2012/01/22

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  Mini Ducati
  Boulevard St-Laurent - Petite Italie
  Scènes de Montréal - Montreal Scenes
  

  Above

  The price sticker says 429.99$ - "pour enfants sages seulement" (for well behaving children only). The mommy or daddy one next to it is more in the many thousands of dollars.

  

  New Moon, New Year

  Tomorrow January 23, at 08:01, it will be the New Moon and by an incredible coincidence, also the Chinese New Year's. This one will be the year of the Dragon. Flaming hot no doubt! Watch your asses!!

  This said, I wish a very Happy New Year to all Asians celebrating this special day.

  

  Subject to review and possible correction by some Chinese readers, those signs meaning "Happy New Year" in [simplified] Mandarin, are pronounced like "shin-yin how" in English, and "chine-yine haö, avec h aspiré" in French. If it's not, blame the 'hear it' feature in Google Translate. .

  

  Stuff that in your pipe! JK...

  We have in Montreal the best chocolate-blueberry-raspberry pies in the whole wide world. That's what they say in front of a shop otherwise specialized in hundreds of beers on the Plaza St-Hubert. If they say it, who am I to say otherwise? I guess I'll have to buy one some day to find out if the claim is warranted. That guy in the pic is not me. My hair is shorter, I never let it hang loose, and I would never, I mean never, wear my pants in my boots like that, let alone in 'that' type of boot.

  

  We also have in Montreal the fastest electric violin player in the world (Guiness certified, playing that Rimsky-Korsakov "bumblebee" thingie in 55,57 seconds at the Montreal Just for Laughs Festival). I've heard that piece played so many times that personally, after 5 seconds, I've had enough of it. Of what I've read, he's had enough of it also. Seeing what else he can do, I can understand. I heard about him in the latest edition of my local free weekly paper.

  

  That front-page article led me to look for more on Youtube. The first video below he apparently produced himself. We hear him play more than we see him, which is no problem to me. He's really talented, and it's a talent to be heard more than seen, although he's not a bad sight at all. Besides, a good section of that video was shot at night at Marché Jean-Talon!

  This other one was shot at the Montreal Juste pour rire/Just for Laughs Festival (from what I gather, the show at Place des Festivals, following the parade) Wowie! And I'm not only talking about how sexy he is! (my appreciation) Watching someone who seems to be enjoying himself so much doing what he does is always a wonderful sight, and he does seem to have the time of his life, in all the videos of him I've seen.

  I don't know if Speed is a stage or his real name. I'd go for the first.

  

  Is this me talking?

  I am generally not much interested by all the gossip surrounding the rich and/or famous, nor haute couture fashion in general, and the likes. Here are two examples where I let myself be dragged into those waters.

  A) I've known Vanessa Paradis for a long time, as a singer (in Gainsbourg's Tandem and as an actress, from her first film aged 16, Noce blanche, where she had some naked scenes and after which she told reporters something like «mon p'tit cul, vous n'êtes pas sur le point de le revoir (my l'ill ass, you're not about to see it again)». She always kept control of who she wanted to be, and not to be. She's been living with Johnny Depp since 1998, who sings about the same song. He also is not the type to lick other people's asses to promote his career, for any reason. They formed a well balanced couple, in my view, leading also a well-balanced life sharing it between the U.S. and France (plus that little island... ). Now there's talk that their union is faltering, and I find that kind of sad.

  B) High fashion (anyways what they call in French 'haute couture') usually left me totally cold. Then I went to see that Jean-Paul Gaultier exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts last year and my coldness got a warming jolt that I didn't expect. Seeing those garments up close, I realized that many of them were definitely works of art, in the sense that besides their intricate workmanship they related to something deep inside of us, something cultural not to name it. think this showed in my account of the exhibit on this blog. I still think that some of those fashion designers are nothing but phoneys producing crap, the kind whose only vibe resides in cash register ring-a-lings. But there are also the others, like Gaultier. So when I saw three diaporamas of the most recent collections for men, I bothered clicking for a look. Gaultier and Vuitton were up to my [new ] standards. Classy, manly, flair. On the other hand, Versace showed us stuff for ring-a-lings, a bunch of Barbies all set and ready for a night of showoffing in some Hollywood bar. Tacky, no class, totally devoid of any harmony, be it in style or color. Du n'importe quoi!. Untranslatable, something like 'it tries to be everything and end ups being both of anything and nothing'.

  Links to the diaporamas (on the La Presse site): Vuitton, Versace, and finally Jean-Paul Gaultier.

  

  Perry & Perry

  The United States is a strange place. They put their National Security on the very top of their agenda, for this they even go as far as to flirting with questionable moves on the freedoms and civil liberties front, they keep who they consider their enemies in no man's lands like Guantánamo, but at the same time they let walking ticking bombs like Rick Perry run around loose and jeopardize American security. This guy alone represents more danger to the United States than a whole bunch of foreign lunatics.

  Turkey joined NATO in 1952, when Perry (and I also, for that matter) was only 2. Besides Israel (which is a loose cannon on the deck and a ticking bomb all of its own in the area), Turkey is the or about the only real other ally the U.S. has in that region. Last week, Perry called the Turkish government a bunch of Islamist terrorists and added something like they better clean up their act if they want American support. I don't think Turkey, which is considering entering the European Union, was much amused. Nor Europe, I'd suspect. Nor the current U.S. executive even. In fact, Ankara was rather furious. Moreover that if someone needs the other in that part of the world, it's the Americans lightyears before the Turks.

  I don't know, but when you have only one friend, you don't crap on his head. When you are not a dangerous flaming idiot that is. There's a lot of talk nowadays about what to do with those 500 or 600 FEMA camps Bush left as a poisoned gift to Obama. I have a suggestion ready, if they ask me. Mind you, Perry had the good taste to get lost this week, so maybe my suggestion would come too late.

  The man below isn't looking anywhere. It's a diversion. If he'd let us stare at him straight in the eyes, we'd be able to see the back of his head. Nobody home.

  
  Photo © Jim Young, Reuters

  This other guy, also a Perry but not related (he was an adopted child), is one of the 234 persons the above [choose your own expletive, mine could get me in trouble] has administered death to by draping himself in the convenient costume of Governor of Texas.

  >
  Left: Photo © TF1 (France) -- Right: Photo © From Werner Herzog's film 'In The Abyss', Metropole Films (Quebec distributor)

  From a Guardian (UK) article - bold characters are mine:

  Some prisoners finally confess on the execution table. Some say nothing, some pray, some sing, most address their families. [Michael] Perry's last statement was controversial: "I want to start off by saying and letting everyone involved in this atrocity know they're all forgiven by me."

  He looked over at his weeping mother in the observation room. "Mom, I love you. I'm coming home Dad, I'm coming home." [his father died only weeks earlier]. A single tear rolled down his right cheek.

  He was declared dead at 6.17 pm on 1 July 2010.

  NBC anchor Brian Williams addressed Texas governor Rick Perry in a recent Republican candidates' debate.

  "Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times," Williams said, as the conservative audience cheered. "Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?" Rick Perry smirked slightly.""No, sir. I've never struggled with that at all."

  I'm glad some person of my knowing is now officially and physically out of Texas. It permits me to say all the bad I think of a State which elects psychopath morons to govern them. The cold-blooded killing of someone by the State, anywhere in the world, is a repugnant act which brings about in me the most profound disgust.

  Werner Herzog's Into the abyss opened yesterday in Montreal. He interviewed Michael Perry days before his execution. for this film.

  France's TF1 also produced a television report, 31 minutes long, available here -> http://www.wat.tv/video/moi-michael-perry-condamne-mort-46wol_2hg6l_.html. He had severe manic-depressive phases as a teenager. That's a sickness. Up here, these people are sent to hospitals to be treated, whatever they could have done. I'm not even talking about contentions that he was already in prison when the killings occured, or that the doctor certifying the time of the victims' death has later been found to be a fraud.

  American television reports with Michael Perry can be found here ->

  The Texas slaughterhouse is in Huntsville. They don't call it that way. I do. It has seen the execution of 1200 people since 1865. In 2011, in 34 States still applying the death penalty, 3260 prisoners were on death row, some of them for more than 20 years.

  What are they doing in Afghanistan again? Oh yeah... spreading humanitarian values, right?

  

  American deconnection, Chinese reconnection

  Up here, our Kyoto terminator [Prime Minister Stephen Harper] got a slap in the face from Omaba, who told him that his proposed Keystone XL dirty oil pipeline (linking Alberta to Texas) was a dead duck, until a new and less environmentally dangerous route is proposed. Mister Terminator is not amused (I am though, as also a bunch of others not living in dirty-oil-loving Alberta). Mister Terminator says that if Americans don't want his dirty oil, he'll sell it to China. China is one of the reasons Mister Terminator terminated Kyoto, because, says he, countries like China don't do their share. Now he's proposing to make sure China never does its share, siding with it by the same token. That's what you call connecting the dirty dots. Or taking Canadians for imbeciles.

  Of course, to send that oil to China, it would require another pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific. In British Columbia, they are even less amused than Obama. Hundreds of organizations have demanded to be heard at environmental hearings studying the matter. That pipeline would have to be doubled. Since dirty [some call it tar sands ] oil is too heavy to travel by pipeline, it must be mixed with a liquifier at the rate of 30%. That liquifier is an environmentally dangerous substance which would have to be imported hence the out->in pipeline, and then when added to the dirty oil, that oil would travel in the other parallell in->out pipeline. The Minister responsible for the pipeline is not amused by all the critics. He says they are being funded and driven by foreigners and that his government will change the rules to shorten the delays (his expression), or to shut people up (everyone else's expression). Remember Fascists talk in pre-WWII? Or Orbán now in Hungary? He does not seem to mind however that those who will cash in, the oil conglomerates, are also foreigners. After all, ultra-right wing conservatives are masters in double-language and hypocrisy. It's their trademark, so to speak

  
  Cartoon © Chapleau, La Presse

  NO TO THE KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE
  MINISTER JOE OLIVER REACTS:
  One must really be a radical environmentalist to not want to profit from this nice natural and Canadian resource !

  

  Goodies

  I gave this cake (along with other eatable goodies) to one of my 'guests' at the Christmas réveillon. I had never eaten nor seen any, but I saw it all nicely wrapped in an Italian store and by the price it went (about 14 or 15$), I figured it had to be good considering its small size. But still the same, I always had this nasty thought in mind: what if it wasn't? I could always ask the recipient but it seemed like a clumsy thing to do. The other day I entered a biscuit/candy store on the Plaza and they had the exact same cake, reduced by 3$. So I gave it a go. The dough is something like a pannetone's but a little more tight, the center green creamy part is made with pistachios, the white topping is white chocolate and some whole pistachios are used as decoration. It is made in the town of Bronte, in Sicily, where they specialize in making things based on pistachios (I found that out on Wikipedia). Maybe I expected too much, but my first slice was a fine deception. However, the more I ate into the cake, the more I liked it. Not to justify the price they sell it, imho, but if they'd sell it for, say, around 8 or 9$, maybe I'd buy some again.

  

  
  The wine is a 20 year old Port - not the best match - maybe something white like Beaumes-de-Venise would have been better

  Trying new stuff does not preclude returning to old loves. Also last week, I returned to the Slovenia butcher shop/grocery store/cafe-restaurant because I was out of Kransjska sausages. Although that place is named Slovenia and sells lots of products from that country, it also carries Croatian products, among which the current owner, who is Croatian himself. They always have some cut and wrapped pieces of potica (poh-teet-zah) near the cash register so I chose one with nuts to add to my purchase. They also have some with poppy seeds but I think the nut ones are more traditional. I asked him what they were called since I didn't remember on the spot what it was. He replied "strudel" as had done the woman serving me the last time I had asked. I guess they say strudel because strudels resemble a little the potica, and strudels are better known in these here pastures. I told him, "Yes, but isn't there another name? I have it on the tip of my tongue but I just can't remember..." He said "potica" and I said "Yes, that's it, potica!" adding "and they are much better than strudels!" ^[1]. The butcher/owner who is usually pretty much expressionless, was simply beaming, harboring a large smile. I guess he was dumbfounded to have in front of him someone who looks as Slovenian as Churchill looked German, and who knew what potica was, and by its name. I kind of felt good inside too, to be honest.

  

  ^[1] Maybe some strudels taste better, but who cares! He was happy, that's good enough for me.

  Still in the goodies department, but maybe in the less flamboyant novelty one, two classics of mine which I had this week:

  
  Merguez with risotto alla Milanese this time accompanied by freshly unfrozen republican brains. This risotto was not my best. It is supposed to be flowing, open to new horizons, not with its grains of rice sticking to each other like some xenophobic Front National or NRA member.

  
  Veal liver. Sometimes like here I have it sprinkled with steak spices, something I always did when eating beef liver, which I have not had for many, many years. I know it's not kosher since veal liver is much more delicate (priced accordingly) and usually only a few herbs is plenty enough. However, when bought in supermarkets, it is often not from a young veal anymore and borders beef liver in color and taste. In those cases (like in this one) I may then add the spices AND the herbs. And whether beef or veal liver, mucho sal.

  

  Just in:

  About not so evident evidences

  Pakistani Talibans just put online a video showing them shooting Pakistani soldiers in the back of the head with Kalashnikovs, while cryout out "Allah is great!". Well, I'm awfully glad they told us that Allah was great, because just like that, at first glance, it wasn't that obvious to me.

  

  • 15:02
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