It's a Grey Day

Yet another shitty day in Montreal. April ate my balls. What can be more disappointing that waking up and not being able to get out of your heavenly bed cause it's too damn cold everywhere but under your blankets ?

You know you hate what is commonly being called "grisaille". I almost learned to love grey days thanks to Zoot Woman's wonderful track of the same name. But a song won't do to heal a bleeding heart - and a freezing ass.

I don't want this blog to become an "evil whiny Meteomedia twin" but for my complaints to stop, the problem would have to be resolved. Tell that to the weather woman. Tell her I've had it with the cold, and that it's time for the sun to shine. Feels like fuckin' autumn right now if you wanna know what I'm thinking...

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Canada Post just released a stamp with Fay Wray on it. It's part of the "Canadians in Hollywood" series. Funny sense of timing, with the King Kong remake and everything, don't you think ?

Three more faces will be unveiled in the next few months. They're keeping it a surprise, just like in Hollywood. And that reminds me of the good old days I was still a kid, collecting stamps and making friends who shared the same interests. My mother was worried about me - rightfully or not, that is still debatable. I was a library rat, except that the library was right at home. I would spend my whole evenings at home, reading. The week-ends were no different. That the sun was shining or not did not matter; in fact, the more beautiful the day was, the more I'd be inclined to stating outside and read.

In order for me to make friends - geeks like me, that's what everybody was afraid to admit - my mom signed me on to some stamp collectors association who held workshops in a cultural center somewhere in Laval. Or was it when we were living in Trois-Rivières ? I cannot honestly remember.



The "workshops" basically consisted of about an hour of "stamp talk" where old collectors would give us young thugs their tricks, and then we'd just sit around and talk, and exchange stamps. There were people of every age, all reunited by this "passion". The older ones were more generous, giving us free stuff, and advice. I even visited a few "stamp conventions" at Place Bonaventure, and it all seems extraordinarily surreal for me right now. But that was a wonderful gesture coming from my mom, and even tho I do not have any friends left from that era, I'd like to thank her for that.

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Which brings me to a disastrous babysitter we had during that same era, and that I hated. She was what we commonly call "B.S." - unemployed, and not looking - and living in a trashy social housing complex behind the Guzzo cinema - it was not built at the time - in Laval. I don't know how my mom found her, but let's not elaborate on that.



Her boyfriend was a biker who worked as a mechanic, and who had an impressive stash of hard rock albums on vinyl. I remember listening to Ozzy's "Bark at the Moon" while sitting in his appartment. Because yes, the babysitter was taking us there, to be "at home" while doing her "work". My little brother had some kind of "girlfriend" in the area and this is where I started noticing stuff that belonged to us popping up at the babysitter's. A distinctive pen we had lost a few days ago magically appeared in her living room. And so on.

I was also collecting money at the time, and had built quite a reasonable stash, thanks to donations from all over my family. I had this HUGE binder with coins & bills from all over the place, mainly Canada. I even had a cent from 1878, 100 years before I was born.

Around this time of our life my brother had started to befriend thugs - a trend that would go on and amplify over the years - and he was hangin' out with the bad kids of the block. The Laval-des-Rapides posse. Brats, really.

So one evening we came home from school to find the place completely devastated. We had been robbed. Everything of value had disappeared. It didn't take too much snooping around to find out that some of my brother's "friend" had decided to sneak into our house and help himself with our stuff. When we confronted him and suggested we could rightfully call the cops, he gave us back what he had taken. Everything... except my money collection. He swore that he had not seen such a thing at our place.

Turned out that it was that fat, cleptomaniac babysitter who stole it. We were never able to get it back. It was kinda ironic to have so many thieves in our lives around the same time, and to get to know Laval's pathetic and desperate small time criminals. But I guess it's better to meet this kind of trailer trash early in your existence - and to learn to keep them away afterwards, for the rest of your life.

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I ALMOST went to see "Lucky Number Slevin" yesterday. I won tickets with the Mirror, once again, and I went to pick them up in time. However, I changed my mind, because the movie was at 7:30 at Paramount and I didn't feel like going out in the FUCKING COLD. I spent all day outside, walking around to do some shopping, and believe me that was quite enough.

I tried to give away my tickets but nobody wanted to see "that". So if you ever pass by my blog and happen to have seen the movie, let me know how it is, okay ?