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.


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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.