Headache, maybe because it’s so grey today. Is my head “me gulliver?” Anyone know what a gulliver is? Clockworks reading this? Well I’ve got a pain in it, whatever it is.

In times of heightened work activity, I rescind the no-scone rule, and read comic books on my commute, because they are easily digestible (like stomach lining). Quick, tactile pleasure-experiences are more approachable psychologically than long-term storytelling or higher-brain analysis. I get up in the morning or get home at night, and Porno Guy is still watching porno… how did we never notice this? This much porno, this much of the time? though now he has drawn his blinds; they block about 45% of the porno, which still puts a generous 55% porno out into the world. Like a beacon for smutty superheroes, called forth by video images of penises on a screen large enough to make them the size of rotweilers. To the pornomobile! What do porno-superheroes fight – chastity? Or even worse depravity? I guess they could do both. They hold the middle ground.

The headline of today’s Metro (Toronto’s free transit rag) is simply “Math questioned.” I suppose the idea that the entire concept of mathematics was brought into doubt is amusing enough, but I rather prefer the notion that someone did away with Geography, and Math was brought into the station house for interrogation under the hot lights. But they let Math go (there was no motive). Math’s reputation is not what it once was but until Math does it again, Math goes free. This is justice?

Let the right one in… to your home! Last year’s vampire classic (last year’s only vampire classic) comes out on shiny blu today. Own it before that Cloverfield guy remakes it. Me, I’m gonna snap it up after drinks & apps with the work folk at Kelsey’s (yes Kelsey’s), and then go home and watch Yet More Lost, which is the other only thing my brain can handle in times like these.

Posted by tederick at 7:44 AM in 1701 & comix & jedi antics & sex (theoretical) & shinybludisks
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Sitting around in the apartment, doing contract work, whittling down what precious little weekend I have been afforded in between my two mega-work-weeks.

Here's what happened last night, and it still confuses and upsets me: at 4 in the morning (new time), I was woken by what I took to be gunshots. I then heard someone engaged in a heated argument. I don't think they were actually gunshots, but they were fucking loud, whatever they were; when they repeated 15 minutes later (four or five quick BANGS! in a row), the entire building seemed to shake. I think someone was breaking through a wall with a sledge hammer. (That's not a joke. That's actually what I think.)

Anyway, here's the confusing and upsetting part: I didn't do a goddamned thing. I was so panic-stricken by my upon-waking assessment of either gunplay and/or murder, that I literally sat in my bed and shivered, convinced that someone was going to try to break into my apartment with whatever the hell they were hitting the walls with. Whatever was going on (I think it was happening in the apartment directly below mine), it continued sporadically until about six in the morning and then it stopped. My fight-or-flight instinct stayed on "flight" i.e. "stay the fuck away from anything to do with this" until about ten a.m. today.

Normally, potential gunshots + angry shouting = call the fucking police, moron, doesn't it? I'm pretty disappointed in myself.

Having now completed the first five extremely enjoyable days of Sarafinapalooza 2009, I am padding about the homestead trying to get through significantly more webworks than I had banked on when receiving the assignment a week ago. The ground remains gritty underfoot. I think one of the principal reasons I identify with the cast of Lost so much is that I, too, live on a beach. Perhaps when Seasons 1 and 2 come out on blu-ray I will import a small sandbox and play in it. I could make a smoke monster out of old socks, and an Egyptian statue out of Zam.

Six hours later, and I'm done.

Posted by tederick at 8:33 PM in 1701 & 4-8-15-16-23-42 & shinybludisks
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Transitioning... transitioning... while the domain nameservers are switching over I have no email, and through strange coincidence my phone is not taking incoming calls either. Unexpectedly hermited, I am enjoying some peace and quiet. I wonder if the blog will even work in this new, strange server. Well I guess we'll find out momentarily.

Now don't get creeped out, but: I have large windows looking north on a series of apartment buildings, and so rather naturally I gaze out over the vista while, say, talking on the phone and/or ruminating upon things. Now I noticed, just randomly, that on Valentine's Day, one of the individuals in an apartment opposite mine was watching pornography on his very, very, very large television. The television faces the window, and is very, very, very large, and as such (from my vantage point) it essentially is the window, for all intents and purposes. And that window is porn. It was so on Valentine's Day, and now inevitably every time I gaze out on my vista, my eyes are drawn back there to see what's the what now, and it's porn. Lots, and lots, and lots of porn. It's amazing to me that with only the naked (heh) human eye, one can discern porn indisputably from over 1000 feet away. I wonder, had I a much larger television and more than a passing interest in porn, if I would also have my television face the window so that I would be beaming my porn out into the cosmos like my apartment-facing neighbour. I'm not so sure. I've never quite removed myself from the 12-year-old boy gut-feel that porn is something to be secreted, hoarded, and absolutely never admitted to in any tangible sense. Porn is for dark corners, not 60-inch plasmas.

That newfangled HDTV Simpsons opening credits, though, that sure as fuck is for 60-inch plasmas. It was very exciting right up till I realized that this is, demonstrably, the moment that The Simpsons has inextricably jumped the shark. They must now demonstrably be within seconds of being cancelled. Like that year of The X Files with Anabeth Gish and the T-1000. Sweet, merciful cancellation. Can you believe The Simpsons went twenty years? And only about three of them sucked?

Hey - if you saw Medicine for Melancholy at the festival (or elsewhere) (and if you didn't/haven't, you really should), check out the interview with Barry Jenkins on this week's installment of The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell. (The Soderbergh one from a few weeks back, too, is fairly kickass.) Additionally, there's a new Mamo that doesn't seem to be syndicating correctly, so check that out too.

This week was long and complex and performance-reviewy, and I am tired and have yet to get into my whiskey as was promised to me by me, about six hours ago. I'm sure we have much to discuss, like why Dollhouse sucked so bad, but we will have to talk about it later.

Posted by tederick at 8:49 PM in 1701 & movies & podcastery & sex (theoretical) & simps & tederickdotcomdotcom
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Yup, today was one of those days where, when checking my BlackBerry on the way out the door, I thought I was looking at the wrong day's emails because no way could it possibly be Wednesday. It's Friday! Clearly it's Friday.

Is it Friday?

It's not, is it.

The nice thing about the blistering cold happening in Toronto right now is the sheer number of things I can achieve without ever leaving my building. Last night, Sarafina and I had dinner at Windows, the restaurant in the hotel. It was not bad, given that it's hotel food, American-sized, and expensive. Today I might try ordering room service and seeing what they do. I can also:

• Get a haircut
• Go for a massage... potentially with extras but I haven't explored that
• Book travel plans for Asia
• Sample exotic beers
• Rent a car
• Steal dinner mints.

Switching tracks, I read The Sinestro Corps War in its entirety, and am absolutely obsessed with how good it is. For a run and jump superhero story, that sorta feels like the biggest widest grandest most ambitious most exciting thing I've read in years. When Coast City lit itself up green at the beginning of the climax in the last issue, I was sorta beside myself. I fell ass-backwards into this thing just in time for this whole Blackest Night dealie that is supposedly coming, and before that I don't think I'd even had two thoughts to spare about Green Lantern since I was playing with his action figure when I was eight. Now I'd say it could even be my favourite thing I'm reading. Really, really impressed across the board.

Posted by tederick at 12:05 PM in 1701 & comix & foodin'
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One thing I will say I have noticed since moving to College & Yonge, is what I would have previously called a disproportionate number of people who walk the streets yelling to themselves. "Previously called," because obviously, it's just the reality of this place. Sarafina said a while back that downtown just makes people crazy. I'm inclined to believe her.

But the convenience...! I'm so close to Fire on the East Side that when Matty Price and I had to postpone our brunch date just now, I was able to detour home in only 2 minutes! Convenience beats crazy. Because inconvenience... is crazy.

Posted by tederick at 9:45 AM in 1701
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If you had somehow guessed that this is the third day in a row I've been wearing the same underpants, you wouldn't be wrong. They're pirate underpants! You think pirates changed their underwear every day? TRICK QUESTION, DUMBASS, pirates didn't wear underpants. They are the very definition of "free n' easy."

Tomorrow I am shooting my first movie in well over a year, and since I don't really count This Thing Is Bigger Than The Both Of Us anyway (for good reasons, not bad reasons, don't freak out), let's say it's actually my first movie in well over two years. It is, both intentionally and not, close kindred to Standoff, the movie everyone dislikes except me and Daniel and Demetre, who at the end of the day are the only three people who I really wanted to like it anyway. No coincidence that the three of us alone will work on the new flick. I would be pleased if the outcome were similar.

Having now exonerated Star Trek: Nemesis, I will shortly be exonerating The Phantom Menace. Can you believe it's been nearly ten years since that shit? I archived a clip from Global News back in the day, y'know, the one where I notably declare TPM to be my generation's Woodstock... boy. Heady fucking times they were.

In the meantime, I have just absorbed a nice rosewood table into my homely home, and will shortly cast out for dinner parties. My living room smells like basement, but over the course of the coming month I shall make it smell like merriment. (Merriment=turkey.)

Posted by tederick at 2:47 PM in 1701 & galaxy far & pirates & tederick films
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My new(ish) apartment is exemplary in almost every detail with one notable exception: the grocery stores are horrible. I hate them. I actually hate them, like you'd hate a person or a president. They are so fundamentally, bafflingly mismade that I will often wander their completely incoherent and disorganized aisles in a state of near apoplexy, trying to find the most basic staples of human consumption like milk or flour or meat. One of the stores is a Dominion in Carlton Court; the other is an ugly dwarvish Sobey's. Both are open 24 hours - this seems like a bonus, yes? But what good is the 24-hour availability of grocery stores, when the aisles are stocked with nothing but despair, the tills are staffed not by the damned but by the rejects who could not even pass muster as the damned, and the haphazard physical layout is so mind-alteringly incomprehensible that it would make Rubick himself sit upon the ground and shit his pants? At the Sobey's, for example, the baking goods are found, in portions, in three separate aisles. Oats are in aisle 1, flour is in aisle 2, and for chopped walnuts or other finishing products, you'll have to go all the way to aisle 4. Tortillas are at the front of the store, rolls are in the vegetable aisle, and for all other breads, go to the back. At the Dominion, cheese in some form is found in every single aisle. Every single one. This ready-at-hand convenience might seem helpful to some, but try keeping which cheese is found where straight in your mind, and you will find your neurons slowly warping themselves onto the path of total senile dementia. And none of these goddamned establishments carry deluxe KD. Oh, I hate them. I hate them so much.

Posted by tederick at 1:28 PM in 1701 & foodin'
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At Sarafina's suggestion I put Jabba on the fridge, which was something that had been kicking the back of my mind anyway, and thus turned a large and unwieldy collectible I was seriously considering getting rid of, into the best thing about my house. Jabba on the fridge: pop art, cautionary tale, or just good decorating? A bit of all three, I think.

I spent the afternoon making chili and watching The Godfather.

Posted by tederick at 6:05 PM in 1701 & awesomeness & foodin' & toys!
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The goddamned miserable couch scenario finally got concluded last night and after several hours of toxic toil, I have a couch. A pretty spiffy couch that turns into a bed, so that I can have house guests. As far as I can tell (having received no information on this whatsoever from any educational institution, wise elder, or What To Expect book), the process of becoming a grown up is marked by the following pegs:

• The ability to host dinner parties
• The ability to have people from out of town sleep over
• Formally engaging some kind of financial "retirement plan."

I didn't sleep well and hate every single thing about the world this morning, except for maybe the couch, which I have not actually turned into a bed yet and might be awesome.

Posted by tederick at 9:54 AM in 1701
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But it sure feels nice to have some.

Last night was lovely. El familia and I and Sarafina went to Scaramouche, and I had quail and pasta and a very strange and interesting wine. And boy, they're not kidding about that coconut cream pie. Everything golden and nice and I went home very happy. Adam and Caitlin gave me The Force Unleashed for the Wii, which didn't exactly set the world on fire, review-wise, but I'm ready to yank a Star Destroyer out of the sky with my mind right now anyways thanks to my contentious and highly frustrating relationship with Ikea over a certain $1300 they owe me and/or a couch that apparently is never, ever going to show up. Can I give you some advice? Don't ever buy anything from those Danish fucktards ever. "Ikea: Swedish for we're assholes."

Otherwise, things are coming together. Zam is now the nicest cat ever; she was apparently so traumatized by the move that she even started sitting on my lap while I watch TV on my complete and utter lack of a couch. I am going to get her a scratching post. I have internet at home at last, some more furniture hand-me-downs coming, and the makeshift couch-bed on the floor of the living room ain't bad for watching movies, looking out at the skyline, and/or musing abuot life / plotting the downfall of the wicked. And I ordered this. It's gonna be somethin'.

"Honey Kisaargi, an android created by her scientist father, is attempting to balance her dull office job and her secret life as the constantly costume-changing, pink-clad superhero warrior of love, Cutie Honey. When the dreaded Panther Claw gang returns to create evil and steal our hero's Love System necklace, it can only be Cutie Honey to the rescue!"

Posted by tederick at 10:23 AM in 1701 & foodin' & movies & wii & zam!
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Helloooooo internet! I am 32 years old now, which is the age between 31 and 33. This technically still qualifies as "early 30s" but really feels like "in my thirties" which translates to "soon I'll be dead." You might just as well be reading this blog from beyond the grave. Wouldn't that be something.

For my birthday, Sarafina took me to the ROM to see the dinosaurs. This turned out to be excellent. You know how we all griped about the crystal for a really long time? Unnecessary! The crystal makes a hell of a dino-display case, even if it had to be connected to the ROM proper with rickety gantries that even Indiana Jones would be nervous about crossing. Anyways, here's me with a short-faced bear:

There were also giant turtles, stegosauruses, and mean-looking Tyrannosaurs with their wimpy arms. Plus, in other parts of the museum, mummies, dresses, and Shanghai. Not to mention the Stair of Wonder, which is really just a staircase, but give the ROM points for upping the rhetorical ante with their naming conventions. There's really a lot going on down there.

Later on in the evening, 1701 hosted its very first BYOC party - bring your own chair, cuz I ain't got none. Sarafina made ninja cakes: cupcakes which are ninjas.

I got some Duchov-love from Bex, plus my first household plant from Demetre. It's a Reggae Breeze, which is a type of Hydrangea... an awesome type of Hydrangea. Plus several other excellent people came by and sat on my floor. So it was pretty decent as these things go.

Then it was the Reservoir Lounge for somewhat down-tempo swing dancing, but it was still fun. Here's me and Mark and Sarafina, c/o Demetre's camera:

I like those people a lot. Unfortunately there are no pictures of us dancing but I guess that's just as well since I never really mastered "dipping" Sarafina.

2 a.m. eggs at the Griddle, 9 a.m. wake up call for driving to Brantford, lovely downtown Brantford all day Saturday for the Brantford International Jazz Festival, and then stuck on the QEW for what seemed like the rest of my frickin' life because nobody thought it was worth mentioning that all arteries into and out of the city were going to be closed on Saturday night. Sunday cleaning house and watching Spider-Man 2, perhaps a little high, which was an excellent way to end an excellent weekend, and that brings us to here, whereupon I am actually feeling good again for the first time in six weeks, and not just tired. So all right: I likes me some September, and walking around town with my love, and thinking forward to the next thing.

Posted by tederick at 6:22 PM in 1701 & jedi antics & miscellaneous crap & photoblog
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"It's crack cream. You put it on your crack." - Matthew Price

ITEM!: I never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever shoulda tried to go without internet in the home. The wi-fi signals in my building are locked up tighter than... uh... tight... things. But why complain, Matt? Well, in spite of my bravura technology-couldn't-possibly-be-that-important stance (and yours too), it's surprising just how much daily information you need to get off teh intrawebs. I'm not talkin' no Facebook email mumbo here, I'm talking simple stuff like where to go if you're bleeding from the head, or want a copy of Final Fantasy III. Fortunately, I have set myself up to have internet installed sometime early next week, whereupon I can finally start downloading some TV, which is the other thing I never shoulda given up.

ITEM!: I never shoulda cut all my hair off, either. As much as the long hair was driving me insane, the short hair is making me really, really sad. Who knew? I guess my internal image of myself changed sometime this year.

ITEM!: 175 emails upon my return. Pitiful.

ITEM!: Yesterday with my ladyfriend was pretty much the best day ever, from neck to nuts. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I'm doin' ok with that.

ITEM!: Things my house needs: soap tray, bath mat, chairs, a sofa (on order), plants, pots and pans, steamer trunk, framed Japanese Prestige poster, the internet, scratching post, a personality

ITEM!: Burn After Reading is rather tremendous, if puzzling; the flick fucking ends like a slap in the face and I would say it had done so too soon, were I not completely unable to figure out a single storyline, character arc, or plot element that had not actually been satisfactorily resolved at the moment the credits rolled. It feels a little like a magic trick, or more accurately, a game of three-card monte, but I respect the deftness with which I was tricked.

"I'm not set up to mold hard rubber." - Harry Pfarrer

Posted by tederick at 3:32 PM in 1701 & j-o-b & miscellaneous crap & movies & tv
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Well this is what I've been reduced to, friends - squatting in a Starbucks, coasting on the OneZone's weird technical loophole which still, three years later, lets me access Tederick.com for free while every other site on the earth is blocked by the connection checker, desperately to fuck wishing I had not decided to brave the first few days of my new habitation internet-free. It's goddamn terrifying up there, Internet! A BlackBerry is a piece of shit substitute for a living, breathing Facebook! Merciful Zeus. And serious crap.

Actually, the only thing that really worries me about being web-deprived is that I agreed to blog about Midnight Madness over on my old blogTO stomp, and now it looks like I'm going to have to finagle some late-night wheeling and dealing just to get into the site's back end. (Story of my life. Ho!) If it works out, though, you can check out my posts starting tonight with JCVD, right over here, sometime after 3 a.m. Wait, make that 2 a.m. - I LIVE SIX WALKABLE MINUTES AWAY FROM THE RYERSON NOW. In case you hadn't heard.

I am sick to death, Internet, of moving, unpacking, cleaning, organizing, shelving, stocking, decorating, and pulling very long white hairs out of my beard. For a "vacation," this one (thus far) utterly sucks.

Fortunately, there's TIFF.

Over the next 10 days I will be seeing (yes seeing!) FIFTY-ONE feature films. I was cranking for 53, but barring putting something together at the table tomorrow and mid next week, it's looking like I will merely be matching last year's number, not exceeding it. Still, this ain't golf. Golf sucks.

I will be seeing:

Thursday:
Soul Power at 6:30
Waltz with Bashir at 9
JCVD at midnight**

Friday:
Achilles and the Tortoise at 9
Delta at 2
C'est pas moi, je le jure at 4:30
35 Rums (arrrrh!) at 6:30
Derriere moi at 9
Detroit Metal City at midnight
and I might rush Rocknrolla, not because I want to see it, but because fuck Rocknrolla, that's why.

Saturday:
Sauna at 12:30
Vinyan at 3:15
Flame & Citron at 6
Religuolous at 9
Deadgirl at midnight**

Sunday:
It Might Get Loud at 10
Blood Trail at 12:45
Knitting at 2:45
Witch Hunt at 6:30
Zack and Miri Make a Porno at 9:15, where Kevin Smith WILL be asked to guest-host Mamo.
Not Quite Hollywood at Midnight

Monday:
Still Walking at 9:15
White Night Wedding at 12:00
Ashes of Time Redux at 3
The Hurt Locker at 6
Hooked at 9:30
Acolytes at midnight

Tuesday:
The Wrestler at noon
Of Time and the City at 4
Brothers Bloom at 9
The Burrowers at midnight
and I may rush Patrick Age 1.5.

Wednesday:
Better Things at 12:15
Three Wise Men at 2
Medicine for Melancholy at 5:45
Tears for Sale at 9:15
Martyrs at midnight**

Thursday:
Gamorrah at 9 a. damn m.!!
Synecdoche, New York at 12:15
Dungeon Masters at 3:15
Acne at 5
Me and Orson Welles at 9

Friday:
Che (the whole bloody affair) at 9
Tokyo Sonata at 2:15
Vacation at 6
American Swing at 9
Sexykiller at midnight

Saturday:
The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World at 9
Sky Crawlers at 12;15
Real Shaolin at 3:15
The Secret of Moonacre at 6:30
Three Blind Mice at 9
and Chocolate at midnight.**

The ** line items are the ones which, theoretically, I will also review on blogTO before retiring to bed on those nights. God, next Thursday morning's gonna suck, especially if Martyrs is as mind-warping as they say.

All rightie, I'm up and out, got my first flick in just over an hour, and it's at the gorramned AMC. This is gonna be a disastahhhh...

"Let's get down to brass tacks here: how much for the ape?"

Posted by tederick at 5:05 PM in 1701 & blogTO & tiff 2008
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I am a dizzying 17-storey height above the city right now, it is a beautiful Tuesday, and I am on vacation. Were it not for the slight inconvenience of spending the only truly gorgeous weekend of our entire apocalyptic summer not on a cottage deck drinking beers (a lack felt so painfully that, in Canadian Tire the other day and confronted by a truck-sized billboard of Canadian Shield granite poking through a mist-shrouded lake, my eyes started brimming), I'd say everything's going off without a hitch.

In comparison with my former roommates, it turns out I am relatively monastic in my quantity of possessions. I figured I'd be in the middle of the pack (nobody was going to out-clutter Brandy) but after spending 2 hours on Sunday night just bringing boxes of stuff down to the living room from Chris' room, I felt positively Spartan. All in all my move was a piece of cake, a lazy Sunday afternoon in the driveway at 3QF with my big truckin' fuck. It was only after an existantialist nightmare trip to Ikea, when the sun went down and we started loading Chris and Brandy's big truckin' fuck, that things started to get frazzly. I have consumed more sugar in the past 48 hours than in probably the last month (including a bushel of Cinnabons which, had I the means, I would have pre-digested Fly-style and sucked up whole), enough sugar that, after midnight on Sunday and while the others thought we had gone off to slack, Steve and I even hoisted Brandy's beaten, broken couch out the front door of 3QF and smote its ruin on the mountainside.

Now in my surprisingly enjoyable new pad - which, for everyone who's missed the subtext, is christened 1701 - Zam is being her predictably adorable self, so needy and clingy (as she is after any traumatic event) that she's almost an entirely different cat. All is well. Sarafina came over last night (her office is a scant 4 minute walk from here) and we made a delightful feast of Swiss Chalet among the forest of box towers, and watched American Graffiti. The roar of the city kept me up for much of the night, and now I am surfing the ether of unpassworded wi-fi, watching DVDs and emptying the boxes I spent the last week filling. Life is insane. So much production, for so little change.

Posted by tederick at 9:29 AM in 1701 & 3QF & the apocalypse & zam!
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Sometimes, you just have to accept that some of your friends are stealing from you, and there's nothing you can do about it, and it's kinda okay anyway cuz everybody just wants stuff even if it's not their stuff, and really who wants to get into a fistfight over "stuff" anyway. Batman: that's who.

So the good news, TIFFwise, is that I got the thrill this morning, which is nice, given that last night I was so overwhelmed with work and the move and the festival and everything else that I never even wanted to hear the words "film festival" again. I am in box 41, and I await my results. I am also, however, about to go truly internet-free for the first sustained period in a long, long time - have to turn in all the modem stuff to Rogers before close of business today, and do not actually have an internet hookup coming to me at the new apartment next week. I will be surviving on the whims of free wi-fi until I can get things sorted out. So, fair warning, communication may be spotty for the next little while.

Plus, I shit you not, after 3 months of agonizing, $5 tickets for Avenue Q fell into my lap, for tomorrow afternoon. So yes, it's true that all of my friends went to see Evil Dead: The Musical without me, and in spite of its thrice return to this city I have never been able to go see it with anyone, and I will never ever see it for the rest of my life ever. But I will see the puppet sex. Oh lordy, shall I see the puppet sex.

All is well. It is cold, and rainy, and there's a fuck of a lot going on at all times, but I am happy, and I am going on vacation, and I am in love, and I believe that everything will fall into its proper place. So that's something.

Posted by tederick at 10:41 AM in 1701 & tiff 2008
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The selling-shit-off thing actually worked out better than I expected. I'm down to just two or three items left and they aren't exactly the ones I expected to fly off the shelves. I cannot believe someone is actually taking the TV: that thing is so HEAVY. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my soul.

"How was your long weekend?" Well, it was fine. Not long enough. Sarafina and I had a pretty decent day of just lazing around doing nothing on Saturday, which we haven't had opportunity to do in a good long while (and probably shan't again for a while yet). But I coulda done with more of it. Actually all in all I'm in a very "nesty" mood these days. I wish it was winter, because I seem to crave little more than bed and vidja games, but it's just too goddamned hot at 3QF to accommodate my need. I am forced to go outside, where parasites are choc-a-bloc and the radiation ball rules. Is a little self-imposed agorophobia really so impossible to achieve in August in Toronto? Apparently it is.

Speaking of August: Brian K. Vaughan's meticulous re-work of the 2003 blackout within the fabric of the Ex Machina storyline is really rather breathtaking. As Shortbus pointed out, there's a unique relationship between 9/11 and blackout '03, and also a lot to do there in terms of massaging our own fond recollections of the night the lights went out (vs. the morning CNN would not go away). In narrative terms, the summer of '03 also makes for the middle of his storyline, doesn't it? I am liking that title more and more with each book that comes out.

Sockvivor continues. I've thrown away my lucky socks - I guess sixteen years is simply too much. Things are getting lean around my place - more and more stuff siphoned off to 108, to friends, to the trash heap. I feel cleansed, for the first time in forever.

I have a fondness for Star Trek III that is disproportionate to its worth.

Posted by tederick at 4:17 PM in 1701 & comix & miscellaneous crap & socks
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One scathing email, two failed mover negotations, two large going-away meals within three hours of each other, one supervisory smackdown, three hotel getaway scheme needs assessments, one unplanned wander around the midtown area, and one half-accurate and hilarious description of my job later, I'm feeling quite a bit better thank you. I would like to go see Batman again, and then I think everything will be set to rights.

No more cell phone driving Ontario? OK. The telecommunications industry and its foibles has been much in my mind of late, but due to various conflicts of interest I will have to publish my findings at another time. Until then, please do not call me while I am driving.

In the more immediate future, I need a couch.

On another topic, I'm not entirely sure how we got a hundred and nineteen shows into this deal before stumbling upon the title "Mamo a Mamo," but we've finally arrived, and with that clever bit of pun titleage, my esteem for Matty Price has grown another hectolitre. Here's Mamo #119: Mamo a Mamo, in which further Batmania is discussed.

And in the "let's further prove that we just don't get it" sweepstakes, Sony is trying to widen the Spider-Man movie platform with a Venom spin-off. I for one couldn't be more thrilled: Spider-Man 3 being the only entry in the series that I can actually enjoy (I own it on Blu-Ray!) and Venom being the worst thing about that awful, awful movie, I must expect that a Topher Grace-headlined Venom flick would be fan-fucking-tastic, not just in a so-good-it's-bad way, but also in a so-bad-it's-hallucination-inducing sort of way. I can see molten rivers of obsidian CG goo in my mind's eye right now... hopefully they relocate the story to a smaller city in the American midwest where Venom arrives as a hapless outsider on the run... and have an orphaned kid involved, who forms a tender bond with the oil-slick-with-a-heart-of-gold Venom... It'll be the story of us, man, who we are right now, all us loners and losers and people made of glop out there. Yeah. That's moviemaking.

Posted by tederick at 9:32 AM in 1701 & j-o-b & movies & podcastery
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Today sucks, for reasons blah, and blah-ha, and boo-hoo, which I shall not utter here. I shall, however, say: Ha! (Not a "ha" of merriment. A "ha" of deep, diaphragm-clenching malaise.)

I will also say that if you're going to have a gigantic see-thru glowing toy bust of Fat Palp on your desk (I'm not), this is the one to have. Tell me this ain't some scary shit. Damn the Japanese are weird.

Unsurprisingly given the storm clouds over my head today and also the obvious cinematic parallels in The Dark Knight, I've been thinking about There Will Be Blood quite a bit lately. The TWBB blu-ray remains one of the highlights of my collection and the flick is just, well... "even better every time" don't cover it. It's goddamned stunning. In fact I think a blu-ray TWBB/TDK double feature (to be subtitled: The Night America Stole Your Soul) would be quite the crushing experience of cinematic awesomeness, examining the complete dissolution of moral certainty in the 21st century, and I may stage such a viewing at 1701 in the fall sometime.

That's right, 1701: behold the tag for my new domicile, in which I shall be living solo starting on September 1 of this year. I signed the lease on Friday. Now I'm all bound up with labour and logistics. More detail to follow.

Posted by tederick at 1:49 PM in 1701 & galaxy far & miscellaneous crap & movies & toys!
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