Author: Nic Olson

I keep telling people that it is not easy to get jobs in Montreal if you don’t speak French.
I think I lied.
I’ve got three in three months of living here, and I didn’t look very hard. Two of the jobs called me, and one I didn’t really interview for. But last night after the Habs won game four of round two and I went to the Bell Centre to join in on the party, I was pretty damn glad that I no longer worked at the place that didn’t really interview me. There would have been more than a few ceramic cups with chicken sauce stained in them than I would want to deal with. But I did work for the Montreal Canadiens during the season of their twenty-fifth Stanley Cup.

Starting a new call centre today, I am also pretty glad I no longer work at the one I did before, because any day now the RCMP should be kicking down the doors and breaking some ribs.

It is good to be in Montreal, for more than one sport-related reason.

I got by in Jean Talon Market using French, including proper phrases. Bought more fresh vegetables than my body has seen in several weeks.
I cruised the longboard everywhere; in between cars on busy streets, downtown in the middle of St. Cath’s past cops and high fiving passing cars.
I rode the best metro system there is.
I got lost twice finding the new home.
I made a peanut butter and spinach sandwich. Desperate hunger.

There are days that I feel like I am in the wrong city completely. Surrounded by multilingual artists and students and people that dress well, as I hunch in the corner under a bare bulb of some cheap hardwood apartment and write bitter articles of resentment towards anything that fronts me. But yesterday felt like a day that I was in a city that might want to have me around.

Good to be home.

Writers try this all too often, to scrape together a handful of meaningful, or at least readable sentences everyday for an extended period of time to try to encourage a discovery, or give some sort of meaning to a banal existence by highlighting sentiments to different life situations. But I’m doing it, writing something once every remaining day this month, regardless of the recycled idea, and the likely recycled themes, because if anyone has time to do it, it is me. And if anyone has a shitty platform to do it on, it is also me. I mean, if I write something everyday for thirty, probability alone says that there has got to be at least one sentence out of them all that has some trace of intelligence.

Through the first third of the year my mind has covered some territory, my independence has been declared but shown as weak, and I got really nowhere. I am having the same exact feelings of unease as I did in January, where the only place of comfort is against some bunched up tattered blankets on the floor in the corner of my new room in front of my computer with Johnny Cash singing shakily his past four albums.

My bedroom moved three Metro stations north, one floor up, ten steps back, twenty square feet less, a searing red faded into a patched peach, and the original unfamiliarity rings strong as ever before.

But I can spit out my bedroom window. Now all I need is a smokeless tobacco addiction.

This bus prohibits a man from standing, wearing a full brimmed hat, hands in his pockets with a wide stance next to another man in a full brimmed hat utilizing the bus lavatory, which is so small one person can barely fit inside.

Another reason I love the bus.

Fort Wayne to Montreal.

I’ve met a Nepali woman who moved to NYC speaking no English. I met a dude from Pittsburgh who had a long ride home to really hone his ‘sexting’ abilities. I met a young Canadian couple of Indian heritage who traveled to Cleveland just to see the Cavaliers lose by 18 points to the Celtics. I sat next to a girl from Alaska, who lived in California, who had a certificate in Holistic Nutrition, or Holy Nut-Friction or something, a racist hippy joining the army to take advantage of their schooling programs. I sat next to a 19 year old girl who went on a 70+ hour journey from Tacoma to Schenectady to visit her boyfriend, who had obviously lost her mind on the last eight hours of her trip.

All in twenty four hours, and I still have to cross the border. Likely, the most eventful part yet.

A single hour of sleep, a WiFi signal that travels with the bus, three apples, a bag of granola, two teas from Dunkin Donuts, and one sore ass. The sum of these is: a French couple frenching in front of me, the chance to watch period one of game three, and two hours until Montreal.

The bus does no less than amaze me every single time. No exceptions here. Mr. Greyhound, let’s do it again sometime.

Good Riddance, the southern California punk band introduced me to a man named Noam Chomsky through well placed sound clips in fast, aggressive punk rock albums. Read about him.

Chris Hedges writes about Noam Chomsky:

“He reminds us that genuine intellectual inquiry is always subversive. It challenges cultural and political assumptions. It critiques structures. It is relentlessly self-critical. It implodes the self-indulgent myths and stereotypes we use to elevate ourselves and ignore our complicity in acts of violence and oppression. And it makes the powerful, as well as their liberal apologists, deeply uncomfortable.”

In the article, Chomsky says,

“I try to encourage people to think for themselves, to question standard assumptions. Don’t take assumptions for granted. Begin by taking a skeptical attitude toward anything that is conventional wisdom. Make it justify itself. It usually can’t. Be willing to ask questions about what is taken for granted. Try to think things through for yourself. There is plenty of information. You have got to learn how to judge, evaluate and compare it with other things. You have to take some things on trust or you can’t survive. But if there is something significant and important don’t take it on trust. As soon as you read anything that is anonymous you should immediately distrust it. If you read in the newspapers that Iran is defying the international community, ask who is the international community? India is opposed to sanctions. China is opposed to sanctions. Brazil is opposed to sanctions. The Non-Aligned Movement is vigorously opposed to sanctions and has been for years. Who is the international community? It is Washington and anyone who happens to agree with it. You can figure that out, but you have to do work. It is the same on issue after issue.”

Read more here.

Tour is over. Real life begins.

How do you tell a Russian white supremacist steel worker that you disagree with his morals?

The day started with a pizza breakfast, fresh, and quantities more than I needed. Then for supper, a Snickers Blizzard. Wow.

Shotmakers; the finest sports bar of Southgate, Michigan. After ten minutes of first intermission chatter, the jukebox petitioned the bar patrons to a chorus of ‘Love Stinks’, and six Tigers fans answered with a vocal boom.  Children in baseball uniforms drinking mocktails and playing computerized card games while their parents downed cheap 40s of Bud Light. A haze of secondhand smoke made the HD showing of the hockey game like it was being brought to you by rabbit ears. The perfect place for a game seven.

The second intermission arrived, the Habs leading 1-0. Walk a block down Dix Toledo Road to The Modern Exchange, enjoy the stylings of my favourite active Saskatchewan/Indiana/Missouri band. Walk into Shotmakers with style, escaping the secondhand smoke and the nonsensical blabbering of Keith Jones and his awkward VS crew of analysts. Twenty minutes: game over. Two to One. Habs win. Biggest upset in playoff history, some say. One of the greatest days of my hockey watching career, I’d say.

Then I met Vlad. Vladmir. Living in Southgate. A Russian multilingual who was once a professional soccer player in England until knee problems prevented him from playing further. Take it or leave it. He sported a viking tattoo on his right bicep, which he said stood for white power. But he didn’t tell me that until later. He bought the next round(s).

Upon hearing the story of his tattoo, seeing a few gentlemen in the corner with ‘Hitmen Murder Crew’ leather vests on, and a quick call from the bands that the show had finished, we left Vladmir to his good times at Shotmakers as we headed to our home.

And all the good times shared with my new found twin brother, his name is Nick..

Another day. One more to go.

License and registration.

Where are you going? (home, a friend’s house, the red light district)
Where are you coming from? (Pensacola, Zanesville, somewhere in Alabama, that place in town where the double homicide happened)
What is the name of your band? (Continnance, spelt incorrectly on purpose)
What kind of music do you play? (R&B/Country Jazz/Spoken word)
Do you know why I pulled you over? (you are bored/your wife beats you/the trailer lights don’t work)
Is there anything illegal in your vehicle? (only an illegal immigrant/merch guy, a suitcase of cash, a half pound bag of weed, and a dangerous amount of Mountain Dew, stolen and bloody hunting knives, unregistered guns…)
Do you guys smoke dope? (yes)
Are you guys gay? (often)

We have got pulled over five times in a three week period. Most times because our trailer lights don’t work, but also because of speeding, and the fact that all white vans with white trailers driving at 2am must be on drugs, coming from a pick-up/drop-off, or are holding a massive quantity of drugs in the vehicle. An air of fear. The etiquette between driver and patrolman is almost as unnecessary and based on fear as the traveler/border guard relationship. Twenty minutes from our destination. Every time.

When we finally arrived to an actual home in Fort Wayne, Indiana (USA’s Fattest City, which, through logic, must mean The World’s Fattest city), we arrived to a wagging greeting from the black lab Marley, and a large box of copies of the new album, released today.

The van has never got a ticket. The car in Florida got a $200 speeding ticket, and the lady cop that patted me down got a handful of the good stuff, but the old van has amassed a colourful collection of warning citations. At least we know that the world is a safer place, as we drive the interstate with our hazard lights blazing. Thank you figures of authority.