The Best And Cutest Little Dancer

I try to leave minors out of this blog, for all the right reasons.

However, my kid's a cute little fucker:

14 months old, just started walking (now running all over the place at all times), and a star dancer. Also, as you can tell by the bottles on the floor, a juggler-in-training.

The Birth Of Father's Day

For most of my life, on Father's Day, my Mom would take us to my grandparents' place so the entire family could celebrate with the Family Elder. I'd wish every dad a "Happy Father's Day" except my grandad, who got the "Happy Grandfather's Day" greeting instead. Only from me, not any of his other grandkids.

I "met" my own father when I was 20. Before then, I had a succession of men volunteering for the job with varying levels of conviction; only one of them had some level of success, my brother's dad, who lived with us for over a decade. I learned many Life lessons from him; he was a lawyer, a sports fan, a history buff, a grammar nazi and a music aficionado - all things I could relate with or grew at least a passing interest in.

Still, I realized when I got to meet my biological father that we had even stronger bonds despite never having spoken to each other prior - he was court-ordered to never (ever, not even after I reached adulthood) contact me before I'd learned to speak, as I'd just begun taking my first few steps. We shared the same mentality, the same animal instincts, the same food preferences, a penchant for alcoholized drinks, the same irrational fear of skunks... and so much more.

So I've been celebrating Father's Day with him for the past 20 years as well, but also with my grandpa.

A couple of weeks ago, my girlfriend gave birth to my very own son. I was going to get celebrated for Father's Day for the first time, myself. We had things planned out, first on my girlfriend's side for lunch and early-afternoon activities, then an evening with my dad and his lady.

Except that on Father's Day eve - Saturday morning - my Mom called, telling me my grandfather, who'd been living in an assisted-living facility for the past couple of years, took a turn for the worse during the night and was entering his final few hours.

He hung on for as long as he could and waited for every one of us to each have our moment alone with him before taking his final breath, and I left his building around 7 PM on Sunday without having seen my own son on my very first Father's Day.

Life wanted me to close out the "Grandfather's Day" chapter of my life before I was to enter my own "Dad" moment. It was bittersweet, it was sad, and I wasn't at my best when I finally saw my kid a few minutes ago, still going on two mostly sleepless nights and a tear-induced headache, but I came home to my own family to begin a new chapter, having closed one a car ride prior.

Like a well-written TV series script, there will be repercussions from this weekend in the coming weeks, months and years - my grandmother still lives in the same facility, for one, and some family members were forced to re-open some old wounds that will require new stitchings when facing the Family Elder, but Life has a way of tying together loose ends that works a lot better than anything J.J. Abrams or M. Night Shyamalan can cook up.

Onwards and forward.

Happy Father's Day to those who can have that - and a nice stroll down memory lane to those who can't.

2017 In Unnecessary Censorship

Unnecessary Censorship: Star Wars Edition

Jimmy Kimmel and his staff just keep upping the ante.

This week's Unnecessary Censorship clip is all about the Star Wars saga:

This Week In Unnecessary Censorship

When I was in film school, I mostly made my mark as writer-director and editor. The film I submitted as my final project was called Le King, and it was a mockumentary about myself featuring real actors, friends from my real life, and stolen clips from TV interviews and other forms of lost footage put out of context to either show me in a positive or very negative light.

Before settling on that idea, though, I toyed around with other concepts, including cutting/mixing clips from one person to make them say something else (still planning on creating a YouTube channel dedicated to just that), or taking words out to give the impression that someone was saying something other than what they were really saying.

And so I really enjoy when Jimmy Kimmel has his "This Week In Unnecessary Censorship" segments, because his crack-team of researchers can find the best clips to do that with, as seen in last Thursday's show:

About #MeToo

You may have seen it, all over your Facebook or Twitter feeds, as I have, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, the #MeToo hashtag with accompanying text:

I have deliberately cut out most of the picture and name to protect her identity for future reference.

Better yet:

The fact that pretty much everyone of my female friends followed suit - some even going so far as detailing when and how it happened - proves this is a generalized issue.

However, I want to point one thing out, for clarification's sake: the results of these stories has to come out for two reasons: 1. in case some people want to prosecute their abusers; and 2. for society to change and build from this for a better future. That being said, we should not, by any means, require victims to share their most intimate secrets in public to get that ball rolling. That's not how it should work.

I'm all for "innocent until proven guilty", I realize some famous folks have been wrongly accused these past few years, that's all good, a crime's punishment should require an actual trial, not an online lynch mob; on the other hand, victims must be believed and protected as well. You can do both in a civilized society. There may even be cases - that's where a true court comes in - where a victim may feel wronged but when the facts come to light, the defense may be able to make a credible case that there was middle ground; in the U.S., that's where civil court comes in, with punitive damages awarded.

Further debate and explanations on that issue, however - as with my own #MeToo because, as a Man, this is not my day to join that side of the argument - is for another day.

Today, my statement is this: I do not consider to have been a torturer in that sense, because just hearing the word "no" calms my manhood down for the rest of the night, as many disappointed role-playing ladies have found out. But there was a time as a child when I was discovering myself and sharing the experience with friends and relatives where now, as an adult, feel were either fucking weird or may have crossed some sort of line, and hopefully I didn't scar anyone for life. I have been told it was "normal childhood behaviour" by professionals, but kids are a mess anyway.

This does not mean I haven't been part of the problem, as an asshole, at an age where I probably knew better and could handle some responsibility.

I try to be a good person, and I try to improve on that every day. Some days I can't. Many times when I can't, I don't cause much damage to anyone but myself, if that.

But I have disrespected women, some of whom I even dated. I have said harsh thing. Terrible things. I even asked someone who had been on my case for an entire night "When will you die?". Jesus Christ. I'm haunted and tormented by the shit I've done - not just to women, to men too; I've said it here before, I've seen both sides, I've been bullied and I've been a bully, but fuck, man.

I'm in my late 30s now. I want kids. Chances are, if I do have some, they'll have some of my DNA. I don't want my kids to do what I did or say the things I've said. And here's the thing: my Mom was an amazing parent. She taught me to want to be - and do - good. She's probably the reason why I didn't turn out a criminal like some of my friends or some of my folk heroes. I don't know if I can do any better than she did, but I know there is shit I've had to learn by trial and error - and ages 8-10, then again around 15-16, I've erred quite a bit - that will look a hell of a lot like History Repeating Itself to me if and when I notice them from my kid(s) or their friends.

Sure, you try to teach them the basics: good, not evil; treat everybody equally, regardless of everything; help those in need. Some of that will have to come with reminders sometimes. Then there'll be the path corrections when they stray.

I have no idea if it'll stick. Because every day, I live with everything I've done in the four decades that I've been on this planet. And today, I'm thinking particularly of what I did and said to one gender. Friends, girlfriends, teachers, strangers.

I haven't always been a part of the solution. I'm trying to be, I really am, because there's only so much weight I can carry. But mostly because it's the Right thing to do.

Video Of The Week: Tonnes

Sure, these are disturbing times, and as we sacrifice Liberty for Security and Bureaucracy, we are losing our Humanity. Franz Kafka wrote about this in Der Process (The Trial) in 1915, and published it in 1925, between the (first) two World Wars.

History has, of course, proven him correct time and time again. As bureaucracies get bigger and bigger, the "Big Picture" and "Greater Good" start constantly getting cited as the reason for doing and acting in certain conventional ways, except most people are at best only 90-95% conventional, meaning we're all exceptions in certain cases, and as soon as a government, State or otherwise leadership group looks into one of our behaviours, we are all likely to fall in some of the system's cracks at some point and be judged unfairly. Because at the end of the day, The System is unfair, rigidity is unrealistic, and we are all outsiders to some exent.

And so, Montréal indie rock "supergroup" Tonnes have enlisted director Giuliano Bossa (also the band's bassist) to set this reality into our own timeline, in this military-police-led present day - and the results don't even shock anymore, as we've seen these kinds of scenes happen on TV - and not just in fiction - and in film so often in the past two decades. The song is called In Trouble and, yes, we are.

TONNES - In Trouble from Giuliano Bossa on Vimeo.

R.I.P. Carrie Fisher

Fuck, 2016 is a killer.

Today, Carrie Fisher was the latest esteemed member of the entertainment and arts community to pass away, the result of a heart attack suffered last week while flying from London to Los Angeles.

She was 60 years old, and is survived by her beloved puppy as well as her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds, and daughter, actress Billie Lourd.

As Princess Leia Organa in the Star Wars movies, she was my first silver screen/celebrity crush. I had always dreamed of writing her into a screenplay. In terms of film writing, she, Demi Moore, Rebecca De Mornay and Deborah Kara Unger were my muses when it came to female parts; I tried writing strong, smart parts for women so that one of them would one day play in one, giving me the credibility I needed to keep making and writing movies.

My most mainstream screenplay - for lack of a better word - about a guy who loses it and starts sending dill pickles by mail, had parts for all four of them as his co-workers and bosses in a call center. It was never sold nor picked up, of course, because I am terrible at selling myself.

She will be missed.

She had recently released her autobiography. It's a fine read.

Death In Vegas

I was in Las Vegas a month ago when the Paris attacks took place.

And this week, fellow Quebecers were in an accident on the strip where I spent most of my time there:



Those interviewed keep asking ''why''? The same was said about what happened in Paris, and in Beirut.

But there is no why. This one was a distressed woman. Terrorists have a cause. People need to realize many things, chief among them the fact that even if we cure everyone and every ill, one dissatisfied customer can take things to the extreme and crack - and kill.

That's life.

Another part of life is that we all die.

At birth, at one year old, at ten, at twenty-five, at fifty, at eighty-three, at one hundred years of age. Natural causes, AIDS, cancer, accident, murder - no one walking the earth's surface survives, ever.

Who the fuck cares how you die. Live for the moment. LIVE. Because Life hangs by a thread, and a tiny one that no one can see most times.

R.I.P. Angie

The smallest and youngest of my two cats, Angie, left this realm today, at the ripe old age of 8. She had cardiac issues and a blood clot had formed near her aorta, and it paralyzed her hind legs. This is her, earlier tonight, in that picture.

I spent the day crying alongside her, whether it's when we lay on my kitchen floor in between going to veterinarians' (three times), or at the last animal hospital where they, too, told us it was time to let her go. I use the ''us'' pronoun because at that last place, I called her former human, my ex-girlfriend (i.e. Former Lady Of The House) to join us. It was she who held Angie as the doctors gave her the anesthetic and performed euthanasia. She was hers at first, so it felt like a circle had been closed. It made sense.

And that's where my brain reacted in ways I wasn't used to. We're conditioned to want to avoid death, to see it as ''wrong '', and euthanasia on humans is illegal in many places but tolerated on animals and pets. And I know it would have been selfish to keep her with me for another day because of the inhumane level of pain she felt, even though she only expressed it when she wasn't in my arms or sleeping next to me.

Then I wrestled with my memories of her being louder than usual when she would talk to me these last few months, and wondering if there was anything I could have done differently for her to have a better quality of life; the doctors say her condition couldn't be cured, and even if it had been controlled by medicine, in cases like hers, the inevitable eventually happens anyway. I might not have even bought her more time.

But there's always that ''what if'' in the back of a human's mind. And although your mind knows right from wrong, truth from fiction - it still tries to play you.

Mine was telling me I was her protector, and that I had failed; but not only is death the only inevitability in Life, disease is the one thing no bodyguard can prevent, even the best ones.

I chose to cry to let my sadness out, and I chose to do it in front of her. With her. Towards her.

And I choose now to remember the love I gave her and the love I felt back. The good times we shared, and the bonds and closeness we had.

It'll be a while before I fall asleep easily without her sleeping either on top of me or with her back to mine, exchanging heat. And my other cat - who isn't the healthiest beast out there, I fear - will probably go nuts.

But she remains with me in thought. I treated her like a daughter, she treated me like a husband. I miss her like a sister.

Happy St-Jean Baptiste Day!

It was going to be a paid Holiday like most others: spending three hours finishing the work I hadn't done last night, taking it slow, alone, in my shitty apartment, then heading out to see friends in a band performing, this time Orchestre Afrobeat Jeunesse Cosmique outdoors, at Parc Hibernia, in Pointe St-Charles.

But it rained, so all we got were the openers, Le Trio Poitras, for 75 minutes, then the rest of the festivities were cancelled.

But the Jeunesse Cosmique folks decided to turn the botched outdoors Québec National Holiday into a house party of sorts, and invited me over since I had friends in the band and was already there.

By the middle of the first song, i was the third percussionist, and by 10 PM we had recorded a live album. And I'm pretty proud of my playing on two tracks, particularly the last one.

And when I got home, I made myself the second-most Quebecest meal (because I wasn't going to make myself a maple syrup poutine this late at night), a bowl of spaghetti covered in Schwartz' smoked meat:

It was one of my best days in a very long time.

A Reason To Finally Like Miley Cyrus?

A head above anything else in 2014, Against Me!'s Transgernder Dysphoria Blues was an impactful and goddamn amazing record (that could have used a bit more distortion on the guitars, so it wasn't perfect). By far the best record from last year, and I'll fight Kanye West to prove it if I have to.

Miley Cyrus, well, enough about her already. Except she did perform on this, and at the same backyard-party/fundraiser event, performed Androgynous with Laura Jane Grace and Joan Jett, so there's a double-dose of street cred right there, gathering funds for kids ''facing homeless youth, LGBT youth, and other vulnerable populations''.

Decent stuff.

So is this:

Kudos, Kiddos

Most times I'm content knowing the human race is circling the drain on its way to being flushed down the toilet of history. (Shout out to Florida).

Once a week, however, a minority of humans who didn't get the memo go out and do something awesome, like these three 8th-grade basketball players who stood up to some asshole who was taunting (they say ''bullying'',  but I for one think that term is over-used nowadays) a cheerleader with Down syndrome:



Of course, the hypocritical school overdid it by officially renaming the gym D's House, but whatever. By going with that extra tap, the principal took some of the spotlight away from the kids and, really, 12 or 25 years from now, when society's perhaps moved on and all people are treated equally and this is no longer ''a thing'', won't you regret taking that one moment to honor a 5-minute event when you'll want to rename the gymnasium for the lady who is now President of the Continent (or Galaxy, what do I know?) who played volley-ball in that room?

The school should just have handed the boys a civility medal or something. Or made them pass a failing class. Or thrown them a party. Or return their confiscated Playboy magazines. Not take credit for the kids' move by co-opting their shit.

Why I Was A Goalie

Before completely turning to music, writing and the odd bit of translating to make ends meet, I played hockey until the Major Juniors level for Laval (Halifax also owned my rights). I was a goalie. I looked like this:

I wanted to be a goalie first and foremost because my boyhood idol, Patrick Roy, was one, but also because it fit my personality the best: as the last line of defense, the goalie is the one responsible for fixing any previous mistakes. The best ones do so with little fanfare, but the egotistical bastards can also have their day - and look foolish at times as well, when things don't go according to plan.

Being a person of extremes, I'm both: calm, quiet, and reserved, but who likes others to know he'll get the job done and will, at times, bask in the temporary glory it brings, knowing full well it will only last until the next ugly goal against. As such, my tenure in many places ended with a severe correction (a 9-1 loss at Brébeuf at the Collegiate level, a 12-0 loss at Notre-Dame to finish my high school career, a 5-0 loss at the Midget AAA level after having posted four straight shutouts). Only my time in the ''Q'' in Juniors didn't end badly - no goals against, and two fights in my final half-game for Laval.

Where I shined, however, was in tournament play. I loved playing in front of packed arenas full of strangers. I have never played in one and gotten less than a silver medal (second-place finish), and never been less than at least MVP of one game, usually named the best goalie of the tournament. For some reason, when the pressure was on, it was like the puck was twice its normal size and fit perfectly in my glove, which became a magnet for it.

There was one tournament, Sainte-Marie, where there was a rule that a player couldn't be named Player Of The Game more than once - so everybody had their chance to shine, and no one could end up being the perennial second-best. I got it in my first game, which meant no matter how I played, I couldn't get it any other time. I didn't care, I was having a blast with the rest of the NDG Wings.

Nevertheless, in the Finals, which we lost 1-0 with the shots being around the 40-10 mark favoring the other team, my buddy Giovanni Rippolo (who had the best slap shot in our age range) was named the best player. While he did get some applause, as soon as he got his prize (a medal), the 1000-seat crowd started chanting ''goalie! goalie! goalie!'' and I had to acknowledge them with a wave, slightly embarrassed yet extremely proud.

Just like Slovakia's Denis Godla from the World Juniors last night:



Those are the moments you live for.

I'm a huge fan of Slovakia in general, and in hockey in particular. They're usually the team I root for in international play, more so since the Rise Of Jaroslav Halak in 2010, but it was already the case even back in the 1980s and 1990s, thanks to the Québec Nordiques' Stastny brothers and an education system that taught us about the rest of the world in addition to our own history.

#FuckCancer

The last few weeks have been trying in my immediate circle with health scares and warnings, ranging from heart conditions to burn-outs and depression to erectile dysfunction to my own appointments and checkups regarding diabetes.

But the word that came back the most often this week was cancer.

One of my brother's best friends, in his early 20s, wrote this heart-wrenching piece - in French - about his current condition with leukemia, which in turn brought my immediate family back to memories of a painful past.

I also decided to bring my Twitter profile back to life - I went from having hundreds of followers to between 50 and 60, a figure that seems to change daily for some reason. No, Traci Lords is no longer following me. (insert sad face here). And I wasn't there a week that I learned more people I know were afflicted with cancer. Three people I know well were diagnosed in 2014, all in their thirties.

And that's in addition to Ottawa Senators general manager Bryan Murray's confession that he has Stage-4 colon cancer and whose only hope at this point is to extend his life, because it's too late to cure. He knows he won’t overcome his battle, but joked he wanted to prolong overtime, like during the famous 1980s game between the New York Islanders and Washington Capitals: ''Let’s go to extra overtime and keep playing, like the game we played against the Islanders many years ago, and we went to four overtime periods'', Murray said.

In the long run, no one survives Life. We are all just visiting and must make the most of what we have, try to find happiness and, ideally, try to help mankind evolve. And no one is immune from accidents, but seeing someone who knows his time is up, and trying to make the best of it while not dwelling on the fact that he's nearing the end really hits home. Hard.

And he becomes the second Senators hockey operations member to seemingly spend the end of his life as an actual member of the team in just about a decade, after Roger Nielsen in 2003.

Gold Lion

I thought I was among the only households with a pet lion:

Turns out some Hollywood types have the full-size versions of them in their homes:

That's the home actress Melanie Griffith grew up in, with mother (actress) Tippi Hedren and father (director) Noel Marshall, and lion Neil, as the family was ''researching'' living with large cats.

Frankie MacDonald Wants Montrealers To Have A Safe St-Jean

Sometimes you tune in to your favourite singer or band for new, rare stuff; sometimes you just want the hits.In this video, for today, Frankie MacDonald (from Nova Scotia) does both: it's a new day, for one, and it's summer, so no snowstorms. But severe thunderstorms? Oh yeah.

So...

Montréal be prepared: have your rubber boots ready, have your rain coats and rain suits ready, order your pizzas and Chinese food, buy cases of Pepsi and Coke

And most important as far as hits go:

have your iPads charged, have your iPods charged, have your cell phones charged, have your laptops charged and have your tablets charged

Seriously, I don't know the extent to which he's laughing at us while we're amazed by him, but I do really think it goes both ways. He has ingrained himself into my psyche to the point where every time the weather's just a tad unpleasant, his voice rings in my head telling screaming at me to have all my shit charged and he decides what grocery items I should buy and what to order out for.



''Don't get wet!''

''Be safe'' - you too, my friend.

The Chris Burns Fire Story

In the Montréal indie scene, few stories compare to the time where Chris Burns' place went up in flames. It had everything all of our daily lives consisted of: shitty building ran by a slumlord, not being able to afford insurance, a whole scene banding together to (temporarily) help cope with a crappy situation, from indie newspapers like The Mirror promoting a benefit show, to all the bands that wanted to take part in it, to everyone who showed up, and to everyone who gave perhaps not money but time and/or goods to help Chris and his girlfriend Isabelle get back on their feet.

Chris' story resonated deeply with me, because I lost all of my shit myself once, in a flood after the thawing of the 1998 Ice Storm - I had pretty much the last remaining pictures of deceased family members, hundreds of rare arts books and first editions of classics, four guitars (I managed to save one) and two amps (ditto), and the usual stuff like furniture and electronics.

It took me years to get back to the level of comfort I'd been accustomed to - though on the bright side probably enabled me to rely less on my possessions and afforded me the emptiness I required to spend a bit longer than a year going back and forth between Montréal and NYC.

But back to ''Crispy'' Burns. Here's the video from the benefit show that was held on his behalf, complete with his recounting the fire saga in the middle of a rendition of The Talking Heads' Burning Down The House...

Fathers Day

On Fathers Day, I texted my dad. I'd spoken to him for over a half hour the previous day, and I knew he was working and wouldn't have slept the night before, so I didn't want to impose another conversation that wouldn't be as ''deep'' as the one we'd just have.

Funny that I didn't have a dad for the first 20 years of my life - or not a permanent one, and certainly not the biological one - and now that I do, I treat him as if he'd always been there.

But the best Fathers Day thing I've read this year was from Enid-Raye Adams' blog, which quoted another one, and can be found here. I'll just quote her conclusion:

To all the Moms out there doing both jobs, Happy Father's Day.
And to the Dads that stay and do the work, you are a treasure beyond description.

Good stuff.

Post-Party Years Depression

Last Friday, a lady was telling me about a two-year depression she'd gone through, where she wouldn't get out of her room, or see her friends - who were only really trying to help. Time took its toll and she lost track of most of them, only staying close to her family, pretty much.

And so I went home to my smallish apartment, alone, and wrote. And cleaned house, or at least tried to while envisioning myself doing it. And Saturday was much of the same, as was Sunday.

Sunny days, all of them, and I didn't even set foot on either one of my balconies.

My skin is whiter than Casper's - take your pick between the Friendly Ghost or the underhanded-rapist from the movie Kids, both are pretty fucking white, and I'm whiter than either of them. As a matter of fact, my skin colour this year is somewhere at the crossroads of transparent, translucent, green and yellow.

But, yeah. Maybe it's depression, or maybe just a dry spell. I'm always exhausted and have to over-amp myself on caffeine just to stay awake for a couple of hours at a time during the day - and yet I'm still pretty much an insomniac at night.

But I'm thinking about getting creative again. Writing music, blog posts, short stories. I always plow through, and I have no doubt I shall again. It's just that I have to dig so deep to find the motivation that many times it takes up all my energy just to get the will part.

But I'm getting there. Be patient with me, I won't be on this for two years - though funny folks might argue I've been there since 2005.

On the bright side, a homeless man told me ''Jesus loves you'' the other day, but he doesn't know any better. Jesus may or may not love me, but only he knows that; no, Jesus respects me as the improved version of what people thought he was, 2000 years down the evolutionary chain from an imaginary book character.

*for the record, while I may show some signs, I personally think I'm more just ''in a rut'' mixed with an unhealthy dose of procrastination.