Monday, April 18, 2005

Michael Jackson: "Coupable ou non coupable?"

Much of what we've managed to do with Maya up here in the Le Great White Norte falls into two catagories - Sarah taking her into sessions at her medical conference and me taking her out walking around Downtown. Almost without exception she's been a manageable conference participant and there are always loads of people willing to "take her" from Sarah for a bit of respite. Out in the world, Maya's doing what she usually does in her stroller - kickin' back and snoozin' away so long as we're moving. Street life in Montreal is like any downtown amalgam of bizness-clones, retail-slaves, tourist-roadblocks and the homeless (although here, even the homeless are bilingual). Mix in the fact that McGill University is very much in the vicinity and injecting freshish-fratish foolishness - that's what I see of the Downtowny mix around Rue Ste. Catherine. A bit later Maya and I are planning another excursion to venture a bit farther afield.

While entertaining Maya a bit earlier as Sarah snuck in a quick workout, I watched the most depressing example of American entertainment pollution I've seen flow this direction thus far - a replay of the E!Network's "Michael Jackson Trial" re-enactment show. If you haven't seen it in English, your soul may still be intact. But if you're like me, you've gotten used to the frightening American "legal commentators" that attempt to do just that during breaks in the action - they comment on the so-called "legal aspects" of the case, usually with boundless self-promotion in mind. Well, on what appears to be a cheapo version of VH1 (MusiMix), they've replaced those Americans with two rather doughy French-speaking chaps while the re-enactments still play in English without subtitles. I think I got the jist of what they were saying. "Jesus juice" apparently has no French translation. Boy, do I need to get outside.

Two of today's greasier advances on DC happy-hour chatter are the Ralph Reed rundown in the NYTimes and the "Bolton's an even bigger prick than previously thought" story in the WashingtonPost. The Ralph Reed-Jack Abramoff connection isn't entirely new reporting (I mentioned it back in February, for those of you keeping score at home). But it does deliver a bigger smack-down than previously seen for the often kid-gloves-treated Ralph "Body Bag" Reed. And as far as Bolton's concerned - we'll see tomorrow whether this adds any fuel to the fire. It all really comes down to Lincoln Chaffee - if he votes in favor of the nomination in Committee, the horse is outta the barn for good.

Maya's back from her afternoon scientific session. Time for some mindless strolling. More pics soon, I promise.

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