After a while it just seems cruel and inhuman

But it's really funny at first:

Pants on the Screen

I just re-vamped my "Lonelypants" video from two years ago - when I first posted it, I was naughty and I used an audio track without permission and got caught by the YouTube police. So my littlest stop-motion animation has been without any sound whatsoever for about a year and a half...until today, when I made a soundtrack on iMovie (omg omg soooo fun). It's way better now. I'm really looking forward to making more animations and spending 7 hours on moving one puppet's arm bit by bit. Seriously. It'll be a great winter activity.

In other news, I went to see the Otto Dix show at the Musée des Beaux-Arts yesterday . I had been really excited all week about seeing the show and I convinced a few friends that it was really worth the money to see it, but I panicked a bit at the beginning because the first room was wall to wall drawings of Dix's experiences in the trenches in World War I, so lots of crushed skulls with worms coming out of them, amputees, brains split open... the Museum even put a "Viewer Discretion" sign outside in the lobby. The first room was intense, and I instantly felt bad for dragging my friends to see such a gruesome show... but the rest of the show was mostly made up of his FANTASTIC paintings and portraits. The people he painted are so weird and really human and affecting. There were also lots of boobs of all shapes and sizes (this guy was The Original Boob Man) but, as my friend Caissey put it, "not a lot of Dix".

I really recommend this show if you go to one Museum thing this year. So go!

Sew Nice

I've done the following things since the last post: started knitting a scarf, screenprinted a pink cake onto some tote bags I am making, and made up a bunch of silly songs of Garage Band. I also made my first music video! By myself, in my room! Neither the song or the video was meant to be seen by eyes other than my own, but what the heck. I have nothing to hide.

You can see more of myvideos on My Youtube Channel. There are definitely some more animations in the works for the next little while. Once I finish the silkscreened bags, and the scarf, and the record, and the zine, and the oh my gawd how many more things can I possibly start. I am having fun, though, making up stupid crap. I hope you have fun with my stupid crap too!

I also made a sort of serious song that I'm quite happy with - it sounds pretty good for something I did in one afternoon on GarageBand with no mics and the computer's drum machine. I wrote the song in the brief time I lived in Mile-End, it was easy to just go walking in the neighbourhood and get your head in the clouds for a while.

Here are some pictures of animals that I took in Newfoundland.

The puppy's name is Julian. The girl's name is Cara.

This is Bobs. He has giant balls (not pictured).

Have a ballserific day!

Machine Love

I have to admit: I'm swooning. I feel like we were meant to be together. Our destinies are now interwined, each of us giving and taking, through joy, sorrow and laughter. I don't know how I managed to live without it in my life.

Yes, I really do feel that "Debbie", my MacBook laptop, has given my

life new meaning. I always saw myself as something of a Luddite, someone who staunchly resisted the onslaught of new technology. I secretly laughed at those who fell prey to the newest, fanciest gadgets. I refused to stop using a Walkman until the last possible second. I rolled my eyes at people who lined up in front of Future Shop for 8 hours to get the new I-Gadget... until this beautiful machine came and showed me how very, very wrong I had been all along. However, I will draw the line at joining Facebook.

That being said, I'm going to try and give this blog a new focus using all the fancy tools that I now have at my disposal; mainly posting more stuff from my sketchbook, and more pictures of finished works.

I've almost the Golden Girls that I started so many months ago; it started out as a personality quiz but I turned into a Mad-Lib instead. I'm having issues with the paper size and haven't gotten it printed yet, but I will soon. (Thanks "Debbie"!)

My rendition of Rue McLanahan (aka Blanche the slutty one)

I reprinted an expanded and improved version of my word-collage zine Modern Rainbow Action Theater!, which you can purchase from me at the bargain-basement price of 1 $.

On the music side of things, I played at the Marche Fermier Mile-End on Thursday, under a gray, rainy sky. You should check them out if you're in the neighbourhood, it's great to be able to put a face to the person who makes your food. And they're always very nice, friendly faces.

I'll be at Grumpy's this Monday night, September 13th, for the zillionth edition of Chick Pickin' Mondays. Dat's it dat's all for now, see you in the funny pages!

see more Poorly Dressed

New Found Yak

Oh benevolent deities of the Blogosphere, I know I have not paid you homage in over two months, and I've totally back-slacked on updating this thing, but I have returned with an offering of delicious bouillabaise stew, beats dropped like they are hot, and tiny angels with rainbows coming out of their asses.
I hope this will pacify you, and that somehow reviving this blog will give me a creative kick in the pants for the fall.

I guess I'll start at the top of the pile: despite the imminent heat wave that is upon us, summer is indeed is wrapping up. And I have to say I am very, very, very satisfied with the way this summer played out. As I mentioned in my last post eons ago, I spent one month in the mystical isle of Newfoundland, where I did the following things, among other things:

• made a lantern shaped like a cake with my buddy Cherie, which we carried in the St.John's Lantern Festival procession, eliciting oohs and aahs from every which-a-way
  
• fed goats and horses and carried chickens around on a farm
• played a succesfully attended show at the Rose & Thistle Pub
• jumped into ponds
• saw 1 day old kittens
  
• was a flower girl at a drunken fake-wedding party
• played with pups
• pulled weeds for 7 hours a day
• ate moose fat

I also drew a fair bit in my sketchbook. Voici le resultat:


I'm only putting up two, because I'm very lazy. Also I'm planning on making some sort of ziney thing out of my Newfoundland drawings when I decide to stop being lazy, so there'll be more sketchbook stuff unveiled later (probably).

Also I noticed while looking through my sketchbook that I'm very much into making lists.

LIST OF QUAINT/CUTE/AMUSING NEWFOUNDLAND EXPRESSIONS

• hard ticket ("Michael Furlong is one hard ticket") = a phrase used to describe a tough guy, someone whose path you shouldn't cross
• queerstick ("His sister Betty Furlong is a queerstick; she wears ponchos year-round")= someone who is eccentric, unusual
• the once ("I only met him the once but I won't forget him soon") = one time
• whippersnipper ("Use the whippersnipper on the front lawn") = a weedwhacker
• the Bay ("he was from around the Bay") = a generic place from where Newfoundland bubbas and rednecks are said to come from

In recent news, I just returned from another new place, which wasn't as idyllic but had it's own thing going for it; I was a volunteer at the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in Brooklyn, New York. I had a amazing, inspiring time. We started everyday by punching our fists in the air and shouting: "WE ROCK! WE ROCK! WE ROCK! WE ROCK!" Some 9 year-old girls wrote a song called "Barbies on the Battlefield". Every lunchtime there would be a different band performing (all ladies all the time of course), and Beverly "Guitar" Watkins, a 70-year-old blues guitarist from Alabama, played on Thursday. She and her band KICKED ASS. I also played a lot of Boggle. I most certainly did not kick ass, but my best word was "crux".

Here's some drawings I made while I hung out waiting for delicious pierogies and spacing out in the Willie Mae Volunteer Lounge listening to ladies gabbing it up:


This thing called "Buttermilk Channel" is a restaurant you should all know about; I was advised by someone who knows that you can't have their fried chicken on cheddar waffles without following it up with their pecan pie sundae. It just isn't done. One thing that seems big there that I hope will soon catch on here is that bars will often give you free food if you buy drinks. There's one place in Greenpoint that gives you a slice of pizza if you buy a beer, and another that gives you a corn dog if you buy shots. America is good.

So now I am done my wanderings and am ready to hunker down and get serious, dudes. I'm going to focus on finishing things instead of starting new ones (I tried this a little bit before I left for New York and it made me feel so blissful). I'm going to finish my record, polish it up and get it out into the world. There'll be many other things happening in Quartier M-D, so come visit me often in Cloud Town, y'all.

Let's talk about the cod moratorium

Hello Cloud Town visitors - here I am in St.John's, Newfoundland, listening to the CBC in a pretty little kitchen, drinking lemon-ginger tea and nursing a summer cold that I got from going from Montreal temperature (35+degrees) to St.John's temperature (10 degrees) in just a couple of hours. It's all part of the adjustment period, although I hope it adjusts soon because my head feels like it has bricks inside of it (hold the snippy remarks).

What can I say so far? The houses are beautiful and colourful, everyone is as friendly can be, the street are clean, the air is fresh and there's a symphony played by boats in the harbour on their foghorns in the afternoon. In a little while I'm going to go to a lantern-building workshop in a park. Hopefully I will be around when the caplin - huge swarms and

waves of tiny silver fish - roll up on the beach to spawn, and people go to the beach to scoop them up in big buckets and have fry the little fish around fires on the sand. Everything here feels nice and healthy, which is why I hope this stupid cold will be a short one.

More posts and photos to come soon, promise!

The Newfoundlander on the Street

M-D's Daily Affirmation Post

Well, well, well. Things are happening. I've moved for the 5th time this year, and now I'm off to Newfoundland on Tuesday, back on August 3rd. All I can say wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! I'll play a couple of shows while I'm out there, one in St. John's and the other at the Anchor Archive in Halifax, a place for all things ziney and craftsy. I have a nice little number of shows coming up in the next couple of month, so just check the mySpace once in a while if you are so inclined.

As a pre-departure gift, here's a picture of some dudes in a basement. Enjoy.


see more

Ride the Blog Winds

Oh my gosh, it has been simply toooooo long. There certainly hasn't been a shortage of new things happening in Quartier M-D, I just haven't sat down to chronicle them until now. So here I go spouting my fluff into the ether:

Next week, on June 24th from 5:30 to 9, I will be playing providing live music at the Mile-End Farmer's Market. It should be a fun time, so stop by and get some food and say hullo. There might even be protesters! Yay!

Then the very next day, Friday, June 25th, I'll be having a 5 à 7 'finissage' (the opposite of a 'vernissage') for my show Baboon Bop currently up at the Sustainable Concordia Gallery. The theme is 'let's sustain animals, 'cause they are nice'. It should turn into a fun little event, as I will be providing some live acoustic music, there will be silly drawing games galore, oh yes and lots of wine. Here's a sample of the masterpieces you can marvel at if you come and check it out (sorry for the poor quality of the pictures, but you get the drift):


In other news, I'm going to Newfoundland! I'm going to try and do a lot of things while I'm there, namely WWOOfing, playing some shows, hang out with my pal Stacy, go jigging for cod, and maybe finally get a chance to wear my waist-high rubber boots and my fake fisherman beard.

So stay where you're to till I comes where yer at me duckies.

You can listen to it

Just in case anyone actually reads this... I posted a couple of songs from my demo/EP on mySpace. At this point I'll be looking for feedback and constructive criticism, so any comments at all are appreciated.

Also I've become enamoured a Brooklyn cartoonist by the name of Ken Dahl , who is possibly one of the funniest people around, and he draws purty good too. His sketchbook drawings are friggin' hilarious. And he will draw absolutely anything for money. He wrote an entire graphic novel about herpes (also friggin' hilariosu). Check it.

Speaking of drawings, I've been making more of them lately, so once I find a scanner I'll try to post some of them.

Toodles!

High-fives for me

Hey everybody! Guess what? On Thursday, I finished all the recording I had planned to do for my first recording. I have 5 songs in total, enough for an EP. My friend Brad helped me a whole lot (actually he did most of the work) and made magic with wires and adapters and cables and oh my gosh I don't know what I would have done if he hadn't been there. Then we all ate dumplings with mustard in celebration.

That means I'll be starting to design the packaging for the CD, which is exciting! I love doing that kind of thing, and my friend Elgin-Skye is going to help me as she is an expert and her CD covers are lovely.

I'm also designing a tattoo for my friend Eva, which is kewl, as I've never had one of my drawings permanently drawn on someone's body. It's going to be a swallow, and I've made a couple of sketches to get an idea of what I'm going to do.

I'm going to post a couple of the songs on the EP to the mySpace, after I decide which ones to post and which ones to hide until the actual thing comes out...

So long, and may all your dreams come true before we meet again next time in the cyborgsphere.

Oh my!

Saturday I took part in an event in the Maguire Meadow of Mile-End, also known as the vacant lot behind the Jeans Jeans Jeans building. I always pass through this field on my way to Rosemont métro but I never stopped to notice how beautiful and lush and green it is. The grass is tall and there are clumps of big trees to sit under. There's a grey stone wall bordering it and fencing in the convent on the other side.

There are some people who want to protect this space and keep it as it is, free for anyone to access and free from any governmental or private development. I'd say that's a pretty swell idea.
There was a camera crew filming a documentary about the garden, so hopefully there will be more awareness that this space exists and the need to preserve it. We made some music under the trees afterwards. I sang some acappella stuff and a Woody Guthrie song before my guitar string snapped. My friend Alexis (who also has a blog) came along and did cartwheels with me in the grass.

Trailer bikes!

Frolicking!
Pharmaprix!

I've got a few shows coming up in the next little while, one this Wednesday at the Cabaret Playhouse. I've added the other shows to the mySpace page so check it out if you want to know where I'll be next.

I'll also be doing some recording this week, and if I remember to bring my camera I'll post pics of that too.

Toooodle-oo! Enjoy the hot sticky weather.

Cuteness up your ying-yang

Oh boy, it's been a while since I've written anything. The Blog-Gods are surely frowning on me.

I finally went and took pictures of the collaborative drawings installed in the Sustainable Concordia Gallery, where, by the by, I will be showing my own stuff for the month of June. There'll be a little end of show party on June 25th, with musical guests and I'm hoping a game of charades.

Other exciting news: my mom found a tiny kitten in the backyard of her house on Monday morning, and she rescued it. Now I'm in love. His name is Ralph. Or maybe Mister Mustache.

Luv-er-ly

The weather seemed uncertain on Monday morning and it seemed like the live drawing/BBQ/plant sale organized by Sustainable Concordia would have to be moved inside, but fortunately the sunshine came out with incredible timing (and blinded those of us who were staring at a piece of blank white paper.)
There were bean burgers, ukuleles, flutes, face painting, roasted asparguses (asparagi?), lots of lovely people and lots of very fast moving clouds. Bronwen and I created a magical neon animal kingdom, complete with pick-up truck. I forgot to bring my camera, so I'll have to post a picture of the finished work later on in its new gallery habitat. Someone painted this on my face:




Today I made a scroll drawing that I'd like to put in a show that it's in the works for said Sustainable Concordia gallery. I collect pictures of animals, so the show will probably revolve around cute animals made cuter by fashion accessories.

"Mrs. Murphy's Waltz" is now finished! Glenn put some lovely fiddle lines on it and I'm very happy with how it sounds. So basically I'm expecting this song to be my triple-platinum selling single, with heavy rotation on CHOM and Virgin Radio, and in-store play at Wal-Mart stores across Canada. I'll be crushed by anything less.

Here are some photos from last month's show at the Nu-Art Café:

Some dork playing the guitar

Elgin-Skye à son piano

In other news, I have to move in July and so far my apartment search has been fruitless, so if you hear any of apartments that are freeing up (and that you yourself are not moving into), I would be eternally grateful if you could bring them to my attention.

Until next post...

Melodeoniously

Work continues apace on my debutante recording: last week I recorded a song at my friends Brad and Julia's house, on their piano. Brad helped set up the equipment and Julia played the big bad-ass double bass.


The song was inspired by my very brief time in Galway, Ireland, most of which was spent at the Central Bar on Woodquay Street drinking 1 million cups of tea and drawing in my sketchbook. I also walked around aimlessly a lot and talked to buskers, of which there were a good many in Galway City. One of the melodies I heard on one of my walks kind of got filed away in my head until I returned home, where it resurfaced at the piano and became 'Mrs. Murphy's Waltz'. The song still needs some fiddle parts, so it's not quite done yet, but it will be.... very soon.


I'm planning on recording two more songs for this project, one a Woody Guthrie song on dulcimer, the other is my newest shiniest song (on guitar). Stay tuned for a release sometime (hopefully) either in the very late spring or very early summer.


In other coincidentally Irish related news, I've come into the possession a button accordeon which belongs to my Grandpappy Antonio Couture (who is by the way a certified, award-winning Québécois Accordeon Champion), so I've started messing around on that. It's quite a challenging instrument on one hand but on the other hand it's fun to play an instrument that isn't just for right-handed people.


My friend Bronwen has invited me to participate in a collaborative live drawing event happening Monday at the Sustainable Concordia space (located above the Multi-Faith Chaplaincy on MacKay st.). I'm looking forward to it and I'll be posting some pictures of the finished work afterwards.


Here's a funny little thingie I found in an old magazine the other day: a few years ago, this middle-aged German divorced man created a CD of ordinary household sounds designed to "simulate the presence of a live-in partner" without the inconvenience and hassle of an actual live-in partner. Here's a selection of some of the track titles as further evidence of how weird Germans really are:

• Now and Then a Cappuccino
• Quickly Reading the Newspaper
• Blow Dry the Hair A Little
• Nothing on TV; At Least the Chips Are Good
• Fry a Roast Beef in the Pan
• A Bath Sounds Perfect

Strummin'

Head in the Clouds

Over the past couple of months I've been doing some home recordings on my beautiful 4-track cassette recorder, and last night my friend Brad helped me transfer them from their analog cradle to the digital world... which means that you will soon be able to hear them coming through your speakers. Brad also put down some nice dobro parts on one of the tunes

You can hear one new song that I posted on my personal mySpace page. It's a cover of the classic Drifters song "Up on the Roof"starring my ukulele and myself on backing vocals. Check it out!

Also I'm going to be involved in an event happening May 9th: I'll be playing an acoustic set with other musicians in the Mile-End Roerich Garden. It's for a cause that's dear to me heart, namely the preservation of particular vacant spaces as areas that are open to public use and not meant for any single designated (ie: private) use.

So that's it for now, there'll be new songs to listen to in the next while, so keep checking back!

Alley Art

Here's a mural I did a couple of years ago on the doors of the now-defunct Mile End Bike Garage. Funny story: a few days after I finished the mural, a guy showed up to volunteer who looked exactly like the dude with the mustache that I painted (except that he had real eyes instead of bicycle wheels)... cuh-razy.


I'd like to do more murals, so if you've got a huge empty space that you want filled, drop me a line!

Aaaaa-eee!!

Here's the poster I made for my next music performance happening in my old hood of Verdun (also lovingly known as Verdump). It's inspired by the mysterious ground drawings in the Naszca desert in northern Peru. There are about 30 of them over the entire face of the desert, and they are so huge that they can only be seen from an aerial perspective, yet they were made thousands of years ago. One of the drawings is of a man with an owl head pointing to the sky and the ground. I remember seeing it many years ago in one of my books in high school.

In other news, my friend Glenn and I recently watched an NFB documentary about traditional music festival that happened at UQÀM in the 1970s called La Veillée des Veillées. I listened to the record at Christmas and liked it quite a lot, so I was excited to see the concert itself. The idea was to have traditional Québecois, Acadian, Irish, French and Brittany music represented on one stage. I was especially stoked to see my favorite dude, a singer from Louisiana called D.L Ménard (He's called "the Cajun Hank Williams", but if you ask me Hank should be called the "Alabama D.L Ménard"). D.L (Doris Léon) lived in Erath, Louisiana his whole life, working as a furniture maker. He's still around, so hopefully I can hear him one day. Meanwhile, check out this video and you'll see that this guy is the real deal:

D.L singing "La Porte d'en Arrière" with the Louisiana Aces

Come check out the show happening in Verdun, it's gonna be off da hook!

Let's get our zine on

Good news! Bored Waitress # 4 : The Erotica Issue is now on the racks at Monastiraki (5478 St-Laurent) and Librarie Drawn and Quarterly (211 Bernard). It's 4$ in the stores (you get a deluxe double-sided full colour page), or 3$ if you want to buy it directly from me.

Smokey the Zinebear sez: "Support your local artsy-fartsy hipster, y'all"

Run with the blogosaurus

I have the first post jitters here ... I'll be posting various things here: drawings from my sketchbook, various writings, funny things I saw on the bus, projects I am working on, doodles, snippets from my exhilarating life, you know, that kind of thing. It might be only read by me and the pizza delivery guy who stalks me but you never know... feel free to leave me a comment. I like comments. They are nice.

Right now I'm excited because my friend Alan (the guy painting in the picture) who owns the East of Eden Bookshop in Berlin (the store in the picture) is also a book-binder, and he is making me a sketchbook with some super-retro DDR wrapping paper! Yay!

Among the myriad of other things that I've started and hopefully will finish someday, I've started some cartoons on long scrolls of Chinese paper as well as a personality quiz based around a very popular '80s chick television show. I'm also working on a recording of my songs... so we'll see which one gets done first! Well that's good enough for a first post, so keep on checking back for new stuff daddios.