Meltin' Mind

It's so humid out there that my brain is melting.

I sometimes feel as if I am a character in a Bruno Dumont movie. Since FLANDRES is at Cannes, that is pretty contemporary... Life around me is bleak. People are chatty. I am silent and waiting. Waiting for them to shut up.



Can you remember Tomas Milian at his peak ? During the 80's he fell from grace while shooting the Nico Giraldi series with Bruno Corbucci, but from '76 to '79, he was the biggest male star in Italy, able to compete with studs such as Franco Nero, Maurizio Merli, Fabio Testi & Luc Merenda. He was labelled the "Cuban Chameleon". He could play any role, any type of guy, and he did. He even played twins in Umberto Lenzi's LA BANDA DEL GOBO, shot in '76. One was a criminal huntchback, with a look similar enough to the one Milian sported in ALMOST HUMAN, and the other one an afro'd mechanic simpleton called Trash, or "Poubelle" in the french dubbed version I watched.



Milian also appeared as a very serious young man in Lucio Fulci's DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING and in Alberto de Martino's COUNSELOR AT CRIME. He was plagued with cocaine problems during his Nico Giraldi days, and pretty much disappeared from Italy's genre movies industry while it slowly died at the beginning of the 90's. He appeared in a Miami Vice episode during season 2, and in an italian UFO drama, DISTANT LIGHTS, in '88.



He resurfaced playing small roles in Hollywood productions, something that was very odd. To me at least. Seeing him play General Salazar in Steven Soderbergh's TRAFIC wasn't something I would have expected. But still, you recognise him the moment he appears, filling the frame with his typical jaw, chewing on his bubble gum in a very Tomas-like manner. He also played a small part in THE YARDS.



We can most commonly see him in the extras of COMPANEROS, a Sergio Corbucci western he appeared in during the 70's alongside Franco Nero and Jack Palance. His interventions are always hilarious.

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I once saw a Rod Stewart lookalike working on D'Auteuil, a tourist-infested Québec street. He was wearing the traditional helmet and a brightly colored vest, directing trafic as his worker friends filled a nid-de-poule with maestria.

*

I won tickets to see the première of THE OMEN, tomorrow at the Paramount. Oddly enough, this is a remake of a movie I recently saw, a few weeks before Miss Bijoux moved from Villeray to my place. Her neighbor owned the DVD, and before giving it back to him, she wanted to see it - and so did I, because frankly, this is considered a classic and I felt that not having seen it yet was procrastination.



We didn't regret it, and it was actually quite funny / creepy. We are very, truly looking forward to seeing this "new interpretation". When Hollywood has nothing to say anymore, dig out the classics !

*

Other activities planned for the upcoming days include seeing Gatineau tonight, at Diable Vert. You gotta love the way MC Brutalll wears his brown underwear in public and shakes his belly. And now that Montreal is a smoke-free city, the atmosphere will be greatly improved. No more nasty fumes on our clothes, and no more itchy eyes.

On Saturday, we might go to Mutek's first Piknic, but chances are we'll rather take it easy and save our energy & money to go on Sunday, where Troy Pierce, Magda, Marc Houle & Richie Hawtin will kick your ass the minimal way alongside some guy called "La Villa des Loups". Let me guess... would that be Riccardo Villalobos, chilean extraordinaire, who was already set up to play here and failed to come TWICE ? He was (partly) the reason I paid to go to this damn Fonderie Darling in 2005 for the Nuit Électronik. Since he never showed up & Matthew Herbert's set was pretty poche, I was dumbfounded.

So yeah, Villalobos is set to unofficially play Piknic. If that happens, great. Piknic hit their all-time attendance record last Sunday, with 2800 people showing up. With Hawtin & Villalobos playing for cheap (7$) in an outdoor setting where you can bring your own booze, dog & children, a sunny Sunday in sight, during a world-renowned minimal festival taking place in a very minimal city ?



Bam ! There will be so many stompin' feet on this man-made island that it will probably sink.

But let's just wish, for the moment, that we'll dance our asses off.

FFWD Week-End

It was almost like watching bad porn.

My week-end started on Saturday, at 2 PM, when I got out of the office and out in the open, where the sun was waiting for me.  There was a protest going on on the corner of Sherbrooke & St-Laurent, which considerably slowed my bus down.  I don't know what it was about but people part of it wore these scary masks & riot clothes.  Then I got to 514 Connexions to pick up Miss Bijoux and while walking home, we saw another protest, this time staged.  A movie was being shot at the school set on Parc Lafontaine's land, and people were holding signs that said "A bas les riches".  Montreal's SWAT team was there and it was kinda unreal.

We got home & went for the grocery store.  To do "les grosseries".  I slept a little and got up at 8, completely lost.  We ate and people started pouring at our place, ready to party.  Vodka was in the air.  I got drunk real fast.

We left for the SAT around midnight.  It was hot outside, and we didn't bring coats.  We were going to NYC INVASION, a Neon event showcasing some of the talents currently throwing parties in NYC.  Well let me tell you something : I'm glad to live in Montreal !  These guys were nice but not so shiny, and they played mostly old stuff from last year.  They were "so last year", in a way.  So we were drunk, and I kept drinking once there : double gin tonics (not recommended) and other non identified stuff I got from friend's glasses.



Around 3 AM I was completely exhausted, and ready to go.  I couldn't even walk home so we took a cab after magically stumbling upon Hugotron, who was walking towards the SAT, on Ste-Catherine, to pick up Rocker and take him to see Maus at Aria.  I crawled into my bed as soon as we got home.

*

Sunday, I woke up repeatedly with a very dry throat, and a headache so powerful it felt as if somebody had put nails in my brain.  I had bad dreams all night, and could safely pinpoint my heavy drinking if I ever decide to look for an explanation.

I was in Belgium for a trip with Miss Bijoux, and was photographing buildings and watching people bathe in strange lakes in the middle of cities.  My girlfriend was pregnant and when she was about to give birth, she decided at the last moment that she didn't want me in the operating room.  She came home after a few days but systematically denied me the right to see our baby.  After a while, she finally told me that our baby died.  What a strange and unpleasant dream.

I also dreamt, later on, that we had a small black dog with white stripes and that when he ran away in the woods, we sometimes mistook him for a skunk while searching to get him back.

We were still going to go to Piknic, of course, but I had to adapt to my new reality.  After a decent meal, I was back on my feet and ready to rock, sorta.  Mr. Bérêt came to "pick us up" with his bike, and we rolled down Papineau & up the Jacques-Cartier bridge.  Piknic was already pretty crowded when we got there and it didn't changed much until we left.  Mateo Murphy played an interesting set, but hearing a pitched down version of Royksopp's "What Else is There" remixed by Trentemoller has now become routine.



The sun was pretty hot, and the boys & girls too, but I was so fatigued that we left around 7.  We still had a bridge to cross and a steep hill to battle with, and many unseen SIX FEET UNDER episodes waiting for us at home, along with ice cream.

*

I also watched Ricardo Trogi's HORLOGE BIOLOGIQUE, a movie I was told would be more bearable than his first effort QUÉBEC-MONTREAL, a romp I could not stomach.

Well, I'm sad to report it, but I don't think much of its follow-up either.



From the opening with cavemen & CGI, to the songs used throughout the movie, to the "acting" and themes, I have to say that this is the type of flick that does not touch me on any level.  I don't consider myself an "average french speaking male from Québec" even though I mainly speak french, and the relationships, indecisions & dialogue featured in there are not part of my universe.  It would perhaps be interesting from an anthropological point of view, if only it was well shot.

I don't know how Trogi can get the financing for his movies, because his scripts sure are not stellar.  It may be that popular fervor for "average joes tragi-comic tales" that has seen a drastic rise in the last few years (LA GRANDE SÉDUCTION or LES BOYS 1-4, anyone ?) or the end of good local moviemaking as we once knew it - Rodrigue Jean, where are you ? - but I'm getting more and more worried about the future of our beloved medium in the Belle Province.

Lève-tôt Boogie

C'est à 8h AM tapantes que j'arrivais au boulot, ce matin, après avoir à peine dormi. L'alarme qui signala ma brutale intrusion dans la grise réalité de ce samedi peu ensoleillé n'était pas tendre du tout. Café format "ultra-grand" du Mmmuffins à la main, je suis prêt à affronter la vie et ses dures aspérités... du moins tant que l'effet de la cafféïne durera.

Mon collègue hors-la-loi, Jessie James, fait des recherches sur le net pour connaître le prix des transmissions "neuves" de Porsche 928. Il est arrivé ici en même temps que moi, oubliant momentanément qu'il ne commençait qu'à midi. Il faut vraiment être déstabilisé par un horraire tout croche pour se lever quatre heures trop tôt...



J'en suis ici à mon sixième jour de suite au bureau, dans une éternelle quête d'heures supplémentaires pour payer quelques factures pressantes, et comme le Dieu fictif de la Bible je me reposerai demain, car ma création m'essouffle et m'émerveille tout à la fois.

Espérons qu'il fera beau pour fêter l'occasion.

*

Je me suis souvenu hier - souvenir enfoui qui m'est remonté dans les neuronnes actives comme un nageur remonte à la surface de l'air après un plongeon particulièrement profond - d'un épisode troublant de ma jeunesse lavalloise. Souvenir qui m'a frappé de plein fouet alors que je feuilletais un vieil agenda datant de mon année scolaire '88-'89. Ne me demandez pas comment il se fait que ce truc-là se trouvait encore dans ma bibliothèque, car je ne serais pas en mesure de vous fournir une réponse satisfaisante !

C'était à la petite école primaire de Saint-Gérard, dans Pont-Viau, quand j'avais onze ans. Je venais probablement d'arriver en ville après avoir quitté Trois-Rivières avec ma mère et mon frère, qui fréquentait l'école Sainte-Cécile, école adjacente partageant la même cour que la nôtre et qui était réservée aux jeunots. J'avais peu d'amis et j'étais un enfant tranquille et peu expansif, studieux même.

Nous avions un exposé oral à faire dans le cadre de je ne me souviens plus trop quel cours, et ce genre de défi n'a pas, pour moi, toujours été facile à relever. Je n'étais alors pas un individu très social, je préférais la compagnie des bouquins à celle des hommes, et je ne cherchais pas à le dissimuler. Je passais mes étés enfermé, lisant tout ce qui me tombait sous la main, et ne bougeant de chez moi que lorsque j'y étais obligé.



Imaginez donc devoir parler de moi devant la classe pendant un interminable cinq minutes ! Le thème ? "Un événement important dans notre vie". Rien de trop compliqué donc. Je dois vous avouer que je ne me souviens absolument pas du sujet que j'avais choisi, car un souvenir précis éclipse tous les autres : un camarade de classe, dont j'ai aujourd'hui oublié le nom, avait traité d'une "home invasion" dont il a été victime. Un homme, évadé de l'hôpital psychiatrique, était entré chez lui en plein après-midi et avait tenté de lui trancher la gorge. Il avait amené comme agrément visuel les photos médicales prises par les policiers, qui le montraient avec une cicatrice autour du cou.

*

Steve Proulx, chroniqueur médias du Voir et auteur du bouquin "Les Saisons du Parc Belmont" que je suis en train de lire, nous recommande cette semaine de lire le numéro de juin du magazine Métropolis. Ouais, bon. Le magazine a fêté cette année ses 25 ans, disons tout simplement qu'il était temps. Avec des chroniqueurs solides - parmi lesquels Philip Nobel - et des sujets toujours passionnants, le mandat de Métropolis est clair : découvrir avant tout le monde quelles sont les tendances en design & architecture. Ils y réussissent plutôt bien, et je vous invite fortement à le découvrir vous-même !

*

J'ai l'impression que les détenteurs de la carte Ultramar Mastercard sont majoritairement... une bande de morons. Est-ce que je me trompe ? Si oui, je vous en prie, détrompez-moi, parce que là, vraiment, j'ai perdu espoir.

Nourriture Rapide & Lecture Lente

En fouillant dans mes bibliothèques aujourd'hui à la recherche du Temps Perdu de Proust - projet de lecture sans cesse remis aux calendes grecques - je suis tombé sur divers Moravia, Modiano, Gide, et j'ai finalement localisé mes deux tomes de L'IDIOT de Dostoïevski.  Lecture d'été ?  Je n'en suis pas certain, mais comme l'été est la seule saison où je ne suis pas accablé par des lectures universitaires obligatoires, c'est une période rêvée pour me lancer moi-même quelques briques par la tête.



Parmi mes lectures projetées, donc, figurent les ILLUSIONS PERDUES et SPLENDEUR ET MISERE DES COURTISANES de Balzac, L'IDIOT de Dostoïevski (les deux volumes de GUERRE ET PAIX de son compatriote Tolstoï m'attendent depuis toujours sur mon étagère, mais me font un peu peur) et finalement, LES NUS ET LES MORTS de Mailer.

Vous me connaissez, cependant : je risque de changer d'idée 100 fois en cours de route.

Lorsque l'on est occupé à lire, le seul problème peut être que l'on n'a pas le temps d'écrire.  Ou que, si on rédige quand même, on est influencé par ce qu'on lit.  Sans parler des divers magazines (la plupart hebdomadaires) que j'accumule.  La lecture peut-elle être une occupation à temps plein ?

J'aimerais bien que l'on me crée une subvention ou un fond de pension qui me permettrait de prendre ma retraite l'an prochain, et d'entâmer une longue et fructueuse carrière de lecteur professionnel.  Mes quartiers seraient établis dans un endroit calme, coupé du monde, où je lirais sans interruption de 9 à 5, pour ensuite revenir sur terre et me consacrer à des tâches plus terrestres.

J'ai toujours apprécié des "liseux" une qualité exceptionnellement rare de nos jours : leur silence.  En cette ère d'agression sonore constante et de déficit d'attention extrême, où tout le monde marche et respire l'oreille collée à un téléphone cellulaire pour démultiplier les conversations stériles, il est devenu rare de croiser quelqu'un qui ne produit aucun décibel en public.

Lecteur silencieux, je te salue.

*

Une conversation avec Caron nous a fait communément élaborer une théorie sur l'alimentation.  Nous avons remarqué, au fil de nos élucubrations, que nous avions tous les deux été littéralement "élevés" au junk food.  Mes parents m'amenaient chez A&W pratiquement une fois par semaine, à l'époque où leur succursale de la 5e rue, à Shawinigan, disposait encore d'un juke-box personnel à chaque table et où les Mozza Burgers étaient servis dans des paniers en osier, aux tables.



Ronald McDonald était aussi un bon ami, avec le lot de "surprises" qu'implique un repas chez lui.  Je me suis donc habitué à l'absorbtion rapide du Big Mac dès mon plus jeune âge.

Un peu plus tard, à l'école secondaire, quand j'éprouvais des troubles "comportementaux", mon travailleur social récompensait mes efforts par des repas au A&W et m'a fait lui promettre quand quand je serais "établi", avec une "vraie job", ça serait mon tour de lui payer la traite.  Je suis désolé de l'écrire, Alain, mais ça n'est pas pour demain matin !

Notre théorie, donc, suppose grossièrement que les individus ayant été gavés de "fast food" dans leur jeunesse n'éprouvent pas le besoin subconscient de se "venger", une fois leur indépendance économique acquise, en se nourissant comme des otaries sur le crack.  Et que ceux qui en ont été privés, au contraire, sont davantage sujets à une mauvaise alimentation, en raison d'une incontrôlable entreprise de "ratrappage" de ces délices entrevus, mais qui ne leur ont jamais été accessibles.

Remarquez que les Burger King et autres Valentine sont aussi pleins de familles qui se transmettent le gène du gras de père en fils, et qu'une éducation alimentaire familiale fait son effet au rayon des mauvaises habitudes.  Mais la poursuite de ces habitudes, au sein d'une société hypermédiatisée où on nous met au courant de tous les dangers imaginables sur tous les tons et via tous les médiums, ressemble beaucoup à l'obstination des fumeurs qui se brûlent les poumons malgré les horribles photos qui ornent leurs paquets de cigarettes.  On peut tenter de contrôler les restaurateurs et de diffuser l'information aux dévoreurs, mais il restera toujours le facteur humain qui nous pousse souvent à soupeser nos choix d'une façon tout à fait informée, puis à prendre la décision la plus abominable qui soit, celle qui aura les conséquences les plus désastreuses sur notre santé, en toute connaissance de cause.

Pourquoi ?  Parce que.

*

Avez-vous remarqué que je deviens légèrement nostalgique les vendredis ?

A Slap Behind the Head

Well, now that I finally got the dough to pick up the New Yorker, I found out that we're once more graced with a Malcolm Gladwell article, this time about some random sports theories.  Which means : we don't care.

I have not been raised to appreciate watching sports, or discussing them.  My more "formative" years I spent living with my mother, who was always very permissive and who didn't expect me to be "into" anything I didn't really like.  This has shaped a personality that some may argue has grown through the years to be out of control, but at least I know what I want, what I like, and what I don't.



This has made my life difficult at some levels, especially in high school or college when I had to take physical education courses against my will.  I wouldn't say I'm "athletic" but I'm muscular enough and in a pretty good shape - I could probably kick your ass any day.  But still, I really just could not go through this hellish experience of being told what to do by a bully turned teacher.

I was always the last to be picked in sports teams, and still would be if I wasn't attending university.  Yeah, all this to say that, well, fuck it : as much as I like Gladwell, I won't read this one.

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It can become tedious staying slim once you reach a certain age, and a certain life rythm.  My metabolism never put me in a situation where I actually had to care about a worry so far out as my belly size, but I feel that the time is slowly coming.  Not drinking beer helps a lot, but eating pastas and not exercising doesn't.



Being just next to Parc Lafontaine, I'll start a new habit tomorrow morning, if by any chance we can be spared by the rain : running.  The idea came to Miss Bijoux when we were watching a SIX FEET UNDER episode yesterday.  She admires people with discipline, and getting your ass up to break a sweat in the morning mist doesn't appeal to everyone, which should be praised even more.

So yeah, on top of biking our summer away, we'll also try to run frequently.  Fight the beer belly.  Even if, as I mentioned before, I don't drink beer.

*

Office life has never been so fun.  Have you ever heard about a company replacing their employee benefits with "incentives" ?  The rules are simple : you get no insurances, no paid sick days, and a general disregard from the high heads.  In exchange, they are able to take a fraction of the money they're not spending on you, and givin it back in what I call "crap".



Today we had this event where we had to play mini-golf.  We accumulated points and got to eat granola bars & drink some "naturally fruit flavoured water beverage".  Then I got back to my desk and took a break - life's hard - and when I came back from lounging downstairs, my supervisor had 5$ worth of McDonald's gift cards to give me.  That could seem like an odd choice, if you think about the dangers of working in a call center : you sit there, answer the phone, and don't move.  If you eat a lot, you gain weight.  What better way to help you out than by giving you McDonald's gift cards ?  That's pure genius !

So these incentives and the traditional "pizza days" that we're often treated with only add to the problem.  Oh well.

*

Au sein d'un centre-ville à haut coefficient en pitounes, il est souvent hasardeux de tenter de lire Les Caves du Vatican d'André Gide alors que les demoiselles passent, talons hauts et mini-jupes bien en valeur, en se dandinant les fesses, sur McGill College.



Souvenons-nous alors que le soleil est notre meilleur ami, que la journée va arriver à sa fin un jour, et que nous rentrerons chez nous sain et sauf, un peu fatigué peut-être, mais fortement satisfait de rentrer au bercail.

Long Time no Sweat

Breaking rocks in the hot sun. I didn't fight anybody and I still lost.

Have I ever told you about our "no jeans policy" at the office ? No ? It's pretty simple, standart office stuff : from Monday to Thursday, we must wear pants, whatever they are. So somebody shows up in track pants, schredded cotton pants, welfare pants, rehab pants, and it's OK. But jeans, however classy & clean they are, are verboten.



So yeah, since I'm on the phone, nobody can see me. That makes a whole lot of sense.

I have developed a strategy that pays in reaction to that. I keep black pants in my drawer and I change when I get to the office. Because, you know, I don't feel to great walking around the "real world" in these. I sometimes "dare" my supervisors and keep my jeans all day. What will they do to me ? Bury me under written warnings ? Fire me because I'm stylish ?

My merchandise coordinator wears jeans all the time, and once somebody made a comment to him. This is what he answered :

-You know, I live in the world. And in the world today, it's "jeans day".

*

The sun's back, folks. Hope it's here to stay. If not, I'll have to put on my ranger boots and join the army. Or send a missile to the moon, or a mission at the center of the earth. Mission : possible.

Forgive me for being so dissipated, but the cheap office coffee I drank (so cheap it's free) didn't entirely wake me up. Long evenings at the office can have that nauseating and knocking out effect on me.

We found out today who was the fool always locking up the front door in the morning & at night. It's the same guy who makes so much noise every morning putting on his rollerblades in the staricase next to my appartment door, who is coincidentally right next to my bedroom door. He is probably the same guy who behaves like an elephant every time he goes up or down these same stairs.



I have very nice neighbors. Back when my car was still functioning, but making a hell of a noise due to a dying transmission, a lady living upstairs from my garage was always running down to come rushing in the courtyard and yell at me, thinking I was doing all these noises just to impress the birds & cats passing by.

*

Tomorrow at work I am doing what they call "extra hours". I am coming into the office at 8 AM and getting out at 8:30 PM. I could have stayed until 9, but psychologically, I didn't need being the one to open & close the shop. Opening it will already be painful enough as it is. Hope I recover fast from this mess.



Because the bikes will go out again. The clubs will welcome me again. But most importantly, I will let my love story with piknic resume on next Sunday, if by any luck we're graced with nice weather. Krikor will come down from France especially for me, and I shall be right in front of the booth during his whole performance, even as he battles with Pheek. Vodka / Guru will be the course of the day, and dancing the purpose.

Hope I see some of you over there, as this is exactly what you need : some time away from this damn computer screen who is rapidly becoming your best friend but who will turn down his cell phone if you call him late at night to cry on his virtual shoulder.

Trois livres que je lis et un film que j'ai vu

J'ai finalement terminé Trois jours chez ma mère de François Weyergans. Comme je suis persona non grata dans les bibliothèques de Montréal en raison d'une exorbitante collection de frais de retard, ma bonne amie Caron l'a emprunté et me l'a laissé quelques temps. Je devais théoriquement le lui remettre le plus rapidement possible mais je me suis perdu dans le fil des jours et je me suis retrouvé les quatre fers en l'air après m'être pris les pieds dans les fleurs du tapis en croyant que je les avais, les deux, dans le même plat.



On se retrouve rapidement pris de court devant la nonchalance de François Weyergraf, le narrateur du bouquin en question, qui n'est nul autre que le double de l'auteur. Comme chez Modiano, beaucoup de souvenirs sont évoqués, et il est souvent difficile de faire la part des choses et de distinguer la fiction du réel. Ils sont si adroitement entremêlés que c'en est presque étourdissant. On ne tombe pas ici dans l'auto-fiction, ou la pornographie biographique d'une Catherine Millet ou d'une Nelly Arcan; c'est de littérature que l'on parle ici.

Weyergraf est un personnage attachant, et nombre de ses préoccupations qui pourraient de prime abord sembler futiles sont partagées par ses lecteurs; sa compulsion de collectionneur de l'inutile, sur laquelle il élabore dans La démence du boxeur; son observation appréciative constante des créatures féminines qui l'entourent; et son sens de l'humour, unique, inattendu.

C'est un loser magnifique, sans le pathétique, avec le raffinement en plus. Et un magnifique hommage à sa mère - on se demande longtemps pourquoi le livre est ainsi titré, mais tout prendra son plein sens avec les pages qui tournent, ne vous en faites pas.

*

Steve Proulx, le monsieur qui s'occupe de la chronique "Médias" du prestigieux hebdomadaire Voir, a déjà publié un essai, "Boycott", en 2003, ce que j'ignorais complètement. J'ignorais donc qu'il avait aussi publié en 2005 un livre sur le Parc Belmont, parc d'attractions de Cartierville aujourd'hui disparu, dont je n'avais jamais entendu parler, pour faire changement. Décidément...



Le livre semble être une histoire détaillée de l'ouverture du Parc (1923) à sa fermeture en 1983. Fascinant car disparu, et convoité parce qu'impossible à atteindre. Je vous en donnerai des nouvelles une fois que je l'aurai terminé, mais je peux vous garantir que ça ne sera pas trop long, parce que c'est dianlement intéressant !

*

J'ai toujours eu un faible pour les articles de Malcolm Gladwell parus régulièrement dans l'hebdomadaire extraordinaire The New Yorker. Je n'ai pas encore eu le temps de lire son dernier sur Cesar Milan, paru la semaine dernière, mais je me ratrappe en lisant The Tipping Point, son premier bouquin, dont les Roots s'inspirèrent pour baptiser un de leurs albums.



Il est fort amusant que j'aie dû commander ce livre afin de pouvoir l'acheter, car c'est un "essentiel". Gladwell explore le phénomène du "tipping point", un moment en marketing où un produit ou une idée atteint une popularité jamais vue. Avec des exemples apparemment banals comme les souliers Hush Puppies ou l'émission Sesame Street, il nous explique les causes du "tip", les différents profils psychologiques des acteurs qui y contribuent, et le tout est rédigé dans une prose aérée, simple et prenante.

Gladwell est un vulgarisateur extraordinaire, et s'il n'était pas si chrétien et frisé, il compterait sans doute parmi mes idoles.

*

Cédric Klapisch est un réalisateur "intéressant". Je l'ai connu avec une projection de UN AIR DE FAMILLE au Ciné-Club ayant lieu dans le défunt cinéma Cartier de Shawinigan - qui a brûlé depuis. Il était bien entendu difficile, en tant que jeunot impressionnable, de déceler le machisme méprisant dont baigne toute son oeuvre, au même titre que celle d'un Étienne Châtillez.

On restait un peu dubitatif devant son PEUT-ETRE et sa vision romantique du futur de Paris, mais on reste de marbre devant sa testostérone étalée au grand jour dans NI POUR, NI CONTRE (BIEN AU CONTRAIRE). Un titre typiquement franchouillard qui dissimule une glorification un peu bête des mauvais garçons, ou alors une morale un peu lourde, on n'a pas bien compris.



Un bellâtre (Vincent Elbaz) tombe par hasard sur une caméra-girl (Marie Gillain) alors qu'il doit filmer un braquage qu'il s'apprête à faire. Il l'engage donc à la va-vite et l'amène avec lui et ses potes. Elle fait bien son boulot, et ils décident de la garder avec eux. Ils sont quatre, ils sont violents, irrespectueux, simplets et machos : le gangster de bas étage standart, tel que dépeint récemment dans le décevant A LA PETITE SEMAINE de Sam Karman. La petite est un peu amoureuse du Elbaz, et s'enfonce dans son univers criminel typiquement mâle : braquages, saouleries avec des putes, soirées passées dans un "cabaret" parisien avec danseuses semi-nues de rigueur.

Quand des gestes de violence - minimes, certes, mais là n'est pas la question - sont banalisés, voire glorifiés ou passent pour ne faire qu'un avec l'attirance sexuelle qu'est supposée ressentir une femme pour un "mauvais garçon", et que le cinéma populaire français en pisse des lames de rasoir à pleins camions, ça devient embêtant. Et Klapisch est bien mal parti.

*

Pas de New Yorker pour moi cette semaine. C'est la première fois que je rompt la tradition depuis plus d'un an et demie. Il me reste très exactement 3.14$ dans mon compte en banque et je bénis d'avance le moment où, mercredi soir, ma paye sera déposée dans mon compte.

It's Getting HOT in Here

Despite the weather. Despite the black tortured souls howling at night because they haven't seen the sunshine since... I don't know when. Despite all the hard times we've been facing in the last 10 shitty days that have graced Montreal, the Piknic still happening yesterday with about only 50 attendees - among which I was not - and the overall crap mood everybody's in, it's getting hot in here.

Simply because... the A/C broke down.



I don't know if you've ever been in an office where it's humid and tropical, and the celsius meter hits 40, but it really ain't my cup of tea, baby. So when I got to work earlier today - I even VOLUNTEERED, for fuck's sake - I was hit by a barrier of hot air upon entering the 8th floor. They still allowed us to come to work because they thought it would be bearable, considering the ass freezing weather outside. But, well, they were kinda wrong. There is such a discrepancy between inside & outside that it's almost frightening.

So with all these weather worries we've been experiencing lately, and Météomédia still predicting rain in the upcoming week, all I can say is that I'm pretty fuckin' fed up, thank you.

*

I tried to go to Balroom yesterday, to see Stephan Bodzin's DJ set. The guy is good, he's the humble ghost producer behind projects like Marc Romboy's "Gemini" album, the Rekorder series, and Schumacher's project Elektrochemie - and he DJ's like a madman. I would have been a fool to miss this, right ?



I am suffering from a cold, and am pretty depressed by the weather & sleep deprivation. So when I got up after my disco nap, around 9:30 yesterday, I didn't feel much like partyin. I still took a shower, dressed up & left. When we got to Balroom around 12:30, it was still raining, and we saw the line-up was expanding to the door. People were smoking inside, which is always pretty disgusting in a small confined space like that, and a friend of mine told us he had been standing in the staircase for 15 minutes without anybody moving.

It almost broke my heart to decide to go, because I had "negociated" a double guest list with my editor in chief at Noctambules. But the line-up and cigarette smoke I could have done without. So I decided to leave and go the fuck home to read my New Yorker in my bed while drinking tea. Before doing so, Miss Bijoux & me watched a Seinfeld episode in which somebody's father had a whole box full of love letters from John Cheever. This whole thing constituted more fun material than any smoky evening spend in any club.

Can't wait for the fuckin' new law to pass. May 31st, please hurry your fat ass up.

*

My Spike Lee fixation continued over the week-end with the viewing of SHE HATE ME. Shot in 2004, after THE 25TH HOUR and just before THE INSIDE MAN, this funny piece of celluloid depicts the tribulations of John Henry Armstrong (played here by Anthony Mackie), an exec in a pharmaceutical company that loses his job after being too honest in a corruption story.



Not only does he lose his job, but his ex employers are also doing all they can to erase him from the surface of the earth. His bank account is frozen, and he can't find a job anywhere. Thanks to his ice cold boss, played by Woody Harrelson. So his ex fiancée shows up with her girlfriend, one day, and proposes to give him 5 000$ to make her pregnant. Ditto for her girl. After a bit of convincing he gives up - he needs the money and doesn't mind getting laid, of course - and the following day the ex shows up to his door with five other lesbians looking to get knocked up.

The cast is impressive, with characters played by John Turturro, Ellen Barkin, Jim "Slaughter" Brown, Monica Bellucci, Ossie Davis and Jamel Debbouze, and even though it lasts 2h20, it doesn't appear to drag. However, Spike Lee's worst comes out : the "feel good" music with burning saxophone solos and keys really hit rock bottom here. And the ending is, shall we say, incredibly cheesy. Maybe it's Mackie who's not up to the task of portraying such a "sex symbol", or maybe it's just too damn to ask from us to believe this fairytale, but the ultimate heterosexual "dream" of living with two gorgeous lesbians just doesn't appeal to everybody.

It's not always refreshing to detect remains of repressive machismo in the oeuvre of a director we like.

I Have Found the Lost City of Atlantis

It's raining in heaven. Except that heaven has turned into hell, mostly thanks to the rain that never seems to stop. I don't remember any springtime in my recent past being so intolerable. It's as if the purpose of winter going away - going back to spending some time outside in the sun, biking, having sex outdoors - was obliterated and rendered useless. As if somebody was telling us that it's no use, we'll never have nice weather again, anymore, ever.



And as much as I want my mood to stay consistent, I have to say it's pretty hard.

My healthy resolution of biking every day faces a serious challenge. And the Piknic Électronik's season opening, due on Sunday, might not happen. How do you expect me to remain calm in front of all this ?

It might be small reading - as opposed to small talk - but it's essential that we all realise we're screwed. Adios, sunburns. Bye bye, mini skirts. Hello rain. Buongiorno humidity.

Water will run down the cracks in our scalp and our brains will have to learn to swim.

*

Peeps are an incredibly strange brand of marshmallow that happened to recently be featured in the "Consumed" column of the New York Times Magazine. My friend Mongola Batteries (Caron for those who really know her well) recently found some in a Pharmaprix fuck knows where and couldn't resist buying them.



We had 15 perfectly formed chicklets to play with, because as you should know, these friandises aren't manufactured as food. People use them for art projects, and scientists conduct various experiments on them. They try to make them melt, dissolve, and do various other weird things. There are numerous websites where you can see these poor Peeps being mercilessly slaughtered.

So we never did envision them as food, but I still ate them.

*

TROIS JOURS CHEZ MA MERE is François Weyergans' latest, and it even won the Goncourt. Robert Lévesque, ICI's star cultural columnist, read it under a three in Parc St-Viateur and proclaimed it as genius. He may have used another word. Can't remember.



This is the book I'm reading these days. I'll soon be done and will therefore be able to give you my impressions. But right now, there's a drink in my room and I need a hot lady, so I have to run.

Sourcils, Soucis & Souris

Je ne sais pas si ça sera intéressant pour vous.

J'ai toujours été proprement fasciné par les sourcils.  Quand je croise quelqu'un qui propose aux regards un "unisourcil" au-dessus de ses yeux, je suis toujours sous le choc.  Et j'ai découvert un truc infaillible quand on prend quelqu'un trop au sérieux.  Il suffit de regarder cette personne à l'envers, et de s'imaginer que ses sourcils sont une moustache.  Disons que ça donne une perspective toute différente !  Difficile, cependant, de justifier que l'un de vous deux soit à l'envers.



Difficile aussi de vous expliquer pourquoi j'aborde mes délires avec ça aujourd'hui.

*

Les soucis sont-ils le "sel de la vie" ?  On croirait rester tranquille, et voilà qu'ils rappliquent.  Moi, en tout cas, je m'en passerais bien.  Surtout de ceux qui sont d'ordre financier, en fait.

*

Je ne sais pas si je devrais plutôt utiliser le terme "mulot".  Quand j'habitais sur Fullum avec Pat, on a eu toutes sortes de problèmes animaliers, ou du moins, du type "bestiole qui bouge et qui dégoûte les demoiselles".

On a tout d'abord eu droit à une invasion de fourmis.  Petites choses inoffensives, elles envahissaient notre garde-manger, rendant toute tentative de se faire des muffins sans protéines tout à fait vaine.  Nous avons essayé divers types de trappes, jusqu'à ce que nous fassions un gros investissement avec des "pastilles" ultra efficaces qui ont fini par exterminer toute la colonie.  Du moins je l'espère pour les locataires actuels.

Nous avons un peu plus tard fait la rencontre d'une souris, que nous n'avons jamais baptisé.  Et je ne l'ai personellement jamais vue, du moins jamais avant de la trouver écrabouillée dans une trappe, les yeux éjectés de leurs orbites, au bout d'une traînée de sang qui avait taché le tapis.



Pat la rencontrait toujours dans la cuisine, tard le soir.  Il ouvrait la lumière et l'apercevait là, sur le comptoir, momentannément figée par l'intensité soudaine de l'éclairage.  Personne n'est assez rapide pour attraper ces bestioles.

La rumeur a dû courir dans le monde animalier que nous traitions bien nos invités, car quelques semaines plus tard une autre souris est venue se joindre aux festivités, et nous l'avons capturé de la même façon, sauvage et sans se salir les mains; cette fois-ci, cependant, elle n'est pas restée sous le métal de la barre qui lui a brisé l'échine.  Nous l'avons retrouvé presque un mètre plus loin, au milieu du salon, couchée sur le côté comme un chien qui dort.

*

Le cinéma canadien anglais a généralement une réputation calamiteuse, qui a peut-être quelque chose à voir avec les exigences scénaristiques de Téléfilms Canada, mais je ne m'avancerai pas sur ce terrain boueux aujourd'hui.

Il vous suffira pour comprendre ma perplexité de savoir que j'ai visionné hier, dans le confort de mon salon, le thriller THE DARK HOURS.



Huis-clos glauque et magnifiquement photographié, le film raconte l'épopée de Sam, une psychiatre avec une tumeur au cerveau qui vient de reprendre sa croissance après une rémission de deux ans.  Elle traite de dangereux criminels et lorsque l'un d'eux la suit jusqu'au chalet où elle a rejoint son mari et sa petite soeur, les choses commencent à mal tourner.

Il y a quelque chose de mou dans la construction narrative et dans la performance des acteurs, qui nous donne l'impression que le film est décalé de la réalité, et la photographie vaporeuse n'arrange rien.  Si un événement, par exemple, est supposé durer 30 minutes dans le scénario, rien dans la réalisation ne nous laisse le deviner - les repères sont malhabiles et l'impression que l'on retire de l'ensemble, donc, en souffre grandement.

Il faut dire que les acteurs ne sont pas non plus très convainquants.  Même les moments de violence rédemptrice semblent avoir été pensés en fonction du manque de budget, et ne fonctionnent qu'une fois sur deux.  Et le "méchant", interprété par Aidan Devine, qui est pourtant là pour éliminer la compagnie malgré son insistance qu'il est là pour "jouer" et donner des leçons, nous est presque sympathique.  Pas très réussi comme pari.  Nous découvrirons subséquemment qu'il y a une raison derrière ce dernier détail, mais en attendant, le climat s'en trouve fortement affecté.

On se demande comment Kate Greenhouse, qui interprète le rôle principal, malgré un fort joli minois, a pu râfler le prix d'interprétation féminine au dernier festival Fantasia.

Je ne regrette en rien d'avoir investi 1h20 de ma vie dans cette expérience, mais peut-être en ira-t-il autrement de vous.

A Workload in Your Face

One does not feel the need to go to work during summer. The Hydro bill is minimal, you can walk / bike anywhere, the sun is shining, and you don't feel like being enslaved in an office all day long while so many mini skirts are walking on the sidewalks downstairs.

Not everybody likes being outside, and that may be a proof that our society is diving deep into a collective psychosis. It sure is fun to work, but when half the city is composed of slackers who just lounge in the sun in the Lafontaine Park, next to the lake, or in the Carré St-Louis, or anywhere there's GREEN, you almost feel like a misfit when you have to go to work.



You're the abnormal one. Why didn't you find a way to avoid this ?

I remember spending a whole summer without working. I had stacked enough money to move out of my Laval basement and I was coming to town. My place on Fullum didn't cost too much and I only found work at the end of August, when I felt like paying the september bills would be kinda hard.

And you know what ? I don't remember much about that summer. I had a blast - watching movies, going out every night with various friends, high speeding through the city on a green Kawasaki with Mr. Moto... I wasn't the big spender I am now and some stacked money was all I needed to survive the summer. Now I am stuck begging for overtime in a boring and understaffed corporate call center.

Living the simple life might be fun, and if it implied not having to work, why the hell not ? But in the meantime, who's going to pay for the bills ? Not you, of course.

I guess I'll settle for less and experience the worst.

*

I went to a condo "visit" on Saturday morning. I had left Théâtre Plaza around 4 and at 8 I was up, showering not to smell too boozish at the meeting. Miss Bijoux wants to buy her own place, and was curious to check out the prices of 801 Sherbrooke Est, this office building they recently stripped off everything but its structure.



The plans look nice, and the views will be amazing. There will be thirteen floors and the prices are escalating along. The units we were interested in checking out were all priced at around 300 000$.

Needless to say, it won't be for now. Paying 300 000$ for what basically will be an appartment downtown, when you can get yourself a big-ass house on any shore for that amount, would be kind of crazy. It's a choice, of course. But not a choice we're ready to make right now, unfortunately. Not with my sorry student ass.

*

I have heard about Nicolas Roeg's DON'T LOOK NOW for years, and I realised yesterday, when I finished viewing it, that I never had really "heard" anything, in fact. Just a silent wave of buzz that didn't say much. Perhaps it was because of Julie Christie, too clothed in Truffaut's LA NUIT AMÉRICAINE, and my man Donald Sutherland, who's always nice to see.

I just happened to come across the Roeg section of the Boîte Noire and it reminded me that I had always wanted to see this one. So I took it. I waited all week, and yesterday we finally got to watch it.



The atmosphere, at first, was mysterious, to say the least. The schizophrenic shots and the epileptic editing didn't help : nothing felt familiar. And once the "action" is taken to Venise, in Italy, it gets even more unfamiliar.

It's not the kind of movie where everything is given away, right away. You kind of have to wait for things to start making sense. You start feeling uneasy after a while. You're not sure which one of these characters you can trust.

The movie has been labeled "erotic" when there is only one sex scene, and it's quite standart according to today's trends. Back in '73, however, it must have been something. Strangely, this scene reminded me of Bertolucci's 1900, where Sutherland plays a vicious nazi officer, and where Gérard Depardieu & Robert de Niro get to share a prostitute. This kind of erotism was troubling, almost upsetting. The scenes with Sutherland were just too brutal & sadistic, and the scenes with De Niro & Depardieu were shocking because of the enormous star status these two guys have achieved today. You wouldn't just expect them to do something like this today.

So when DON'T LOOK NOW ended with a shock, and I found out that Miss Bijoux was sleeping. Too bad she missed the only really scary part of the movie.

Absurd Wolves

I bought a 100 blank CD's spindle about two weeks ago at Neulogik, this "alternative" electronic equipment store located just next door to Future Shop, on Ste-Catherine.  The brand's "Miss Nova" - never heard about that either.



When I got home, I tried to burn a CD and my computer crashed.  The second one failed as well as the third one.  By then I realised I've been had.  The receipt specified I had 30 days for any return.  So I sat on my laurels and waited.  Until yesterday.  I saw the spindle in a corner of my living room and decided it was high time I got myself some new CD's.

So I left earlier for work - the store's next door - and I walked a bit since the weather was so nice.  When I arrived in front of Neulogic my subconscious told me that it was pretty dark inside but I still reached for the door.  Locked.  A sheet on the glass read like this : "The store will be closed May 1st.  Thank you for doing business with us."

Shit happens, I guess.

*

You know I like music.  I'm into bands like We Are Wolves, Wolfmother, Wolf Parade, AIDS Wolf & Wolf Eyes.  I also like cinema a lot, and my favorite movies include Wolfen, Company of Wolves, Teen Wolf, An American Werewolf in Paris / London, Wolf, Time of the Wolf, I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Dancing With Wolves.

So I was pretty excited when I rented WOLF CREEK at the beginning of the week.  This has been a much talked about flick, part of the wave of "serious" horror movies influenced by the seventies classics.  It was launched around the same time as THE DARK HOURS & HOSTEL (which I haven't seen, but soon will) and it carried a perfume of sheer terror.  Since I also appreciate terror, I decided to give it a try.



Well, for once, the characters are well established before the butchery begins.  The shots are almost Dogma-like, with a handheld camera, and Australia's wild countryside is shown to its maximum potential.  The desert sky has never looked so good.  Once the "action" kicks in, however, things get darker, and disconcerting.  We have learned to care about these characters and we are surprised by what might, and what does, happen to them.  With no depth, these senseless killings would have been just another campy thrill.

The killer is realistic, but once again, towards the end of the movie, he turns into a caricature of himself.  And I think the movie would have worked better if he didn't.  But that's just my opinion.

*

I've heard about Montrealer's "savage" manners for a long time without ever realising that I couldn't "get" it since I was buried knee deep in its street culture.  My week-end in Toronto made me realise how easy going and friendly people are over there.  Considering this is a city with a rather high crime rate, I can't even begin to try to imagine how friendly other canadians, in other cities, can be.

The coldness of many people in town is often attributed to the fact that you do not know right away in which language you have to talk to somebody you don't know.  That's the con of living in a bilingual & multicultural city such as ours.

Personally, I think it's rather an overload of attitude & snobbiness that's responsible for all of this, because frankly, I don't know many people who aren't fluent in both languages.  I have decided to write my blog mainly in english to reach the wider audience possible, and have never been told by anybody that it kept them from reading.

But then again, it may be just because I don't have any readers.

An Upside Down Week-End in TO

We came back yesterday around 5, went to eat grillades on Prince-Arthur, and after unpacking the van we went to bike for more than an hour, after driving six hours straight to come back in town.

*

Sunday was quiet at The Clothing Show.  Apart from a giant spider web - where a giant spider lived - that was found in the ladies bathroom and that horrified every girl that went in, nothing much happened.  I hung around with the Oligarchy fellas and read my New Yorker outside, sun bathing the best in could in this cold ass Toronto weather.



When the taking down of our booth was done with and the van was packed, we went downtown to get some sushis.  We got an enormous wooden boat full of 'em.  They were nice, especially after being on our feet the whole day, and the night leading from Saturday to Sunday, where we vainly tried to catch some sleep.

*

The first day of the expo was nice.  The girls went there first, because they still had some things to set up, and I stayed in my bed for one more hour of sleep.  Mr. Beach Club knocked on my door at 10 and we went to get coffee, and then tried to find a supermarket.  We were instructed to follow a real ugly road and finally got to some kind of poor man's grocery store.  I don't remember what it was called but it looked as if Dollorama was going into the food market.

We still managed to buy some crap, and headed to the National Trade Centre's Automotive Building.  The girls were glad we brought breakfast.  The attendance wasn't exactly as dense as hoped, probably due to the sun shining outside, but there were still cars lined up à l'infini in the parking lot.  Lots of mother / daughter teams, lots of cute stylish TO chickies, and some guys.  I spent the day helping as best as I could, here and there.  When the show closed at 8 we headed to La Bifthèque where I ate the world's biggest burger - a burger I ended up not finishing.

We headed back to the hotel and decided to go for a swim.  There were only three baby boomers chilling in the jacuzzi, so we took control of the pool and swam under the big dome a bit.  We were in the jacuzzi, at around 10 PM, when some kids started pouring in the pool by small groups of 4-5.  They would push the door, start screaming, run and jump in the water without any further intro.  Turns out they were brats from Calgary, in town for a hockey tournament.  Tournament sounds a lot like torment and we would find out a little later that the two almost always go together.  Miss Bijoux & Miss 514 Connexion decided it was time to leave the premises due to an overload of screaming kids, so we went back to our rooms, had a few drinks and went to sleep.



Only to be awaken fifteen minutes later by the hotel's fire alarm.  What the fuck ?  We waited a bit, and a message came on, asking us to stand by, that the alarm was "under investigation".  After fifteen minutes of loud blaring, another message came on : the situation had been settled, but the message got cut and the alarm kept on ringing.  I don't know if you've ever experienced a hotel fire alarm but man, this is fuckin' loud, and quite UNBEARABLE.

It turned out that one of the fuckin' kids had pulled the alarm, and that the hotel staff was way too retarded to have it stopped.  It kept on ringing for an hour.  An hour that felt like eternity.

*

We left Montreal around 8 AM on Friday, and stopped to eat something only once we were deep into the Ontario plains.  I went to have a wizz in a bathroom stall with a grafitti that proclaimed : "Madona was here".

We only got to the hotel - the Renaissance, located just next to the Pierson airport - around 3, and left almost immediately, since we had to be at the Trade Centre at 4 to build the booths.  We couldn't possible have guessed that a surprise was waiting for us...



The guys at the security gate, before we entered the building, asked us if we had "safety shoes" on.  We most certainly did not.  So : we couldn't get in !  We went to seek an explanation at the front door, where two Clothing Show employees were standing in a booth.  They told us that due to a new bylaw, all trade centers were now considered "construction sites" and that, thanks to that, they had to follow "construction safety rules" and make us wear steel toes for setting up our booth.

So here's what we had to do : either rent some steel toes at 5$ a pair - the rental booth was empty even though there was only about 40 persons setting up their stuff inside, so this option was out of the question - or buy some at 30$ a pair in Mr. Safety Shoes' truck, coincidentally parked just outside.  Which is, if you want to know what I think, a fucking scam.

We eventually bought the shoes (two pairs for Miss Bijoux & me = 60$) and went inside.  Only to find out that most people were walking around in regular shoes, and that some persons even had tongs on !!  Some girls that arrived way earlier told us that nobody mentioned safety shoes to them at the entrance.  We were pissed.  An asian lady came and asked us if she could borrow a pair from us for 5$. She went for some change - with the shoes - and never came back. So on top of having to buy these fuckers, a pair was stolen from us.

An hour later or so, they even stopped enforcing this "law" because Mr. Safety Shoes got the hell out of there - he ran out of stock ! That was so fun.



After setting up Miss Bijoux' booth, we helped the others a bit, and we were out of there around 9:30. We went to eat at Boston Pizza, just across the highway from our hotel, and we got to the rooms it was too late to go in the pool. So we just kicked back, and slept early. With a plane landing on our head every ten minutes. To be fair, it didn't keep me from sleeping like a baby with my baby.

New Neon Eyes

Luscious Jackson put out a song called "Naked Eyes" and that made them famous. Being on Grand Royal, the Beastie Boys' label, wasn't enough; their first EP was well received, but when I saw them at Lollapalooza in '94 they weren't that big. And on my way to get a beer, I heard a deep and sexy voice claim : "Hello, I am Nick Cave". I ran.

No relation to what what follows, whatsoever.

I found out today that I am looking at the world with "new eyes". As if I was blind a few days ago, got an operation and regained sight. Suddenly, out of the blue. I see things that I have never seen, even in some place where I've been every day for the last three years. Things change, of course, and I observe them morphing. My attention span also helps my amazement : I am sometimes so busy and focused that I do not see the world around me.



In a temple of bling bling like the Eaton Center, it's easy to let your eyes drift on stuff...

Then again, I might perceive reality differently from other people. That has happened before. Especially that night I took two hits of LSD, smoked hash on the oven, drank half a 12 pack of Molson Dry and finally decided to snif the last line of PCP I had. The grass was crawling over me, my feet were entering the sidewalk as if it was quicksand, and I thought my friends wanted to kill me. I went to Shawinigan Sud that night to see what the fuss was all about and people stopping by were talking to me, their faces' skin peeling off in the multi-colored street lights. I felt as if somebody with a search warrant was turning my bowels inside out and tears were running down my eyes. I didn't notice.

*

There's one Neon a week in the month of May. Tiga launches his album, SEXOR, on Saturday, with his lil' bro Thomas Von Party opening. He'll also launch it on friday night at Toronto's Mod Club, with MSTRKRFT opening, and I was supposed to attend. However, my days in TO will be long and I could use some sleep in between them, so I'll have to pass.



Next week, on Friday the 12th, MSTRKRFT are headlining the 4th edition of Voyeur... Guess I won't be there, because I'm attending - and DJ'ing at - Robeat's "Kick le... Clavecin" party, at Théâtre Plaza in Villeray. It might be the start of a whole new monthly if enough people show up, so represent ! Tickets are 4$ in advance, and if you need any, I'm right here to pimp 'em to ya. Expect some dark discothèque vibes, a sweaty dancefloor and sub bass that will make your brain melt and your ear drums explode.

On May 20th, Headman is in town to attend his own private I Love Neon party, with Thomas Von Party once again opening. Miss Bijoux' best friend is getting married on that very same day, and she happens to be the demoiselle d'honneur, so there are good chances we'll miss it as well, because we'll be kinda stuck in Oka, or Deux-Montagnes, I don't know where it's at exactly. Unless a gentle soul picks us up or somebody leaves early and takes us, we'll be a no show.

May 27th, NYC invades Neon - after invading a New Year's Eve Neon two (three ?) years ago with DJ Unknown & Morgan Geist - with James Fuckin' Friedman as the headliner. You should be able to count me in on this one, at least. Or maybe not, because I *might* be DJ'ing at a friend's party in... Ottawa. Call it bad luck ?

With the Piknics back with a bang on May 21st (with Poker Flat's Jeff Samuel !), and several high profile gigs coming up over the summer, it should be pretty hard to keep money in my pockets over the course of the season. But I'll try, I'll try.

*

So here I go again, like Whitesnake. Tomorrow at 8 AM, Miss 514 Connexion is picking us up and we're heading for beautiful Toronto. Miss Bijoux will appear at The Clothing Show, over the week-end, with yours truly as her most effective assistant.

I'll try to catch Frank Gehry's expo as it's the last week-end where I can do that. But if I don't make it, it won't be the end of the world. I'll be back, folks : the CN tower, Aesop's Table, and the fuckin' City Hall will all be gazed at and photographed by my own private self by the end of the summer. It's a mission I don't intend to fail.



I heard there was a pool at our hotel. Yippee ! I'll go in there and have a swim, and hopefully scare away all the conservative elderlies. I might report from over there if I can find any wi-fi, but if not, talk to you next week !

Souvenirs de Shawinigan Falls

Les souvenirs sont de fugitives pensées habitant nos neurones, et nous jouent parfois des tours. Si on laisse un tiroir ouvert, il est facile d'y fouiller, mais on perd parfois la clé des tiroirs fermés...

Je ne me considère pas comme un être exceptionnel mais j'ai vécu au sein de plusieurs univers et groupes sociaux au long de mon existence, en ayant des intérêts aussi multiples que divers et en déménageant plus souvent qu'à mon tour. Nos activités sociales nous amènent souvent à faire de nouvelles rencontres et je connais ainsi des gens dans diverses sphères et groupes d'âges, et dans diverses régions géographiques du Québec.

Ces rapports que j'entretiens avec les gens que je côtoie quotidiennement disparaissent parfois sous la masse des souvenirs, et ressurgissent brusquement, sporadiquement, lorsqu'un élément les évoque. Cet élément peut être un mot, une image, une odeur, une impression...



Je me suis souvenu cet après-midi du temps où je courais les tavernes de Shawinigan, désoeuvré et assoifé, alors que je n'avais même pas l'âge légal pour y entrer. Mon hâvre de paix houblonneuse préféré était la taverne Chez Rosaire, non loin de la rue St-Marc, située au coeur d'un quartier défavorisé - il est difficile de trouver autrement, à Shawinigan, depuis que le taux de chômage a chuté dramatiquement au profit d'une armée d'assistés sociaux. Il n'y a plus d'emplois, mais les gens s'accrochent malgré tout.



Chez Rosaire, donc, plusieurs avantages s'offraient au consommateur averti; le bâtiment communique avec les cuisines du déli de la rue St-Marc, et on pouvait donc se faire "livrer" la nourriture de notre choix tout en savourant le spécial du mercredi, le "boc à 1$". Bière en fût : 6$ le pichet. Serveur : chemise blanche, coupe Longueuil, moustache. Arachides non écaillées gratuites !!! Juke-box infernal.

Il y a depuis peu un écran géant - en fait, depuis longtemps, mais il ne m'est jamais arrivé d'aller traîner là en plein match de lutte, je n'ai donc jamais vu le déploiement de son plein potentiel - servant principalement à distraire les clients solitaires qui dorment, la face dans le Nouveliste (le quotidien de Trois-Rivières), devant leur pichet Clamato / bière en fut, auquel ils ajoutent un soupçon de sel, bien entendu.

J'ai commencé à fréquenter la "place" à 16 ans, et à mon anniversaire, deux ans plus tard, j'ai été avec Bobby Gagnon voler un pingouin "gossé" en bois dans un dépanneur non loin. Tout le monde l'a signé, on l'a trempé dans nos pichets, on a accidentellement cassé un de ses bras, et Bobby lui a fait un "plâtre" avec du papier de toilette. Je m'en suis récemment réparti mais je me souviendrai toujours des commentaires réjouissants qui l'ornaient, entre autres ceux d'un certain "Sébas" qui avait écrit : "P.A., t'es un vrai straight edgeeeeee".

Quelqu'un m'avait mentionné qu'on avait droit à un boc gratuit si c'était notre anniversaire, alors je suis allé voir notre sympathique serveur moustachu pour vérifier la chose. Il m'a confirmé la tradition en exigeant de moi une pièce d'identité avec ma date de naissance, et lorsqu'il s'est aperçu que je devenais majeur ce soir là, il m'a regardé d'un air incrédule.

J'allais aussi quelquefois au Campus, un bar plus "dance" surtout fréquenté par des étudiants du Cégep de Shawinigan et des joueurs de hockey des Cataractes (c'est une maladie occulaire, mais aussi un mot pour désigner des "rapides" formés par une dénivellation du terrain sur lequel court une rivière).



Le Campus est situé sur les berges de la rivière Saint-Maurice, qui se jette dans le St-Laurent au niveau de Trois-Rivières - en fait, eh oui, c'est l'une de ces fameuses "trois rivières", et j'imagine que le Saint-Laurent en est une aussi, j'ignore cependant quelle peut être la troisième ? Un soir de désoeuvrement où on m'avait encore une fois expulsé du Campus et où je n'avais pas trouvé de demoiselle à tripoter dans un coin, Bobby et moi sommes allé finir nos bières sur la berge. L'eau du Saint-Maurice est assez douteuse, la rivière ayant pendant de nombreuses années servi à transporter des billots de bois en provenance du nord de la Mauricie (La Tuque et au-delà), acheminés en ville grâce au flux nord-sud naturel des eaux, pour être transformés par la Belgo et la Stone Consolidated en pâte à papier. Industrie qui, avec l'électricité d'un des tout premiers barrages hydro-électrique au Québec et, plus tard, l'aluminium de l'Alcan, ont constitué les principaux pôles d'activité économique et, avec l'arrivée d'un marché ouvert et la construction d'autres barrages, a précipité la chute de l'équilibre social et commercial du coin.



La contemplation des flots noirs de l'eau mouvante de la rivière nous a fait remarquer un canot amarré non loin, et dans notre stupeur alcoolisée nous avons décidé de "l'emprunter" pour aller se ballader sur les flots.

C'est au milieu de la rivière, avec une Molson Ex chaude entre les mains, dans le silence de notre dérive, que j'ai compris qu'il ne servait à rien de vénérer le passé comme si c'était un temple sacré, et qu'insister pour demeurer sur les lieux de ma naissance, aussi pittoresque soient-ils, n'était peutêtre pas la meilleure chose à faire.

Cannibal Stock Footage

Using stock footage and letting it appear in the final editing of any full length, commercially released feature is kinda lame. Not only is this lame because it suggests that you didn't have the budget, time or imagination to shoot the scenes yourself, it's also lame because you're assuming the viewer is an idiot who will not see the difference in grain or film stock used.

However, an industry litterally lived on stock footage in Europe, in the 70's and 80's. A practice that was seldom used before almost became a norm, with italian genre filmmakers, and for the fine folks at the Eurociné offices, in Paris, it was mandatory.

Eurociné were a phenomenon : they had a whole catalogue of action scenes, and with their economical ingeniosity, they could write a script around a whole hour of stock footage and then have to shoot only half an hour to get to the 90 minutes mark. Even with only 30 minutes to shoot, they would try to cut down costs by avoiding to pay for "interns" part of their crews, or doing everything "on the cheap"; their productions reflect these choices, unfortunately, and this "cheapness" has become their trademark over the years.

Italian genre filmmakers used the "technique", more often than not, as a valuable shock value. Especially in cannibal movies, a current started by Umberto Lenzi's MAN FROM DEEP RIVER and whose most remarkable pieces included Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST and Lenzi's own CANNIBAL FEROX. These movies are all fun, all action, all shockers.



When I worked in a Laval Club International Vidéofilm, some years ago, there wasn't a week passing by without somebody asking about CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. Modern legend has it that the "found footage" featured as the main plot twist of the film is real. Which, of course, is not the case. Ruggero Deodato knows the story well, because he's heard it all his life. When I met him in Tarrytown, NY, at his CultCon appearance a few years back, he mentioned that the thing for which he was blamed the most was the animal massacres. In EATEN ALIVE, another Lenzi flick that I watched yesterday, the shock value of animal killings is taken to an extreme. The scenes are pointlessly incorporated in the action, probably suggesting that the jungle out there is a deadly and savage place you wouldn't want to visit anytime soon.



It's just horrifying on another level : the biggest shock is that a film crew could stand there and capture pure barbary for the sake of "entertainment". I'm not a born-again christian or buddhist who believes every life has the same value, but common sense drives me to think that killing animals "just for fun" - because that's what it is, after all - is reprehensible.

In EATEN ALIVE, I don't know what parts of this nonsense were shot by Lenzi and what parts where stock footage. Even though it does not interfere with the way we perceive the movie and our appreciation of old Umberto's sense of pace and witty one-liners, it's not a pleasing experience to have to see that, and it's the kind of "exploitation" that gives the genre a bad name.



It's still a fascinating subgenre from an era where a lot more was permitted, and watching it is like staring at a Monet painting in a dusty museum; it is the transposition of sensationalism onscreen, as seen by an italian artisan, with Ivan Rassimov, Janet Agren and Paola Senatore. Which is something I, personally, cannot say no to !