Video Of The Week: Halsey

Halsey is the stage name of one Ashley Nicolette Frangipan, from New Jersey.

She is a 23-year-old pop artist who is on her second record, Hopeless Fountain Kingdom, having released Badlands in 2015. She has toured with Imagine Dragons and The Weeknd, recorded with The Chainsmokers and Justin Bieber, and is emo to the core, citing Panic! At The Disco as her all-time favourite band.

She spent her late teens dating a heroin addict in New York City and dropping out of college, so he had the regular rebellious lifestyle worthy of a TV biopic.

Oh, and she's way more into P!nk than she lets on, as can be attested by the video for Bad At Love, which she co-directed with Sing J. Lee:

There's a lot of Thelma & Louise in there, as well, of course. Because empowerment.

And because watching and getting inspired by Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Gas Food Lodging, Bound, Set It Off, Mulholland Drive, Frida, Suffragette, or Lost And Delirious is not cliché enough for a young soul who only pretends to be interested in cinema.

Luka Sabbat Doesn't Actually Explain Teen Talk

I'll classify this as "comedy" even though I'm fairly certain model and fashionista Luka Sabbat was dead-serious in this piece:


Now's a good time to wrap your face around in your palm. Death to us all.

Added bonus, an actual comedy bit on the subject by Late Night with Seth Meyers:

Weird Pepsi Flavours

I don't always drink cola, but when I do, I try to drink Pepsi. Because it's the least disgusting, and Pepsi Max has ginseng. And triple the caffeine of the regular brand. Zero fucking calories.

Yet Pepsi Max isn't in this list of 19 (actually 23) of weird Pepsis.

I'd try most of them.

Then again, I really, really liked Crystal Pepsi. As a teen, when my corner store stopped buying it, I emptied their remaining stock by myself, one at a time, for a month. Then I hit withdrawal.

Video Of (Last) Week: Arcade Fire

It's hard to say either party have outdone themselves, really, because both Arcade Fire and director Spike Jonze are responsible for some of the most beautiful and ground-breaking videos out there - one of Arcade Fire's videos, animated in a style reminiscent of both Nightmare Before Christmas and the Spawn series was even the subject of a previous Video Of The Month post, while Jonze has DVDs released of his video works, in addition to his acclaimed films such as Where The Wild Things Are and Being John Malkovich.

This time, in a setup reminiscent of M.I.A.'s Born Free but much more subtle and poignant, The Suburbs are the setting, fittingly, as the title not only of the song but also of their recent album, as we follow a group of teenagers through a day and evening of their time in their neighbourhood, which we learn through time is both police-run by day and under martial law at night, which doesn't stop some of them from being mischievous at times and others from being assaulted.

It's a terrific short film in line with our times, with the Fear and Panic that strikes in the general population, afraid of losing its basic civil liberties - ironically, a theme that seems more present now for Conservatives in the U.S. vis-à-vis the policies of Barack Obama than it was under the George W. Bush / Patriot Act / War On Terror years for Liberals.

It's a good song off a great album - but not the best one, which is a good thing. It leaves room for improvement and upgrading.

 

Video Of The Week: Break Machine

Before I was a writer, a musician, a hockey player... I was a child. A break-dancing, spin-on-my-head on a cardboard box child, living in a huge apartment complex on the wrong side of the tracks by the St-Lawrence river in Pierrefonds.

Not all my childhood years, but, say, ages 3 to 6. Before living in Verdun for 3 months, and then NDG for the remainder of my not-adult life.

There was one kid I'd play with - we both had Star Wars figurines and could have fun all day playing with them - that was, of course, decades before keeping them hidden in a closet and not playing with them would have made us millionaires.

But when that friend wasn't available, it was either learning to ride a bike, or dancing - usually by myself, on cardboard boxes.

In 1983, I started listening to 3 artists that would keep me going pretty much until the end of the decade - or at least until Guns N' Roses came along... a man: Michael Jackson, a woman (hey, I was 5, I didn't know!): Boy George (and Culture Club), and a song: Break Machine's Street Dance. And eventually, Samantha Fox took over Boy George's place, but that's a whole other story.

But Street Dance stayed with me a long time. To this day, I put it in my iPod rotation for a couple of weeks every year; it had that (little) bit of edge that Thriller didn't have, the street smarts, the balls. Although in '83, Jacko had balls, he was even black. Again: whole other story.

For some reason, today, at work, it came upon the subject that, as a kid, I was a full-fledged break-dancer. That I had all the fucking moves down, whcih is kind of hard to believe given my actual physique, I'll admit taht much. But still...

If 1993-96 were the defining years of my teens (and the best years of my life, probably), 1983 was the year that made my childhood. Starting kindergarten, making new friends at school but rarely seeing them after school and/or on weekends, my mom working her ass off to raise me and make ends meet - but caring, full of love, happy. Shit, if my childhood had been my 1983 for all years until I was 12, then my teens would have been 1993-96 three times over, fairy tales would not have matched my level of love for life and happiness ever after. I wouldn't have even needed adulthood, my life would have been complete.

But no, I had to witness the rest of the '80s. To this day, having lived it once, I can't understand the whole ''80s revival'' bullshit that's seemingly been going on for 10 years, not even in a sarcastic way: it wasn't just terrible, it was awful, wretched, horror-disguised-as-fuchsia-and-pastels, decadence for assholes and idiots, shitty beers, terrible TV, the worst music of all time, extravagance for the sake of absent-mindedness.

It wasn't the worst decade of the 1900s, it was the worst decade of all fucking time. 1984 isn't just a book by George Orwell, it's a fucking way of life embodied by Duran Duran wearing pastels on a boat in Miami harbor; by haircuts so bad the male cast of Friends wouldn't even dare touch it with someone else's ten-foot pole; by the stench of sweat mixed with cheap cologne drenched in cocaine and that shit that makes Cracker Jacks stick; by an Albertan oil magnate selling the services of a human - the best at what he does, ever! - and not doing jail time for it; by extremely Conservative politics vying to bring back The Church's Values that the people had pushed aside 20 years prior.

It was the worst of times, it was the... worst of times. Until 1985 came along. Then 1986. Then most of 1987. And a bit of 1988, and quite a big chunk of 1989, too. Even 1990 wasn't immune to the shit - thanks, Technotronic.

So I always have 1983 to go back to, the one shining beacon in a decade of black holes and eclipses (and general fecal matter for the soul). And a big part of what made 1983 so special was this song, my Video Of The Week, Street Dance. Thanks for your patience.




Oh, and yes, I know Break Machine was actually produced/kind of put together by Jacques Morali, the brains behind boy-band-of-its-time Village People. So what. It's good, and it's street.

Kids Who Want To Die Young

I was walking down the street last night, coming home from the grocery store, when two kids are walking towards me, in the opposite direction. The one on the left is tiny, probably between 10 and 12 years old, with the emo-ish haircut from three years ago; the kid on the right was tall, I'd give him maybe 14 years of age, lanky, cap on sideways, wearing a green shirt.

The tall gringo asks me if I have a cigarette for them, to which I reply: ''no, I'm sorry, I don't smoke''.

And he proceeds to name-call me, saying my armpits smell, that I stink of urine, that I'm full of shit. Of course, he waits until he's 15 feet away from me to say any of that, and so I just turn around and stare at him as I keep walking my way.

He then says I should look out for cars from the oncoming traffic, that I could get hit, and all I could say was this:

Kid, between you and me, you're the one who isn't going to die of old age.

Ah, good times. It's nice to know we're raising the next generation to be complete scumbags, in case the planet does kill us within two years, it won't be too much of a fucking loss.

I could have ended it there, maybe I should have, but no. Later, I was having a conversation with the Former Lady Of The House and I mentioned this, and described the kids... they are customers at the video store she manages - and the whole staff hates them. So refuse to even service them. Ha ha. Pricks.

The Stinkiest Alley In Montréal

I guess when they got the cleaning the City, they cleaned up that alleyway, too, because when you pass by it, the stench no longer causes you to want to vomit, but having been there in the early-to-mid-90s, I still won't venture into it.

It's situated on Ste-Catherine West, right behind a Burger King that been there for ages and what is now the downtown core's biggest Future Shop, although we used to know it more as the block that housed Labyrinth (rock t-shirts and posters galore, knives and lighters and motorcycle stuff too) and Mars (a dusty asthma-inducing basement - even though it was on the second floor - where they would sell bootleg CDs for almost $100 and one-off collector's show posters from the 60s to the 90s) - still, it's an area that most Montrealers passed by on a daily basis.

You could smell it from almost a block away, putrid, like decomposing homeless bodies that had shat themselves prior to dying there. When you'd see a hobo walk in there, you just knew he'd never come out - you had probably witnessed someone's final moments in the World Of The Living. Whether it was summer or winter, there was an acidic steam coming out of it that would burn the eyes, a somewhat transparent cloudiness of stench that stood from the ground to about twelve feet high - and it stank so much that most people who would walk past it would just hold their breath to not be subjected to it in the pit of their lungs and settle for teary eyes and temporary burns to the face and hands; it's a surprise a fast-food joint could survive and thrive there, considering.

A few friends and I entered it once, as a dare, the one time that it didn't smell like the pits of Hell had thrown up a sack of shit and sweat - we must have been 14 years old, three or four of us. It was a Sunday. We saw it to the end, it lead to a parking lot where the cars that were closest to the alley were rotting, like its extension into the world of mechanics, like they had caught a mutated version of whatever virus lurks in the air of the alley.

We didn't want to stay too long to not catch it too, so we quickly fucked off to Labyrinth, but we were uneasy being there despite it only smelling like decayed garbage and stale urine that time. You should have seen the look on people's faces when they saw relatively healthy teenage boys come out of there: shock and - not awe, maybe mistrust. They even stayed clear of our way until we entered the store, it was weird and pleasant at once, like we were Ghost Riders or something.

Extra Virgin

1993 was a great year. Pearl Jam released Vs., a perfect rock record; Nirvana released In Utero, their best record; the Toronto Maple Leafs couldn't get to the Cup Finals despite gut-wrenching performances by Doug Gilmour and Félix Potvin; and the Canadiens won the Stanley Cup for the last time so far, a miracle-working Patrick Roy taking a very average team to the highest honours almost all by himself against Wayne Gretzky's Los Angeles Kings.

In what was probably June of that year, the decisive Cup Finals game between the Kings and our beloved Habs was at home. My family had season tickets, but I opted out of going and instead set my sights to La Ronde, the local Six Flags amusement park, with a bunch of friends and maybe catch a bit of the end of the riot afterwards; I didn't end up with a free TV, but I lost my virginity to a 19 year-old chick I picked up at La Ronde, so all in all, I must say it was a decent night.

It was a time when I was slimmer, when I would wear two band t-shirts at once and tie a third one around my waist with the logo facing outwards toward those behind me; it looked pretty fucking cool to me, and I was the only one doing it - it was my style, easily identifiable.

It wasn't rare for me to get hit on in those days, what with a tall athlete's frame, long straight rocker hair and a shyness I hid behind feigned confidence. Often, I would leave with girls' telephone numbers. That night, I left with the girl.

Normally, at almost 15 years of age, after a day of walking in the sun and light entertainment, I'd be ready to go to sleep by 1AM - but not that night. That night, in the basement where I often slept (I had an actual room on the second floor, but my little brother and parents also slept there, so I had the basement as additional living quarters where I could sometimes get more privacy, especially at night) it seemed I was going to get a go at it. She was older than me, at least 4 years, and she knew what she was doing. She even interrupted a make-out session to ask, specifically, ''do you know what you're doing, have you done it before''?

''Yes'', I was quick to reply, ''of course''. It wasn't really a lie, because I had lived that moment time and time again, millions of times, in my head. And already I knew the gizmo I carried around in my underpants through and through - I'd lived with it my whole life, after all. And I knew ladies' equipment pretty well, too, having already toyed around that area enough in the couple of years previous to this night on an average of maybe once a week - just not actually been inside there with my machinery.

So the mouths went from the mouth to everywhere our hands had been previously, and came time for the fatal question - one that I'd previously had the answer wrong to, which had cost me an earlier deflowerization: ''do you have a condom?'' This time: ''yes''! We had a winner.

So together we struggle to release the condom from its packaging, succeed, and together we put the fucker on.

KABLAM!

I ejaculate right then and there.

I had tried condoms on before, even jerked off into them. Never had it had that impact on me. But this time, maybe it was the nerves, the sexual tension, the fact that she was so hot despite wearing way too much make up, the lack of experience on my part, but it happened. I came in the condom before even entering the comfort zone.

I tried getting away with it, too, and lucky for me I'm still pretty well hung even when getting flaccid, so we made do, having soft-cock sex. She did her best to pretend not having noticed, and we still went at it for a few hours.

Believe it or not, that was not the most embarrassing moment of the episode. No, that came the next morning, when we went upstairs for breakfast, with the parents at the dining table.

''So, Sébastian, are you going to introduce your friend?''

Oh, yeah.

Her name was Katia, and I never saw her again. But I did see a few of her friends for a while, including a very short but very hot girl, my age, named Manon - a name usually reserved for people over twenty years older than she was. She was a blast - and she still has a cap of mine that I really loved, corduroy, all black, with an Esso insignia in front - sarcastic branding was all the rage then, and would be even more so the following year.

The Brothers Who Loved Boys Too Much

The Gazette came out today with an amazing in-depth look at sexual abuses at my alma mater, Collège Notre-Dame.

It talks about one particular case but also says the bulk of the cases reported to it took place in the 1970s.

I was there from 1990-95. I can say that cases in my era were absoltely not blatant and exposed. For one thing, Brothers no longer taught any classes, and only two were still on duty, in charge of the boys' dormitory for seventh graders.

Others roamed the halls at times, yes, because they still lived in the building, but most were never present when students were around.

It's hard to pinpoint how many kids were susceptible to have been abused, because you cannot assume a teen has been raped just because he acts weird.

But the two who tended to the boarding boys should not have been there in the first place. Whether accidental or intentional, some slips have definitely occurred. And to think that some kids were scarred to the point of committing suicide - for something that could easily have been avoided - by keeping the priests away from the kids. As simple as a math problem, really.