rules on the road, either. Transmissions, tires, turning signals are of no importance. Only the horn: the horn is master. Taxi driver pushing 80 mph, flickering lights, honking, pulling past cars a piece-of-paper's-width away, doubling back, backing up, people barely noticing that we almost squish them. This is the norm. Every second is important. Every movement is too. Cars parked with their bumpers touching. A North American mother would have a fit with her kids running around these streets, but kids do here and they're smart because every one of them is paying attention all the time. Life is immediate here.

I'm writing on the toilet now. I cannot throw the paper into it. It must go into a garbage bin. I've been on an airplane or in an airport for the past 48 hours and that takes its toll. I hope I won't be judged by what I'm dropping into that bin. I feel ashamed.

I spent three hours today with the people of Cairo on a Friday, their least chaotic day, their day of rest, and I am worn out.

* * *

The smells on the street... I can only say that each new step brings a new odour: spicy meat, shit, fruits, solvents, perfumes, piss. It's a buffet of smells and a lot of them I haven't smelled since working at the mill at Con. Solvents from paints, car work, welding, polishing. The sidewalks, cobbled stone, look like the wood planks in the [60-year-old] mill in some places, like they have been eternally coated with a pasty, chemical dust. A toxic cosmetic foundation.

The streets are smorgasbords too. You'll have a shop selling fruit beside a pharmacy and a clothes shop and then a guy fixing a car. He'll be pumping tires, working paint off with scrubbing solvents, welding steel right beside a cafe. People will sit drinking a NesCafe with all this heavy mechanic work going on next to them. It's surreal.

Everyone helps each other with directions, with work. It's a fraternal place. Lots of father/son activities, work-related. Lots of male relationships at play, like I said, because other than later in the days, there are really no women walking around.

Some kids sprayed my book bag with some stinky ass spray and followed me around for a while. Funny little dudes.

I don't want to say that the sidewalks are dirty, because that's lazy. Yellowknife's streets are dirty because people just toss shit like wrappers or bottles onto them. Here, the streets are different. They are alive: they are the public forum, the public space. Each day, they get dirty, crowded and crowned with the detritus of the day, then they're washed, scrapped and the day is carried away down the road in a mucky river. The layer of skin is shed and the streets are ready to be lived again. They are anew the next day.

January 12, 2008:

I've hired a driver to see the pyramids today.

Yesterday, I was very self-conscious with my camera and I didn't want to demean any of the authenticity around me by snapping pictures like a tourist. I stopped only when there were absences of people and so I think I only took about 10 pictures or so.

* * *

So if yesterday was unbridled enthusiasm, excitement, optimism and explosions of meningeal juices from the limitless hustle and bustle of Cairo life from the invisible - or we'll say ghostly pale or translucent - observer, then today was the sober real: I was the walking-wallet participant.

It got me down. It really did. It was everything that I was hoping it wouldn't be: Pushy, fake, insincere. I felt I was treated like a baby, being coaxed, bribed and sweet-talked for a piece of that sweet cheddar in my back pocket.

Hosam, the driver, was not a bad guy, but he just wouldn't listen. I didn't want to go to the tourist carpet place or the perfume shop. Seriously, I'm a single guy. Why would I want to go to a perfume shop? I got pressured into buying a piece of papyrus at this one shop.

Anyways. Here I am, I just saw the Giza Pyramids and the Sphinx and I'm ranting about the pushiness of the tour guides. But it just bugged me. I couldn't enjoy myself unless I was by myself. These guys had me thinking too much about the tip. Like that greasy camel guy that held me hostage in the desert asking for a tip then and there. What an asshole.

But the pyramids were unreal. We're driving through Giza, weaving, banking, dodging ubiquitous humanity, and behind half-crumbled buildings and garbage piles, you see these three mysterious, mathematically-precise beacons of the surreal. And we get there and I hop on a camel (which I thought would just keel over and die at any second) bribe a tourism guy who lets us through a barbed-wire fence and then the desert is our playground, on the inside looking out at all the bus tourists, while my black market guide leads me to the destination with no line. I went up and touched the middle pyramid, touched it with my hand, the same one clutching this pen. It didn't sink in until now, as, at that moment, some pushy fucker on a horse was bugging me for money. Some guy was climbing the third pyramid. How wild is that? They let him climb the fucking thing? What a country!

So Cairo and its suburbs are like 25 million people. Too many. People everywhere. Donkeys pulling people down freeways. Bombed-out-looking brick buildings for miles along the highway, buildings never to be completed so their owners can evade paying taxes. Kids playing in trash. People everywhere. We're heading back on the freeway, pushing 100 kpm and a truck comes up beside us. It carries bags of rice packed as high as the cabin, and then there is a guy sitting backwards on top of the rice, his coat over his head. If dude driving hits the brakes, this guy is a human projectile. It's absolute madness. It's Crazy Taxi. Grand Theft Auto. No rules. Might as well not paint the lanes.

Hosam almost died today. My guide had high-blood pressure. When he talks, his eye lids slowly fall as his eyeballs roll back into his head.

The awe, the shivers of reverence, never came today when I saw the pyramids. Awe is difficult to feel when you're busy whipping the shit (literally, nasty, burning-hot, wet poop) out of an old grunting camel that you're sure is going to crap out on you and send you flying ten feet down to the ground, as it hobbles up rocky inclines, while you make small talk with a overtly fake swindler who just wants to make you happy so you give him more money. The pyramids are getting pimped shamelessly.

I don't mind tipping But don't ask for it. Don't demand it. I worked in tourism. You don't do that. It's disrespectful. It's not honest. Why did I let it slide then? Fuck it, no more... I'm going to enjoy the rest of my time, not spend it spending worry and energy about how I'm spending my money.

You know, Mr. Mohammad, my sheesha smoking pal in the restaurant this morning was my favourite guy: he talked to me like a person. I felt like a person then, not a talking-ATM. Good man.

* * *

(written while "half in the bag")

So tonight... ooh boy. It started out well. A Nile cruse. I'm waiting for the guide, who shows up and walks me to the end of the street. "Sight." I point to my eyes, not knowing what's going on. He shakes his head. A cabbie jumps out and some random guy waves me toward his car. "Said." I still don't know what's going on..

We jump into the cab and madly - MADLY - take off. We serve through spaces you wouldn't dare attempt in North America at 80 kpm. Yikes. And we're supposed to be heading to a relaxing buffet cruise. I swear, I thought he'd roll the cab about ten times or smash into the back of another car or some pedestrian. We almost clipped like ten ladies in the shopping district and I'm sure we got one lady's handbag. She didn't even flinch. We didn't hit one person or get into a collision or anything. How?

In Cairo, you don't just rely on your own intuitive, prophetic, magician-like ability behind the wheel, horn, gas and brake. More importantly, you rely on the rest of the 25 million residents' driving talents and walking dexterity.

We get to the cruise and the cabbie smiles. I shake my head and I can honestly say I wasn't freaked out, but impressed. More in awe of his driving than I was from the pyramids.

The night was fun. I met up with the tour guide, Said. Starting to make sense. After working a 16-hour day, Said got called in to escort me to this cruise. How bad do I feel seeing how tired this guy is and hearing how his six-year-old son wanted him to stay home.

We had a good time and some laughs. The belly dancer jiggling and us giggling. A really goofy band played out their karaoke dreams. Then a traditional twirling dancer and a midget get up. (The whole schtick was that the midget was trying to dance like the stoic, twirling dancer and he kept messing up.) I didn't want to just up and laugh at the midget. Political correctness tells me not to. When in Cairo though. Said was cracking up, smacking the table.

I get back to the hostel and go out to smoke a sheesha before bed, and...

run into a pack of crazy Cairans, who become my friends immediately. It's not hard to make friends with the locals here.

They convince me to go to a club with them, and...

we walk six blocks, then through a parking lobby, into what looked like an abandoned marble building lobby. We go up some stairs, through some doors and...

A red-walled joint, streamers everywhere, lamps, colourful hanging ornaments, table with suited men and hookas, HAPPY NEW YEARS and MERRY CHRISTMAS signs still up, handshakes with smiling suits and mustachioed serious dudes, girls hanging around tables, band on stage, live music, make-up, tight dress girls, dancing, suited young man singing, keyboard player, drummer and two bongo players.

We get a table, two hookas and some beers.

The boys introduce me to these girls. Barely speak English. They say the same, same, SAME things over and hover. The girls kissing me, winking. Me refusing their company politely. No one seems to understand. I spend the next hour repeating this.

"She good..." one of my friends says.

"Yeah, she's pretty, but no thanks."

He nods. Talks to her. Whispers something. She looks at me coyly. He turns back.

"Her..." he points. "She good." Nods, content with his judgement.

"Uh... no thanks."

The room is so smokey. So bizarre. I'm dying. Too much smoke.

I give homeboy 50 Egyptian pounds to pay for the drinks. He goes on stage, makes a speech about how much he loves Canada. Pours money over one of the dancing girls. Everyone claps for me: All the girls, my friends, the staff, the suits. Great. Girl comes over and we walk onto the stage. She's actually very attractive. I second-guess my earlier stance. She drags me to the front of the stage. I don't dance well at all. Not sure what to do. Can I touch her? My friend Monkey comes up on stage and dances like a maniac and saves me.

We sit down and cheers. I want to leave now, though. Sick of refusing women over and over and over. I think I stuck around so long to see if maybe I'd say yes.

But no, I'm tired from the smoke. We bounce and we spend my money tipping the girls. Is this why I have made these friends? I don't know.

They walk me back, make plans for a sheesha tomorrow. I swear, I had to repeated things 1,000 times and still I don't think they understand me.

"I go to Giza tomorrow. A.M. No problem."

"I went already today."

"We party tomorrow."

"No, I'm going to Luxor."

Cool experience, but I'm glad I'm leaving tomorrow.

* * *

January 14, 2008:

Well, I missed getting anything in here yesterday, because people like Mr. Said Mohammad Ibrahim were too busy serenading me out of 25 pounds for some cigarettes, 20 more pounds for some eye medicine with flattery and cheap commissary. He even finagled the pen out of my hand. These guys are good. Very good. Being an expert in persuasion (I graduated with a BA in Comm Studies with a specialization in Persuasion and Rhetoric) I should be able to see these types of things coming form the "hello," but I don't, because I want to be friendly and return their insincere goodwill.

It starts off with a "Hello, Welcome to Egypt."

How do you ignore that? "Thank you."

"Where are you from?"

"Canada"

"Ah, Canada Dry. No woman, no cry. Good people. I know _________ from Montreal."

Small talk ensues. Canadians are great. Generous, they say. They invite you for tea, because you are such a great man.

You have tea. They flatter you and offer small gifts like an orange or some coins. They act way over the top with these gifts, like they are being supremely generous and putting themselves out. The flattery continues.

Then it is time to pay for the tea. You pull out your money and reciprocate. You feel indebted and almost like you have a duty to respond and validate their claims that Canadians are great, generous people. This flattery makes you do some silly things and they know this. This act is repeated. After a while, you realize that everyone in the street has an angle. It's a hustle.

I've learned. Today, I walk. I don't talk. Sure, people make you feel like an asshole for not acknowledging them, but it's all a hustle. You need to remember that they are the ones being assholes.

But those Cairans are clever: Clever as a Cairan, people should say. Life is a hustle. It's a struggle. They are amazing salesmen. They find something in anything. The mark of a good con is that they make it so the mark doesn't know if he's been hustled. Thinking back on this week, I don't know how many times I've been had.

A supposed Palestinian man came to me in tears claiming that his family had been killed and he needed to get back to see them. I didn't know. His accent was different. His story was elaborate. His tears seemed genuine. He was the most amazing actor if this was his game. And you know, if it wasn't a hustle, on the off chance, I feel alright knowing that I helped him out. How could I turn him down a few dollars as a human being, if it was true? Fuck him if it wasn't, but he put on a good and convincing show. Maybe I've spent too much time in small-town Canada and I need some hardening.

But in a place where 50 out of 100 people don't have a job, the people have to do something to live and the few that got a few pounds out of me these last three days have been very good at what they do.

* * *

Everyone works ridiculous hours. Said, the guy who came on the falluka cruise with me, works 16-hour days. He's sleep deprived. "Oh well, my God will take care of it," he says. People in Cairo work this much just to eat. Hosam was looking rough, like he was going to pass out the entire day we spent at the pyramids. He didn't sleep that night because he'd been working.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

So those were the most relevant and least pathetic passages from my journal. I don't know what purpose they serve at all, but in the spirit of this blog, I figured why the hell not?

Hopefully, for the Hosams, Saids and even the swindlers in Cairo, the events of this past week - and whatever happens in the near future - will help improve the quality of their lives and the lives of their families. I don't know if anyone even knows what to expect or what kinds of changes are being sought, but after spending a week in Cairo, wandering around lost, even I recognized that people were working hard and weren't happy with the little that earned them. I definitely stand in support of the demonstrators in Egypt.

teach your kids to play the...

2011-01-19T20:03:00.007-07:00

SAXOPHONE

No, herbiberous has not been possessed by Bleeding Gums Murphy and I'm not holed up in my apartment in a haze, listening to Murphy's seminal album, 'Sax on the Beach,' on an endless loop...

but I remember reading an interview with Deerhunter's Bradford Cox after the release of Halcyon Digest and his gushing over how the saxophone was going to be the wave of the future:

The song "Coronado" from Halcyon Digest features saxophone sounds inspired by the Rolling Stones' album Exile On Main Street. Cox recalled, "I wanted that sax on there because I was listening to the Stones' Exile On Main Street reissue a lot...I began to see a pattern forming. Saxophones are becoming this thing. That's why we did it early. Next year everyone's gonna have a saxophone on their record because saxophones are just cool.

(pulled from wikipedia cause I'm too lazy to find the actual interview...)

Not really the most well-defined or reasoned argument, but he does say that there will be more sax and while I wasn't thrilled with the out-of-place solo on Coronoda, maybe I'm tempted to side with him after hearing 'Chinatown' by Destroyer for the first time, earlier tonight. (Yes, Jung. Byron Crawford is now an essential visit every day. Happy?)

Not too shabby, that old sax, eh? Maybe you'll want to talk to your kids about sax while they're young. It might do them some good as they get older.

When I sit and really reflect on whether saxophones are appropriate in modern song, an overwhelming genetic impulse compels me to say, "Yes, they are." And that impulse comes from the area in the brain that controls annoying, thoughtless, inane play-on-word production. Listen to it and listen closely... Can you hear it? It's saying... BRING ON THE SAX PUNS!

UNRELATED NOTE:

I'm likely a little late with these guys too, but I saw Little Dragon last night at Il Motore and there are definitely a good handful of you out there who I'm sure would enjoy them. The singer was really great. (It dawned on me that I'd seen her when the Gorillaz were here this fall.)

We couldn't figure out where they were from last night. I googled them and, wouldn't you know it's Sweden. (Is everyone from fucking Sweden?) The band had elements of Battles, bjork and Animal Collective, but the only thing that I found distracting was that some of the songs sounded sort of like Mariah Carey tracks on speed. (And their songs always ended awkwardly.)

At the coal mine where I slave and toil, we ask references these long sets of questions about a job candidate all day and usually, if the reference is in a rush, they'll say something like: "Look, I'm about to go in on a conference call (read: take a shit) and I've only got a minute, so I'll sum it up by saying that I'd rehire Mr. Whoever." That's what I'm saying with Little Dragon: "I'd go see them again. Like I said though, I've got to go take a shit (er... dammit)."

thought of the day

2011-01-19T18:40:00.004-07:00

I have a feeling that when a future generation looks back at us in a few hundred years, names like Bush and Obama and bin Ladin will have long faded into history, along with the prolonged and pathetic conflicts that marked their lives, but the people in our future will see Carl Sagan as a prophet from our time.

how to make it in montreal

2011-01-17T18:38:00.004-07:00

In this city, you get a chance to observe a strange person making money in a stranger way each day.

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.

addendum: palin is cannabitch

2011-01-13T18:41:00.008-07:00

A quick post-script to the script of yesterday's post:

Whenever I hear Sarah Palin whine and pine and slam Obama, I always go back to this song and something Eminem says at 0:56. (If I knew how to embed videos that began at a specific time, I would.) I think it's apropos:

I'd like to say, by the way, that this should not be construed as a reflection of my feelings for Canibus.

A little Canibus love (even if there is no way that this is a freestyle):

oh, the sarah palin

2011-01-12T17:28:00.004-07:00

I'll admit that it took me a few tries to first get into Team America: World Police. I'd psych myself up to watch the Matt Stone and Trey Parker flick, while visions of Basketballs danced in my head, but I'd wind up deflated just minutes in because I couldn't get past the wooden puppets. As absurd as the setting and characters and situations were, I took all the dialogue seriously for whatever reason and the humour was lost on me. I'd turn it off for good, just ten minutes in.

Thankfully, I got over my puppet hang-up and I have enjoyed the movie many times for what it is: an over-the-top, cliche-spoofing satire of American intervention in world affairs (with puppet porn!)

And I think the same thing is starting to happen to me with Sarah Palin.

When this broad first stepped into the national spotlight, I couldn't fathom how anyone could even entertain the notion of taking her seriously. Her stuttered and stunted speeches - and some of the electorate's rapturous reactions to them - made me turn away in disbelief and disgust and I've been doing the same ever since.

But now, after she released this video to show her disapproval with some in the news media who are arguing that vitriolic rhetoric (which does absolutely nothing good for anyone, in my opinion) may have played a part in that demented 22-year-old's killing rampage in Arizona, (not printing the dude's name because that's really all that those people want, isn't it?) I think I'm finally getting the joke. (Editor's Note: Now that's what I call a run-on sentence. Should start calling that a Gump.)

Sarah Palin: "America's Enduring Strength" from Sarah Palin on Vimeo.

Palin is just an over-the-top, mothafuckin aw-shuckin, cliche-spouting satire of a 21st Century politician. (This isn't my original thought either. Thanks to Inflatable Elvis' twitter feed.) She survives through sound bites, she is hardly challenged on her beliefs - or her own thoughts - in public, her image has been crafted and mythologized with some very creative twisting and exaggeration of fact, and everything she says is scripted by someone else operating things behind the controls.

Man, she's actually quite a lot like one of those Team America puppets, right down to the vapid stare, terrible acting, puppet strings and blockish, chiseled face.

to the new strokes

2011-01-10T17:28:00.005-07:00

I saw 'Incendies' this weekend. A few quick thoughts:

1) I'm super proud about having understood about 95 percent of the film considering it was in French or with French-subtitles. (It is kind of sad though that I'm still stagnant with my functional French and not even on the cusp of fluency yet.)

2) Man, is that one heavy flick. You don't even know what to say after you walk out of it. I won't give it away in case you check it out, but I'll just say that Freud was really one creepy guy. (And I'm still not sure about the character ages and how they all add up. I was doing the math for a couple hours afterwards and I still don't know if it's all possible...)

...and 3) During a preview for a new Sofia Coppola flick, I heard a melody sung by Julian Casablancas that I could have sworn I'd heard before. The chorus came: "sit me down/shut me up/I'll calm down and I'll get along with you..." and I recognized it from the First Impressions of Earth album, but I had to sing it over and over in my head about 30 times before I could build the song around it and realize it was the album opener, "I'll Try Anything Once." I couldn't focus on the first five or ten minutes of 'Incendies' because of this and the reason it took me so long to recall this track was that the song that appeared in the preview was a stripped-down, soft version with just Julian singing, accompanied by a fuzzy keyboard and not the layered version I was used to.

It's really damn good.

The Laser and I got to talking about the Strokes at a pub a week back after 'Is This It?' came on. We talked about how refreshing those Strokes were back in 2002 - 2004, when that album and Room on Fire were soundtracks to my life. Laser said the same, but added that he hadn't liked the second album as much and hadn't really heard any of the third. I admitted the third felt a little over-produced and that I'd only recently given Julian Casablancas' solo album a listen after my buddy Ska-Ped played me a few tracks this summer. (I have liked a lot of Albert Hammond Jr.'s stuff.)

The thing about the Strokes was that, although their albums do sound meticulously crafted, they didn't ever seem like they were trying hard, but with new each album - and expectations building and critics pleading with them to evolve and fans wanting them to stay the same - it seemed like they were pushing harder and harder to sound as much like themselves as possible. Unfortunately for all of us, they sort of lost what that was and what had made them so great: the effortlessness and the cool.

And so with a new Strokes album scheduled for release this year, here's hoping they sound more like this demo than their latest, glitzy incarnation.

But I'm just one guy, so who gives a fuck.

speak for me, youtube

2011-01-07T14:53:00.004-07:00

Youtube is really starting to consume me. Well, maybe not consume, because it's more slo-mo, Spice Girls, 2 Become 1 shit. It's integrating into me.

Not only does it entertain me while I'm at home (example: two hours completely disappeared last night as I jumped from wrestling link to wrestling link to wrestling link) or liven up an evening when conversations get dull with friends, but this year - since I'm still working hard to string together some pennies - I actually sent some friends my favourite clips from 2010 as a Christmas gift. It's the thought that counts, right?

I know I'm definitely not alone in my appreciation for this site, but without realizing it until just now, I think I've started to take this love to a new level: youtube is speaking for me.

A little history (and don't worry, this will soon make sense): My old man is as renown for his clever gift card messages, as he is notorious for the amount of time it takes him to sign said card. He puts a lot of pressure on himself and he feels he has a reputation to uphold each and every time a loved one's birthday or wedding or new bambino comes around. It's a gift and a curse, in his mind. He sits down at the table and stares at the card, looking through the thing, searching and straining for the perfect combination of words. He'll then look skyward and scratch his head. Everyone knows not to talk to him during this time. He'll get up and go dry some dishes and then, suddenly, he'll start back to the card and sit back down with a pen and almost have something, before getting up again to burn off the nervous energy.

I feel somewhat stricken with this handicap: it's not that I am noted for having hilarious notes in cards, but I always strive to come up with something clever whenever the occasion arises. (Note: Look at that, I just backed my way into an excuse for the lack of recent blog posts. When you don't got it, you just don't got it, folks.)

So thank the Spaghetti Monster that my pops doesn't have facebook. You see, the constant barrage of wall posts and messages and photos creates an endless and insatiable demand for clever quips. I'm sure if my dad was ever presented with this possibility, it would drive him crazy(er?).

And that's where I've likely wound up. Call it laziness or craziness, but instead of racking my feeble brain for some funny, tight and succinct one-liners, I've leaned upon my burgeoning catalogue of youtube clips and allowed them to start talking for me. Someone posts a beautiful picture? I'll fire off a link with Keanu Reeves' saying 'WHOA!' The boys won a hockey tournament in Hay River? Well, why not paste in a clip of Canadian fans going apeshit after Crosby scored in Vancouver to show my appreciation?

You see how this works, right?

I can see how this might be viewed as lazy and I can see how some would say that this is further evidence that technology is becoming more embedded in our everyday and that, as it becomes more expressive and complex, we - the users - become less verbose and simpler. I can also see how this kind of linked response could get very tired, very quickly.

But for delusion's sake, I'd argue that I'm just demonstrating the fruits of all my youtube labour. I've put in hours and hours of work watching videos and now I'm just showing off my encyclopedic knowledge of banality. I think I've put in the effort, now I'm watching it pay off.

Do you think I'm full of ess-aich-eye-tee? Do you agree? Let me know... but do it using a youtube clip.

happy thought to start your year

2011-01-03T11:26:00.009-07:00

As we start this new year, with new hope and new dreams, here's a little story that I read this morning that puts it all into perspective. The actual CEO wages aren't all that shocking actually, but the story's lead really makes my whole next year feel kind of pathetic:

Canada's top-paid chief executives only have to work until 2:30 p.m. Monday to make the same amount of money the average Canadian will earn for the entire year, a new study suggests.

Now I've been on the "Kill Bankers" tip for a while now - especially after seeing Inside Job - so reading this jives with my surly philosophy that all rich people are greedy and suck. (Although, I suppose they could just have easily replaced 'Canada's top-paid chief executives' with 'Many professional athletes' and I probably would have shrugged.)

The story really does have the ability to get you down, if you live check to check like I am right now. The disparity in wages between these chief swindlers and regular folks are getting out of hand, especially when I try to imagine how much 'real work' these people actually do.

I started to get down, actually, until one thought immediately picked me up. It's January 3, 2011 today. I don't have to work today. And while those CEOs are currently 56 minutes from having made the equivalent of my yearly income, at least I'm still in bed while those working stiffs are stuck at their desks.

Have fun, CEOs, ya big chumps ya. I think I might just have a coffee and Baileys right now... mmm...

Happy New Year

belated merry government mandated pre-new years days off...

2010-12-26T23:27:00.001-07:00

or Christmas, as it's called in some sacred circles.

why i love craigslist

2010-12-21T13:47:00.002-07:00

Marty Jannetty, is that you?

cold feet reality

2010-12-21T09:49:00.011-07:00

It kind of all hit me for real while I was having a beer at a show at Cagibi. It wasn't anything sung in a song that made me take notice and it certainly wasn't an alcoholic epiphany that opened up this suppressed railway of thought either. Funny enough, it was a set of cold feet that made me realize that I've come back to the worries of yore: the anxiety and restlessness that possessed me on my move out of Yellowknife and down here.

Cold feet.

I'd kind of slept-walked through the day: got up late, saw a flick, ate a burger. My buddy Chocolate T told me I didn't seem myself - I'd heard that from a handful of people the past month or so. I was tired and feeling reclusive. I went off to the show, even though I wasn't really up for it. I kind of wished that I had a giant beard, like Pacino did at the end of Serpico, so my eyes could poke out of the fur like a periscope and I could watch what was happening without being detected. I would have fit right in at the Ground Zero of Montreal Hipsterdom too.

Before this starts to sound like an emo song, it's not that I didn't want to talk to anybody, it's just that I didn't feel like I had anything to say. I moved into my own place about a month and a half ago and that means a lot of time by one's self. A friend wrote me and said you are confronted by your demons in a live-alone state because it means you have a lot of time to think. That's really the last thing I need.

I have had a lot of time to think about what has gone wrong in the past few months. For one, my two best friends in Montreal - my two former roommates - had a spat and the house was disbanded as a result. Being who I am and trying, in my own way, to do right by both of them - or maybe to avoid conflict - I played Switzerland and kept my distance. I went home to sleep that last month and that was pretty much it.

Now, I don't really see much of either of them and when I do, some resentments seem to crop up or linger behind the scenes. That's mostly my fault because I find that I don't want to deal with any of this and that's maybe because Montreal has really been a fantasyland since I arrived just over a year ago, with only a backpack full of clothes and books and a sleeping bag purchased in Iceland.

I hit the ground running and saw and did something new every day. Everything in the city was new too and so close and fascinating. Saw a ton of shows. Ate amazing food. Went to some great - and some ridiculous - parties. Hung out in parks and on rooftops and skating rinks. And met new people all the time. I had the same story: just moved here on a whim, looking for work, etc. I fell into a great group in nearly the exact apartment I'd dreamt about living in, while pondering life pessimistically in Yellowknife.

Life was grand. It was new and challenging. It was starting from scratch.

But like the Roots best album, Things fall Apart. People started to leave. I found a job. Money got tight, as I started to live on my income and not my Visa. Free time shrunk. Energy got zapped. Fought with friends. Stress. Got sick of my job. Wanted something else. Got static. Had weekend rut - and hangover gut rut. Lost creativity. Pay Check. Broke. Pay Check. Broke.

Cold Feet.

Back to the cold feet. Like I said I realized, for the first time at that show, that my feet were cold and that they shouldn't be cold. I'm wearing some black Pumas that aren't equipped for winter. (I'm sure they'll somehow rust, with the amount of salt the city unloads on the sidewalks and streets.)

But the point is, I was discomforted by my cold feet. A year earlier, I wouldn't have noticed them - or if I did, I would have shrugged and sucked it up, because I was in no position to do anything about ameliorating the situation. "I need a job! Feet, you're going to have to wait until later."

Is it possible to feel worse knowing that you can better your condition? I'm less happy the more comfortable I am. Is that weird? I enjoyed living unsustainably, trying to pull myself up onto the ledge. It was exhilarating. Everything I worried about was legit. There was no time or room for idle anxiety. Now I'm on that ledge and I'm twiddling my thumbs about what ledge I should move on to. I've found a job, I've got a roof over my head, I've made friends, but now I hate my job and I'm living by myself and I have had some friend drama and so as much as I tried to fight it, it looks like real life - REAL life - has finally infiltrated Montreal. I'm back to stressing about a satisfying job, finding a spark and I'm spinning my tires about how to go about doing all that.

I want to be dependent and I'm getting there, but it doesn't feel like I'm gaining maturity. Is maturity really about knuckling down, planning, getting real and doing something about something? Am I confusing it with something? Why should deciding on a future be accompanied by so much negativity?

Or am I just thinking too much?

Note: I wrote this at a Second Cup beside a chick who was griping about THE EXACT SAME SHIT with her friend. I found her totally annoying and self-obsessed and enthralled with the sound of her own voice. Heh heh heh.... errr... self-FAIL!

a funny thing happened on google

2010-12-05T22:32:00.007-07:00

I'm back in job search mode. I suppose I'm always in job search mode, but as happens at least once a month, a few lousy days at work and a few hopeless looks at the bank account have galvanized whatever energy I have to scouring through the craiglists, kijijis, workopolises (workopoli?) and jeffgaulins of the world to find myself something more satisfying, gratifying and... er... lucrative.

Over the past few months, I've consistently sent out cover letters and CVs and consistently got no response or a 'no' response. It's a drag, but the job market for Anglos is competitive in Montreal and, as Sir Smoke-A-Lot once said, "I understand."

However, after not hearing back about a position I was actually kind of qualified for and one I figured I'd at least get a call about, I thought I should check something out that had been bugging me for a bit. Call it paranoia or maybe careful, but I did a google search of 'herbiberous' tonight, just to see what kind of ridiculous statements and examples of poor judgement I'd let loose on the blogosphere and I wanted to see if any of them tied back to my actual name. Keep in mind folks, a lot of the things I write here are done in frustration, in jest or in a state of semi-intoxication and I imagine, at times, it's difficult to tell if something I've put on here is serious or not (and more often than not, it's not.) Really though, much of what I end up posting here isn't fully digested and instead of ridding myself of a consistent idea, I usually spend a lot of time wiping up a messy, ill-conceived thought littered with cornels of tangents that I can't ever remember ingesting (poo analogy: check!). If I was a potential employer and I read some of the things I've written on here -- there really is a substantial amount of this blog devoted to feces and masturbation -- I might hesitate to call this gentleman up. I've heard stories about hiring managers using facebook/google searches to vet candidates, so I wanted to see what kind of damage I'd done to my name and, as a consequence, my job prospects by having literally posted so much crap on the internet.

Not surprisingly, this blog appeared, as did an old myspace page. A little surprising was the amount of nerdy and angst-filled youtube -- and many other message board -- comments I stumbled upon. Maybe surprising isn't the best word. Embarrassing. Yes. Definitely, embarrassing. I suppose I'm probably the only guy in the world who uses the handle 'herbiberous.'

I was glad that the search - or at least the basic search that my limited computer skills enable me to conduct - did not link 'herbiberous' to my real identity.

Something odd did come up though. I found an interview with the band Surfer Blood (aka Montreal Bachelor Party 2010 Alumni) and shockingly 'herbiberous' was involved:

Bizarre.

Three things:

1) Laziest interviewer ever?

2) What a poorly put together and haphazard comparison. If I knew the comment would have been picked up for an interview, I would have put together an 800-word treatise on their surf-and-sun sound roots, which would have been nearly unreadable because of the hyperbole.

3) Am I entitled to some kind of compensation? If time is money, I definitely dispensed some money coming up with that hybrid-sound-comparison on youtube. It caused me great anguish (Please disregard Three Things: No. 2.) If royalties aren't likely then, do I get to at least put an interview with Surfer Blood down on my CV?

wind up radio sessions

2010-12-03T00:22:00.004-07:00

If you're coming through old Montreal, gimme a jingle so we can meet up so we can catch up and have a few laughs and bust each others' balls and get something to eat and we'll head down to make sure we're in line to buy tickets to the place where we're able to get a few drinks and have some more laughs and bust some more balls and chat with some chicks and eventually check out the wise old gents (work father-figures) from the Wind Up Radio Sessions.

The Wind Up Radio Sessions - Little Bird from Cameron Mitchell on Vimeo.

Immodest Proposal

2010-11-29T18:00:00.001-07:00

It is a sad sight indeed to walk around any major city in our country and find the streets and side-streets and sidewalks littered with vagrants, seeking drink or fighting off sobriety, pleading and prodding for the change that jingles through our pockets. I think it is agreeable by all that this tremendous number of homeless is a grievance to our present deplorable democracy. We all struggle to make ends meet as we make less and less at work but pay more and more for the most basic of amenities, and not only are these vagabonds literally doing nothing to help us and the economy, they are actually a tax on it.

They ask and beg of us and they do indeed take from us, through our feudal payments to the federal government. These donations are ladled out to a long line of social handouts like addictions counseling, find work programs and affordable housing. It is truly disgraceful and discouraging to think of what our hard-earned pay is promoting.

As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this subject, I have found the only possible recourse to eliminating this embarrassing homelessness problem: encouraging it. While this may seem preposterous on the surface, it is indeed true that not until we are all homeless, will we be rid of this type of despicable homelessness.

While I have illustrated that homelessness is a deadweight on us all, perhaps if we choose to view it from a different lens, we can see how homelessness can be used as a positive force. It appears we have spent ourselves into our present predicament, where individuals and cities and countries find themselves deeper and deeper in debt. We are over-consuming and perhaps we are doing this because we are trying to keep up with our overproduction, which our economy greedily and constantly demands. The homeless are not interested in this at all. If we all went homeless, would it not follow that we would consume far less and, as a result, become no longer enslaved to overproduction. Our systems would become more honest and sustainable.

With less production, people will start earning less money, so there will obviously be a decrease in tax dollars in the public purse, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The greedy politicians charged with dispersing these funds would then be forced to spend our money wisely. Surprisingly, they would actually do a good job of this, while still thinking about their own interests. They’d have to keep spending money on infrastructure, lest their roads start falling into disrepair. Remember, these politicians will be the only people making any significant money and therefore the only ones able to afford to drive automobiles down our highways and byways. The politicians would have to dispense less to please lobbyists and would have to take fewer, and less elaborate, tours of foreign nations on business or else they would have to sacrifice the communications networks that would let them contact these lobbyist friends. They would be forced to forego the fee-hungry consultants and do their own work so they could pay the doctors that keep them in health, the teachers that taught the doctors and the tradespeople who built the schools, the hospitals and their very own homes.

By going homeless, we would force our government to pay only those professions that were absolutely necessary. It follows that there would be far fewer police and nearly no bankers to speak of.

We can actually thank the big banks for giving us a head start on this homelessness initiative. With the toxic mortgage crisis forcing millions to foreclose on their homes, the banks created a new, growing legion of homeless people.

As a by-product of our ‘going homeless’ we would have no trouble hitting our greenhouse gas emission targets. Let’s face it, homeless people can barely feed their dogs: they aren’t buying cars, taking extravagant vacations in jumbo jets or even heating a house. Who ever heard of a homeless person with a home? We would reduce our carbon footprint and be heralded by the international community.

Homeless does not mean hopeless, either. Once homeless, there are still many ways to succeed and survive. For instance, these days I must search in earnest to find a discarded pop can or beer bottle on the street when, in my youth, they adorned sidewalks and alleyways like dandelions. This is due to the recycling policies we have that pay people to pick up these items. By incentivizing the return and recovery of aluminum cans and glass bottles with nickels, dimes and quarters, we solved the environmental problems these objects once presented.

To think what we could do if we gave a monetary value to fast-food cups or cigarette butts. With job security where it is today, I would not hesitate to say that armies of casual, temporary and on-call workers – fed up with their meager pay and sporadic hours cooped up in front of a computer in a recycled-air office tower – would start roaming our cities with bags and tack-sticks to collect garbage so they could feed their families.

And the homeless actually wouldn’t be homeless after a short time. Homes boarded up and deserted after the mass exodus, would become reinhabited by responsible squatters. There are successful and well-documented instances of this in Buffalo and Detroit – cities particularly bitten by the recession. People can live safely and content in a home they don’t actually pay for. Every tenant learns a trade to fix up the dwelling and they earn their own way in the home. Just think of it: entire neighbourhoods would be revitalized and reinvigorated with energy and hard work. Subdivisions in suburbia would become self-sustaining communities, with a burgeoning new, hands-on labour class emerging where citizens have a renewed sense of purpose. Since so many over-priced stores would have gone out of business, resourceful residents would scavenge through the city and return with new pieces of furniture to add to their flourishing homes. And artists would be freed from their nine-to-five, or seven-to-seven, or on-call slavery to produce the works they’d always had locked up inside but never had the time to develop.

All we have to do to solve our problems and truly get ahead and succeed is to swiftly ditch everything we own and go live off nothing. That’s our only solution.

Unless, that is, you are prone to pessimism: because if some rich so-and-so has already figured a way to incentivize taking rusted, discarded cans off the ground and turning them into currency, then surely that person will surely figure a way to take homeless people from the streets and recycle them back through the machine to make them profitable once again.

madafakaz

2010-11-25T21:28:00.003-07:00

The Madafakaz.

Go see these guys. They play with leotards over their heads like old-school bank robbers. I've seen them a couple times and the energy is crazy because they start kicking and pushing each other over while they play. Their stuff reminds me of Huevos Rancheros, but a little grittier and less polished (other than this track.)

I haven't seen them a while. I just had an oogle on google and saw that they played at L'Esco Bar tonight. Nards. Next time, I suppose. (It's too bad... their myspace page used to stream songs recorded at a live show and I like those a lot better than the glossed-up album versions.)

the squirrels are trying to tell me something

2010-11-21T15:18:00.005-07:00

The days are chillier and night seems to come so dark and so early to my my office tower window that sometimes it shocks me. Not only do the years seem to slip by faster with each birthday, but these days! They barely start before they're over.

And it's been 'chilly' for a while now (although, my people in Yellowknife will not find it funny that I'm calling 0C chilly and I don't blame them.) It's also been a month since I've walked home from work with any sun. But these aren't the hints I'm using as evidence that the summer is now doing its best impression of the Yellow Pages or the physical map in the face of google ubiquity... and by that, of course, I mean it's becoming a thing of the past.

It was apparent today, as I walked through the park, that winter - in its snowy, frozen guise - is knocking on the door. And it was the squirrels - or lack of them - that showed me.

Squirrels are a little different here in Montreal than elsewhere, I've noticed. They are bigger and they are crazy and they seem to be everywhere. You'd think we were living in some post-apocalypse sometimes, the way these maniac rodents pounce on garbage bags and dive into garbage cans, ravenously ripping through bags to find some sustenance.

I once had lunch on a patch of grass near work and watched a squirrel hanging from a tree on its hind feet. His head was dangling down, arms were splayed out and his back was pressed against the tree. We wondered if this thing was dead and someone had nailed it to the tree. Nope. About five minutes later, it stretched up and ran away somewhere.

I've watched a squirrel cling motionless to the side of an apartment building for minutes at a time, trying to figure out how he was defying gravity. I've watched with amusement as two squirrels chased each other around the truck of a tree, each squirrel's tail just barely staying out of the other's grasp, like a perpetual carnival game. A squirrel ate my poutine in Parc Lafontaine a few weeks ago. And then he called over his friend and another. Soon there was an army hungry for the stuff.

And that's what I've become accustomed to when I walk through the park now. One curious squirrel will scout me. If it is comfortable with me, or if I'm eating something, it will follow and soon others will take notice and they'll do the same and before you know it, a whole gang of them will be chasing me through the park, waving up and down fluidly as they do.

It freaked out my mom when my folks were down here a few weeks ago. My dad started making squirrel sounds - tiktiktikitiktik - and he chuckled as squirrels, who were focused dead set on finding a nut, put up their heads, craned to see where the sound was coming from and then started to come toward us like he was a pied piper. He soon had 20 of the little suckers trailing him.

The squirrels really are furious here, but today, they were all gone. I walked through the park and there was nothing scurrying around. There were no scuffling leaves. The dogs didn't even beg their owners to unleash them, since they'd realized there was nothing worth chasing out there.

I guess all the squirrels must have decided it's time to pack away for the year. They must know something we don't.

This summer was so long and so hell hot - for me at least - that I can't fathom that this same place where I laid in puddles of my sweat for four months will be frozen over for the next five. I'm not mentally prepared for winter and snow and ice.

But the squirrels are and I guess I'm going to heed their advice.

I'll let you know how long it is until we are covered in snow.

Deerhunter in the taillights

2010-11-07T10:44:00.004-07:00

I checked out a Deerhunter show about a month back with Patch and some buds and never got a chance to write about it. Days and time have been spinning past me like a warp-speed carousel, so there isn't too much I can recall, other than Bradford Cox was a sound alchemist with his pedals and self-recorded harmonies. He hit you like a wall. What else? The bassist looked like he was actively trying to get fired from his job. He showed no emotion. Nothing. It got to the point where my buddy the Lazer couldn't enjoy the show. He wanted to go up and punch the guy because he was consciously trying to look so indifferent.

Anything else? Oh yeah, we were standing outside the venue - La Tulipe - after the show. A couple of us were leaning on a van and then all we hear is "fuh dump-duh" and the van shakes a bit. We didn't think anything of it until Patch comes round to tell us that some guy got hit by a van. I walked around the van we were standing by and, sure enough, there was a guy (or girl, I couldn't see) under a coat and a blanket with people telling him (or her) to stay calm and relax. Shit. It was bad. Or it seemed bad. My immediate reaction was the person was dead, because, from what I saw, their face was covered with a blanket. From movies, I assumed that meant they were dead. There was a huge dent in van that had hit the person.

We were all a little shocked.

If anyone knows what happened to that person, please leave a comment.

Either way, great show, but the crowd was a little dead, probably because the bassist sucked the life out of them. (He also fucked up the bass line in 'Nothing Ever Happened.') We went to la Banquise for poutine afterwards, marking the third time me and Patch consumed the stuff in less than 20 hours.

life in a nutshell

2010-11-06T13:43:00.005-06:00

I'm nearly all moved in and life is nearly back to normal. Nearly. The fridge is still lazy - it keeps its contents a little cooler than lukewarm. The oven is still odd - if you turn the stove up too high, the top, broil element comes on. And the place still smells... odd. But I'm cleaning furiously like Howard Hughes is about to move in, the heating, electricity and internet accounts are all changed over and the overall home is starting to take shape.

My folks are coming in tonight though, so the sleeping situation is a little shady. I've got a borrowed air mattress in my room, which I lay upon in a sleeping bag with a broken zipper. The stress is palatable. My ex-roommate said she would lend me a mattress while my parents were here, so I grabbed a hockey bag that I figured would hold it and set down to the old apartment.

The walk took longer than I thought. About 25 minutes or so. I walked into the apartment too stressed and too time-pressed to really feel nostalgic. I helped take a gigantic TV to the curb and then set about rolling the malleable mattress up to shove into the bag. As I found, it wasn't going to happen. After about three frustrating tries, I finally was able to stuff one side of the mattress into the corner of the bag. The mattress was about two-feet too wide to fit completely within the bag. I probably would have gotten this before I'd started out, but I was in too much of a hurry. I took the bag straps and Scotch-taped them together before having my one genius idea: I unlooped all the keys off my key-ring and fed each strap through the ring to hold them together.

I kissed my ex-roomy goodbye as people do here and walked down the stairs to unlock my bike, which I'm happy to say was not stolen this summer - probably because it's had a flat tire that I unintentionally neglected to fill.

And I was off, with the most awkward object slung over my right shoulder and a bike with a flat, being guided by my left-hand. I couldn't figure how to transport these two things simultaneously. The road sloped down to Amherst from St. Hubert on Lagauchetiere, so I just hopped on my bike and took the three blocks, trying not to ram into cars. At one point, I dipped to the right and my wheel frame screeched against the pavement. I got off fast and started to walk the bike again.

Now I had to get from Amherst below Rene-Levesque to Gauthier, which is just south of Rachel and east of Papillon. This is about a 25-minute walk, uphill. I was afraid if I was too aggressive with the mattress, it would fall out of the bag and make it impossible to carry. I couldn't turn back because my ex-roommate had set off for work. So there I was, stuck on Amherst outside the CBC with no idea what to do.

I tried to balance the mattress on the bike seat. No dice. It kept falling off. I tried to jam the mattress through the frame of the bike. Not happening. It wouldn't fit. I heaved it up on my shoulder, but it was fucking up the pinky I broke five years ago on my right hand and it felt super uncomfortable. I dropped it down and stood there, open to inspiration.

I imagined what I looked like to the people who drove by. I could picture people in their homes, watching me out their windows with a cup of tea, entertained by this guy who just couldn't figure out how to carry this stupendously clunky mattress in a hockey bag. They probably watched me like a scientist does an agitated animal test-subject trying figure out how to get food out of some jimmy-rigged experiment.

I tossed the bag over my back again. Whichever way I chose to grab the bag by the straps though, the mattress portion would hang lower and I'd fret that it would slip from the bag.

By this time, the old blue mattress had accumulated some dead grass and leaves. I was sweating with the effort and a little uncomfortable by the predicament I'd allowed myself to get in. People walked by me and looked at me with a bit of a chuckle, as they watched me struggle with my situation.

I'd basically become the human equivalent of a three-legged dog.

Finally, magically, I discovered another strap on the bottom of the bag, which was there perhaps to let the bag's owner hang it up from the top after a hockey game or something. I fit my hands between the four-inch strap and whipped the bag onto my back and slowly made my way home.

I'd have to stop every few minutes to catch my breath and massage some blood back into my fingers. On the second occasion, with the way that people were looking at me or crossing the street before they had to pass me, I got the impression that people thought I was homeless. (You should all know that I'm not the... um... sharpest dresser.) They probably had every right, too: I was standing with a dirty mattress covered in dead leaves, stuff in an old hockey while a bike with a flat tire leaned on my leg.

Self-consciously, I took out my iPod and made a show of myself searching for a song - even though the battery was dead. I put the headphones into my ears and set back off and I didn't stop once until I got home... where I bumped into the old lady 'concierge,' who said the landlord would probably replace my fridge.

VICTORY!!!

P.S. Underrated cool thing about Montreal: A lot of the womens' bathrooms are identified with the word 'Dames.' I know it's French for ladies, but still, I always imagine it's 'dames' the way Capone probably said it in Chicago back in the day.

Massive, COLOSSAL, kind of funny waste of time

2010-10-27T23:58:00.003-06:00

Because my Jacob 'Party Boy' drama wouldn't work as a written story...

should i go for it?

2010-10-25T18:20:00.003-06:00

end of the night

2010-10-24T01:50:00.002-06:00

As a child of divorce - metaphorically speaking - I was showered with a new Expos hat gift. And ever since I've started wearing it, I've been mistaken for 'someone I know.'

Tonight, at The Books show, a girl tapped me on the shoulder. "Dave?"

The other day, at the Viau Metro, the STM worker behind the bullet-proof glass demonstrated that he was somewhat human by joking around with me a bit. I was gobsmacked (as Lazer-by would type) and then the Metro guy said, "J'm'excuse. J'pensai que t'etais quelqu'un que je savais."

I enjoy this newfound anonymous oblivious celebrity.

Quick Notes (because I know you are all studying or about to sleep or pregnant.):

- I was at a club tonight and dancing with a couple of girls and 'Hard to Explain' by the Strokes came on and I started to get 'er goin, but the girls didn't react... they didn't know the words... they didn't know the song...

Sad, I know... but it came out in 2001. Damn, where did time go? (As I learned tonight, at The Books show, Meditation is an anagram of 'time in a dot' or 'a dot in time.') I think I need to readjust my expectations.

- By the way, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club is the Double D Tits...

- Go see The Books. Don't be illiterate. They're very, very good and the music is very unique and sincere. It's an experience. Vancouverites, if you don't check them out, you have no excuse...

awesome band name #11,345

2010-10-15T17:09:00.002-06:00

While I sat oblivious in an office tower today, as Mother Nature threw down trees and torrents of rain, I came across a neat little item -- or company name -- from British Columbia, which just might be the best band name I've come up with on this here doohickey:

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...

The Jealous Fruits.

exit scene cast of characters

2010-10-14T20:08:00.004-06:00

At some point in my apartment in the past month, fecal matter hit a spinning air circulator. For reasons I don't feel like rehashing and because I wanted to stay out of things, I decided to move out of my beautiful home and from my two best friends in the city.

I feel many things about this, but I don't think this is the proper forum to talk about the most important thoughts I have.

So I will talk about the trivial ones and the ones I will feel a sort of surface nostalgia for: the riff-raff that I'll miss, walking from the Metro station home every morning, every night and any time in between.

I'll miss walking past the guy in the cafe on St. Hubert and St. Catherines who can be counted on to be on one of the computers taking pictures of muscle-men on youtube with his camera. Godspeed, sir.

I'll miss the Tommy Chong-lookalike who wanders along meaninglessly with his head leaning forward, pushing a tiny dog in a kid's stroller.

I'll miss the enormously tall Sudanese brother with the tiny head, who wanders the park around the station selling drugs. He reminds me of one of those shrunken head guys from Beetlejuice. The guy is like 6'8, but I feel like a preschooler could palm his dome. I used to look at him and wonder how anyone so awkward and harmless looking could do what he does, until I saw him lose it on a guy who didn't have any money and now I keep my distance.

I'll miss the morphine freak, who still makes appearances every now and then. She looks puffier than she did when I met her a year ago, when I moved to town and bought her a coffee at the same cafe on St. Hubert and St. Catherine. She told me she had to apologize to the lady behind the counter, because she'd been kicked out earlier that week and she'd thrown things and yelled at her.

I'll miss the guy with the long white hair, who walks around like he's just killed somebody. I used to find him fascinating when I moved here because me and a friend had plowed through Twin Peaks and he is the spitting image of Bob.

I'll miss being accosted for weed by thugs every time I enter the Metro.

I'll miss the wound-up-like-a-toy junkie walk, the random drunken freak out on a telephone booth, the legless, hopeless cigarette smokers, the blazee busts outside the Metro station, the homeless sleeping outside the heating vents.

I'll miss walking past the lines of cabbies, smelling like cheap cologne pulled from a magazine ad, arguing about their fares, while they wait forever for a passenger.

I'll miss walking past the bus station and the couples crying or kissing and travellers taking in their first breath of Montreal and a hippy packing a surfboard into the back of a cab at the start of winter.

I'll miss the music or the spoken word wafting out the windows of L'Escalier.

I'll miss the syringes and vomit and piss and turds on the street because it reminds me of home.

I'll miss what has become the backdrop, the setting and the scene and what really is the ubiquity and consistency that has made up the first year of my life in Montreal.

At least at my new place, I'll be a five-minute walk from the best poutine in the world.

Job of the Day

2010-10-09T14:46:00.001-06:00

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American man Looking for a great massage and host (Montreal)

Date: 2010-10-09, 10:42AM EDT
Reply to: job-cn9yu-1997108260@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

Hi I'm looking for a great massage and host at a resonable price
If this is good it could become a regular thing
if you are interested get me your name and number in your first response

Location: Montreal
Compensation: to be discussed
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entrapment

2010-09-29T19:47:00.003-06:00

There are times when I marvel at how some people on this spinning blue sphere are able to sleep at night. Pedophiles, rapists and televangelists are the usual groups that come to mind as falling into that category of should-be insomniacs, but after an unfortunate incident this morning, another group of people come to mind: petty, private police.

I was running about 10 minutes late for work this morning. This summer, I've walked every morning, since, from front-step to building lobby, it's about 20 to 25 minutes depending on the jump in my step, the heat and humidity or whether my stomach persuades me to grab a bagel and coffee along the way. As I wasn't going to arrive on time by walking today, I decided to take the Metro. I've used the train maybe a dozen times this summer on such occasions. I opted not to buy monthly Metro passes in May, June, July, August and September to save the $70 per month and because I didn't think it was necessary, considering that my walk to work in Montreal is actually shorter than it was in Yellowknife, by some nautical miracle.

Today, when I arrived in my tiffy at the underground ticket booth, I found no surly, French-Canadian old-timer to greet me with his/her practiced annoyance. I'm talking both sides of the booth. And it wasn't like the STM worker was standing around talking to a bus driver and pretending to ignore you like normal or that they were unwrapping their sandwich, oblivious to the line-up of people awaiting them. There was no one in there. Torrents of people were pouring out from the turnstiles, as the 9:15 am train had just arrived and dumped off loads of eager students to the Universite de Quebec a Montreal campus at Berri-UQAM. Past this stream of people, I saw a small logjam at the automated ticket machine and so I did what any rational person would do when running late and confronted with my situation: I jumped the gate.

Bad idea.

Immediately, some gigantic bald black dude, who must have been a Montreal Alouette, undercover in a blue dress shirt, grabs me by the arm and tells me I have to stop.

Busted.

He talks into his radio and within seconds, there are two doofus STM transit officers on the scene, dressed all in black, with big puffy vests like they are expecting to be called into SWAT duty, who start giving me sass about not paying.

I've been in Montreal for a year minus three days and I have jumped the turnstiles TWICE! Two times! I told that to the doofuses, but they didn't care. I offered to pay them the three bucks I had in my hand (the ticket is worth $2.75) and they shook their heads and started giving me guff and prodded me for my I.D. No warning. Nothing. Ticket. I told them I was running late and that they had to be kidding. Really though, what was I to do?

I swear, it was entrapment. They'd rigged up this little set-up to nab folks like me. After about five minutes of standing and waiting, I saw an old, white-haired lady waddle back into her booth. The sting operation had proved successful. They'd caught me and an old Chinese guy who was pretending he didn't speak any French or English. I nodded at him in a show of respect.

The bigger, and predictably shorter, douchebag of the two STM numb-nuts, M. Chindaire (from what I can make out on my ticket) took my I.D. and then took 20 minutes away from me in order to write out my ticket. He took his time since he knew I was late for work. Unfortunately for him, he still fucked my name up, writing Willian as my middle name instead of William. I still may fight this thing.

Back to those transit officers: I really, truly don't know how they sleep at night. I mean, I'm not going to say that I'm changing the world with what I do at work, but at least I'm not consciously fucking peoples' days up and actually deriving pleasure from doing it. This M. Chindaire was delighting in my misfortune. I couldn't comprehend why. (A friend and I called him Const. Shortman Sydrome and Corp. Mywifes Acunt at work later for comedy's sake. I said he couldn't have a wife because no one could love him. Even his tapeworm had left him.)

But the people who work these jobs must either know that they aren't quite full-blown authority figures and repress it and power-trip, or they must be content by the misery they inflict over the course of their lifetimes. And why are these people always shorter than average? Can we get some sociologists to look into this, please?

Finally, Chindaire handed the ticket back to me and told me my options. There was no way I was paying the $2.75 in front of them (especially since a minute part of that might finance their miserable livelihoods) so I walked to work under a cloud of frustration.

All told, my walk to work cost me $214 today. Maybe Chindaire could have let me off with a warning, but he was obviously too cranky because he couldn't sleep with himself the night before.

continued

2010-09-28T19:22:00.005-06:00

Almost a month. Yowsers.

How do I reintroduce myself after such a prolonged absence?

How about with my job title of the year?

I don't really have anyone to blame for the hiatus. Sure I've been working and it feels as if I've had a different guest every weekend and there has been a lot going on, but that shouldn't excuse me from scribbling nonsense onto this digital tableau every once in a while.

(Speaking of tableaus, or 21st-Century tableaus, don't you think we are going to look back at iPads in five or six years and just laugh. We'll kind of look around and ask what the hell we were thinking? Don't they seem bulky and sort of silly, like they are some uncreative compromise between a Macbook and an iPhone? Have you looked at a first generation iPod lately? They seem bulky and excessive and you almost tend to want to look at it with condescension. I feel that we'll all feel the same way about the iPad very soon, when there is some fourth-generation version of it that actually makes sense. The iPad kind of reminds me of the Segway.)

Anyways, I suppose the main reason I didn't feel like writing much was that I didn't feel very funny or at least that I'd be able to write anything funny. Any idea I came up with wound up circling back to some deep sense of nothingness. I think I battled away nihilism this summer. I'd honestly get up in my 40 C room panting and all-sweated-out and wonder if the impending day would be any different from the day that preceded it and then I'd wonder if it even mattered.

See, pretty dark stuff.

Not that I was depressed or anything, but the summer was just odd. I don't think I'm used to such heat and to a summer season that lasts more than a month and a half. In Yellowknife, you are conditioned to go out and take FULL advantage of every semi-decent day. In Montreal, you don't really have to because there is a steady stream of days that seem to go on for like four or five months. Yet there I was, rushing out to soak up every sun beam and I think I burnt myself out a little bit.

And I'm convinced my head shrunk this summer. I've got a full set of hair, which is probably the longest it's been in years, yet the hat I've been wearing for the past year can't seem to stay on my head. I wore it on gusty cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Iceland and during winter days on rooftops at work in Quebec City, but when I run across a street, my cap threatens to leap off my head. I think this fact bolsters my claim that my brain evaporated at some point this summer.

(By the way, I think government officials from the defense department should start studying the chemical properties at work on my ball cap. It does not get wet. Rain beads right off it. I'm not sure if it's a year's worth of living and hair grease and dive bars and snowstorms, but it's the most impermeable object I've witnessed.)

I'm doing well, but as I've previously mentioned, I think I need a change. It's not so much a change of scenery or career or anything, but I think it's mainly a change in philosophy.

It's funny how something small, said to you very innocently, can knock you on your ass and make you examine your life and the way you are living it.

Last week, I was having lunch with a couple buddies from work and the conversation turned to poop, like it seems to do at least once every noon-hour (I should say, 2-hour.) We were all talking strategies and making jokes until someone said that I take the stinkiest deuces in the office. I laughed, thinking this guy was just breaking my balls, until two of the other guys I was eating with piped in and agreed in all seriousness. I was shocked and after lunch I kind of became paranoid about my celebrity.

All of the famous stinky dump-takers I've known throughout my life - friends' dads, severely obese dudes at different job sites or tiny, junk-food fiend kids - had one common characteristic: they were all very unhealthy. At my computer desk, surrounded by cups of coffee and empty Pepsi cans, I resolved to eat better and live healthier.

Two days later I was using a friend's 2 for 1 Big Mac coupon at lunch. I tried.

Fun fact: A friend tells me when you are living healthy and eating well, a crap should require very little - to no - wipage. I think I've covered this on the blog before.

But no, I think with winter on the way, there will be less distractions and I'll be able to focus a little more on writing. Really, since my friend Eli quit work in August, I haven't written down a single idea. We used to exchange stories or rants each Friday. She was much better at doing that than I, but at least it forced me to write.

For now, on this here thingamabobber, I might just write self-obsessive tomfoolery to rid the detritus clogging up my neuro-pathways until a nugget of a concept can shimmy its way through to the surface of my consciousness. Seems kind of narcissistic, but hey, what's a blog for then?

And I'm really feeling energetic at the moment, listening to the new Deerhunter album, Halcyon Digest. The thought of picking up the album actually got me through the afternoon and I walked through a rainstorm to get it. It was the first real album I've bought in a long while.

I asked my big boss at work where the nearest metro was to the HMV on St. Catherines. She said Peel. I'm pretty sure I knew this, but I was so zonked from ceaseless callbacks at work that I couldn't think for myself. I got off the metro and got to street level and walked down to St. Catherines. I looked right and didn't see the store, but I walked on even though the sky had opened up and I got absolutely soaked and I kept walking and still I saw nothing. Shouldn't it be close? I cursed my boss under my breath. Why didn't I look where it was myself? Another set of lights and nothing. I kept going and no HMV. I walked like 12 blocks all the way to Atwater, pushing ahead irrationally until I stopped and snapped out of it. It couldn't be that far. I turned back. The rain had stopped. (Some homeless guy asked me for "change for a coffee." Who needs a coffee at 6 p.m.? I wanted to ask him)

I walked back to where I'd gotten on to St. Catherines and continued back East and there was the store, a block away.

I got home and made some pesto shrimp spaghetti and lima beans and tossed on the album and the soaker was worth it.

what if the neighbour's cat was god?

2010-08-29T16:50:00.004-06:00

Our neighbour, I'm told, is an alcoholic. I've heard and seen some evidence to back this up. For instance, there is a hollow area running up from the basement of our triplex to the roof, where there used to be a chimney chute. It's situated just beside the bathrooms of the three apartments, meaning you can hear everything happening in the 'office' below us. Due to this unique architectural quirk, it is not uncommon for me to hear the familiar sounds of retching and vomiting as I get ready to shower in the morning. As well, I've been through the neighbour's apartment to take the fire escape to my place when I've forgotten keys and I've seen the collection of empty bottles. Also, someone who lived there for a time told me stories of his constant self-medicating with alcohol and other substances.

This is not being mentioned trivially because I'm judging him. Who am I to say how someone should live their own life? I only bring this up because he owns a cat, which I see outside our apartment at all times of the day and night. My thinking is that this cat roams around outside for most of its summer life because it may be forgotten or neglected by its intoxicated owner. Or maybe it's not, seeing as cats run wild here and the felines have their own daily and nightly dramas that play out on the street. (Last month, I awoke at 3am to a cat wailing. I stepped onto my balcony in my boxers and see it just laying there in the middle of the street, crying out into the night, while another cat stood next to it. I couldn't tell if it had just been hit by a car or had a train run upon it by the creepy cat standing beside it. I clapped my hands loudly and the sound reverberated down the empty street. The lurking cat looked up at me in a guilty way. I clapped again and louder it started to slink away cautiously. The other cat eventually stood up and disappeared into a bush.)

I'm not a cat guy at all and I'm not overly sympathetic when it comes to pets, but I've really grown fond of my neighbour's tabby. It's white in colour, with spots of grey and beige and if I had to guess, I would say it's spent 80 percent of this summer outside of its home. The only times I don't see it outdoors coincides with the time that the neighbour's daughter comes to visit him. My roommates and I have surmised that this cat probably belongs to his daughter.

Last night, I returned home from a friend's show and found the cat lying on the top step. This is its preferred resting place. I walked up the stairs and it didn't even move and barely acknowledged me. I sat on my top step and pet it for about five to ten minutes until it stood up, wandered down two stairs, looked at me sideways and then walked down the rest of the stairs and slid down under a car and was gone. I fished out my key, slid it into the lock and walked up the stairs into the apartment.

I went to bed and thought about the cat and how unaffected and almost divine it was as I pet it. It would blink slowly and it only turned to look at me as it walked away. It was then that a funny thought popped through my head: what if the cat was god?

What if this cat, which I've seen splayed out on the other neighbour's balcony, on window ledges and in trees, was watching me and judging my character? What kind of conclusions would it have drawn about me? What would it have seen?

I thought back to the various dozens -- or maybe even hundreds -- of times I'd seen it on the steps or on the sidewalk below our stairs and what I'd done. I think it would be safe to say that about 50 percent of the times I'd seen it, I was busy on my way to work or rushing off somewhere else and I barely paid it a passing glance. Maybe a "hey kitty," or quick rub from its ears to its back as I fit my headphones into my ears and tucked my shoelaces into my shoes and before walking away.

God would say I'm not very organized and not good with time-management.

A few other times, I'd seen the cat in some pretty dicey locations, like on a tree branch 10 feet off the ground, or on a ledge 6 feet from the top of our stairs on a second floor window. It would look at me as if it needed some help and I would reach out but not be able to get to it. Then I would pull out my phone, realize I was running late for work and figure, 'well, this cat got itself here somehow, so I'm sure it can get itself back to safety. I mean, they're cats and cats are freakishly agile.' I'd give it one last sympathetic look and then head off to work.

God would say that when I'm presented with a problem, many times I'm not willing to work sufficiently hard and sacrifice enough to solve it.

In a handful of instances, I've seen the cat laying up on the step below my neighbour's door, craning its neck upward to try to see if the neighbour was coming to open the door. It would look hungry or tired or thirsty and it would seem like it wanted to go inside and take a nap. Once or twice, the fur on its back would be knotted and clumped, like it hadn't been combed or groomed in a week. It would let out a few agitated meows. Unless I had to piss, I'd sit there and pet it for a couple minutes and if it really looked thirsty, I'd bring out a bowl of water. The cat would typically walk under my outstretched hand and I'd lower it and it'd keep walking until its tail passed under my hand and then it would turn around and do it again. When I would get up to go inside, it would look at me enviously. On the occasions I brought out the bowl, I'd put it beside my door and try to convince the cat to drink from it, but it wouldn't trust me for whatever reason and it would usually walk down the stairs and then under a car.

God would say that I tend to notice when things are wrong, but I either don't have the time or don't know the correct course of action to make things right.

The interactions with the cat these last three months really don't paint a pleasant picture of myself and I realize that my daily encounters with this pet showcase a general pattern of actions and behavior that were playing out in the rest of my life. This summer wasn't easy, for reasons I didn't really understand until I sat there stroking the cat in the dark, rubbing it behind its ears, while car horns and sirens echoed down my street as they maneuvered through the city scape.

Last night, I spent a lot of time with the cat, stroking and petting it until it had enough and went away. Perhaps it was surprised by this show of attention and affection because it's something I haven't demonstrated in the past three months. Maybe that's why it looked at me suspiciously as it descended the stairs. Maybe it had to go under the car to reevaluate its opinion of me.

God would say I'm starting to understand things a little better.

(Note: All characters in this post are fictional, except myself, the neighbour and the cat. *Rimshot*)

no details

2010-08-18T23:15:00.003-06:00

Very telling action concerning yours truly:

I had a $100 Keg coupon. I had the option of taking someone out for dinner or, selfishly, trying to eek out two steaks for myself on the coupon. Guess which one I chose?

So I was sitting at the bar eating steak #1 this evening, when the guy sitting next to me struck up a convo. He was an Anglo Montrealer and drunk and a regular and he wanted me to tell him a story. He bought me a shot of whiskey. I told him one about my childhood, growing up in Yellowknife and he said it was shit. And it was. I kept going with it and related a bit more about the city and my family and he was touched. He said he had wanted context and I gave it to him. Unknowingly, he reinforced a lesson I obviously haven't taken into consideration in this post: the reason stories connect with people are through the amount and depth of the details.

I left before I let him buy me more beer. He was lonely. His ex-girlfriend died two years ago from breast cancer. He sold everything to save her. It didn't work. He said he'd been occupying bar stools since, but he'd be starting his life back up this fall. I couldn't help but wonder if 'this fall' was last fall or the fall before. We spoke about existentialism. His faithlessness was real. He'd lost something. My faithlessness or what I take it as at the moment? Theoretical. I've never lost anyone very close to me, but still, I can't shake the feeling that sometimes you really do have to trick yourself to make believe that there is something really, truly meaningful in the everyday. I left before I could let him buy more into what I was saying or thinking at that time. It was probably for the best. For him.

I met up with my roommate on St. Denis for a beer and we talked about girls and then I went home. The homeless, surprisingly, were all resting up. They were asleep along Rene-Levesque in stairwells or beside fences. I started wondering if there was something important happening in the morning that they were preparing for. I picked up my pace a bit, before remembering that only crackheads walk nowhere fast. I slowed back down.

I got home and met my roommate and he'd just finished downloading the demo for NHL 2011. I was a little nervous about sitting down and playing it, knowing it would determine whether I would enjoy the next 12 months or not. I watched the demo video and we scrolled through the menus, listening to the game's songs, which we would know by heart and hate with all of our hearts in probably just three short months. I was reluctant to embrace this new thing.

Then we sat down to play.

Quick recap:

- The game is far more of a simulation than years previous. It's nearly impossible to hit. It's nearly impossible to make a clean pass. In other words, it's real hockey. I don't know how I feel about this right now, but I'm sure it will be fine in a couple of months when I'm used to it.

- There is a new face-off option, where you have to set up your player for a backhand or forehand win before the puck is dropped. Then there is a battle for it.

- Players sticks break on slapshots now. Players also lose their sticks. It's pretty neat. Again, this is an option I like right now because it adds to the realism, but I'm sure after playing this game for a couple hundred hours, a pattern will emerge with the stick breaks and I'll think it's stupid.

strokes of genius

2010-08-16T20:47:00.004-06:00

In the last real post on here, I wrote about spiders. The cobwebs are accumulating in the corners of my room, between the bars on my balcony, along the steps up to the apartment and apparently, between the growing void between my ears.

Proofs:

1) I recently took out three CDs from la grande bibliotheque because I'm broke. I thought I'd take them out, burn them onto my laptop, burn them out on the CD player and then return them and take out some new ones. Well, four weeks go by and I wake up to a message on my phone telling me, in a French voice surely trained in a conservatory, that my CDs are a week overdue and I'll be subject to pay a late fee on them. I then left the house for three days, forgetting to bring them with me each time to drop them off - THREE BLOCKS AWAY. Turns out that it'll end up costing me just about as much to take out these three items for 'free' from the library as it would have by just buying them.

2) I wrote back in June that I'd be surprised if my bike lasted a week in this haven for bicycle theft that we all call Montreal. Well, here we are in the middle of August, and my bike is still straddled to the guardrail on the apartment steps. And this comes after my roommates' bikes were ransacked, with tires stolen and pulled off. The problem? I haven't ridden the thing for a month in a half. I noticed that every three days, the front tire went flat. I came to this hypothesis when I struggled up a small incline on the lowest gear, while a severely obese lady pedaled past me with minimal effort. Every morning, I wake up motivated to buy a portable bike pump as I walk past my ten-speed on my way to work. Every evening, I return having forgotten to buy the $12 object. I've probably spent $80 - $90 on single-pass Metro tickets over that time, when it would have been a minor-to-moderate bike ride.

3) I forget what else... Blame it on summer. On heat. On sweat. On the periodic existential ennui that strikes at least once a year and takes over every non-essential watt of brainpower.

antoine dobson

2010-08-05T22:23:00.002-06:00

My friend Eli sent me this tonight. I have been listening to the auto-tune version for a solid 15 minutes on repeat. I can't stop myself. It's genius.

spiderwebs

2010-08-01T01:13:00.005-06:00

Not much going on over in these parts. Nothing blogworthy, at least. Long, sweaty day on the roof, spent reading/coffee-drinking/napping/listening to the Osheaga tunes bounce off the institution beside the domicile. It was No-sheaga today, unfortunately. Finances.

Dog days of summer, I suppose. The kid is a little restless. He shaved his goat off. Just 3 a.m. chillin on the balcony now with the spiders, which are all passed out dead-centre in their webs. At least they've been working hard. Spiders and bees and fleas. Routine has set in HARD. An unsustainable routine, I will say, since sustainability is en vogue these days. Can't do what I need to financially in this routine, so I might need to break out of it. Don't know what that means or where that's going to take me. Haven't regretted a thing about the move out here, but at the same time, I haven't given it my all down here. Haven't pursued the dream, or what I think the dream might be. Been in a holding pattern. Summer ended two months ago, it feels. Lots of ideas, lots going on, no follow-through, no energy. Lots of work, but no hard work. No real work. No excuses though. No real ones, at least. No ridiculous, spontaneous summer nights chasing cosmic invincibility.

I realized again today that I'm someone who thrives with limitations. It was that way in creative writing class. The more boundaries and less license I was given with an assignment, the more creative and expansive I'd get. I'd take an idea so far that I would break the rules and I had fun playing with the definitions of the limitations I'd been given. Yet, when I was given free reign to write a story about anything, I'd be paralyzed by the infinite options offered by the empty, white page.

Montreal is that blinking white page. There is so much going on all the time that either I can't just sit at home and read a book or I feel guilty sitting at home reading a book. It's a Catch-22, really. I don't think I can pay off all I need to pay off here working where I work, so I think I might leave soon. But that means that I might not be able to take advantage of everything this place offers, so I go out and do as much as I can and try to do as much as possible, which makes me spend the money that I'd otherwise use to pay off what I need to pay off.

The spiders know they have to spin webs to catch bugs to live. The bees know they've got to pollenate and return to the hive. The fleas just turn into fleas from maggots and they're all good. Lucky bastards. They don't have VISA debt or student loans and they don't know that they are constantly getting older and that they're going to die one day. I'm on my balcony wondering what it is I've got to do.

new s villa

2010-07-28T16:21:00.001-06:00

Why Hip Hop sucks in 2010?

2010-07-23T18:44:00.003-06:00

Because it isn't this...

(I just hit 27 last week, so I'm old and entitled to feel a little salty.)

At work, the one and only Chocolate T Money and myself were talking about why we barely listened to hip-hop anymore. After a few minutes of pretendedly-unmonitored-by-supervisors conversation, we came to the conclusion that it sucks right now because it's all geared toward 14-year-0ld girls. We're probably just bitter dudes who are getting older, but seriously, can you tell me anything L'il Wayne or Drake could ever come close to this...

or this...