I Waited 30 Minutes in Line to See Chihuly — 6 Days Left

Dale Chi­huly is an Amer­i­can glass blow­ing artist/genius/innovator. I went to see his show at The Mon­treal Museum of Fine Arts last week and waited 30 min­utes in line because his pop­u­lar show is com­ing to an end and I’ve been busy for the last few months. The show ends offi­cially on Octo­ber 27th.

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One of my great­est pet peeves on planet earth is wait­ing in line. Give me the best restau­rant in Paris, New York or Mon­treal and if I have to wait more than a few min­utes, I’d rather pick up a falafel or pizza slice and eat it on the go. Don’t get me wrong, I love good food, but my hate for line-waiting wins over nearly 100% of the time. Need­less to say, when I went to the museum last week and saw a line of about forty peo­ple I was not happy.  My wife and I sur­veyed the line. She knows me (and my bad whiny behav­ior) with lines…so she quickly told me that it was ‘my call’ and that we could leave imme­di­ately with­out con­se­quence. As we (mostly me) were mak­ing this deci­sion, the line sud­denly started to move rather quickly and a forty per­son wait turned to a thirty per­son wait. I bitched a bit but we sucked it up and waited in line.

Here’s my review. Words or pic­tures can’t do this show jus­tice and I only stayed at the show 60 min. It’s a 10/10 mas­ter­piece that needs to be expe­ri­enced. Period. So long as you are not colour blind, all I can say is go see it. It’s worth a 30 minute wait. It’s worth a one hour wait which is my max for wait­ing for absolutely any­thing non life-threatening. If you are a patient per­son though, it’s worth wait­ing all day.

Take your cam­era because pho­tog­ra­phy is 100% per­mit­ted and encour­aged. This mod­ern aspect of the exhi­bi­tion also impressed me because plenty of exhi­bi­tions are still in the dark ages with regard to pho­tog­ra­phy. Expect crowds but expect that the wait and bus­tle will be worth it. Expect to see the work of a Master.

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The Circus is in Town — Montréal Complètement Cirque

This week­end will be your last chance to catch Mon­tréal Com­plète­ment Cirque, which is a newish cir­cus fes­ti­val that got added to Montreal’s ros­ter of fes­ti­vals a few years ago. It’s loads of fun and a great addi­tion to the sum­mer fes­ti­vals in Mon­treal. I was lucky enough to see a few shows and I can tell you that there’s some­thing for every­one. There’s both free out­door shows as well as paid indoor shows. Last week I saw the indoor show Smashed Gan­dini Jug­gling which was a fab­u­lously whim­si­cal jug­gling per­for­mance by a team of British apple jug­glers wear­ing suits. It starts off com­pletely whole­some and gets slightly less whole­some through­out the rest of the jug­gling show (but remains whole­some enough for kids).

Last night I saw Pro­pa­ganda at Usine C and they were less than whole­some. It’s an eccen­tric 2 per­son acrobatic-theatrical show with female acro­bat Jo-Ann Lan­caster being top­less for about half the show. There’s skits, tits, trapeze, rope swing­ing, themes of servi­tude along with some cool fetishy out­fits, all served up in a dimly lit set with harsh light­ing. The audi­ence enjoyed it big time but I didn’t get it or find it very excit­ing. This week S Circa seems to be get­ting lots of buzz; I didn’t get to see them yet but Mon­treal Cuture guy Zeke reviewed them here.

Free out­door shows are a great way to soak up the cir­cusy zeit­geist and I got to see TOUR DE PISTE AU QUARTIER DES SPECTACLES: BABEL last week at the cor­ner of St. Hubert and Ste. Cather­ine. About 25 acro­batic per­form­ers jump, dance, strut, swing, bal­ance, tram­po­line, uni­cy­cle, and flip all around a few sto­ries of scaf­fold­ing in Place Emi­lie Gamelin. Fun stuff for the whole fam­ily and still going on for the rest of the week.

 

Babel - Place Emilie Gamelin- Montréal Complètement Cirque

Babel — Place Emi­lie Gamelin– Mon­tréal Com­plète­ment Cirque

 

Smashed Gandini Juggling - Montréal Complètement Cirque

Smashed Gan­dini Jug­gling — Mon­tréal Com­plète­ment Cirque

 

Montréal Complètement Cirque

Smashed Gan­dini Jug­gling — Mon­tréal Com­plète­ment Cirque

The city and the people working as one — NOT

Every pho­tog­ra­pher has sub­ject mat­ter that inter­ests them more than other sub­ject mat­ter. For me, what gets me going the most is fine art pho­tog­ra­phy and por­trai­ture. However.….every once in a while I’ll pull out my cam­era to shoot dif­fer­ent sub­ject mat­ter. Gotta pay those bills. This morn­ing how­ever I pulled out my cam­era because I was sim­ply pissed off at my city. Look at what they are doing with our recy­cling. Does THIS look like a recy­cling truck?

I love Mon­treal. I find the city VERY pro­gres­sive, tol­er­ant, fairly clean and great place to live. My wife and I love it here. We are com­mu­nity minded peo­ple who believe in the envi­ron­ment and we ALWAYS recy­cle as much as we can. We wash out con­tain­ers and bot­tles and sep­a­rate papers to make it easy for the recy­cling crew. We used to see our recy­cling going into a recy­cling truck, where it would get sorted on the spot. As far as I know, crunched up mixed recy­cling in a garbage truck is NOT recycling…it’s frig­gin’ garbage on its way to a landfill.

Does any­one know what is going on here? I mean as much as I love to do my part, I hate wast­ing my time, and I hate munic­i­pal bull­crap. If my recy­cling is going into a land­fill, then why am I wast­ing my frig­gin’ time?

Portrait from the Plateau

I recently moved into one of the best parts of Mon­treal called Plateau Mont –Royal AKA The Plateau or Le Plateau. There are so many inter­est­ing peo­ple in this bustling and artsy part of town that I think I may start a new series of casual ‘street’ por­traits just for fun.

Yes­ter­day as I walked through my new favourite loca­tion (Parc Lafontaine), I spot­ted 2 lovers in a ham­mock and asked if I could take their por­trait. They agreed and I think I cap­tured the feel­ings they have for one another. This was shot at about 6pm with no flash or reflec­tor, only ambi­ent light.

Party at the Old Port

Here’s a shot of a huge ship at the old port in old Mon­treal at night. It was of course the lights and their reflec­tions on the water that made this shot inter­est­ing for me. I nor­mally don’t shoot hand­held at slower than 1/30th of a sec­ond and this shot was taken at 1/15.‚ Exif data F2.8, ‚1/15 at ISO 1600. You can click the image to make it tastier on the eyes.

photograph of the old port - Montreal