2012/07/23

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  KINÉGRAF - Grande Place, Complexe Desjardins
  Scènes de Montréal - Montreal Scenes
  

  Parts of this post were edited yesterday, Sunday.
  Parts of this post were edited tomorrow, Tuesday.

  Around the gay village in 25 minutes

  Last night (Saturday) was France's entry at the fireworks. The show's theme was Jules Verne. A little slow to start, and quite a weird sound track. Given that it's not easy to translate into music and light the adventures found in Jules Verne's books. There was a number though, quite long, which addressed the landing on the moon (including famous sound clips, you know, the "small step for man..." and all that jazz), and which in my case did give me some emotion, maybe because of the woman soprano singing an opera aria I couldn't identify right off the bat. There were a lot of very high exploding bombs, and I mean very high, and often coupled with others at ground level, which made the show to be seen preferably from a distance. I don't know if that 1PYR08 guy filmed that one also, from La Ronde, but if he did he must have gone seasick from moving his camera up and down and up and down all the time. My take is that he'll miss some of the global picture. We'll see. All in all, not a winner in my book but I didn't regret at all having gone to see it. As usual I left home too late and after arriving at Berri-UQAM I had to transfer to another metro line to go to Papineau (two stations away), but when I got to the wharf I missed the train by seconds and there was a seven-minute delay before the next one so I just decided to walk to my vantage point under the bridge, an about 25 minute walk. I would have had to walk somewhat also if I had been to the Papineau station, not to mention the humongous number of people who would have been there in the up-going escalators, preventing any possibility of fast walking out of the station. All in all, I even think I got there faster by walking. And since it was more than 48 hours since that biopsy and that technically the Pfuittt! season was over, I figured that as long as I didn't run... which was not a problem since I never run. I do walk fast though. I only walked a small bit on Ste-Catherine because it was also full of people (I would have had to walk the entire gay village section where there are those overhead pink balls) so I headed south quite early to reach boulevard René-Lévesque and finally Notre-Dame Street, where I was going. If I had the time I'd show on Google Maps where I passed but I don't have the time because today is the 22nd and as has been the case for the last six months, the 22nd is BDD, or Big Demonstration Day. It's organized today by the more militant student organization, the CLASSSÉ, but the other two will be there also. They don't expect a huge crowd for obvious reasons: it's summer, most students are back home, and it's the first week-end of the yearly two-week "vacances de la construction" (construction workers vacations), during which about all the construction workers are on vacations, and by the same token, most companies working in or around that industry, and by the same token still, their family members (spouse, children, whatever) who also schedule their vacations at the same time. I don't know the exact numbers but I'd say that about one third of Québec's population kinds of vanishes elsewhere for those two weeks. It's a little like what happens in France in August, when the whole inside country shuts down and moves near the sea.

  All this to say that I'll probably show up downtown to check things out and maybe participate in the demonstration, which will again technically be illegal because they won't advise authorities in advance of its route. This time around, it's not so much for tuition fees, but rather because they said that the march was mostly against neo-liberalism. THAT rings a bell in me.

  Laterz, like, say, Monday...

  Well, I didn't have the time to post this before leaving for the march, so now I have to add more stuff to this post which already had enough. Oh well. Da food section will have to wait or be bumped to next post.

  When I got to Place Émilie-Gamelin, there were some people there, and scattered around at different intersections or locations, like near the Grande Bibliothèque, or Ste-Catherine St which was already closed since the police had to make their little silly showdown, all clad in anti-riot gear, while most people there where elders, young parents with toddlers in carriages, middle-aged people, and students of course. They looked ridiculous holding their tear-gas guns or whatever-they-shoot-with-them. Near them, on the corner of Berri and Ste-Catherine, I ended up chatting with a Belgian who said he was there to try to understand because over in Belgium they ask permission for demonstrations and it's no problem and all generally goes well. I could have told him that everything goes well when the policie forbids you to go to the streets you want to go and your march bothers no one, but I refrained. I did mention that since our law is considered illegitimate and probably illegal, that our Human Rights Commission has just severely condemned it, that we didn't feel compelled to obey to it. When I left I wished him a belated Belgian Fête Nationale.

  Among those there, guess who! The unkillable 83-year-old Armand Vaillancourt, sculptor, political activist, painter, multidisciplinary artist, provocateur and what have you. This guy is in shape like a fifty year old. It just boggles the mind. I told him so, later on at the end of the march. Our Premier's name is Charest and he made a wordplay of it with "charette" which is a cart, a wagon. He had put two boxing gloves on his makeshift cart on which he had written "Charette viens te battre" (Charette, come and fight). I don't have a clue what those three red pails stood for though. I mentioned in a post a good while ago that he had invited me to enter in his fenced yard which is loaded with an heteroclit pile of scrap material he may use one day, or not, in a sculpture or an installation.

  

  A few pics of peole waiting for the march to start. It was slated for 14h00 but finally only left at 15h00. It was very sunny and very hot, maybe 32˚C or 33˚C. I made stamps of them for the post. It's a test to see if it will make the page less heavy to load. Larger-sized versions always available on double-click, as usual.

  

  

  

  Anyways, it was like I had expected. Maybe a few thousands, if we were lucky. Or so I thought. THIS is what it turned out to be.

  Pics taken on Berri Street, just before, under and past the Sherbrooke overpass (or underpass if you're marching).

  The woman in a wheelchair was alone downhill, which doesn't show on the pic but is rather steep. That man and his wife offered her to push her chair uphill. She gladfully accepted and from then on she was beaming, using her liberated hands to clap them like there's no tomorrow, joining the others. I realized that a person in a wheelchair can never clap their hands or use them to make any kind of noise if they are moving, hence her being so delighted. It takes so little to bring happiness in this world. The couple was as happy about her as she was. (point B on Google map below)

  

  Before entering the underpass, looking ahead (point B on Google map)
  

  Once in the underpass, looking ahead
  

  Almost at Cherrier St, long past the underpass, looking back. (point C on Google Map)
  

  The improvised route (well, not told to police nor to the marchers) ended up being 4,5 Km (from A to I on the Google map below) and since I walked back to metro Berri-UQAM on foot also (from I to K), it made it a total of 6,1 Km for me, under the sun, and in sandals. I had two 500 ml water bottles and they were put to good use. And despite it felt like it in the end, I developped no blisters under my toes., surprising since those sandals are rather cheap and not very new let's just say.

  The route of the march. It ended at point "I" on the map but I walked back to where it had started.

  Note: Agrandir le plan means Get this darn thing much bigger.

  
  Agrandir le plan

  And this is the route I walked the day before for the fireworks, this one 1,8 Km, one way. Double that because I didn't sleep under the bridge. I'm not there yet. So all in all, I walked 9,7 Km (or roughly 6 miles says a conversion site) in less than 24 hours. Not in shape as Vaillancourt, but could be worse I guess.

  
  Agrandir le plan

  Add-on about my encounter with Armand Vaillancourt:

  At the end of the march, on McGill College St, I saw Vaillancourt again, close to the wonderful La Foule illuminée sculpture (The Illuminated Crowd) on the esplanade of the BNP tower. He was alone and seemed to be looking for something, an idea maybe? There were some red squares on the characters and I think his imagination was running full spin to try to make something out of it. I approached him and told him that he was 'vraiment increvable' (really unkillable). Then I asked him, «You're eighty what, now?». He replied «83, and I'm just starting». I think that's when the light bulb in his head switched to On. What he was looking for was a way to integrate himself in the movement of that crowd in the statue. I happened to become the key to what he was looking for. He told me «Come, take a pic» and placing himself in front of the statue he pointed his left middle finger in the air for the well-known 'finger' pose. I took a few pics then other marchers in the street noticed him and started to click their cameras too. That only encouraged Vaillancourt who shifted hand and showed again all what he thought of the government. Then he went on to both hands and both middle-fingers, to the delight of the bystanders who were savouring the moment as much as he was. I think he craves attention. Isn't that what all artists do? Anyways I may have been instrumental in fostering that moment, and that's good enough for me. Besides, I'm some kind of old fool also, so...

  I read on the wikipedia page that the sculpture is polychromed in such a way to suggest a bright light coming from the front, from a show, from a fire or from an ideal, and whose bright light would project shadows. I may have mentioned this before on this blog, I don't remember, but it may be why this sculpture leaves no one indifferent. And I will definitely go and check it out, this time with new eyes. What I mistook, probably like most, as the sun's shadow, was most likely directly imbedded in the sculpture itself and I find this fascinating.

  

  

  

  

  Da food section

  Having more time on my hands, I did my "paupiettes" on Friday. It takes about an hour and a half to prepare, due mostly to having to simmer the paupiettes for about an hour.

  There is no English word for paupiettes. They are usually made with veal. It's a thin scalloped (I think this is a pleonasm) piece of veal garnished with what we call in French "chair à saucisse", seasoned ground meat used to make sausages, then bundled together and fastened with a string. Since veal is a very lean meat, the bundled paupiette is also surrounded by strips of lard to make it less dry.

  I should have taken a pic before cooking but I didn't so I'll post this pic from Wikipedia instead. Those I had looked exactly like these.

  

  The recipe I did is a variant of the classic "paupiettes de veau aux pleurotes". Pleurotes are a delicate oyster shaped mushroom. This recipe rather uses the more common Paris mushrooms (known in the English world as 'common mushroom', 'white mushroom' etc). I tried to use both but in this particular recipe, pleurotes tend to stick in the pan when I stir-fry them so next time I'll stick to what the recipe asks for. I had both mushrooms because I live near marché Jean-Talon. I can go there and if I want to buy four mushrooms I can buy four mushrooms and I get to choose the ones I want, which is pretty handy especially when one lives alone and doesn't cook for a regiment. Nothing pre-packaged there (fruits and vegetables I mean). It's not a place for hygiene freaks, but that's their problem. Besides people should always wash their vegetables anyways, even if they were pre-packaged, if only to remove chemicals you're almost sure there are on 'store bought' ones.

  Later: Oh, I forgot, I have this plant of sage on my balcony which this year is growing like crazy. Sage and veal like each other (ask any Italian about saltimboccas ) so I stuck a leaf at both ends of each paupiette, between the lard and the meat. To be discarded before service time, along with the lard and string needless to say.

  

  Yesterday (Saturday), because of fireworks imperatives, no long recipe. I had left-over flour tortillas, left-over monterey jack cheese, left-over "La roche noire" blue cheese (see a previous post) and a plate. I didn't eat the plate, I used it as a template. I used one of those tricks they show kids in kindergartens. If you want to make a smaller circle from a bigger circle, you put something round and smaller inside the larger circle, and you cut around it. This is how you make medium-sized tortillas from decidedly too large ones. This time around, instead of kalamata, I put in sliced large green olives (pitted of course otherwise it's the pits), but I kept alive that love affair with diced green peppers and thin-sliced pan-fried mushrooms. I forgot the jalapeño but the hot peppered oil came in to the rescue. What I can say though is that this blue cheese does not need to be coaxed to melt. But it adds a wonderful taste. This cheese combined with maybe a little too much Montery Jack made it longer for the tortilla to turn into a crust. But it eventually did, which is all that counts. This one, I took a before pic, before adding the top tortilla that is. Once again, maybe the quantity of stuffing was a little wee bit over exagerrated.

  

  Yesterday also (still Saturday, remember), in the afternoon, I went strolling at Marché Jean-Talon for no particular reason other than I was in the area and had a little "creux" (WordReference says «to feel peckish (familiar) GB, to have the munchies (familiar)»). I saw this cheese at Capitol which I had never heard about before. It's a semi-hard cheese (like Edam) and it was really inexenpensive compared to other cheeses (22$ something a kilo), so I bought the smallest piece they had. Since it was cold, I waited for it to warm up before starting eating it, which finally happened only when I was back home. The cheese is Dutch and called Maasdam. I went on their internet site to get more info about it, and they say «If there is one true cheese country in the world, it has to be Holland. Renowned worldwide for its many famous, classic Dutch cheeses, Holland is the world’s largest cheese exporter. Edam, Maasdam and Gouda are named after old Dutch towns, where they have been sold for centuries.» Now I may be a slow learner or a little picky but this makes three cheeses. France has 800. France is THE cheese country in the world. And it's not really a sccop, let's just say. Everyone knows that, including the Dutch. What they mean(t) I suppose is that they produce a few cheeses but by the tons and the tons (they say hundreds of millions of kilos ), which means strictly nothing. McDonald's burgers are produced by the biliions and it changes nothing to the fact that they are basically crap. I hate it when people try to pull silly word games on me, as if I wasn't intelligent enough to see the difference. Anyways, it's not a bad cheese although rather ordinary (it's not cheap for nothing), its taste is hard to describe, but I wouldn't walk two hours to get some. I don't think I'll buy any of it again, especially that I'm not a heavy (a emphemism) semi-hard cheese user. That won't be very hard since I never saw it sold anywhere else before. People who like Edam will probably like it more than me.

  

  

  • 15:56
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