Montreal New Years Eve 2010 :: the Blog

I know a cool festival by its website. According to this rule, the Jazz Fest is lame because its website is square and old fashioned, but the MEG Montreal Festival is the bomb .

What exactly is the MEG festival, I am not too sure, and I don’t even know what the acronym stands for. What I do know is that some pretty damn good music will be showcased at the festival.

To start, the amazing Bonobo will be playing the last day of the festival, Sunday the 1st. If you don’t know what a bonobo is, I can just tell you that it is a very sexually active primate (I guess a bit like us). But the Bonobo is a primate from the UK, making groovy electronic music like none other.

To end, the amazing Chromeo will be playing tomorrow Saturday the 31st. The guys from Chromeo went to my high-school and I saw them perform live maybe in 95 (that’s already 15 years ago for *&*# sakes). This morning I take the Montreal metro to work, like every day of my adult-like life, and i see that both frewe daylies, Metro and 24 Heures, have Chromeo mentioned on their front page. It’s good to see people from my generation making it (and I still taking the metro).

Then again with a genius album cover art like this bellow, how can they not make it?

The Football World Cup is nearing the end, but that shouldn’t stop us from pushing a close friend of ours. KF13 is a talented Montreal-based graphic designer, and a huge football fan. To celebrate the countries that made it to the World Cup, he has released an original line of football shirts. All the designs are unique and can only be purchased on his Rudetackle Zazzle online-store.

Get a shirt from Rudetackle and you can be sure that no one else will have the same tshirt as you. You will not find this line of apparel anywhere in stores either; online is the only place.

It’s pointless to describe the designs in text; just go and visit his online store and you will be convinced.

See all the products at the Rudetackle store.

For all those out there who enjoy a good night of rock music, you’re in luck because Plants and Animals are back in Montreal for a night of guitars, drums and fun. This will be next Thursday, the 21st of April, and the venue is La Tulipe (on 4530 Papineau, on the corner with Mont-Royal).

Personally, Plants and Animals are my Montreal discovery of the year (last year that is, I don’t have a Montreal discovery for 2010 yet. If you do, please post it in the comments section). Their music is amazing and refreshingly sounding. Just check out this magically sounding song, Faerie Dance:

Or what about this amazing video for Feedback in the Field, where our own Parc Avenue is invaded by a marching army of toy creatures:

A quick note, to remind everyone that the St-Patrick’s day parade is hitting Montreal this Sunday the 14th of March.

Bring out the Irish in you, sport green clothing and enjoy your Guinness and your Irish car-bombs.

If you want serious journalism, read what the Mirror has to say about St-Patties. I did just that, and I realized for the first time where the name “Irish car bomb” comes from, and it’s kind of wrong, at least for people that have witnessed the violence in Ireland. But I guess this is a recurrent event: a name that starts with a quite dubious origin, but with time and history evolves in something more and everyone forgets it’s unpleasant origins. And there will be a lot of forgetting being done Sunday, especially after a few of these Irish car-bombs are consumed.

Talking about Guinness here are two cool ads. I prefer the first one, because it isn’t made with computer effects.

It’s a bit late now, because the event is now over, but that didn’t stop our friends at Montreal-Clubs.com to publish an article on the Montreal Fashion Week.

Judging from the media’s attention, it seems that the event was a success yet once again. It’s great to see so many talented designers from Montreal showcasing their creations.

Again, judging by reactions in the media, designer Denis Gagnon won the hearts of the public with an all-zipper made robe and purse, which you can see bellow:

I must admit that the zipper thing is an amazing idea. Denis Gagnon also makes shoes that have a big chunk of them made from zippers, so I guess it is a specialty of his.

Unfortunately, you will now have to wait until next year’s edition of the Montreal Fashion Week, to view the beauties bellow and to witness which other clothing accessory could be made from zippers, or other secondary materials. You’re probably already thinking about thongs, but I am ready to bet that it has already been done.

To continue on the Vancouver Olympics hotties topic, I was watching the first hockey game of Canada’a women team, when they beat the Slovak women’s hockey outfit by 18 to nil. The score is impressive and the Canadian women played amazingly, but to me, the true star of the game was the Slovak goalie Zuzana Tomcikova. She was simply spectacular; it seemed at moments that she was playing alone against the Canadian team. Tomcikova received a total of 67 shots, and some of her saves were brilliant. But what was even more impressive was her sports-woman-ship-spirit: she just never gave up and played with all her heart. And you could see the intensity in her eyes, peering from behind her goalie’s mask.

Today I wanted to know more about the eyes behind the mask, so I looked Tomcikova on the web. There is not much info on her, but I guess that’s normal, she still has her whole hockey career in front of her. The results are bellow. But one thing is for sure, for me, a new hockey star/hottie is born.

Just forget about Montreal for a second. All the action will be in Vancouver today. The Olympics are probably my favorite international events. There is nothing like watching a bunch of extraordinary human beings, pushing themselves to their absolute limits, and fulfilling a dream for which they have dedicated most of their lives in intensive training. I can barely keep up a basic task like waking-up and going to work, whereas these people train professionally since their childhood. That alone deserves a ton of respect.

To top it all, these Olympians, these best-of-the-best, are also hotties. As if being amazing in a sport and kicking everyone’s ass in it wasn’t enough. For example, check out Lindsey Vonn, a skier for the US team.

It turns out that, other, smarter minds of the web, had already discovered this “Olympic hottie” effect and published much better articles than mine. So here it is, the link for Olympics beauties. So let the games begin and may the best woman and man win.

And here is snowboarder Torah Bright:

I was reading through the Mirror, le Voir and tons of sites online to figure out what’s happening in Montreal this week-end, but I can’t find anything interesting to write about (if you do know of a cool event, just post a comment about it). I was banging my head against the wall in desperation and hoping that an interesting topic would pop in my head.

Then a colleague of mine mentioned the Carnival, and I went: “Yes, I am going to Quebec city to party and ski, but that’s only next week end, for the last days of the Winter Carnival, so it’s too early to talk about that”, a innocent and truthful statement, to which the answer was “What Quebec city are you talking about? I was talking about the Rio Carnival” (which I should have understood right away, considering that my colleague is, luckily for him, Brazilian).

And that’s genius.

The Quebec Winter Carnival is always lots of fun. There’s the freezing cold allowing tons of activities like hockey, bobsleigh, skiing and naked snow wrestling. The warm “caribou” served and drank on the street, finally restoring our human dignity and giving us freedom to get intoxicated on the streets. And finally the packed bars and clubs, full with human beings trying to forget the cold.

Or maybe trying to pretend they are in Rio.

Because the Rio Carnival is the real stuff. It’s summer in Rio. It’s full with people in Rio. And all these people want to do for a couple of days is: dance, party and indulge in all sorts of debaucherous activities. They don’t have to worry about freezing to death, so they don’t need the tasty “caribou”. All they have to worry is finding their way back home at the end of the carnival.

I love the Quebec Carnival, I’m going for sure. But I wish I went to Rio.

VS

I think there really is no competition here, Bonhomme des Neiges finishes last (unfortunately for him).

Believe it or not, but there are people out there that thought that organizing an outdoors party in Montreal at the end of January was a good idea.

And somehow they ended up being right.

Last week-end (January 23rd) a whole bunch of my friends headed for the Igloofest, and I quickly labeled them as crazy and refused the invitation. Turns out the party was a blast: all they had to do in order to survive the cold is to dress with skiing-clothes and drink some alcohol. But apparently the setting, the ice bars, the igloos, the music and the people, made the whole event amazing. I guess I can understand that, it is definitely different than the usual week-end chilling at Rouge or any other “normal” club.

If you’re skeptical like me and you missed the event the last two week-end, you still have one last chance to catch-up on Igloofest this week-end (January 29 and 30).

I wanted to wish everyone an amazing new year, all the best for 2010, lots of health and joy.

I hope you all had a blast partying on new years eve, I know I sure did.

A friend of mine had some issues with a patron at Confessionnal, so that place is now officially black-listed, and yes, you shouldn’t go there either. If you don’t know where it is, even better, I wont say.

Today reality is back with a full-strength slap in my face. After almost 2 weeks of vacations, it’s hard to go back to the routine. At least we had some amazing snow falling in the last 24 hours, so ski-slopes, here I come.