Dead Barbies And Fried Eggs

Today I took a moment to revisit one awesome website. Insight51.com. Insight is a surf, skate and lifestyle apparel company from Australia. The company has been in Canada for 4-5 years now and has spread its wings really fast. They are the disturbing edgy guys that set the most awkward trends and expose the taboo in everything. They slip on the slippery side of things and they do it incredibly well. Their marketing campaigns are the most interesting I have seen done by a clothing company; for me, they stand right beside Benetton. The first year they were in Canada, they distributed a mass amount of big decals with pictures of random things like raw meet, fried eggs, burnt barbie dolls with no heads, some weird stuffed animals with eyeballs popping out of their heads, plastic skulls or random thnigs smashing wood walls. They propose images you will probably never forget; a sort of anti-pub that works in their favor. They bring imagination to a point where it hasn’t been before.

This next one is probably my favorite one out of all. Showing some serious asomeness in every aspect. 

These are some of my favorite pictures, and it was really hard to not put all of them… They have inspired a lot of the window displays I’ve done in the skate shops where I have worked and I highly recommend you go visit their cyber world on your own.

Grooveshark.com

One last thing for today. If you like music make sure you check this site out. One more free music site, but this one allows you to listen to almost any album from your favorite artists!!! You search the artist, then look at all the albums and select all the songs you would wish to listen to. You can make playlists or just listen to new music. I find it’s an awesome alternative to downloading full torrents and piling music you don’t often listen to on your hard drive.

http://www.grooveshark.com

enjoy!

Lucky me

The past few days I’ve had a few moments of retrospective, reviewing the event of the year (or should I say past two years?). Lots of things have happened, and for most I remember there was a lot of bad luck involved. Or really, is it luck? After thinking about stuff I can’t fix because it’s past, I finally understood that I can fix what is going on right now, I do what I will in life.

In the past 2 years I lost what I thought was the man of my life (my life partner, my best friend ever…), my house with him, my driver license, my car (crashed by somebody else), a bike(stolen from a friend’s house who was borrowing it). I moved. I quit the job I have been doing for almost 10 years (and that I actually loved). I also got really broke; I had to stop eating all organic food, going to yoga twice a week and drinking double lattes at Oso Negro. I also had to put my mountain bike away cause I couldn’t afford to fix it anymore… I started dedicating myself to things that cost nothing and that I don’t brake; like reading, walking, thinking, painting, skateboarding.  I am not going to lie, I felt really lonely and powerless at some points. But somehow, I did find myself… I think. Or some of it. I took time for myself, with myself. I finally decided what I wanted to do with my life; this is why I quit my job. I realized why even after 7 years, this guy has never been the right lover for me. I moved to start new things, meet new people, have new experiences. The things I lost were what made me who I thought I was. Then suddenly I found myself beeing, without all these things…

Anyways, today I had another revelation!!!

After reading over and over that message some people posted as their profile on facebook, It kinda became a subliminal message…

I was cleaning the dishes which ok, I don’t absolutely love, but It is kind of a meditation moment… when the missing pieces of my puzzle of thinking showed up like a pop up screen.

I am lucky because I only do the things I love!!!!!

It’s true. I don’t do anything I don’t love, and I pretty much do almost all the things I love, all the time! Even when I work, I love my work. Everything in my life is driven with passion. This why I am who I am, and why I am where I am. True.

Than I realized I haven’t had a tv for over 2 years (this is probably why I spend so much time on facebook, ha) and I DO have so much more time!!! Time to do the stuff I love… like writing this, snowboarding, biking, skateboarding, yoga, painting, reading, dancing and socializing. When I can’t do one thing, I do another one. It is so easy; there is so many things I love to do.

I also have the most beautiful people in my life. This is a huge part of what MY LIFE is. Nobody’s got the same exact people in their life. This is how we are united in our difference; we sort of make each other’s world what it is… We sort of create the universe together; without each of us it would still be, but it would never be the same. Every little bit counts, every last bite. This is my personal story…

When I stop looking for THE love of my life, I find so much love in my life.

Thanx for this.

So fresh and so good

Wow, it’s been an awesome winter…. Lot’s of shredding the pow non stop. Heli boarding, cat skiing, hiking .and so many days setting tracks on the ski hill. I am such a lucky girl! Thanx Ullr. All that riding and quite a bit of working kept me busy, and looking back I really haven’t been out much at all… I have been wintering.

Now that the snow is melting, the magnolias are in blossom, the grass is trying really hard to look good; I am feeling the spring. I mean, it is May 26th, and there’s 2 sleds I just got stuck in the slush I got to go dig out… but it is finally happening! Times of birth, change, re-freshness and good smells.  Love.

Back then when…

December 19th, 1995 was my first time ever. I was turning 16 that night, on the 20th. It was a little private party in Granby, Québec on the stage of a theater. There was at the most 200 people, one big room with a giant screen on what they projected japanese animation videos and played mostly house and jungle music. My first time dancing all night like nobody’s watching, and not caring. My first time seing everybody doing the same. Feeling the energy vibrating from the music into people and than out from people into the crowd. My first dance craze.

Back than these parties were completely illegal. To find out when they were happening, you had to hang out at the right places. There was flyers in many skateboard, music and underground fashion stores. They rarely made posters; and they would only post them in the locations where the tickets were sold. To make it even less obvious, either the posters or the flyers really explained what it was; it said the name of the event, the date and the djs playing. The location was only released a few days, or the day before  the event. Most of the time you had to call a phone line and listen to a recording that gave you the directions to the party; we have to remember at this time, only a small portion of the population had internet at home. In montreal, you couldn’t drive to the parties; they only gave the bus  and subway routes. This greatly helped avoiding being spoted by authorities.

Although most of te parties were opened to all ages, there was still a certain number reserved for adults only; but alcohol was absolutely never allowed.  Everybody got thoroughly searched when they got in and once you were in, you couldn’t leave the party until you want to leave for good. They was no reentry; you go out, you go home.  Back than in Québec we were allowed to smoke inside, in the chill rooms.  In most events there were energy drink bars. They served the first generation of “RedBull” I’ve seen; the smart drink. Basically a crystal mix of sugar,caffein and vitamins. With the course of time, they got repaced by fruit juices and natural energy supplements.

Every party had it’s own set up for food and drinks. One of the most memorable one I’ve been to had a free “make-your-own-snack” bar with fruits, bread, spreads, a toaster,  teas and and a caddle. Behind the bar, on a shelf there were some big mason jars labelled “free herb” . When I asked the staff what it was, he filled my two hands with it and gave me a bunch of rolling papers; he told me to roll it all up and pass it around… That party was in Québec city on December 31st, 1997. New year 1998. All the djs were girls. I was there with my brother for his first rave party and to celebrate my 18th birthday that was a few days back. It was a small event with maybe 300 attendees. There was some fairies walking around the dance floor all night with trays of jujubes and fruits. Like most other parties it had two rooms and a chillroom.

My brother had never really danced before, so he first sat down on the floor and watched everybody go. He seemed to be wondering how people do it. He didn’t know yet how to let it flow and let it go. I got him some glowsticks, thinking it’s a good way to get him to move around on the beat of the music. It worked. He was tripping and doing some crazy moves with them. This was it, he was kind of dancing!  Than he started talking to everyone, fell in love with 30 girls and booked his next party for a couple weeks later… He got right in it and he soon abandoned the glowsticks.

Candy ravers took a big part in the nineties culture. They were the futuristic cartoon-looking people, wearing fuzzy baggy clothes, abdorned with toys and colorful plastic jewellery, sucking on baby soothers and dancing like some kind of graceful monkeys. Why did they look like that? Hummm. I don’t see many explanations other than the drugs and the electronic music. Seriously. People looked like big kids and acted like they were from Wonderland. We would go to the dollar stores and get party supplies; a bunch of random things you could play with, eat, wear, or give away. It is a good way to meet people and to put a smile on the only faces that have lost theirs…

Rave parties were about the music, the people and the experience itself. The end was always a sad moment, the time of separation with the imaginary world. It was like coming out of a cave after a long winter of beautiful dreams; the light was so bright and the world looked so much different. It was a little bit of a cultural chock; think about Alice coming straight from Wonderland and waking up downtown Montreal… In the winter it was almost terrifying, but in the summer it was usually the start of another beautiful day; we would all gather at the Tam-Tam, Parc Jeanne-Mance, eat good food, drink coffees, play drums and pass out in the sun. The dream was never over until the day was completely done, and the reality never hit you for real until the next morning…

The Beats

The 50’s,  post-war era, were a time of big change. It was a time where the dominant culture was desperate for a reassuring planned order. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth. The USA their first hydrogen bomb explosion test. These days also saw the invention of the solar cell, the establishment of a passenger jet service, the first successful ultra-sound of the heart activity and the world’s first nuclear plan.  It was an era of evolution, materialization, globalization, commercialization and concretization.

But on an other end there was a strong intellectual undercurrent calling for spontaneity to end the psychological repression created by the war.  A need of exteriorization and realization; new ways of expression. The emergence of Rock’n Roll. The pop art. The beat movement.  The start of some big things that will change the world forever.

The beat movement was first started by the agglomeration of a bunch of mostly american writers who pushed the boundaries of acceptability of the conformist 50s.  They used another, less formal and more chocking language to describe their perceptions. They listened to jazz music, consumed alcohol and drugs, wrote about sexuality,  homosexuality, unsanctioned criminality, antimaterialism and such unspoken realities.  They were bohemian hedonists, who celebrated non-conformity and spontaneous creativity. They embraced Zen Buddism and Amerindian culture. Their ideas were strongly influenced by the Dadaism and Surrealism movements that were themselves, a reaction to World War I. The Dadaism was against elitism and favored spontaneity; The Surrealism turned the Dadaist ideology into more positive social intentions and its focus on revelations from the subconscious.

The first, and probably the most important writing in the history of the movement was Ginsberg’s Owl.  Its perverse, sexual and controversial ideas were the fuel of his fame.  The era was in need for a more chaotic, Dyonisian existence.  Soon after, Jack Kerouac’s On the road was published.  It was the real start of a new counterculture; the vagabond, soul-searching minds that constantly re-redefine what bad ang good are.  They were new ways of thinking and new ways of being.  The book was named by Times Magazine one of the 100 best English language novels written in the 20th century.

It became some sort of a mild revolution of bums, artists and illuminated, instructed, intelligent people. They soon got enough attention from the media to be stereotyped into the beatnick we now know.  The superficial dirty hipster with a goatee, wearing a beret, rolling cigarettes, playing bongos; and most of the time running bad-ass illegal transactions. This is a very exagerated caricature of  how things actually were; the result of a very overview of something that was too different to be easily accepted.  In response to this, Allen Ginsberg explained that some essential effects of the  Beat Generation artistic movement could be better characterized in the following terms:

• Spiritual liberation, sexual “revolution” or “liberation,” i.e., gay liberation, somewhat catalyzing women’s liberation, black liberation, Gray Panther activism.
• Liberation of the word from censorship.
• Demystification and/or decriminalization of some laws against marijuana and other drugs.
• The evolution of rhythm and blues into rock and roll as a high art form.
• The spread of ecological consciousness, emphasized early on by Gary Snyder and Michael McClure, the notion of a “Fresh Planet.”
• Opposition to the military-industrial machine civilization.
• Attention to what Kerouac called (after Spengler) a “second religiousness” developing within an advanced civilization.
• Return to an appreciation of idiosyncrasy as against state regimentation.
• Respect for land and indigenous peoples and creatures.

So many artists have been known to be at one time involved with the Beats, noticeably Neal Cassidy (the real-life hero of On The Road), William S. Borroughs, Lucien Carr, Gregory Corso, Herbert Huncke, Peter Orlovski and John Clellon Holmes.   The popularity of this movement only got bigger as the culture changed.  It very fluidly led us into the sixties conterculture; the freedom and peace & love movements,  the activism ,  The Beatles… BEATles. The beatnick turned into a hippie.  Neil Cassidy, high on amphetmine; rapping about random glimpses of his existence. The exponentional use of psychedelic drugs like LSD, peyote and ayahuesca.  The growth of the grano-environmental conscience and the persue of the antimaterialist vision that was first induced by the beat generation.  The war against war. Times of decolonization, independance and cultural revolutions.

Ha…

Thriller

 

Some good stuff…

http://www.mixmag.net/

http://www.viceland.com/int/dos.php

http://www.juxtapoz.com/

http://www.zinkmagazine.com/main/

https://www.adbusters.org/

http://hypebeast.com/

http://www.karmaloop.com/

Jango.com free internet radio

http://www.jango.com/profiles/36903272?l=0

Let’s see if this work…

If you don’t know Jango already, you should give it a try.  A few years back I used to listen to Pandora.com and very sadly it became exclusive to american citizens.  Jango is available in Canada and it works almost the same.  They are both intelligent radios that analyze your taste in music and play stuff you might like.  How it works is that you put in the name of an artist or song you like and it will play similar music.  You can fast forward, pause and rewind songs.  You can create a bunch of different personnal radio stations by adding all the artists that you would like to each one of them, or just play the existing stations by genre.  You can also rate songs and by doing this you help customizing your stations, and see what other people are listening to.

This link will take you to my personal profile, with the radio stations I created.  If you wish to create your own profile, just log out and sign up, it’s free.  I like.