Rue Ste-Catherine - Village - 2012.07.01

Above

There were 84 of those kiosk/tents for the Festival International Montréal en Arts which was ending since most of them were packing up when I took this pic, a little past 18h00. With all the terraces, you can pretty well say that all of the street was occupied. Don't look for Canada flags. Besides at the Old Port, you really, really, have to know it's Canada Day in Montreal on July 1st.

Canada Day this and thats

I know I shouldn't go there, year after year always the same kiosks, the same stages, at the same places, the same kid's corners, the same performers and the same propaganda stand. I still go to see how things evolve, over the years. To keep informed, so to speak. This year around, they really surpassed everything I had seen before. Not only was there the same booth giving away flags to anyone wanting, but they were giving them by the handful, literally, and they had satellite progaganda spots all over the place, strategically located where people had to pass, like on both sides of mini-bridges and the likes and where they had boxes and boxes of mini flags they had to pass and were giving away also by the handful, I mean here 5, 6, 7 flags, whatever their hand could hold. And of course, the more flags around, the more ending up on the ground, stepped upon. I even saw some adorning and inside a trash can. Ah! Can't beat Canadian pride! They also had a booth where they offered to exchange current 2$ coins for the new ones (temporary ones I was told) with a nice engraving of the 1812 Anglo-American war which about 99% of historians say was of very low significance, so much it is widely unknown, but which the war-mongering Harper has decided to make the founding block of this country. And not only do they change the 2$ coin but they would also want to remove from circulation the current one, featuring a polar bear? Talk of temporary! Unless of course it's only to make sure everyone gets to know about the founding block. It's so obviously gross it's like a zit in the face. There was this report on tv a few weeks ago with a history professor from Ottawa's Carleton University, one specialized in Canadian history I think, where she mentioned that in an over 1000 page history book about Canada, that war occupied four pages. Four! The founding block? Spell propaganda again? These people like war so much that Harper's wife managed to get a 50,000$ grant from Ottawa to build a monument to war animals. I wonder how much would cost a monument to the Afghan civilians killed by Canadians?

Every year we hear that the Gay Pride parade in Toronto is one hell of a huge affair. They talk of one million bystanders! Gee, I thought in my inner self, would Toronto have become more gay-friendly than Montreal? This didn't make much sense to me but hey, the numbers were there weren't they? Well, this year, I found out that they hold it on Canada Day, July 1st that is, a day when everything is closed (over there) and when there is absolutely nothing to do besides going to a gay parade in the afternoon before returning home to watch on TV the bland show staged on Parliament hill in Ottawa, decorated with such an abuse of red that one would think he's landed in a slaughterhouse. After I learned about this, the first time I strolled under the pink balls in the Village, it came back to me that seeing such a thing on Church St in Toronto is as thinkable as seeing Benedict XVI rolling out his mat six times a day for his prayers to Allah. And I felt as good as I felt after having been to see Rufus who, I read in a local paper, gave a concert in Toronto a very short while ago and by the accounts of that music critic, in front of a public showing as much emotion as a cow watching trains go by (my metaphore). But they are rich. Well, richer than us. I guess it counts for those for whom it's a capital value. I'm still glad for Toronto gays, mind you. It gives them a large visibility, even if circumstancial, that can only be benefitting in the long run. On that aspect, they made a smart move.

Canada Day in Québec, and more so in Montreal, is yearly Moving Day. IKEA distributed free 16,000 or 18,000 (different sources, different numbers) recyclable cardboard boxes for those moving. There were a few pickup spots, but they also had a truck going around, the whereabouts of which were reported live on Twitter. Nice gesture. Worth more than stupid ad campaigns, imho. IKEA is a model corporate citizen, in Montreal at least. When it became mandatory to have French outside signs on stores, they obliged. There is not a word other than in French on it's store's facade. And everything inside is done in French (language of work for employees). When a subsequent government caved in and permitted bilingual signs as long as French was predominant, IKEA changed nothing and stayed as they were. By the way, this same government closed and still closes its eyes when not only did the businesses not respect the predominantly French clause, but also came back to English only ones. IKEA's stance did not prevent it to announce a store expansion which will make it the largest IKEA store in North America. This alone proves by the absurd that all those contentions about French-only signs and operations hurting business is a humongous pile of bullshit. Oh, and since it's Canada Day of which we should be so proud, can I mention that this opposition stems for most from Canadian companies, rarely American ones. Home Depot has an issue about the company name used in Québec. They say changing it to Quincaillerie Home Depot would cost a bundle. Maybe, I don't know. But I remember they first used Home Dépôt, with the accents, which is more of an oxymoron and why it was abandoned I think. But when I go there, inside, everything is in French. Period. And they are not anywhere close to being bankrupt, let's just say.

After my annual self-induced downer at the Old Port, I BIXIed to the Village and was strolling on Ste-Catherine where this girl wearing a Spanish-colors bandera over her shoulders was talking to a few people of her knowing, in the street. Since I had seen a few cars with Spanish flags passing by close to the old port, when I came near her I asked in spanish if Spain had won. By the yelling frenzy she responded with, I knew it was not a good time at all to go shopping in Little Italy. Funeral parlor ambiances is not something I readily rush to. Four-zero! Gosh! This is not a drama, it's a catastrophe.

Janet Jackson's tit won't be discussed by the American Supreme Court. My goodness, it went that far up in the judicial system? I understand the Supremes for not wanting to fall in such ridicule. I hope the current Canadian Conservative government gets the message. It's pretty much their style to get their tits in the wringer, so to speak, about such things (the exposed tit). Is Ottawa on Madonna's tour schedule?

When I BIXIed back home, in the early evening, I noticed they had built two square "pétanque" fields in Parc Laurier, large enough for holding each three or four simultaneous games of pétanque. There is another pétanque field closer to my pad, in a small park located near the underpass/overpass seen in my video of the Night Bicycle Tour. There are also some at Jarry Park. In Little Italy, there are bocce fields near the Madona della Difesa church. There are others but I don't know where they are. One day I'll try to find the difference between bocce and pétanque. Maybe for one you drink pastis and for the other you drink grappa?

My upstairs neighbors came back last evening from a house-sharing week-long trip to New York, with their two small kids. While they were gone, the New Yorkers in question were upstairs. She said she was Algerian. I don't think they came to Montreal for the Canada Day celebrations. She said she had relatives here but wanted to be on her own. I can relate to that. Today upstairs neighbors left again for a week of camping. No frogs are moving in.

I'm glad this is over. I hate having to rant.

Yes, I know, Janet has not much to do with Canada Day.

Da food section

To bring in some fresh air, another instalment of this world-famous segment.

Stuff I had recently:

Yesteday: Breaded cod fillet with fries. I stopped at a supermarket on my way back (open until 23h00 as usual) and bought the cod. I usually have this with cooked morcels of potatoes and carrots but yesterday I felt British (hey, Canada Day!!) so I went for it and fries it was. I make the bread crumbs from good bread (miche à l'ancienne) which I cut in squares, let dry thoroughly then scare the hell out of in a blender. I put nothing else on the fish except salt and freshly ground pepper. [add-on: oops, I forgot, I soak it in a beaten egg before covering it with crumbs]. Pan fried in a bit of olive oil. The fries are cooked in duck fat. Normally the fish is golden but I did it outside on my propane camping stove and the heat being slightly too hot, or the cook being slightly too occupied ranting on some site, it was starting to burn which explains those little black spots. Caught just in time, the taste having not been altered yet. Those [sweet] pickles are made locally by a half-artesanal company and are terribly good, both in taste and texture. Nothing to do with regular supermarket-bought industrial ones. A little costlier, but like going to heaven, it's not free. It's just a little noticeable in the picture, but since I hide nothing from my readers when it comes to Da Food Section, I have to add that I had preheated the plate and let's say that pre-heated it was. Very. So I had to put it on one of those round cork thingies made just for that purpose, so as to not be stuck with a permanent design on that placemat which costs 1,000$ to go get another one.

The day before: Meat tortellini in a rosée (pink) sauce. It seems orangy in the pic but I think it's more of a lighting effect. I had a left-over of tortellini in the freezer which I had to pass, and this sauce was perfect for it and is easy to make: contains tomato sauce, onion (this time shallots), garlic, bell pepper, sugar, red wine, parsley, olive oil, salt and pepper and light cream. I added a half serrano pepper (deveined and seeded) for that little thing that tickles your palate. Regular cooking method: brown onion in the oil, then the garlic, then reduce the wine then add all the rest and let simmer until done, then add cream, simmer, and this time what I don't always do but should, short voyage in a blender. The extra parsley is only for decoration. The cheese is Pecorino Romano Lupa, otherwise known in some circles as "Carlo's favorite".

The day before the day before: Another Belgian beer I hadn't had in some time. Deep golden. A little spicy if I remember well (it was three days ago, and I'm aging ). With a name like Duchesse de Bourgogne, one would think it's French, but not only is it Belgian, it's also Flemish. Back then Bourgogne spread much higher than today, up to Belgium I believe.

The day before the day before the day before: Rufus night. No supper. Ice cream cone of not pictural interest.

No pic

June 27 (it's shorter than a before list): Quiche and salad. Milano (on St-Laurent) have recently expanded and now have a prepared foods section. I let myself be tempted by this zucchini, eggplant, bell pepper and prosciutto quiche. Tried a raspberry vinegar vinaigrette (dressing) on a small mesclun leftover to which I had to add chopped romaine, and dry panned pine nuts. Not bad. The vinaigrette made it to the cookbook [number 210]. The quiche made it on the "anytime again" list.

Place des Festivals - 2012.06.28

Epilogue

I found out that the event was scheduled to start at 21h30. So I didn't miss that much of it, maybe a half hour, presuming it started on time. Still would have liked to be there for some of the songs I missed but as the say in the States, «c'est la vie!» .

A new video popped up on Youtube. It's the song Bitter Tears, the one in which Rufus sings wearing those red sunglasses we see in that pic from the previous post. If I only had had this video to post, it would have been enough all by itself to convey what kind of performance all who were there had the chance to be part of. He was obviously having the time of his life. As the song progresses, the more and more he is on fire, culminating with that final gesture with his sweater which said it all. Almost post-orgasmic. If this is not making love to one's public, what the hell is? There was a close-up on the giant screens of that funny grin he makes at about 3:49 and the whole crowd smiled like there was no tomorrow. I saw on Youtube that he sang that song elsewhere in the last weeks and months, like in Tel Aviv, Paris, London, all fine performances, but the difference with what he gave in Montreal is, if not staggering, at least pretty obvious. Yes indeed, he gave it all!

Finally, to close this chapter on Rufus, I also found this video of a performance dating from last year on that sassy Télé-Québec program which I've talked about before, Belle et Bum. It's a gift of mine, let's say, to those French-speaking readers of this blog, and to others also who may never have heard this song universally known in French-speaking mundo. It's a song by the late Serge Gainsbourg, Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais (I've come to tell you I'm leaving you) in which, in the original late sixties version, the woman we hear sobbing in the background is a young Jane Birkin, his life partner of the time, and muse. Jane Birkin, much later, sang it also, after Gainsbourg's death I think. Her version was, and stil is, sublime. There's a recent video where Rufus sings it at La Cigale, in Paris, with Birkin in attendance in the first rows, but with a crowd joining in which I find is of the utmost tackyness.

This here one, with the public as silent as an Egyptian tomb, so much you could have heard an ant fart, and with Lulu Gainsbourg, Serge's son, at the piano, and Québec's fabulous Jorane (one day I'll have to post about this exceptional cellist, eclectic singer and performer) accompanying a Rufus Wainwright singing what I think is the ultimate version of this song, neck to neck with Jane Birkin's one (I want to stay in good terms with Jane ). I'm pretty sure my readers will agree. Simply sublime. And as in the Bitter Tears video above, at the end, he seems like coming back to life after a trip in the bottom of his soul, all surprised to realize how far he had been. I may be chauvinistic to say so, but I think it's Montreal which does this to someone. When one knows the heavy and besieged atmosphere that lingers in Israel, and one looks at the video of Bitter Tears from the Tel Aviv concert, one understands why it has all the forced excitement of one of those "concert for the troops" in far away war zones. I'm glad I live here.

Today is Canada Day. A pathetic affair in Quebec. Imagine the July 4th concert in Los Angeles where all the music would be Latin-American songs originating from those countries. Won't post more about this, at least not until tomorrow. Don't thank me.

Rue Ste-Catherine - Village - 2012.06.28 23h51 intersection Ahmerst

Above

View above is looking eastwards near Amherst St. The white tents are kiosks for a current arts festival. For a view looking in the other direction (west) from near Alexandre-de-Sève street, about ½ Km farther, click here.

Big post for big emotions

Pic © Anik MH de Carufel, Le Devoir

« I’m giving you everything tonight, Montreal ! »

And by golly, did he ever!

From Sylvain Cormier in my paper: «Yes, he gave everything, starting with himself, all clad in red. Red velvet trousers, red shoes, red sweater. Magnificient. A girl's sweater, I'd swear, the top modestly covered with sequins, the bottom almost transparent, revealing the belly (it's him who said it). Tribute to the late Guilda [a transformer who died a few days ago], queen of the nights of Montreal? No! Challenge to Liza! Yes, the Minelli, who will be at the Jazz Festival on July 5. It's definitely the daughter of Judy Garland whom our Rufus has summoned to dare wear a more spectacular sweater: "Game on, Liza, game on!"

Red as in red square, should we add. "Thanks to all the protestors for your actions, and for not doing anything tonight..." let out Rufus mid-way, underlying that the color of his costume was not accidental: "I am a large red square!" There were a few casserolers, completely in the back when I arrived, where Ste-Catherine and Place des Festival meet. A small gang, maybe twenty, serpenting in the dense crowd in an east-west direction, not towards the stage.

Yesterday was the opening grand event of this year's Montreal Jazz Festival and Rufus Wainwright was the name of the game. Needless to say, all outdoor concerts during large festivals here are free. After years of being asked by the festival's organizers, he finally accepted to come, but no messing on smaller stages for him. The big one or nothing. This year was the one it came about. I left late (as usual ), took a BIXI and got down to the nearby St-Laurent métro station at around 9h25. There were no free spaces and it took me a good 20 minutes to finally find a parking slot for it at the corner of Berri and Ste-Catherine, metro Berri-UQAM that is, and had to walk back to finally arrive at the Place des Arts / Place des Festivals area at around 22h00. I don't know if the show started at 21h00 as it was supposed to neither do I know how much of it I missed but what I did attend until 23h10 was out of this world.

The stage was fabulous. Adorned with a large crimson velvet looking red curtain as in old opera houses, it had six round hanging candelabras and a huge pearl-shaped one right in the center. If that curtain was fake, it sure dumbfounded everyone. With all the colors from the lighting effects, from splashing reds to deep blues to shocking pinks and soft purples, on the stage and on the ajoining Musée d'art contemporain, it created an atmosphere that no pic I took can even come close to rendering.

Then there was Rufus himself, with his fabulous voice. And his so superb songs. And the musical arrangements. The arrangements, OMG! I swear to god, at times I had to fight my tears. It was just too overwhelming. I mean being able to convey that kind of emotion, outside under the stars, in the core of a big city, and in front of thousands and thousands of spectators, is really something exceptional.

From the Ste-Catherine end of Place des Festivals where I arrived, I tried to make my way closer to the stage but the crowd was so dense that I could only make it one third of the way, still having to zoom with my camera for the few pics I took most of which are too blurred to be used.

Naturally, when you talk of Rufus and the McGarrigles and the Wainwrights, you talk of family. They were all there, uncle, cousins, sister Martha who sang with him a few times, aunts Jane and especially Anna McGarrigle, sister of the late Kate, who came on stage to sing with Martha and Rufus Complainte pour Ste-Catherine, a song she wrote. A great, great moment. Place des Festivals is bordered south and north by Ste-Catherine and De Maisonneuve. Anna joked about De Maisonneuve unfortunately not being mentioned in the song. Cormier: «And all the smala sang Entre Lajeunesse et la sagesse and Rufus was beaming. "They’ll be back!", he promised, and it was true also, the time for "La complainte pour Ste-Catherine", with the Catherine at the other end of Place des Festivals waltzing in bliss». Gosh! I missed Lajeunesse! Make this

All the rest was candy. From "Candles" (an homage to his late mother Kate McGarrigle) sung a capella with only two chorists, almost in the dark, «almost a religious song (Cormier)», to "One Man Guy", a song from his dad Loudon Wainwright, to «a jazz piece for the Jazz Festival opening event: a divine lecture for voice and trio of a beauty from Judy Garland's repertoire, The Man That Got Away. Liza Minelli, doubly challenged. Will she be told? (Cormier)»

He had other gifts: Excursion à Venise, another Anna McGarrigle song from their "French Album" and sung for the very first time by Rufus (that one too I missed, stupid stupid me ), and «the most beautiful rendering ever heard of "Je reviendrai à Montréal", in a heart-wrenching duo with Martha» (he had sung it with its author Robert Charlebois at last year's Fête Nationale concert - see my June 25, 2011 post, for video and the song's lyrics), and Montauk a new song he wrote for his daughter Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen, «can't get more Montreal than that» he joked, a beautiful song which I found on the net but the rendering he sang yesterday was a least doubly long, eight to ten minutes, and with arrangements that would border a symphonic orchestra. Simply grandiose. And, as curtain call, alone on the stage at his piano, Hallelujah, «hymn to the beauty of the world by the grand-dad of Viva Katherine, a Montrealer named Leonard. Yes, even him is in the family that Rufus was celebrating yesterday: his, ours. (Cormier)». Magical.

Rufus talked at times in English but also a lot in French. He addressed the Americans in the crowd saying how elated he was with the Obamacare decision, that he was an American, since he was born in New York but raised in Montreal, dedicating his next song to Romney and Gingrich. I don't remember what the song was but I think Americans there appreciated. Many Americans come for the Jazz Festival.

I think it was when presenting Je reviendrai à Montréal (I will come back to Montreal) that he mentioned, almost extactically, that this concert was for him «un rêve accompli» (a dream fulfilled).

As per Rufus, all along the concert, he was his own self, flamboyant. Beautifully flamboyant. Or simply beautiful, as I told the middle-aged woman who was standing next to me with other woman friends of hers, all glued to the giant screen, mesmerized.

And if he has accustomed us to intimate-style concerts, in this one he opened the flood gates to all the Liza Minelli or Judy Garland in him. Yes, he did give everything! I lack words to say how I and those who were there felt.

As I mentioned, there was a giant screen just above my head, about where I had to settle when I could not advance any more nearer to the stage. Looking at him sing, I had a thought for all those whom I know would have been elated to be there with me (or without ) on Place des Festivals last night, for this oh so very special and once in a lifetime event. May I add that I had a special thought also for two Ipswich fellows of our knowing, whom I know are consumate fans of Rufus.

I was also thinking that this world megastar had started years ago by singing in an underground café just a block and a half away, on Clark St, between St-Laurent and St-Urbain just south of Sherbrooke, the Café Sarajevo, where beginning musicians played at times for nothing or just about, just for having the opportunity of playing their music. Café Sarajevo closed down in 2006 because the musician's guild said they were exploiting musicians and had to pay them standard union fees, something the café obviously couldn't afford. I'm generally speaking for unions and workers' rights, but at times, maybe too much rigidity is just that, too much rigidity. In French there's an expression that translates as "throwing away the baby along with the bathwater". If Montreal is the cultural haven of Canada, it's in good part because of the Café Sarajevos. In 2007 it reopened much more uptown, on St-Laurent just before entering Little Italy (my area, so to speak). For all sorts of reasons, among which because uptown is not downtown, the synergy is not the same, it finally closed down for good this last February.

There are only two videos for now on Youtube about last night's concert. The first is "Je reviendrai à Montréal", sung in duo with Martha. Too close to the stage for my liking, we miss too much of it and of the surrounding atmosphere, but at least we can see some of the candelabras.

Among the songs I heard last night, this very nice one, Rashida, from his latest album. The orchestrations were almost as elaborate as on this studio take. You can imagine...

And this is the (beautiful) song for his daughter which he sang as before last song, which as I mentioned was much longer and elaborate than the "offcial" video of it. Very often, on the large screens, we could see close-ups of his hands dancing literally on the piano. He truly is a very gifted musician.

I later found this other video from last night, from the same not so good viewpoint, this time for the final song, Hallelujah, which apparently he had stopped singing live but resumed after the birth of his daughter, last year.

After the concert, I headed east on Ste-Catherine towards the Village, where I had a vanilla soft ice cream cone and then headed back home before the metro closed, near 01h00. I was too tired to take a BIXI but I felt good.

2012.06.24

Above

Ordinarily, the flags are those of the countries having participated in the 1976 Olympics. On Fête Nationale Day, I don't think anyone will mind a little chauvinism. I don't know if the podium has always been there. It's the first time I notice it. It happens often with pics. You discover afterwards stuff you didn't notice when you were there on location. I take a lot of pics for this purpose since digital came our way. What a blessing...

Fête Nationale

It was nice most of the day (the 24th), the parade was ok (lots of giants, some new ones this year), and the evening megaconcert was the best I've seen in years. I'm waiting to see if some excerpts will show up on Youtube (the ones I'd like to post). The over two hour show is available on the net on TOU.TV but only to Canadians.

Long poles

I am not on Facebook. I don't like bandits, whether they are in three-piece suits or in jeans/t-shirts and sweat in interviews. A crook is a crook. Facebook for me has always rhymed with the last of these two categories. Zuckerberg may be a pretty face (I find him sexy), the way he acted with his co-founder is pretty much tell-tale of his dark side. After serious confidentiality issues, then the recent stock exchange rip-off, they are now screwing their own members by pirating their contact email address present in their user profile, diverting it to a Facebook email account these users never asked for, without either warning them nor asking their permission to do so. In my book this is spelled steal, rob, deceit, fraud.

A lot of people put up with this because they centered their lives around that type of social media and now they can't live without it. They are screwed, kind of. I'm sorry for them, because they don't deserve to be treated like this. Me, I don't need what Facebook provides, at least not at that cost. I knew from the start it would turn out like this, there's no free ride, ever, and that's why I kept away from it with a hundred-foot pole.

Me Myself and I

Yesterday: Radio-Canada, mid-morning radio show. One segment's topic: Vacations - A political gesture when you are a head of state. Guest: François Brousseau, international politics columnist at Radio-Canada (and at my paper Le Devoir). Loosely translated:

«A president of the United States who would dare pass, if only two days, of vacations in a foreign country, it would be very, very badly seen. [..] When Obama, after his first European tour following his election, in the Spring of 2009 I think, for one day, we're not talking three weeks at the end of the world here, he profited of his being in Europe for work to take one day off with his wife to go to one or two nice restaurants in Paris to eat things French, not American. He was scorched for it by the right-wing press for this crime of patriotism-treason consisting of having a good time elsewhere than in the United States. [..] Same thing for his wife, I think it was in the summer of 2010. Michelle Obama, it wasn't vacations with her husband and it was short vacations, but she was with one of two of her daughters, at least one, and it was in Spain in a palador, one of those old renovated castles, sure that it was not a slum I can understand that, well then again she was called a Marie-Antoinette. I googled [at the time] the word Marie-Antoinette and many of the results contained Michelle Obama Spain Vacations Summer 2010 Marie-Antoinette.»

Yesterday, in the news: an online article from the Washington-based magazine Foreign Affairs, written by two Canadians, a former ambassador to Washington and a professor at Carleton University (Ottawa). The title: How Obama Lost Canada. The article enumerates a series of "problems", such as the delays he put in the Keystone XL pipeline (between Alberta and Texas), the protectionist measures of «Buy American», and even the absence of consideration for the military Canadian contribution in Libya and Afghanistan.

Well, first, Obama didn't lose ME on the Keystone thing. Quite on the contrary. Tar sands oil is dirty oil, period, and also much heavier than light crude, which makes pipelines more prone to break. And in Canada they have artificially boosted the Canadian dollar and this is destroying the manufacturing economy in the eastern provinces, starting with and including Ontario but also Quebec and the Maritimes. It is what is called, and what we are already seeing signs of here, the Dutch Syndrome. That's long to explain but essentially it means that if you put all your eggs in the same basket and stop maintaining your garden at the same time and for some reason no one wants your eggs any more you're stuck with your basket and you're left with nothing else. I'm schematizing , but barely. Second, it must take compulsively naive people to think, in view of what I've mentioned above about Obama's or wife's travels, and of the last 200 years, to think one second that the U.S. would ever do something nice for another country if they didn't have an obvious financial and/or political stake in it and that it didn't serve first and foremost its own interests. Thirdly, it boggles the mind that some fighter-plane-loving pricklet like Stephen Harper can come to think that militarily, a country like Canada having slightly more than the population of Mexico City can be a military kingpin on this planet and be at par with the big guys. Someone should tell him that Canada is only in the G8 because the Americans insisted, and this against the will of the other 5 (it was the G7 initially), so as to have two votes around that table. He's like that woman I talked about in my previous post who really thought she was the Queen and not the political ornamentation vase she was supposed to stay. Harper is like that frog from the fable who thought he was a bull. That one ended up with a messy blow-up, in the fable I mean.

Out of order?

Since early June, I have no more email feedbacks from Xanga (comments, replies, etc), although all my settings are ok. Someone else is stuck with this problem?

Changing time

London's Big Ben will now be known as Big Liz. Well, maybe not exactly that, since there are two Big Bens. The clock and it's home, the tower. It's the home that's being lizzed.

The shit hits the fan

After Harper started this in 2006, inspired by his look-alikes from south of the border, negative ads (a euphemism for personally oriented political trash campaigns) have now hit Québec, thanks to our current Liberal government which, after its disastrous handling of the student strike, is desperate to get re-elected most likely in the early fall. Many are not thrilled about this kind of politics and it could well backfire in their face (the face of the Liberals). In this as in many other aspects, Quebec a) could be different than the rest of North America and b) often acts unpredictably.

Obamacare or Obamagone?

We're supposed to know tomorrow. I think I've mentioned what others now think of the U.S. Supreme Court these last years... I don't expect much [elevation] from them.

Not smelling oneself

Conrad Black, that former media mogul who voluntarily relinquished his Canadian citizenship so as to become a British Lord, and who spent almost four years in prison in the States on convictions of fraud and other related economic crimes, and who's back to his plush home in Toronto with the benediction of Stephen Harper who let him back in like nothing, Black, I was saying, gave a conference at the Empire Club in Toronto, in front of 1,000 members of the cream of the cream of Canada's financial world, who applauded him like there's no tomorrow. These people also are the first in line to blabber everywhere that Quebec is a corrupt province. I guess they must talk out of personal expertise in the matter. It's nice to see an applied application of the hypocrisy concept. Hypocrisy is another great Canadian thing, like the discovery of insulin and the cultural and not so cultural genocide of Amerindians.

Smelling others

The Austrian Press Agency reports that the police have intercepted three truckfuls of garlic, 9½ tons of it, stolen in Spain apparently, while they were preparing to leave Austria for Hungary. The police were suspicious because of the smell I think. I don't know if this says something nice about Hungarians or not. I knew that they made fantastic paprika, but that garlic craze is new to me.

Da food section

Back by popular demand (really?? ) here is another instalment of this world famous segment. Due to a nosy neighbor on the other side of the yard and who's often there on his balcony when I eat outside on mine, I hesitate to take pics when eating there. It's pretty stupid of me because I owe him nothing and I really don't give a damn what he could think of me, not to mention that a guy between thirty and forty who systematically puts on a apron when he cooks and this for meals which look bland as the color of his walls and which take about the time to read the recipe to prepare, is not at all the type of person I'd like to mingle with. Furthermore, in the last few days, we've been under rain or a cold spell so eating outside was not even an option.

Yesterday I had this favorite of mine, which I've mentioned before in the mammoth food section of my May 3 post, as the last dish of the list. Called "Salade au lard et au mesclun" (Lard and mixed lettuce salad), it's a hot/cold salad combining just cooked and still hot cubes of potatoes, pan-fried pancetta cubes, cold lettuce, hot and reduced red wine vinegar, salt and freshly gound pepper, all tossed together. This time around, I had the right salad. This mixed salad (lettuces) is called mesclun in French and some in the States erroneously call it California mixed salad I think. It's a perfect meal for days when the weather is more fresh than hot. Light but hearty still the same. Accompanying good bread is almost a must. And this time around I had rosé instead of red, which is better. This Bordeaux wine was said to be perfect with a niçoise salad so I bought one the day before because Friend was here and we elected to make a Caesar's salad for supper and as far as moi is concerned, and as far as vinaigrettes and tastes palettes go, it's pretty much the same thing, except for the mustard in the niçoise vinaigrette (which is the typical French vinaigrette). As I mentioned in the previous instalment of this recipe, I don't bother buying the two lards the original recipe calls for, first because pancetta is tastier (or at least I like the taste better), and it's much less fatty than lard, streaked or not.

This one is another re-run, this time on June 19 when the weather was more friendly: veal liver with chips of garlic. I'm still not sure if I like garlic cooked this way, since overcooked garlic becomes quite bitter, but in this recipe, maybe because I put steak spices on the liver, it somehow seems to fit together. I don't remember the name of the wine but by its color I don't think it had the balls to go with this dish.

Finally, since it's almost heavy enough to be considered as food, I'm having this just right now (well, it was right now when I first wrote the sentence). Hadn't had a Maredsous in many years and didn't remember if I liked it or not. Now I can say: good stuff! It's a Belgian abbey brown (dark?) beer boasting a nice 8% alc/vol, brewed according to a Benedictine monk recipe. Monks, besides having sassy roles in movies of the Roses disguised as young Christian Slaters, also spend (spent?) a lot of their time either getting drunk or figuring ways to get other people drunk on fine beers, in both cases a very noble gesture, as far as I'm concerned.

Vieux-Port / Old Port - 2012.06.17

Yearly navel gazing

Radio-Canada's Saturday radio morning show, today. Host Joël LeBigot interviews Gilles Vigneault, our greatest living monument, about his song "Gens du pays" (People of the land) which many (not me) consider to be the unofficial for now and proposed to be official when the time comes, national anthem for Québec.

Joël Le Bigot: «Celle-là puisqu'elle est devenue... mais on sait pas si ça vous fait plaisir... de dire elle est devenue un hymne aussi... "Gens du pays" est né comment?»

Gilles Vigneault: «Eh bien quand on me parle d'hymne national je dis toujours que c'est comme un drapeau , c'est pas ça qui fait avancer le bateau ça le retarde souvent, et jusqu'ici on a utilisé les hymnes nationaux et les drapeaux pour envoyer la jeunesse se faire trouer de balles.. alors on parlera d'une chanson.»

translation:

Joël Le Bigot: «That one, since it has become... but we don't know if it pleases you... to say that it has become an anthem as much... how was «Gens du pays» born?»

Gilles Vigneault: «Well, when I'm told about a national anthem, I always say that it's like a flag, it's not what makes the boat go forward, it often holds it up, and up to now national anthems have been used to have the youth sent to be filled with bullet holes.. so we'll talk about a song.»

He then goes on explaining that he and two others (almost as monumental as Vigneault imo) had been asked to participate in the first large "fête de la St-Jean" (as it was generically called then) megashow on Mount Royal in 1975. For remembrance this is the same show where Ginette Reno first sang Ferland's song «Un peu plus haut, un peu plus loin» of which I've posted about a few times. Since it was a birtday in some way and that the celebration's theme that year was Québec Fête, they had planned to sing "Happy Birthday" [knowing these people, most likely in a sarcastic way], but he got the idea of creating a whole new song for the purpose. Splendid idea the others said, and hey, why don't you go and start. So Vigneault wrote the refrain and they all agreed it was great. Vigneault suggested they then each write a verse. When Vigneault came back with his, the others told him they couldn't do better so Vigneault ended up writing the other two.

A personal version of this song soon appeared and quickly became the de facto song we sang at someone's birthday, all across Québec, and even at times in some other French-speaking countries, in lieu of the traditional English «Happy Birthday To You», which sounds terrible when sung in French. For the personal version, the lyrics are modified to address the person instead of the people in general. It is a very universal and inclusive song, which can be sung to just about anyone anywhere, maybe it's one of the reasons some want to make it a national anthem. On the other hand, for that same reason, I don't think it is fit for that purpose. It is also a poetic song, which is a big plus, for me.

This song also quickly took political overtones and became the song of a nation (in the sociological and French (language) meaning of the word). At the outcome of the 1980 referendum on sovereignty, at the end of his defeat-conceding speech, René Lévesque started to sing this hymn, in a gesture to bring all Quebecers back together after that highly divisive referendum. At his death in 1987, It was also sung spontaneously by people along the route which he traveled from Parliament where he was lying in state, to the Quebec City cathedral where his funerals took place. In Montreal, where he lied in state for a few days at the old Court House in old Montreal and where thousands of mourners waited hours to be able to see him (of which me), people started to applaud when he left the court house, heading for Quebec City. It was the first time such a thing happened here. But that's a another story obviously not related to this song. Then again...

There is a not that bad translation of the song on Wikipedia but which contains a few serious mistakes. I nevertheless used it as a canvas to make a better one. Like I said, it's a poetic song, and «c'est votre tour/de vous laisser parler d'amour» does not mean at all «it's your turn/to let yourselves talk about love» but to «be talked (spoken to) about love». It's a passive form, not active. The use of "country" is also borderline since "pays" in the sense it is used here (by Vigneault, others uses I'll address below) has no real translation in English. It is not at all a country in the political sense, like with borders and stuff. It's a poetic phrase, more of a state of mind, a sense of belonging, something cultural. A region in one's mind or memory, in which one feels at home. It's a little complicated to explain. In an expression like "le pays de l'enfance", pays would be the hood in childhood, say. Land is better than country here, but still not really it, and does not sound well but that's a collateral. Country sounds even worse in these lyrics. I hesitated between "the" and "this" land, and went for the more universal "the". Those who took the word "pays" literally are those who made it a national anthem. And it's not what Vigneault had in mind as I mentioned earlier.

In the personal version (birthdays, celebration parties, hommage, etc), «Gens du pays (People of the Land)» is replaced with «My dear [person's or group's name]», and only the refrain is sung. The first time ever the song was done, at that concert, they replaced, only in the first and leading refrain, Gens du pays by "My dear Quebecers", using it in the 'birthday' application of the song. The political application came later..

That clip above comes from our RDI (allnews channel) and from a program hosted by anthropologist Serge Bouchard. At the end of the video, we hear Vigneault say something (below) which motivated the essential of my life and is why I live in Quebec. No one, ever, will treat me again as a second-class citizen. And for this to happen, it's not very complicated. All one has to do is to own himself, and preferably also, his society. Then, being open to the rest of the world is the easiest thing on this planet to do. I own myself, but some Quebecers still have problems, even today, suffering from over two centuries of British colonialism and still bowing to the conqueror, often without their even being conscious of it. As Jacques Brel said in a famous 1971 interview (my translation): «What is hard, for a man who would live in Vilvoorde and who would want to go to Hong Kong, it's not to go to Hong-Kong, it's to leave Vilvoorde.» When you finally decide to leave Vilvoorde (or Canada), the whole planet is up for grabs.

Vigneault: «I would like, through all that I have done and all that I will still try to continue doing.. to transmit that idea.. to possess oneself.. so as to be able to say "Welcome!" to the people who come to see us».

What he means of course is that when you own yourself, you are no longer afraid of losing your identity, and therefore the stranger, no longer a menace, becomes instead a source of personal enrichment that you welcome heartily. It also means that you have to own your dwelling if you want to have a say on how it's run.

Below is the 1976 St-Jean mega-concert on the mountain (Mount Royal), one year after the 1975 creation of the song. In one year it had already swept Québec. The concert featured five of Québec's greats: the late Claude Léveillée, Jean-Pierre Ferland, Yvon Deschamps, Robert Charlebois, and Gilles Vigneault singing his song helped by others. Keep in mind Vigneault is a poet, not a singer . That historical concert was attended by 300,000. Six months later, René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois were elected, becoming the first ever independentist government in the history of Québec. 1976 was a major date in Quebec's history.

With the "printemps érable" (maple spring) that is shaking Quebec these days, some make a parallel between 1976 and today. Stephen Harper secretly met last week with former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to discuss among other pressing issues the possible return to power of the Parti Québécois, as early as this fall. The thing is, if there were a referendum on independence these days, contrary to the other times, there is no one on the federalist side having enough clout and/or credibility in Québec to even think leading the federalist forces, and those still having a working lightbulb in the brain are a little disturbed by it. These people considered the idea of independence dead and wrote off Quebec. Harper has 5 or 6 members of parliament from Quebec. Might as well say none. English Canada, every time they have a chance, take their wishes for reality. They are clueless about understanding the Quebec psyche. Tough luck for them.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to install a few Québec flags in my hanging flower baskets, because tomorrow is the Fête Nationale of this country-in-the-waiting of which I am very proud to be a citizen of, a country as astounding at times as it can be despairing. But a country with a life. And these days, that's a rarity.

Oh, and I got a red square too.

2012.06.14

Note: this post was edited over a two-day span.

Sweat

We're having our first heat wave today (Wednesday). At 19h00, it's still 32`C outside with a humidex or 'felt' factor, whatever it's called in English, of 40`C under sunny skies. This kind of situation is worse in a big city because of the pollution. Dangerous for the sick or the elderly. I went to Marché Jean-Talon for errands and thank god I could get hold of a Bixi both to and fro. Over there, merchants were obviously unthrilled. They suffer like everyone else, more even because they are outside all day, and to make it worse, the clientele is as scattered as sunflowers in the Arctic. It's supposed to be even hotter tomorrow.

Today is also the year's longest day (as in daylight).

Playa

Montreal has given itself a second man-made urban beach. There's already one on Ile Notre Dame in the middle of the river, near the Casino and the Gilles-Villeneuve Formula One race track. This one dates from the second half of the eighties and is sometimes known as the "plage Doré" by the name of the mayor of the time whose idea it was. It has a real beach giving access to the water which is kept clean and filtered by by a system of algae.

This week, a new one was inaugurated, on the model of Paris-Plage and other urban beaches which though located near the water, do not permit swimming for a variety of reasons. In Paris, the Seine is not what you can call the cleanest of waters, not to mention the boat traffic. In Montreal, it's because the beach is located on a pier (or quay) in the Old Port, the Quai de l'horloge (Clock Quay), which has on its side facing the city a marina, and on its other side the tumultuous and deep waters of the river St-Laurent. The beach itself lines the city side plus the tip of the quay. The setting is beautiful. This past weekend it was open house. Since Monday it's 6$ for an adult to enter the premises. I'm told a season pass is available for 27$. I have a cinch the beach was not deserted today nor will it be tomorrow. Of course, since it was open house, I bothered to Bixi myself downtown on Sunday afternoon and go check things out.

The part of the beach at the tip of the quay is lined with a higher fence and is the recommended area for those with children. The other part lining the marina has very low fencing. At the tip, they have installed an elaborate set of stone steps, or staircase, leading to the Clock Tower. It started to get cloudy not long after I got there so imagine a bright sun for those less sunny pics. Oh, by the way, that very fine and very pale sand was imported from Ohio. It's the kind of sand they use for golf course traps, apparently. The beach is separated in two parts joined by a boardwalk section, boardwalk which also lines both sections on the marina side of the quay.

In English, it seems to be open bar as to how "quay" is pronounced. In the U.K. it's something like a weird 'kee' (based on Google's translation module - never heard it live myself), in the States, it can be kway, key, kay depending on where you live (WordReferencs forums). For the sake of universality, I propose they all pronounce it 'kay' (like the letter K) which is the exact pronunciation of it French equivalent (and origin) "quai". Don't thank me.

The only dark side of this beach is the semi-privatization of a formerly public space. The Old Port belongs to the Federal Government and it is not always developed in accordance with the city's wishes, or simply with our culture in mind. In some (most) areas, you could be in Ottawa, in Vancouver, in Toronto, or any other federally managed outdoors site. Not much originality to talk about. And way too much post-modern destroy-style steel. On the other hand, what it looked like before the new beach was put in place is nothing to be proud of either (pic below)

Paint job update

I've finished a few days ago the painting itself of half of what I had to do. Remains the two closed rooms and the bathroom and for now, that will wait. The job is not finished per se since I still have to hang back on the walls stuff that was there before (or not hang back - decisions to make) and maybe replace some ceiling lighting apparatus and buy an additional floor lamp and maybe some furniture. Enough to keep me busy for a year.

This is the whatever-it's-called entry room. It doubles as a storage room in winter for my bicycle. That plant is a miracle in a pot. It is usually not that lighted in there for much of the day when the ceiling light is off, so it grows erratically, looking for some light. I've had it since before I came to Montreal in 1985. I moved it here with me in my car, along with another one, from Sept-Iles to Montreal, a 950 Km drive. Comes to think of it, it's much older than the vast majority of protesting students.

Dirty queening

I've mentioned before that we have here in each province someone acting as the Queen, our official Head of State for some strange reason, and that this person is called the Lieutenant-Governor. It is a highly symbolic job, and in Quebec at least, this job holds no official residence. If in other provinces, this lieutenant-whatever is the one reading the throne speech at the opening of parliamentary sessions (the government's intentions), in Quebec he's been told years ago to take a hike, and it's the Premier who reads the policies of 'his' government. In other words, besides signing bills voted in Parliament to officially declare them laws, this person serves no real purpose, and most Quebecers wouldn't have a clue who and what that person's name is (I don't, if it's any indication). I've seen it in the papers somewhere, but it's the kind of information I don't bother reserving a space in my memory for.

Unfortunately, in 1997, this job was given to a former television personality turned politician and who happens to be stuck in a wheelchair since she was 14, after an accident. I've never seen her going anywhere with her even touching the wheels. Her chair is pushed by servants. The reason I say unfortunately is not because of what precedes, but because she somehow got into her head that her new job was not a silly remnant from medieval times, but that she was the real thing, that she really was the Queen. And acted accordingly, taking grand airs, and showing up at many public events and make long speeches telling "her subjects" what is good for them. Ten years of this. Although questions were being raised about her lavish lifestyle, it's only in 2007 that they really started to look into her business. They discovered that over those ten years, from spendings of 1,700,000$ for which she got reimbursed, 700,000$ were for those frills, like fancy dinners in top notch restaurants, gifts to some people of her knowing, all of which had the same characteristic of having nothing to do with her job.

Stephen Harper (the royalty freak, remember) and who is responsible to nominate these lieutenant thingies, ditched her in 2007, officially for reasons, he then said, having nothing to do with the revelations. Yeah, sure! The inquest did continue and in 2009, she was formerly charged under six criminal counts, of which fraud, breach of trust, forgery and fabrication of false documents. She's been trying since by all sorts of means to have those charges removed and to avoid a trial, including playing the poor victim, complete with a grief-stricken face.

This is where it becomes juicy. Recently, she made a request to Quebec's Superior Court, through her new lawyer, to nullify the charges on the count that according to an unwritten common law rule, «the queen can do no wrong», or put in other words, that the queen can't prosecute herself. You've got to give it to her new lawyer, he sure pulled up a nice rabbit from his hat. The Court will render judgement on the request in August, but in the meantime, in other countries where they still have remnants of British monarchy in their Statutes, they are a little at unease, to say the least. It has of course never happened in history that a representative of the Queen has been criminally charged and furthermore invoked that rule. And just as here, they have no plan B if it happens.

All this has pretty much to do with what I was explaining in a previous post. The British system is based on basic unwritten rules revolving around gentlemanship and has worked until today because said gentlemanship was, like the rest of the system, mutually understood and taken for granted. We live in a different world today. Nowadays, crooks with no scrupules whatsover, be they political or criminals, make profit of this vulnerability to hijack the system and use it to pursue their own personal goals. Harper, Thibault, all the same.

By the way, Lise Thibault got the job because the one who preceded her had to resign. He is a highly respected stage actor and theatre director who studied medicine before becoming an actor and who, by his own admission, had the [bad] idea, for a prank he said, to draw a swastika on his lab blouse when he was a medicine student.

I'm glad the British could celebrate their Queen's jubilee. They and their queen have obviously a fine relationship.

Out here, however, royalty leaves nothing but a trail of stink. Maybe Elizabeth should ditch Canada, before the stench crosses the ocean.

In this first pic, Lise Thibault with her official chair pusher, savouring all her glory in 2006 when she was playing being the Queen.

pic © Wikipedia Commons

What she looks like today, playing Maria Goretti

pic © Radio-Canada website - photographer uncredited

At my pre-2008 workplace, there was a manager whose wife was the sister of Ms. Thibault. He took pride in letting it be known. He retired some years before 2007 and I later saw him at a social gathering not long before I was transfered downtown in 2008. He wasn't the same color as the wall, but almost. I felt a little sad for him. But certainly not for his sister-in-law.

Fête Nationale du Québec

This week-end is the Fête Nationale (June 24). With the current events of the last months, the mega-concert on Sunday evening risks having a distinct color, figuratively and maybe literally, and also sound since the master of ceremonies for the show barely hinted that 'casserolers' would certainly not be shunned away. I saw today an interview with Adam Cohen, the son of Leonard, who is also a singer and who will be part of that show. For remembrance, Rufus Wainwright participated last year in a duo with a Québec mega-star, Robert Charlebois. Adam said he's proud to be a Montrealer and a Quebecer, and says so whenever he travels and people ask him where he's from. He speaks pretty good French by the way.

Testimonial

The ice cream cones are still on the sidewalk (see a previous post). That indicates it hasn't rained since at least June 16, or that's a pretty darn good quality chalk that kid(s) used.

Mundial?

I haven't followed too much the current football (soccer) series in Europe, that is I don't know for now if it's only European or if it's the Mundial. All I know is that today in late afternoon, hundreds of Portuguese were in the street on boulevard St-Laurent (at the level of Duluth and Rachel St). My take is that Portugal won a game. All traffic was blocked on St-Laurent and at the intersection with Rachel (pic below). I don't now for how long, I was there about fifteen minutes then headed by foot towards the Mont-Royal metro station, 'cause with the intense heat (34C, humidex 41C), there was no way I would use a Bixi to get back home.

I got to St-Laurent just as people started to pour in the street and police cars were desperately trying to rush to the scene, sirens yelling. It cheered me up because I was coming back from a medical appointment at Hôtel-Dieu which was not particularly rejoicing.

2012.06.14

Above

We have tightrope walkers here also. They don't evolve in a spectacular setting like over the Niagara falls, but on the other hand they can do it without a balancing bar and this, day after day .

Chile in a stick

There is a Chilean butcher shop/store on Beaubien St, near St-Laurent. When I pass in that area, I will often enter to buy a Chilean empanada, de pollo o de res, of chicken or beef. Chilean empanadas have a different taste than other empanadas. They contain black olives, hard-boiled egg and a typical mix of herbs and spices plus lots of onions and the meat of course. Theirs are to die for (well, not completely, one has to come back later on to buy some more) and they are the perfect solution when one has no idea what to do for lunch or supper. Lightly reaheated and served with a salad, any salad, lettuce, vegetable, pasta, nopales (cactus), whatever, they are just great.

All this is besides the point. The point is that when I came to pay, they had these things in packs of four, on the counter near the cash register. I asked what they were and the owner replied cuchuflí. I'll be frank with you, I didn't have a clue what he was talking about. So he added, seeing big question marks in my eyes (or maybe it's me who asked) that they were a Chilean specialty (I had that figured out already, especially that it was marked "artesanal" on the label), and that they were filled with dulce de leche, a latino caramel which holds no secret to some of my readers. At 2$ a pack of four, I figured they must have been good so I added one to my purchase. I thought they were made locally by them but back home I noticed on the back label that they were imported from Chile.

Cuchuflí is pronounced koo-tchoo-FLEE with a slight tonal accent on flee. Normally, by rule, it would be pronounced koo-TCHOO-flee, with the tonal accent on the middle syllable. But, as you may know already and if not today is your day of luck as per free new knowledge goes, in Spanish, the sole purpose of accents on vowels is to signal that the word is not pronounced by the customary tonal rules, and that the tonal accent is instead on the syllable where the accent is. Those who walked over their pride and got themselves some eyeglasses when the time came, will have noticed that there is indeed an accent on the final letter "i". There's none on the sealing label however which leads me to believe that although it's imported by a Montreal company and there's an added label in the back in French and English, I suspect that where it's originally packaged and the golden sealing crest is applied, it's also for the American market.

But, I hear some grumbling out there, who cares! What we want to know is what it's made of. Well patience will prove rewarding since I will divulge this precious information rigtht here and now. Mind you, one could already have gone on the internet and spare him/herself all this ridiculous drama, but we make our fun with what we have, don't we?

So it's an ice cream cone shaped as a stick. Ok, more precisely, it's a tube made with sugar, egg whites, flour, butter and vanilla, and which has the same texture as your conic iconic ice cream cone . Inside, it's filled with dulce de leche. I won't repeat what this is, there's a limit to pick up after those who don't pay attention, but I'll add that in Chile, they call it manjar, for reasons I'm not privy to.

[add-on: In French, it's Chili. In English, I always mix Chile and chili (the pepper). And it's cuchuflí, not chuchuflí. I think I'm tired... but not enough to prevent correcting both. Done. ]

Talking of ice cream cones...

Another tell-tale sign of changing street demographics (pic taken June 16).

Battle of the Rings

There's an eclectic music show on Télé-Québec every Saturday evening which is called Belle et Bum. Last Saturday it was a repeat of the November 2011 issue of the program, where one of the invited guests was Shawn Barker, an American from the metro St. Louis, Missouri area, who put up a show dedicated to Johnny Cash, called The Man in Black, and tours with it. He sang three or four Johnny Cash songs on the show, one in duo with a Quebec singer, and of them was a sassy version of Ring of Fire. Besides his musical talent, this guy has a pair of eyes that just grab you in your seat.

Anyways, about an hour later, while I was zapping, I landed on PBS where there was a Chris Isaak special and he was singing, guess what? Yup, Ring of Fire. Can't invent this.

The black guitar player to Barker's right is the show's co-host. The other co-host, Geneviève Borne, one heck of a lady, we don't see here but I've mentioned her before in a previous entry.

I preferred Barker's version a lot more. Or maybe it was the Belle et Bum house musicians. They're pretty hot. Belle et Bum is like a far out version of Austin City Limits. It's very Québécois. A little American, not at all Canadian.

This one, from another Belle et Bum program, I wish I had a brown paper bag to put on my head. Not even the house musicians can salvage this, or rather, thank gawd they were there. Roch Voisine is a New Brunswick (Acadia) born former hockey player turned pop singer. He moved to Québec long ago. About fifteen to twenty years ago, he was huge especially in France where teeny-bopper girls fainted in his trail. Roch Voisine speaks French, of course, and the way he massacres the French words in the second song, You Never Can Tell, is something to hide in the bushes forever. There is only one way to pronounce "Pierre" and "Mademoiselle" in this song and his is not it. Heck, even Chuck Berry pronounces them better, for crissakes. It's not the opinion of those who commented thevideo, I must say. Fans, assuredly. After all, he still remains a pretty face, for those who like this 'genre'.

The Voisine show was recorded at Théâtre Plaza, not far from my pad on St-Hubert St (Plaza), where it was for years. This season they moved to the Théâtre National, a nice hall with enveloping balconies which we see in the Barker video, and which is located on Ste-Catherine St smack in the middle of the Gay Village, facing the Beaudry metro station, the one with the Gay rainbow stripes.

Nostalgia

I was listening to a radio station from Mexico City (Radio México - La radio cultural por internet and they were saying it was 17˚C at around 13h00 their time (mine -1). Here it was 28˚C. Mexico is located very high on a ridge (elevation 2250m, 7381 ft). and the climate is quite temperate. Nothing to do with what it is on the coast. I listen often to that station, which features music most of the time. Not necessarily Mexican, but in Spanish at the very least. Eleven years since I was in México Ciudad and its surroundings for almost a month, in July of 2001. I miss that city.

Métro Papineau - 2012.06.06
Louis-Joseph Papineau sans/without Victoria

Business as usual

The Los Angeles Kings won the Stanley Cup, for the first time in their 45 year history I read in the news. Forty-five years? Gosh it's like it was yesterday. I remember when the National Hockey League had only six teams. I used to watch hockey in those days. Then the league expanded in the United States, and later on in other Canadian cities. Then the Philadelphia Flyers started to act as goons and to beat up the players from the other teams. Before that, there used to be some violent clashes between players, but it was mostly only during the end of the season playoffs, when tensions were very high. After the Flyers, it became day to day routine. You beat me, I beat you. Violence in hockey has progressed ever since, so much that hockey fans these days don't even recognize it's there, taking it as part of the game. It's gotten to the point that it's rampant amongst junior leagues also, with kids who barely have begun to develop body hair being encouraged by moron parents drooling and yelling in the stands to go and beat the shit of players from the other team. It's gotten to the point that they had to enact strict rules to prevent the even younger ones to fall in this culture of violence. I don't watch hockey anymore. I haven't for about forty years, I just realize. When I zap and land on a hockey game (on CBC usually), there's 90% chances, by my experience, that I'll land on someone trying to break a body part of another player, the head more often than not. Hockey and concussions are synonyms.

It's sad, because hockey is a nice game. It's just that they stopped playing and airing it about forty years ago. I remember the 1972 Series of the Century between Canada and the then Soviet Union. The Soviets came here and showed a mesmerized Canadian public that hockey could also be played with intelligence and art, and not only as a form backyard brawls as it was here. Canada won four, the Soviets three, and one game tied. But in fact, the Soviets lost much more. Our goon way of playing became the norm. As with everything else, the crap takes the cake, because crap is cheaper and brings in more bucks.

I have a particular grudge against all those media sports commentors who, over and over and over, tear their shirt in outrage every time one of those incidents happens, as if it was the first time ever, and do nothing to have it stopped besides tearing their shirt for 30 seconds, before resuming business as usual until next incident, usually a matter of days (or day, at times).

A380 - the epilogue

I shouldn't have talked about the Airbus A380. Air France announced Monday that it will remove Montreal from its fly list as of October, due to a smaller than expected demand, in business class mostly. Air France has eight A380 currently serving, besides Montreal, the cities of New York, Washington, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, Tokyo et Singapour. Anyways, as a consolation, if it falls, it won't be on my head.

Whoring around

Mitt Romney has a new friend: Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino mogul. He had vowed to spend up to 100 million in support of Newt Gingrich in the primaries. He and his family finally gave "only" about 25 million to Newt's Super PAC before he called it quits. This money was spent in large part on ferocious ads against Romney. Now that Newt is gone, Romney suddenly becomes acceptable to Adelson, who along with his wife recently gave 10 million to the Romney Super PAC. What is the definition of prostitution again?

This total of 35 million would apparently be a new record, and made possible by the decision of the U.S.A. Supreme Court authorizing enterprises, unions and individuals to finance Super PACs of their choosing, without any limit whatsoever.

Incidentally I was reading an article only a few days ago about how the American Supreme Court has become (is being considered) more and more irrelevant on the world scene, in the last decades. It was not the case before, when its decisions were often used as something equating to "the guiding light". Another fine legacy left by Republican neo-Whatevers.

Paint job - more about...

I finished part one of the project. Tuesday was a write-off since it rained heavily all day. Too dark and sticky to do anything. Today I'll try to start the whatever-it's-called front room, a vestibule maybe, since it's where I do get dressed in preparation to going out. The radical "vest" means more or less clothes, and the French word for getting dressed, vêtir or se vêtir, was originally written vestir. The circumflex accent in French replaces a former "s". I don't feel right now like looking for the etymology of vestibule, but I'd bet it has a lot to do with a place one gets dressed or undressed. That room, where is my front door, is separated from the rest of the apartment by a patio door. Not an ordinary flimsy one with a screen, but a very heavy one with large white contours and equipped with thick tempered glass. I wasn't living here when the apartment was renovated (two years before I popped up, in 1985) but I'm pretty sure there are not many other apartment out there with such an entrance.

What to you do on a rainy day? You travel to Belgium. Not with a car though cause at 8,4% alcool...

Social crisis - not much more about

I mean not much more that I care to talk about. It's getting nastier by the day. And the government is on full crackdown mode, hammering that the pacific protestors, and especially those wearing the red square, are violence ridden and intimidators. Everyone knows that they do this for electoral purposes and it's pretty sickening. I passed way too much time commenting in newspaper blogs these last days for my own good. There is so much to say that it would be never-ending so for now I'll just skip the subject.

Reconciliation

I planted my basil yesterday. I waited this far in the season because every year, Friend and I are rushed into making our yearly batch of tomato sauce because the basil becomes overdue too early, losing its chlorophyl and a lot of its taste by the same token. Ideally it's better to wait for the second week of September for the best tomatoes. By planting the basil in early June as before, it was ready in late August, which was too early. With a ten day delay this year, it should be just right.

July who?

I wasn't to post on this, but it's kinda cute in some way, so what the heck! The paint will wait.

On May 1, 2011, the New Democratic Party of Canada was and had always been a curiosity in Québec, having, at times, a lone Member of Parliament from this province. It's a party with left oriented policies, very social democrat you could say. They are those who first started medicare in Canada, in the Prairies. They are the antithesis of Harper's morons, er... I mean conservatives. However they were also a very centralist party, considering the federal government as much more important than the provincial ones. This did not pass at all in Quebec, hence their quasi absence from the political scene. Quebec on the other hand had its own leftist federal party, the Bloc Québécois. The Bloc Québécois was created in the early 90s, when Canada once again shit on us, with the Meech Lake accord. It is of course an independentist party. Their arrival on the federal scene was massive and sudden, so much that they became at that election Canada's Official Opposition. An absurd situation and unheard of needless to say. However, for many reasons which I don't necessarily agree with, Quebecers thought that this situation, a separatist party representing them in Ottawa, was kind of leading nowhere, after 20 years. Since they are viscerally and for a large majority against Harper and his ultra-conservative agenda, they turned to the next best thing, the leftist NDP. So on May 2, 2011, history repeated itself and the day closed with Québec sending a whopping 58 new NDP members of parliament to Ottawa, making that party the new Official Opposition, tossing the Liberals.

Recap: the NDP is for a strong centralized federalism and since it was essentially an out-of-Quebec party since its foundation in the mid 20th century, you can't say it was overly French, if you know what I mean.

My member of Parliament is from the NDP. Up to now, he's one of the newcomers who impress the most in Ottawa. If what follows is an indication of what's to come, some people in the ROC are not finished having bad dreams.

Members of Parliament have a budget at their disposal so as to send once in a while if they wish small parliamentary bulletins to their constituents. My member is no different than the others. What is special however is this:

The above is not the French side of the leaflet's cover page. This is THE cover page. English available upon request, it says. That's it. In Canada where bilingualism is an official policy and where everything coming from the federal government is printed in both English and French but only used as a front in English-speaking provinces where getting French language services is often akin to a fat joke, this is not usual at all. It breaks the facade they worked so hard to put up.

And the above is another page of the leaflet, this one listing all the major events happening this summer in our riding (Rosemont-La Petite Patrie). Keep in mind that Canada Day, our equivalent of the 4th of July, or France's 14 juillet, is the 1st of July. You can't say he overdid it in reminding people about it, did he? Then again, NOTHING ever happens in my riding on Canada Day, besides people moving from an apartment to another, a yearly ballet less and less elaborate as condos pop up and rented apartments diminish. I do celebrate Canada Day however. I get up in the morning and I look at the small Quebec flags I stuck in my hanging flower baskets for the Fête Nationale (the real one, ours, June 24) and which I carefully make sure not to remove before July 2nd, and I enjoy the moment. Call it a statement, if you wish.

His referring to June 24th as Fête Nationale is also something undheard of from anyone evolving in or around a federalist outfit. For them, it's St-Jean-Baptiste Day, period, as it was before Quebecers gave themselves a distinct identity from other French-Canadians. Something these people negate to this day. Like I said, if others are like him in the NDP (and it's my take), Canada's sleep is anything but guaranteed.

The above is a red square. If you're not intimidated by looking at it, there's nothing to be ashamed of, really.

Now back to paint. White, for the nervous ones.

Plaza St-Hubert près de/near Bélanger - 2012.05.31 - 21h12

Noise job

Big week-end. First the Formula 1 Grand Prix and also the beginning of the FrancoFolies, an international festival of songs in the French language or coming from French-language countries. There are other Francofolies at different times in the year, in France and Belgium, namely. It started in La Rochelle (France) in 1985, but Montreal's one is by far the largest in both public attendance and participants. The FrancoFolies revolves around the Place des Arts/Place des Festivals area, while the Grand Prix parties are little more westbound, mostly on a stretch of Crescent street.

Friday, there were three demonstrations. One to protest the [indecent] spash of money which is the F1 Grand Prix, and organized by a militant group called the CLAC (Coalition Large Anti-Capitaliste - Wide Coalition Against Capitalism). Another one was organized to protest the degrading of women of which this event is the epitomy, with its bimbos on and around cars and all over the place where people congregate for this very machistic event. This one featured what we called here "manufestants", that is nude protestors. Most were not 100% nude, although red squares on nipples and panties is not what you can call being overdressed. Some guys did show their attributes, I saw in a clip. Finally, there was the 46th daily march, held by the striking students and those who support them, which starts each evening at 20h30 at Parc Émilie-Gamelin and which is always illegal because they never tell their itinerary in advance so it's a wild guess each night where they will go. There was another more dressed up march on Saturday afternoon about the women exploitation thing:

Pic © Huffington Post Québec / AP

Since this is the F1 Grand Prix week-end which is the yearly mega party of the Haves and their wannabes, all having in common that a car for them is a form of penile extension, they of course benefit from all the advantages of being in the Haves section of society, like heavy (a euphemism) police security. At times there is more police than protestors. They even got some help from suburban police forces, people who are very used to dealing with disrupting crowds and mobs in a dense urban environment. Police blunders expected.

In the area on or near Crescent Street, restaurants and bars have lots of loudspeakers outside and the protesters who come nearby have, them, their casseroles and their protest chants, so it's quite bordelic as per noise goes. The occasional protestor yelling out when a police officer beats (er... I mean arrests ) him or her adds a little spice to the cacophony.

To this is to be added the noise from Ile-Notre-Dame where the Gilles-Villeneuve race circuit is located and which is at a stone's throw from downtown and where for three days it's vrooom vrooom with some tire and other tests on Friday, qualifications on Saturday, and the race itself on Sunday.

Speaking of Villeneuve, the other one, the son, he made himself a bunch of new enemies on Friday. He said something like the students are a bunch of lazy whiners sitting on their ass and should go back to school. Jacques Villeneuve has been educated in top notch private schools in Switzerland and refuses to send his kids to Québec's public school system which he considers inferior. A nice case of "do what I say, not what I do". Jacky should mingle more with the people, he'd find out that those lazy asses are the student population in the world which works the most in part-time jobs during their studies, year-round, to either make ends meet, pay their tuition, or buy that laptop they need for their studies. I've seen lazier people, like for instance those whose financially at ease parents pay for everything, maybe?

As per demonstrations go, Saturday was pretty much a mix of the same with variants. Maybe with a little more spice (see above). Someone reported on Twitter a little while ago that at the end of one of those daily protests, one protester said amicably to a police officer something like "Good night. See you tomorrow". This may only mean something to North Americans, but that situation reminded me, with a smile, about the Looney Tunes characters Sam the sheepdog and Ralph the wolf which we used to watch on television, and where after a day's shift of the first beating up the other, they would both go punch their time clock card and exchange civilities of the same nature.

Pic © Wikipedia Commons

Elsewhere in Canada, it's the Stanley Cup hockey final. On CBC, hockey is a religion. Hockey Night in Canada is about the only show the ROCers watch on their national broadcaster with enough viewship to show in the ratings (I exaggerate, but barely). For the rest, they watch mostly American shows on other networks. Hockey players are like Montreal's police in demonstrations. They can knuckle out any protestor, they're certain they'll get away with it. Yesterday, the media in the ROC were all on catastrophe mode. A horse which is supposed to be the embodiement all by itself of Canadian pride was removed from an important race in the States, the Belmont something, because it was injured. Its jockey (a Latino, maybe Mexican I don't know), from what I understand, is not even Canadian. I know all this because sometimes I zap and bother watching here and there puffs of wind blowing from that region. Thank gawd I have a TV, because in our media here it's Horse Who?

By the way, most of those freaking out about what goes on in Montreal are from the suburbs and some other places in the province. Most tourists and most Montrealers just go by their business as if nothing. And most of those who say they won't come to Montreal are less scared for their safety than for not finding a parking spot or being stuck in a trafic jam. These people need a car like others need lungs. Police brutality always makes the headlines because the media only focus on that. Behind, 98% of demonstrators are peaceful, civilized, and at times downright funny. And for one bystander who sends them the finger, there are hundreds of others who applaud or encourage them.

reminder: ROC = Rest Of Canada

Paint job

Thursday I went for a haircut at 13h30. Little afterwards I started painting and ended at 20h00. Friday, I went for the second coat which occupied me from 12h30 to 19h30. Generally speaking, I think it's a lot of time and physical pain in the right shoulder (a lot of ceiling) but it's worth it when you end up with a fine nice paint job.

Well it's not a fine and nice paint job, especially on the ceilings. And I am rather pissed about it. One thing is for sure, I'm not starting anything in the other rooms before I determine for sure what went wrong. All the problems came with the second coat. I don't know if it's because I didn't put a primer initially, or if the second coat was too thin, but it's full of dull spots on an otherwise somewhat shiny surface (pearl finish). In other words you can see all the movements of the paint roller. It had not done this with the first coat but it needed a second one because I hadn't used an initial primer and we could still see the "old" white-having-become-less-white previous paint.

It's not the end of the world. But with time since the last paint job in 1994, the ceiling had developped such spots and it's one of the reasons I wanted to repaint. To go through all this work to end up with worse than before is not what qualifies in my book as "funny".

Paint job update - June 11

I tried a fix-it and it worked. I applied a third coat, this time with very long roller strokes and pushing hard on it while doing so. On the second coat, the lighting was bad and I couldn't see where I had painted and not painted and I had done smaller strokes from left to right instead of front to rear. Added to this the ceiling's plaster is not even and I'm not sure I have the right type of roll for this type of rough surface. What happened is that it rolled on a somewhat kerplunk kerplunk way, with alternating spots having more paint and others less, and I couldn't see it because the lighting was bad and if I lighted more with a spotlight it was even worse. Yesterday in late afternoon the daylight was just right and I gave it a go on the part of the ceiling where it was the most obvious. This morning, karma! By the way, I know we should use flat paint on ceilings, in good part to avoid problems like this. The thing is, my apartment like many in Montreal, because the island is offset, is very badly lighted. I want the most light possible to be reflected on the walls and ceilings. My situation is even worse than others since the city planted a maple just in from of my pad some twenty years ago and now it is huge, so in summer it blocks almost all the daylight. This tree is very close, like every year I have to cut the branches that get into my balcony's or the stairs' area. They don't plant such trees smack in front of buildings anymore, I notice, but that's not much help to me.

What I had not mentioned and which was representing at least 50% of my despair was that I had used a small roller (about 6", 15 cm) with long hair in its end (I think it's made just for that) to make sure all angles were well painted in the crease, something impossible to do with the larger roller. Therefore there was on both sides of every wall and/or ceiling connection a 6" white band before I started to paint the rest of those walls, or put differently, each piece of wall was framed. However, even after two coats, those bands were still visible like a zit in the face. I figured that if I added a little bit of paint just below thoses lines with the large roller and then shyed away from it in a degrading motion, it might somewhat alleviate the problem. I had Friend on the phone and after mentioning my idea, his take was that I could just worsen the whole thing. He's usually of good counsel but boy am I glad that his take on this one was complete bull. I did as I had planned and the lines, although still visible for the keen eye, are no more as obvious as before and... a very important and... no visible trace of the intervention. I could always give it a second shot but I'm totally fed up with part one of this paint project and need to move on. Besides I'm tired of living somewhat in a camping situation. I need to have things back to where they belong, the stereo system to work again, to continue working on my Frida Khalo puzzle, to have again a table in the kitchen where I can eat in some kind of decorum, away from painter tape rolls, piles of unread newspapers, screwdrivers and other un-food-related thingamagigs.

Loosely put, spirits are back on the rise. And I have two good Belgian beers to enebriate myself with.

Psychiatric job

Our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is more and more suffering from some kind of reality disconnection which I'm not sure psychiatrists have found a name for it yet. After queening in London for a few days, he took on himself to cross the Channel and go explain to dumb French Presidents and German Chanceliers that they don't really know much about running the economy and that he and his Canada are so shit hot in those matters that it's to die for. Harper, while insulting these people, is also working hard in parallel to establish a free-trade agreement with them. I don't know if he knows what is more than one dot, but if he does, he sure wouldn't know how to connect any two of them together.

Harper also bluntly said that any organism which receives funds from the federal goverment and takes a position which goes against government policy will have its funds cut or be simply dismantled. That's what he's been doing for some time now to everything related to environmental issues, but it's the first time he owns to it. Just an example of what this means: suppose a group whose job is to counsel the government and all Canadians by the same token on environmental issues, and this groups finds out and says (facts to support) that a particular government supported policy is a disaster on the medium or long run for whatever reason, then the government is justified to flush said group because 'it would act against the interests of the Canadian taxpayer'. In short, any opposition is anti-democratic. Figuring this one out is where the psychiatry part comes in.

About the above, this translated by Google and fine-tuned by me excerpt of an editorial by Jean-Robert Sansfaçon in my paper's weekend edition: (original French here. Bold is mine.)

«This is the vicious circle: to obtain financing, debtor countries must undergo austerity measures that exacerbate the recession, which in turn widens the gap and increases the borrowing needs ...

Here is a suicidal attitude from the government of an exporting country which at the same time is seeking to sign a free trade agreement with that Europe which it despises from the top of a fragile success of which it is not responsible and that it does not even understand!»

This says it all. A bunch of dangerous clueless economic sorcerers feeding on ideology. Like all neocons, for that matter.

Spelling job

It seems that they are not very prone on geography in Atlantia, where CNN is based. Maybe we should send this pic to Harper, to sober him up about his megalomania. He'll find out that you don't have to travel far to find someone who can't locate his shit-hot Canada on a map, let alone spelling its name correctly.

Pic © Huffington Post Québec / Twitter (Justin_Lewis27)

Silent job

One of my uncles died in his sleep last Monday. He was a former government minister in the sixties and then judge until his retirement in 1994 and was also a very important figure in the promotion of Acadians in New Brunswick, especially with regards to the using of French in courts, in laws etc. He was Justice Minister when the province became officially bilingual in 1969 and he was the first judge ever in New Brunswick's history to render a judgement in French. His funeral was yesterday but I didn't attend because first I have no car fit to make a 900 Km drive (1800 return trip) and I was also stuck with my paint job. My mother who lives in Acadia (or New Brunswick under today's official boundaries) did go, along with a brother of mine. Physically and as per character goes, of all his brothers, he was the one who resembled the most my own father. Both were very generous persons, especially with regards to the Have-nots. My father, who died in 1971, was his elder by two years.

Leaking job

A few days ago, a pipeline leak near Red Deer, Alberta (about half-way between Calgary and Edmonton) let go 3,000 barrels of crude oil in the Red Deer river. That's about 475 000 litres.

Plains Midstream (the pipeline's owner) apparently has not finished yet to clean another spill of some 4,5 million litres of oil which happened on April 29, 2011, near Peace River, also in Alberta.

Alberta is of course home to the dirty oil sands.

Ecological and environmental concerns of mine put aside, ask me if I cry for Alberta!

Ave Christophe-Colomb - Tour de nuit - 2012.06.01

Above

Some of Montreal in a pic: outside stairs, a bicycling population, BIXIs, orange construction cones, no turning left on main arteries, French street names and parties (behind photographer ).

Coming to one's senses

Once again, on Sunday, Mr. Weatherman came to his senses and postponed the delivery of the bags of rain he had in store for that day. So the Tour de l'Île benefited from very nice weather, even nice sunny breaks. At 50 Km, it was not the longest I've seen since the first ones in the mid-eighties, but for those who like me participated (then, not now ) without too much physical preparation (read: nil), it's quite a hefty ride and those rest areas along the route are anything but superfluous.

Tape, tape, tape

Half of my apartment has to be painted in one shot because the ceiling and one wall extend from the front to the rear, or from the rear to the front if you like to exasperate others with silly word games. The other two rooms and the bathroom and the front I-don't-know-what-it's-called-but-it-has-a-patio-door-in-it-and-it's-weird will have to be done later. I expect to finish before Christmas, mostly because I'm already fed up to the hilt. For the part of what I'm doing now, the cleaning is just about done and most of the furniture and stuff on walls has been transferred to my bedroom for most of it. Now I'm installing the green painter's paper tape. All window and door frames, baseboards and cabinets are varnished, not painted. That means that they all have to be lined with tape to protect them from the paint. Only exception, the two front windows which have been replaced two years ago and have cheap fake-wood frames. It changes nothing since I have to tape the inside instead of outside. Big job. I haven't finished yet and have already used a whole roll of tape. I'm bored.

Panic in Ottawa?

Later today Venus will pass in front of the Sun. It will start at 18h03 in Montreal with the best views starting at 18h21, so we will only see the first hour of a six hour (I think) phenomena. Those living more in the west, like in California to name a place at random will get more of it.

In 2010, there was an exhibit here at the Old Port dedicated to sex and destined to teenagers. It was funded in good part by federal money. It had a nice success and after Montreal it went off to Regina, Saskatchewan, where it was just as successful. Neither here nor in Regina has it caused any problem whatsoever.

This summer it landed in Ottawa. Big mistake. Some stupid puritan freaks put up a complaint to our equally stupid puritan Minister in the Harper government whose department was responsible for the funding of the exhibit. Result: censorship. Those to whom it is intended won't be able to see it if mommy or daddy are not with them. Pure religious imbecility. You see, under those cro-magnon's rule, adolescents are not to be told anything about sex and how it works. Otherwise they'd make less unwanted babies and there would be less abortions and those right-wing religious dogs wouldn't have anything to bite on.

So I do expect the Canadian government to lodge an official complaint to the Master of All Things and of the Universe They're Set In to protest about the Goddess of Love showing all her fineries today to those unsuspecting children who will undoutedly suffer irredeemable damage the scope of which can't even be imagined.

I had posted as a header of my July 4, 2010 post a pic of a sign in the Old Port announcing the exhibit. Here it is again.

Whichever way you turn things around, you always end up with the conclusion that Harper's version of Canada is a shithole. Period.

Maybe 'despise' was not that bad a choice of word, after all. Already that I had downgraded from an original 'hate' to a less offensive 'despise'.

UPDATE 20h20:

It was cloudy when the Goddess of Love mingled with the Sun. I'm therefore happy to announce that no Montreal kid suffered brain damage by watching them frolicking around.

I also hear 'casseroles'. The movement is still kickin'.

Still provocative

Madonna's show in Tel-Aviv caused a little stir in France. In a video part of the show, at one point she shows a picture of Marine Le Pen with a svastika drawn on her forehead, after having shown a picture of Hitler. According to an article in Le Nouvel Observateur (a prestigious French paper) Madonna would have crossed the Godwin point on this. Some say that Marine Le Pen is not as bad as her father and that equating her to nazis was over-done, if not trivializing their horrors. On the other hand, when she goes somewhere on campaign and sees a French-born person having North-African immigrant parents and riding a convertible car and asks him if he won it at the loto instead of by working, she does not help herself by pushing this racial prejudice about all people of Arab origin being either drug dealers or system leeches. As for all right-wingers especially the ultra-right ones, simplistic answers to complicated problems they don't fully grasp, and answers also to irrational fears which they are instrumental themselves into creating, is their common modus operandi.

About Madonna having gone overboard, I don't know. She's not to her first controversy. All I do know is that the show is staged by Quebecer Michel Laprise from the Cirque du Soleil, the same who staged her performance at the SuperBowl, and lots of the show's multimedia content (what they call theatrical visuals) is produced by the Montreal firm Moment Factory. Madonna herself has Québécois roots by her mother. That combined with her Italian roots by her father can only give way to something good, doesn't it?.

Dangerous help

Mark O'Mara, George Zimmerman's lawyer, is a funny guy. Apparently Zimmerman received a bundle of money from internet donations and neglected to declare these revenues when it came time to set the amount of his bail. When the judge learned about it, it was back in jail rapido presto for Mr RoomGuy (zimmer is a room in German). Mr O'Mara tried to explain this behaviour of Zimmerman's by saying it was an «error (...) caused by fear, wariness and confusion» (my retranslation). I don't have a law degree, but seems to me that this is exactly the argument expected to be brought in court by the prosecution to explain that Zimmerman, far from being in self-defense mode initially at least, just got his brains overspeeding when he saw the Black kid, precisely for the same reasons.

If I were Zimmerman, I'd change lawyer and fast. Something which I'm not sure he hasn't already done prior to this current one.

Tee-Oh on freak mode

[This is a rant - be warned and skip if so pleases - especially that I told Friend about the theory I'm exposing below and he told me in other and more direct words that it's 'unsubtantiated', namely about the Magnotta murder being a sex murder. I disagree on this last one but for the rest, Ok. On the other hand, he doesn't fall as often as I do on some of their fine media like the Toronto Sun et al, so I may have an edge here ]

T-O is how they call Canada's largest city, outside of Québec. Some will even venture a slightly sarcastic or humourous Tah-RON-tah. We simply call it Toronto or "la Ville Reine" (the Queen City). This has nothing to do with Toronto being the largest city since we called it that way well before it became such, aka when Montreal was still Canada's metropolis. It rather has all to do with it having been a haven for British Loyalists fleeing the American revolution, and with what for a very long time has also been a hellhole for anyone having a French culture in this country. In Toronto, the Queen is queen. Always has been. These days, with 49% of its population not having been born in Canada, it changes, but the old base is still there. And by old base, I mean that special type of puritanism bathing in a thick sauce of hypocrisy.

This said, there was a shooting a few days ago smack in a downtown Toronto shopping mall, the Eaton Center, and in the food area at that. Some street gang settling of accounts, at first glance, but apparently it wasn't. All we know is that the victim was targeted. However there were dead and injured innocent bystanders. Understandably the city was in shock, although a female worker who lives in one of those violent areas of which Toronto never talks about, mentioned not in those words, but something like hey, what's new?

Where I'm coming at is that immediately after and since then, the very first thing both the police and Toronto's mayor (Rob Ford) systematically do when they start their press conferences is to engage in full-fledged damage control, insisting that Toronto is not a violent city, that this is not representative of the city, and blah-blah-blah and blah. He just did it again after the shooter was arrested. "Toronto is the safest city in the world" the mayor says. Nothing less. The victims? They're mentioned. As a statistic. But only after what really counts. Business. In other words, money first, the rest can wait.

Today the body chopper was arrested in a Berlin cyber-café after a short stint in France where he arrived on May 26th we're told. Montreal mayor's first words, just told about the capture, were to express all his sympathy to the Chinese community and to the family of the Chinese victim [of this sordid and gruesome murder]. That was it. Neither today nor since the first discovery of the torso in a suitcase has he ever mentioned anything about how this was not Montreal. And this even if that sicko is a pure product of greater Toronto, and even if he was labeled the Montreal butcher all over the planet, even if he only moved here recently. He never felt the need to tell people Montreal is a "safe" city, which it is, and a lot more than Toronto as far as I am concerned. If what is going on here since a few months would have happened in Toronto, it would have been a blood bath. We saw what they were capable of with a somewhat smaller, wait... I mean very much smaller scale event like the G20 a few years ago.

Harper's reaction about the arrest (he is in London UK, Queening) was to send all his heartfelt congratulations to the police forces. That's it. Not a word about the victim. The police did NOT find Magnotta. He was recognized by someone from the cyber-café's personel who THEN called the police. Of course the police was instrumental in posting the murderer's face all over the planet, and sooner or later he would have been caught, but technically, had it not been of this guy, he would still be on the run. Harper likes the police. He likes playing cops and robbers. He does so with toys for grown-ups, unfortunately. He gets orgasms doing photo ops dressed in military gear and posing in the pilot's seat of military war planes, military helicopters, and military tanks. That these things kill people is not something that readily pops to his mind. Oh, just heard on tv that Montreal's police spokesman, the one I was whining about recently, and he also says that «Interpol is great for that, but you know, It's not only the police...». Gosh Stephen, even the police is letting you down.

For the record, Luka Rocco Magnotta is from Ontario, and so was that other couple who took sexual pleasures and gratification in raping and killing girls while filming themselves, also dismembering them at times, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, and so is that other serial rapist and murderer Russell Williams, colonel in the Canadian Air Force (er... I mean ROYAL Canadian Air Force, it's been renamed by Harper), a sex sicko who burglarized women's homes and sniffed their panties and occasionally raped and killed them. Williams was a military hero. The stuff Harper's dreams are made of. I don't know, as per sex freaked wackos are concerned, they seem to have their good share of inclination in that patch of the land. It's not an accident if their murderous sickos revolve around sex more than elsewhere. It's sociological, and I don't want to get into this. We have sickos too, but ours are fuse blowers, not carefully planning sadists. I wonder, before bashing others (us) while draping themselves in virtue, maybe they should keep themselves a little reserve? If only for the sake of simple decency, for starters. And it's only because they never miss a chance to hit on us that I bother ranting about it. Otherwise, I wouldn't give a flying fuck about Toronto. There are such a multitude of better (and cheaper) places to live or to go to on this planet that I'll leave to others the enjoyment of her frills!

It's not a secret that I will never live in that part of the country. Some days more than others, I'm reminded why. Conflicting values, essentially.

Pic below originally posted in my June 3, 2011 post, along with a big bunch of balls, not theirs fortunately. The one on the right is still the Defence Minister. He likes F-35s (an offensive-oriented plane) so much that he underestimated a contract to buy some for Canada by 15 billion dollars, or to make things clearer, by 50%, and this even if the plane is not even running yet and is already a financial disaster, and seemingly also a technological one. The one on the left is the control freak having... oh, never mind.

JUNE 6 UPDATE

It's the economy, stupid!

Or is it?

I thought people who were business-minded were supposed to be the guiding light of modern-age societies, or so would they want us to believe. I personally have my doubts about this. In fact I think they often act pretty stupidly, to put it bluntly.

The Labatt brewing company, makers of the famous (much more in English Canada than in Québec for reasons I don't have a clue about) Labatt Bleue / Labatt Blue beer, were not happy about Montreal's English daily, the Montreal Gazette, for having had on its website a photo of Magnotta (the body chopper) in which he was holding a bottle of Labatt Blue. The pic was from Magnotta's Facebook site and was used to illustrate an article about him. Labatt sent a formal request to have the picture removed, under the pretext that it was hindering its image. Twitter users, who became aware of this, jumped on this and created a new Twitter handle called "newlabattcampaign" where they started to make morbid jokes associating parts of the body with the trademark. In other words Labatt's gesture backfired grand. The Gazette declared that it would not remove the photo and Labatt published a communique today (yesterday) saying it was accepting the decision and was considering the case closed. Yeah, sure, wink wink. They freaked out, that's why they backed off. As one 'tweet' mentioned: «TIP OF THE DAY: If you see a murderer posing with your product, don't draw attention to it». I've come with time to notice that business people are notorious for doing over and over and over the same mistakes, decade after decade, and are also notorious for blaming others for the result of their blunders, but that's another story.

I don't understand, after all the events of the last months here where youngsters, by using internet and the social media, managed to make even the government look like a bunch of dimwits and have generated the largest popular movement in decades, that the people from Labatt didn't have a clue they were putting their foot in their mouth like there's no tomorrow. Where the hell have they been? All they managed to do is to focus all the attention on what they were trying to shun away. And these are the people who want to run our economy? Geez.... do we have a plan B?

A380

The other day I was downstairs on the sidewalk casseroling with my downstairs neighbor. He is a college professor, from the same college as that other political sciences professor who started the whole casserole movement some weeks ago. I didn't know that the other one lived not far from us and that my neighbor regularly car shares with him (that college is about an hour's drive). My neighbor was saying that the other professor was wondering if he had created a monster. I suppose jokingly.

What all this has to do with this section's title? While we were casseroling and chatting, this large plane passed over our heads, much slower and lower than usual. Early evening is when most planes heading to Europe leave Montreal with an arrival at destination in the early morning their time. My neighbor told me it was probably an Airbus A380. After looking at the tail, an Air France plane indeed it was. Anyhow, it was not large, it was huge. And it was flying so low and so slow that I couldn't but marvel at how this giant of the airs could fly without falling. Truly impressive.