Category: It Happened to Me

Ah, Montreal. Home of McGill University, people-watching on St. Laurent and Prince Arthur, smoked meat and poutine, the great club known as Foufounes Electriques (literally, “Electric Buttocks”) and my first serious brush with girl trouble so many years ago.

Or was it my second serious brush? It depends on how you count it, and what you classify as trouble. It’ll make a great blog entry someday.

Thanks to Dave Polaschek’s VIA rail voucher, my housemate Paul and I travelled here first class in one of those four-seat booths with the table, getting our asses kicked my the chess program on my PowerBook, eating pan-friend trout, and drinking Bloody Marys, red wine and I introduced him to the joy that is Grand Marnier. If gangsta rappers took the train, they’d do it the way we did. Once again, thanks, Dave!

My friend Boris loaned us his apartment while he jaunts off to New York to hang out with Joi Ito. His place is in a cute little arrondisement just off the St-Laurent strip and across the street from a cool little cafe called Cafe Jose where they make great crepes and soups and seem to play nothing but Men Without Hats (who came from Montreal and wrote The Greatest Song in the World, Safety Dance). Once again, thanks, Boris!

(Cafe Jose has “RIP Johnny Cash” on their blackboard today. We’ll miss you, Mr. Cash.)

Later tonight, Steph (a.k.a. “Sniffles”) from the #joiito channel, and possible Aaron and the rest of the YULbloggers (YUL is the airport code for Montreal’s Mirabel Airport) will be meeting us at the resto-bar Pistol (on the east side of St-Laurent, just south of Ave. des Pins) at 8:00 p.m. Feel free to join us. I’ll be the Hawaiian-looking guy with the accordion.

The interesting thing to note about this vacation is that it would’ve happened differently without the Internet and “social software” like blogs or IRC. Dave wouldn’t have read my blog and he never would have decided to send me a rail voucher that he wouldn’t have had the chance to use. I never would’ve met Boris, and would have had to make alternate (and more expensive) accomodation arrangements. I wouldn’t be meeting with anyone for drinks tonight. What wonderful things happen when technology and people blend in just the right way!

Yesterday, we wandered around the city, toured the Ste-Catherine strip, and hit old Montreal. We met Tony, an nice older gentleman and accordion busker, where we had a little jam session. Paul took the footage, and I’ll post it later. Last night, we had dinner at the Shed on St-Laurent, stared at their hot, hot bartender, watched girls and did your typical good-lookin’-single-guy things. I tried to teach Paul some remedial French and get him to appreciate Campari and soda with little success. (Especially the Campari and soda. Suddenly, it’s as if a switch has gone off in my head and I’m into “old man” drinks.) Today, it’s some clothes shopping, then the Biodome, then Le Pistol, then who-knows-what. Tomorrow, it’s tam-tam by the mountain, who knows what else, and then back on the train at around 6 p.m. to arrive in Toronto around 11:30. I’ll probably still make it to Kickass Karaoke, which takes place at Rivoli tomorrow night.

Wandering around town, I see posters for two of my friends, who’ve made rock stardom: Lederhosen Lucil, with whom I played in the electro-improv band Lion, and Hawksley Workman, with whom I’ve jammed and backed up John Southworth on his radio special. Well done, guys!

Boris, if you’re reading this, your home internet connection is still down. I’m entering this from a net cafe on St-Laurent. We fed your cat. You’ll have to guess what we fed it to.

A couple of days have passed, and I’m still feeling a little guilty about The Bad Karma Mouse Incident.

Last Friday, I biked home early in order to tidy up the house before the viewing party for my TV appearance. I entered the house the way I normally do when I’m on my bicycle — through the back deck, which is accessible from the garage. While walking to the side door of the house, I said “Hello” to the neighbour’s cat, Pusskin, who was sunning himself. He turned his head towards me for just a moment, barely acknoledging my presence as indepedent cats are wont to do, and then resumed staring off into space.

“You wouldn’t be so standoffish if I were the one feeding you,” I said to the cat, as if a creature with no language centre, a brain the size of a walnut and the loyalty of a Third World mercenary soldier would understand or care.

Upon entering the house, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Tiny, circular movement. A little oval dragging a small line behind it. I took a step towards the movement, and the little oval froze. I flicked on the lights, and the oval turned out to be a mouse.

My house is a historical building that’s had its interior completely renovated. Part of the redesign was to expose the brick walls along the length of the house. While it looks cool, the imperfect joins where brick meets drywall-and-plaster make perfect entry points for the occasional mouse. Most of our mouse incursions stopped after my housemate Paul and I “sealed the borders” with several tubes of caulk. I’m not sure how our little visitor managed to find his way in, but maybe it’s time to do a house inspection again.

I grabbed an empty garbage can from the bathroom and inched my way towards the mouse, who stayed frozen in place, hoping that I wouldn’t notice him. I trapped the mouse by inverting the garbge can and dropping it over him. I then shimmied the garbage can with the mouse underneath it — it was kind of a slow motion rodent-oriented version of the shell game — towards the side door. While I was doing this, I talked to the mouse.

“Don’t worry, little fella, I’m not going to kill you. I’m just going to put you in the great outdoors.”

I don’t know why I was talking to the mouse; it had no language centre either, and its brain was even smaller than the cat’s.

I opened the side door, and with a flick of the garbage can, I gave the mouse a short toss. I just wanted to throw it far away enough to make sure it didn’t run back into the house. The motion with which I tossed the mouse was smooth, and the little creature made a low, graceful arc over three feet…

…and landed right between the paws of the neighbour’s lounging cat.

Pusskin looked at me and meowed once, as if to say “thanks, dude!” With a quick Ike Turner smack of his right paw, he stunned the mouse. He grabbed the mouse by the scruff of the neck and carried him into a quiet corner of the neighbour’s yard, where I’m sure some gruesome Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom activity ensued.

Instead of sparing the creature, which was my intent, I’d sent him off to a slow death. Cats don’t immediately kill mice; they tend to bat them about first, kind of like the way Freddy bounced Jason all over the room in Freddy vs. Jason, except that there are no cheesy pinball sound effects and you don’t have to waste eight bucks and an hour and a half of your life watching cinema-guano.

I certainly hope my own end is a little less hooray-I-escaped/oh-shit-I-didn’t ironic.

Mind you, there is a silver lining to all this: after knowing me for four years, the neighbour’s cat actually greets me now.

Somehow I get the feeling that most of you aren’t regular viewers of the W Network. However, I’m going to plug it because you’re going to see a lot of me on it for the next little while.

A little while back, the producers of the show Living Romance shot a sequence of me attempting to woo women on Queen Street West (a bohemian boutique-y street in my neighbourhood, deep in the heart of Accordion City) armed only with my accordion and my wit. That sequence was shown in last night’s episode and is also used in the promos for the show during commerical breaks.

At the risk of sounding immodest (which I’ll admit happens reasonably often), I was on. I looked pretty sharp and my ad-libs were killer. Several viewings of the tape later, I still think damn, he’s suave, every time I watch it.

You’ve got one more shot at catching the accordion schmooveness — check out W Network on Sunday at 1:00 p.m..

(I’ll get the segment digitized and find a place to put it online.)

Otherwise, I’d be much better at telling starlets apart.

Carson set me straight: both Milla Jovovich and Sienna Guillory were at Kick Ass Karaoke last Sunday. It was Sienna whom I was backing up on Jessie’s Girl (a song that for some reason has such a forgettable verse but a memorable chorus).

In the meantime, I’ll leave you movie fanboys to compare the Kickass Karaoke photos of Sienna with this photo of Sienna in her role as Jill Valentine. (Y’know, if I were fighting zombies in the dank tunnels beneath a mysterious facility, I think I’d wear something a little more protective than a tank top and a mini-skirt.)

Recommended reading

Inside Resident Evil. A blog that purports to be written by an anonymous member of the production crew of Resident Evil: Apocalypse, currently shooting somewhere in Accordion City.

The definitive karaoke performance of Jessie’s Girl (QuickTime or Real required), taken from the Ed Norton/Ben Stiller/Jenna Elfman movie Keeping the Faith. I think they could’ve cast me in the role of “Dung”.