Montreal New Years Eve 2010 :: the Blog

As for a quick side note (or I should say “side post”) I wanted to wish everyone a happy Christmas. I know it’s only the 24th, but I usually celebrate Christmas on the night of the 24th to the 25th; so yeah, here we go with the best wishes.

For people like me, who celebrate on the 24th at night and have no family to visit, there is the whole question of the full day on the 25th. It’s a pleasant lazy day, because almost everything is closed, you can’t even shop for food. Basically it’s a nice day to sleep-in, eat the succulent leftovers and just chill. And maybe catch a movie, for which my suggestion would be the latest Almodovar movie “Broken Embraces” again starring miss Cruz. It’s playing at the AMC at the Pepsi Forum, starting 4PM, 7PM and 10PM. A good lazy way to kill 2 hours of your day, and watch something interesting.

With all that gold, it seems that Cruz’s character got quite the Christmas gift there:

I like the poster a lot, very Warhol-ian in style, but still it doesn’t look over-used or too obviously copied:

Just look around you, the recession is so 2008. Or at least so it seems when you walk around St-Catherine street in downtown Montreal, and you witness the flamboyant store fronts, the colorful banners and the joyful consumers, prancing around from store to store, shopping for that gift that will make their loved ones feel even more loved.

Yes, the Christmas season has its good sides (vacations, snow, skiing, turkeys and families) and it’s dark sides (shopping, gifts, boxing-day). It’s all about establishing a balancing act, between maintaining your sanity, not offending anyone by not having gifts for them, and still make everyone feel loved. It’s not necessarily easy, but it is doable, and we have 2 resources for you: Montreal-Club.com’s shopping guide and the more professional and serious Montreal Mirror shopping guide (click on “Games”, “Gadget”, “DVDs” and “Music” sections to see the whole guide). The first will set you back only a couple of bucks and might get you lots of love in return, the second, more commercial one, will set you back 3 months of credi card payments, but will make you’re material-goods-loving relatives love you almost as much as they love their flat-screen 100-something inch TV.

Enjoy the sinful pleasures of shopping in Montreal.

I had all but given up after a disastrous first half. Bad kicks and powerful Roughriders play made me doubt it was possible to come back. So much that I stopped watching, and instead headed out to Cinema du Parc to see another horror show, the amazingly mad and thought provoking Antichrist. Well, little did I know, I missed an amazing roller-coaster ride second half, culminating in a razor thin victory aided by an unbelievable mistake made by the Roughriders: being one man too many on the field.

Watch the amazing photos of the game here.

Grey Cup parade, here we come.

I didn’t know this, but apparently the Roughriders are a religion in Saskatchewan. Read this interesting article from our beloved national daily (thank Globe and Mail) and you’ll see what I am talking about.

It’s their only professional sports team, so people in Regina and Saskatchewan have built-up their love of the Roughriders up to a new level. And I thought we had it bad with only one NHL and one CFL team in Montreal. It seems the Roughriders sell tons of memorabilia merchandise and have huge “on the road” following, and the team is as old as the province. That’s a sports culture I love. The fans seem all in, and that’s cool. Just take a look at that:

Well, too bad for all the Roughriders fans because the Alouettes are still going to win.

Thanks to Ethel the Frog, from whom I stole the image.

Again, on other Montreal-related news, the Montreal Alouettes, our CFA darlings, are playing at the Gray Cup final, this Sunday, starting at 6:30 PM Montreal time. Their opponents will be the Saskatchewan Roughriders, and we’ve already beat the twice this year, so I cross my fingers.

In the last 8 years, the Alouettes have been at the Grey Cup final 5 times, that’s over 75% participation rate (I don’t feel like whipping out my calculator to double-check this), but they’ve won only once. So yeah, I think we’re due for another Grey Cup parade through downtown Montreal. Cause one thing’s for sure, the Canadiens wont be making us parade on Sherbrooke Street this year.

We already had the Impact win their championship this year, to not much fanfare, but if the Als win also, that will make 2 out 3 our “professional” teams winning. Not bad at all.

On a side note, tomorrow the 21st of November, St-Catherine Street in downtown Montreal will host the Santa Claus Parade.

While if you’re a kid this might be a big event for you, for the rest of us it will only mean that traffic will be disrupted downtown and hordes shopping crazed parents will invade the streets of downtown; eventually to return home carrying heavy shopping bags with items that will be forgotten right after Christmas as quickly as they were bough.

Really, it is just plain ridiculous that the Santa Claus parade is held so early. It’s not even December yet, Christmas is in over a month time. The parade just goes to prove how Christmas has lost its celebration spirit to turn into a shopping frenzy fueled by guilt and societal and marketing pressure.

This is really not the Santa Claus I was dreaming of as a kid.

Some news here on the huge Celebration 2010 party to be held at the Bell Center. Just like in 2006 when Tiesto graced Montreal with his presence and played at Celebration, well this year we’re getting another mega-star of electronic music, Paul Van Dyk.

It’s difficult to get extra info because the site of Celebration 2010 has very little but a flash splash page on it (for now).

Maybe I enable comments again on this blog, and let you readers post whetever info you might have. Hopefully we don’t get spamed to death.

Or maybe I’ll just do some more research and post it up here.

In the mean time, some hard base beats from Paul Van Dyk:

Video for “White Lies”

Paul van Dyk feat. Jessica Sutta “White Lies” from PvDinGaudi on Vimeo.

Video for “Let Go”

Paul van Dyk feat. Rea Garvey “Let Go” from PvDinGaudi on Vimeo.

The making of “Let Go” (for Van Dyk nerds only)

Making of Paul van Dyk “Let Go” video from PvDinGaudi on Vimeo.

In their tradition of serious professional media, the Montreal Mirror just published an epic, both in quality and size, party guide for the Halloween weekend. Everything you need to know about nightclub parties, live music, Halloween balls and pagan rituals happening in Montreal over Halloween, well it’s all in that guide.

The good thing about Halloween in Montreal is that it’s authentic: the trees are devilish-red and mostly dead-yellow or completely naked of any leaves, making them even freakier. The sun goes down by 4:30, the air is humid and smells of decomposing vegetation.

And Montrealers play along pretty well. In some neighborhoods, die-hard Halloween enthusiasts even turn the basement of their houses into dungeons for the kids to venture deep into scary territory in if they want the booty of candy awaiting at the end.

But for those who aren’t trick or treating, Halloween is all about finally having the chance to dress up as that hot doctor or wild animal or sexy nurse that we always secretly wished we were. And not only dress-up, but walk around outside or in the middle of a party with your costume, as if it’s the most normal thing to do ever.

And talking about costumes, here is an “interesting” costume worn by Montreal DJ Alice and the Serial Numbers (odd name, but we’ll forgive her)

If you want to get a sample of more than her costume, here is a video of her (properly titled for Halloween) song Zombie Barbie:

This week-end, that is September 17 to the 20th, you’ll have the chance to discover a entertainment form that you thought was only existing in Western films: burlesque. If you head out to the Just for Laughs Museum venue you’ll have the chance to discover the beauties of the 1st edition of Montreal’s Burlesque Festival. So leave your inhibitions at home and discover everything that these classical entertainment art has to offer, from leg-dancing and striptease to comedy and parody. Here is a little guide and info on the Burlesque Festival.

So enjoy the show:

You know, you’re not a big city if you don’t have your big music festival. The formula is pretty similar across the globe: unique name, full week-end event, outdoors and most importantly tons of bands, with at least one really big bands to headline each day of the festival. Montreal’s own Osheaga follows this recipe to the letter: full week-end event, (Saturday amd Sunday the 1st and 2nd of August), outside venue at the Parc Jean-Drapeau and Coldplay and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (replacing the Beastie Boys who can’t make it because of MCA’s need to take time off to fight cancer).

Where Osheaga falls short is that it is not exactly like a European-styled rock festival extravaganza, where people stay on the site for the whole duration of the festival, usually in tent-cities, and basically transform the festival into one spontaneous and enormous commune. There is no camping allowed at Osheaga, basically you just go in the morning for the beginning of the shows and leave when the concert ends. That’s kind of sucky, itjust makes Osheaga a big day-long concert, something I wouldn’t really call a festival. But hell, it’s as close as we will get to such an event here.

Regardless, the lineup looks really promising, and Girl Talk will be there on Saturday, guaranteeing a crazy night out at the park.