Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, who have been together 55 years, inaugurating the first official day of California gay marriage in San Francisco. It was estimated that about 500-700 people were outside city hall cheering every couple that crosses the threshold.

With Cannes over, I am into the final countdown of many a thing: finishing my thesis and, thus, not being in school for the first time since 1988; the end of my tenth (and favourite) apartment in six year;s and most sadly, the end of my time in Montreal, a city in which I have fallen in love with ten times anything I ever felt toward its predecessor, Toronto, which I spent twice the time in.

Anyway, to coincide with the 66 days I have left before my yearly August 1st put-my-shit-in-a-truck day, I've decided to try and visit, or re-visit, all of Montreal's highlights, and, of course, put them up here for essentially my own amusement and archival use.

First on the tour was the Lachine Rapids, which I'd never been to, mostly due to its non-pedestrian friendly location on the south end of the city's shipping yards. I'm partially paraphrasing Wikipedia here, but to quickly educate: they are a series of rapids on the Saint Lawrence River, between the Island of Montreal and the south shore. As for the impressive part. They contain the largest standing waves in the world. This is because the water volume and current do not change with respect to the permanent features in the riverbed, namely its shelf-like drops. Seasonal variation in the water flow does not change the situation of the waves.

Yesterday, with a car thankfully, I found the rather hidden rapids (behind a "highlight" in its own right, the wild Habitat 67, which I'll post later on), as well as a bunch of hunky Quebecois surfers who were riding the world's largest standing waves. Thats pretty much the whole story, but I'll share some video and photo of them:

Its 4:15am, so just under 2 hours left until I can get in a car to take me to the airport, and 4 hours left until I can sleep on a crowded airplane. Coca Cola Light and MTV Europe are my keep-awakes, with MTV Europe playing a 40 minute loop of videos over and over and over. I've heard "I Wanna Make Love (In This Club)" and "4 Minutes" about 6 times each now and I'll admit its making me feel mildly insane. But I'm not asleep. So that's all that matters.

Anyway, I figured I might as well throw out another (last? I have stuff I could post when I get back to Montreal and regain my mind, but we'll see) blog entry to pass the time. Because I'm not exactly capable of anything more, I'm basically just gonna throw up some photos from today's indieWIRE excursion to Antibes. We did the same thing last year, walking the same sidewalks and eating at the same restaurant. Its nice closure to nearly two weeks of basically 24 hour company with your co-workers, which is surprisingly doable (mostly because they be good people). But in the end I always compare the end of any film festival to the emotional experience of ending summer camp. Except now we're old and its about work and instead of campfire sing-a-longs its drunken karaoke or drunkenly having an American national anthem-Canadian national anthem sing off in the street (I'm sure the French loved that, and on an extremely embarrassing note, I forgot the words to the Canadian anthem). But anyway, today's trip to Antibes was summer camp's end, and now I'm waiting for my metaphorical parents, a cab driver, to pick me up.

After 8 days in the basement of the Palais, I finally came out of daytime hiding today and decided to avoid any festivaling and just tour around outside the centre of the action. It was thankfully a nice day, and Cannesians make it really easy to be entertained just walking around. Perhaps it was inappropriate to take photos of them as a result, but I did, and I'm sharing:

Last night, the Germans went all out with their national party at Cannes. A 20 minute (coach) bus ride from Cannes took you to their extravagant villa, complete with a buffet a good 100 feet long, a dozen bars, a pool, and about a thousand Germans. Elaborate lights gave it a really interesting aesthetic, though the odd way that the carpet's colour on the stairs merged with the raising floor around it left at least 3 (I saw 3) people collapse face first on the ground due to the optical illusion. Either way, some pics:

Unfortunately, around midnight the largely outdoor space fell victim to Cannes 08 weather. But instead of crowding into tents, most of the attendees danced in the rain, and in some cases, danced quite aggressively in the rain: