“Vandals chastised, flea on foot”

For the third night in a row, the helicopters are circling the night skies. This may be completely normal in a city like New York or Los Angeles, but unusual enough here in Montreal to seem really strange and completely disruptive. Like most every year, the students have been boycotting classes to oppose tuition hikes, and to keep things interesting, they’ve taken to protesting in the downtown streets—at night. There’s some live reporting streaming on the Montreal Gazette website, with lots of blurry night photos and captions that are obviously dashed off from mobile phones, which makes for some pretty amusing stuff sometimes, as evidenced with the latest stream which says: “Let’s stay peaceful says crowd. Vandals chastised, flea on foot”.

These protests are apparently fuelled by the latest offer by the Charest government, which they deem unacceptable. One of their chants is “It’s not an offer, it’s an insult”.

From the live stream:

“Police declared march illegal.”

“Chant: An illegal march, that doesn’t exist.”

“Unclear what has become of masked vandal but police are making presence known ”

But what has become of the flea?

"Riot cops moving in at bleury ste cath"

The riot cops are on the scene, and this is where I tune out. And that’s been the news tonight, from the comfort of my living room.

 

Priorities


Pink Reflections, Bishop’s Pond. Watercolour on paper by David Milne, 1920

So last night, I waited on the phone for about 45 minutes to speak to the good people at Apple so I could order my own iPhone 4S; I’ve been due for an upgrade since last December with my current carrier and my now ancient iPhone 3G threatens to give up on me at any minute. Turns out when they said the phone lines would be open to take orders starting at 12:01 a.m. on the 7th, they meant Pacific Time. So I waited all that time because essentially, the crew manning the phones was telling all the hundreds of thousands of callers who also assumed Eastern time the same thing. Figures.

This afternoon, I have an outing with my new friend, 93-year old L. I was supposed to go see her art show with her, and told her I’d call her last week, but then was too low to talk to anyone. She called me yesterday and I said “so when are we going to your show?” and she told me it was over. These are the kinds of things I feel guilty about for the rest of my days. But apparently she still wants to be my friend, since she did call me after all. The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has added a whole new wing which includes a concert hall, and they are having all kinds of events to celebrate the inauguration this month. I had already purchased tickets in the Spring to go see two concerts with my new friend which are coming up a couple of weeks from now (a Beethoven recital and a Balinese dance and music performance). This week they have a bunch of activities exclusively for friends of the museum, so when I got the schedule last week, I reserved two free tickets for a session of 5 short films about Canadian artists. I had planned to invite L and was glad when she took me up on it. If I could go back and choose between her show and the short movies, I’d obviously choose to see my friend’s art. oy. But moving forward, it should be an interesting program, which is as follows:

Quebec in Silence
Gilles Gascon, 1969, 10 min, no dialogue

Canadian Landscapes
Radford Crawley, 1941, 18 min

The World of David Milne
Gerald Budner, 1962, 12 min

J. W. Morrice
Gerald Budner, 1985, 18 min

The Group of Seven – A Northern Shore
Harry Dunsmore, 1990, 28 min

Death of a Visionary

Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple died today. He was only 56 years old. He’d been battling pancreatic cancer for a long time. He was a visionary who, as says in the NY Times “helped usher in the era of personal computers and then led a cultural transformation in the way music, movies and mobile communications were experienced in the digital age”. Very sad news indeed.

R.I.P. Steve and thanks for your many contributions.

A Tribute to Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud, Girl with Fig Leaf, 1948

Celebrated painter Lucian Freud (grandson of that other Freud), passed away last week at the ripe age of 88, leaving behind an astounding body of work (see the New York Times article here). I’m sad about his passing of course as I’m a big fan of his early drawings which I discovered through a great book I made sure to get my own copy of called Lucian Freud on Paper. I thought I’d do my own kind of tribute by posting an art project I did a while ago (still ongoing) which was inspired by a drawing of his called Girl with Leaves. Just visit here to see what it’s about.

R.I.P., Amy Winehouse

The singer Amy Winehouse has been found dead at her flat in north London at the age of 27. The award-winning artist, famous for hits including Rehab from the critically acclaimed album Back to Black, was discovered by police in the late afternoon. Her death was being treated on Saturday night as “unexplained”. – guardian.co.uk

Here I Blab, Mostly About Books.

Gallery

Just got an unexpected phone call a little while ago. It was the MRI technician from the neurological institute, offering to pull my appointment forward from 10:30 pm tonight to 7:30 instead, since there’s been a cancellation. I’ve never had … Continue reading