Those of you who know about Queer Eye for the Straight Guy will appreciate this one:

Qveere Eye for thye Medieval Man

via Good Morning Silicon Valley

In Montreal. During the winter.

This is the kind of stuff that made my friends in California think that the Quebecois were really, really weird people.

La relation entre les qu�b�cois et la neige est amusante. Ils s’en plaignent constamment, ils fantasment sur le sud, ils inventent toutes sortes de trucs pour affronter l’hiver… Bref, ils sont grognons mais ils se laissent tout de m�me s�duire comme des enfants par une belle bord�e toute blanche.

En fin d’apr�s-midi, j’ai d�cid� d’aller � l’�picerie � pied m�me s’il est difficile de circuler dans les rues encore couvertes de neige et de glace. Depuis deux mois que nous habitons en banlieue, je n’avais jamais vu autant de gens dans les rues! �a pelletait, �a jasait, �a riait, �a se disait bonjour, �a prenait des nouvelles les uns des autres. (J’en ai m�me oubli� le groupe de cons d’ados qui m’a rudement interpell�e plus t�t dans la journ�e alors que je pelletais.) On aurait dit le soir de No�l dans un film hollywoodien, sauf pour le fait que tout le monde n’�tait pas blanc, ce qui rendait la sc�ne encore plus attachante. Moi qui croyais qu’il me faudrait attendre � l’�t� avant de voir un peu d’activit� dans les rues!

Je suis rentr�e � la maison avec les joues rouges, le nez qui coule et un sourire un peu idiot sur les l�vres.

Oh, et pour ceux qui se le demandent, oui, le chat est encore en vie.

A florist came by this weekend to deliver a gift from our real estate agent. It was a poinsettia, a plant I am not usually fond of but this one was packaged nicely so I decided to display it.

“Aren’t those poisonous to animals?”, asked B.
“I’m not sure. My mom always had them and it wasn’t a problem with her cat”, I replied.

Still, to be safe, I decided to put the plant high up on a stand, where monsieur le chat Spiff wouldn’t be able to reach it.

B. went to work and I got out to shovel all the beautiful snow that fell last night (I mean ALL of it, at least that’s how it felt.) As I was clearing the area around the backyard, I looked through our patio doors and saw that the poinsettia was on the floor, the dirt spread all around it.

Oh, oh…

I came back in and saw that the plant had been chewed on. I checked on Spiff, who seemed as grumpy as usual, and did some research on the Web about the poisonous potential of poinsettias.

Some Web sites tell you to take your cat to the vet right away if he chews on the plant. Death is a possibility.

Other ones claim that it’s a myth, a kind of rural legend that won’t go away, and that there are no record of a poinsettia poisoning people or pets.

I checked again on Spiff: He was drinking out of my water glass.

That’s the glass I keep on my desk next to me when I work. Does he always do this when I have my back turned?

Now I’m the one who feels queasy and who’s likely to start foaming at the mouth…

Charles Taylor, a writer and movie critic I often agree with, published a rather bad review of The Girl with a Peal Earring in Salon today.

He didn’t like the book it was based on, which probably didn’t help. It’s also funny to see that he wished for more physical interaction between the main characters, when that’s exactly what I feared (not in general, just in this specific movie…):

This Vermeer is a gent, saving Griet from the attentions of his slimy patron (Tom Wilkinson), and never letting his own ardor for her trespass into the physical realm (the movie would have been a hell of a lot better if it had), sticking to their understanding about light and color.

Can’t a relationship be based on a mutual understanding about light and color? Can’t desire arise from a pure aesthete connection? No, no, I’m not a romantic, I’m an idealist…

A stupefying collection of photos showing children being tortured, gathered by Pierre Carion. And it all happened in the U.S.!

My fascination with the work of Vermeer started when I was very young. With my sister and girlfriends, I often played Masterpiece, a board game where players participate in art auctions, trying to determine which painting is a fake and which one is worth a fortune. I always got lucky with a specific painting which often made me a millionaire (in Parker Brothers money, of course). It was The Little Street by Vermeer, and because it brought me luck, I must have become curious about the painter and did a little reading on the subject.

Years later, at a poster sale on the campus of San Francisco State University, I fell in love with a large reproduction of The Girl with a Pearl Earring. I became so fond of this image that I decided to incorporate it in an experimental short film I made while I was in school. Once again Vermeer brought me luck: my 16mm movie won the prize for best film in the graduate student competition of my college. Because of that prize, my short film got to tour around various international festivals.

I quickly discovered that I was not the only person fascinated by that painting, as shown by the huge success of Tracy Chevalier’s novel inspired by the famous girl. It took me a few years after the book came out to finally decide to read it because I was afraid that Chevalier’s vision would ruin my appreciation of the mysterious painting. I didn’t need to worry: I thought the novel was very beautiful, delicate and even suspenseful, and the pleasure of reading it compensated for the loss of mystery.

With all this background, you can imagine how nervous I was, a few months ago, when I saw a preview for a movie based on The Girl With A Pearl Earring! Oh please, no, I thought. Don’t make this into a sexual obsession story, don’t ruin the delicate relationship between the model and the painter by turning in into a banal forbidden love story! But then I look at this gorgeous image of Scarlett Johansson and my hopes are up. After all, the director, Peter Webber, is a self-confessed cinephile with unusal credits, and the light in the preview looks absolutely amazing. After looking at Maciej’s photos of Dutch streets, I’m also looking forward to the opportunity of traveling back in time and walking the streets of Delft in 1665.

All the ingredients are there for me to enjoy this movie: A painter I admire, a book I loved, a good casting choice for the main character, gorgeous settings, non-Hollywood director and producers and a chance to observe once again the delicate art of adaptation, a subject that greatly interests me (I always love to read the book first in order to better appreciate the screenwriters work). Let’s hope they didn’t turn this into some stupid pseudo-erotic stereotypical story and that they will give a lot of room to the paintings. If there’s no shot of the painter watching the model washing her breasts in a basin, everything should be fine… The author of the book claims she loved the film, so I guess that’s reassuring.

Can you tell that I’m excited?

Today at 23:01 in Switzerland, a message I wrote and sent via Internet was projected on the famous Jet D’eau in Geneva. Big green laser letters over a Swiss landmark. The letters appeared and were probably quickly replaced by another message. I wonder if anybody stopped to read it and if they wondered where it came from.

Light pollution or urban poetry?

I’ve always loved the idea of the “message in a bottle”. I think it could even partially explain why I blog.

On Friday, you could still see the grass everywhere. The strange lady, who uses a stroller to walk her dog, was taking her usual midday stroll in my street. My neighbors had not yet put the tarp over the skeleton of their unsightly abri Tempo.

And then we had the first real snow of the season.

Big, light and fluffy snowflakes like you see in Hollywood movies.

Lisa, a Montreal expat who now lives in England, recently wrote a post about her snow nostalgia, so I took this picture of our house for her.

Hey, Lisa, wanna come over and help shovel? Take your time. The driveway should look like this until April…

I’m finishing the last revisions on the second draft of the screenplay I’ve been working on, and I need help with a geeky subject matter.

Does anybody have any idea if there were pocket videogames in 1992, something like an early version of the Gameboy (or any other brand)? If so, do you happen to know if one of these pocket players offered a version of the arcade game Frogger?

I’m researching the subject but I’m lost in all the videogame history sites and I’m in a bit of a hurry, of course. Thanks in advance!