The Best Meteorologist In Canada

Poor judgement? Probably.

Poor taste? Possibly.

Hilarious? Not quite, but almost. (or, as proven in the video, yes, if you know the guy):

Unicorns are people, too.

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.

Snow Storm Alert, Montréal (Yes He's Back)

I like listening to the classics (''have your shovels ready, have your snow plows ready, don't get into car accidents'' and ''keep your iPhones charged, stay away from golf fields, and get back inside your homes'' are particularly great), but Frankie MacDonald from Nova Scotia has a new hit he'd like us to listen to:



So have your winter boots ready, your hats, gloves and scarves, order your pizzas and order your Chinese food, buy cases of Pepsi and buy cases of Coke, don't wait for your grocery shopping DO IT RIGHT NOW and charge all your electronics (I won't name them all, listen to it for yourselves), 'cause there'll be lots of snow in Montréal tomorrow.

''Best of luck to ya!''

Revenge Of The Sea

When a seafood restaurant named Moby Dick offers a full window view of its ''right on the ocean'' location, you kind of have to expect Murphy's Law to play its odds at some point, right? Well, it did.

A winter storm in the entire Southern California region generated waves so strong that they shattered a picture window in the dining room, causing salt water to barrel in and customers to flee their seats.

 And this being now, here are the images:



Here is my favourite part of the article:

According to Yelp reviewers, the place usually lacks ambience (sic) “other than the view.” While the food is “overpriced,” the seafood is “fresh” and the clam chowder is “pretty darn good.”

With the cost of rebuilding an entire dining room, expect the prices to rise even higher, though the ambiance will now be enhanced from being associated with a piece of minor local news. Ghost story fans and gossipers welcome; now mentioned in your tourism guide.

Severe Thunderstorm Alert

You may recall this guy from a while back, warning Montrealers about snowstorms...

Now he's warning us about thunder storms:



Remember to ''keep your Iphones charged, stay away from golf fields, and get back inside your homes'' tomorrow...

I'm sure glad I no longer live in the dump I was in last year, when flood after flood degraded an already crumbling fucking building... I would have lost all my shit. And probably my cats, too.

So hide your kids, hide your wife, 'cause they're flooding everybody out here...

Not The Best Time For Toronto To Imitate Calgary

It's not enough that once-Liberal Toronto has taken a turn for the right politically with federal politics and a (crackhead) mayor worthy of Texas, it now has to deal with floods strangely reminiscent of the ones in Calgary a couple of weeks ago:

Calgary clean-up

The inside of the Calgary Saddledome is shown in this photo provided by the NHL’s Calgary Flames last week. The team said flood waters reached as high as the eighth row of seating in the stadium.

Toronto highway

Some Torontonians have been stuck inside the downtown subway system since Monday night.

A GO train is also partially submerged on the Richmond Hill line that left Union around rush hour. The murky brown water, which spilled through the bottom floor of the train has left passengers stuck for (...) hours.(...) All flights at Billy Bishop Airport have now been suspended due to the storm, according to Pamela McDonald, spokeswoman for the Toronto Port Authority.(...) Toronto EMS are recommending people do not travel if they can as cars are creating obstacles for paramedics. They also said they have received a large number of people stuck in elevators. (...) The Toronto Region Conservation Authority also warned that the banks of the Don River were at risk of collapse in the area of Hoggs Hollow in the area of Yonge St. and York Mills.

Shit, it's like a cross between a natural disaster in a third-world country in the 1960s with the information age and a million levels of bureaucracy/government agencies. At least Canada's version of FEMA won't stall for days with their rescue mission.

Good luck to all concerned.

Storms Of The Century

 While cyclones, tornadoes and so-called ''hot'' storms are becoming more and more dangerous in the U.S., in Canada, it's snow storms that are breaking records.

Earlier this winter, on December 27th more specifically, as I was just days removed from coming out of the hospital and still weak, we got 4 feet (46 centimeters) in one day, 10 feet in a week and a half total:

It got so bad you could even adapt Yakov Smirnoff jokes: ''In socialist Canada, bus travels by people!''

Well, today we got 3 more feet (40 cm), and you'd think we'd be used to it by now, what with 400-plus years of colonization in our land (and Canada being roughly 150 years old), but it still seems to freak the shit out of people, and destabilize motorists. One person wanted to warn us in a particularly dramatic manner:



Good looking out, kid. Much appreciated.

Video Of The Week: Men Without Hats

You can dance if you want to, you can leave your friends behind, 'cause your friends don't dance and if your friends don't dance, well, they're no friends of mine. Or maybe they are, I don't know, I'm not much of a dancer anymore...

Long gone are the days of my breakdancing youth...

I chose this Men Without Hats song for a simple reason: I'll be playing it on Sunday at the Sake Of The Songs benefit show for the Mile-End Mission - which really needs the proceeds these days, what with the minus-30 weather and all - along with a song by Sarah McLachlan (Hold On) and one by Richard Desjardins (Pis J'ai Couché Dans Mon Char).

The evening's theme is ''Canadian Folk'', and while I mostly respect it with the other two artists, I'm stretching it quite a bit with this song - but they expect me to cross certain lines at these shows anyway; there are enough straightforward folkies playing the event anyway, they kind of need me as a mood breaker/comic relief.

I'll likely have the video playing in my head while I'm belting it out, too, and will imagine little people all around me. Maybe.

P.K. Subban And The Weather

Everyone in Montréal - except for hockey journalists - loves P.K. Subban (he's already one of my favourite Habs, along with Tomas Plekanec and Andrei Markov). The camera love him even more - and he loves it back.

A recent example of this was last Tuesday, when he presented the weather for CTV News:

Kinda Live Blogging The News

Things are surely happening in My City these days, what with daily (and nightly!) student protests, three full levels of corrupt government (municipal, provincial and federal), the Canadiens not making the playoffs and going through a major overhaul, the soccer team (Impact) selling out the Olympic Stadium (60,000 fans - twice!), the F1 Grand Prix, the festival season nearly upon us, and most infrastructures crumbling of getting destroyed...

And things are also chaotic in my life, as I left my former apartment (of 3+ years), a two-floor dwelling that was getting too expensive on my own after a collection of unreliable roommates, a bunch of people kicked out of my life (and a few who almost went that way as well), underpaid-and-underworked job, music contracts drying up, practically dry sex life, a pending bankruptcy...

Now, with the flash storms (and flash floods that come with them...) happened to hit my new place, that I moved into a month ago...

Here's a look from the window:




Here's a look at just how much water made it in each time a car passed on the street:




And how high the water level was compared to the door (at this point, the foyer and basement were already flooded, so it couldn't get worse):



How was your night?

Irene Evens Things Out

Thank you, Hurricane Irene, for letting folks in the U.S. know how hard it is to drive in Montréal by making their streets just as bad as ours. And for turning people into socialists, too - the Right must be proud.

The Passing Of Time Through Winter

The future is inherently a good thing. And we move into it one winter at a time.

Things get better one winter at a time. So if you're going to celebrate, have a drink on this: the world is, generally and on balance, a better place to live this year than it was last year.

Those are the words of Spider Jerusalem, writer Warren Ellis' take on a Hunter S. Thompson-like journalist in the future; they are taken from the very last page of the fourth volume in the Transmetropolitan series, called The New Scum, in which a new President is elected to the U.S. Ironically, they were written and published in the year 2000.

Transmetropolitan currently sits atop my line of favourite books, along with other comics Preacher and The Walking Dead.

It's funny that I happened to read this volume again, for perhaps the tenth time, today, if only because tonight marked the final in a five-night series that I was outside putting up posters for a show happening on the 18th at La Sala Rossa, for supergroup Magic Christian, comprised of members of Flamin' Groovies and Blondie, among others.

Five nights during which I froze my balls in minus-30 weather, with a windchill I hadn't felt in years. And last night was the worst. I actually witnessed the temperature go down at least 5 degrees in mere seconds, with the swoop of one short blow of wind, at precisely 2:10AM. It was decently cold, with the wind providing extra chill to the fingertips, but without exaggeration, when out of the blue a tiny whirlwind of a weirdly milder wind came and took over Parc Avenue for a few seconds, just enough to make you realize something wasn't quite right, and as soon as it died off, it became colder than death in an instant.

It was yet another proof that Nature is a much stronger beast than we bipeds, but I know for one I didn't need any. It was also a reminder that February is coming at full speed and we Montrealers should just lock ourselves inside and hide/hibernate for 28 days and just order out, fuck, and play Playstation and let the whole world go right by past us for a month.

And if Jerusalem's/Ellis' words are to be true, it's so fucking cold out there right now that this particular winter should signify the death of the past decade completely - what with its 80s-revivals, shitty music, brand new and brand old wars, political tragedies and all-out fucking up of our way of Life - and bring about some actual, consistent, lasting change. For The Better (not sure why I need to add this in particular, but I've been unlucky with my wishes the past few years, in case you can't tell).

It's not in my genes, in my upbringing, in my habits. Perhaps it can be, although I'm quite happy being skeptical and realistic - but I'm actually hoping for Hope. It feels juvenile and stupid, but set against a backdrop of 100 km/h winds outside my window pushing a growing cemetary of white snow in minus-40 degree weather merely 5 inches from my face, a bottle of Jack Daniel's in my right hand, it's all I can muster up that feels right.

That, and putting this text to rest so I can go meet the Lady Of The House in bed.

Good night.