Armageddon it!

I have good news and bad news. I’ll give you the bad news first: it’s the end of the world. Well, at least it feels that way to me; it was my birthday last week. And while birthdays in and of themselves don’t make me feel like the universe is going to hell in a hand-basket, this year is different because I turned Jesus’s age (well, the age he reached before he was nailed to the boards like the Canadiens defensemen in that last playoff round, har har).

Reaching Jesus’s age made me think deeply about a few things. First off, what did people get Jesus for his birthday? I mean, it’s not like you could ever really impress the guy with something like a fancy bottle of wine since he’d be all, “Oh gee, thanks Bartholomew, I can’t remember when I last had some great wine. Oh wait, yes I do, it was yesterday, when I turned water into the best fucking wine EVER!” What do you get for a guy who has everything?

The second thing it made me think of was Armageddon. I was raised to believe that someday Jesus is coming back, and when he does, he’s gonna raise some shit. Now, I wasn’t a very good Catholic, but I think I remember something about Armageddon starting with a trumpet, which makes sense, especially if that trumpet is played really badly. Now, while I no longer particularly subscribe to these beliefs, I can’t help but feel that some serious biblical shit is going down these days. Every time I check out my newsfeeds, it seems like more and more insane shit is happening. War, disease, famine, pirates… all these signs make me feel a bit overwhelmed. That, coupled with a recent in-depth conversation with colleagues about where one could viably go to escape the apocalypse (the answer is remote northern Quebec or Ontario, unless you had access to a helicopter) made me seriously take stock of my life. So I did what any self-respecting, self-reflective human being would do: I threw a small apocalypse-themed costume party.

The rules were simple: come as whatever you think of when you think apocalypse.

The beauty of it was, there were plenty of clothing options if someone was inclined to do the research. There’s the zombie apocalypse scenario, which was very popular a few years ago. There’s also the Mad Max scenario, where you could just come in spiked hockey pads and a boomerang (extra points if you arrive in a dune buggy). There’s the Quebec Death Cult scenario, where you wear long robes and create a cocktail called Poisoned Pepsi. If you wanted to be topical, you could come wrapped in bacon with a medical mask and be the Swine Flu. Or maybe people would come dressed as a Montreal Canadien—their playoff-ending sweep by the Bruins surely was a sign of Armageddon to many Montrealers. Granted, it may not have been the sexiest of themes, but the costume possibilities were endless and I thought it would be good to see how everyone else was feeling about the apocalypse (plus it would give me an excuse to screen some of my favourite terrible dystopian films like Zardoz).

Most people didn’t come dressed up. Of course, kudos to the people with Xs on their foreheads, and to the zombies with third eyes, and to the people with “2012” sharpied on their knuckles and to the girl in the handmade Handmaid’s Tale robe and to the guy who showed up in nothing but red striped underwear and the leather vest (although I’m still uncertain if that was a costume). But many people didn’t show up dressed all crazy because a) Armageddon is a bummer and—here’s the good news—b) Montreal is so amazingly hot right now, no one wants to think about that shit. That’s right, we have reached that rare honeymoon phase in our meteorological cycle where we’re in between bitching that it’s too cold and bitching that it’s too hot and everything just totally rules. A time when people who shouldn’t be wearing short shorts are letting it all hang out and not giving a rat’s ass. So while it’s certainly possible that epic shit is going down all over the globe, while the world is crumbling all around us, Montrealers will greet it all with a warm, sun-drenched smile. I say bring on the scenarios; the zombies, the cults, the Yellowstone volcanoes, the Gulf Stream disasters, the militia and the dystopic futures where a hairy-chested Sean Connery fucks and fights his way to freedom. We’re Montrealers dangnabbit, we survive Armageddon once a year: it’s called winter.

RIFF-RAFF@SYMPATICO.CA