Arts, Culture and Entertainment in Montreal
“…the dishes they cooked don’t hang in a museum, can’t be ordered from Amazon, won’t pleasantly surprise you when you happen upon them on HBO. Meals pass through us. Restaurants close. Chefs, like General MacArthur’s old soldiers, just fade away. Save for the menus, cookbooks and – more recently – documentaries, there’s no element of […]
“I have a million more stories I could tell in this book, but I don’t have the energy…By using a few of my stories as descriptors, I hope it will have a domino effect. More women will rise up, take their power, and say ‘no more.’ And men will stand as allies.” -Rose McGowan (from […]
Growing up the movies were my refuge; a place where I could escape for a few precious hours from the melancholy of my daily life (so much so that as a child I often daydreamed that my family had moved into an apartment adjacent to a multi-cinema plex where I’d discover a secret passage in […]
“’Normal is a setting on a washing machine.’” -Tom Hanks (from Uncommon Type) To a writer a typewriter is more than just a tool; it is a partner, a collaborator, a companion, and an extension of the person using it, not unlike a guitar is to a musician or a bat is to a baseball […]
“I entered adulthood unsure of who I was, where I belonged or where I came from, so I made up my story as I went along, and in that, music was my answer to everything. Rather than having the world tell me who I was, on stage, through my songs, I could tell the world. […]
“A composer and a writer, though he was a greater wordsmith. I’ve known a lot of people in the arts, and he was the first Renaissance man I ever met. He showed up and had an immediate impact, basically representing the entire history of black music and telling stories about the black experience.” -Bob Golden […]
“This is also an argument for progressive rock as a grand cultural detour that invented much of the music that’s popular now…’prog’s’ reputation has never quite recovered from a series of crises in 1977 and 1978. Punk won over the critics, disco won over the teens, and major progressive bands deflated like punctured blimps.” -David […]
“All the films in this book share an air of disreputability.” -Charles Taylor (from Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You) I do not often look back to the ‘80’s with fondness; that decade was most unkind to me. But the few bright memories I do retain usually have to do with the […]
Not long ago I found myself upstairs at McKibbin’s pub selling books as part of Montreal’s Bloomsday festivities. Seated to my left was Wayne, a musician trying to establish ProSpec Strings, his new guitar accessories business; an assortment of his wares was spread out before him on his small exhibitor’s table.
“To this day I have fond memories of the whole Playboy experience. Playboy represented a time and place unique in history. It will never come back again. It was an amazing moment and I was thrilled to be a part of it” -Arlyne Rothberg (from Playboy Laughs) “I think the real meat of Playboy was […]