After months of being surrounded by movie hype, I took the time to watch a jewel last night: A Single Man.




Now ready, after all the information I had heard about this film faded away, to take it in, mind wide open.

It greets you with a soft touch of contemplation of blurs and slowly takes you through a series of modern symbols, struggling to survive, face-to-face.

What pops up from the mundane modern magazine lifestyle as unique is filled into lungs, rendering them heavy and obsolete. We see a man choose his moments carefully. When to stop and listen in wonder to what takes place in a few seconds, within a few steps. The film succeeded in presenting how everything could look so ridiculously perfect and wrong at the same time.

What we get to see, forming before our eyes, is the stain of defining moments left on the face of someone who knows the importance of what lies between his world and how we see it. What is invisible. What is met between passion and interest. What counts between desire and disenchantment. Throughout the film, we are directed down a hall of mirrors, which are actually passages to other mirrors. All of this emphasizing the moment when a definition is smashed into quiet, sober and rational revolutions, when one door must close for another to open.

This passage, between hyper saturation and fade to black, is worth revisiting.

Labels: design, film, Tom Ford

Good evening, graduating class of the Ontario College of Art.

My name is Manny Coon. And I've been asked to speak to you about art. Yet when I look out over your sea of vacant faces, I feel like...to puke. 'Cause I don't think any of you have suffered like ol' Manny Coon here has suffered.

I was born in a brothel, in a town which now no longer exists. When I was born, my mother mistook the afterbirth as my twin. And the cuter one, too, apparently as I was immediately sold to the cleaning woman for a stamp. The cleaning woman went by the name of Magda...lived out on the edge of town in an abandoned freezer....with a bum named Lucky.

Magda and Lucky used to fight over who's turn it was to beat me. So, to distract myself from the misery of my surroundings, I began to draw. And I drew whatever I could get my hands on. Flattened Kleenex boxes, tin cans, fruit. But nothing fresh. I never had a fresh piece of fruit until I was 21. And it was a lime. I still take the existence of peaches on hearsay...

I was kicked out of the freezer when I hit puberty. So, I hit the open road in search of fame and fortune. For the next ten years I wandered, sorta like that German Shepard...Hobo. Except I don't lick strangers faces unless I'm fucking them.

My school was the open road. Pain and suffering, my textbooks. My teachers, the gypsies and rapscallions I met along the way. The only constant in my life was art. For you see boys and girls I, Manny Coon, am enslaved to the harshest mistress of all...my muse. That bitch rode the right side of my brain for all she was worth. Always driving me on to find that shade of blue that makes you cry, that red that makes you hot. And always...always, to paint bigger and better tits.

For you see I, Manny Coon, had a cri-de-coeur one day. "Manny", I said, "What is it that gets to the people?" It was the tits. From there on I only painted tits! Green tits...yellow tits...blue tits...tits with three nipples! Tits over Atlanta. Tits in wool and fur. Installation tits. Tits, tits, TITS!!! And the result?! Now my work hangs in all the best galleries on the planet. The art world is lined up to collectively kiss my ass.

So, here I stand before you, drunk...smug...impotent. The only way I can cum is to be hit by a bus. And I'm supposed to give you advice about art! The only advice I can give you is...every morning paint something. I don't care what it is. A bottle of wine, a carrot, your favorite member of Menudo. Me? I like to paint a genital first thing. If I'm too hung over, I photocopy my balls. If you're worrying about chromosome damage, don't bother. Artists shouldn't have kids.

I don't really give a shit what you do. Just don't do it in my livingroom. Good luck!

Manny Coon as performed by Scott Thompson of The Kids In The Hall

Labels: artwork, kids in the hall, monologue

Montreal,

did you forget something? Not the old furniture. You left that out on the curb. That tacky purple blazer? You passed it on to the Salvation Army. What about Bonsai? The cat?

There's a curb for that.


For some reason, some people find it perfectly acceptable to leave their pets behind when moving to a new location. Some leave them out on the street but some Montrealers leave them in worse condition: locked up.

There are many organizations that can help you find a home for your unwanted hairball. All it takes is a little time and effort. I know that sounds like a drag when summer has finally dropped some sunshine on our shallow faces but all you need to do is pick up the phone and drop off the little guy or girl in a better place.

Labels: beard, concern, links, love, montreal