2005-07-18 - 1:46 p.m.
What I'm listening to: Rock and Roll High School-The Ramones.
Explored Jean-Talon Market yesterday. I've only seen it at night prior to yesterday:
I didn't find it to be very interesting during the day. Well, it was nice to feel the multiculturalism and the vibrancy, but I didn't feel like photographing that.
I did however find the most interesting sign along the way:
I guess testicle rotis and pig penises are specialties is some cultures.
Segway....
Dinner last night with the folks was wonderful as usual. We did indeed go to Sana restaurant on Jarry, and the handsome woman was indeed there, and unfriendly as usual, to everybody.
The food is fantastic, and cheap. Dinner for four of us (two orders of tandoori chicken, one butter chicken, one saag, one nihari, six tandoori naans, two gulab jammun, one almond barfi, four kulfis) came to...taxes in....$34. We all stuffed ourselves and had leftovers. The portions are very nice-not too big, but with the naan, they are very filling, but not too overwhelming to kill the taste.
The next time, I will ask them to make the nihari spicier. This was very good, but nihari should be spicy enough to put you in the hospital, or at least hot enough to station you on the can for a good couple of hours-no doubt an effective study aid.
The food is good, but the place is a dive. We complained about dirty plates, and one of the employees had the audacity to check over the plates and say 'this one's clean.' All part of the experience....
Conversation flowed as usual, mostly about how the relatives are doing and who has a new grudge with who. Being in my own world in Montreal, I can laugh at the feuding like I do a bad movie. Physical displacement and emotional detachment is sometimes highly underrated.
Speaking of bad movie...I saw 'The Blob' (1958) last night. Good god it was bad. I actually laughed out loud a couple of times. If you want to see McCarthyism at work, this is a good film to do so. I found it funny that the only character that was remotely developed, who was eaten up by the blob, was the only person in the small town who was relatively educated: the doctor-and of course the doctor is an old white man who wears glasses. We never find out what Steve (played by Steve McQueen-I guess he had trouble remembering a different name during the takes) or Jane's parents actually do for a living.
And of course, in small town America in the 1950s there are no visible minorities or disabled people, not even in labour roles. There is however an identified Italian couple, who run a diner and speak in Italian when they get frustrated. Steve and Jane run into their diner to escape the blob, but then act as surrogate protectors to the lone immigrants in the community.
The Steve and Jane dynamic is pretty interesting. In the beginning, Steve takes Jane to the obvious make out point and confesses that he has never brought another girl up here. Yah right. Then the meteor hits with the blob inside. So after this, Steve and Jane are completely asexual, but they pick up these familial signs along the journey. They first pick up a dog, who's owner was first eaten by the blob, then they pick up and rescue Jane's little brother, who in a 'cowboys' and 'indians' fervour tries to shoot the blob with his toy gun with no success. It can't be killed, you stupid kid!
Anyway...time and space. I like films with short times and spaces (The Party, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Rope, etc) so this film takes place entirely at night, on one night. Trying to understand the geography of the town is surreal, as they constantly bounce around from set to set with little to no continuity at all.
Naturally, the police department (the fire department is called in, but with no doubt a totally impotent performace) is unable to stop to blob, and have to call Washington for help. Washington, as a symbolic but visually absent symbol of authority, in its infinite wisdom decides that the blog can't be killed but that it needs to be airlifted to the arctic where it can't grow, because it can be temporarily wounded by cold-Steve finds this out miraculously, by puting out a fire with a CO2 extinguisher, near the blob, and the blob begins to shrink.
The closing shot is a plane dropping the blob off at some generic snow desert (could be Siberia for all we know, but we do know that it is not New York State), with a big question mark on the screen.
So the blob doesn't actually die. A lot of these sci-fi films were intended to have anti-soviet imagery, sort of as a subtle hint to be weary of anything unknown, any threat from outside, especially outerspace (Sputnik I think was launched around 1957), and of course anything intellectual.
All in all, it was pretty bad, and I loved it.
