I do this thing where I have no idea what I'm doing, right? I've got about 3 cups of REALLY good coffee in me (Clearly) and am thinking a mile a minute and acting on things in ways one probably should not. You try and keep it suave and you tip over the edge and act a fool. This is rambling. As in like WHAT I AM TYPING RIGHT NOW is rambling. I am in an incredible boring lecture doing this right now and I do not believe I have ever typed so fast. I'm in a weird spot, recently returned from my Africa trip and don't really know what to make of it all. Christ. I am torn between old and new and there are a ton of things about to land on my plate that I haven't even cleaned yet.

Episode 6 of the podcast is up. Listen listen...

It really sucks when you're not in the same boat. It really really sucks. 

I have a midterm on Thursday? Fuck me, right?

It's okay if you didn't get this post because neither the fuck did I. 

Here's a cool picture of me being neurotic showing off my moustache, roots watch, Skate4Cancer hat and Rydell tank top. Rydell is fucking rad. So is S4C. So is roots. So is my 'stache

real post soon. or not. ha. k.

There's a video of me playing Gaslight's "45" in the post below this one how cool is that.

shut up, Marco.

Rainy days seem to amplify the pain and nauseating twinges one gets after a night of heavy indulgence. My head has since cleared from last night and the realization of things I did push through and I just kind of say…”that’s a shame”. I really need to watch myself sometimes…making a fool of yourself and overspending isn’t such a fond sentiment to wake up to, but it always seems like a fabulous idea at the time. On top of the world but really just under the influence. Go figure.

On a slightly more positive note, Friday night went really well and something kind of magical happened. It was a good friend’s birthday and we all made the hike to Pub 101 for a night of drinkery and good times. Upstairs was a funny sight…the floor above “upstairs” was packed as that holds the dancefloor and DJ, but the middle floor we were on was quite empty save a few dark tables and a 2 man band. One fellow playing a very quirky guitar and the other on a jazz kit. They were playing really great recent rock songs as well as the classics. 2 men yet so much sound. We all sat down while eyeing these men weirdly resting on the fact that with a group this size there was nowhere else to sit down. More songs played and more drinks were served, and the birthday boy was content.

When they launched into a blink 182 song I decided to take my roommates girlfriend for a spin on the dancefloor and we enjoyed some high paced ballroom waltzing and LOTS of spins.

We were dancing to rock and roll.

Suddenly, others from our soiree group were up and moving, smiling and laughing at how ridiculous it was to be dancing to this music instead of steady bass beats leading to a “drop”, or whatever. But we were all having so much fun, and that’s all there really was to it. People from the floor above us would walk down from the “real” dancefloor and realize this was the place to be! Where the fun was. Where it wasn’t about eyeing a hot number and seeing how much of her you could touch while “dancing”.

Before I knew it our whole crew was pushing chairs and tables aside and grooving out. When we needed a break we’d sit but sing out our lungs’ fill.

Sam Roberts wrote “the kids don’t know how to dance to rock and roll” but that’s just it. There are no “moves”..you just…move. You feel it and roll with it, you can dance with your friends’ girlfriends and you won’t get scrutinized because the only thing your touching are her back and hands…with only your hands. It’s the music that won’t die because there’s no learning curve, it just explains who you are and what you feel. It’s lasted a long time and just…flows.

It’s the music that was playing when your parents were falling in love.

Keep the memories in your bones, and thanks for a grand weekend. My coffee is kicking in and this action movie is letting out some aggression that I’m feeling towards myself for acting such a fool.

That’s what a Friday night should be like. 

Hey guys, been a while with the long weekend and all. I'm sitting in demarais before my class and just got off work...went to bed at 1am and somehow woke up seconds before my alarm went off at 5am and felt..quite refreshed. freaks me right out. 

I had an alright long weekend, hope you did too. worked a little as my family is out of town but we never really made a big deal about thanksgiving in the first place, but i get it's a lovely time to spend with those you love so i hope that's what you ended up doing! 

i'm first going to retort to the latest post of the Tales of Taco and say that i have recently become very fond of urban cycling, as Ottawa is made really well for it. i can pedal to class/work in about 5 minutes as opposed to a 15+ minute walk. the only downside is i can't walk and listen to my tunes, but sometimes i make the time for just that. hell no, i do not have earphones in while cycling. that's when you become a douche cyclist like the ones Taco discusses. I cannot stand cyclists who act as this "pedestrian/vehicle" hybrid species. either you are on the street, or you're walking. you don't ride on the sidewalk. when you ride on the sidewalk, and when half the douches don't even have a bell on their bike (which by law you do, for the rec.) you run the risk of hurting someone walking. it's not fair to use a space deliberately made for people to safely walk on and zip around on it. unless it's the uOttawa walkway. that shit is wide and i'll ride on that when i please. when cyclists run reds, it's fine. they can throw themselves in danger all they want. I stop at stop signs and reds. they are there for a reason. i don't see them as a hindrance to my momentum but more a "you should probably make sure you're not about to become a paraplegic" type of thing.

Ride safe. you've got every right to be on the road, but that means...you're on the road. 

(Taco the cyclists probably don't see you, but carry on) 

What I'd like to talk about is how one acts in the workplace. i work at the second cup on laurier right across from the university. it's busy as shit, all the time, really. this can and does wear me down as do most of all retail positions. sometimes you see a customer and generally want to say "fuck off, please" but obviously this is a no no. the thing about retail is that everyone knows it's one of the biggest lies we throw up. the employees aren't happy to be there nor do they want to put in the time for the money but a job's a job. i get that. i have good shifts and bad shifts but no doubt there is something i'd rather be doing that working. you get that. the thing i cannot stand that sometimes happens at my work is one of us will somehow make it seem like the customer fucked up. e.g. i go to make one drink and the customer says "oh sorry, i said two of those."..who am i to say "no you didn't" when in reality i probably did hear them wrong. there's no point in me going UGH like the customer is super annoying and rude when all they did was order. i guess whenever you really don't want to do your job you need to visualize from the customer's end. i get i'm just some person making your coffee and you don't really care about my well being or health, but then again i don't really care for the customer's, i just smile and nod and feel a slight twinge of hope in my heart that their day is going well so far, even though their face will be forgotten in about 5 minutes (except those tall ladies that come in. please come back, like often.). so yeah, just imagine being a customer and having to be confronted by a total dickhead behind the counter. that's not fair. you represent a service, so just give 'er for the time you've been slotted. leave all the bullshit going on at the door because no one who is asking for a coffee or new pair of shoes cares, unfortunately. you don't have to act like their friend, they have friends. you need to be nice and do your job. because nothing about your job makes you a big deal. not to your co workers or a customer. also..

you didn't get a job to make money.
you got a job because you ran out of it. 

anyways. that's a rant. what's up with me? two big things really...on the 19th i'm shipping out on an adventure to Namibia in southern Africa. my dad and sis are there and we're basically renting a 4x4 and driving around dunes and desert. i am beyond excited. lots of videos! 22 hours of flight time however..

Ottawa->NYC->Johannesburg->Windhoek, Namibia.

that reminds me i need to get a big ass memory card...

in other news...NEW GUITAR. Taylor GS Mini Mahogany topped and left handed. it is bloody gorgeous and her name is BabyTay LeJames. deal with it. it's a small bodied guitar but a relatively average scale (length). sounds very bright and has a mellow low end for nice round chords. sounds a lot like what dallas green plays, but less expensive. i'm hoping to play a lot of open mics starting next week, also i had this silly idea of an open mic tour where i go to other campus towns and steal the hearts of all the women and then wake up and realize none of that actually happened. been writing more often too...haven't been in a long time. i tend to write more when i find new music to get inspired from. currently listening to a lot of Lumineers and Fake Problems. what i have NOT been listening to is the Mumford record. i dunno why i'm just going to let the hype die the hell down and then actually go into it with the love i had for the first album. not really a fan of that "i will wait" song, or whatever it's called. but i'm sure there are pure gems on it. please don't bombard me with "omg listen to thiiiis"..yes the lyrics talk about heads and hearts and making love roam i'm sure your life is in shambles and this music is saving it. only my best friend Kyle is allowed to throw music in my face, because it tends to be amazing stuff. 

but all of you should listen to the Gaslight Anthem. everyday. 

I'm really thankful for people who know how to be real and cut the bullshit when they can. it's way more insulting to pretend to care than to just not even letting certain topics come up. just don't pretend to be someone's friend. no one is asking you to. if you want to be my friend, chances are that you already are. i'm not saying the "you're not my friend i don't have to be nice to you" view is what i'm rooting for here, hell naw. it's important to start as kind to everyone. if you can't even start out being kind...you're lost, man. you've just lost it.


keep the memories in your bones

M

let's talk about it, right? the weekend.
i'm half drunk now, i battered myself friday and  saturday, so when my african family who is currently living in the house i grew up in decided to throw an impromptu soiree i had drinks again. i haven't had a weekend like this in..well a week, probably. i actually don't get that ridiculously drunk that often... that was so last year..when monday through friday was when i'd party and the weekend was serious time. when i made incredibly great choices with life and women...nawt. i don't regret a lot, i promise, but we can all agree i was not the smartest fellow on templeton street. 


last night my roommate (and co host of this podcast) and i crashed at a family owned property near the market. after a night of decimating shots and eyeing ladies to no avail, we went the hell to bed. in the morning we decided to go to Mello's on dalhousie for breakfast.

Mello's has been around literally as long as ottawa has...well as long as i've been around in ottawa. There's so much to it, yet at the same time there's nothing to it. it's an old school diner. you walk in, there's the main bar lined with stools and then there are some private booths for the families and the lovers. 

i've been going here to eat since my dad took me here many years ago after a good long ski in the gatineau hills. all it is, is feeling like you're in the movie "Grease" and a damn good breakfast. 

there's the owner of the place..i knew her name at one point. a few years ago my girlfriend at the time and i would go there literally every sunday morning and she'd recognize us no problem. i would, and still do, recognize her easily. she's uh..a big lady. it ain't over until she sings. she's the classic diner waitress. calling you "doll" and "sweetheart" and calling out orders in some ridiculous vocabulary you can't recognize and saying how much she loves the maple leafs. she's nuts and gets the job done with incredible efficiency and precision. "hold the ketchup" and all that jazz. 

the folks who go there are also what make it so special to me. you've got the retired (honourably or dishonourably) sailors with the rapier tattoo'd on their forearms, but the kind of tattoo that was done with such vile ink that their skin tried its hardest to reject it, and now looks like it could be brushed off. you've got the people who have been coming their for a hell of a lot longer than i have...silver haired ladies and gentlemen who do their crosswords and kill off easily a few hours sipping on 5 cups of coffee. you've got older burly men with Harley Davidson merchandise who talk about when they used to ride their metal steeds down these streets but got too preoccupied with families or a chronic heart problem. 

and then you've got kids like me...giving off a desired aura of innocence and honesty that we may or may not actually have. with last nights smoke filled hair tucked into a toque (i don't smoke, but the rest of the world does, apparently), a plain white t-shirt with a stain from a drink I don't remember wrecking the New Jersey appeal i strive to accomplish, and scuffed shoes. i sit there with a good friend and i eat my breakfast. 3 slices of french toast with legitimate maple syrup served up with a duo of breakfast sausages and finally a slice of true ham. 10 bucks with my cup of coffee that is so god awful but there's no other coffee i feel i deserved in that current state. that coffee that tastes like no hell but that's just want you need. the heat and the caffeine to try and jump start your mind in a lacklustre fashion. 

it's a morning ritual i really take in and enjoy. Graeme and i didn't really talk much during breakfast...no doubt because we felt like bollocks and were decimating our brekky's, but also because my eyes were scanning every brick, every stainless steel top being sprayed down and every word that big lady would bark out.

i don't know, it's just a magical place to me. brings me back to an era that i wasn't even close to living in. don't you ever feel that? that retro feeling in your soul but in a way where it's like you were there, or you sure as hell would have loved to be? just for a while? 

i find there's a poetry that goes about this town, and i find the introduction can be found at Mello's. 

Check it out on Dalhousie street. huge sign. truly can't miss it, and nor should you.

Keep the memories in your bones.

-M

Hey, I'll tell you all right now this isn't really a post about fun and games and everything dames, it's kind of a serious one, I guess.

I’ll be honest with you all. 




I’m a bit fucking weird.




Now it’s your turn to be honest, and by that I mean I’ll bet you think you’re decently weird too. Today I caught myself at work thinking about some weird things, and I don’t mean some exotic porn involving a cactus and croquet mallet, I mean just odd things one imagines sometimes on a day to day basis that one really has no motive to imagine. 


It’s very easy to “think outside the box”, or whatever sayings go in concordance with that one. Mainly, it’s easy to think of something abstract and odd. Like instantaneously. I wonder how rich the people are who supply banks with the plastic sheets they cut into thousands of debit and credit cards. I wonder how many debit cards are issued each day. I wonder what would happen if my front wheel decided to just come off my bike while I ride down the steep somerset hill. I wonder if someone offered me a thousand dollars what I would do for it, be it walking up and dry humping an innocent patron of a coffee shop or just scream gibberish in a public setting. I don’t know, but this is the shit that goes through my mind sometimes. We all think abstract and with literally zero noticeable motive. 

I think of things that seem a little bit easier to understand. I think about what it would be like if certain people were still alive, or if some people had never been born. I imagine what it would be like to date a girl who is clearly madly in love with her boyfriend, I imagine what some people look like naked, and I think about how funny my life would be if I wore thug clothing. But is that weird? Because I think you do all that too. 


We think about these things (well, the ones that are somewhat reasonable) yet we do not act on them. We catch ourselves, which I find fascinating. We can imagine the most massively possible things that we could do with a flick of a wrist but we don’t do them. We are caged by our morals and something suppresses us which, if  you think any of the things I think (which you do, you fuck) is definitely a good thing. I think it’s incredible. What is doing that? What is telling me not to just blatantly walk up to a girl I think is gorgeous while she is clearly with her boyfriend and ask her on a date, telling her I’m way better for her and that she’d clearly enjoy herself more with me. Even if I did do it, I would a) look completely out of my mind and b) hopefully the lass would be enough in her own mind to have her man kick me dead. But why the fuck did I think that in the first place? Why do I imagine dating a girl who has a boyfriend? This example even creeps me out as I write it, yet I’ve done it before! Why do I bother thinking of something so morally wrong and impossible to occur and yet see it clear as day? How can this even happen? 


But you catch yourself.  You catch your brain, right? You have those “what the HELL, brain?!” moments. Why do these moments happen, and why do we let them happen? Perhaps it’s because this weird moral and outer force kind of swoops in and is like “RED LIGHT, SHUT THAT SHIT OFF” and nails us, and it’s like we know that, but don’t consciously know it because that would totally interrupt the thought process. It’s like we KNOW it’s there to stop us so it justifies the thought in the first place. 

I think the bottom line of this post was me realizing that anything and everything I’ve thought and felt as been thought and felt before regardless of whether or not it seems so incredibly new and unique to me. I could find this utterly depressing, but I don’t, and that’s because it does feel new and unique to me, and that’s what matters. My life is my instance. You’re not in it, you don’t know what I feel and/or think, and I obviously don’t know the same about you. No one can really know how someone else thinks or feels. You can describe it, easily, even, sometimes, but you are the only being who knows what’s going on. I’m the only one who knows what I’m thinking in my mind, and I know I’ll catch myself thinking it, and watch it unravel.




So I guess we’re all a little god damn crazy. 




I’ll bet you feel it, huh.




This was really weird to proofread.




Cheers

In three days I will be at the CE centre to attend a concert I have been waiting for all summer, the live 885 (an incredible alternative rock station from right here in ottawa) presents Rise Against, Hot Water Music and the Gaslight Anthem. 




Gaslight and HWM are opening acts, but I could not care less. I have been listening to Gaslight nearly every single day since the winter of 2009-2010 when I discovered the the ’59 Sound on the very radio station I listed above. This isn’t going to be a boner post about my love for the band, and while they are my favorite, I don’t think I’d call myself a nutters fanboy. Yeah, sure, I have a Gaslight Anthem t-shirt. Yeah, I could sing every word on every album and yeah, I have sang only Gaslight songs at open mic nights but I don’t care what they look like, or what they do with their free time, or if their wife as instagram or what kind of dogs they have. So the bottom line is I am obsessed with the Gaslight Anthem, but not with the band. 




I like everything they represent with the words sung and strings strummed. The songs about the honesty in doing a day’s work, of equality and Saturday nights with the top down. I like revenge songs to lovers come and gone that you can sing along with in your car and feel like you’re on top of the world. I love how they love the radio. I like how they’re just a bunch of guys who have gotten lucky enough to spread what they do and make me feel the way I do when I hear them. I like keeping up with them in terms of where they go musically, but besides that their lives are their lives. 

I remember the first time I heard this song, “the ’59 Sound”, which, for the record, was the year soul music got its own genre label, I was driving in my van and this song started and just slapped me in the face like no song has since Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. When I heard Brian Fallon hammer on a C chord tuned a full step down as fast as he could on his trusty telecaster I just knew that something was coming. Every lyric of that song drove something home into my heart that recently took a beating, due to a loss in my immediate family that took place months before. 

Before that moment I had not touched my guitar in about 6 months, let alone cared much for listening to new bands or really delving into music as much as I normally would. On the way home from school that day I bought new strings for my acoustic, got home, replaced them and learnt how to play that song, I have not looked back.

Brian’s writing accompanied by the musical pieces that band outputs really got me back on my feet. They didn’t all take my heart and throw it up into the air like ’59 sound did, but there isn’t a Gaslight song that isn’t good, or means something to me in some way. No other band’s music does that for me. 

So this Thursday I’ll be there shouting every word I can, watching the guys who helped me out, and continue to do so.

This is the ’59 Sound.

“You ain’t supposed to die on a Saturday night.”




Cheers 

afternoon, lads and lasses.

quick update: an hour ago i got back from a run i decided to do in the pouring bloody rain. by the time i even made it to the Rideau Canal i was completely drenched, and i made the silly mistake of wearing a white t-shirt, so i felt quite stupid, and pretty slutty. it went well, my ipod and headphones are in a bowl of rice just to be safe (rice dries things out, for the record). i then took a bloody hot shower and realized showering while already totally soaked is incredibly anticlimactic. 

so now i am here, at my workstation desk looking out onto a rainy templeton street watching cars go by and that silly cat that lives across the way. a cup of hot rooibos (afrikaans for "red bush", how 'bout it, then?) and some ideas i've formulated about last night, which i really enjoyed. 

the main point here is that it really does not and should not take much for one to enjoy a friday night. alcohol is something i do like to consume with a good group of people, but i've made a new rule for this year called "i need to earn a drink" by doing...i don't know..a good shift at work, or going to a lecture and actually taking something from it, which i believe i did this first week of school. it began with a bottle of Cava (Spanish bubbly) on the balcony of the temple with the roommates. we popped it into the street and before taking a sip said where we'd like to be in a years time, and they all seemed realistic which is good. we then proceeded to have some wine and get ready to head off to the static good times that occur at the one and only stewart street. good times, met some new people, made a new facebook friend and reserved first time judgements and will re-look into them when we meet again. Daniel Taccone, official dudebro of stewart street touches into this on his latest blog post HERE (shameless plug). 

lots of wine, photos and good conversation eventually lead to hoofing it down to the DTC (DownTownCore)to explore bar possibilities. it's always a job and a half trying to get everyone moving but it eventually happens. we lost a few on the way to the lack of planning and the ever hardening rain fall, but we ended up the trusty pier, then mcdonalds, then home. 

i don't know, running around the market with the rain trying to find people i found to be really fun for some reason. i ended up all alone at one point, with no texts being returned from people i knew where close by, so i just wandered and ran into people. it was warm, a nice limelight, steady rain that kept the streets cool, and warm entrances to crowded bars with people trying to find some shelter and a good drink. i don't know, it just really made knowing this was Ottawa and my hometown really invigorating, that while i was wandering around completely empty streets with seemingly nothing going on, there was everything going on behind every door. all the bars were hopping. all the smiles stretching and the hearts warming. well maybe not all, but that's what i liked to think at that given moment. i'm trying hard to be more of an optimist these days. 

i do hope you all had a fun friday night, if you were taking it easy and going out tonight...i'm sure it will still be raining. 

as for me, i'll be taking the graveyard shift at second cup on laurier, so feel free to stop by and charge up before hitting the town. 

rain makes it perfect.

cheers

team zissou