I'm No Match For The Poutine

For those of you that don't know what poutine is, it's some French Canadian lumberjack shit. French fries (or pommes frites to our cousins north of the border or across the Atlantic) covered in some sort of red meat, a variant of gravy and cheese curds. I'm not talking a small plate of this concoction either. I just ordered this shit at some trendy place in a super fancy hotel, with pepper steak as the meat portion and the mother fucker came on a plate that spanned my table. I had to bow out half way through and admit these bizarre people had rocked me at the one game I was sure, as an American, I owned- gluttony thy name is Montreal. But if that's the case, why is everyone in this hotel so skinny? Is this some joke the non-French speaking guy just isn't in on? It doesn't matter, gravy-cheese-fries are still a brilliant invention, which, if said invention occurred in the 20th century, is pretty much the only thing I can put in the innovation column for the French speaking folks since the revolution. I'm sure I'm missing something but honestly, I can't come up with anything- I mean seriously, Jaguar? Renault? Airbus? Well the Airbus planes I've flown have been pretty nice but still, that's really an EU combined effort. Planes aside, I do like French philosophers even though they are pricks or maybe because they are pricks. Baudrillard is great and I guess he was innovative, but only at framing things that already exist in a new way or describing an apparent system in such a way that the resulting abstraction helped focus perception on the dangers of the culture or lifestyles we are moving towards- Simulacra and Simulation pretty much predicts the type of virtualization this blog and Face Book exemplify (from what I remember of it). So I guess that's my own experience as it pertains to recent French innovation and it fits with the attitude I've bumped into in my bumbling loud way, the French are great critics.

Regardless, I'm seeing Man Man in Montreal tomorrow night, so I'll let you know if they class the set up a bit to fit the cultural vibe here or if they run a reader board with the lyrics translated into French or if they have to have some sort of French speaking opener to appease the laws here that ensure some percentage of music on all radio stations be Canadian- a prospect less terrible now that the Celine Dion's and Bryan Adam's of Canada can at least be offset by the Arcade Fire.

OK, after a quick dive into the Internets I'll also give those lovely French folks the Aqualung- invented in 1943 (during the war?) by Mr. Jacques Cousteau himself (and some other French guy). I'm sure Joel 'so pretentious he might as well be a socialist European' Leigh will come up with some other shit as well. And really the whole exercise implies a competition no one likes to admit exists and I'm only considering it as a result of the insecurity I feel every time some prick at a restaurant gives me a withering look when I mispronounce something on a menu. We all have our coping mechanisms and mine are particularly active when I have the contrast of the French language and mannerisms (even when watered down by Canada) to help accentuate my own lack of social graces. So, to any frogs reading this here blog, give a brother break.