Monday, August 27, 2007

Mtl 4eva

While I do another late-month scramble for an apartment in Philly, sometimes my arrow slips onto the Montreal CL pages. Then I see some $100/month apartment – and you can be sure it's not as dangerous as Rittenhouse Square (my 93-year-old told me about a mugging there) – and my heart breaks all over again.

So, why is Montreal the best place in the world? This is a question scientists have been asking for at least 8 years. Their answers will rock you.

1. Smoked meat, bagels, poutine and shockingly good health

2. L'hockey

3. Les filles du roi – the "king's daughters" that were sent to Quebec to make babies in the early settlement days and contribute to a heritage of loose morals

4. The art scenes, which are all interrelated and pretty easy to infiltrate. It's really a kind of small town

4 1/2. Autodistroboto, the cigarette vending machines repurposed to sell pack-sized art items

5. Sweet memories of Miami

6. Montreal summer – the best summer I've ever spent

7. Halloween, 2003

8. King Heroin

9. Montreal really listens when you talk shit

10. The lead sentence of a Berlin music column I read in 2006, "Now that Montreal is more New York than New York..."

Kisses to you, ma chere fleure

Friday, August 17, 2007

Monday, August 13, 2007

On odd jobs

Last week, I officially joined the ranks of the good-hearted but annoying folks who go door to door and guilt you into giving for the environment. And then I dropped out. It was a Thursday and I had nothing better to do.

The idea had taken hold the day before: Get a job today. I gave out doctored resumes and hastily filled out applications. This was a version of what I'd been doing for the past month, selling myself continually to the far-away and noncommittal mandarins of my future life. Each sent email was a reminder of the immeasurable distance between my aimless wanting self and my direction in life. Was I following it? Was I even getting close?

I liked this paper filling and hand shaking a great deal better than the internet stuff, it felt more real and possible. I could see the distance and it was not insurmountable. If I chose to, I could have held the hand of my potential employer and never let go.

On a lark, I called the black number on the lime-green poster, framed by the words, "NEED A SUMMER JOB?" I did, and they were out there. I was the best man on the market for this sort of work. I'd worked in national parks in Utah and cleaned penguin shit on the Jersey shore. I'd been paid to take photos and sold stuff on eBay. Like a guy ordering Girls Gone Wild via express mail, I was confident I would be getting my rocks off soon.

The canvassing job started off holding my hand, and it was very soon sticking its tongue into my ear canal. It tickled. I didn't know if I wanted to kiss it on the waxy mouth, so I played coy for the moment. It was 1:30 pm Thursday, and I was being introduced to smiling faces.

A 22-yr-old Temple film student named Justin was my trainer. His favorite film was Good Will Hunting and I kind of liked him for not saying something pretentious. There were some other kids in the group with us, a high-schooler and a twenty-something teacher doing this for the summer. We read from a script, and it affected the way we thought. It shrunk our personalities to a letter-size page. It was a complaint in three beats: terrible environmental fact, terrible environmental fact, appeal for money. I went into it doubtful for this exact reason. Shadowing Justin and smiling, I got the friendly/commiserating eye roll a couple times. It's not that these people didn't believe in what we were doing, it's just that we were annoying them.

We were out in a rustic suburb on a brutal night, and no one even offered us lemonade. I went solo after a two hour introduction and racked up $30. Justin said I was doing really well, he said I was a natural. I dropped my intellectual hangups and learned my lines. I found it a good exercise in canceling ego. And of course all the rhetoric about making a difference left me with a pleasant feeling. It's only when the glow wore off that I remembered it bored me deadly.

That night I drank cheap margaritas and woke up the next morning regretting the whole thing.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Statement

Ok, I was trying to refine this a bit before going public, but the kind folks at My Ninja Please tossed a link my way so here it is. My name is Ed Weinberg, I'm a 26 yr old creative type living in Philly for the past 40 days. I write, dj, cut my own hair. I'm at a cafe right now in Center City called the Last Drop, and I feel comfortable here. They're playing an old torch song and the fans are humming.

I chose the name Riot in East Egg for a sense of revolution I'm trying to foster, in myself if nowhere else. I've done some things in my life -- I dug for pyramids in Bosnia, hitchhiked from Berlin to Paris, knocked out a couple of issues of a rad magazine in New York City -- and I know that these things are my true calling. Accomplishments, always changing focus. Not the day job I have 17 minutes to get to.

So I'm trying to accomplish something here, every day. This is something like a public journal, and I hope you like it. One of my favorite concepts is the lattice Dave Eggers goes on about in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I hope this small riot can contribute in some way to this energy, something strong enough to overcome apathy and the sad directions of the world.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Last night:

I dream I am talking idly to some girl at a club. It is a noisy, leather-upholstered place. She shows some interest in me and I stay to see how much. We're on a couch in the back room, unsure, bored. I'm probably wondering, "What am I even doing in this place?" as I often wonder, wandering about my life.

I'm looking off into the distance when a cop comes into the bar, steps on a barstool and removes a gun from his ankle holster. He walks slowly to the large bay window, gun held up at a 45 degree angle. When I see the gun I think, "What is he doing?" and watching him investigate the high angles of the window I say outloud, "I don't trust that cop." Someone seated near says, "He's probably FBI."

He whirls and shoots, a bullet lands softly and noiselessly beneath me. Another in my neck. I wake up in the empty room where I'd been depressed last night – it's 8 am. My eyes are open, but I've been inclined to sleep till 10, 11 most days, not having much to do.

I think "show the bastards you want to live" and I get up.