Where the Wild Things Are

If you never read this book as a child, there’s probably a pretty big chunk of lego blocks missing from the foundation of your youth’s culture. Briefly, the story is about a young boy named Max who is sent up to his room without supper after being very mischievous. The anger raging inside of him is immense: his mother called him a wild thing. Suddenly his bedroom morphs into a forest and an ocean where he finds a little boat waiting for him. He then sails to the land where the wild things are. My story telling ends here, it’s up to you to find out the rest if you don’t already know it.

At the time of its publication, in 1963, finding a children’s book that treated dark emotions such as anger wasn’t very frequent. I guess you could say it was a little avant-garde. Luckily for those who never did read it, the live-action movie adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s picture book is set to be released on October 16th, 2009 and to add icing on the cake: it is directed by film genius Spike Jonze. You can view the trailer
here; needless to say my expectations for this movie are extremely high. However, the book is really worth a read even with the movie coming out, the illustrations themselves, also by Sendak, are key players in what has become a true classic.

Love this Love

As I have mentioned before, I love “Californication”… the tv series.
It’s funny, obscene, slightly dark and cynical – what’s not to love?
I also may have a weakness for it due to the fact that the main character is a jaded writer.
The following scene was taken from one of the last episodes of the second season. It’s one of the few scenes that break away from the series’ inclination towards humor and sarcasm for a moment in order to say: “ok, but seriously now…”
I was left speechless, longing and yet full of inspiration.
This is one of my favorite scenes.
I truly love this love…

Did you Know…

Apparently today, March 12th, is Saint Patrick Swayze Day (and my new favorite holiday ).



Well… according to the O'Regan's pub.

We didn’t get to hear “She’s Like the Wind”, but it was nonetheless a truly great night.

OK to be honest, we only realized it was Saint Patrick Swayze Day when we left the pub and noticed this sign outside. We laughed pretty much all the way home. Thank you Gen, I love you, you are my Prozac.

No Words Necessary

Girl you Know it’s True

I don’t know if it’s because I’m extremely feverish and heavily medicated at the moment, but I seriously can’t stop laughing at the introduction dialogue of this song “from” Milli Vanilli. I’m not sure if it’s Fab Morvan or Rob Pilatus who acts out the scene in the video, but regardless, I was totally expecting whoever it is to pull a “Blue Steel” at the end of his speech. I’ve played back the scene about five times so far and it’s still hilarious. I also have not been home on a Friday night in over two months.

Memorabilia

Last September I spent a very memorable weekend at the Montreal Tattoo Convention (till this day, I don’t think I have ever partied that hard). Spending nearly 72 hours with your close friends, meeting new people who, from that moment on, also become your close friends – I couldn’t have asked for more. I could write about all kinds of crazy stories that happened during those three days, but one thing in particular got thrown back at me last week:

On the Saturday of the convention my girl-soul-mate Kalven and I were checking out magazines and books at one of the kiosks, completely exhausted from the night we just had… and from the night before that. All of a sudden some man taps me on the shoulder and tries explaining to me in a very broken English that he would like to take a photograph of me. I figure it’s a tattoo convention so there's nothing abnormal about that. Kalven tells me she’ll wait for me at the kiosk and so I follow the Spanish photographer. He brings to this place draped in black curtains at the very back and my eyes fall upon a wooden bench in the center of his set up. He pulls out his portfolio and starts showing me all these photos of naked dames then motions to the bench and asks me to remove my top. At this point I messaged Kalven to tell her to get her ass in here because this didn’t seem legit at all. Finally K. walks in as I’m telling the guy he can take his photograph, but the top has to stay on. He settled. I never thought about this moment again until last week when a staff member from one of the stores I take care of in Toronto called me up to tell me that they bought a Spanish tattoo magazine and… I’m in it. I guess getting naked isn’t always a prerequisite.


the cover


me

NB. I am all for nude photography, but it has to be done with taste; therefore I don’t leave that up to just anybody.

Fire Escapes

Very recently I have been contemplating fire escapes. Two nights ago I started questioning the true purpose of fire escapes, thus questioning the name we have given them. How often do we really use them to escape fires? Generally, we use them to briefly escape our lives, “take a breather” as they say. We’ll sit on the steps, gaze into the simplicity of our surroundings and everything else during those few moments, no matter how weighty, seems to be put on pause. You can let your mind wander freely or choose to put it to rest and shut yourself off completely. You admire the black paint peeling off the railing, revealing an old coat of red underneath. You admire the cracked cement in-between the red bricks to which the fire escape is bolted. Then you turn back to the peeling paint and start pulling back the strips when suddenly your mind is brought back to your youth. Back to a time when you used to peel the white paint off your parents’ porch, revealing a coat of grey. You did this out of sheer boredom. The same actions can have very different purposes at different stages of our lives. Back then you did it to kill time, now you do it to escape time, to escape reality. Is a fire escape in actuality a reality escape?
You stop moving for a few minutes and that’s when the motion detector light clicks off. You are now plunged into darkness except for the glow of a distant street lamp at the end of an alley. All the reasons why you came out for some air in the first place come flooding back into your mind: all the fires people keep lighting underneath you, their smoke overwhelming you, choking you. You ran to the fire escape to clear your head from the intoxication. People can be so intoxicating. Seems as though at the end of it all, the name fire escape does do them justice, because we all have fires in our lives we need to escape from.