I saw this at lunchtime. It’s still making me laugh now. Behold, the funniest ever Dinosaur Comics (and that’s saying something).

Oh, and I have some things to say about San Francisco but I’m probably waiting until I get bandwidth to upload photos and time to type on keyboards.

In the last couple of days in Montreal we went to see Freestyle Love Supreme again (since they were so awesome), visited the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the science museum, saw some extreme biking and a skateboarding competition and watched Family Guy Live.

It was impressive to see Freestyle Love Supreme take an entirely different set of prompts from the audience and create an equally funny yet totally different show from the first time we saw them. They are incredibly quick and very funny and likeable. They seem to have a New York residency at the moment (check www.freestylelovesupreme.com for details.

Friday in Montreal was pretty rainy so we headed down to the Montreal Science Centre for the morning and went round the Body Worlds 2 exhibition. This is the exhibition which has toured around the world which shows how the body fits together using real (donated) corpses. I was a little apprehensive about visiting because of the various accusations which have been made against Gunther von Hagens (the exhibition’s developer) including those that not all of the bodies were donated by informed consent. Having said that, I did find the exhibition interesting although it was also somewhat disquieting and creepy. The bodies are positioned in active poses, some of which border on the grotesque, but the more mundane cases showing the sizes of various organs and some of the effects of disease were genuinely informative.

The Just For Laughs festival seems to include, for some reason, a bunch of “urban activities” such as skateboarding, biking, parcours and breakdancing. Despite the general lack of information about when and where these activities would take place, we managed to track down the biking and skateboarding in the heat of Saturday afternoon. The mountain bikers used precision control to bounce between tiny blocks and bunny hop along thin plans of wood. The strength and timing needed to pull these stunts off was incredible and we were suitably impressed by the two riders.

Meanwhile, a bunch of people were still building the skateboarding course, set on a steep hill. For reasons best known to them they had decided to construct the whole thing from scratch about an hour before the competition started and so there was sawing of wood, banging of nails and hasty last-minute addition of safety features to the big ramp (some extra bits of wood on the side to stop skateboards flying out into the crowd). The riders gathered and practised, showing more skill than I had expected. There were jumps over barriers, grinding down rails and a big ramp at the end for more spectacular tricks. Amazingly, a 9-year old kid was amongst the best of the riders and earned a lot of respect from the commentator (who was speaking mostly in French but would then switch to English to shout “that’s gotta hurt!” or “do your job!”, which was most amusing).

The Montreal experience came to an end with a final show - Family Guy Live. The whole cast gathered to do a script read-through live for us then perform some songs from the show and answer questions from the audience. We also got to see footage from the first episode of the next season (the Star Wars episode) which looks pretty awesome. It was actually quite thrilling to see this bunch of people create the voices which I associate with the animated characters and particularly incredible to watch Seth MacFarlane switch between the four main characters which he voices. The cast were generous with their time and answered lots of questions, even if lots of them were just “can I have your copy of the script?”.

We headed back from the show to get a few hours of sleep before jetting off to San Francisco…

On Wednesday we set out to explore the eastern side of the city, taking in the Biodome (which, like the Biosphere, failed to go into lockdown at any point), the Insectorium and the botanical gardens.  It was the hottest day so far of our trip which made it somewhat hard to concentrate within the more tropical parts of the Biodome but everything was well-presented and the model animals within the centre-piece “fatal attraction” exhibit certainly appeared to be anatomically correct.

The Insectorium was quite impressive, with lots of facts and figures as well as examples of all sorts of enormous beetles, scorpions and stick-insects.  Apparently there was an awesome 4-stage diorama showing a fight between a tarantual and a wasp which I missed, but luckily The Mark was able to recreate it as a monologue for us (video to follow).  The botancial gardens were well-presented, but it was really too warm for us to linger too long in them.

We retired to a specialist tea cafe, where I had a pot of remarkably refreshing Sun Moon Lake.  Dave had some mint tea, whilst Mark opted (”oui!”) for a bowl of suspiciously thick, gloopy, bright green tea which he was instructed to drink in three and half sips.  Upon finishing it, he was also told to concentrate on the effect it was having on his body.  The main effect seemed to be making him want to drink cocktails, so we went and did that for a while in a friendly little bar before heading off to see Kids In The Hall.

Not having seen them before, it took me about ten or fifteen minutes to get “into” KITH, but once I did I really enjoyed the show.  Surreal, Pythnoesque in places with hatfuls of ideas and an excellent way with words, most of the sketches were highly enjoyable with only the occasional miss thrown into the mix.  More DVDs for me to add to the stack at some point, I suspect…

Montreal’s main chain stores can all be found underground, clustered around the metro stations.  This is initially hugely confusing and, for some reason, none of it is really signed from above ground in anything more than a cursory fashion.  But I’ve grown to enjoy the way that these little multi-level shopping centres link together a bit like different zones in Quake.  In face, it’s almost a disappointment when you walk through a set of connecting doors and a sign *doesn’t* come up saying “Loading…” and there’s no momentary drop in frame-rate.

I guess the shops are underground so as to present a pleasant experience during the harsh winters that Montreal experiences, but they are also particularly nice air-conditioned oases from the heat of the summer sun.  We wandered around some on Tuesday and failed to buy anything except lunch (my lunch came from Mmmuffins, who really ought to team up with Midland Mainline’s Mmms Bar).

In the evening we went to see Britcom - The Best Of British Comedy.  Unfortunately, the line-up had changed and of the three Brits we were particularly looking forward to - Richard Herring, Frankie Boyle and Russell Brand - only Herring was there.  He was good, as always, but the rest of the line-up - Wes Packer, John Moloney, Michael McIntyre, Frank Skinner, Sean Meo and Stephen K Amos compering - failed to raise many chuckles from me or (in most cases) from the rest of the crowd.

Our Monday in Montreal was spent checking out the biosphere (not to be confused with the biodome but, seriously, what kind of city has both a biosphere AND a biodome anyway?  An AWESOME one is what.  Although it would have been better if one of them at least had gone into “lockdown”).  Originally the US pavilion in the 1967 World Fair, this unusual sphere was refurbished in the mid-90s and is now home to educational science exhibits, photos and some great views of the city.

The biosphere is on one of a pair of islands, the other of which is possibly one of the weirdest places I’ve been to.  Much of it is man-made (including a beach) and it’s the venue for the Montreal Grand Prix each year (you can cycle or drive around much of the track).  There’s definitely a feeling of creepiness surrounding the place, though, and we didn’t stay long.

We thought we’d watch the Transformers movie (knowing that, even if it was terrible, it would be very amusing to watch it with Transformers superfan Mark).  It was terrible and it was very amusing to watch it with Mark.  I won’t go into the details (listen out for the Russ B Film Review Segment on a future Certificate PG) but I think it’s important that you know it was really, really bad.  My favourite moment of the evening, though, came when, already a couple of beers down and still dissecting the film, Mark lifted his glass and uttered the phrase “Y’know, though, Megatron does have a good point…”

We started Sunday by heading down to the bottom of the hill which we had climbed on Saturday, lying down on the grass and watching as a phalanx of drummers, dancers and assorted other musicians grew in volume (correct scientific usage) and in volume (casual, sloppy usage).  It is hard to think of a more relaxing way of spending a Sunday morning than dozing between chapters of a good book in the warm sun with the sound of the tam-tam players washing over you.

Something altogether less relaxing was having a naked, sweating Phil Nichol standing on the, previously unoccupied, chair to my right in the tiny St. Catherine’s Theatre.  Phil, you see, is the Naked Racist and his latest show explores his pacifism and tells the true story of his short trip to Amsterdam after splitting up with his girlfriend.  How he ends up naked I shan’t spoil (but, be warned, he does); I think it’s fair to say that it’s a very entertaining and, as always with Nichol, a very intense show.  His parents were in the audience for the performance which we went to see, which perhaps distracted him slightly, but it was nevertheless most enjoyable.  Also, he licked my head (Pat - I think this makes us even).

So we were chatting yesterday about one of the restaurants we’ve visited in Montreal and how it had about 80 different pizzas, all individually numbered.  It was suggested that they might as well just list all the ingredients and let people select exactly what they wanted rather than going to the bother of enumerating all possible combinations (pizza with onions, pizza with pepper, pizza with pepper and onions, …).  However, the general opinion was that the numbered ordering system made it easier for the staff when dealing with tourists and so on.  We needed to come up with an alternative which combined the best aspects of both systems.

We came up with Pizza Base 2 (name (C) Dave Smith).  By assigning each topping a number which is a power of two, the customer simply selects what they want and adds up the appropriate number to arrive at their ideal (and uniquely identifiable) pizza.  There were further suggestions of making people order in hex or the possible use of punch cards and a massive pizza robot, but these have been discounted at this time.

I think it could really work.  What say you?

Quick update (I’m in the reception at a student hall at McGill Uni and there’s a bit of a queue) to say that I’m in Montreal for the next week and a bit taking in the comedy festival and anything else I can.  So far I’ve climbed a mountain (well, I’d call it a hill), seen some extreme bike activity (extreme by my standards), watched a man run up 200 steps sideways (CRAB MAN!) and wandered round Montreal’s slightly unusual underground shopping mall.

It’s a lovely city with lots of extremely interesting buildings, parks, fountains and other slightly random but pretty features and the people seem genuiunely welcoming and proud of the place.  We’re staying in halls at McGill which are cheap and functional (and at the top of a flippin’ big hill) but, again, feel pretty welcoming.

We saw our first show of the comedy festival this evening - Freestyle Love Supreme - and it turned out to be awesome.  A guy playing keyboards, a beat-boxer and three MCs improvising rhymes around audience suggestions.  Sounds like a recipe for something that could be terrible but actually it was awesome.  The guys were incredibly quick and sharp and worked off each other wonderfully.  Definitely considering going to see another of their performances whilst we’re here.

Tomorrow we are off to see some drumming hippies and then possibly across to an awesome-sounding island where there is SCIENCE.  Also, Mark will be eating as many bagels as possible during the free breakfast in halls.

The day started badly. We’d got about ten metres from our flat when the skies darkened and the heavy rain and thunder started. Raincoat on, umbrella up and another ten metres forwards. A squadron of fighter planes rushed by overhead, heading west towards Heathrow. Then a passenger jet flanked by two fighter planes loomed into view. Then another jet and another two fighters. It felt like the world was going to end.

Our relief, therefore, was palpable when the next planes to appear were The Red Arrows. Oh, right, there was some kind of airshow rather than some kind of international incident.

Following this rather dramatic beginning, the day improved somewhat quickly. For a start, Dave had to purchase one of the most unpleasantly-coloured waterproofs I’ve ever seen (a source of much amusement for myself and Mark). And, then, well we were at the O2 Wireless Festival! Although the rain stuck around for a couple of hours, the place had dried off by the afternoon and by the evening I was rubbing in the factor 30 and watching the bands through my shades.

Mute Math started playing shortly after we arrived and they were good. Really, really good! I hadn’t heard of them before, but their tunes were catchy enough to be fun even on a first listen. Combining rock with electro and pretty much everything else, each song felt like a particularly well-formed piece of art. And there were some awesome somersaults over the electric piano and group drumming to bring everything to a climax. I’ll definitely be investigating their CDs.

Next up were Datarock, who I had been looking forward to but proved a bit disappointing on the day. Fa-Fa-Fa and Computer Camp Love aside (”do the song!” as Dave would no doubt shout), the rest of their material didn’t really excite and there were definite points when it just sounded like a load of blokes shouting. Nice matching tracksuits, though.

We had a cup of festival tea and a sit down. Weirdly, the whole place felt fairly quiet for most of the afternoon (perhaps people were put off by the earlier rain) and there were no queues for food, drinks or toilets.

Heading back to the main stage, we were in time for CSS who were excellent! They had so much energy and enthusiasm that it really was infectious and I found myself grinning throughout the whole of their quirky, fun set. The lead singer’s catsuit within a catsuit was also an excellent touch!

After a lot of tinkering, LCD Soundsystem took to the stage for a shortish set. It was good, but definitely nowhere near as good as when we saw them at the Astoria. There were occasional sound problems and audio perfectionist James Murphy looked pretty pissed off with things on several occasions. It was still an enjoyable performance, but nothing special.

Rounding off the evening were Daft Punk, rocking the park from within their glowing pyramid of electronics. As soon as they came on the crowd went crazy and didn’t stop jumping and flailing until the end of the set. Protected from the crowd by their robotic helmets, the French duo played a non-stop upbeat mix of all their classics accompanied by some excellent visuals. As Dave pointed out, it wasn’t entirely clear whether they were doing lots of very clever live stuff or, er, just pressing ‘play’ on a CD player and dancing round a bit but either way it was very, very enjoyable indeed. Also, the finale was spectacular but I shan’t spoil that for you.

Tired but happy we found our way through the darkness of Hyde Park to Paddington Station and then home. My legs and back ached for about three days.

Wow, it’s got to the point where I’m getting about 1,000 spam comments per week on this blog which resulted in me switching on moderation for all comments (and then taking ages to get round to looking at them because it was such a tedious job). I *think* I’ve now found a much nicer solution which should be completely transparent to 99% of users and means I can turn off the requirement for moderation and let the genuine comments flow freely! However, if you have problems posting a comment then please do let me know by dropping me an email at this domain and I’ll look into it. Fingers crossed this will put an end to very tedious moderation sessions.