it's hot... it's fire

It might as well be spring out here. The sidewalks are visible, the snow piles on the shoulders of streets are hard and chunky after thawing and freezing and thawing and the poor, poor squirrels are running around everywhere, crazy and confused, just trying to find a nut in the middle of winter.

I went out and played some hockey with my roommates the other day, but the weather was too nice and the ice was so soft it could barely keep itself together. It was a riot though, teaching my Lebanese roommate the ins and outs of ice hockey. She's actually a natural and has good instincts... well except for the time she skated into the net, leaned back to regain her balance until the large, regulation net started to teeter forward and fall and she ducked her head just before the three-inch thick crossbar came down on her face and would have took her teeth out. She laughed the whole time.

Still on the grind, whoring and what not, in the search for travaille. It's... er... going... I'm feeling like I'm a high school drop-out or something, sac de croustilles!!!! (Sac de croustilles is a French cuss I made up. Try it, it works. It means bag of chips.)

I'm starting to feel like one of those poor, poor squirrels, chasing that nut, buried deep below piles of snow. The similarities go right down the bushy face.

But self-pity aside, and in light of the temps, I'd be remiss to share this Lupe Fiasco track, which puts a little jump in my step every time I leave the apartment in the morning.

Even though the Enemy of the State mixtape -- and this track -- were released in 2009, I'm declaring 2010 the Year of Lupe.

why we love conan

I've been following the ongoing drama between NBC and Conan O'Brien and Jay "Snake in the Grass" Leno for the past few weeks and while I rarely watched Conan on the Tonight Show -- and thought it wasn't funny the few times I did -- I do sympathize with him just a tad.

I know, I know. Dumb right? The guy makes tens of millions to talk to famous people. Why should anyone care about this, when people are nearly killing themselves in desperation for food in Haiti?

That's a good point.

I don't really care. Especially since Conan will reportedly receive a $40 million buyout on Friday when he leaves the network.

While I do feel he never got a fair shake and his show was doomed to fail from the outset due to his appeal to a younger audience and not the old timers who swoon over Leno, I can't honestly write anything more about it because really, the story is a distraction from the real things that are happening in the world.

But...

If you need a little picking up, here are some classic Conan sketches.

Three reasons why I love the guy.

Hit the link if the video doesn't load

(http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNzYzNTQ0NzY=.html)

Find more videos like this on www.truve

LNwCOB - 1864 Baseball
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Triumph The Insult Comic Dog - Star Wars
envoyé par ZaraV. - Plus de vidéos fun.

what year are we in, nokia?

After a few near flub-ups, I have to question the default words programmed into my Nokia cell phone's t9 register.

We live in a fast-moving world, where we take advantage of every shortcut. There are more demands each day and I find that leaves us focusing less and less on each of the millions of things we do. When in the past, we spent time checking and rechecking our spelling in letters, we now often our instant messages, texts and emails a quick, distracted one-over and then send them off.

When I first got my phone, my texts were -- in the words of Mike Tyson -- impregnable. I never made mistakes, but that was because the technology was new and because I didn't know immediately about the t9 shortcut. I typed everything out letter by letter, which was slow, but less prone to error. When t9 came onto my scene, it took a while for me to get the hang of it, but now I'm farting out texts.

With the new speed, however, comes new problems and I'm truly surprised there haven't been any major scandals based on texting screw-ups, so far.

Case in point, last week I left my skates at a friends place. She was headed over to my place later that day and I texted her to bring the skates over, but for some reason, the first word that t9 gives me when I type in the word "skates" is "slaves." Luckily, I caught the mistake right before I sent the text off. I almost wrote "can you bring my slaves over."

Now why the fuck -- and that's another beef. Why won't they program 'fuck,' 'shit,' 'douche' or even 'crap' in to t9. I use those words a lot and I hate having to manually type that fucking shit into my texts. Crappy douches -- does Nokia give you "slaves" before "skates." I live in Canada in the 21st century, not Alabama in 1830. Hockey is our national past time, for Pete's sake. Slave trading is no longer an acceptable profession. Seriously, when am I ever going to have to write someone about slaves?

You know it's going to get someone into trouble too. I guarantee it.

I could see myself, after a couple drinks -- when text editing goes completely out the window -- writing something like this:

"Had a great day. Got up early, tied up my slaves and just went wild. I feel so reinvigorated."

Come on, Nokia. Let's wake up to the 21st century.

old man luedecke has it right

It kind of fits that after the last post here, which illustrated the rapid transformation of this lowly blog-updater into the Duke of Duderness himself, that I'd extoll the virtues of a banjo-player who writes cathartic songs about quitting jobs and drinking beer.

I thought I'd missed him at Folk on the Rocks. It was a wildish weekend, with so many hugs and hellos that the music was to me, for the first time ever at that funnest of festivals, relegated to background noise. Also, me and Felch were commuting in and out of town several times a day -- in various states of sobriety (no driving though, folks!) -- for a fastball tournament, carelessly scheduled over the same weekend.

I remember breifly bumping into him at the Sunday after-party. I remember Drewsif Islam and Otis Dawgwood swooning over his performances. I remember feeling choked that I missed him.

So when I heard Old Man Luedecke was coming to Montreal, I made sure to get my ass a seat. And it proved a wise idea.

A few quick notes about the show:

-I can honestly say I've never seen so many horseshoe-shaped, bald patterned heads at a concert as I did last night. We sat behind the sound booth and it seriously looked like there were 20 Larry Davids sprinkled in amongst the audience. I kind of figured there wouldn`t be a copious amount of groupie coitus following a banjo tour, and last night confirmed that.

-Do you want to know how Habs-obsessed this city is? Like I said, we sat behind the sound booth, and while tinkering with dials and switches, the sound guy would look over at his laptop, seated on a stool beside him, every 30 or so seconds, as the score of the Habs-Sens game was constantly updating on nhl.com. When the Sens scored, he'd just stare at the laptop like it had betrayed him. At least two or three times during each period, another staff member would come by and look at the screen and, with the Habs trailing, the two guys would look at each other and just shake their heads.

-The sound in Petit Campus was as good as a friend had said it would be. The opener sounded like I was hearing him through over-the-ear headphones. It was a little surreal and the quality made the performance that much more intimate. The Petit Campus is a small venue, located just below a popular student dance club. As the night progressed, and the club filled up with youngsters, the bass started to bleed into the room unfortunately, until literally the metal ceiling panels above us started shaking. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM. All this during a banjo performance. Give the Old Man credit, though. He soldiered on.

-I had to laugh when we left the show. As I said earlier, the venue sits below a student club. Outside, there was a long line-up of very done-up guys and girls waiting to get in. I wondered what they must have thought when they saw the scores of white-haired people gingerly descend the stairs to exit.

As for the show, everything everyone had told me about Old Man Luedecke proved spot on. In true folk tradition, the guy is 100 per cent storyteller. I loved just sitting there, cracking up and then nodding in agreement with most of the words and phrases he sang. So often, you go to a show and there is so much going on that you lose focus on the actual song. Not last night. Just strong songs abut universal themes like love lost and finding purpose, but not in a romantic, pretentious way. I really enjoy how he writes these traditional folk songs, but dots them with all these observations about the conveniences/distractions of modern life, with cell phone and email references mixed in. I mean, one song is called `At the Airport` and he makes the observation that there are kisses there that you cannot believe. It`s perfect and so true.

So yeah, it was fantastic stuff and then we went down to a party that some girls me and the Sachmo had met the night before were having. We spent the evening prior at Igloofest, where we channelled our inner guidos and fist-pumped all night at an outdoor electronic music fest. I invented a new dance move, called the squid hand. I think a T-shirt is on the way.

This city has got the right idea. There is something to do every night.

At the start of the week, I`d been feeling kind of down. I mean, sometimes, not being able to communicate easily and adequately in French can give you a sort of inferiority complex. I was getting no feedback on jobs and I was feeling a little sad because my buddy Pabs moved back home and I felt a bit like everyone was busy with their lives and I was waiting for something to happen. (Luedecke had a great line about that. To paraphrase, `What is crazy? It`s behaving the same way and expecting different results.` Yep, the guy is sage-like.)

It had gotten to the point where I actually had a legitimate work day during a dream. Nothing exciting had happened. I just got up from bed, went to work and spent a couple hours putting together a story. When I told my roommate about this, he said my days were the opposite of a normal person's: where they go to work during the day and dream about doing nothing at night, I was doing nothing during my waking life, but working while asleep.

But then I lightened up a bit, because my roommate came back from Lebanon and she`s a light and I went and played some hockey with my other roommate and some neighbours and it was a total release and then an old friend called out of the blue, saying she`d moved to town and we had a beer and a smoke Thursday and then Friday we danced up a storm and I met a really cool crew, which is coming over for a little shindig at my place next week, and then another old friend called and he said he could probably find me a job, and then to top it off, Old Man Luedecke made all my insecurities and worries feel like they were normal and, in the big scheme of things, not worth stressing over.

I realized I had changed it up a bit and the results were different, and so the man's words hold weight.

So I`m spreading the word of Luedecke. Go see him if he comes through your town.

And yeah, it was a good week.

stay in school

if you're in the market...

On the job prowl again, hitting craigslists and kijijis and workopolises (or is the plural workopoli?) and the ground running. Selling myself to anyone who gives me an ear and talking about myself in glowing tones and all that demeaning stuff.

There isn't much to look forward to when it comes to job searching -- other than the job at the end of the tunnel, of course. But as a way to keep my spirits up, I've been making note of some of the bizarre postings I've come across in the past week or so. And because you have been such patient listeners and loyal friends, I feel I should share a few of them with you:

The adult industry in Montreal must be alive and well. How do I know this? (Don't jump to any conclusions, my pretties. I'm not desperate enough to start starring in snuff films... yet.) Seemingly every job board, other than the government sponsored ones, is littered with many, many very professional sounding postings seeking either sound engineers or graphic designers, communications managers or sales associates. Each job sounds like it could be for a law firm or NGO or something, except for one line that subtly lists as a qualification that applicants should be comfortable with adult material.

That leads me to wonder just how comfortable applicants should be around the material?

"Comfortable, but not too comfortable," I'll assume.

There are even more ads looking for 'nice' girls for 'massage parlors'. The ads ask for exotic girls and pretty girls of Chinese, Japanese, Eastern European or Brazilian descent, because I guess pretty girls give better massages than ugly ones?

I guess it shouldn't surprise me that there are more tugs going around in Montreal than a Halifax harbour.

I found one ad looking for girls aged 18 to 55 to appear in adults films. And if the would-be video girls potentially had any reservations about appearing on video, the ad offered them some anonymity to quell their worries: there was the option of wearing a mask.

And maybe my favorite of all: some guy is looking for an extremely specific and unique chaffeur's job.

Apparently he owns a van that seats 7 and he knows Montreal and Laval very well. What is he looking to haul around, you ask? Well escorts and dancers, of course.

I hope everything pans out for this guy, who is trying to make his dream a reality.

worth the wait

Been waiting for months since the temps dropped below zero to lace up the skates on an outdoor pond here in Montreal and play some shinny. Well, I did just that today, making the 15-minute walk up to Park La Fontaine just off Sherbrooke, with my skate-kabab switching from hand to hand as I got closer, on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, with a sky just as blue as Yellowknife's cloudless winter days. It really was a Yellowknife sky.

I arrived to find a gigantic kidney-shaped outdoor rink, with people of all ages skating around slowly. There must have been a couple hundred people out there, and it looked as if the pond was a lake or river, the way it snaked away, out of view. Opera music wafted over the masses, from speakers attached to light posts.

I didn't see any hockey players though. A nice couple told me there were two rinks on the opposite end of the park. So I walked over and the gigantic rink just continued on and on and on, with park benches and even trees lined up down the middle of the ice surface, so those who needed a break could take a seat and chat.

I found the rink and laced up the skates. When I first got there, there was a backlog of players: probably about 8 or 9 subs on each side. I stuck it out though and gradually the numbers went down and you actually got into the rhythm of playing.

Probably since my second last year in Calgary, pond hockey has really been the outdoor activity that gets me through winter. It's unlike recreational hockey, where people take things super-competitively, but it's way more exciting than aimlessly skating around a pond. Granted, like everywhere else in the world, the games do have their douchebags, but that does little to ruin a good time, and it actually gives you someone to play a little harder against too if that's what you're into.

Well today, there were old-timers and kids alike. And a lot of girls. A team of girls from Brossard came down and after we played for a while, they asked if they could form one of the teams. So it was guys vs. girls and the teams were pretty much equal.

"Imagine that. In 2010," joked a dude who had quit smoking just four days prior. His first shift was about as long as it took someone to smoke a cigarette in -40C. Very quick.

And after a couple hours and making a few new friends, I took off my skates and then took off myself. And it was on the walk that I had a brief revelation (I'll call it a brevelation):

Since I've arrived in Montreal, I've found people dance like crazy here: after dinners, at parties, at bars, everywhere. I, on the other hand, don't dance. I've been telling people that I'll need to start dancing to survive here.

I don't know why I don't dance. It's probably because I'm just too self-aware and feel goofy doing it unless I really feel like doing it. It's the same reason I don't speak French with a French accent. It feels like I'm acting. It's not natural to me.

Anyways, on the walk home, I realized potentially that the reason I love pond hockey so much, is because I get the same feeling from it that dancers get when they are moving to music.

Bear with me for a second.

Dancing, they say, is the one activity where we actually celebrate that we indeed have bodies and we articulate and express ourselves by moving them around.

I find by stick-handling around the ice, by putting the puck in my skates then kicking it to my stick, or turning around to start a rush only to see someone coming and turning around again, or finding someone streaking and hitting them with the puck right on their tape, or putting someone inside out because you put yourself inside out, gives me the same high. I feel like I'm aware of each part of my body and how they all have to move together to make something happen even if I'm not thinking about it happening. It just happens, the parts work for themselves and I feel that's a lot like dancing. I don't need music because the rhythm is the game and the pace of it and the way it is played and you just become a part of it.

I think when I dance. I don't think when I play pond hockey.

That's why I love it so much.