Articles by Jason C. McLean
Jason C. McLean is a Montreal-based actor, writer, activist, culture-jammer and sometimes singer. He is a co-founder of the Forget The Box Media Collective and currently the editor of Forget The Box Magazine as well as a columnist (The Soapbox), theatre and music reviewer and general contributor. Jason is also a co-creator, writer and in-character host of JC Sunshine's Fireside Chat on Forget The Box TV. Outside of FTB, Jason is a co-founder of the International infringement Festival, organizer of the Montreal infringement Festival and a member of Optative Theatrical Laboratories where he acts, writes, organizes and contributes to the Optative Blog. He also contributes to Art Threat, has written for the Montreal Mirror and holds a BA in Journalism from Concordia University.
I’ve seen the future, brother…but so has Jean Charest
Jason C. McLean on the newfound passion in people like Jean Charest and Gerald Tremblay and how it shows that the Quebec student strike is about so much more than a few hundred dollars in tuition increase, it’s about the future…
Off With Their Clothes! Glam Gam’s Little Beau Peep Show
Well, it’s 2012 and we got one of the first signs of the oncoming apocalypse early. Troupe founder Michael J. McCarthy kept his clothes on for the entire show. I’m not joking. In fact, he wore more clothes than everyone else combined. Dressed as the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, we didn’t even get a little leg or someone screaming “off with his clothes!” That’s not the same with the rest of the cast…
Farewell Sweet Penny
I mourn the loss of the penny. Can you blame me? It’s been with me my whole life. I think it’s safe to say that we are all familiar with the penny. Things change, and sentimentality isn’t enough. But, by losing the penny we are also forever altering or outright losing aspects of our lives. Finding pennies in the couch is the first to go…
CUTV journalist arrested live on the internet for doing his job (VIDEO)
This morning, CUTV (Concordia University Television) cameraman and programming director Laith Marouf was filming a student protest in Montreal when SPVM riot cops moved in. His footage was streaming out live on the web to approximately 5000 viewers. Despite repeated attempts to inform police that they, as journalists, were simply doing their job by filming the protest and police actions…
Cross Stolen From Mount Royal
There were a lot of double-takes this morning in Montreal as people passing the mountain noticed something they were not expecting and that had not been seen for centuries: the cross on Mount Royal was …
We’re Not Clients and Our Transit System Isn’t a Store
Call me passenger, traveller, transit system user, citizen even, just please don’t call me a client. I’m not. Just like the Société de transport de Montréal (STM) isn’t a business, or at least it shouldn’t see itself as one. It’s a public utility that does need to charge a fee to function. It also should balance its books, but it should not be run like a for profit corporation…
Roseanne Barr for President? Call it what you want, but don’t call it a joke
Roseanne Barr, the former TV star, now author, fierce tweeter and even more fierce Occupy supporter, announced her intention to run for the Green Party nomination to be their candidate for President of the United States. That’s the same Green Party who proposed Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney to the American public as an alternative to the “two” party system…
SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, C11 and all the other letters and numbers they can throw at us be damned! The Net’s Not Gonna Change
To paraphrase Micheal Corleone’s only noteable line in Godfather III: “Just when we thought we were out, they pull us back in!” I had to paraphrase it because I wouldn’t dare embed the YouTube clip these days and am even a little skittish about a direct quote from such a heavily copyrighted film. Yes, we all know that SOPA and PIPA got shelved in the US, thanks in large part to sites like Wikipedia going dark for a day and showing everyone just what a heavily censored and regulated internet might be like. But that doesn’t mean they’re done for good…
2011: The Year in Posts
While it may have taken a bit longer than expected (admittedly, this is really, really late, but we’ve been busy), our list of our top 20 posts of 2011 is here. We asked our writers to tell us their favourite posts or the posts they felt were the most important, both by themselves and other writers that appeared on FTB over the year…
2011 Year-In-Review: News
With revolution in the streets from the Middle East to middle America, a major power shift in Ottawa and a smattering of other events that would have stolen the headlines in any other year, 2011 will be largely remembered as the year that got the ball rolling for the future, good or bad…
From Ottawa With Love: A Radio-Friendly NDP Leadership Debate
Since the Kennedy-Nixon debates of the 60s, politics have been almost all about what the candidates look like, and how they hold themselves on camera. Sure, what they have to say…
Some people never change: Tremblay evicts Occupy Montreal
You know when you dislike someone and then they go and do something really cool and you start thinking that maybe you’ve misjudged them? Inevitably, they go back to their old ways and you realize that nope, you were right about them all along and you kick yourself for doubting your preconceptions. That’s exactly how I feel right now about Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay and I doubt I’m the only one. For weeks, Tremblay kept a drastically different tone than the mayors of other major cities with an occupied public space. Following the 1am commando-style raid…
On Devil’s Sunday… There Was Blood, Lots of It
Horror and sex, they go together like burlesque and Montreal. If you don’t believe me, just watch any horror flick and tell me you’re not turned on at one point or another by one of the sexy college students fleeing or fighting the mysterious killer. It’s a classic formula, really. Rarely, if ever, are the killers themselves seen as sexy…
It’s Close to Midnight in Montreal: 2011 Halloween Preview
“It’s close to midnight” Yup, was busy with the first real night of Halloween celebrations last night and preparing for a show I’m participating in on the last night. Took me a while to get this post up, but not a minute too soon, because…”Something evil’s lurking in the dark” Not so much evil as creative, inventive, fun and a little bit weird, just like Montreal at Halloween time. And Halloween is upon us once again…
Join the Club, the Candyass Club, Tonight @ Cafe Cleopatre
Velma, Velma, Velma, what have you got yourself into now?
As if running her own burlesque troupe (the Dead Doll Dancers); helping to save Cafe Cleopatre; theatrically teaching the history of Montreal’s Red Light District alongside Donovan King; and the semi-regular trips to burlesque festivals in New York and Las Vegas wasn’t enough, Velma Candyass is now doing a monthly show.
The aptly named Candyass Club runs tonight at the aforementioned Cafe Cleopatre and features burlesque, drag and all sorts of quirky…
The Arab Spring meets fall in New York, but you won’t find #OccupyWallStreet on TV
BREAKING NEWS: New York City is under occupation and has been for a few days. You’d think that would be breaking news, wouldn’t you? Even if it’s not the whole city, just the financial quarter. And even if it’s not an invading army, but people upset with the way their own country is running things (in this case, the economy). After all, domestic upheaval in Egypt and people occupying a public square in Bahrain was headline news all around the world just a few months ago, wasn’t it? Come to think of it, the lack of media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protest is just like the Arab Spring. State controlled media completely blocked the protesters’ side of the story…
