Matthew's Somewhat Interesting Life

Hermestra is my Tiger Daemon

2007-04-25T15:26:00.000-04:00

by S. Morgenstern...

2007-03-17T10:27:00.000-04:00

In 1984, I was in my first year of High School, and in the fall of that year Saturday Night Live busted out a new cast. As far as I can tell this was the first year I really watched a whole season of SNL, a show I had grazed on from time to time. I know that I had zero memory of what most people at the time still thought of as Saturday Night Live. That is, Belushi-Aykroyd-Murray, and to some extent, Chase. So when I was able to stay up late, and the opening of the show got some snazzy 2d composited graphics, I started tuning in. Billy Crystal and Chris Guest pretty much set my adult comic sensibilities that year. There were others on the show, most notably Marty Short in the second half of the year when he brought the best of his SCTV legacy with him. But Crystal and Guest jelled everything together for me. They set up everything in me that I think is truly, rolling around funny. They were peaking, and I was 13, it's a potent combination.

The fun could have stopped there, of course. But then I got hold of Spinal Tap. And then, The Princess Bride happened.

The Princess Bride is the cinematic experience for me. I saw it 6 times in theatres, more importantly, I saw it 4 times in the first 2 weeks. It combined perfectly the deep comedy that SNL had been giving me with that "tingly" chill thing I had gotten from some of the fantasy stuff I loved (the Hobbit cartoon comes to mind). Even though 20 years on it's been downgraded to kids film by most, The Princess Bride is an achievement. It is both archly comic and deeply emotional, often in the same scene, often in the same performance. It is endlessly quotable and enjoyable. It is the standard by which I judge all similar work by.

This same loose group, Crystal, Guest, Rob Reiner, Bruno Kirby and others also defined some other genres along the way. Is there a better mid-life movie than City Slickers? A better modern rom-com than When Harry Met Sally? A better pure comedy than Waiting for Guffman?

Most of what's on TV and in movies these days descends from this stuff, too. The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm owe everything to Chris Guest. Miramax and the Weinstein brothers wouldn't be anything at all if When Harry Met Sally hadn't laid out the blueprint they successfully mined for years. All right, we could have had a better crop of mid-life stuff, but that doesn't take away from how great city slickers is by a long shot.

Which brings me to this:

It's the first trailer for stardust

Yeah, I know. The Princess Bride has a legacy, too, now.

Road safety that does NOT work here.

2007-01-22T23:41:00.001-05:00

dammit.

2006-11-09T14:18:00.000-05:00

Here's whats happenin', in visual form:

This is Max, about a week before hallowe'en, experimenting with a whole "zippy the pin head" costume idea.

Here's most of my costume, the porniest seventies moustache I could muster, for authenticity in my Star Trek get up.

This is a couple of nice shots from our day at the Royal Winter Fair.

Oh, and here's what the car looked like after the accident when I visited it at the impound yard.

pianist envy

2006-10-22T23:03:00.000-04:00

Okay.... so one thing I actually fully intended to blog about a couple of weeks ago when we were out apple picking was this: Pingle's Farm, where we went to pick the apples, has some seriously weird-ass imagery going on. Seriously. Weird-assed. Shit. Man.

Check this out:

Am I wrong, or is that a giant vulva those kids are climbing in and out of?

That is the entrance/exit to one of those inflatable bouncy-room injury factory type things. Kids both shimmying into that thing and exiting it face first made for one of the most enjoyably bizarre sights I've seen in a while.

Then we found a giant checkers game with man sized checker pieces. Here's what they looked like:

What the hell are they putting in those pies, anyways? Has no one noticed the extreme sexualization of these children's objects?

Not that I'm objecting. I think we need to expose the inherent sexuality of childhood more. It's just rarely on such unambiguous display.

Quick, Cover The Delorean!

2006-10-16T23:34:00.000-04:00

Max is now completely into Back to the Future. We watched part one about a month ago. Since then he's seen one of the three movies at least once every day. We ordered a Delorean scale model. Max sleeps with it.

The thing is that from day one, he had no trouble with keeping track of the implications of the time travel. He thinks fourth dimensionally as well as anyone I've ever met. He likes all three movies, although he has spent significantly more time on part 3, which after all has guns and exploding trains in it. He's warming up to part 2 slowly, which is fitting given the darker nature of it. But what's most gratifying about this for me is that these movies, which I have said numerous times represent for me the pinnacle of big budget summer moviemaking are now just as special to him.

The toy is incredibly detailed. Max specifically did not want a Mr. Fusion model, so we went with the classic part 1 incarnation (you can get a car for each of the three movies). There is a tiny little set of time circuits inside there, along with a flux capacitor and the little digital speed gauge. As you can see, the gullwing doors are fully functional. There's even a detachable "lightning hook" for simulating the end of the movie. Max is busy making plans to construct his own Hill Valley, in part so he can show it to people and say: "please excuse the crudeness of this model." And in part so he can electrify the model and set the car on fire, I'm afraid.

The other thing about this is of course that the entire Back to the Future series is essentially about the past; the upshot being that we've now been able to introduce such concepts as the old west and westerns, Chuck Berry, blacksmithing, Jules Verne, and Huey Lewis and The News. All of which sticks a grin on my face about a mile wide every time I think about it.

your life does not flash in front of your eyes, mostly the inside of your car flashes in front of your eyes

2006-10-08T19:09:00.000-04:00

I totalled our car about 4 hours ago. We're fine, really. Max seems completely intact, he has a small friction burn on his neck from the seat belt. Leah has a pain in her foot, but no visible bruising and she can wiggle her toes and put weight on it. I have some shooting pain in my left arm, about a 2 on the pain scale, but I saw a paramedic and we both agreed that this is probably just a sprain from gripping the wheel too tightly during the impact.

Okay, so, as near as I can figure it here is what happened.

We were in the passing lane, on the 401 coming east back from a bucolic day of hay rides, corn labyrinths and apple picking (couldn't you just barf?). We were going with the flow of traffic, maybe 115-125 clicks when the car in front of me (yes there were at least 3 chevrons between us) suddenly swerved.

Now there was a large (about a metre long) piece of truck tire lying across the lane in front of me. I swerved, the car started to fish tail wildly, I lost complete control and hit the divider going pretty fast. At the point of impact we were turned 90 degrees to the lane just about. The airbags fired, the hood flew up and covereed the windshield, we were blind and deaf and right in the middle of oncoming traffic.

No one hit us. This is the actual miracle, since we would have been t-boned and I at the very least would have had to watch as my wife was killed or injured right in front of me. I remember that I could smell smoke, which I assumed was a fire but which occurred to me later was probably just the smell the airbags make when they explode out of their respective compartments. I got directly out of the car and got away from it. We stood on the inside shoulder, lifted Max up onto the divider and did a cursory check for injury.

The car got towed to an impound lot. I'll never see that car again, it's totalled for sure. Now I just have to wait for a cheque from the insurance and start all over again.

Some random thoughts about what was expected versus what happened. Time does indeed seem to slow down, so that every thing that happens during impact seems quite compartmentalized and distinct. You do not go into shock, or at least I didn't, but Leah got very dizzy and had to sit down until her colour returned. I did not have any problem getting right back in the car and driving again about an hour later when we had been given a rental. I did drive a little "extra careful" at first, but no fear or anxiety to speak of. I am totally exhausted now, and it's only 8 o'clock. I do not have any sense of heightened sensation, like the whole "air smells sweeter since I brushed with death" phenomenon.

So I'm home, and I'm sure I'll spend the next few weeks thinking about how I might adjust my driving habits, but other than that all this is is a bureaucratic process that will result either in being given some money, or having to pay some. On to other things.

sweet fuckin' jesus!

2006-10-05T01:11:00.000-04:00

What the fuck are you people doing with your time? Who checks an un-updated-for-four-months blog the day after they get married? Get off the internet and begin having sex already, will ya?!? Christ, do i have to do everything around here?

crank it over

2006-10-03T23:29:00.000-04:00

I was going to write a real cute little "reasons I started and subsequently stopped blogging" pieces. but really, who cares? it's not like anyone is reading this, so..... okay. This blog existed, and really still exists, as a chronicle of my life before my life now. Amazingly, begrudgingly, I fit in to my current situation. I had perhaps the worst day in a year at work today, a completely disorganized and incompetent string of events all of my making, and it was still a better day by a mile than any day at the last place.

It's just past Yom Kippur, and while it's officially the day of atonement, it's also the end of the first go round of fall jewish holidays, and so I'm thinking about it more like it's thanksgiving as well. So, here are the yin yang of me:

I'm grateful that I have probably the best boss in the world.

I'm sorry I'm spending more time daydreaming about how great it would be if I had everything I wanted. It wouldn't be great, that's for sure. Besides for all practical purposes I already have everything I wanted.

I'm grateful that max loves Back to the Future so much that we will in all likelihood be attempting to build a scale model of Hill Valley.

I'm sorry I don't get involved with school for him. Leah gets right in there, volunteers, knows when pizza day is, gets involved. Something holds me back. I'll never be the parent I want to be.

I'm grateful that I get to work with people who's company I enjoy. I like just hanging out talking to them.I picked them, and I picked great.

I'm sorry I'm not going to finish the one minute movie. But I'm not. I'm just smart enough to know in my heart that I'm no good at that. I'd love to make movies, but I self censor with the best of 'em.

I'm grateful that I can write this stuff down, send it out there, and after six months of inactivity be reasonably sure that no one will read it.

It's 4:30 am. I'm fashionably late, dude.

2006-06-05T01:02:00.000-04:00

Hello!

I have a reservation, over there, at the Buffy table. Let me know when you can seat me. Yes, 'tis true. On this past weekend, I finally got over the hump. I see what the fuss is all about. I understand the fervor, I truly do. I am on board, people. Vampire Willow, Vampire Xander, Teenage feelin' Giles making out with the buffster's mom, these things are all to the good. Truly, the only experience I've had like this has been with comic books. Let me 'splain. No, too long, let me sum up.

i) Before I even started, I had borrowed, watched, and grown to love the one and only Firefly. It is lovely, and I was in love with it. Wash became more than my fave character, as far as I could tell I am wash in many aspects. I lurved this show, and so had gained purchase in the burgeoning whedonverse. (try saying burgeoning whedonverse 5 times fast)

1) I started the Buffy about 18 months ago with Matt's season one, having been warned about the cheesy badness, and having resolved to "stick it out" because the show gets "much much better".

2) watched all of season one in about a month, and yes, it is truly with the sucking. A dopey, run of the mill, boringly choreographed action monster hootenanny, about on par with everything else I don't watch on Space. Ooh, Xander's like Chandler, only Chandler was funny. I returned season 1 to Matt, and due to an unavailablility problem, borrowed season 2 from Dave, still willing to persist because in spite of everything there were still small moments of promise amongst the dreck, and I am nothing if not persisty.

3) Serenity was having one of those fan sneak previews. I went. I went in knowing that some drastic stuff was supposed to happen. Then, for no good reason, he killed Wash. That's when the air went out of me, and I spent the last 20 minutes hoping that everyone else would die too, and thoroughly not enjoying myself. It truly didn't help when I was cheerfully informed that "that's what Joss does. He kills people you care about for no reason, so that you can really feel the randomness of the loss. death in nonsensical, random and stupid, so just get over it."

4) I resolved not to keep watching Buffy, because if he was just gonna kill people off for no reason and with absolutely no style, and this was gonna be a virtue of the piece, why spend time investing myself in a buncxh of characters whose outcome is randomly determined anyways?

5) The summer ended with much reading (His Dark Materials, indeed) and much job hunting, and then TV started again, and then the job was successfully killed, stuffed and mounted, and then with the DVD's and xmas movies and podcast and oscars and the yada yada. And season 2 of Buffy just sat quietly on my shelf, forgotten about.

6) The job got easier, more routine and more fun. TV ended for the summer. DVD's were caught up with (mostly). And I looked at my shelves, and there was Buffy, and I just thought, christ, how long am I gonna hold a grudge? I think a year's enough for anyone. And so there it went.

7) season 2, while marginally better, was still just more of the same old shit I wasn't diggin' the first time around. Episode 17 was the key, I was told, the turning point that ramps it up and spins your head around into digsville, man. So I sticks. With it. And then, you know what? Yeah, it's better. Not that much better, though. But I see what could be, and so I'm okay with keping on. The finale actually rocks, and all the more when they kill Kendra, the accent that walks like a slayer, and so I'm now officially psyched. I return season 2, grab season 3, and giddyup.

8) SEASON 3 OF BUFFY ROCKS HARD SO FAR. I am really really loving this. The last time this happened, it was comics, It was animal man, which spends about 10 issues just being a regular comic book about a guy with animal powers, and progresses into an examination of storytelling itself. Buffy is exactly like that, in a way, like a regular monthly book that juuuusst skates by for like a year, never getting good, but never bad enough to make you stop collecting, and then suddenly BAM! It's not like all that mediocre shit didn't happen, it's just that now it all means something.

So, I'm in, like I said. I'm hoping to finish to the end of season 4 by next week, so that I can have something to discuss at length when I'm making the pilgrammage to Hi Mom! in North Carolina. It's a long ride, and I'm just glad to have something hefty to chew on, fat wise.

Take stock

2006-04-19T19:52:00.000-04:00

Tuesdays. A couple of Tuesdays each month, I get up abnormally early. This week it was 5 am. Last week was even earlier, 3am.

I do this so I can go into my store and count the stuff inside it. In a normal business, you would do this maybe once or twice a year. In our business, target as it is for thieves and the like, it gets done 28 times a year. So here's what's involved:

It's 5am, or whatever. I pile into my car, half asleep, and drive as fast as I can to the nearest 24 hour Tim Hortons, whereupon I purchase an extra large double double. For those who have never had the pleasure, this is a coffee roughly the size of a regular McDonalds coke. It contains by my estimation 5 tablespoons of sugar and about a quarter cup of cream. I also get a bagel, toasted, with butter and cheddar cheese. This will be my entire sustaining nutrition until about one o'clock, when I can finally break for lunch. Then I go pick up whoever is helping me count that week. Then it's off to the store, arriving at about 6am in most cases.

Once inside, the fun begins. I go merrily around my store and count everything inside it, recording it dutifully, bar code by bar code, on a little hand held scanner type thingy. This is especially fun when you are counting something like ice cream bars or packs of trading cards. Some people, when they operate this thing, actually develop a repetitive strain type pain in their hand. I have been lucky so far, no pain, no particular discomfort. After about 2.5 straight hours of counting everything, we are done. Then I remember all the stuff I forgot to count, stuff put away in drawers, in my office, etc. Then once that stuff is all counted, I can transfer the results from the little handheld thingys into the big bad mainframe thingy.

Unless there's a problem. Which at the stage at which you are transferring, there often seems to be. The first time I did one of these, it didn't work, and we had to count everything all over again. And then a third time. And then again. After coming in at 5:30 am that day, things were still being recounted when I left, at around 3:30 pm. Apparently everything wasn't completed until 8pm that night. Oh, and did I mention that all the extra recounting was due entirely to the fact that someone had set up the little handheld scanner thingy with the wrong date in it? That's all it was, and that was enough to generate twice the work as was normal.

Once the big bad mainframe has those results, it's smooth sailing. stuff prints out, reports and such, and these are rechecked for accuracy and any obvious errors. Then I make final adjustments, and then post the final results. Then I do all the other tuesday stuff, put out all our promotional stuff for the week, hang posters, etc. Then I'm done.

Then I grab as many people as I can find, and we go out for a well deserved brunch. Then I go home and try to sleep, unsuccessfully. So I often make and eat some chicken soup, which is what the title of this post is really all about.

Happy Easter, Christians!

2006-04-16T10:48:00.000-04:00

they killed your lord
they killed him good
they made Mel Gibson happy!

they strung him up
they bled him out
they made you all get sappy!

he got back up
or so YOU say
he really was quite snappy!

they killed your lord
they killed him good
too bad this poem is crappy.

and another thing

2006-03-18T18:02:00.000-05:00

work has been such a nonstop spiral of stress and long hours, coupled with the no eating and little sleeping, that I now weigh less than 230 pounds for the first time since 2001. I know it's only temporary and that if I don't start adding more exercise to my life I won't keep it off, but damn it feels good to look in the mirror and like myself just a bit more. Amazingly, you burn a lot of calories just simply standing up and moving all day.

i have problems with my memory

2006-03-18T17:53:00.000-05:00

I went to see V For Vendetta last night. Excellent, just excellent in many ways, although I think a lot of the enjoyment stems from seeing something I really liked in book form made into a movie which seemed to capture everything I liked about it. The movie just seemed like as faithful an adaptation as it would be possible to make, every scene straight from the book.

I came home, thumbed through my copy and realized that I just don't remember the book at all. None of the scenes track from the book. Individual moments, yes, but pacing and scene length and placement have been completely reworked. I couldn't believe how much was changed structurally, and yet it all seemed completely faithful. That's how you adapt someone else's work, buddy. I'm even more impressed than I was watching it. I'm going to give it a thorough read through, then do the imax thing later this week.

Also, the one thing I definitely remembered not being adapted from the book was a scene where V lays out the basic tenets of philosophical anarchy. I remembered the scene being about a 2 to 3 page discussion. In reality, Moore devotes exactly 2 panels at the bottom of one page to it.

Whoosh

2006-02-23T23:39:00.000-05:00

My car died a premature death. We bought a new one earlier tonight. I got like $3000 off list. Here's how you do that, by the way:

1) Do all your research ahead of time, on line, consumers reports, car mags, etc. Know exactly what you want before you even test drive.

2) If you do have more than one legit pick and need to decide, drive them all in the same day, and tell the salesperson that you can't decide anything until you've driven them all.

3) Pick one. Be decisive. As long as they are all roughly in your price range, just pick one and stick with it. Go back to that dealer, unless they sucked, and then find another dealer that sells that same car.

4) Once you know you want the car, walk up to the salesperson and say "unless you can't help me, I'm buying a "_________" today."

5) Let them know exactly what options and packages you are gonna need. Let them work out the numbers. Know whether you want a loan or a lease (hint: you want a lease for a new car)

6) Take a look at the payment number. Decide how much less than that you actually want to pay (a good rule of thumb is to ask for about 10% off the price. Dealers don't usually have much more to give) Say" if you can make the payment X dollars (the 10% off rule) I will take the car right now.

7) Wait. let them think about it. Usually they will want to get the managers permission for such a big discount. They may ask you for a credit card at this point. Give it to them and say "if you can match my price, go ahead and put down a deposit. we will have a deal at that price"

8) They will NEVER match your deal. NEVER. They will however come back with something close, like maybe 7.5% off. Hem and haw, and then say that you can't swing the payment. Ask if you can meet them in the middle between 7.5% and 10%. That's like 8.5-9% off list price. They will generally agree.

On a 25,000 car, you just saved $2125 off of list.

If this doesn't work, you are in a badly run dealership. GET OUT. Any decent salesperson who hears a client say to them directly "I want to buy this car today, and I'm willing to give you a deposit provided you meet my price" is going to bend over backwards for you with their boss, because they know it's easy money for them. They don't have to spend all that time convincing you to say yes, you just said it right off the bat. It's the sure thing.

Katanga!

2006-01-30T20:38:00.000-05:00

Meet the new "dark wizard catcher" in Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix. Meet him, or prepare for the worst.

My month of tv-less-ness seems to be coming to an end; Leah has finally figured out how to deal with the cords for the new blinds, and so once the valance is hung I will be back in business. I've spent the last month watching everything on the laptop, including TV. Bah! That's no way to appreciate art. I've also managed to get completely caught up with both Lost and Veronica Mars, and I've come to the somewhat shocking conclusion that I actually like Veronica Mars more. A manageable number of characters and a no less audacious agenda have just propelled this thing into the stratosphere for me. Sure, it's a soapy concoction but holy jiminy they just keep puttin' the whammy on me week after freakin' week.

I'm also basically done with the film noir collection (about 8 more titles are on back order, and another 4 are about to be announced, bringing the grand total at this point to 91 titles!!!) having picked up everything available in a decent print right now. So it's crunch time. In the end, it's come down to two genres, both of which I have very defined interests in; Musicals and Westerns. Since Max is six (or about to be) I figured to go with the Musicals first after all. He'll like them more. Westerns will have to wait until at least 2007. Curtain Up, on with the show. Next stop, Busby Berkeley.

Stevenote '06

2006-01-11T01:12:00.000-05:00

Yes, yes, Mac enthusiasts were gathered together to see just what was in store at the big Macworld Keynote Address given as always by our hero, Steve Jobs. Honestly, is there any more fun to be had then in following a company that seems to exist only to do what it considers to be cool? I think not.

Like in other years, people's predictions surrounding what was going to happen far outweighed what actually took place. 50" Plasma TV's with intel VIIV platforms built in for seamless downloading of digital content right into the living room? Nope. iBooks that weigh less than 2 pounds and deliver better performance than a dual core G5 tower? Nope. A preview of OS X 10.5, Leopard? Nope again.

What we did get was a smokin' fast improvement on the current powerbooks (making it the fastest laptop in production, apparently) that now include an eyesight camera where the enclosure lock used to be. This is good, making a camera a standard part of every computer like a microphone and speakers have become. Of course I want one, but I am content to wait the next 2 years out until the current equipment is paid for and has outlived its usefullness.

What does interest me is the iLife upgrade, if only because Garageband has been outfitted with some kind of "podcast studio" type of functionality that would likely benefit Mamo. Sound quality, while improved, still isn't anywhere near where I'd like it to be, so I will be heading in to Long and McQuade some time next month to see what can be done about it. Plus I'd like to take a whack at adding some chapter stops, theme music, and other niceties if I can.

Our subscriber list took a hit recently, and it's just coming back around this week. The big drag down coincides with the holidays, which I guess makes sense. Thanks a lot, Jesus.

what just happened?

2006-01-08T01:13:00.000-05:00

my first post in what seems like a month, as I wait to see if Dave is actually on-line, or just xbox live on-line which makes him look all available but in fact means he's playing games and can't talk right now.

I am just a little bit drunk right now. For the first time in forever, I decided to go to a bar (Allen's) and just drink far too much. which in my case is 4 pints in 2 hours, hardly a record, but as Matt points out, I'm past the point of finding it impressive how MUCH or how FAST I can drink it. Since when is that a test?

All I know is that it actually felt pretty good to pour myself into a cab after a night of drinking and laughing, and I feel good and content and warm in the feet sitting here in bed blogging this all up. Leah and Max are away, so I'm single for 48 hours, and drunkenly happy about the whole thing.

Even if I do have to get up tomorrow and go figure out how to start a dead car by using only the telephone.

actually, for an ice floe this is really quite comfortable

2005-12-19T20:18:00.000-05:00

I just had to fill out a questionnaire online. When it came time to pick my age, I had to put myself in the "35-49" category. Ugh. My opinion is the same as someone's grandpa when it comes to filling out surveys. And just 10 days ago I was still completely relevant.

Something this powerful cannot be diluted

2005-12-19T04:27:00.000-05:00

It's almost 4:30 in the morning, and I have been awake for an hour. Which is good, because on Wednesday of this week I will need to be leaving my house by now to go to work. Every 2 weeks or so we need to be in our stores by 5:00 am, something I'm not sure I've ever done before. Should be interesting.

I've spent the last hour doing homework, something I should have been doing all weekend but couldn't bring myself to actually pick up. The last 48 hours has been entirely Kong related. Also there was some shopping, but I'm choosing not to focus on that. I've decided that I need to embrace my utter lack of clothing originality and just get with the fact that I am a TipTop Tailor kind of guy. If and when I ever have any real money to spend, I would do well to remember that and not fool myself into thinking I need to upgrade to Harry Rosen. That just gets expensive.

But back to the various simian delights. From opening The Production Diaries, something I never in a million years thought I was going to need (but I completely do) to seeing the movie for the first of what will undoubtedly be many many times, to the great birthday dinner where 3 different large parties felt the need to launch into a spontaneous happy birthday sing-off to Meredith's christmas do, Saturday was as nice a day as I have ever had to celebrate my birthday in. Once again I am ever grateful to still have so many people to celebrate it with. Wasn't I supposed to be isolated and bitter by now? What happened to that plan, dammit?

Sunday was brunched up with Leah's cousin getting engaged in front of many people who's faces I recognized and who's names always escape me. I am just no damn good with the names. What is wrong with me? (Don't answer that.) Then it was back to Kong, with the long rumoured jumbo sized mamo and a birthday present of even more Peter Jackson with the director's cut of The Frighteners.

Mamo continues to surprise me at just how much fun it is, still after 30 of these things. I think I truly have found something I would do for free; spout off on whatever takes my fancy. Then home to a simple repast of salad, cheese and bread, some dvd collection cataloguing and the aforementioned homework. I was in bed by 10:30, up again 5 hours later (something I have learned not to question is my body's ability to just wake up for no reason once in a while) and more homework at that point. I am going to spend the next hour finishing up as much reading as I can do, then drive to work and visualize myself delegating responsibly. Then maybe some lunch.

panther quick and leather tough

2005-12-06T00:33:00.000-05:00

I made myself some elk for dinner tonight. And it was good.

The great thing about having a butcher, as opposed to shopping at loblaws, is that I'm not scared to ask for advice. Things don't have to be so complicated, food wise. I love trying new stuff, and the best part is it isn't even expensive.

There's only about four basic rules for food, and after that it's just about how you combine them.

1) Always cream the butter and the sugar.
2) Sear, don't steam.
3) Don't burn the eggs.
4) Work clean.

If you can do these four things well, you can cook. period. everything else is just technique and bullshit.

120 hours

2005-11-26T22:06:00.000-05:00

Gryfe. Price. Brown. Horton. Au. Lu. Parham. Davidson. Bidiasee. Jones. Troup. Szpirglas. Brown. Brown. Gorber. Nolan. Rouillard. Dault. Keen. MacLean. Mitanidis. Gryfe. Brimblecombe. Sullivan. Campbell. Allard. McLean. Schoedsack. Cooper. O'Brien. Kong. Murti. Avis. Dawe.

2005-11-21T22:05:00.000-05:00

god lit a fire

2005-11-20T14:32:00.001-05:00

After my insane rant about the crappiness of the Harry Potter books, I took a bit of heat from some of the fans. Well, actually from one fan. I stand by my opinion, though, that while the world is good, and the characters have compelling attributes and the stories plot out nicely enough indeed, the prose is for shit.

However, given just how much I enjoyed the latest film, coupled with Matt's assertion that it wasn't a patch on the novel, and that HPATGOF represents a turning point in the series, taking it from the realm of the simple boys own adventure and turning it into something much much richer and more substantial, I have to give it all one last try.

So I'm plowing through book 3, and then it's on to the big one. And then, and definitely then I am LEAVING this shit alone if I ain't feeling it. Because no matter who says it's great, or how many of them there are, if I ain't feeling that shit after 1100 pages, then I'm just never going to be able to.

Why do frogs like pants?

2005-11-18T11:56:00.000-05:00

Because, silly, pants have flies.

Max wrote a joke, everybody! I'm givin' him extra allowance this week for it, so now's the time to hit him up for a loan if you're so inclined.

I was only off by a factor of .... well, pick a really big number.

2005-11-17T09:01:00.000-05:00

At Chris recent birthday party, I busted the old "There are more people alive right now than have ever died" saw. At the time, and for most of the past ten years since I first heard this I really believed it to be true. Because of course the population of earth right now, and even 10 years ago, is just so huge that its genuinely hard to apply any critical faculties to it at all. Six billion of anything just inherently seems like more than is rationally possible. So it's relatively easy to believe that it's so out of control that it has effectively surpassed all other human existence in recorded history. I certainly believed it. I even encouraged those at the table who were having a hard time of it (only about 20% of those present even were that skeptical) to go out and google it for themselves.

So of course upon doing just that, I have to sheepishly report that this entire idea is, as it turns out, bunkum. Check this mathematical proof at the University of Hawaii. Or, just skip down to the bottom line for the big number. As you can plainly see, Earth's total historical population is close to 100 billion people, a LOT more than the 6 that are here right now.

That's 1 person for every $80 of current United States debt. That's right, that's my new, fact checked, totally responsible weird population fact: The United States owes $80 for every man, woman and child who have ever existed on earth.

2005-11-15T22:05:00.000-05:00

I just finished making some ringtones for my new phone. I just grabbed mp3's from itunes, cut them down in garageband, exported them back to itunes, converted them back to lower bit rate mp3's, then put them on my phone using bluetooth file transfer.

I've really gotta give my powerbook a cute name or something.

I'm gonna go shave now and do a mamo.

well then, you just have to quit

2005-11-12T22:08:00.000-05:00

In 2002 I got to do something I had been itching to do for a while. I got to make some little movies. And get paid. Actually quite well. And then it all came crashing down.

My boss (actually my bosses' boss) called me over because she had seen a video I did when the group of us that were hired together graduated from training. She thought it was cute, and she asked if I could put something together for her in time for a conference she was headed for. So, of course that was great, and she asked me to quote on it, because of course this was just slightly outside of my job description of junior level call centre management. So I figured I'd ask for about $1000, which seemed about right for something that was going to require about 30 hours of work. And I put it together, and got paid and it came out pretty damn good, I thought. And it was apparently a hit at the conference, too.

And all was right with the world. And then I got a call from the director of HR. She saw the video, and she wanted me to give it to her, and also to change it a bit, and add a couple of things and tweak it for length. And I said, sure, that'll be $1000, since this was now a new project for a different department and I had done it as a private contractor and also I needed to get permission form my original client to make sure she was okay with it.

And then I got called into my original client's office (my bosses' boss, remember) and told in so many words that I had already been paid enough and I was going to do the work, for free, if I wanted to keep on-a-working there.

So I went home, and told Leah the whole story, and told her that I'd have to quit as soon as possible from the best paying job I'd ever had, one that afforded me pretty much guaranteed job security and limitless possibilities, and she didn't even bat an eye. She just said that of course I'd have to quit, and that we'd get by.

And we did, and I am so glad that I quit, but more than that I am dumbfounded by how immediately she just.... agreed with my point. Even I am not entirely sure that quitting was the right thing to do, and yet it's never been questioned even once, no matter how much money we've lost or what I've had to do since. And that more than anything is what I marvel at, ten years on.

in print

2005-11-07T09:13:00.000-05:00

In 1996 I had another in a series of supremely half baked ideas. I go to TIFF every year anyways, and so do Dave and Sunny and Joanne, and maybe we could all write reviews and a couple of articles and some sort of diary (blogs having not been invented at that point) and put together a 'zine! A zine, baby!

And then Leah said she'd help design it and do all the production. Bevause I had NO idea how much work was going to be involved. None. Whatsoever. And that year I reviewed close to 100 films, wrote 3 articles, got Dave to do the cover, got Sam to throw in a cartoon, and had the thing printed and ready to sell within about four weeks. That's 28 DAYS to write and completely design and execute a 68 page magazine. With 2 diaries running across the top and bottom of multiple pages. And photos. And word marks. And God knows what else.

And when it was done, and Leah had managed to do it all on her trusty G3 Blue & White, I started going out to various stores and getting them to sell it on consignment. The Beguiling, Hollywood Canteen and most importantly Tower Records. Tower had this skinny kid with a weird beard working the magazine section downstairs, and he agreed to take some copies for me.

I sold out about 150 copies, out of a run of 200. In all I basically broke even financially. But someone from TIFF wrote me a really nice letter saying that they had gotten ahold of the thing, and that they loved it. So I was really pretty proud of the whole thing.

And from time to time, at various TIFF midnight madnesses, or here and there around the city, I'd run into that skinny kid from Tower Records. And in time Erik and I got to be friends. And he introduced me to his friends, and those people are essentially the core group that form about 50% of my social existence these days. And I wouldn't have known a single one of them, except that Leah said she'd help me out with one of my many half baked ideas, and instead of letting it sit there half baked, she put on her asbestos underwear and baked that thing right up to full. And I'm richer for it, and I'm grateful too.

the things i've done.... you have no idea

2005-11-06T19:37:00.000-05:00

Friday marked ten years since I met my wife. I met her at a party. Well, actually she met me at a party, since I spent the entire thing coming on to someone else. I've spent the past couple of days trying to figure out exactly how to express the significance of our meeting like that, how to let her know how much I owe her. It's not easy, but I think what I'll do is put together several little instances that could have gone either way, and thanks to the best thing that ever happened to me I made the right choice every time.

Right after we met I got fired. I worked for what turned out to be a real jerk who without warning had just walked in one night around closing and relieved me of my keys to the store. I phoned Leah, crying, and let her know that I wasn't going to be working there any more. We had been going out for only about 2 months. She said later that she thought hard about leaving me that night. She didn't. She pushed me by making absolutely clear that she would leave if I didn't get another job tout de suite. She lit a fire under my ass on that front. I had just come off of six months of unemployment insurance and credit card debt when I got that job, and having lost it if I had been single I probably would have just wallowed for at least a couple of months.

It was clear that this was not going to be an option.

I wound up working at Bonanza Video, perhaps the turning point in my career. I learned more and had more fun than I have ever had in any other job. I attained minor neighborhood celebrity status, got a regular TV gig, got into ACTRA, and talked movies with David Cronenberg amongst others. I never would have pushed so hard, and frankly that was just the first of about a hundred times that Leah's design skills made my resumé stand out enough to get the job in the first place.

Next I'll explain how I couldn't have become a magazine editor without her.

Oh, he'll come out. I told him I'd eat his dog if he didn't.

2005-11-02T09:19:00.000-05:00

I've been working on my version of the Aristocrats, it's almost ready for a try out. At first I was gonna shy away from going too sexual with it, on the assumption that it had all been done. But then after watching A Dirty Shame last week I realized that there was more I could be doing. I'm going to put it on video and throw up a link here if I get brave enough. Or if I'm forced to do it. Or if I have a MASSIVE lapse in judgement. We'll see, anything's possible.

We did a really stupendously enjoyable Mamo! yesterday evening, and then I got so carried away with it I posted it to the site myself, even though it was Matt's turn this time. He'll get the next two. Plus maybe some cake, or at least a cookie for his trouble.

Here's a picture of Vampire Max fueling up before the big night on Monday. Sure, that's a pizza in his hand, but it's a PIZZA COVERED IN BLOOD!!!!

Daily Circulation: 58

2005-10-31T22:31:00.000-05:00

I'm going in tomorrow to give my notice. That's right, if my boss reads my blog he'll finally know something ahead of time. I am leaving, for greener pastures. But I seriously doubt he's readin' my blog.

In any case my ship has come in just a little bit, and I'm taking more money and more freedom and more responsibility starting in two or three weeks. I'll be back in home video, where I belong thank you very much. And did I mention more money? Plus god knows how much I'll save by buying my dvd's wholesale. That alone is probably worth more than the health insurance.

I'm pretty determined to make this work, too. From all indications I am getting one hell of a great boss, a smart, competent, funny woman who seems like she is on exactly the same wavelength as me. My interview last week ranks as one of the best first meetings I have ever had with anyone. (I hope she reads this, I'm really laying it on thick here.) I am really jazzed about being able to hire and fire, and I'm looking forward to being able to basically pick the people that I want to work with, something I've never been able to do. I am going out tomorrow to get my hands on as many books about interviewing and getting the right people as I can find.

The best part is I went out and did this completely on my own with no outside pressure at all. My job was totally secure. I wasn't in dire need of more money. I didn't have a huge moral quandary at work. I just knew I needed something better and I went out and found it.

Yay me!

Set your phasers on stun

2005-10-28T09:26:00.000-04:00

George Takei came out of the closet today. That's right, Sulu is Gay. Not as gay as that black/white Frank Gorshin planet, not as gay as Wesley Crusher, but as gay as he wants to be all the same. No, but seriously folks, good on him. Way to hang out the big matzoh ball, Georgie boy. That sound you hear is hundreds of hyper-insecure 54 year olds tearing his poster off the walls of their parents basement.

"If Sulu's gay, and I love Sulu, does that mean I'm gay?!?"

Hands up if you want Paramount to produce a sitcom called "I Love Sulu."

I for one welcome our Google overlords

2005-10-27T17:40:00.000-04:00

A brave new world, indeed.

I thought Hootkins was dead months ago.

2005-10-26T11:46:00.000-04:00

We spent last night curled up on the couch watching A Dirty Shame on dvd. It's nice when a great festival movie actually holds up out in the real world. Best of all was kind of monitoring the reaction beside me on the couch, as it went from "this is stupid" to "yeah, but really funny" to "no, actually it's kind of serious in its own goofy way". Exactly the reaction I had to it a year ago, and why it wound up on my top ten for 2004. Not for everybody (I wouldn't recommend it to my parents, for example) but raunchy and sweet and probably a good idea for anybody starting to be engaged by the puberty monster.

Things have been churning away out in the real world for a while as well. I finally got to see Max in full on Karate action at his class. Leah points out, quite correctly, that just like her ballroom dancing experience he's got a little problem with remembering the "steps." Still, how cute is it to watch 20 five and six year olds all punch and kick the air in unison? Pretty damned cute, indeed.

I also took him out to see Body Worlds at the science centre. The actual exhibit couldn't be more fantastic, I highly recommend. Also, Max got bored and came out with his best line since "you're not talking". After asking to leave for the 10th time, he finally looked at me and said "Daddy, you're like Godzilla. You never leave!" No I don't know what it means either, and I'm also not sure Max knows who Godzilla is, but come on... That's awesome all the same.

I'm about a week away from announcing a fairly life altering decision... but I can't until it's for sure (background checks are being conducted as we speak). I can't wait to make it all public. It's weird when you know your life will change, that you'll be leaving some people behind and having to forge all new friendships. That you'll have to start thinking about things in a much more intelligent way again. I'm pushing myself out of my comfort zone, and it really feels good to do that.

That is the steak.

2005-10-12T12:34:00.000-04:00

The lost parade of ancillary silly nonsense continues. If Lindelof et al spent half the time writing the show that they are apparently spending screwing around with fake websites we might already know something more than we do. There are now even more loose plot threads dangling than there were when the season began. Hanso? Skinner? A race around the world? The tail section?

Why not start here. Keep zooming out, noticing the pathway between continents. It helps to hum the creepy lost music in your head, as Tederick suggests. At least we ought to know where to start looking for edu-tourism packages.

Then check this out. The original fake site gave up some pretty cool clues. Feel free to poke around, there's lots of pretty crazy hidden stuff here. Keep your eye open for that marked up page of script.

Then zip on over to here. What seems like an official lost site does have one neat trick. Click on the barcode at the bottom and type "theislandiswaiting" into the password field. Up pops another script page, this time with some pretty damn spoilery stuff about the true nature of things.

Hell, just put http://www.theislandiswaiting.com into your browser and you'll see even more fun. I have no idea what happens if you find all the numbers, or if anything happens. Let me know.

Curious about the Dharma Initiative? There's always this here, whilst not informative at least it has the air of official timewasting coming off of it. By the way the weird url comes from the numbers on the cans in Desmond's store room.

That's not even the half of it yet. In what is perhaps the biggest wank fest of all, the Hanso Foundation is out there, too. Check out their entirely fake website and get a load of the crazy projects they've got on the go, projects that serve only to complicate and confuse the possiblities even more than they are already. Plus you can click on the dharma initiative link and see the training video again!

Then really screw your brain down tight by going up to the address line in your browser and adding an s to the http part (https://thehansofoundation.org.)

Take what you find there and do what you think is best with it. What the hell do you make of that?!? I checked around, and at least part of what you're hearing is morse code. For what, you may ask? I'll leave it to you to find that out for yourselves. There's gotta be some mystery to this thing.

For even more (there's more?) goofy lost shit, there's always the blog:

http://flight815.blogspot.com

Now that's dedication.

catch up

2005-10-02T00:51:00.000-04:00

Max started Karate this week. When I asked him to show me, he came up with a perfect looking punch, delivered with a lot of power for his small frame. He measured his stance, kept his fist tight and his arm came out nice and straight. If he sticks with it for a while, we've promised to buy him his own Gi. He also knows that karate is only for self defense, although he has no idea what self defense might actually be.

Starting next Friday, Canadians will finally be able to see Craft Corner Deathmatch, perhaps the greatest reality TV achievement in the history of the world. HGTV, Friday nights. Its host has already left the show to become the latest addition to the cast of the daily show, so I suppose that means there won't be any more craft corner deathmatches, but at least we can take the time to enjoy the precious few episodes we've got. If it wasn't clear from the name, CCD is a contest style reality show, in which 2 budding martha stewarts compete head to head in various craft based challenges. All in an atmosphere that is somewhere between Iron Chef and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. The judges then pick a winner, who moves on to the bonus round, where that lucky person dukes it out with (and I wish I had thought of this first) the "craft lady of steel". Seriously, it's like crack mixed with chocolate.

The new TV season has otherwise been fairly hit and miss. I've added about 4 shows, Prison Break (enjoyable junk food), Kitchen Confidential, My Name is Earl, and Criminal Minds. I left behind Amazing Race & Numbers, a show which devolved into routine so fast it was scary. I'm hooked on Veronica Mars and Rescue Me. I'm hopeful that Lost will finally deliver a major chunk of the goods next week. I'm dangerously close to giving up entirely on The Simpsons, something that I didn't think was possible. House put together its first truly awful episode ever last week, a maudlin, boring example of a show that betrayed everything it used to be about. Let's hope it was just a one off anomaly.

I just realized that by February, I'll be finished collecting Film Noir for the most part. I'll have to pick something else to concentrate on after that. Westerns? Musicals? 70's Thrillers? Silents? 80's Teen Comedies? The choices are truly overwhelming. Maybe I'll just pick up every single criterion collection title. I can afford to get about 3 per month, so I should be finished by approximately 2013.

you won't hear from me

2005-09-08T17:36:00.000-04:00

It's here again, 10 days of delicious new filmmaking goodness from around the world. I can't wait to get my ass handed to me with the sheer delight of it all. Some observations:

Tonight I see 2 movies that both have the word bang in the title. The President's Last Bang is followed by Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

In the space of 2 days later in the week, I'll attend Black Bull, A Cock and Bull Story, and The Matador.

I'm seeing 7 Swords, Twelve and Holding, Banlieue 13 & 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous

I'm not going to blog it up, sleep's way too important. I will be trying to steal a few scant minutes for podcasting here and there, so keep your eye on the Mamo over at the right.

See you at the movies.

I am an inkwell hair dipping motherfucker, and it's time I went Anne of Green Gables on your ass.

2005-09-02T10:51:00.000-04:00

I've been back a week, and made a very smooth transition between jet lag and ongoing fatigue. Everywhere I look, the city seems smaller, more pedestrian, more drab. This ain't Barcelona, I'll tell you that. We got most of our pictures back, and I'm starting to organize a slideshow. I'll set it up on flickr, if I have the energy.

I'm supposed to Mamo it up after work today, and I'm just itchy about the whole thing. We got our very first honest to god fan mail this week, we're planning to publicize ourselves at the fest, and I'm still trying to figure how I'll get time to record some shows in the midst of the insane schedule I seem to have planned out for myself.

I'm old, by the way. For the first time since 1992 (the year of my festival newby-dom when I didn't know down from up,) I won't be at the last midnight madness screening, closing out the fest like a true movie maniac. This year has felt entirely weird, with nothing really grabbing me and taking hold in the schedule, no absolute must sees. Just lots and lots of what looks to be pretty good, coupled with the usual grab bag of compromises and calculated risks. I'm sure we're gonna discuss it at length in the podcast.

This years closing midnight is Hostel, which looks to be a thoroughly repugnant exercise in Miike style gory nonsense. No thanks. Instead I'll be ending things off with Vincent Ward's River Queen, or if I'm screwed on my pic selection, the gay hip hop documentary. By the way, I'm officially calling foul on calling documentaries "Docs". If you're doing that on a regular basis, stop it, gaylord.

I'll know more about my final picks as soon as they email me with them (that's new!) and I'll post them accordingly. Here's a picture of Max to freak you out. It's a self portrait.

Let's hear it for cheap applause

2005-08-27T14:51:00.000-04:00

Saturday night (thank gods they put the day of the week on the floor of the elevators, I'd be lost without that) and I'm sitting alone in what passes for the internet café around here. It's our second sea day out of the last three. After I signed off last, I did most of what I set out to do.

I did read most of His Dark Materials. I'm about half way through book three. Enjoying the series immensely. And Matt's right, he is the one to direct it. If there's any justice in the universe he'll do it too.

Yesterday was Naples. Up early, we piled into a tour bus and made our way 85% of the way up Vesuvius. The other 15% was on foot. A killer climb, 15 minutes of hard going that felt like it was straight up. Whatever didn't kill me made me stronger, though, and the view from the top was well worth the climb. We walked around like tourists, took lots of pix, and then came back down.

Then there was the (seemingly) obligatory stop at a local cameo factory (for which I'm sure a kickback was involved) and after wasting a half hour of our time looking at some particularly ugly examples of the art form, we were off again.

Pompeii was our fourth set of ruins this trip, and the greek and the roman are starting to run together a little bit. It definitely was the largest settlement we've seen, and the only one that had preserved the decoration as well as the walls. Interesting, but I think I've had enough for now. I'm ruined for ruins, it seems.

After that we grabbed Max and headed into Naples to try to seek out the elusive Pizza we had heard so much about. It turned out to be harder to find then we thought, since all the restos had closed up after lunch and weren't opening again until dinner. We had given up completely and were headed back to the ship when we finally spotted a place that looked both authentically neapolitan, and also open for business. Great, fresh, wood fired and with a cold beer the perfect snack. An excellent final meal, and a fitting capper to the trip, too.

I spent half of today reading, and the other half packing. In a few hours I'll go to sleep and then spend about 15 hours in various airports, planes, buses and taxis until I am home again safe in my own bed. Until then I'm gonna finish The Amber Spyglass, because I'd like to find out how the world ends.

One more thing, just an observation I had today that I thought summed up my ambivalence towards the whole cruise ship thing nicely. The overall metaphor for this kind of a trip is this:

It's like living at the mall.

Everything's nice, everyone's friendly, everybody's trying real hard, but in the end it's just the mall, a world of artifice and plastic experience. Traveling by train and plane and staying in hotels might be less convenient, but it's also just the tiniest bit more real. And I can't recall the last restaurant I was in where the staff lined up to receive a round of congratulatory applause, but on the cruise they've managed it the last 3 nights in a row.

I'll be glad to be home.

It's always 9:15 when I look up

2005-08-27T03:16:00.000-04:00

I come in
A dark room, but busy as my eyes adjust
I am finding my wary way

Just beyond my reach I see what I will see soon
That there is a world here; I move inwards, I am of the world I see
There is still darkness
I do not have to feel my way as cautiously as before

I can walk now. I am seeing.
I can begin to anticipate

I run, faster, almost tripping almost falling almost feeling
Being

The world has order as the world slips past
As it fades I travel with the people I have met
I feel them beside me

The end comes faster now
The bottom part of the slide until it stages me and I am slowing
And landing on an ending that I gently defend as best.

Athens & Santorini

2005-08-24T11:10:00.000-04:00

Well!
It's been a hell of a couple of days. Got up later than we wanted on Tuesday and after sending Max off for the day we took ourselves into Athens to gawk like the tourists we are at the Parthenon. Some points:

1) Don't go into Athens in August and forget to take your sunscreen and your sunglasses. Walking around the Parthenon in 110 degree heat for 90 minutes is pretty tiring on the system.

2) The thing I had no idea about; when they said they were restoring the site, I sort of thought they meant they were cleaning it, putting up new plaques, etc. Nope. They're pulling the damn thing down and completely reassembling it from scratch, cutting new marble as needed and replacing the iron supports with all new titanium ones. We got to see them cut the marble to match a plaster cast they had made on a giant drill that resembled nothing so much as an 8 ton key cutter.

3) Another day, another insane meal. Taverna Psaka, with a view that overlooked a trellis of flowers and then the streets of the city. Fresh baked rolls piping hot, with a goat cheese and herb spread. Eggplant keftedes with bacon. Greek salad with a piece of feta the size of a slice of toast. Grilled calamari that filled the plate. Free watermelon and honeydew for dessert. Fucking brilliant.

4) Athens itself, once you are just downtown and out of the Parthenon area, is really nothing special. It's just another city. The big open squares, Syntagma and The Plaka, are plain compared to Barcelona and Rome. Had I only come here and nowhere else, I might have been much more impressed.

This was the only day I got truly sunburned and my foot blistered, but I was still a happy but exhausted camper by the end.

Today was our most expensive day, we booked an exclusive tour of Santorini, going by coach to 2 small villages, plus a winery tour and tasting, and a boat tour around the volcano. It finished up with the most elaborate greek meal of them all. The best food I've had anywhere has been in Greece, and that's saying something. Today was:

Ouzo
crackers spread with fava bean mash, hummos, tsatziki and olive tapenade
Greek Salad
Caesar Salad
Fresh Bread
Wine
Charcoal grilled santorini white eggplant and portobello mushroom caps
Grilled king prawns in butter sauce
Grilled salmon in dill sauce, served with rice and steamed vegetables
pistachio baklava and cappucinos

All while perched under a canopy, overlooking the caldera of the volcano as we were buffeted by gentle breezes.

The villages are a photo op at every turn, and we both picked up some small jewelry before taking the cable car ride back down the cliff to the port. I'm about to go enjoy my dinner, and then tomorrow I'll be at sea for the day, trying to read all of the His Dark Materials series in one day.

Then it's on to Naples. I'll check in again after climbing to the top of Vesuvius, wandering through Pompeii, and hopefully getting into Naples to check out the birthplace of the Pizza.

Antiquity, Haxan and dinner went a head

2005-08-22T14:34:00.000-04:00

Hi there!

It's Monday night, and the ship finally has reliable internet again, so I'll catch you up.

After I blogged, I did in fact complete an intercontinental podcast. I then tried to post it, unsuccessfully, to my idisk. So you'll have to wait a while to listen to it. We headed back to the boat right after that.

The next day was spent at sea, as we travelled down the Italian coast, through the Straits of Messina, and on towards Mykonos. I spent the first half of the day eating, playing some minigolf in a gale force wind (this is something everyone should do!) and looking for a single quiet outdoor place to read my books. About 3pm I found it. We went to pick Max up that night from the kids program. He wasn't there, because he wet himself in all the excitement and had to be removed. This was his one chance, if it happens again he can't come back and we are kind of screwed for the rest of the trip for babysitting. (This is truly a one-off thing. He NEVER has accidents, so I'm not that worried.)

Then on Sunday we were in Mykonos. We took the excursion to Delos, to walk amongst the ruins. Delos is one of two examples of ancient greek culture unearthed intact, and we had an excellent guide. Pictures to come when we get back. Then it was back to Mykonos for what can only be described as one of the best meals I have ever eaten. Nikos Taverna served me a fish plate that tasted like the sea. 66% of my meal still had the head on it! A fresh whole fish (I don't know what kind) charcoal grilled in some olive oil, a GIGANTIC king prawn done the same way, and about a pound of the best calamari rings I have ever had. Plus of course fries and rice. And the best spanikopita I've ever had. And the best Saganaki I've ever had. And a fresh baked loaf of dark dark whole grain bread that I'd willingly kill a man for.

Opa!

Then we just had time to clown around with the very tame and people friendly pelicans (again, pix to follow) and then it was back to the boat. After a day walking around ruins in the hot sun, I happily collapsed into bed.

We were up again at 6:30 this morning, After a quick breakfast we headed into Kusadasi, Turkey for our second set of ruins and -

I have to pause here to just make an observation. I'm writing this at the terminals near the main lobby of the ship. They've switched the live music currently pounding in my brain from horrible lounge crap to even more horrible bouzouki crap. My question is this: are there any greek songs that don't start slowly and just build and build? because I've heard like 10 of these numbers now, and it's always the same bloody thing.

anyhoo, we took a bus to a guided tour of Ephesus, a completely preserved ancient roman city of about 250,000 people at its height. Although our guide was slightly less personable, the city itself was remarkably magnificent.

meanwhile Max and sone of the others went to the turkish railway museum, where Max practiced his photography. He's developed quite an eye, and some of his shots are better than mine or leah's.

Then we just hung out on the boat for the rest of the day, Leah and I got massages, and that brings us to now. We're in athens tomorrow at 7 am, so I've left another 6am wakeup call. I'm going to have lunch near the athens market, so I'll be back tomorrow night or the next with more gastronomic tales to tell.

As far down as I wanted to go, and then some

2005-08-19T09:29:00.000-04:00

I'm in an internet café in Rome, taking a break while I wait for Matt to record a podcast over skype. I don't want to talk about yesterday. That is out. O U T. But Wednesday was nice, in Nice. Beautiful, varied, pleasant. Today the same. So what if I wanted to take my own life on the in between day? Let's just forget it happened.

Just know this: 5 year olds do NOT need to travel. They can safely be left at home, without the slightest guilt.

In any case, some highlights. A fantastic view of nice from the waterfall on the hill, a great walk along the beach, the Matisse museum, and perhaps my best meal so far, a mixed green salad with a dijon vinaigrette, a gigantic piece of smoked salmon and a huge scoop of buffalo mozzarella. Fucking great, simple, light and fresh. And today, a slice of pizza from a joint that simply sold the slices by weight. I asked for quattro formaggi, and the lady motioned with her hands, how big? Then she just threw it on the scale. Less than 3 euros for a HUGE slice.

Saw the Trevi, the Pantheon, The Spanish Steps, The Fountain of the 4 Rivers. Great Cappucino (maybe the best ever). Great simple lunch. And I bought some awesome sneaks, baby.

Hopefully pictures soon. Or at least once I'm home. Someday I will blog about yesterday, but today won't be that day.

How loud can they belt that thing?

2005-08-16T17:31:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting in the "coffee bar" on board ship. Really it's just a side area near the main lobby. There is the world's most mediocre jazz band lounging it up about 20 feet below me, though of course it feels like they're playing from inside my brain.

All that aside, it's been an awesome trip so far. I was up for 24 straight hours from Sunday morning until my head finally hit the pillow in Barcelona Monday night. In between I went from eating Weber's burgers in the airport to $100/kilo aged ham in a Barcelona tavern. They do not mess around with the leg of the pig here. Barcelona has two main things; insanely detailed physical surroundings, and that Ham.

It's really more like prosciutto, or at least the best prosciutto ever made in any case. I had three meals in Barcelona, Dinner, Breakfast and Lunch. The ham was consumed at all three.

We conked out after dinner on Monday (I was so tired that I have no actual memory of putting Max to bed) and then I managed a basically uninterrupted night of catch up sleep that left me mostly refreshed and ready to go for today. After a really nice hotel buffet breakfast (our hotel was classically euro, very small but so elegantly appointed and with the most brilliant use of materials throughout) we were picked up for a guided tour of Barcelona. This turned out to be a typical "from the bus" tour, with a far too quick look at the city, a quick stop at La Segreda Familia (it really is quite unbelievable) and then we were deposited at our ship.

We checked in, got everything where it was supposed to be, and ran back for a last look at Barcelona. This time we did it the right way, on foot. started at the foot of the Ramblas, walked along until a sidewalk tapas joint called out to us, had a lunch of tapas and limonata, and then proceeded along to explore the street performers, the impromptu pet shop kiosks, and most of all the market. A market to put St. Lawrence to shame, and this even when over half of it was closed because most shopkeepers take holidays in August. Just a brilliant, brilliant day, and the first time we really felt like it was "our kind of trip".

I'd love to post some pictures (I will eventually) but internet on board ship is kind of ridiculous. I'll try to blog it up a few more times, and I'm going to try to find an internet cafe in Rome on Thursday.

I've got to go now, they're starting to play "Misty" and I'm a sucker for horn and banjo arrangements.

:)

You and Me and George

2005-08-14T09:54:00.000-04:00

1) Packed

2) Fed

3) Prepped

4) Scared

Awaaayyy we go!

Total Recol (dot CA!)

2005-08-09T21:22:00.000-04:00

I just checked my junk mail account, and there's a version of the Nigerian Scam in my inbox. A rather crude and badly worded version at that. I'm not exactly sure who it is that's the target audience for this anymore. Are there still people out there who are smart enough to get email, yet simultaneously dumb enough to fall for this?

In any case I decided to do my civic duty and try to forward this thing to the proper authorities. After about two or three google searches I came away with www.recol.ca, the RCMP's online crime reporting page (is it me, or is that cool in and of itself?) Reporting Economic Crime On Line. Dot CA. Except that when I tried to get past the splash page, I got a security warning. The RCMP let their security certificate for their own online crime site expire 2 weeks ago. Which means that the site itself could be a phishing operation. It certainly asked me to register all of my personal information before reporting any fraud. Like I'm gonna be that stupid.

Can someone call Alannis Morissette? I think she might want to add a verse to that song.

Wheel within a wheel

2005-08-08T12:00:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning to some sad news. Followed immediately by some happy. One person left us, another joined in. All within the space of an hour or so.

I'm leaving on a jet plane in just under a week. It seems slightly surreal, going from shiva to baby naming (assuming it happens in time) to vacation to film fest planning to work to film fest attending all in a row like that. Hell, that doesn't include poker, or movies, or podcast, or radio show, or anything else.

I took Max to see 2 movies yesterday, a mini film festival of his own. To paraphrase Wooderson, every year I get older, but the disney movies stay the same age. We saw Herbie: Fully Loaded (no doubt a subtle hint to adult viewers) and Sky High (no doubt a subtle hint to adult viewers.)

Except for the haircuts and Lindsay Lohan's prodigious talent(s) I might as well have been watching The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes or The Shaggy D.A. There's no reason for pg rated entertainment to be this bland, folks. Sky High especially suffers form an overwhelming capitulation to the generic. There simply is no excuse for a movie about the various cliques and social divisions of High School life to be this lifeless. Herbie fares slightly better, if only because of the inspiration to make the little bug bond emotionally with its new owner and therefore take on some of her characteristics and abilities. Like the ability to skateboard and trick off of everything, something that isn't used nearly enough in the ensuing action.

Max liked the cars, of course, and the superhero stuff. Tellingly, he did not exit the theatre with an immediate plea to own the dvd's of these movies. This is as close as a modern five year old gets to hating something; not wanting to own it on dvd.

I shouldn't slag Ms. Lohan, something the press has been doing an admirable job of lately. The fact remains that she is the most talented and charismatic actress of her generation, and the only one able to truly carry a mediocre vehicle (sorry!) like this one (I don't consider Jessica Simpson's appearance in Dukes of Hazzard to actually be acting. Bringing in a crowd that simply wants to "tap that ass" as the daily show put it is not the same as hoisting a narrative on your shoulders for the long haul.) The problem is that every time her "father" Michael Keaton leans in to her for a big old hug, it just feels a bit icky. Cause you know that if they were just hanging out as actors he'd be trying to put the moves on her like there was no tomorrow.

Ewww.

He's back from the past to save the future from... Oh, never mind.

2005-07-28T13:24:00.000-04:00

Okay, so this is the new look for spring. The very latest in slumber breathing assist technology, and it's mine all mine, man. I could not be happier, since it's been a year of feeling better and better tempered with the growing concern that my health was being compromised by a progressively more damaged skin area on the bridge of my nose. This mask not only reverses that concern, but I mean, come on, that thing is dead sexy to boot. It's even better up close and personal, if you know what I mean.

I'm off to the cottage this weekend, for food and fun. The water is warmer than it's ever been, the beer will be cold, and Jumbalaya, ribs and Vietnamese Salads abound. Also, check back for the first ever Mamo recorded in a gazebo. I'm headed to a few specialty stores tonight, doing the big shop on the way up tomorrow, and then back to reality on Tuesday.

In 2 weeks, I'll be in Barcelona.

He's losing his memory... but finding his conscience

2005-07-26T10:29:00.000-04:00

As excited as it is possible for me to get about any movie, that's how intensely jazzed I am that sony classics picked up The Alzheimer Case. Miraculously, I managed not to review it for Tederick's coverage last year (sorry, dude) but it was in fact my 2nd favorite movie of the fest and easily made my 2004 top ten. It lands in theatres at the end of September, which means a DVD release probably in time for my birthday. See it before it gets remade with Nicholson, Newman, Redford or Beatty.

Yippee!

ummm.... Ouch?

2005-07-22T15:10:00.000-04:00

Up up and away...

2005-07-22T10:02:00.000-04:00

Mamo! continues to astonish me. Since I started doing it, it's quickly become my favorite 45 minutes of the week, a chance to "get it all out" on whatever is happening. I'm also proud of it a way that I haven't been of any of my other work.

I'm also just plain grateful that people like it. I'm doing everything I can to list it in as many directories and programs for podcasts as is humanly possible. We're now accessible through Odeo, iPodder, PodcastAlley, CanadaPodcasts and Podcast.net. Itunes is still under review (who knows how long that could take?) but still I expect to be there eventually.

That's why I can't stop loving this:

We had our best day ever for downloads yesterday, and the trend continues upwards. So thank you to everyone who reads this; for being able to take the time to listen that. You're feeding my soul here, people.

We need more power.

2005-07-20T13:58:00.000-04:00

Here's hoping there's as much adventure in the next undiscovered country, old friend.

R.I.P. 3/3/1920-20/7/2005

72 hours ought to be plenty of time to finish a fucking book.

2005-07-18T09:16:00.000-04:00

Last week, when some consumers inadvertently, but legally, acquired the new Harry Potter book from a grocery store in Coquitlam, B.C. they found themselves the subjects of the most insane court order possibly ever issued by a Canadian court.

"(Raincoast Press) sought and obtained a court order banning reading and discussion of a children's book. In fact, Raincoast had asked the court to go even further, by compelling purchasers to disclose the names, addresses and other contact information of any other person with whom each had discussed the book's contents."

Apart from my feeling, stronger than ever, that the emperor truly has no clothes on at this point (more on that in a paragraph or two) I'm just wondering when exactly it became okay in a free society to compel citizens not to divulge information that could affect the sales of someone's book? Why exactly are the courts supposed to care about this? Besides, had I been the subject of the order, I can't think of a better test case for individual freedom than this one. Those dozen or so people should have set up a website and crowed the spoilers like there was no tomorrow. Can you imagine the circus if someone had actually been fined or imprisoned for giving away the ending of a book?!?

I've finished reading the first 2 of the series so far. I've seen the movies as they've come out. The movies are better, so far as I can tell, since the books themselves read like the longest screenplay treatments ever written. Nicely plotted, well constructed, sloppily written and without an ounce of real wit. Boring, Boring, Boring. The more the mania spreads the more indifferent I find myself to the entire enterprise.

Plots and plot points are the least interesting reasons to read a book, anyways. I know how Winnie the Pooh and Alice in Wonderland and the Oz books "come out". BFD. What amazes me about actually reading those books, or Narnia ar any of the hundred or so children's works I would place head and shoulders above the Potter series is the writing. Read Alice in Wonderland and just marvel at the language, the levels of meaning, the pure whimsy and delight of it all. Rowling can't hold a bloody candle to this. Knowing her plots in advance really does ruin the books, because frankly that's all they have going for them in the first place. Getting courts to issue injunctions around them strikes me as the ultimate expression that corporations really do run things around here thank-you-very-much. It all combines into a pretty compelling argument to just stop paying attention to it all together.

Let us dedicate our memories to the spirits of the Eldar who came to us from the Ocean that lies to the West.

2005-07-14T15:48:00.000-04:00

I finished the last of the Return of the king today, at least the last of it that I can reasonably conceive of getting through. I'm sure that at some point in the future I'll want to sit down to 17 hours of actor, designer and post producer commentaries. But not today. PJ and Fran and Phil are enough, thank you.

I will say this; as much as my appreciation of the movies continues to grow upon every successive viewing (I'm now kind of mentally reviewing my all time list to see just how high up they rank) I was probably just as moved, if not more emotionally struck by watching the making of material as I was by the films themselves. Regardless of the achievements of Gandalf et al, it seems much more awe inspiring to think about a hardy little band of kiwi's getting up the gumption to take on the standard bearer fantasy story and not just wrestle it on to the screen, but do it with the grace and elegance and wit and perseverance and forebearance that they did it with. The feat of making the movies seems at least as miraculous as the stories themselves.

Mamo! Jr. You know, like Donkey Kong Jr it has nothing to do with the original.

2005-07-08T10:53:00.000-04:00

This is Max, on a TV he made himself. He even cut out a little cardboard rectangle for the remote. Right now I think we're watching the news, but it might be a new episode of Gundam Force where he plays all the robots. You have to use your imagination.

First!

2005-07-06T16:26:00.000-04:00

Heyyyy! Looking for that certain something for the star wars geek that has everything? Then get a load of this! Yes, that's right, Gary Kurtz is havin' hisself a fire sale, kids. Like a garage sale where everything is that impossible to find import reissue of Dark Side of the Moon where you can hear David Gilmour make a mistake, this is a one of a kind opportunity for someone with way too much room on your credit card. Gentlemen, start your excessive justifying of the absolutely unnecessary purchase....... now.

helloooo

2005-07-04T22:09:00.000-04:00

Just realized I haven't blogged in a long, long while. Especially unforgiveable, since I spent the last 3 days batching it. No distractions, no excuses, just some dedicated me time. True to form, I spent it by squandering the nice weather, and just watched movie after movie after movie. 3 on Friday (Batman again, this time in Imax, Mr&Mrs Smith and War of the Worlds) Then got through the entire long assed Lord of the Rings saga, all 13 hours of it on Saturday, in addition to one of my film noirs, The Big Clock. Sunday I took a break, went to the Tulip for a big breakfast, found a place in Toronto where you can get real honest to god Andouille and Tasso (!) and then did my third Mamocast of the last 3 weeks. People actually seem to be listening, too. Comments have come in from 3 continents so far. Sunday night was yet another noir, The Street With No Name, and that rounds out my weekend.

I want to blog and have lots of nice funny things to say, but I just spent another 12 horrendously stressful hours at work and I really can't muster up the funny right now. But click on the link and listen to Mamo. It's really good, and a nice way to spend 30 minutes, I promise.

no, i'm pretty much looking right at you.

2005-06-27T12:20:00.000-04:00

I know that this is a poor excuse for a blog post, and I really ought to have something more interesting to say, but here goes. I found this review on amazon.co.uk, and it so completely misses the point whilst unwittingly exposing the author as a neanderthal moron that I got a huge kick out of reading it. My favorite is where she compares Stanley Kubrick (who she's never heard of) to Darren Star, and Star comes out the clear winner.

Enjoy!

I have to say this is the poorest film that Nicole and Tom Cruise have been in. Before you all give me a bad rating due to saying that... come on.. you have to agree.

In the cinema they advertised the movie showing the scene of Nicole dancing in front of a mirror naked. I couldn't believe it was her at first and then Tom walks up. They advertised the names up as CRUISE, KIDMAN, KRUBRICK. I didn't know the last one. Then heard he did Full Metal Jacket which I liked and a few others that were also pretty good. But I wouldn't go OTT over him.

I have to say I agree with a review I just read. If you want to see nice clear shots of Nicole's brests then this movie is for you. They advertised it that way in the cinema and I bet that drew people into watch it. They were suckered. Yea there are lots of other women naked too but WOW!

For me I want a story. If the cast like running around naked then okay. Because we know how essential all that is to a story now don't we. It never is! That is why successful shows like Dallas oor BH 90210 could do relationships without nudity. So films don't need it either. But the directors think it will sell, they love to be able to say i worked with nicole kidman and got her filmed in nude (who wouldn't) and Kidman - well she never turns down a nude role. I think she finds it a turn on running around naked in front of all the cast. Nicole walking around in a part see through top with hard nipples! Oh come on!

As I'm sure you can imagine I was disappointed in the movie. A good stroy is what I want but this was just made for nudity appeal and that is wrong in my opinion.

In summary:

If you want a good story - watch something else and not this
If you want nudity - watch this
If you want nudity and a good story - watch the first 20 mins. After that it dies slowly.

Keep your site as amused as possible

2005-06-23T17:52:00.000-04:00

Keep your site as amused as possible
Published by Creford Wong on May 09, 2005

Home » Weblogs » May 2005 » Web page

When everyone had grown up, his elaborative faculty had improved very much. Because the his age, status, Knowledge, position, Weltanschauung, philosophy, and thoughtway were different from before. When you are doing something, have you considered how others feel?

Someones were easily to say something disagreeable on the internet. Even wrote everything which disagreeable in his site. It's not necessary. Probably it will make your site disagreeable, and you will make your visitors tired.

So don't talk about something disagreeable in your site as possible. Fox example, barely I heard a song from my neighbor. But he listened to it and repeated it for many times, he always listened to this song, in truth this song is awful, such song will make people to be tired of popular music indeed. We need to choose the really fair-sounding popular music. But many people didn't want to choose by themselves in China. So they don't know what is popular music.
It's necessary to listen to a song for numerous times, such as 100 time, 300 times. But turn the volume down as possible, please.

It's disagreeable. It's just a real example, I hope that you don't mind if I've just mention it. So, keep your site as amused as possible, just talk about the happy topics.

I'm very glad that my visitors said to me "I'm very happy when visit your site". In our lives, we'd better to make others feel that "I'm happy when talk with you". It's very important, and you will have many good friends.

My thoughts exactly.

a face for radio

2005-06-22T15:30:00.000-04:00

Hey. Psst. C'mere.

I'm back at it.

Check out the mamocast, kids. Matt and Matt and waaaaaaayyyy too much coffee to be good for us.

I am very very very happy about this.

That felt..... Mighty!

2005-06-22T00:23:00.000-04:00

Just got back from Café Demetre and our first ever podcast. And it's called (dunt da da da!)

MAMO!

As in, Matthew(s) + Movies. Say it. Mamo. Feel the power of it in your mind.

In all relative seriousness, it felt really great. Loose, spontaneous, real, and at least from the inside fairly interesting. We'll see once we get it up and running if all this is true. Matt's mp3ing it up in the next 24 hours; I'm figuring out how to host it on my idisk and then syndicate to it with the various podcast directories. All shall be revealed, in the fullness of time.

Also had a very nice little get together with Bex, Phantom, Kate and Matt at my place before hand. Ate a little fish, a little salad, some nice chit chat, and oh yeah PLAYED ROCK'EM SOCK'EM ROBOTS TILL OUR HANDS ACHED!!!!!! BEST FATHER'S DAY PRESENT EVER!!!!

Whew. Apparently podcasting is like some kind of contact high for me. I am fucking wired.

The internet comes through again

2005-06-14T09:51:00.000-04:00

Sure, it may seem like heresy, but I cannot help but be overcome by the utter coolness of this.

I almost wish some studio would remix a whole movie this way, just for the sheer exuberance of it. Check the way he just keeps singing, even when the song is altered significantly. Nice work, vee dub.

1st priciples

2005-06-13T12:14:00.000-04:00

I came to a realization this weekend. I haven't been going to the movies enough. It's been easy, really, over the last year or so, to just stop being motivated to go. I've even seen it happen to some of my best friends, people who I thought were as appreciative of filmmaking as I am. They just... drop away. When you can't get your buddy out to see Star Wars, you know you won't get him out for anything at all. I'm not that interested in falling into that trap. And it is a trap. Here's what keeps me away from the movies:

1) They just aren't as good as they used to be.
2) I'm too busy/tired to get up the energy to go, besides Leah will be stuck with Max if I go out.
3) There's lots of DVD stuff I still need to watch

These are all completely valid reasons. Not. Here's what I need to keep reminding myself.

1) Movies are just as good, if not better than they have ever been. Every age and generation of this stuff has had its share of greatness, and its full share of supercrap. We just think the old stuff was way better, either because we grew up with it or because we selectively filter and simply don't remember all the crap we've seen.

2) I may be tired and busy, but I'm not nearly as tired or busy as I was before the breathing machine kicked in, and the thing I keep forgetting is that I don't get tired watching a good movie, I get energized. I have come out of great cinema exhilarated, ready to go hard at it. If I need to sneak away to a late show here or there and lose a little sleep, so be it.

3) There may be a hundred DVD's sitting up there waiting, but how did they get there? I saw the movies, in a theatre, and it made me love them so much I went out and bought them. But it starts in the theatre.

So I'm not going to let myself fall into an age spiral where I see less and less, do less and less, and just pass out of existence with no involvement in anything. Fuck that to high holy hell, I'm still enjoying myself down here.

Maping-freaking-Guari?!?

2005-06-07T12:21:00.000-04:00

Are you crapping me negative?!? The giant monster on LOST is one of these. No doubt a nano machine based version, but still, man. Wow.

This is why you make the films

2005-06-07T09:15:00.000-04:00

When you've got it, flaunt it. (Now Ulla dance!) I mean, what's the point of making the Lord of the Rings and then getting $20 million up front to tackle King Kong if you just sit on the money? Why not do this:

That's right, that's a fully automated touchpad controlled robotic jug band. Peter says it's a present for Fran. Enjoy it, fat man, enjoy it to the hilt.

progress

2005-06-05T20:31:00.000-04:00

So far, with the summer about 1/8 over, I'm doing okay. I was right about Cinderella Man (it just made $18 in its first weekend, and should have the extraordinary legs to finish with 80-100, or well out of the top ten) and very right about Ep III (right on target to make about 375 and squeak to first place). I'm also on the nose with Madagascar, as it just took 1st place for the weekend and should cross 200 mil just barely.

I'm completely off on my Longest Yard assessment, and while it is still possible that it could grind to a halt, it seems unlikely. I thought it would underperform for a Sandler vehicle, but instead it held its own and now looks to finish with a likely 140-150. This puts it at least eighth, and makes me less than perfect. Still, it's nice to know I can still do this with some accuracy.

I'll review again in a few weeks, probably after the debut of war of the worlds.

we could have done a lot of things

2005-06-05T10:32:00.000-04:00

this is all the places I could have been in the past 2 days. We went to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Matt and I, to stand at the back of a bar, watch some funny shit, and turn around and go home. It's a pretty long way to go, but I have to say I think I'm built for long trips. I did my share of the driving, and never felt like it was too much. Anywhere in the circle is somewhere I'd consider visiting, even if it was only for a few days. It's a lot of time in the car, but that was fun, too.

CHAPTER THE FIRST

2005-06-02T09:23:00.000-04:00

In which we learn that meat can thaw, friends can try, and the nature of 360 lines is the nature of the universe itself.

I'm about most of the way there on whipping the new tech into some kind of shape. My laptop has a ton of new music on it. I've spent the last couple of days at work organizing and revising tags. There's gonna be some gaps in terms of song titles and whatnot since so much of this new stuff is DJ grade and there's nowhere to reference it online. Indie 12"s sold from the stage don't always get documented that well :)

Also the home network just hums along. It's amazing how simple and powerful that is, too. I love being able to just move stuff between the machines whenever I need to, without plugging anything in to anything else. Simple, but great. I saved my very first spotlight search today, making sure Leah can find her faxes no matter where they're filed on the machine. She hates it, but she does want to know how I did it so she can make her own.

There's just one more day before Matt and I head out to the Hi Mom! film festival in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. If I close my eyes, I can actually taste the pork in my mouth.

read me

2005-06-01T23:14:00.000-04:00

cool.... I just syndicated myself.

Mobiblog

2005-05-31T10:26:00.000-04:00

Since yesterday:

Picked up the 2 new Macs. Feels incredibly strange to walk out of a store with more technology than I can literally carry at one time. I had to get help from the guy, and when I got home I had to leave the scanner in the car.

Got home. Skipped on dinner, went straight to backing up the current machine. Cloned the drive on our old machine to our external. While that was happening, set up the Airport network, figured out a problem with the phone, set up the laptop, got connected to wireless internet, found both printers (wireless printing is just way sexier than it ought to be) and started charging the first battery. Used the external to start moving all my files to the laptop, using setup assistant.

Went to poker. sucked like never before. didn't care. couldn't wait to come home and keep working. Leah was working away, appropriating the internet connection away from the wireless base. Decided to pass the time by unpacking the main machine. got my first look at Tiger. Got the internet back. Updated all programs and systems on the laptop. Successfully paired the wireless keyboard and mouse with the 20 inch. Started installing Office: 2004 and virtual PC on the laptop. hooked the external to the imac. transferred Leah's stuff, took about 1 hour. after 5 minutes realized that this was a waste of time, since I still hadn't partitioned the drive on the imac yet. let it finish while I took care of the microsoft installs. Did my first ever Windows XP install.

Partitioned the drive, reinstalled the system. Updated everything. Charged the 2nd laptop battery. Hooked the external back up, ran setup assistant. another hour. Started transferring the 15 gigs of music I have lying around waiting for these upgrades. Finished the transfer on the imac. Decided to back up the laptop to the big machine. Tried over the network, best I could manage was a disk image, not a full file transfer. decided to use firewire target disk mode. Purposely didn't leave the laptop plugged in, so that the battery could drain and calibrate. Got the wrong machine in target mode. switched everything around (the source machine should be running and controlling everything, not the target) got the backup going, realized it was going to take upwards of 2 hours, watched a little of the TRON dvd to pass the time, didn't want to fall asleep and have max wake up and accidentally break something, decided to sleep next to the machines on the couch.

Got about an hour of sleep, on and off. Backup finally finished around 5:30 am. Moved everything out of max's way, put the laptop to sleep, put myself to sleep.

Whew, I fucking love my life right now.

I'm sending out mad love, yo

2005-05-30T10:05:00.000-04:00

So, in the last little while, my awesome cousin Aura has:

Gotten married in the freaking Ice hotel.

Moved to Vancouver. Didn't really know anybody. Just pulled up stakes and moved.

Started 2 Blogs. Personal, and professional. That's the way to do it.

Got herself right into cartoon form

Seriously, is there anything she can't do?

Predictions...

2005-05-27T12:03:00.000-04:00

I just miss MrShowbiz. Around this time of year, the website mrshowbiz.com (which is no more) used to run a box office derby game to beat the friggin' band. I played, and frequently did quite well in a game where opening weekends were guessed, movies were bought, sold and traded, and hundreds of people tried in vain to separate the wheat from the chaff. In honor of all that, here are my picks for the top ten movies of the summer. Summer is all movies released between Episode 3 and the last weekend before Labour Day.

1) Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith
2) Batman Begins
3) Madagascar
4) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
5) The Fantastic Four
6) War of the Worlds
7) The Dukes of Hazzard
8) The Wedding Crashers
9) Bewitched
10) Mr and Mrs Smith.

Notable also rans: The Longest Yard, Herbie Returns, The Island, Cinderella Man, Stealth, The Pink Panther, The 40 Year Old Virgin. These will all do well, but not quite well enough.

I'll recap and let you know how I did at summer's end. Also, if you disagree, email your own list and I'll put it up here as well.

This is how humanity ends, to thunderous applause

2005-05-25T08:25:00.000-04:00

This article seems like a pretty sure sign of the impending apocalypse. Listen, why, even if you could do it, would you in god's name want to do research into any of the following?

1) Humanoid robots with 10 times our strength?

2) Nano machines that can replicate themselves?

3) Super intelligent computers to store our identities?

Yeah, those are going to make life soooo much better.

Emptrophy, the decay of empathy

2005-05-24T08:57:00.000-04:00

Since Matt was kind enough to publish his misadventures in customer service, I thought I would do the same, although in a slightly more constructive, and slightly less major fashion. What happened to Matt is epic, the sign that a company has completely lost its way.

To begin, I bought one of these, about 3 weeks ago:

A black one. My first one. Because I don't have any nice shirts for work that don't have to go to the cleaners. That is a pain, because as nice and reasonably priced as my dry cleaners is, I seem to have a real mental block about getting there. This means I often don't have shirts for work. Also, with the company changing names, there goes about half my central stock, 'cause I'm not wearing stuff with the old company name on it. Polo shirts, golf shirts, whatever you call them, are a good alternative. Except every single one I've bought in the past 5 years immediately looks like crap after a wash. They fade, they stretch, the buttons don't close, the collar wrinkles up, they suck. So I decided that if I'm going to give them any kind of a last chance, I am going to do it right. No more half measures, no more sales, just the best quality shirt I can buy. Which I decided after some research were the alligator jobbies.

Ninety Five Dollars. Yipe, this thing better be the best, for that kind of money. I tried on a couple, settled on a size 7, black (euro sizing, no less.) It fit. Close to perfectly, which starts me on my first anxious moment. "Is this gonna shrink?" I ask. No, comes the reply, as long as it's washed in cold (I always wash the darks in cold)and it shouldn't be heat dried. So I can tumble dry, or better yet hang dry it without a problem. Yes, comes the reply. Because at this point I'm happy to buy a size 8, if this is going to be a problem. No, no, you'll be fine.

I pay. I wear the shirt the next day to work. 4 independent complements. Wow. It must be nice. I'm making plans to save up for a couple more at this point. I'm wearing this thing again straight out of the wash. I'm happy.

2 days later, it comes out of the wash. I'm not as happy. I realize that despite following instructions, my worst nightmares are realized and I now own a very expensive shirt which doesn't fit me right. It's tight in the arms. Like, the actual arm holes are tight around my biceps (such as they are) and the whole thing just feels "funny."

No problem. I'm already wearing the thing, so I finish out the day, take it home, wash it a second time, and them take it back to the Lacoste store. I'm there on a saturday. The first warning flag is that I'm immediately informed that once a shirt has been washed, it can't be returned. Except that, as I point out, it's been washed according to their instructions. Oh, I'm told, I'm just a salesperson, only the manager can make a decision like this, and she's not there. The manager of the Lacoste store has decided that Saturday, the single busiest retail day, is the very best day for her not to be there. Because what can go wrong on the busiest day. So I should come back, during the week. "When exactly do you think I have time to come out here?" I ask. Oh right, of course, they apologize. They call the manager. She doesn't answer her phone. They tell me I can leave the shirt with them, she'll make a decision about it on monday and call me first thing. I leave.

Let me take a minute here to point out what they could have done, even as salespeople without the ability to solve my problem right then and there.

1) They could have asked me to try on the shirt and show them what I thought the problem was.

2) they could have asked me to try on a new size 7, to see if it had the same problem.

3) They could have (and this is the absolute key) empathized with me. Not agreed with me on the issue, just acknowledged that it sucks to be less than happy with a $95 purchase.

On Monday the manager didn't call me and left by 4:30, when I called to see what was taking so long. I was told there would be a note left reminding her to call me first thing Tuesday morning.

She didn't call tuesday, either. I called her, about 11:30. I was informed that there was nothing wrong with the shirt, that she had compared it to a new one, and that in fact there was a stain on the back of it. I would not be receiving an exchange, and I could pick the shirt up whenever I liked. The tone was clear: I was trying to pull a fast one, I damaged my own shirt, I was a crook trying to make the store eat a large cost for a damaged piece of merchandise.

Again, some things that could have been done differently:

1) How about not accusing your customer of being a general scumbag? That might be a start.

2) Maybe don't keep hiding behind the words "store policy" quite so much.

3) At least have the courtesy to call the client back, instead of making them come to you.

I went and got the shirt last friday. Know what? It's actually okay. It certainly doesn't have a stain on it, although I was able to locate a tiny bit of washing powder which came out with my fingernail. The arms loosened up again once I wore it awhile. It's fine. I probably am buying some more of them. Just not from the dicks at sherway gardens, where the policy seems to be the customer is always an asshole, angling for something for nothing. Nice Going, Salome Mohyeddin, Manager of the Lacoste store.

all the way in

2005-05-20T12:41:00.000-04:00

In the last 6 months, I've gone from casual star wars appreciator, and someone who would openly mock the insanely faithful, to being well on the road to the fanatical about it. It's been a pretty cool trip, I must say. And I definitely get how rewarding it can be to be on the inside of the phenomenon, even if I myself am not really there yet. Because it's impossible to tell how episode III would have played for me if I hadn't been keeping myself abreast of things the way I have the last couple of months.

Celebration let me in on the joy of the thing. The way people feel about the saga, the way they "own" it in their hearts. Like it or not, anything in this age of disjointed experience that lets the collective experience of that happen is a good thing. There's a warmth and generosity amongst fans who just want to love this thing no matter what, because after all it is star wars, and life would be a lot less cool without it.

Watching episodes one and two, and before that 4,5 and 6 let me see things a little more clearly, forgive some things I thought flawed, and reevaluate some of the flaws into strengths. The main thing I thought, and it's confirmed now with Sith, is that 1,2 and 3 function way way way better when viewed as one six hour movie than they do as separate 2 hour ones. Phantom Menace is slow, but act one of a lot of stuff is slow. Clones can seem disjointed and more than a little confusing (which side are the clone troopers on, exactly? Sifo Dyas? whuh?) but the second act of a complex political story should obfuscate and play with audience expectations. Sith proves to not just colour and enhance the original trilogy; it improves and grows the scope of the prequel trilogy, too. It really plays like a cohesive and brilliantly structured piece.

Seeing the entire run of Clone Wars, the animated micro series that fills in some of the gaps between 2 and 3 probably helped as well. As much as I think the movies should play completely on their own apart from all the spin-off storytelling that's out there, it's extremely helpful to know exactly what has been happening in the days leading up to the opening battle in Sith. I spent no time at all grounding myself in the story; I was right in there, completely engaged from the get go.

All three prequels lack what we have come to expect in our spoon fed dramatic environs; namely, the scene where either the good guy or the bad guy lay out the entire plot for the audience so that they can understand exactly what they hope will happen. For a movie trilogy about which the biggest complaint seems to be too much exposition, this is an omission which borders on the brilliant. Lots of characters explain things that are happening, but they aren't always telling the truth and so the audience does have to work to see what is happening around us.

I made a bold statement when the screening was over, and I'm repeating it here: Episode III is my favorite movie, not just of the prequels, but of the entire series. That's right, more than Empire, more than Star Wars, more than Jedi. More than anything, Sith feels like the most Star Wars that a star wars movie could be. The purest distillation of what Lucas seems to want the the whole story to be. The only time since they came out that I felt the way I did when I was 13 and watching Return of the Jedi for the first time. For any movie to cut through 20+ years of the aging process and make me feel that way again, it has to be the best one for me.

Movies are a complex alchemy when it comes to an individual's verdict. Did I, by steeping myself in the lore a little more than I normally would basically force myself to like episode 3? Maybe, but all that familiarity could have just as easily bred contempt if things hadn't gone the way I'd wanted them to. Who knows? I do know that I'm a lot happier loving the movie than I would be if I hated it. To paraphrase Norman Vincent Peale, it really sucks to hate stuff. Liking stuff is better, and I really liked Revenge of the Sith.

evidence of the big day

2005-05-17T01:16:00.000-04:00

I took some films of Max, so you can watch and enjoy them at home. The best I can do right now is to link to them and let you download and play on your machine. Someday, I hope to be able to make them play right here, at my somewhat interesting life. The first one is him leaving us to explore; the next involves him coming back.

the big day

2005-05-16T11:21:00.000-04:00

Saturday was one of those milestone days, man. When you have a kid, or at least when I had mine, there were just certain days. First girlfriend introduction. First movie in a theatre. The day he leaves home. The day he beats me at chess. BIG days.

We had one, one of the biggest of them all, at least what passes in our modernity for a true rite of passage. We went out to a flat piece of ground, took the training wheels off and watched Max ride his bike with no help from either of us. After twenty minutes he didn't need us to steady him while he started, and he didn't fall once.

It is awesome to see him get that excited about his own accomplishments, too. Just ask him about it and his face beams as he says the words "two wheeler" and talks about casting off the training wheels.

There's a yiddish word that gets used, often as a punchline, but it seems apt. That word is "kvell" and it means to burst with pride, and that's pretty much what I did when I saw max stomp down on that pedal, almost overbalance and then pull that correcting move that's second nature to anyone who rides. The first time you see that, you kvell till it borders on mishegas.

gentlemen, start your pens

2005-05-13T15:48:00.000-04:00

Some preliminary notes on a comedy film sketch:

1) A man wakes up to find his pants are made of cheese. Also, all female humans have become mice, but since women are finally interested in getting his pants off, the man does not mind either change.

2) Voogle: The voodoo Google engine. Every time someone is googled, they feel "weird". If I google someone's name along with a feeling, they experience that feeling.

3) Christ returns, and joins the justice league.

4) Everyone's brain must be upgraded to consciousness service pack 2.

5) We parody those daily show field reports, by having one of the subjects finally punch the reporter in the nose for being such an asshole.

There. You can't say I'm not contributing. Also, the following remake ideas have recently occurred to me. These are not jokes, I'm interested in these as legit ideas.

1) Ball of Fire. The gangster's moll hiding from the mob with the 7 professors, itself inspired by snow white, seems a natural vehicle for anyone from Renee Zellweger to Queen Latifa. Just reserve James Gandolfini, Danny de Vito, James Cromwell, Christopher Walken, Carl Reiner, Harvey Keitel and Harrison Ford for the profs. Where are the Coen brothers when you really need them?

2) Strangers on a Train. They can't exactly meet on a train anymore, now can they? I think they ought to meet while playing Halo 2 online. What gamer doesn't want someone to kill his mother?

3) Pickup on South Street. What if the pickpocket grabbed someone's iPod instead of some errant microfilm? What if the state secrets were being passed to Al-Qaida instead of the reds? What if indeed.

growth hormone

2005-05-09T11:01:00.000-04:00

Moore's law says that everything about computers is just gonna keep on getting faster, bigger, more. Actually, Moore's law isn't a law at all, just something someone at intel noticed about 40 years ago, that about every 18 months computing power (whatever that means) will double. That's why intel has been so focussed on clock speeds on its chips, since that's an awfully easy way to self fulfill their own prophecy. But putting that aside, there is one way to tell that computer power keeps growing faster than our uses for these expansions in power.

When we bought our first G3 tower, back in 1999, it came with a 6 gig hard drive and 256 megs of ram. Also a 14 inch CRT. Plenty of space in every way. When I wanted to do some video editing with it I added and external firewire drive. I was going to add 30 gigs, but there was a screw up and I got a 45 gigger from LaCie to make it up to me.

When we bought the G4 iMac, it came with a 60 gig hard drive (10 times the space,) 768 megs of ram and a 15" LCD. I ended up adding an external 160 gig drive about 18 months ago, for backup and video, etc.

We just ordered our G5 iMac. It has a 400 gig internal drive (only about an 7 times jump this time,) 2 gigs of ram and a 20" LCD. I expect that in about 18 months we'll be adding an external drive with a terabyte of storage, if the pattern holds.

At this rate, my next computer will have two terabytes of internal storage, 6 gigs of ram and a 30" screen. What in hell will I do with it all?

Why are people spending that much money on replicas?

2005-05-06T15:50:00.000-04:00

click me. for the love of god, click me.

ruutu to krup; shoot on puppa

2005-05-05T15:22:00.000-04:00

Stop worrying about me; I'm fine. I have managed to recover almost fully from the whole ordeal. Although at the last minute I wound up not going to the movie. It's a long story. I did get to stay home to watch a humdinger of a Lost episode. I'm glad I'll be with friends to watch the next 3.

We bought our new computers today, so if you're in the market for a used machine that can burn dvd's and is an awesome music machine, we're letting it go for $800. The screen is included, obviously.

I watched Star Wars episode 1 this week, getting Max ready for the big day when he sees a star wars movie in the theatres for the first and only time. The thing about that is that now that it's clear where things are going, Phantom Menace plays way better than I remember it playing. It really feels like I suspect Lucas wanted it to, the opening act of a 3 act play. The restraint in the action and excitement is laudable, as it's going to make the hell on wheels situations in Revenge of the Sith feel that much more insane when these three are watched in a row. I have my ticket, for 2 weeks from yesterday, and I just can't wait.

stress

2005-05-03T16:48:00.000-04:00

I walked in this morning, on a day that was sure to be tough. Let me 'splain. My company, the one I work for, is getting a divorce. It's a partnership and for a variety of reasons the partners have decided to got their separate ways. Which is fine and in the long run probably better for me. I've got lots of new responsibilities, starting today. The first thing is I have to make sure that we reinstall our point of sale software on all of our machines. PeeCees, to be exact. I suck at these, and I am the one making sure that we put in a software VPN, the POS, and some background sequel server stuff. Don't ask me what I just said, I have no fucking clue. So I follow the emailed instructions I have, and after about 3 hours I finally have everything working, on one machine. Then I fan out and start calling our other two locations, getting them set up, replicating what I just did. Except the one store doesn't even have winzip installed on his machine and can't uncompress the programs to install them.

Also, now that the programs are installed I need to be upgraded to administrator status on the POS so that I can start learning about how to take care of it. I could go into more detail, but let's just leave it at the fact that I will be overseeing making sure that we, the company, get paid correctly for our work, and that we, the employees, get paid correctly for our work. It's a lot of niggling detail. It's what makes this all better for me, since I think more responsibility makes me harder to get rid of. But it's a shitter of a learning curve. I'm staring straight uphill.

Also, orders and other general business keep on happening. I sold four internet connects today, a new cell phone and helped another few folks with their various questions and concerns. All the normal part of my day.

And I'm buying new computers. Two of them. Apple just gave the imac a kick ass update, basically killing the specs over the previous model and saving me about $600 in the process. Plus we're gettin' a powerbook so I can work at the same time as leah, and so we can have something when we travel. So I'm understandably excited and my adrenaline is up, the way it always is when something extremely expensive and good is just around the corner.

And I look after repairs for the company. That means when people bring their malfunctioning phones in for repair I facilitate sending them to the correct service centre, loaning out a temp phone for them to use and tracking the repair and any charges and approvals through the system. I keep a spreadsheet that let's me record everything in case the whole thing crashes. I completely depend on that thing, and it's safe on my work computer.

Today, it was erased. Gone. I am completely fucked.

I was so upset Leah thought I had lost my job when she called and I couldn't talk to her. I had to call back and assure her that in fact I am just stressed out of my mind, not fired.

We're trying to undelete the file. and it's not working. and I'm going home, and starting again tomorrow.

And I haven't even told you how I lost my babysitting for tommorow night and had to cancel going to see Raiders of the Lost Ark: the adaptation, and then gave the ticket to Jason, and then my brother came through with the babysitting and I had to call Jason back and take the ticket away again, one of the shittier transactions I've undertaken in a while.

get me out of here.

if you need the beeg truck, or the strong men

2005-05-02T17:50:00.000-04:00

Have you gotten the voicemail from Boris? or Janosh? or Tugboat Bill? 'cause they call like a couple times a year, leave a message on the voice mail about helping you move. People outside toronto have no idea what this is about, but you need to know that this happens, to everyone, all the time. And it is downright awesome, bordering on performance art. If you do nothing else, you need to check the cellar dweller for some of the most incredible misadventures in tracking these guys down. Real movers? Culture scramblers? Does it even matter?

may is chocolate month at tim hortons

2005-05-02T10:28:00.000-04:00

I'm back, and somewhat rested.

The rest of the convention was really excellent once i got a few hours of sleep under my belt. Here's what we did for the next three days:

1) we got our action figures. In a stunning move of bold brilliance, Jason came up with the idea of pooling our four per person allotment into one group of 16 figs, thus allowing us to acquire a (dunt da da da!)sealed box of 12 figures. Which were listed on ebay that night, and sold within 2 days. and shipped before we left the country (by the nicest and most competent kinko's employee that may have ever lived)

2) i bought Max a couple more figures (real cheap old school figures, but they do the trick), got him a free comic book, and a wicked cool lego scout walker. Now he can have luke and han fight vader with light sabres, and use the scout walker to provide cover fire.

3) The people behind the counter in Indianapolis (with the exception of the coffee nazi at the convention center starbucks) were beyond great. I have never met such an unrelentingly friendly and nice group of folks.

4) GenCon, the organizers of the four days, were really unprepared and caught off guard. Lots of lines, no real system and a general lack of planning added lots of unnecessary stress to my weekend. Also some joy, as their bungling of the massive George Lucas lineup led to my compatriots and I jumping ahead of about 9,000 other fans to nearly the front of the line. Everything was set up for maximum frustration and we were all given plenty of time to stew over it.

5) it got so bad that by the last day, when I was climbing over, under and through those flipping metal barriers for the last time I just gave up, hulked out and in what was apparently the funniest thing ever seen picked up a barrier and chucked it across an empty expanse of sidewalk. The thing flew about 25 feet, and landed with an insanely satisfying clang. I'm pretty sure that half the assembled crowd loved me and half were very, very afraid of me.

6) My super secret project was completed and made it most of the way through the trip. I built a full size replica of Artoo's head, fastened with magnets to the top of the volvo to look like he was my droid co-pilot. I drove with him on the roof to pick everyone up, then we stowed him in the back with the bags, and on our last day there we drove around indianapolis with him until he was caught in a gust of wind and "we lost artoo." I prefer to think of him still lying there, on Meridian avenue, as cars weave past his fragile little domed head.

7) We got to watch Jason and his new found lego buddies demolish, and I mean cream like corn the competition in the big lego star wars build off. go see the sharknet website for a picture of what he won, but let me tell you, it was impressive.

8) I have seen what few at this point have seen, and that is an actual 3 minutes from Episode III. there is no way to accurately judge the movie based on what I've seen (and out of the more than 40,000 people who attended Celebration, less than 2% of us have seen this) but let me tell you, this looks DAMN GOOD. scary good. I was drawn into this sequence in a way that I haven't been since Return of the Jedi. I am much more excited about this movie than I was when I went on this trip, and that is a very very good thing indeed.

linez

2005-04-23T22:21:00.000-04:00

Here's what I had to say about the trip to Indy, whilst it was on:

So here's the news from the front: This has been a hella trip so far, and it only gets darker before it gets lighter. Here's how it's gone down. We left Wednesday night, a time that seems like a year ago to me now. My plan was to wake up really early Wed morning, so I was up from 2:30 am. I wanted to make sure I was good and tired by the time I finished work at 3 so that I could nap at home for at least 4 hours before we left. Cut to me tossing like a salad in the bed from 3:30 to 5 and getting basically no rest. Than we left for the big show and drove until 8 am to be in Indy and go to the hotel. Except that the hotel was closed, and we suddenly realized that we were now on central time and it was 7am, which was weird because nothing else in this band is central time.

That was as far as I got on Jason's super tiny laptop before it became clear that I will never own anything labeled "sub-notebook" in my life. Matt may have the fortitude and tiny, ladylike fingers to make his way on that thing, but I had to stop before I actually chucked it in the toilet to alleviate my miskeying frustration. So back to the what was happening, which I'll attempt to keep in the present tense right up til the end.

We discovered that Indiana doesn't believe in daylight savings time. As a result, we are screwed coming home by an extra hour when we can least afford it. The only thing to do was go find the convention center and get the lay of things. Thank god for that, because there were already about 3-5000 people waiting to get in. At Noon. First we had to wait in the will call to actually be allowed to line up to get in. I hiked over to the hotel across the way and got starbucks for everyone. (side note: Chantico? What the fuck is wrong with you people. Eat a chocolate bar) Jason passed out in the corner, our first casualty. By this point I had been awake for more than 30 hours, and the day was just starting. After that it was past ten, and time to get into the really big line. Which was supposedly going in at noon. At 12:30 we hiked out to get some lunch at one of these goyishe bagel places that has the blueberry bagels and the bacon on everything. We came back, and walked past what had now become a truly impressive group of people. I'm guessing that this was over a mile of lineup, about 3 people wide on average, so like 10,000 to 15,000 people. On a thursday morning.

The lines were being controlled with this orwellian metal locking system that was erected at crotch height and was consistently soaking wet, making for some fantastic feelings when traversing a series (more on this later). At about 2:30 we got inside and got into our next line, to go to the store and buy our exclusive stuff that can't be found anywhere but at the show, and of course on ebay. My intention all along was to finance my trip by reselling this stuff, but by 3:15 it was clear we weren't going to be buying anything this day. We went to see Warwick Davis show us his home movies from Return of the Jedi. Then I'm not sure what happened, but I know that at some point in the next hour it was decided that we should go back to the hotel, which is where we are now. Pizza has been ordered and eaten (and at 6:30, after you've been up and either working, driving or queing for more than 2 straight days pizza tastes pretty unbelievably good) and I have accidentally (emphasis on dentally) allowed Matt to brush his teeth with my cortisone cream. Which I managed to pack instead of toothpaste. Matt says his mouth is very tingly.

More about this whole trip when i return, and have rested and taken a suitable blogging break.

which I did

oh Lisa, that's a load of fresh creamery butter

2005-04-20T10:01:00.000-04:00

I really have no plan for the next few days. Even though I've known I was making this trip for over six months, I still have only the barest idea what I'm doing once I get there. I posted earlier that I've never been a member of a fan club. I've also never attended a "con". Not a comic-con, not a technology fair, nothing. I suppose the film festival has some aspects in common with what I'm about to go through (the sleeplessness, the intense interactions, the bemused observation of humanity and its foibles.) In any case, the plan looks like it consists of glomming on to either Jason, Matt or Chad and just letting them steer the ship. I plan to take it free and easy, buy something unnecessary but cool for Max's room, and just enjoy eating the insane food portions available in a US restaurants (Denny's Breakfast Bowls?!?)

dys-topic

2005-04-19T01:21:00.000-04:00

How would you know for sure. I mean, beyond any doubt how could you know? You all know what I mean, I mean look around, people. It's here. It's a dystopia, and we're living in it just as happy as can be. Want evidence? Okay, here's what I've got so far:

1) The US government, basically the government of the world (if it's not, why is the appointment of their ambassador to the UN a more important story than the appointment of the Secretary-General of the UN?) are lying to us, all the time. They've used a vague threat of something bad possibly happening to someone somewhere at the hands of shadowy terrorist groups as an excuse to enact enormous legislation that turned the US into the biggest police state in history, a place where 10,000 people can be arrested in one day.

2) More than half the people you meet are taking some sort of mood and personality altering drug just to stay within societal behavior norms. Ritalin, Paxil, Viagra, Zoloft, Booze, Cannabis, Prozac. If we're all drugged up, where are the real people we used to be? You know, the bitchy ones nobody got along with?

3) From public school on, the goal of education is career training, nothing more. A liberal arts background is something to be ridiculed as a complete waste of time. Nobody learns just to make themselves a better person, we've replaced learning with training, an odious concept designed to generate ever more efficient cogs in the gearbox of consumption.

4) The Graduate is only available in a non-anamorphic, letterboxed DVD. This alone makes our society broken, almost beyond repair.

5) Our government lied, stole our money, lied about stealing our money, used the money to kick back most of it to themselves, didn't actually buy any of the influence over Quebec that they were hoping for, and are still the only electable party in the land.

What if it is broke? How do we fix it?

half naked, yelling, angry under-medicated santa

2005-04-18T10:15:00.000-04:00

A basically good weekend. We finally reached completion on the big super secret (which I am sure everyone already knows about, but all I'm asking is for them to pretend to be surprised.) It looks about 10-15 times better than I could have ever hoped, with almost every component I bought being both the right shape and size. I love it when a plan comes together. After this is all over I'll post a picture and maybe even follow Matt's lead and have a contest to give it away.

Took a nice walk through the Rouge River Valley on Sunday. I wanted more of a hike, but I'll take what I can get. Then we went to yorkdale to get the inside of the car cleaned out, and walked around checking out the changes to the mall. You have to hand it to yorkdale, man, they do not give up. The Eaton's store closes, and they spend the dollars to really up the ante there. It's impressive for sure. The apple store is still being constructed, but I did peek through a crack in the hoarding. It's not a flagship store, by any means, so there's still hope for something downtown.

What really surprises me is how sharp my recollection of the various stages of yorkdale development really is. I worked there in the eighties and nineties, and my mother worked there in various guises before me. Walking around I can pretty much pick out every major and minor update, what stores have moved, what used to be there (remember the Kresges?) and all the other things, too. I remember all three of the movie theatre incarnations. I remember when they put the first addition on, when the micro cooking store (my first real job) moved from beside the theatres and food court around to where ditinctive gifts is now. I remember the Pro Hardware, the Dominion, and by god I remember the buffet upstairs at Eaton's. I miss the ambrosia and stringy roast beef, man. and the little roasted potatoes... oh god, I'm tearing up here.

I saw Batman on opening weekend at Yorkdale, and I also saw Raising Arizona there. I got my bike stolen there. I worked there 3 different times. I won a spelling bee. Ate my first whistle dog. I'd love to say I lost my virginity, but you can't have everything.

really... why?

2005-04-14T22:59:00.000-04:00

In a kind of bizarre turn, the director most represented in my dvd collection after Hitchcock and Woody Allen turns out to be William Wyler, for no other reason than that he made my 3 favorite films of the 1930's, The Good Fairy, Dodsworth and Come and Get It. Plus I seem to have acquired a couple of proto noir and gangster pictures, The Letter and Dead End, just in the last couple of months.

There's no design to this, other than mere coincidence. Wyler doesn't really have a style, per se. He's not a hack, just a solid craftsman who approaches direction from the "artfully invisible" school. He also seems to be pretty keen on breaking down social barriers, tackling adultery, open marriage, prostitution, gang violence and vicious gossip. And that's all before 1939. His films all seem kind of refreshingly modern in their instincts, and I think that's the power they've got over an audience today. He also gets incredibly good performances and works consistently with actors, not movie stars. The leads in his films would for the most part be considered character types by everyone else. He trusts their ability to sell the scenes, not the movies for their success.

gagnez un biscuit

2005-04-11T08:48:00.000-04:00

If you are a reader of the linked blogs, you already know what I did yesterday. That's the essential issue of two bloggers hanging out; who will report back first? If not, I'll fill you in.

I went on a big fat hike yesterday. I wanted to go last week, but I mean, come on... did you look outside last Sunday morning? I like to hike, but I prefer it in a non-apocalyptic weather environment.

This week was different. Sun so hot I got a burn, my earliest sunburn on record, on my neck, face and arms. There was still ice on the ground up there even with the sun beating down, and water rushing and frogs brek-a-keck kecking their little hearts out. We saw a beautiful 18 inch garter snake that made me wish I was a parselmouth, entered a tree and branch defined cavern of gauzy filtered light, and walked until we were more than glad to stop. A swiss cheese and tomato sandwich became the best tasting thing I have ever prepared. Ditto to the ice cold can of coke greedily consumed at the end of the day. Something about that super cold can, guzzled back hard until you feel the knitting needles on the back of your throat.

Saturday was an indoor day, I took a shift at work for a few hours, made damn fine use of the broiler with some gorgeous rib steaks and finished watching The Grifters with my sweetie. Andy called up about seeing Sin City, something I had mentioned to him earlier in the week, and I jumped out for a late late show. Too late for me as it turns out, as I nodded off during Hartigan's run at the farm and never quite came all the way back until the movie was over. I also got a little closer to finishing the project, and man it's starting to look good. Wait till you see it.

I'll post a link to something absolutely astounding now, by way of taking my leave:

Be sure to click on the "walking videos" link halfway down the page on the left. It will blow your mind.

pimp my byte

2005-04-08T15:47:00.000-04:00

Get off the grift, Roy. You don't have the stomach for it.

2005-04-08T09:53:00.000-04:00

Wow. It's very dusty in here. Creepy, almost. Hard to believe my last post was about freakin' Zathura, of all things. What was I thinking?

I'm back. Not that I went anywheres, just took a break from the horrific grinding pace of 1 to 2 posts per week I was maintaining there for a while. It's been four weeks since I was here. Not much has happened, but here's what's going on.

My super secret project has progressed to the point where it might just barely be finished in time. More on that in a later post, but I did want to publicly declare that I have in no way become completely pedestrian in my time away from the blog. I am working on something, dammit.

My car thought we crashed. Turns out when you move the passenger seat forwards as fast as you can, the car thinks you just crashed and turns on the warning light for the airbag. All of which is hilarious if you're just driving around and suddenly notice the airbag light is on. All I could think about was the airbag just suddenly firing off and breaking my jaw for no good reason.

I drove to hell and back. Or through hell, at any rate. Last week's super insane freezing rain-o-rama found me going to Cobourg and back to watch my dad play (what else) the dad in Brighton Beach Memoirs. There was a moment there, coming back at night (this is pre-DST) with the rain whipping us and the bus in the next lane sending up terrific amounts of spray, when I suddenly just could not see anything. Yup, 110k, passing lane, zero visibility for 3-5 seconds. That'll put cream in your coffee. (In this metaphor, the "coffee" is my underpants.)

The play was good, especially (what else) my dad, who seems to be the one elevating everyone else to their best work. When he's on stage, everything is ok, everyone is engaged, and what is happening seems real, immediate and true. Please, if there is a design to this universe (which I am sadly aware that there isn't) let him have a crack at a singing Gimli :)

Celebration is fast approaching. Less than 2 weeks until 4 not so young guys get in a station wagon and drive 1000 miles to be in a room with George Lucas and Peter Mayhew. My dream of this is that you'll all be able to see me on the tv, preferably in a two shot with Triumph, the insult comic dog. Also, we'll be trying to stop only at places completely filled with dirty truckers, for that authentic Middle America Stephen King nightmare feeling. I got my membership card in the mail this week, so I am an official card carrying member of the Star Wars fan club. My first, and only fan club membership ever.

My dvd collecting has turned singular, as I am focused with laser like precision on completion of my film noir section before turning my attention elsewhere. At last count I have over 40 noir titles, and By the time it is all over there should be more than 100.

That was why Sin City was such a great kick in the ass. For the first time in more than 2 years, a movie didn't just exceed what I thought it could be, it blew me completely away. Since the end of the real film noir era (and its discovery as an actual film genre) we've been in the midst of self conscious film noir. The great thing about noir was its truly organic development. It is simply a group of filmmakers and writers being hit in the collective unconscious by the war, the holocaust, the blacklist, and all the other parts of america's end of innocence. Once post war Europe was opened back up to american movies, critics there thought all these dark little detective and murder stories were being done in a coordinated way and gave them a name. Film Noir. Black, like the shadows at every turn. Check Paul Schrader's essay for the definitive say on the subject.

Since then, people have been trying to keep making them, but once it became conscious, it also became harder to pull off. Way, way harder. In the 50 years since we found out what noir was, there's been at least 3000 attempts to recapture the glory. There's been about 5 that worked, roughly one every ten years. Riffifi, in 1958 was Jules Dassin's last noir, and qualifies as conscious simply because it was made in France at the height of the discussion. Dassin is a bona fide noir auteur, with Brute Force, Thieves Highway, Naked City and Night and the City to his resume. Riffifi is the DNA of the heist film, writ large, and it's silent centre is the 30 plus minute heist played out in agonizing detail.

Touch of Evil is Orson Welles materpiece of corruption, and in my mind his best film, outdoing even Kane in its brilliance.

There isn't another noir worth a damn until 1972. It's Chinatown. Murder, incest, facial disfigurement, the Los Angeles water commission.

Body Heat. 1981. Double Indemnity with the gloves all the way off. Does anybody play big and dumb better than Bill Hurt? How about slinky and slimy better than Kathleen Turner. Uh uh, didn't think so.

The Grifters is maybe the best of them all, effortless, uncaring, black and right as rain. Watching it again last night I realized I had also forgotten all about Elmer Bernstein's score, maybe the best noir score I've ever heard. He out Bernard Herrmann's himself and makes the movie a classic from the get.

You can add Sin City to the list. Period. It belongs right up there, by not fighting its self consciousness, but revelling in it. Like Matt said, when 2 different bad guys get their equipment shot off in the first ten minutes, you're in for something special. And if you can't appreciate how truly cracking good that last statement signifies the movie to be, don't go, you won't get it.

I'm truly glad I got it.

Try to push the spectre of Jumanji from your mind

2005-03-11T08:56:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I'm kind of excited about Sin City. I've got a wait and see attitude about Episode III. I'm hoping for good things from Hitchhiker's. Cautiously optimistic, that's me. That's because it's been at least six months of total meh about the movies. Am I getting old, unable to give myself over to a childlike sense of wonder and just enjoy the hell out of the fantastick? I was starting to become very afraid at the possibility.

I don't want to just fade out like every other victim of middle age, stuck in my own past with nothing ever able to penetrate, to engage me, to shake me to my core. I want every year at the movies to be my best year ever. I sure don't want to sit around complaining that everything sucks.

That's why I am genuinely overjoyed today. Not because I saw the Star Wars trailer (which gives me enough enthusiasm that they could call the trailer A New Hope ;) but because I witnessed the opening volley in what looks like the best live action kids film since The Indian in the Cupboard - Zathura. Zathura. Zathura. Oh, I'm ready for that to be as good as the trailer.

There's a moment near the end of that thing, where Danny opens his front door and instead of his neighborhood out there, there's just outer space. Not realistic space, but OUTER SPACE, like from your childhood conception of it. It's the primal moment for me. That is the idea like no other, a visual as close to the lizard part of my brain as it gets. Oh, I'm joyful inside.

You're entering a world of pain here, Donny

2005-03-09T15:35:00.000-05:00

DVD commentaries. I've listened to more than my share at this point, as I'm fast approaching the exhaustion of my entire 300 title collection. I've got about 8 more features and another half dozen kids titles and then I will have watched basically everything I own at least once. In this time I've learned a few things about the burgeoning art of running film commentary:

More is better

Having multiple voices always livens things up and takes the pressure off of any one person to provide two plus hours of riveting discourse. Very few of us, no matter our expertise are ever up to the challenge of talking non-stop for that amount of time. Being able to hand it off and come back is infinitely fresher.

Togetherness

As a caveat to my previous point, having those multiple participants in the same room at the same time is a big help too.

Spontaneous Combustion

As in life, the best things are unplanned. Whether it's Jim Abrahams taking a call on his cell phone or Roman Polanski eating his lunch while the film goes by, the unplanned really keys you into the experience of watching the movie with whoever's commenting, instead of just listening to a kind of ersatz film lecture.

Don't Get Cute

In the name of all that's holy, don't try to outfunny your film. Humour as a commentary motif should really be avoided. That's not to say you shouldn't share an amusing anecdote or three, by all means go ahead. But don't develop your comments as some sort of extendo-sketch. Believe me, by minute 20 this gets very old. Ancient, even. (See Simple, Blood)

Tonymono

Try not to make the entire commentary about just one aspect of the film. Again, variety is what works in a format this lengthy. Criterion is a good example of this: Notorious has 2 commentary tracks, one which uses a film scholar to discuss nothing except the various techniques and iconographic information being presented, the other to talk about nothing except historical anecdotes involving the production. Both are so detailed that boredom quickly sets in. Why not alternate this info, or better yet have the two commenters meet each other and discuss the film together?

Bogging down

Finally, a special plea to the issuers of all classic films on DVD; please please please, I'm begging you... stop calling Peter Bogdonavich. I've had it with him.

Sunday at the big box mall

2005-03-07T11:25:00.000-05:00

Leah spent the day enjoying her birthday present, spa treatments at the elmwood. I spent the day trying to exhaust Max so he would be suitable company for his grandparents while we went out for Erik's birthday dinner. Random stuff:

1) Ben and Jerry's closes for the winter. What, people don't like ice cream because it's cold outside? Open up and let me at that creamy goodness, especially after I promised it to Max so he'd leave the Best Buy without a scene.

2) I will resort to bribing my son with the promise of ice cream when he is reluctant to leave a store.

3) Universal Grill really does make nice food. Dry rub ribs, yam fries, a vinagrette spinach salad with warm portobello mushrooms. Yum. Not cheap, but damn good and not crazy expensive either.

4) The Devil and Daniel Webster remains a hella good film. Incredibly expressive and creepy, it's like Citizen Kane's evil sibling. And Walter Huston, man alive what can you say? Like buttah. Not to mention perhaps the best film score ever written, a rollicking tour through copland-esque americana mixed with some of the most progressive electronic techniques available in 1941. One scene is scored using the hum that comes off of telephone wires.

5) Max is getting too heavy to carry. Isn't there some sort of built in switch that says when you get to a certain weight, you can also wake yourself up enough to walk to the car?

6) Clue jr, the board game I can play with a kid? $17. Playing hard and still having the 5 year old win? Priceless.

aniconsotony*

2005-03-06T00:02:00.000-05:00

Hey, here's a question; Why isn't anyone doing video game lacrosse? I got taken out Friday night to the Toronto Rock game at the ACC. The physicality of hockey, the scoring of basketball, the athleticism of soccer, the fans of wrestling. It may well be the perfect sport. Or it may be that I was slightly drunk (3 beers? what was I thinking, I can't drink 3 beers!)

Mostly it just amazes me that there is anywhere as nice to watch a sporting event as the ACC, a basically new building that already feels historic, comfortable and right. It's the little things, like real elevator operators, and those black and white banners with pictures of 1950's fans watching from the gardens. I've been in there maybe 5 times, and every time it's like coming home again.

And about that elevator operator. There's a bunch of us waiting to go up to our seats. The up light is pressed, and the doors open. The up light does not go off, leading us to believe that this car is on its way down. "No, we're going up. Get on!" says the operator. So we do. the doors close, and we promptly head down. Let's face it, folks. If you're operating an elevator these days, it doesn't take any great skill. We all manage to do it practically every day, on our own, with no special training. In fact, the entire expertise of this guy's job is just to know which way the elevator is going. And he got it wrong. Personally, I just feel bad for the guy. He's got the one skill, and he can't even get that right.

*The feeling of drudgery one takes on after prolonged attempts to comfort someone on the loss of a pet.

moritamankeymumonium

2005-03-04T09:38:00.000-05:00

Cool. I just made up a word. Its meaning? It's an imaginary musical instrument that sounds like a great ape applauding a memory play.

I am going through the Memento DVD. I think partly because this week on Jeopardy's big super ultra playoff championship (something has to replace the hockey) I saw one of those annoying "guest readers" describe a keepsake as a "momento". It's nice when you're smarter than the writers of the quiz show. A little like the feeling I'd get if the answer to one of the questions was "What is a Moop, Alex?"

I'm watching Memento forwards right now. This is one of the extras you can access with special codes off of disc 2. I wasn't ever planning to do this, but then I watched the commentary, and then I decided to do it anyways. Know what? Play the movie in its regular "backwards" incarnation and it's a story about Leonard. Play it in its crazy forwards version, and Teddy turns out to be the main character. He's way easier to identify with, since he doesn't keep losing his place every minute or two. Plus his motivations are a lot clearer.

One quibble; In the forwards re-edit they didn't bother removing the scene overlaps that end every section to re-orient the audience. So scenes end, then come up from black and just repeat themselves for a second. You can argue the artistic merit of this but given that no one will ever watch this version first I would have just taken them out and edited everything without seams.

One final thought on the whole Matrix craziness: I don't know nearly enough about philosophy. If I did, I'd know that John Locke and Rousseau were both concerned (along with Hobbes) with a philosophical movement called The State of Nature. It tried to imagine "The state of man as it would be if there were no political organisation or government ... as a criterion of what man's natural condition might be and as to what extent the condition has been spoilt or corrupted by civilisation." Sound like any shows we've been watching?

I've hunted, now I'm gonna gather.

2005-02-26T14:10:00.000-05:00

Watching the Oscars I realized it's been months since I went to a movie theatre and saw something new. This is not usual. I see a lot of films every year, but money's been tight, and it's been my priority to watch stuff on DVD that I've already paid for instead of going out of my way to see new stuff. And let's face it, the last time I went out there on a bender to get some serious movie watching in, out of five flicks, one was really great. Alright, better than great, monumental even, but still. Four disappointments is a harsh blow. At this time last year, I officially got excited about what was around the corner, and so I'm trying to do it again this year:

1) Hitchhiker's Guide - the more I see, the less worried and the more excited I get. The trailers (especially this one) make me not just smile, but actually remember what was so great about reading those books in the first place. They weren't just funny, they let you feel like you were a part of them. Not a reader or a viewer, but a co-conspirator in the fun. The movie just feels like it's doing the same thing, and I haven't felt that much like a part of something since The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and that was over 15 years ago. Half a life is too long to wait for that feeling.

2)Sin City - duh. I keep going back to the graphic novels and collections and issues of this that I was buying 10 years ago and showing to anybody I could get to sit still. The compositions on the page blew my mind. Sin City was and still is utterly unlike any comic book story ever, with renderings so evocative and stylish that they out noir everything on the planet. Do I think Rodriguez can pull it off on film? It sure looks like it. My big Rodriguez complaint has always been on the writing side, specifically story and structure, where I think his reach often exceeds his grasp. But Frank Miller is essentially in charge here, and although it may all play a bit flat in the end, at least what happens won't get in the way of how great it all looks and feels.

3) The Amityville Horror - SURPRISE! I am looking forward to a horror film. I am intensely unbuilt for horror films. I am the first person to scream, jump, or otherwise be completely manipulated by what is going on up there on the screen. I'd prefer to believe that it's that same quality that allows me to desperately love all other kinds of films, that inability to set myself apart from the experience. In any case I am willing to risk the sheer humiliation of it, if only because this looks like a genuine attempt to recapture the '70s supernatural horror genre, when getting scared meant empathizing with the adults, not a bunch of pretty young things being punished for their sexual encounters.

4) The Ringer - finally a movie about that universal subject, a guy who pretends to be retarded so he can rig the special olympics for profit. Dude.... that shit's wrong, dude.

5) Kung Fu Hustle is supposed to hit this spring as well, and based on everyone's raves I will be there. This was the movie I had a ticket to during the past festival, only to find out the film had been destroyed at a private screening. So technically I've been lined up for this for over 5 months.

Herein lies the problem. This list was the best I could come up with for the next 3 months. It's not exactly that great. Where are the really great movies, man?

a lot deeper than I originally thought

2005-02-23T12:54:00.000-05:00

So just to get the news out of the way, I came through the wisdom teeth removal machine with hardly a scratch. 6 days later I'm nearly done with the antibiotics, and all that's left is a two minute recheck with the dentist Thursday night.

Some observations:

1) The gas, it does nothing. Even though I'm only paying about 20% of the cost after the insurance kicks in the rest, I don't think it was worth it. NOS just ain't my drug. I'm inaccessible to the chemical high at the best of times, with very little of the (admittedly limited) experimentation I have undergone ever resulting in what could charitably be called a high. In any case, N20 has zero effect. I keep forgetting to breathe through my nose anyways.

2) I am not freaked out by being in a dentists chair. Actually there's a certain enjoyment when I'm in there, similar to the lovely feeling of the barber's chair or being measured for something. Not sexual exactly, but really really close. (I reiterate - NOT SEXUAL. Different from sexual. Please don't start in with the silly comments.)

3) I love when after everything is half frozen, they basically sit on top of you, brace their knee on your chest and heave the novocaine in your mouth like they're tightening a lug nut. There's something enjoyable about seeing someone work that hard to make sure I won't feel a thing.

I recuperated by watching the Matrix box set, almost all 36 hours of it. I recommend this, it's quite a ride if you can clear your schedule. My critical perception has shifted several times over the four days, and it really does seem possible that any subsequent viewings can only get richer and more satisfying. My bold prediction: That this will, when viewed properly as one large 8 hour work (including the Animatrix shorts) be regarded as one of the best science fiction stories ever put on film. A generation from now, long after the critics of the day have faded into silence, college kids will be watching the matrix and talking about it.

I have crawled almost all the way back out of the rabbit hole now, and only the monster Lord of the Rings day still awaits me, beckoning like a silent behemoth from the shelf, taunting me with its weight and volume.