Petronia

Went to the terracotta warriors exhibit preview with ukefied (after trying to organize a get-together for months - universal truth being that the moment two Internet people say "Hey, we've lived in the same city all these years, why don't we meet up for a coffee," roadblocks and unforeseen delays will rain down from the sky). It was pretty awesome! Also, I am now the Mayor of the MMFA on Foursquare after two check-ins.

* If these were mass-produced, were the original molds done by one person? The soldiers honestly give off the sense of a single creative mind (the horses might have been someone different; the entertainers certainly were). The Buonarrotti of the Qin. Why didn't the names come down to Sima Qian, I wonder?

* So while watching Little Big Soldier I was like, no way did anyone at that period run about armed with a miniature red-lacquered crossbow, not even a prince of the realm! That is so an anachronism! Er, well, I guess I was wrong.

* We are not too mature to snigger at anatomically correct funerary statues and bronze strap-on dildos. The original molds for those were high craftsmanship too, is all I'm saying.

* I demand a city-size mausoleum with a river of amorphia mercury in the D&D game (either G's or Bob's, not fussed).

The next day I dropped by Montreal Fashion Week for the Style & Conscience cocktail and somehow scored a ticket for the Denis Gagnon A/W2011 fashion show (thanks Aleece). Don't think I've ever attended a runway show before, and it was a good one: sort of a cyberpunk flapper vibe. Metropolis with fluo pink tights.

I have an excuse - I was writing. Let's not all get too excited. XD;;

Went to the Yves Saint Laurent retrospective at the MMFA last Wednesday evening. Will probably return with sketchbook; the first time was for the walkthrough, which took only ninety minutes even with copious gawking. Saint Laurent died just days after the exhibition opened (the guestbook is to be sent to Pierre Bergé afterward, no idea what to write) so the experience was weirdly, unexpectedly emotional. Most of the pieces were shown in the 2002 valedictory runway retrospective of the couture house, a video of which was looped on a suspended projection screen; tbh I can imagine those physically present bawling their eyes out. ^^; What the survey brought home was how much YSL was women's clothing for the past forty years - one doesn't have to be a fashionista to ID the style of each frock or pantsuit down to the half-decade, in fact a group of middle-aged ladies was occupied in doing precisely that, to much hilarity. Inevitably the outfits I really like are all from the 60s. Catherine Deneuve's black dress from Belle de jour was in there. URGE TO COMMIT MUSEUM ROBBERY RISING

The Vanity Fair Proust questionnaire should be a meme, shouldn't it? (Isn't it already?) I'd like all my flisters to answer. XD;

Today: ensconced for hours in the Mont-Royal Caffe Art Java with an iced latte and a pint each of Quebec strawberries and New Jersey blueberries. Found all of Chesterton's Father Brown stories in hardcover at a used bookstore, $15.

( Body Worlds 2 )

( Garden design exhibit )

Tomorrow smurfmatic is driving dipping_sauce and me as well as himself out to Lac Brome and Lac Memphrémagog, in search of wine and cheese festivals and farmer's markets. Urgent + key: music, camera, cash.

Whereas this is mp3 blogging relating to events two Saturdays ago. XD I have an unfinished post canned from that Monday detailing how there was a massive blizzard Friday (March 2) and work let out early, T and I went shopping and then to Talal's birthday dinner at the Maharaja, etc. The others actually went clubbing, I begged off because of the all-nighter going down the next day.

March 3 was fairly epic, seemingly every young and healthy individual in Montreal turned out onto the streets. Met Ced and Tania for coffee/exhibit at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (the giant tearaway notepads were memorable; have to ask T what happened to those XD), then picked up Andrew and wended over to Metropolis with a stop for coffee - at which point we met Ced again with a dude from anime club I hadn't seen in about seven years. XD Then it was Nuit Electronik, which was wall-to-wall packed. One of the forum peeps estimated 850 people (including she who will go down in anecdotal history as GHB Girl, and cohorts). Afterhours crowd, SAT electro crowd, who knows. The chemical palette was broad. =_= The sound was great, as it tends to be for Metropolis electronica shows.

Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence (Richard X Extended Mix): Koze played this at 2:40AM by my notes - it was an eclectic set, all unidentifiable Hot Chip remixes and SUDDENLY DRUM & BASS. And a Voigt track I can hear in my head right now but still can't put a name to, so it's not uploaded. =_= Mixing was a bit rocky but selection was super fun.

Mayer/Aguayo - Slow: an oddity, because I'm sure Holden played it, not Koze - but I'm dead certain that at one point in Koze's set I heard two bars' worth of "Lovefood", and the only way that could've happened is if he'd been seguing into "Slow" instead. XD; So either he was using it as a transition and it gave Holden the idea to play it, or my memory is more shot than usual.

Gui Boratto - Arquipelago: yet more singalongs ahaha. It's a problem I have.

Egoexpress - Live At Sirius Prime: Holden was dark and epic and 120% brilliant. I literally flirted with dehydration because I didn't want to leave the dancefloor long enough to get water. XD;

Depeche Mode - The Darkest Star (James Holden Dub)
Nathan Fake - Charlie's House (Apparat Remix)
Nathan Fake - The Sky Was Pink (James Holden Remix)

3AM-6AM is a perfect time slot for the Border Community style IMO. One trance track dropped like a starburst at 5AM before and after three hours of minimal darkness beats trance-all-night for pure euphoria. (Check 7:50 of this video [1] - if anyone can ID it for me I'll ♥ you forever.) On the flip side, it was a bit samey. XD;; I say this in the most complimentary way possible, i.e. throughout the whole set I kept imagining I was hearing "The Sky Was Pink", which is one of my favorite tracks and one of the best the genre has to offer, period.

Oh, and:

Apparat - Montreal: operatic electro breakbeat recorded live, bpitch style. I had to ask one of the nodding trainspotters what this was called. Then I bought it off Beatport ahaha. At 5AM over a club soundsystem I heard a vocoded voice four minutes in chanting "Montreal, Montreal, Montreal"; somewhat unnervingly, this is not at all what it sounds like under sober daylight conditions. XD;

I'll be uploading more mp3s once I get back from Booka Shade, no doubt. There's also a massive bookblog to be done of everything I read over that weekend.


[1] Actually I was a few feet away when this dude was up in Holden's face for ten minutes with his credit-card-sized camera, I just didn't expect the resultant Youtube clip to be ten minutes long as well. XD;

Went to see the Provençal painting exhibit at the Fine Arts Museum yesterday evening. A whole lot of Cézanne and some fascinating 18th-century panoramas of Antibes and whatnot, where the canvas is three-fifths sky with shiploads of anthropological detail crammed into the bottom two-fifths. Didn't get home early enough to read any more Tsubasa, of course, but that hardly matters as my zip of volume 8 is corrupted.

AAAARRRRRRRRR

I suppose since it turns out I'm enjoying the series so much I'm morally obliged to buy all this after all, except I don't think the French is out to volume 8 either. (And so sororial unit can read it on the bus, although it will not eat her brain as much as it eats mine because she knows nothing about X, Rg Veda or Clover.) Vampires? ...I'm sorry, I think I am truly bothered by this. *has disturbing visions of Louis and Claudia*

Rec me fic, people! Nothing overly spoileriffic, but I need feeding today.

Here's another thing I would really, really love to have: the Tommy Feb opening to the Paradise Kiss anime. ♥ Didn't mention that I'd managed to watch 1-3 over the weekend (along with the latest subbed episode of Monster and the first ep of Mushishi). It's by the same people who did Beck, isn't it? *rolls* The feel is different from the manga. There's the chibis, the weird beasties, the character design (for some reason Arashi and Hiroyuki didn't translate too well I feel, the rest are fine). Most of the voices startled me, as if either tonality or diction weren't what I'd been hearing in my head, but it's been so long since I read the manga... ^^; The pacing. I like it, mostly - it's infinitely preferable to a pedestrian reading with no sense of a director's hand at the helm - but it doesn't achieve the original's breathless romanticism, and as I was thinking about it afterward I realised it was because of the music. The lack thereof, rather. ParaKiss is so not an ambient noise soundtrack sort of series. And what there is of it is, well, there's this single chord that plays whenever George is about to do something that drives me batty because it makes me think I'm about to hear "Mizuiro no machi" by Spitz which is like the antithesis of a George song; that's pretty typical. >_> They had it with the opening, they had it with the ending, now what about the rest? Or has the budget been blown?