superman=mc pee pants ('cause he likes candy, G)

a nice weekend, kicked off with tickets to a sneak for The Incredibles, certainly my favorite pixar movie, and the best thing Brad Bird's ever done. Maybe the best superhero movie ever, too. I also picked up America: The Book, and then put together some tasty vittles for the party last night. A good time was had, and it was nice to see everybody looking spiff. I can't wait until I'm far enough into Buffy to understand what Matt was dressed as. 3QF is starting to be the place to be.

Oh yeah, I should mention that I've finally gotten over my fear of commitment and I'm working my way through the Buffy DVDs. It makes getting married and having a kid seem like dalliances.

Today was split between me time and Max time. Spent the morning enjoying the fab breakfast burrito at Easy, then picked up the kid and lazed around watching I Robot... You Jane whilst a pumpkin was carved not five feet away from me. Then Max got bored with that so he indulged in some treehouse teevee as I slumbered on the couch. Then it was time to slick back his hair with enough gel to style a medium sized chimpanzee and spend over twenty minutes making the curl on his forehead. On with the costume and out the door we went. The upper beaches, east of woodbine between gerrard and kingston road is prime territory for trick or treating. More houses had front yard dioramas than did not have them, and fewer than 10% were dark. Plus out of his entire haul there were exactly no lame candies. Not a single gross halloween orange and black wax paper wrapped "toffee" gauranteed to rip bridgework out at fifty paces. No lame unwrapped candy pumpkins that would need to be discarded for fear of tampering. The worst thing he got would have to be rockets, and frankly I love rockets.

I'll have a pic up this week.

The iPod myth

first, read the original analysis by clicking on the post title. Pay special attention to the part about fairplay. here's what I wrote in reply:

I don't understand your point when you say that my iPod can only play music downloaded from the iTunes music store. I live in Canada, and until next month I won't even have access to the music store, and yet I have almost run out of room in my 30 gig iPod. Over 6500 songs and counting. I'm not even sure I'll be buying any downloaded music, at any time. I haven't needed to, since I went ahead and purchased my music the way 99% of all consumers do: by going to record stores and buying CDs. Like anyone who's passionate about music I own quite a few. (BTW music enthusiasts are the ones who spend $500 for portable stereos like this one). All of my friends also have iPods, and no access to iTunes didn't matter to them a lick. We all just rip our own stuff from our collections. None of us file share, either, since we actually like our computers free of malware and viruses almost as much as we like music.


I'll post if she responds.

damn my racism

yeah, so the reason I couldn't figure out who Michael was (according to the ep description he's getting beat up tonight on Lost) is because, of course, Michael is the black guy. It doubly sucks because Harrold Perrineau was one of my primary reasons for watching lost in the first place. I own 2 DVDs with seminal Perrineau perfs on them, Romeo + Juliet and Smoke. I am a genuine fan, and I didn't even bother to learn the character's name after 5 episodes. He was just "the black guy." Shame on me.

Shame on Robert Harris, too. The man responsible for the restoration of Lawrence of Arabia (my superbit copy just hums, thank you) to 70mm amongst many other film preservation efforts has an interview here with George Feltenstein, Sr. VP of Marketing for the Warner Brothers classic catalog. I'm warning you, though. Read this at your own risk. Reading this has cost me well over $1000 in future purchases by my count. Fuck you, WB for being so gorram responsive to my film classic lovin' soul.

get off your ass

Things were going so well, Max wise, that I should have known. 4 is tricky. One minute we're going great, he's running through the apartment completely intoxicated with his new halloween costume, and then total and complete meltdown. I mean screaming, kicking, breaking stuff, etc. Nothing can stop him, he is a rage machine converting all sensory input into anger. Which doesn't really bother me that much as long as he does it in his room, but he kept insisting on coming back out and forcing us to speak to him, thus increasing the rage. And it's 8 o'clock. And he's not less worked up, he's more worked up. What do I do?

Times like these make me really appreciate the 2 parent household. This is the part that you don't think about when people raise kids on their own. Certainly I'm no model parent and I don't mean to generalize this since there are clearly some awesome single parents out there. I'm just saying it's easier, much easier when you can take turns being the reasonable one, give the partner a chance to cool down, maybe get some perspective. Take a break. Maybe the 2 parent thing is nature's way of letting us back off once in a while.

That's a mighty nice gun.... mind if I hold it? (edited)

See, this is why I won't go to Guelph.

Click here to see for yourselves.

That shit is making me uncomfortable, yet oddly aroused.

your brain is an important learning tool

I spent the day indoors yesterday, fighting off what remains of the wicked head cold. Currently it seems to have worked its way down into my throat, in an ongoing journey through my body that undoubtedly ends in my rectum (or my toe). Enjoy your meal!

Also got through a serious amount of staring blankly at a television screen. Lucky that I'm married and have a child to look after, otherwise I might have nothing left to do for having done it all. Since both of those folks are away for the weekend and I'm all alone, I watched: Disc one of Michel Gondry, this week's Project Greenlight (ouch, Chris MacDonald), Jerry Seinfeld: I'm Telling You for the Last Time, The Company, Survivor: Outback(DVD), Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere (all 6 eps), Saturday Night Live (ugh, but I gotta give props for the Zell Miller thing; astounding). I also had soup and ordered Swiss Chalet, thus feeding the mind and the body.



I'm a big believer in moving out of your parents house, but I realized that being completely on my own without even a roommate is not in the cards for me. I just get too freaked out at night. I actually woke up at 6:15 this morning when I thought I heard a woman in the other room use my name. I did the classic thing too...called out "hey, anybody there?" which makes a lot of sense if you're worried that some one might actually be there intent on causing you harm. What are they gonna do, call back "yes, but don't worry, just a home invasion"??

I also spent the weekend trying not to mess the place up after the cleaning lady came Friday. There's that post cleaning lady honeymoon and I'm just trying to enjoy it. I even made it cleaner, went out on the balcony and took care of the inch of grime that builds up out there every 6 months (what the hell? are we breathing that? I mean I'm 9 stories up here, is that shit just hanging in the air?)

meatwad, frylock, master shake

I need candy, any kind will do
Don't care if it's nutritious or FDA approved.
It's gonna make me spaz like bobcats on booze,
A hyperactive juice that only I can produce
To use a giant drill bore straight into hell
Releasing ancient demons from their sleep-forever spell
So they can walk upon the earth and get resituated
And hawk the diet pills MC Pee Pants has created.


ohh yeah... that's good squishy.

Holy Cow, Frampton really does come alive

broken links will not be tolerated

stupid, stupid pumpkin creatures.

I'll rip ya a new one, punk'

Okay, so this seems like it might be worth signing up for.

(IMAGE REMOVED)




I want my flanders pumpkin right now! Also a food pill and a rocket pack, dammit.

It's not you, it's me.

Dear Jon,

I don't think I've been this disappointed in you since you came back from 9/11 and blubbered for 15 minutes about how sad you were. As evidenced by your semi-sheepish recap of the events on your show last night, you also think you might not have done everything right this weekend. I feel for you, since I really like you and I love your show, but in all honesty I think you acted like a jackass last friday night. Here's why:

1) IN TRYING NOT TO MAKE LIGHT OF THE PROBLEM, YOU ABANDONED YOUR BEST WEAPON, WIT. Throwing insults around, rising to Carlson's bait like that just is beneath you. Don't outshout somebody you can outclever. You lost your cool, and cool's all you got, man.

2) YOU DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING NEW. I agree with everything you said, but didn't learn a single new piece of information, nor was I shown an existing fact from a new perspective.

3) WAY TOO SMALL A TARGET TO BE WORTH IT. Crossfire doesn't get as big an audience as Emeril live. If you're gonna risk your credibility by hitting somebody head on about their responsibility as media, why not save it till you're in a room with the real villains, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Eisner, Gerald Levin, etc.?

4) HOW COULD YOU LET HIM CALL YOU A BUTT BOY LIKE THAT AND NOT BREAK HIS NOSE? If someone put me on national television, even in front of that small an audience and called me a pussy I would not hesitate to ask that person to step outside. Your dick comment notwithstanding, he made you his bitch for a few seconds there.

5) THE BEST THING ABOUT YOU IS YOUR ABILITY TO HANDLE PEOPLE YOU DON'T AGREE WITH. On your own show I am consistently blown away by your ability to treat even those you find abhorrent with dignity and style. You never give in, but you never forget that they are your guest. They in turn rarely forget that they are your guest. You (and carlson/begala) completely ignored this and went right for vulgarity to make your points.

6) THE NET EFFECT IS FREE PUBLICITY FOR THEIR SHOW, NOT YOURS, IDIOT. You were on their show, making them the winner since now someone might tune in to see if anything like that will happen again.

7) YOU ACCUSED THEM OF BEING THEATRE WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT THAT MEANS. Of course it's theatre, it's all theatre including what you do, what they do and what goes on in the legislature. Any form of public discourse is theatre. Part of Crossfire's theatre is that they won't ever call it theatre. It would be like the Coen brothers adding a screen crawl at the end of Fargo letting us know they made it up.


Begun, this flame war has....

Everyone has AIDS! AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS!

let the TA:WP quote fest begin. 3 days and still no note from Hyperspace. I'm beginning to think they don't actually want my money, or else they somehow detected my general ambivalence towards all things Star Warsian and have decided not to let me join their little club. Either way, I'm going to Indianapolis even if I have to spend the time getting drunk and exposing myself to the folks at the local homeland security office.

Seriously, how long is a person supposed to watch Matchstick Men without figuring out the entire thing? 10 minutes? 15? Because there wasn't a single aspect of this that didn't entirely telegraph to me. Nic Cage sells the shit out of it, but come on, man, we all saw House of Games like 20 years ago for fuck sakes. Just once someone ought to write one of these con man scripts that does not end in a giant twist you can see coming a mile off.

Okay, weekend wise I haven't posted because I don't get near the computer in my home anymore, like ever. I'm sitting down at it now because Leah's asleep early for once, but otherwise fahgeddaboudit, I'm not posting except from at work, which is of course where I do all my really good quality thinking, what with fucking assholes coming in and asking me their stupid questions all day. I'm not happy, man.

Also, I'm never, NEVER going into a walmart again, ever. I thought I'd break down, see what all the fuss was about, really scope out the evil, but nothing prepares you for the sheer depressing enormity of the experience. Never mind that I saw people rooting through merchandise like actual pigs at the trough. Let's just start with the fact that every single item of footwear and clothing in that place is so buttfuck ugly I feel bad for the 5 year olds that have to look at it all day whilst employed in its manufacture. No amount of saved money can be worth all this. There's nothing like spending your saturday hoping for a jihad inspired nuclear war to put the whole worthless continent out of its misery. Starting with anyone who uses the word "fahgeddaboudit."

start sending me attachments

Hotmail finally upped my storage to 250megs! Now the real question is do I continue with the devil I know, or switch the whole sheboogle to google?

I never said actors were cattle. I said they should be treated like cattle.

Just finished watching Suspicion, with Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine. This means I have seen every feature length Alfred Hitchcock movie made between 1934 and 1964, 31 films in total. I am not including those for which Hitchcock is considered the director even though he isn't credited as such. (there are 2 of these examples, and I haven't seen either one.) For no particular reason, and in no particular order, here's my favorites, the ones I think everybody ought to see:

Rear Window

Obviously. Not only because it's easily the most tension filled, but because the sheer brilliance of every aspect of the film contributes to the startling whole. Where do you start praising this? Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly; it don't get any more movie star brilliant than this. Thelma Ritter is practically a clinic in how to be a character actress, prodding, relieving tension, lightening to make the dark seem worse than it is. The formal directorial devices, switching from the subjective to the objective, hell even the photograph Scotty was supposedly taking at the time of the accident are all brilliant. I have yet to meet anyone who does not fall under the spell of this film even if they don't immediately get all the slight of hand going on underneath the surface. After at least 10 viewings it still doesn't fail to make me laugh, or make me quake at the menace of Raymond Burr's footsteps in that hallway.

Shadow of a Doubt

Not only does Hitchcock invent the serial killer genre, he makes the best doppelganger statement and has characters comment on the genre at the same time. For lovers of all things symbolic the film never stops giving up the goods, plus it's funny and terrifying in all the right places. Probably the first "Film Blanc" where broad daylight carries just as much menace as shadowy night.

North by Northwest

Duh. more fun than a dozen James Bond films put together, this is the wrong man globetrotting action thriller that tops them all. Hitchcock not only invented this type of film, he's parctically the only practitioner of it. Whenever critics throw that "Hitchcockian" tag around this is definitely not what they mean, since nobody ever seems to get that the brilliance of this is the effortless balance between taut and charming, often within the same scene.

Rope

I'm a sucker for the most formally experimental piece in the canon. Designed to force the longest takes possible, Rope takes place in one apartment, over one afternoon/evening and contains only nine takes, sewn together by seamless transitions that make it appear to be one long cut. It's also blackly comedic and quite engaging as a look at the thrill kill phenomenon of Leopold and Loeb. It's also Hitchcocks first and most audacious use of colour, with a real time sunset occuring out the bay window in the background of every shot.

Young and Innocent

The best of the british work combines lots of themes that show up later, and also contains my single favorite individual shot, a sweeping crane over a busy ballroom that ties together all the dramatic momentum in one (literal) fell swoop. Foreshadows North By Northwest in its cross country chase and innocent man falsely accused. Charming and effortlessly brilliant. Also has some of the funniest and most self conscious model work I've ever seen.


There are lots more I like lots and lots; Strangers on a Train, Lifeboat, Foreign Correspondent, Rebecca, The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Notorious. There's also three I definitely don't like, Mr & Mrs. Smith, a lifeless and forced screwball comedy directed with none of the visual wit one usually associates with Hitchcock, The Paradine Case, a bland courtroom drama whose storytelling is as stilted as Greg Pecks acting, and Vertigo, a movie which, frankly, bores me. I am of course completely alone in hating Vertigo. Everybody else hails it as an obsessive masterpiece, but its repetitive structure leaves me flat and quite frankly I got what he was going for the first time.

That other name's kind of, i don't know...unclear?

Matt and Kate (see the links section) are referring to me by my de facto handle, MattVideo. This is because I am a big fat whiner, so homophobic in my sense of self that I have not been able to brook being called "Matty" since I was 8 years old. That was when I wrote a letter to a city official regarding a traffic light suggestion and they wrote back to me assuming I was a girl. Even though I signed the letter "Matti Price" they wrote back to "Ms. Matty Price." I guess in addition to presuming my gender they thought they'd go right ahead and correct the spelling of my own damn name. Scarred for life.

We are set for Celebration III, the giant american Star Wars convention next spring. I'm gonna need costume suggestions, unless I go ahead and Jabba myself up between now and then. Yup, I figure with a little effort and planning I can hit 400 pounds by New Years, and the big sawbuck should follow soon after. Are you gonna finish that ham the size of a rugby ball?

next i'm gonna learn spanish!

Hey, check it out, my second mod to the coding of the blog. That's right, I added a link section! bow to the awesomeness of my coding ability (or rather my searching the support section and cutting and pasting ability.)

sure, it's legal tender.....IN PRISON!!

The fine folks that brought you the commemorative ground zero silver dollar are now also the ones making a delicious Harry Potter coin, which they say is legal tender (they neglect to mention which country would honor it, but a close examination reveals it's the Isle of Man, in case you happen to be going there and need to change any money.)

Hey - babies are like, hard fucking work, man.

I love Max, and no matter what my current mood is about whatever he's doing I never stop completely digging him on the most basic of levels. I think most parents feel that way about their kids, and that's pretty much how we'e programmed to feel on a biological/evolutionary level. So what's with all the parents killing their children lately?

This week alone someone went out dancing for 72 hours while their baby suffocated, a kid fell out of a 7h floor window that didn't have a screen on it, and now a woman beat her daughter to death. What the fuck is up? Are we reporting on it more? (Have you noticed you haven't heard about any truck tires coming off on the 401 lately? funny, that was happening every day last summer) Is it happening more? Is it time to take a serious look at licensing new parents?

The parental license is something that keeps coming up in discussions whenever something like this happens. The problem is, you need a license for most stuff that involves risk in society. Drive a car, fly a plane, own a gun, have a dog, fer crissakes. You need a license for a DOG, but not a baby. WTF is that? Okay, so, how do you actually, you know, design a license like that?

I'm not saying that this is necessarily a great idea, either (Orwellian, anyone?) but it makes for the interesting theoretical discussion, now don't it. Chime in with your comments below. What would such a license require of the licensee? When would it be applied for, at conception or birth, or 3 months after to allow for post-partum? What are the ramifications for personal privacy and the Canadian Charter of Human Rights?

I would so call him Darth

A while back Jason had a close call with Ani, but if it happens again he should know what to do. This way, Ani can live forever.

Shhh. You had me at dicks fuck assholes.

Saw Team America: World Police last night. Max is at the cottage with the inlaws, and we have a weekend to ourselves. I'm not gonna review this, since any review is impossible without giving away at least some of the surprise of watching this cold. Do yourselves a favor; don't read any kind of descriptions or reviews, just see this thing before someone ruins it by telling you their favorite parts. Not knowing how the jokes were going to come was definitely a plus, and I will leave you by saying there is no way to like this movie and then not buy it on DVD. Funnier than SP:B,L&U, I throw down the comedy gauntlet at the feet of the masters.

Also hooked an XBox up to the high def TV last night, that shit truly is a hoot, although the weird XBox cable doesn't separate audio from video, making it kind of impossible to hook the components in the back of the tv and put the sound through the receiver. That's m-soft for ya, thinking like a computer company instead of what they are with XBox, a personal electronics manufacturer. Still, lovely jubbly in 480p. Gotsta rent some actual high def games for the next time, but man, the new star wars was damned impressive. Halo 2 oughta rock large next month.

my money's on Dangermouse (II)

So on with the new shows of 2004.

Desperate Housewives: It starts off good, like a female American Beauty, and then you quickly realize that it actually might be a Female american beauty, and then you just don't care. Why did Mary Alice die? I'm not sure I care that much, and I really think the juggling of small drama with big melodrama just doesn't come off for me.

Life As We Know It: Critics have given this one a pretty solid pass, but sorry, this just don't make it for me, at least so far. The pilot seems to have discovered one big truth, that teen guys think about sex. Then they surrounded it with enough hokey TV world nonsense that I couldn't keep a straight face.

The brilliant thing about My So Called Life, the show this show wants to be, is that it didn't either underplay or overplay the high school world. It nailed it perfectly, the hallway culture, the classes, everything.

LAWKI doesn't come close (how many giant carnivals did your high school organize?) and at about show four, when they drop the "talking to the camera" thing, this will be just another boring dramedy that will go the way of american dreams or now and again.

Corner Gas (season 2): Just as fun and smart as last year, next to the simpsons the only show I must watch, not because it will be brilliant but because it'll never be less than totally enjoyable.

If it's so great, howcum yer scratchin' yer tea bag like every ten seconds?

I showed Max Star Wars tonight, after we got home from the annual Thanksgiving tea at his school. I talked to an actress (one I had a major crush on whilst in my younger days) and had a parenting/home schooling conversation with a blues guitarist, which was enlightening and a bit odd. Apparently I need to start empowering Max to become my parent, or someting.

So we get home, and we're on the couch watching R2 and Threepio get in that escape pod and ditch the ship, and Max turns to me and just says "Darth Vader is Luke's father, right?" Okay, so Max had not even heard of Star Wars before today to the best of my knowledge and he intuitively grasped something I could not accept even after I saw The Empire Strikes Back for the first time (I genuinely thought Vader was just trying to trick Luke so he could get him.) I quizzed him a little bit, but he swears no one told him, so I just have to accept that in addition to being hilarious and handsome as the day is long, Max is also psychic. Please son, just wish it away to the cornfield.

Rescue me is getting really, really good (see above.)

Gonna check out Life As We Know It tonight, plus I am officially cancelling future PVR'ing (PVRage? PVRness? PVaRt?) of Desperate Housewives, due to the fact that I do not care that much about the big secret, whatever it is that Sue-Ellen Mishke is hiding.

Who's the best pilot you ever saw?

Gordo Cooper died today.




He was the fourth Mercury program astronaut to pass away, and the first man to spend so much time in space that he actually fell asleep up there. He's also part of the last group of Americans in history (the Mercury Seven) I can think of as unqualifiedly heroic. With all the news about the Ansari X prize, and the real possibility that Leah and I, or at the very least Max might someday get into space I have been thinking about space travel alot lately. Gordo Cooper seems like the first guy to want to go to space not just for fame and achievement, but simply because of how cool it must have been to do so. Goodnight, Gordo.

I am good at Risk

The post film fest cottage weekend has come and gone, with great success. I rediscovered that cool mock trifle my mother makes, and mmm boy, that's good bison. Here's the recipe, if you can call it that:

A large bowl
Strawberries (2 quarts), washed, trimmed and halved
Plain digestive bisuits (about 1 package worth)
Nutriwhip (500 mls unwhipped)

Make this at least six hours before you intend to serve it, the night before is preferable. You need to use Nutriwhip because real whipped cream will separate if it sits that long.

Prep:
Put the bowl and beaters from the mixer in the freezer for 1/2 hour before whipping the nutriwhip. Use the time to clean and halve the strawberries. Whip the Nutriwhip. open the package of cookies.

Assembly:

Put a thin layer of Nutriwhip in the bottom of the bowl. Cover with a layer of cookies. Make sure to use broken cookie pieces to fill in all the nooks and crannies on every cookie layer. Put more Nutriwhip, about 1/4 of total. smush about 1/3 of the berries in a layer into the nutriwhip. cookie layer on top, then nutriwhip, then berries, then cookies, then nutriwhip, then remaining berries, then a final cookie layer and then the remaining nutriwhip. You can decorate the top with some extra whole strawberries, or some cocoa, or some cinnamon, or whatever. Chill, covered in the fridge. Serves many, and makes a fab bring with for parties.

man on fire!

This is excellent news. Thanks, Magnolia Pictures! (where if it's a good picture, it's a Magnolia?!?)

please don't put that there

I went back for a follow up sleep study* last night. Boy, that's good sleep. My favorite part was driving home with what looked like animal sperm on my chin and in my hair. I kept driving just like, 5 k too fast, hoping the cops would pull me over and arrest me. The sleep techs got my CPAP machine cranked up to around 14, which pretty much makes it feel like someone is blowing up a balloon from inside my own mouth. Very relaxing.



*What is a sleep study?A sleep study or polysomnogram (PSG) is a test that examines a person's sleeping behavior. It is an all-night procedure where a professional PSG technologist applies several electrodes to your scalp, chin, chest and legs to monitor your brain waves, heart activity and body movements during sleep. An elastic belt is placed around your abdomen in order to record respirations. Two thin wires are placed near your nose and mouth to record air flow during breathing. Finally, a small device is placed on your finger to measure your oxygen level.