I Guess That's Just the Way Life Goes, Ya Know?

Montreal is starting to feel like home now. I find that places and routes come to me automatically now that they've been built into my routine. I still hesitate a little bit while asking questions in French and feel self-conscious about butchering the official language that everyone speaks, but that's slowly improving and eventually that doubt will shrink into a recess of my mind where I don't notice it so much.

It's weird, I thought I had above-average French, but realized quickly that I had above-average Ontario French, which is not the same thing as speaking it well. That was a tough thing to realize when we moved hear and I had to come to terms with the fact that rather than being bilingual, like so many people told me throughout my life, I would need to put serious work into learning it and getting to a point where I can adequately speak it. That's a long way off, but hopefully I will get there before long.

EV, and Faubourg Tower and Grey Nuns have turned into my academic homes and without even thinking about it, they've become the places I rely on to spend time in. It's funny to think about that sort of place, where you can count on it hosting you and not having to worry about a time limit or spending money or being welcome. On one hand, I need those places to have a spot to work, but it's also nice to know I can relax and do nothing if I need to. Not that I ever really get a chance to do that with the demands of a PhD, but it feels good to know I can if I really want to.

I've been reading a dense and esoteric-ass Michel Foucault text for the last two weeks and it seems like that is influencing how I'm writing at the moment.

NO!

Maybe the path to getting back to my actual writing voice is to talk about something a little more lowbrow.

This past weekend, Rebecca went to go visit a friend and help them prepare for their wedding. While Two things that she generally doesn't want to watch? Extremely bad movies and things about skateboarding. I covered both bases by watching the 2009 movie Street Dreams.



It was the exact type of bad that I love to watch: Horrible acting with equally terrible writing and a plot that is just linear enough to not make it a slog to get through.

Maybe it will only be funny for skateboarders, but there's at least one thing in every scene that made me howl. "There are 10 million street skaters in the United States. This is their story." as the title card. P-Rod is heinous as a leading man. Rob Dyrdek's character saying "I heard about this unreal spot in Ohio" and it cutting to the public skatepark he had just built at the time. Dyrdek and Terry Kennedy playing 24 (?) year-olds. P-Rod talking about his white whale trick "The Knack" and him landing it in a sequence but the movie not acknowledging that.

I could watch things like this endless. My brain is bad.

I've found a lot of good music lately, so I'll compile that and post it on Monday. Capiche?