Eat Your Emotions

I'm eating a spinach cream soup and pretending nothing's happening to the world. I just took a look at Meteomedia's website and even though it will probably rain all day, it is predicted that the weather will reach 12 degrees. Not bad for my day off. I wouldn't lie to y'all if I told you I needed a break. Most of my co-workers would agree. I stay calm on the phone at all times, but as soon as our customers are gone, let's just say I'm fast on the bitch switch. Sleeping long hours is already helping. But a week or two in the sun wouldn't hurt.



Speaking of which, I'll be off to California for a whole month this summer. From July 16th to August 13th, I will be harvesting lavender and living the good life on a farm in Los Gatos, near San José. Horseback riding, climbing redwoods, cruising around the coast... It will be a much needed month off, the first I will take since 2000. My holidays since then have mostly been bad jokes, spent in Montreal doing exactly what I'm doing all year long. I know I'll miss the Daft Punk show at Bell Centre, but they're playing in Berkeley at the end of July so I'll be there. And I will, of course, let you know what's going on from time to time, as I plan on bringing my laptop with me.

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Hookers are making "friends requests" on my MySpace page. It's not a recent trend but it's rather annoying. If you go on their profiles, you are magically redirected towards some porn pages. How lame. If I want to look at online porn, I don't need a spammer to tell me WHEN to do it...

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In Miami on Monday, a drunk police officer named Michael Ragusa - yes, same name as one of the firefighters who perished in the World Trade Center on 9/11 - stopped his patrol car (he was off duty) near a 31 years old woman walking home from her job, around 5 AM. He called her "beautiful" and got her to approach the car, and when she did, he grabbed her arm and forced her inside. With the lady still on his lap, he drove to a secluded area and proceeded to grope her and take her pants off. He was about to rape her when she told him she had a venereal disease.



That stopped him short. She was permitted to put her pants back and the policeman drove her home. Just before letting her go, he asked her for her phone number. She gave it to him, and he told her he'd like to see her again. He sent her a text message 20 minutes after she got out of his car, while she was telling her uncle about her little "adventure". Later during the day, Ragusa called her again, inviting her to lunch.

At that point, the Miami police was made aware of its member's inconduct, and Ragusa was promptly arrested, and relieved of duty.

Source : The Miami Herald.

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Freddie Francis is dead. He died leaving behind him an impressive body of work. A cinematographer on films such as David Lynch's THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980) and Martin Scorcese's CAPE FEAR (1991), he was first and foremost a director, deeply invested in Britain's genre cinema industry. Beginning his directing carreer with an uncredited involvement in THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS in 1962, he would go on to pursue an impressive stint of b-movies, including classics such as DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965, reuniting an impressive cast comprised of Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Donald Pleasance) and the Hammer's DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (1968).



While he died before I had the chance of watching his productions, it is still a great loss that follows a long series of losts. The men who have shaped the b-movie industry of Europe in the sixties and seventies are falling like flies. R.I.P.