Village - Le 1681 - 2011.06.01
Above
This bar already existed when I first arrived in Montreal, in 1985. It's located at 1681 Ste-Catherine Est, hence its name.
Good news
We learned on Tuesday that Philippe Falardeau's Monsieur Lazhar, representing Canada this year at the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film (I guess that means non English), made it to the final five nominees. We don't expect it to win because the Iranian film Separation it competes against is universally considered to be really something else (it opens in a few weeks in Montreal), but with the current political context and the fact that Monsieur Lazhar is a kind of feel good movie, and Hollywood being Hollywood, we never know 
. It is the second year in a row that the same producers manage to get one of their films nominated in that category, last year being Denis Villeneuve's Incendies. That alone is unprecedented. And both films are based on theatre plays, which as my paper says it, shows that a good story can have more than one life. Monsieur Lhazar was originally a one-character play. Three other Québec films made it in previous years in that category, all by Denys Arcand, Le Déclin de l'empire américain, Jésus de Montréal and finally Les invasions barbares which it got the Oscar. Without being chauvinistic, can we say that for a tiny society of only 8 million drowned in a sea of 330 million people not speaking its "foreign" language, it's not that bad of a score? And I'm not even talking of other categories, animation in particular, where Montreal's Frederic Back won not one but two Oscars for Crac! and L'homme qui plantait des arbres (The Man Who Planted Trees). Incidentally, a Québec animation films is also nominated this year. I say Québec films because that's what it is. It's too bad that the country under whose name all these films compete at the Oscars barely gives a shit about them in their televised news (I'm talking of those networks which broadcast in the new lingua franca rather than in that "foreign" language, especially the federally funded CBC [Radio-Canada's English counterpart]). It's kind of strange considering that in matters of splashing nationalistic red maple leaves everywhere, they are usually more on the "overdoing it" side of things. Maybe Québec is not in Canada anymore and they forgot to tell us? 
My take is that it's more a majority of Quebecers who have not yet their eyes in front of the holes and still don't see what is obvious to anyone looking. There are two countries here. And culturally, one is freeloading on the other on the international scene. Looking at their television, they are also freeloading on the Americans, but that's another story.
Incendies (for reminders)
Incendies is also currently nominated for the César (French Oscars) of the Best Foreign Film (from outside of France), which will be staged also this upcoming February.
There is another film in that category, the Belgian Rundskop (Tête de boeuf in French, Bullhead in English). The film has been shown here last year during the Montreal Fantasia Festival (link -> http://fantasiafestival.com/2011/en/films/film_detail.php?id=721) where it got the Best First Film award. In Wikipedia, they say that it is in Dutch, French and Limburgish. I didn't know what was Limburgish, I remember hearing that besides Flemish and French, there was also another smaller region in Belgium with a language a little different, but that was it. So I hit Wikipedia to find more. It's all a little complicated, and I realize I don't know much about Belgium. I'm a little tired to go through it all right now but at least I know now what Limburg is. On the other hand, I still don't know if the word Rundskop is Flemish or Limburgish or both.
Good news damper
What follows now in this section is something I had decided to ditch, but after all I heard today (Thursday), too much is too much. I'll explain farther up what made me recycle this from the garbage bin. Since it is all essentially a rant, feel free to skip over it. I post it for my own future reference.
Tuesday night on CBC, they managed to stage a five-minute report about the Oscar nominees without saying one single word about the Québec (and still Canadian to my knowledge) nominees. Which was not the case for Christopher Plummer who apparently is also Canadian (from the right gang however) and is nominated for best supporting role actor, and of whom they spoke abundantly. After the report, when they came back to the anchor, he just mentioned that, oh yeah, there was a Quebec film nominated for Best film in a foreign language, and some other in the animation category. No images, just some print over an image of the Oscar statue. From what I understand, the CBC most likely did not know that Christopher Plummer was raised in Montreal and is bilingual, and not in Toronto where he only lived much later and for a short period of time (he's been living in the States like forever), otherwise they probably would have ignored him too. I must in total fairness mention here that the private English-language networks, contrary to the CBC, did not ignore the Monsieur Lhazar nomination in their coverage, CTV even mentioning it as one of the two opening headlines of its late night evening news. CBC, from the farthest I can remember, has been anti-Quebec to a point that borders racism. In 2003 when 150 000 Montrealers hit the streets to protest against the upcoming Iraki invasion, and only 5,000 turned out in Toronto, the Toronto 5,000 were mentioned, but when it came to Montreal, numbers disappeared and images were a no show. This was not an accident. It's the daily business at the CBC. CTV that same night had a factual report, and with images at that. Examples like this are a dime a dozen. English Canadians are for many totally clueless about Quebec because they are never told about it, and the few times they are, it's to bash Quebec, at times with falsehoods.
There was also an article on the CBC site: «The Quebec filmmaker said he was thrilled "that a film, an intimate film like Monsieur Lazhar, can exist in Hollywood alongside the biggest films in the world. I think it says a lot about the fact that we have to make the movies that we have inside of us and not try to imitate any kind of recipe," he told reporters by phone from the Sundance Film Festival, where his acclaimed elementary school drama is screening. [..] Falardeau's Monsieur Lazhar tells the tale of an Algerian immigrant and substitute instructor who helps students grieve the tragic death of their teacher. It has already earned a raft of honours on the past year's film festival circuit. "The timing for us is incredible. Monsieur Lazhar is coming out [in theatres] in some cities in Canada this Friday," Falardeau noted. "This is the best marketing campaign we can hope for in English Canada," he said, adding however, that "I hope we can come to a point where we don't need an Oscar nomination to release [a Quebec film] in English Canada." Monsieur Lazhar is the second consecutive Quebec film to make the Oscar foreign film short list, after Denis Villeneuve's Incendies was nominated in 2011. Both films had the same producers — Luc Dery and Kim McCraw — and, Falardeau noted, Villeneuve had sent the team a short text message Monday night: "Good night and good luck."». Apparently there are missing canals between the CBC news service and the rest of the shop.
Céline Dion was an international star in Europe and Japan but remained "Céline who?" in English Canada, until she moved her career (and style) to the United States. Same for the Cirque du Soleil, and just about anything else stemming from Québec and successful on the international scene. Last year, when the Royals paid us a visit, the Harper government had two paintings celebrating Eastern and Western Canada by famed Canadian painter Alfred Pellan, removed from the main lobby of the Externals Affairs building in Ottawa to be replaced by a picture of the Queen of England, and of "their" Canada. The paintings had been there since 1973 when the building was officially inaugurated by the same said Queen. Asking me to be proud of being Canadian would mean being proud to be associated with a people which not only ignores its founding culture which is also about the only thing besides health care that makes it different from other anglolands, but furthermore puts a foreign set of values (the British culture) before its own (presuming there is one). Frankly, I don't see the point. Acadian, Montrealer, Quebecer, Citizen of the World. That's plenty enough for me. There's no place for wankers in there.
Below, the new look of Canadian External Affairs. That's what foreign diplomats now see when then come here. Could be Saddam, Mao, al Assad, Kim Whatzizname, same personality cult style with pics everywhere. What boggles the mind is how this government which projects the image of a country which refuses to assume itself, still thinks it counts for anything on the world scene. Would be pathetic if not so tragic. The United Nations knew very well what they were doing last year when it was Canada's turn for a seat as a temporary member of the Security Council, and in an unprecedented move told Canada to shove it. And I refuse in advance any claim that I'm generalizing. To my knowledge, NO ONE in English Canada issued any vocal complaint about this trampling of Canadian art. Worse, this Queen splashing has been ordered to be done in every single Canadian diplomatic office across the world. That of course includes Washington, Bruxelles, Paris, Bejing and hundreds of others. And I'm not even mentioning the renaming at great cost of our Armed Forces, after more than forty years, to reinstate the term "Royal" in it. Anywhere on this planet, if I now say I am Canadian, it means that I live in a place nostalgic of having been (or still wanting to be) a British colony. It won't happen. If they have no self-pride, it sure is not my case. By the way, the federal government had even considered selling the paintings, and had to abruptly change its mind when faced with an uproar coming from Quebec. Quebec, the first Canada, named such by Jacques Cartier from the Amerindian word Kanata, where it all began in the sixteenth century, and in many aspects still today remaining the only true Canada, the one that made itself, with the help of Amerindians, by settlers who with them roamed most of the continent, not the branch of some foreign kingdom occupier which pitted Amerindians against other Amerindians before trying to culturally genocide them, and never, never, mingled in bed with them, and who fled liberty and freedom after the American revolution. Before that, there was a military conquest in the 1760s, and they borrowed the name Canada without asking. Then there was a bloody rebellion in 1837-38 after which they stole the name for good, and our cash by the same token since their half of their Canada was bankrupt. In 1867, they stole all the rest and renamed the original Canada as Québec. Finally in 1982, they kicked the original Canada out, during that infamous 'night of the long knives' when they reshaped Canada to their liking, in the rooms and corridors of an Ottawa hotel, while those from the original Canada were sleeping in another hotel on the Quebec side of the Ottawa river. Other countries and nations have glorious feats on which they set their foundations. Canada has a bunch of conspirators ganging up in the middle in the night in a hotel, with the purpose of screwing those who originally founded the country. They wanted a Canada to their image. They have it. It's all theirs now.
I can live with that. Without the name, I mean. It doesn't mean anything to me anymore.
This is where ends the part I had decided to ditch and salvaged from the garbage bin. Here is why. For the same reasons mentioned above, feel free to skip to next section.
Today (Thursday), in a matter of only a few hours, I had the unfortunate luxury of hearing three times about our Prime Minister Stephen Harper and of his government(?).
For those who don't know, because Quebec is a French-speaking society, there is a lot of Tunisian immigration here. It is also a place where members of former dictator Ben Ali's family had some properties, a lavish house on Mount Royal, among others, owned by Ben Ali stepson Trabelsi. When the Tunisian revolution hit their country, these people used their pied-a-terre here to transfer large amounts (presumed huge) of money they had stolen from the Tunisian people. The Canadian government refuses to say anything about the amounts involved. Contrary to other countries like Switzerland for instance, Canada slept on the switch and did not immediately freeze any of that money pending a decision about what to do with it. This permitted Ben Ali's family to take all their time to reinvest that money in banks and other venues where it will become impossible to trace. But the worst part is that for the rest of what's still traceable, Canada, it's government at least, is apparently into negotiations to keep 50% of it. No other country has engaged in such a despicable enterprise. Canada want to keep for itself money that has been stolen from the Tunisian people. Canadians of Tunisian origins are understandably scandalized and furious.
Stephen Harper is today (Thursday still) in Davos in Switzerland, meeting with the cream of the cream of the capitalist system, people needless to say who are not exactly on welfare. There is where he chose to announce, not in front of Canadians or on Canadian soil, that he intends to bring changes to the Canadian old age security system because of rising costs. This is not about private pension plans. This is not about the public pension plan. Those are so-called 'capitalized' systems, paid for in part by the future beneficiaries all along their working life. What he's talking about is the money this society gives to its elderly, regarless of anything. It does not take a wizard to know that those who need it the most are those who are the least wealthiest. He did not say what he intends to do: raise the admissibility age from 65 to 67, lower the benefits, something else? It also does not take a wizard to know that those who will pick up the tab are again those on the bottom of the scale. It has to take an incredible amount of insensitiveness or cynicism to go announce such a measure elsewhere, and in front of people who will never have any trace of any financial problems in their whole life. While he is planning to hit on our elderly, for the petroleum companies processing the dirty oil from his native province, it's open bar, companies which alreaydy year after year declare record profits whose indecency only matches Harper's. In French, you could call such a person "un salaud".
Today also, we learned that for the upcoming Canada Day celebrations (July 1st), the local celebration committees asking for federal grants and who include in their activities references to the 1812 war and the Queen's Jubilee will be preferred to those who don't. The Heritage Minister says that it's not an obligation. You effectively don't 'have' to include those references in your demand, it's not written anywhere on the form. But if you don't, you may not get the grant. The Minister thinks Canadians are dumb. They are not, but he is. First in Quebec, where mentioning the Queen of England and all her possessions brings the same tremolo as blowing in a whistle, and where until recently people wanting to celebrate Canada Day almost had to hide, it is obvious that forcing the celebration of that Queen's Jubilee into Canada Day celebrations is surely the best way to make sure they are never staged. But in the ROC (rest of Canada), can I say that for Mr or Mrs Recent and not that recent Immigrant stemming from any country on this planet not being a former British colony, Elizabeth II is certainly a nice person but what the hell has she got to do with Canada, today? And Canada Day at that! Especially considering that Mr and Mrs RONTRI are rapidly becoming the majority in this country they call Canada? Not to mention that even among the others, Canada Day is the time to celebrate Canada, not the Queen of England. Then there is the 1812 war. Never heard of it? Case in point. In fact, it's a rather minor event, and as far as Canada's involvement in it is concerned, calling it a war is an overstatement. In fact, it's more of a few battles between a new expansionist United States and an old and grumpy British Empire, worried about losing what was left of it in North America. But if we're to talk about war, then its real name is the "Anglo-American War of 1812 to 1815", not the Canado-American war. And it says what it was. The only thing Canada had to do with it was being part of the battlefield. But for Stephen Harper and his history-challenged goons, it suddenly becomes the founding act of Canada. And since this is not obvious to 99,99% of Canadians, they (the Harperites) have decided to spend millions in this anniversary year (1812-2012), to re-write history to their convenience. I can understand that. When you first came about as an 'official' country by a simple act voted in a foreign Parliament (Westminster, 1867) based mostly on the fear of Americans expanding north, and spearheaded by a bunch of financiers wanting to make bundles by building a railroad coast to coast, and taking local ownership of the thing more than a century later by backstabbing one of it's founding members, and in both cases never having the people concerned involved in any way [not stemming from any form of popular movement or uprising and not voted on in any way], you really need something more glorious to get your nationalistic rocks off, even if that means getting into some fancy embroideries about past realities. These days, hardly a day passes without seeing some federal minister going here or there associating any minor event to the 1812 war. Propaganda in the most basic significance of the word. Harper's Kampf.
Food section
Yesterday (Tuesday), I saw on the La Presse internet site a report about some German scientific study by a certain "Max Planck Psychiatric Institute" having come to the conclusion that seeing pics of appetizing food stimulates the hormones that control appetite.
That just boggles the mind, doesn't it? Whodda thought! I'm sure this comes as a total surprise to virtually almost everyone. 
To be frank, what boggles me the most is that I don't know what is the most boggling: a supposedly scientific study finding out something that was already known and obvious to every living soul on this planet, or a news media bothering to report about it. I don't know how many times in a year those words from a 1965 Jean-Pierre Ferland song (Les journalistes) ridiculing journalists and newspapers, are brought back to my mind, but it's enough to keep them as fresh as a rose up there:
[my translation]
Knowing all is knowing nothing, I know little but I know it well
I learned in a daily all the fundamentals
I learned what I knew, the less it's false, the more it's true
The more it's big the more it's thick, the less it's white the more it's dirty
Now that we know that what we know is what we already knew, the only remaining unknown is to determine if the following pics are appetizing or not, or put in scientific terms, if your appetite hormones will get all excited like crazy neutrinos in a stray molecule.
I had this for breakfast on Tuesday. It's called Huevos Rancheros. "Huevos" in Spanish refers most commonly to "eggs". By extension, the word can also refer to testicles. Obviously, we are here in the poultry department, the female poultry that is. I say female because apparently some consider as a delicacy those other huevos found in their male counterparts, the roosters. I remember a French cooking show on TV5 with Maïté, back then, where... oh never mind.
Basically, and terminally because that's how it's to be done and that's that (those kinky variations found on the net are imposters says me 
), it's a tortilla in a plate on which you deposit one or two eggs ("au miroir", aka sunny side up, or "huevos estrallados" in Mexican - estrallado means star-like or shaped) and then cover them completely with a semi-hot sauce made with tomatoes, chilis, and a few other things, and finally sprinkle with white crumbable(?) cheese. I used dry feta for this (they call it feta no cremoso at the Latino store), the cheese used in Mexico for this not being available here. It does the job finely, however. For die-hards, the sauce can (and will at times in certain Mexican food joints) be really hot. Normally, this is, like most Mexican breakfasts, served with warmed tortillas enveloped in a cloth in a plate, on the side, but the ones I used were as large as the main plate and it was plenty enough tortilla for me. At times, this dish may also be served with another breakfast token, frijoles (refried beans), and the cheese then sprinkled on them instead of the eggs. With beans, you'll often see some tostaditas (tortillas cut in small wedges and fried) planted vertically in them. Huevos rancheros were a peasant's and ordinary Mexican dish, plain, simple. Without even checking, I dare to say that if you type huevos rancheros in Google images, 95% of what you'll see there shouldn't be. I'm not against imagination in cooking, quite on the contrary. I'm simply against robbing names (words) and denaturing what they refer to. Gee, reminds me of Canada all of a sudden.
For those who would not know, the easiest found antidote to relieve mouth inflammation after having recklessly eaten something way too hot for one's tolerance, is something in the dairy line of products. Milk, yogourt... But you don't HAVE to be on fire to appreciate good yogourt. We have here, in Montreal, a brand called Liberté and which makes yogourt akin to silk. This one is 2,6% fat, but another one they make, the Méditerranée, contains 8% and is nothing short of velours. They also have a Greek yogourt at 0% fat, only containing milk and little buggers. Tried it once, but don't remember if I liked it. It's quite expensive compared to the others.
I had this on Thurday. Something I had tried many months ago and had started to edit the recipe, but needed to re-do in order to get that recipe straight. It's to be done with thick pork chops (with the bone) but I had four thin boneless ones (bought for 1,80$ 
) and it's just as good, providing cooking times are shortened accordingly, of course. Ingredients include garlic, Italian (flat) parsley, French shallots, Dijon mustard, 35% cream, lemon juice, olive oil, butter. Of course, it's always preferable to add mushrooms and pork chops in there.
Zeus
I had forgotten that 2012 is an olympic year. I used to like the Olympics but not anymore. Each time, it's the same old record skipping over and over again.
They promise prosperity to the people whom they expropriate to make place for the installations and these people always end up getting a raw deal.
They say the Games will autofinance and they never do, there are always important cost overruns, and they all act totally surprised when it's found out. (I know, Atlanta, apparently pulled it through. They were also the most indecently commercialized Games ever).
They say the installations which cost hundreds of millions will help future kids to be in shape while in fact they either become half-abandoned, or they are picked up by fianciers who don't give a damn about the health of kids but give a great damn about the health of their wallets and of the professional teams they own.
They attempt to beat records that cannot be beaten by a normally constituted human being.
Some take drugs to beat unbeatable previous records and everyone acts surprised that they are caught and swear on their mother's head that never again... and so on until never does become again, and they then resume saying never again, and so on... and so on...
Some have high tech equipment developped for them so as to beat unbeatable records, with the end result that it's the athlete with the better equipment that wins, or put more simply, it's not the athlete that wins, it's his Speedo and his missing eyebrow and body hairs. Games should be played like in the old days. Naked. That way, everyone would be competing on the same level.
Athletes from all over the world will parade for their country and pretend during the opening ceremonies that they are all brothers and sisters, and the next day barricade themselves in their country's allocated area in the Olympic Village. Some will even have their own little separate housing (Americans, namely. Israelis also, I think). At the closing ceremonies they will again pretend to all be brothers and sisters and some classless country (like Canada) will unfold a giant flag, theirs, over the heads of the other Games participants. When you're the shit-hottest country in the world, says they, it has to be made known, I guess.
Some countries will also use the Games to show the world they can invent the most horrible and tacky costumes on earth. Again, Canada here is a repeated winner. They have a garment company here called Roots and which should be sent to a Nuremberg-style fashion trial for crimes against good taste. On the other hand, if Canada goes away with the ugliest costume trophy, London's logo is surely the ugliest one in ages, maybe even ever. Unreadable.
The Olympic Games are a commercial venture and a nationalistic pissing contest. It was that way in 1936 in Berlin and it was that way for all the others that followed. Those supposed 'olympic ideals' that the people are being led to believe in are not always those that win the hand.
One of the nice things about Olympics is that they can produce architecturally beautiful buildings.
London said this week that their stadium is an 80,000 lego thingie that will be de-legoed to 25,000 after the games, with the removed lego pieces recycled or something. There's already a court action about whom will use it (football teams) then. The other Olympic buildings are all promised a bright community future. Aren't they always? In view of past games, can we just say: «We'll see?» About total costs, an article from Sky News says "Of the original £2.747bn of taxpayers money set aside to help pay for the Games £974m remains, and with almost 80% of the construction programme complete the chances of overspending have been reduced. But the NAO warns there is no guarantee the project will come in on budget and urges ministers to work out where any extra cash needed might come from." My understanding of "£2.747bn" is 2 billion seven hundred and forty seven British Pounds, or 4,329,143,165 Canadian Dollars (give or take a few millions for US money). I don't think the television rights are accounted into this. Those rather go direct to the IOC if my memory is correct. Speaking of rights, some "Official" Games partners for the 2008 Beijing hooplah included Coca-Cola and McDonald's, two companies which, as everyone knows, specialize in good health, an Olympic value if there's one (besides getting rich, of course).
One plus for London: I read this week that they closely studied the Montreal 1976 Games, known to be the most patent example of what NOT to do. They have my blessing.
The Grand Mass of the Union
This week was the yearly Grand Mass of the Union, presided over by Messiah Obama. He stills continues to impress me. This guy is totally atypical as per American politics go. You can sense that he's got a plan. You know, like someone who knows exactly where he is going, who is in it for the long run, who knows that immediate and short term events insert themselves in a broader scheme of things, which is what, ultimately, really counts. He's obviously also very intelligent, to a point he cannot even be compared to the lessers who want to replace him. I have in store a post about Obama which I may post one day, but for now, I'll just say that if Obama has been a deception for some, the American people by electing those frozen-stiff Republican neanderthalian nay-sayers in Congress, are for a large part, responsible of their own demise. I heard something this week, I don't remember on what media, but it was in French, saying that for an American President, it's during the first two years of a second mandate that he can really leave his mark in history. I've heard complaints that Obama let himself be stopped by the Republican obstructionism. My take is that maybe he just couldn't do otherwise, the way the system works, that those comments about second term action that I mention above are behind what Obama meant when he said that from now on, he'll fight obstruction with action. A kind of clear message that if he's reelected, that hooplah party will be over and he'll be moving to serious business, straight on. We'll see. If he's relected of course. We'll only know in four years how it all turned out.
AMERICAN POLITICS EXPLAINED
cartoon © BADO, Le Droit (Ottawa)
Hollywood in Paris
I went to see Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris this week. What a wonderful film! Beautiful images of Paris. Fantastic voyage in a time when Paris was the center of the cultural world.
I don't want to say more, for those who haven't seen it yet, besides that some of the action takes place around a century ago. Incidentally I went to see it at a special cinema called the Cinéma Dollar (or Dollar Cinema since most films there are in English). It's an old 3-hall cinema in a low-scale two story shopping centre having lots of vacant space and which has seen better days. Those operating the cinema before, Cineplex Odeon I think, shut it down at some point. This guy from the West Island, a Bernie [something]berg, who looks like a Slavonic Jewish hippie who dies his long wire-stiff hair pitch black, took it over in 2004 to turn it into a 1$ cinema showing films that are at the end of the run. Price has since been uppered to 2,00$. Food stuff is also cheap. For the film, a small popcorn and taxes, it cost me 4$. The movie was scheduled for hall number 3. Hall 3 has been in renovations for some time. I mean 'quite' some time. I think it's a ten year project. Anyways, once you opened the hall's door, instead of the two left and right small stairways usually leading to the back of the hall, they put up temporary walls and all there is left is an L-shaped little room with no lights besides the light coming in when the door is open, with an overhead DVD projector beaming at a large flexible screen stretched in the angle right next to the door, and visible from both sections of the L where about 24 people could be seated in 3 rows of four respectively. Seated here meant some old theatre seats deposited in the center areas, and the rest along the walls being that kind of metal framed plastic molded chairs you can see in kitchen sets or church halls. I took one of those because I'm never comfortable in those other regular seats, let alone that the ones they had had made the war, and mine was located next to a wall on which I could lean, and furthermore stretch my legs full length. It proved a smart move. I'm gonna miss those chairs. Felt strange however because I and those others in similar chairs were seated higher than the ones in regular theater seats, but the idea was to watch the screen, not the neighbors. The owner, now I'm sure he is Jewish, is the kind of laid-back straight-faced person who never smiles but has a devastating sense of [Jewish] humor. When time came to enter the small room (more of a closet, really), he placed himself near the door, and acting like an airline steward, he supervised the entry of the spectators who had been waiting in the lobby and obviously were somewhat, er..., on a surprise mode, telling them to take a seat, fasten their seat belts, and make themselves comfortable. When everyone was seated and after he finished playing with his remote control to start the movie, he wished everyone a good trip and a wonderful time in Paris, and that he'd be back to pick us up in two weeks. There were no boarding passes because when you buy your entry at the food counter, they don't give you any ticket. It's all on a face recognition/honesty basis. Besides, the lobby is quite small, everyone sees everyone, and people have to wait there before entering the halls. It is equipped with three large three-cushion sofas in which it is best advised to sit in slowly. They, also, have made the war.
Anyhow, when the expression says "like in the old days", in this particular case, "old" really carries its full meaning. Reminded me of those days when I was sending bi-weekly single-motor 3-to-5 seater bush planes in the North, equipped with floats in summer, skis in winter, and we almost had to hold the door to prevent it from opening during the 2 to 3 hour trip. Couldn't be more basic than that. But as much as cruising at only 80 mph and viewing herds of cariboos from a mere 4 to 5 thousand feet above was something unforgettable, viewing and being in Paris through the eyes of Woody Allen also made you forget the immediate environment and let yourself slip into his magic.
Paris in Hollywood
With the film "The Artist" (L'Artiste) raking 10 nominations, and other French films being in nomination in other categories, and Midgnight in Paris itself being an ode to Paris, plus the nominated Quebec films, we could end up with quite an unusual Oscar night ceremony this year.
>
). I went to Milano's for the tomatoes and some garlic and some bananas and some half bottle of white wine at the nearby wine store. I buy my garlic there because they have those real and large garlic bulbs, sold by the unit and which taste like garlic, nothing to do with those imported Chinese small ones which are much cheaper, come in netted packs of three, and taste what they look like: nothing. I think they come from the States (the one I bought) but I don't want to know. I avoid buying produce from the States when I can because there's been way too many recalls lately to my liking. If I'm to die eating cantaloup, I'd prefer it to be Latino. I noticed Milano have a nice variety of unsold regular-sized panettones and have started to reduce their prices. Maybe next week or the one after will be a good time to go fetch myself one. I also bought a couple of bread rolls for the cheese I'm going to have after the mussels. That cheese, what's left of the Maréchal, I just removed from the fridge so as to bring it to room temperature. I just unfolded its wrapping and my oh my, what superb smells. It's like a good quality Gruyère with a thick brown coat. Can't wait. 
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