-by Tubby

Maybe it was the music. Jazz is mellow, unlike the usual sonic violence that often accompanies other music festivals. Maybe it was the excellent cheese available at the bistros, or the wine for that matter. Maybe it was the fact that it was nice and warm (more on that later) for a change. Maybe it was the -- gasp -- clean portapotties. But the many babies at the Montreal jazz festival were all happy. They all seemed well parented, a good thing for the future of the world. As someone contemplating the joys of parenthood in the foreseeable future (though still in the abstract), I find it highly encouraging that I will be able to gather in groups of more than six people without the incessant screaming of a teenager-in-training. How big a crowd could you get in the US before some cute but neglected (or spoiled) baby begins letting everyone in a 1000' radius (based on buildings, wind, lungpower, and how many watts their amp has) exactly how awful their parents are? If the crowd is greater than six people and includes a baby, chances are it is trying its level best to warn Saddam Hussein that a dozen AC-130s are entering Iraqi airspace with written invitations to the right palace. Then comes the "it's too _____" dance, followed by the "I wanna ________ but you won't let me" dance, and finally the "Hey! This person is trying to kill me!" tango. The more people in the area, the more likely this is. Good old Murphy will also note that the odds of winning the "Best Histrionics" award increases dramatically in relation to potential embarrassment for the parents -- any co-workers, doctors, lawyers, and ex-spouses in the vicinity all up the odds considerably. Grandparents make this display simply a matter of time -- I suspect that this may prove to be the first verifiable example of telepathy, or that one or the other is as bribable as an Enron executive. (Certainly bribes help; this is why such tantrums happens both after the presents are all gone and anywhere in the area of toy stores.) This applies to any child under the age of four or so, and a distressingly large percentage of children up to about thirty years old. After this, most of them have learned that lying on your back, kicking and screaming is not the most productive way of getting what you want -- asking permission from your S.O. is. So how come Montreal is so different? In huge crowds, under just enough clouds to make you think you are safe from sunburn, with lots of loud noises happening, how is it that every kid I saw was happy? They danced with parents and siblings, they lost balloons, they spilled dad's beer (an evil child, that one - but it was only Labatts1), but not one of them was attempting to imitate a deranged saxophone in my vicinity. What a beautiful thing music can be, when you can actually hear it. Waitresses chased happy little kids trying to make new friends all over restaurants and sidewalk cafes, toting them back to Mom & Dad. Kid thinks this is fun; repeat scene, and yet everyone is still smiling. No one starts bitching about "those noisy/obnoxious kids, why don't their parents hold on to them?" I saw a 3-year-old girl dancing with her dad for an entire hour-long set of Caribbean-influenced jazz, and everyone around them was smiling. Everyone. Among the grown-up children, even more odd things occurred. After four days of hanging out with approximately two squillion people (I counted their feet and divided by two), I overheard exactly one argument. It was something about "why should I waste my time with someone who doesn't understand anything about soccer" on Sunday afternoon from a guy with a German accent, directed towards his apparently horrifically ignorant girlfriend. Granted, every Brazilian soccer fan in Montreal had been driving around yelling and honking their horn, waving flags, blocking traffic, and making a nuisance of themselves since some godawful hour in the morning. I can understand that no one wants to have their nation's failure rubbed in their face. But he could have argued with his girlfriend at home much less expensively, without ruining my nice wine and cheese with his inane bitching about whose national soccer penis is bigger. This metric shitload of people swilling Labatts (no bartenders, just teenagers carrying fifty cups in a tray balanced on their head, selling it hand over fist to all the people too lazy or soused to walk twenty feet to the nearest stall, where you might have been able to pay someone to cut you off...), wine (only slightly harder to get - you have to be willing to sit down in the shade and have an unfailingly polite, bilingual Quebecois serve you with admirable speed), or whatever (Grand Marnier had its own stage, and lots of bars manned by those aforementioned teenagers), and smoking homegrown, I saw one fight. Within three minutes, the combatants were outnumbered 10 to 1 by security intent on kicking someone out, and the only weapon in evidence was a cup of beer, which was pretty darned ineffective. A police officer with whom I do martial arts expressed... incredulity, I think is the word, that this many people could be in one place at one time, and not be trying to slaughter each other. For those of you who have not worked behind the scenes at a similar event, you should know that it is critical to arrange for ambulance support at a similar event in the US, and there is always a veritable parade of patients. Alcohol is strictly "controlled," usually by checking ID and selling bracelets, or by only selling liquor in limited areas. The first person so drunk or otherwise intoxicated they can't stand up is, naturally, about 15 years old. Everyone rapidly becomes hammered, and soon after this they become obnoxiously loud, screaming stupidities at everyone within earshot (see the babies thing above), making you wish that you could make them your patients. Mosh pits are another great source of customers for EMS. Everyone has sunstroke, compounded by alcohol poisoning. While there were first aid trailers at the Jazz Festival, I did not see that they were getting a whole lot of business. A few ambulances floated around, but they weren't trying to get anywhere in a hurry. The biggest problem, I would say, was probably sunburn. Believe it - Canada can get hot. Maybe not Savannah, Georgia hot, but hot enough to break a sweat walking down the street, and the sun sets around 9:30 PM, so peak frying hours are somewhat extended. Add a bit of haze, making you think that there are clouds and that it is safe to go out, and you can get yourself a very nice crop of skin cancer right quick. So what do you do at (and around) the Montreal Jazz Festival, besides goggling at the social miracle of peace and happiness around you? A few suggestions: Buy stuff. It doesn't matter what you buy, it's all cheap. Everything is priced in dollars, and is approximately 40% off. Furthermore, you should buy a lot of stuff at a time, and keep your receipts. If the total amount of stuff you buy is over $50 Canadian before tax, you can get these taxes refunded to you, for use at the duty-free shop on the way home. The duty-free shop has liquor, maple syrup products, liquor, smoked salmon, liquor, and beer. Good beer, not Labatts. And you can easily have a coupon for $50 or so. (Of course, if you are really cheap, you could probably get a check, but that would take longer and wouldn't be nearly as fun.) Eat. A really good dinner for two, with appetizer and dessert, can be had for about $30-35. For $50-60, you can add wine/beer, and up the superlative to outstanding. If there is a cuisine, there is a restaurant that serves it - Chinese, Japanese, Lebanese, Spanish, Italian, Barbeque, Thai, Brazilian, Mexican, French, Polish, French (of course), you name it they have it. There are great bakeries, and coffee shops that know how to make a mocha that doesn't taste like charcoal. I have never been anywhere with service as consistently good as this city - every waiter and waitress was unfailingly knowledgeable and polite. I suspect that this is partly due to the fact that you more or less have to be bilingual in service-type jobs, raising the average intelligence level of these people considerably. Drink Port. Warre's Sir William 10-year-old Tawny Port. As much as you can afford. Go to the Biodome, in the Olympic Park. Apparently there was not much demand for an indoor bicycling track after the Olympics (go figure). So they turned this building, which according to my wife looks like an extraterrestrial bug, into three separate ecological environments. You can actually walk through a South American rainforest, complete with sloths, golden lion tamarinds (very cute little monkeys with very sharp-looking teeth), birds, caiman (skinny-nosed alligators), capybara, iguana, turtles, piranhas, bats, strangler figs, and more. The only barrier between you and the animals is the railings on the elevated walkway. The Laurentian forest and coast should look familiar to anyone who has spent time in New England - but I'll watch otters play all day, especially from just a few feet away, and it's hard to watch swimming birds in the wild. The arctic region had puffins on one side & penguins on the other. Very cool, and remarkably engineered. Drink beer. Especially Rickard's Red. Try to avoid Labatt's unless you are really desperate. They don't let you go on the Lachine Rapids unless you are six, but this may in fact be why all those little kids are so happy. "If you don't cry until you are six, I'll take you out on the river" could be a powerful incentive. This is completely worth the trip. Whoever thought this up should never have to buy a drink for the rest of his life. First, make a 40' hydrodynamic stainless steel bathtub - flat-bottomed for maneuverability, with foot-wide bulkheads running the length of the boat. Next, weld in seats & hand bars using 4" stainless steel tubing (which help just a little holding the thing together). Put a scoop in the front, to throw water coming over the nose of the boat up, just because. Finish this off with two 660 hp Caterpillar turbo-diesel engines powering water-jet drives, and you have one hell of a boat - one foot of draft, a comfortable 50 mph, and you can do a 180 in perhaps two boat lengths. This is what every jet-ski built wants to be when it grows up. Now put forty silly-assed tourists on board, give them ponchos, and drive this sucker to the section of the St. Lawrence river that drops 45' in elevation, and try like hell to sink it. No, really. They could never get away with this in the US -- some idiot would keep their mouth open and sue because they swallowed half the St. Lawrence River. In the pep talk beforehand, they tell you to keep your mouth shut, take your glasses and jewelry off, and let you know that you will get really, really wet. They mean it. There is no way they can prepare you for exactly how wet you will actually get. The pilot deliberately digs the nose of this boat into 15 foot waves, sending a massive curl of water directly into your face. The poncho they give you is totally pointless, though it does keep the wind off reasonably well. Think "The Perfect Storm" -- when the waves are coming on the deck while they are trying to make it through the storm, and you are in the ballpark. After each pass through the rapids, there are eight inches of water sloshing around in the bottom of the boat -- almost enough to pull your shoes off. And nobody said "eh" the whole time we were there. Not once.

1. Labatts is Canadian Budweiser, except their water is cleaner, so it tastes like filtered horse pee.