Sébastien Lacasse - 2 years ago today... Marilyn Monroe - 45 years ago today...

It was very late in the night, on this date, when it all took place.
Or rather very early in the morning today - around two in the morning to be exact. He was headed home, on his bike, after a tumultuous evening at a party he should have never attended... He had had two altercations with two different gangs on that night - and it all been triggered by a little hoe, Sébastien's former girlfriend, who was now seeing a black boy... Mind you, there was no racism involved here - all the protagonists involved are really, tis sad to say, pathetic Laval-Quebec-Canada teens who flatter themselves too much into thinking that they could be the next Eminem or Dr. Dre... White boys and Black boys alike - I see nothing but a confused and inane lot among this Generation Y or Z... I'd call them "Generation P - for Pathetic" but I am quite fond of the idea that they are indeed "Generation Z" - i.e. the last one, so... But I digress...

So then, two years ago, first around 10pm -maybe- Sébastien Lacasse, a curly-haired blond boy who, perhaps, talked the talk one too many times, was roughed up over a silly tramp that used to be his girlfriend... Then, he was careless enough to get into a second argument on the very same night - with another gang of young punks (who he may have mistaken for the first bunch - however, wasn't the hoe's absence a vital clue that these were clearly not the same losers?)
This second gang wanted "respect" - not in the true meaning of the word though (these silly geese have no idea what true meanings, true definitions, syntax, punctuation and proper spelling are all about...! These are "streetsmart" hoodlums - with little or no education and real smarts to speak of...
(And I heard some moron who was reporting on this tragedy say that "these were kids (...) with a future" - HA! Depends on your definition, once more, of that as well... But I digress once more...)
Hence, the respect sought here was to be FEARED - since Sébastien Lacasse was carefree enough to show that he thought them to be ridiculous rather than fearful, without any back-up (how could that be though - since 1000 people showed up at his funeral? Where were all these so-called "friends" when he needed the back-up?!? Digressing again - and giving away the sad ending here... Mea culpa.) the gang of 13 soon decided to "make an example" out of Sébastien...
As if 13 morons can teach anybody anything at all...
The only 13 that showed the WORLD all there was to know were the twelve apostles - and CHRIST! And they were not dumb brats like these 13 from Laval - who fancy themselves as something that they CAN NEVER HOPE TO BE and exercise violence as means to compensate...
And so, they got to corner Sébastien on la Rue Des Patriotes and one of the cowards stabbed him in the back 7 times. The others sprayed pepper spray over Sébastien's eyes, so that he wouldn't get away... When he tried to get up, they tripped him and he fell... They kicked him repeatedly, stomped his ribs and face (cause he was cuter than any single one of them) and then they left him to bleed to death.
They only stopped the savage assault because FINALLY a neighbour came out and yelled something... That "bon voisin" and proverbial good samaritan stood by Sébastien until the medics and cops arrived, as the 13 cowards fled the scene right away, the moment that someone "saw"... What were these 13 morons thinking? That they could keep at it all night, without being "disturbed" at all? Most astounding of all, once in their getaway cars, they were all shocked to find their clothes blood-splattered and their hands bloodied with their victims's hemoglobin... HOW MORONIC ARE THESE CRAPPY WASTES OF FLESH?!? Again - WHY WERE THESE BOZOS EVER BORN AT ALL?
But I digress, one final time.

Sébastien Lacasse was dying when they took him to a familiar place - l'Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur. His parents, Luc & Line, were called, finally... They had no clue what was up with their son at two in the morning... Unlike me, Sébastien's parents have nothing to blame the hospital about. They can blame themselves and their son's brash attitude though. One shouldn't start a fight one cannot hope to be able to finish - unless one has a death wish, that is.

Sébastien died soon thereafter - he was only 19 years old.
His mother says, on a teledocumentary made about the tragic event, that when she received the worst possible news of all, she curled up in a foetus position and cried for a long time.
Her son was placed in the same cold room where my father was placed in, almost two years later...
Who knows - maybe it was the same "cubicle" too...



45 YEARS AGO, an outstanding eulogy was read for a very familiar and, now, intemporal face: Marilyn Monroe's wake came to a closure with the following eulogy read by Lee Strasberg.

"Marilyn Monroe was a legend.

In her own lifetime she created a myth of what a poor girl from a deprived background could attain. For the entire world she became a symbol of the eternal feminine.
But I have no words to describe the myth and the legend, nor would she want us to do so. I did not know this Marilyn Monroe. Nor did she.
We gathered here today, knew only Marilyn - a warm human being, impulsive and shy, and lonely, sensitive and in fear of rejection, yet ever avid for life and reaching out for fulfillment. I will not insult the privacy of your memory of her - a privacy she sought and treasured - by trying to describe her whom you know to you who knew her. In our memories of her she remains alive, not only a shadow on the screen or a glamorous personality.

For us Marilyn was a devoted and loyal friend, a colleague constantly reaching for perfection. We shared her pain and difficulties and some of her joys. She was a member of our family. It is difficult to accept the fact that her zest for life has been ended by this dreadful accident.
Despite the heights and brillance she had attained on the screen, she was planning for the future; she was looking forward to participating in the many exciting things which she planned. In her eyes and in mine her career was just beginning. The dream of her talent, which she had nurtured as a child, was not a mirage. When she first came to me I was amazed at the startling sensitivity which she possessed and which had remained fresh and undimmed, struggling to express itself despite the life to which she had been subjected. Others were as physically beautiful as she was, but there was obviously something more in her, something that people saw and recognized in her performances and with which they identified. She had a luminous quality - a combination of wistfulness, radiance, yearning - to set her apart and yet make everyone wish to be a part of it, to share in the childish naivete which was so shy and yet so vibrant.
This quality was even more evident when she was in the stage. I am truly sorry that the public who loved her did not have the opportunity to see her as we did, in many of the roles that foreshadowed what she would have become. Without a doubt, she would have been one of the really great actresses of the stage.

Now it is all at an end. I hope her death will stir sympathy and understanding for a sensitive artist and a woman who brought joy and pleasure to the world.

I cannot say goodbye. Marilyn never liked goodbyes, but in the peculiar way she had of turning things around so that they faced reality - I will say au revoir. For the country to which she has gone, we must all someday visit."
August 8 1962

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