It took me about three blocks to remember the secondary meaning of "cold feet" in English and appreciate the appropriateness. The primary meaning, however, was more than clear. It's a totally stupid idea to wear birkenstocks in Montreal in November. I know this. I should attempt to be less of a fool.
The cold weather, however, means a proper Halloween. None of the crappy suburbia plastic decorations. The wind bites, the dark menaces, Montreal sings with its own eerie seductive wail. My Halloween, though not very spooky in and of itself, was fairly great. Several compatriots on the nordic ski team attended a funk concert of the New Groove Orchestra, which was relatively magical. Getting to said concert also had its own specific charms, as it meant riding double on Dorian (my old steel seventies bike and primary lover) with a friend from the ski team. We sped down Universite in a precariously exhilarating fashion. Riding double on a bike tends to be quite dangerous and rather fun. Because of a general lack of costume in the world, I lent out my various bits of clothing to various people and we painted faces. So it was two girls with pigtails and Maori-like warpaint weaving through the cars and pedestrians. In short, fun. Combined with the home-brewed beer and omeletes and gramophone records and general revelry, it was quite good.
The concert itself was more than good. Molly always raves about funk on her blog, and now I truly know why. Funk is just kind of fun. It's the type of thing that makes you want to crazy dance because the rhythm validates itself. New Groove Orchestra is a ten-piece(!) band with a five-piece brass section and an electrical frontwoman wearing a shiny leotard and huge afro. It was crazily intense and crazily fun. Even white a-musical girls from eastern Europe get mad into it, which indicates the general goodness. Incidentally, price of concert? $7 canadian. Whut?
We got funked.
(photo not taken by me, and not of the concert I went to, but features ngo, so one out of the three)
www.newgrooveorchestra.com is worth visiting.
