Youth Of The Beast

I was waiting for him to have a few posts before directing people to him, and I think we're at that point now...

My pal Youth Of The Beast has a blog that could be interpreted as NSFW (some images have boobies)... what it is is a blog with vintage pictures, be it of architecture, interior design, cars, album covers, unnamed bands rocking out, and topless girls. In no particular order. With no accompanying text to understand or contextualize.

It is what it is, and he adds to it with relative frequency.

Try it out.

LWLLJB...

Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber.

It's a blog, a website, a ridiculous new internet low and a great way to spend the next 10 minutes.

I've known about it for 24 hours now, and just realized I should probably share (I've shared on Facebook since yesterday, though, sorry!) in the fun.

It's weird - I struggle to blog once a day but post 25 links a day on my Facebook page...

I guess I save the really good stuff for the blog.

To My Friend, Yan Basque

I saw a kid today, he looked just like you, only, obviously, twenty years younger. He was running after a metro, trying to get in the subway train before it left Guy station.

I wanted to stop him, tell him it was too late, not to run uselessly in this suffocating heat, but more importantly, I wanted to tell him, for the future, ''don't sweat the small stuff, don't worry so much, but if you do, meh... chances are you'll be an artistic genius someday anyway''.

Or maybe even just a genius.

You could see it in the look in his eye, even beyond his glasses. You could see the pure, innocent dreams that someone should build upon to create a better world.

All this in a half-second of looking at your 10-year old doppelgänger.

I hope you had a great day.

The Unanimous Success Of Philémon Chante

And to think that just last Fall, Philémon Chante was performing a free concert at UnPop Montréal, my annual festival, for a half-full Cagibi... and that I got to share a stage with him, opening for Daniel Greer in an empty Brasserie Ste-Ambroise on a sad Tuesday night...

Like Patrick Pleau before him, Philémon Bergeron-Langlois has accomplished much in a short time span, not content with playing the Fringe Festival on June 12th, but performing at the peak of francophone music, Les FrancoFolies on the 15th.

A quick rise to glory for the man who, just two days ago, released his first record, Les Sessions Cubaines, at Casa Del Popolo, packed full of sweaty, loving adoration. Sure, it wasn't perfect - his usual charming and über-talented magnificent violonist Zoé Saint-Pierre couldn't make it... and neither did the records; despite a lauch show with nothing to launch, it seems the show garnered nothing but praise.

Here are a few articles in French preceding the show: Voir, Nightlife and L'Actualité!

And some pertaining to the show itself:
en français: on 4MTL and Bombe.tv
in English: from Free After Four and Examiner

The votes that matter are in, and despite being eliminated in the Francouvertes semi-final a month ago, we all know in our heart of hearts who the real winners are: those who get to witness Philémon singing.

Video Of The Week: The King Khan And BBQ Show

In honour of his showing Lindsay Lohan his behind at Cannes, this week's Video Of The Week features none other than King Khan, for the video ''Why Don't You Lie'', from his The King Khan And BBQ Show project (seemingly every year, he's in another, new ''King Khan & something'' band).

The King's real name is Arish A. Khan, of Indian descent but born and raised in Montréal. He now resides in Germany with his wife and two kids, and his projects garner much attention in Europe. Well, perhaps not as much as his stunt with Lohan, which got him on TMZ, Perez Hilton and Vice...

This song is a throwback to slow 50s love songs, while the video just pokes fun at indie films, homophobia, Berlin and German history.

Turn your brain off and enjoy. The link to see it on YouTube directly is here.

French Soccer Players And Poor Taste

This story is all kinds of wrong.

First, the (alleged) facts: three soccer players  from France's national team (Franck Ribéry, Karim Benzema, and Sidney Govou) have supposedly had the ''services'' of the same high-priced prostitute, and it turns out she was underage (17) at the time.

She says she had told them she was 18, and judging by the pictures, fine, I'll let that one slide.

Now, the reason why a man will use a ''professional'' for sex rather than, say, a groupie or their wife's sister, is that there is the implicit (and explicit) understanding that being paid for her services includes discretion and silence. Clearly, of late, some professionals are steping way over the boundaries of client/serviceperson privilege.

Then there's the issue of taste. You'd think that someone making upwards of $30,000 a month for sex would be hotter than Carmen Electra; in the  case of Zahia Dehar (the underage hooker in question), although she tries her best to look like Pamela Anderson, she fails miserably.

Case in point:

She looks like a used-up 40-year old skank who may have been a crack whore at some point.

And thus, a tasteless story becomes even more so, but in a different direction.

For that kind of money, seriously... Megan Fox...

King Khan Shows Lindsay Lohan His Bum

After a post about girls who wear (skimpy) clothes, here's another one about Montrealers who like to, uh, dress down: (musician) King Khan, pulling his pants down and putting his ass in Lindsay Lohan's face, at Cannes. Yes, King Khan is at Cannes; seems fitting, somehow, even if only phonetically.

The story was originally posted on the French blog Jalouse, but Vice (a former Montreal arts-and-community paper turned NYC/London hipster bible) worked hard and gathered all the evidence under the same roof - which was probably on fire, yet I doubt they let the ''motherfucker'' proverbially ''burn'', which could be a shame, I'm not sure yet.

Here are a couple of highlights; credit goes to Vice for stealing them from Jalouse, I guess. Is a man's behind safe for work? Who knows, who cares: if you're reading this, you're already in the wrong for not working. Enjoy.

Girls In Their Summer Clothes

I love Montréal in the summer, the weather, the sun, the humidity, the cleavage, the legs, the tummies, the women smelling of fresh flowers and and passion...


Some disagree, it's either their m.o. or their prerogative, but either way... fuck them.

But I see nothing wrong with a downtown like this

populated with creatures like these:

Moms. Again.

Mother's Day came to pass. I called mine, even called my grandmas. Two of them, anyway. Wished a happy one to a few of my friends, too.

Then it went away. That's what Holidays do, they expire, and the very next day, storefronts are loaded with the next spenders' trap.

And as it did years ago, just as it had faded from memory, bad news came on all fronts, from everywhere.

A really good friend of mine lost her mother early this year; now, her father's girlfriend has been diagnosed with cancer. My best friend's mom just got diagnosed with cancer, too, forcing him to come back from Mexico earlier than he'd expected. Even the former Lady Of The House's birther got a crappy diagnosis recently.

Mine's healthy, joyous, happy. She's the ideal mom for my brother and I - she's been treating us like adults since we were kids, teaching us about taking responsibility for our actions really early on. The kid's lucky, too, 'cause I made the usual 'teenage mistakes' first, so he didn't even get half the yellings I got, lucky bugger.

We took her for granted for much of our lives; we're too independent for our own good. Nearing and reaching 30, I started to realize it would suck to lose her without letting her know how I feel, how important she is to us.

She knows, now, even if she remains the one who initiates contact most times.

It's weird, because I'm at the age where people I've known all my life are dropping like fucking flies - especially the older folk - and it got me thinking about death, about getting terrible news myself, and I think...

Fuck. I think I'd be more ready to hear I'd be terminally sick than hearing it'd be her.

I've lived my life so that if/when the time came, I'd have the least amount of regrets possible, that I'd have the least amount of miserable days compared to good ones as possible.

But I'm not ready to let her go.

Take care of your moms, people.

R.I.P. Green Room

On Sunday, The Green Room, part of the Mile End Cultural Centre in Montréal, caught fire because of en electrical problem, i.e. ''an electrical short of an extension cord'', according to my friend and venue manager, Dom Castelli.

It had taken me years to get to play there (mostly because of their high price to rent the venue), but it was one of the fine-sounding showrooms on St-Laurent.

Bummer.

R.I.P. Ronnie James Dio

Cancer's a motherfucker. So is old age.

Dying of stomach cancer at 67 is a tad premature, but not unheard of. It's what happened to Ronnie James Dio, of Dio, Black Sabbath (and later Heaven & Hell), and Rainbow fame.

A hell of a legend of rock, and possibly the inventor of the ''devil's horns'' hand signal, which supposedly his grandmother used to do to him when he was a child, to ward off the ''evil eye''. His career spanned six decades, which is longer than the Rolling Stones' or Paul McCartney's - and that is despite ''heavy metal'' only being invented at the tail end of the 60s.

Regardless of whether you like the style of music or not, his powerful voice (even at a sick 67 years of age) was unique, and his talent must be recognized. His career is one worthy of the Hall Of Fame.

I Think I Need A Drink

I dunno, man - I haven't had money in something like three months, been restraining myself in that timespan.

I feel like going out, partying.

Then again, the playoffs start again tomorrow night - Habs versus Flyers - that can be reason to leave the house and celebrate.

It doesn't happen a lot, but I'd kinf of almost want to end up like this:

Video Of The Week: Jim White

Ok, I won't lie, this week's Video Of The Week was supposed to be by Them Crooked Vultures, the supergroup that was in town comprised of Josh Homme (of Queens Of The Stone Age, on vocals and guitar), John Paul Jones (of Led Zeppelin fame, on bass), Dave Grohl (of Nirvana and, more importantly, Foo Fighters, playing drums here) and Alain Johannes (of many bands, but mostly the Desert Sessions and QOTSA, playing guitar)... except they don't seem to have an actual, official, song-length video.

Then I thought of using Loco Locass' Le But, Montréal's anthem, but with the Habs winning and advancing, there'll be more opportunities.

So I went with one of my favourite artists, Jim White. No one (perhaps not even White himself) really knows what he's done before embarking on a path to singer-songwriterdom, but some have attempted to gather the many rumours on his Wikipedia page. Good luck deciphering any truth in that.

As for describing his music, I'll go this far: the base of it is alt-country, but it expands in all directions the way Beck probably would, but country-ish instead of folk-ish. The lyrics are bright, imaged, and often funny, like as if Beck, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash got drunk one night and started recording themselves telling each other stories of events that never actually happened in towns that don't exactly exist.

I don't know. Or I could just say: click here, or watch below:

Giants Instead Of Fish-Men

The first thing I realize upon entering the subway station is that it smells like a hospital cafeteria at breakfast time. Right away, I know this will be an eventful trip.

I'm reading Bukowski's Ham On Rye and I aim to take it slow, I want to taste every word more than bite all I can chew. I keep looking up in the faint hope to see something that'll make my day, perhaps the Fish Man I'd seen twice a few years ago (who kind of looked like this, but in purple, and with more normal eyes, and a blind man's cane), or a really, impossibly hot chick.

I'm about to reach my destination and abandon all hope when, as I'm exiting the train, I look to my immediate right to notice a man - no, a Giant - who was taller than the train itself, even from the outside. Everyone was staring at him, and he didn't seem phased by it at all. This was no handicap, it is a gift, you can tell by the smile on his face.

It isn't enough, but it's a start.

Off to La Belle Province for the usual Tuesday poutine, where they mess my order up... in my favour. I get two poutines, one of which I'll likely never even get to finish, but I have no one to share it with, and there are no beggars anywhere in sight, ironically. I'll have all the cheese, though, I must.

It's a good day to be me, but not one to work during. It's the type of day where I should just wander around the City and notice its eccentricities, hang with its freaks, bask in the world I used to live in.

I think that by growing up - because other people kept telling me to grow the fuck up - I have become an adult. A boring, normal adult. Days like this remind me of what used to fascinate me, and I wonder how I'd be if I'd stayed the same. I'd probably have been lonelier for longer stretches of my life, but I'm the type who feels lonely in a crowd of 50 friends anyhow. At this point, you'd be hard pressed to find me valid reasons to remain a boring, responsible adult.

Life seems so much funner on the other side.

Video Of The (Last) Week: Hexes And Ohs

They are an electro-pop duo from Montréal who specialize in making people happy.

He does wonders with visuals; he's created their website, makes show posters (including this one for me and my birthday show in 2007), and he's always willing to give tips, advice and opinions to newcomers on the scene.

She gets things done.



Together, they make cute, happy songs that resonate with love and a lust for life.

I chose to show you their video for Little Bird, in which he is in love with her, but a bully stands in their way. Watch it here, or below.

Cyndi Lauper At The Jazz Fest

They've announced earlier this week that Cyndi Lauper would make her way into the Montréal International Jazz Festival, and I thought it was great news. I remember purchasing a jazz-lite/bluesy record of hers from a decade ago and being pleasantly surprised at the general quality.

I just hope for two things:

1. not too much of her 80s crap
2. a bizarre event that will forever keep the show ingrained in my memory, like this one.

Now, the Jazz Fest needs to grow some balls and convince Tom Waits to have a week-long stand playing different shows each night with different people each time (although I'd gladly accept Marc Ribot being a part of everything).

Speaking of Waits, he plays the Devil in Terry Gilliam's most recent film - The Imaginarium Of Dr. Panassus - the best film of 2009. Buy it on Blu-Ray.

Website Of The Day: Passive Aggressive Notes

The internets. They are full of fun things (boobies!), fun facts (Uncyclopedia!), fun videos and fun websites.

Today's fun-filled discovery is a site many people already know: Passive Aggressive Notes (dot com).

Sample right here. Good times.

They even made a book about it, and I love the cover (the note on the table is priceless)!

Moustached Officials: Social Commentary Through A Picture, Because It's Worth A Thousand Words

I actually follow this blog very closely; usually, I check it within minutes of them adding a new picture, or set of pictures. They almost always crack me up, they never disappoint.

Basically, what they do is post pictures of people, the type of pics Sears is famous for making, or your small-town local photographer, whose ''office'' is right between the general store and the post office, on main Street, close to Church Street - you know the type.

You also know that they're cheesy when they're taken, but become cheesier every day after the fact; a decade later, they encapsulate an era, but usually not the essence of the era, just the ''what was politically correct at the time?'' of the era, the lowest common denominator, the minimum accepted level of quality, the universally-found-anywhere.

Blue background? Check. Out-of-date haircuts? Check. Awkward, unnatural pose? Check.

It's the ''normal people'' equivalent of having a band picture in front of a brick wall.

Moustached Officials is today's post. It's too good not to share.

The Halle Berry Break-Up

Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you, it was going to be my last post of April...

I told Halle Berry about the Oscar Curse, and how her relationship was doomed.

It seems like she agreed, because she left him.

You're welcome.

Now imagine this woman on the free market...

No, you don't even stand a chance.

Better Know An Actress: Shannon Whirry

Again another entry by Horror Movie Hotties, that is well worth seventeen seconds of your time.

Today: Shannon Whirry.

You, like I, might also recall her from the Jim Carrey film Me, Myself & Irene - a film I've seen over fifty times!

Semi-Fail

I was hoping I'd get 30 posts in 30 days in April in each my sports-and-chicks blog and this one...

With this post I'm at 29 here, with a little over an hour to spare. I'm at 26 there...

So close!

I probably would have made it if not for having posted in my French blog 5 times and the political blog I share another 4 times.

Oh, well, there'll always be next month!