Montreal, Links
May. 8th, 2008 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedMontreal was fun. We got in around 2pm, picked Alex up from his appartment (worlds cleaner than it was last time), then drove down to Atwater for lunch/to fill the time. Atwater is like a smaller Reading Terminal Market, and thank God for that, because my brother is already susceptible to panic attacks when confronted with too many choices. After lunch we walked along the canal for a while, but it was cold, so eventually we got back in the car and drove up to the hotel to check in. Before then we were in a very nice kitchenware and home furnishings store, where I tried to note what my mother was interested in since Mother's Day is coming up soon (and I forgot her birthday this year and would like to make up for it).
We spent about an hour lazing around the hotel, then went out to dinner: a Caribbean bar close to where the Canadiennes were playing, but without television coverage of the game, and so virtually deserted. I had blackened Red Snapper and about half a carafe of Sangria. A few minutes before eight I left the restaurant to meet![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
petronia, who was practically on time for once, possibly because dippingsauce was with her. The three of us went for smoothies (Sabina paid for some kind of coffee drink for me when I belatedly realized that I'd forgotten to bring any Canadian money -- thank you!). Later we relocated to Starbucks, where we stayed until they kicked us out at 12pm, at which point Erin caught the metro home and Sabina walked with me to our hotel before also catching the metro home. And talked at length, I want to add, about Irina Lazareanu's persistence, which was fascinating and should really be a post to one of the Libs communities but anyway.
Alex was still up and we spent some time watching trailers together. Summer movies I definitely want to see: Iron Man, Indiana Jones; summer movies I might want to see: Smart People, Pineapple Express. Note the age breakdown there. ^^;
Sunday morning we had brunch at this place off Parc called Eggspectations -- the only "food" place in a sea of coffee shops, and consequently pretty crowded. Then to the art museum to see the Cuba exhibit. This was a very good thing because I'd been thinking in circles basically all day (combination of tiredness and refueled obsessiveness ahaha) and the exhibit was really interesting and something to focus on. Basically, it was a decade-by-decade history of Cuba, with art from each period. There was some very clever recent art (which was bound to appeal, us USians looove to see the citizens of communist countries expressing criticism) including a Cuba made out of concrete blocks ("blockade"), an ideology-meter, and "revolución" printed in ten thousand different computer fonts. But my favorite was probably the art from the forties that explored Cuban street life etc in different art styles brought back from Europe. There was also a room of American poster art of Cuba from the era when Havanna was Las Vagas, which was simultaneously hilarious and awful -- dancing girls with skirts made out of bananas. I once read a really good academic article about the dignity and puritanism of the revolution as a balm for the indignity and licentiousness of Cuba-as-America's-playground, with a focus on homosexual tourism in Havanna and post-revolution intolerance of gays -- the exhibit didn't go into the later, but certainly reflected the former.
Then back to Alex's appartment for tea -- I'd had coffee with breakfast also, but hadn't slept well and it was like pouring caffeine into a black hole. Briefly met the roommates, who struck me as very "cool" and together (and tall). (My brother is also very tall (6'3"!), but uhh not "cool" by most people's standards. Good luck to him in that situation, that's all I can say.) Early dinner in Chinatown, walked around the old city, got in the car and drove home.
Links:
The Paris Hilton Memorial Fellowship: short story by Rachel Shukert. viaflyingsauce
Television, Gin, and Social Surplus: article on participatory culture. via Meta no Tame
The Ironic Urban Landscape of Death Note, or, Kira the Pop Sensation: meta in comments by the author of A Tithe to Hell.
A Tithe to Hell: loooong L/Light fanfic with the most canonically perfect beginning and ending EVER, and a gooey fanon middle. XD viasesame_seed
We spent about an hour lazing around the hotel, then went out to dinner: a Caribbean bar close to where the Canadiennes were playing, but without television coverage of the game, and so virtually deserted. I had blackened Red Snapper and about half a carafe of Sangria. A few minutes before eight I left the restaurant to meet
petronia, who was practically on time for once, possibly because dippingsauce was with her. The three of us went for smoothies (Sabina paid for some kind of coffee drink for me when I belatedly realized that I'd forgotten to bring any Canadian money -- thank you!). Later we relocated to Starbucks, where we stayed until they kicked us out at 12pm, at which point Erin caught the metro home and Sabina walked with me to our hotel before also catching the metro home. And talked at length, I want to add, about Irina Lazareanu's persistence, which was fascinating and should really be a post to one of the Libs communities but anyway. Alex was still up and we spent some time watching trailers together. Summer movies I definitely want to see: Iron Man, Indiana Jones; summer movies I might want to see: Smart People, Pineapple Express. Note the age breakdown there. ^^;
Sunday morning we had brunch at this place off Parc called Eggspectations -- the only "food" place in a sea of coffee shops, and consequently pretty crowded. Then to the art museum to see the Cuba exhibit. This was a very good thing because I'd been thinking in circles basically all day (combination of tiredness and refueled obsessiveness ahaha) and the exhibit was really interesting and something to focus on. Basically, it was a decade-by-decade history of Cuba, with art from each period. There was some very clever recent art (which was bound to appeal, us USians looove to see the citizens of communist countries expressing criticism) including a Cuba made out of concrete blocks ("blockade"), an ideology-meter, and "revolución" printed in ten thousand different computer fonts. But my favorite was probably the art from the forties that explored Cuban street life etc in different art styles brought back from Europe. There was also a room of American poster art of Cuba from the era when Havanna was Las Vagas, which was simultaneously hilarious and awful -- dancing girls with skirts made out of bananas. I once read a really good academic article about the dignity and puritanism of the revolution as a balm for the indignity and licentiousness of Cuba-as-America's-playground, with a focus on homosexual tourism in Havanna and post-revolution intolerance of gays -- the exhibit didn't go into the later, but certainly reflected the former.
Then back to Alex's appartment for tea -- I'd had coffee with breakfast also, but hadn't slept well and it was like pouring caffeine into a black hole. Briefly met the roommates, who struck me as very "cool" and together (and tall). (My brother is also very tall (6'3"!), but uhh not "cool" by most people's standards. Good luck to him in that situation, that's all I can say.) Early dinner in Chinatown, walked around the old city, got in the car and drove home.
Links:
The Paris Hilton Memorial Fellowship: short story by Rachel Shukert. via
flyingsauceTelevision, Gin, and Social Surplus: article on participatory culture. via Meta no Tame
The Ironic Urban Landscape of Death Note, or, Kira the Pop Sensation: meta in comments by the author of A Tithe to Hell.
A Tithe to Hell: loooong L/Light fanfic with the most canonically perfect beginning and ending EVER, and a gooey fanon middle. XD via
sesame_seed