Massive, COLOSSAL, kind of funny waste of time

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

should i go for it?

end of the night

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

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

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.

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

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Date: 2010-10-09, 10:42AM EDT
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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

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entrapment

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.