The Green Mountain State

o ms. rosie b., one johnny v. and the lovely meesh & trik gathered in a rented hertz in the early hours of a bright beautiful sunnyday morning, the weekend last, and set off for a day's adventures south of the border. after a brief antique shopstop en route to the crossing, we arrived at a teeny line-up to Cross Over and babbled about how to keep our fruit...les bananes passed, but les oranges were confiscated. trik offered many sweet details about his arm ink experiences and fondness for forests...and we parked just o'er tha gates to feast on our yellow-cased fruits. with no real plan made for the day, we pulled over to the info/rest/visit station for a cup of stale java + maps + guidance through the lovely state of VERMONT.

ah yes, Vermont, the green mountain state - a place home to cheese, cider, and world-famous bad-ass sunglass-wearing tattoooed teddy bears:

don't mess wit' em. for real son. well we got a rough route leading us through mountain towns, through colour shifting leafy valleys, and on toward the buzzing breakfast metropolis of Jeffersonville...on our way, though, we found a strange yard sale assortment of goods for sale including: boxes of naked barbie dolls, boxes of potato chips, and a verrry nice ol' wurlitzer organ...which trik & i plonked upon & then debated avec les ladies whether or not it would fit into the trunk. consensus reached: it wouldn't, though we hoped we'd make a later discovery of cheapy vintagey gear. mmm hmm. before we knewed it, we wuz in jeffersonville. the Bakery cafe was filled with bikers and college kids and the kitchen ran out of food...and when Johnny & Trik asked for another place to go 'n eat...we was mistaken for locals! yeehoo. a fine happenin'. wethinks it twas his hat and my beard - or maybe our scruffy shirts. well, we hauled it all the way cross town to the Smuggs Inn where we manged way-creamy hollandaise and monolithic farmer's breakfast delights...

but we knew we'd find finer delights later on, so off we continued down vermont's sunny roads, admiring the leaves and loving being out à la campagne...we weaved and wound our way round to a very inviting looking mountain - where we parked the vehicule and clambered over the wet rocks and up the busy, muddy trail. at the top of the hike we found a lovely mini-lake (=pond) and sat on large flat stones amongst the sweaty hikers. round a bend or two to a higher path we came upon a ski lift and climbed atop it to see what we could see. apparently on clear days you can see montreal from there! well. we couldn't, but it were a bee-oo-tiful vista, to be certain.

with an appetite for sweet earned from our hasty descent, we ambled back to the car and along the twisty roads through the town of Stowe, passing old gabled houses with wide expansive porchs and babbling postcard-perfect brooks, to our friendly mid-route destination: the Cold Hollow Cider Hill

situated just behind an idyllic front garden with comfy porch swings and ultracomfortable hand-carved wooden deck chairs...the cider mill was full of both tasty deeelights and full of many tooourist types (us not included of course)...but we manged the best o' the best:

delicious cider donuts

and warm mugs o' the finest vermont apple cider...

we lounged for moments as the afternoon sun basked us in golden...then shtuffed and satiated the 'Retha Franklin was cranked on the stereo and we did zoom on down that highway feelin' like a natural woman...

our next stop were an overload of many kinds. indeed, the Ben & Jerry's Factory offered various flavours & photos & 30 minute 30 dollar (!?) tours...but as we roamed in the front lobby/giftshop debating the relative merits and failings of factory tours, we espied through a plexiglass window, down a hall filled with plaques and photos of past B&J success, a sinister ice factory spectacle. this was no ice cream room, it was a flavour mixing laboratory. there were drawers labelled with chemicals and additives, a box brimming with used syringes, a huge 2-handeled machete-like knife lying a top a counter, a periodic table of the elements...and, most startingly, a notebook:no, but not just any notebook. this one bore the ominous title: MEIN KAMPF - Confessions of a 2nd Shift Mix Maker. in disbelief i stared at it for minutes before calling the others over to see if it was indeed real. it looked as though it could have been placed there on purpose, almost on display, but this were far too strange a symbol to leave & let wandering eyes discover. we did not take that tour that day. but Trik still munched 3 x fancy flavours. and the factory staff placed bets on where we were from. consensus: NYC or MTL. go figure. no chance at being mistooken for les locales.

back on the freeway, free of fancyfactorylands, we hit the big town o' Burlington as the sun dripped into the overlooking lake.

out of the car we marched down the town's fleur-de-lis lined streets, johnny looking for a quickbite, trik & meesh leapin' from the carefully place rocks adorning either side of the cobblestone walkways. after sketchy pfetzeling on a dreadlockedpita, we hit the dark road back north, with French Kicks melodies filling the car, and began a lengthy discussion of fave discs, albums, songs, and moments in our own music histories...the border crossed with barely a glance or a minute lost, and the return to the glass and skyhigh lights of Mont Royal mediated by a perfect constellation of sounds...

i like road trips.
and holidays.

xo johnny.

on seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful april morning

Buildings from The Future

How To Have A Number One The Easy Way

and it's all right here...

banksy vs. mickey

A life-size replica of a Guantanamo Bay detainee was placed in Disneyland...

this is becoming a bit of a recurring theme.
once again, thanks banksy.

xo johnny

Simplicity, maturity, and resolve

Chris Ott, in the Village Voice, writes:

"Over the last few years, my peers in pop criticism have celebrated the dourest, most difficult or deranged music they can find. In the anxious universe of early adoption, we seem to have decided that complexity and severity equal authenticity: We need to prove we "get" the death-dirge apocalypso fusion of Bowie/Byrne protégés TV on the Radio and the Arcade Fire, and the ill- defined nihilism of Deerhoof. But rather than question what these musicians are moaning about—and more to the point, whether their tangible conceits are sound—critics uniformly punt, hiding behind a cloud of subservient hyperbole. They are all "impossible to describe," "genre- defying," "miraculous," and "completely original" if you believe Rolling Stone, the New York Times, and . . . MSNBC. Not only do the aforementioned bands hail from an established lineage, they are ultimately descended from the same progenitor, and are all shooting for the conceptual moon, which leaves critics a larger slate.

Simplicity, maturity, and resolve are abhorrent qualities now, polarized to pointlessness as hokey Springsteen nostalgia—the deplorable new Killers album, Canada's overripe working-class romantics the Constantines, or cloying pastiche like Sufjan Stevens. You don't hear stoic rock songs—classic rock, blues rock, even powerpop—about love and loss and wonder anymore, by singers who acknowledge their mistakes and move on. Rather we wallow in petulant regret, holding our cuts open, staring bug-eyed at the blood, never realizing that shock is a form of paralysis."

i think there's a whole lotta truthiness here. do you agree?

xo j.v.

it's a fine line

between hot hair and hat hair ...

time for a new lid

here's what i'm thinking for a fall hair do... qu'est-ce que tu penses?

The world can see what you listen to.

does anyone else remember my ICRS idea from way back when? apparently someone's taken up the fight in my absence...now you can "discover people through music and music through people" as easy as this:

MOG.com

and what the hell's a mog-o-sphere...

damnit. just let me rate my friends based on their indie credibility.

love johnny

thank you, banksy