Today I watched all of the Star Warses - the completion of my life's work. It had to happen sooner or later so it happened today. I was kind of dreading it, actually. But you know what? Worked brilliantly. Way easier than Lord of the Rings, even though the running time turned out almost exactly the same. Noticed things I'd never seen before, got spooky new re-significations of existing material thanks to the complete storyline, even had a good long contemplative think about my life and the things that have happened in and around these various Wars. Can't say fairer than that.

Last day of the Star Wars line. Jen dressed as Queen Amidala and I was in my Padawan finest, kind of a mismatched pair, but we didn't care. I remember that after Qui-Gon got killed I noticed how hard I had been squeezing her hand, and let go.

Jason and I paid $500 to see it. Apiece. Hayden Christensen was there; he and his entourage walked out as soon as Yoda had put his lightsabre away, which seemed to indicate that the next five minutes wouldn't be particularly good.

Kate fell asleep on my shoulder somewhere around when Anakin and
Padmé had their cross-Coruscant mindwalk. Everything was sweet and easy. As conclusions to a lifetime of fandom go, it didn't get much better than Sith.

My father took me, sometime in my early years, and the first thing I can remember in this whole hysterical lifetime is looking up at the ceiling of a movie theatre, thinking that a real Star Destroyer was in fact passing over my head.

Geoff's mother took us to see it at the Cinesphere, afterReturn of the Jedi - which means that for a few crucial years, my entire understanding of Empire came from the book-on-tape. I demonstrated the running stance of the tauntauns to my brother when I got home.

I'm still at least a quarter there.

Posted by tederick at 10:45 PM in galaxy far & shinydisks
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I woke up at ten (new ten) and answered some sexuality survey questions online in some detail, and then got to trying to tame the wilderness below. If the success of a party is directly proportional to the stickiness of the floor afterwards, then we did well; limoncello and melon liqueur had formed a fine flypaper sheen on the entire kitchen floor which was... well, really nauseating actually. On the whole I wasn't anywhere near as hung over as I deserved to be, just a bit of queasiness going into the soccer game that turned into a massive starvation explosion when Chris put the roti whammy on me. Then he said that he'd buy me a roti if I scored a goal, so I scored a goal. A beauty goal, too, a fucking wide-open breakaway into their unprotected end zone and all kinds of finishing. It was really nice. Now full of roti I am completely exhausted and have an annoying number of things to deal with before The Simpsons, after which (based on how I'm feeling right now) I fully expect to lapse into a coma. So much roti. So much of everything. This weekend was pornographic in its excess, at least in relation to how spare everything's been lately. My body's not used to excess, not right now.

Posted by tederick at 5:37 PM in 3QF & sockey
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Yeah that's right I was River. And boy howdy was it fun. Except for the wig; those really cheap plastic wigs are murder. But yeah on the whole I'm glad I finally got around to it after a couple years of near misses. (I'd had a general plan to be Mola Ram because I'd found a really wicked ripped-out heart, but I ditched that because I didn't want to shave my head.)

Reasons why I was River:

• Hallowe'en is all about the unspeakable evil... and what's more evil than girls?
• No Serenity 2 = last chance to be River
• I am wicked hot in eyeliner.

I couldn't pull off a real hunga munga, but I got a cheap-ass axe and a cheap-ass scythe at Shoppers Drug Mart and turned them into some decent double-handed edge weapons. The dress came from Valu Village, as did the wig, and I went commando under the whole deal because I didn't want a VPL. Coming up with an effective method for concealing my cock proved to be wayyyyyy too much of a hassle, so it was pretty much right there. This meant that basically, whenever someone rubbed against me in any particular way, River would develop a mighty tributary. It was also a bit hilarious when I would crouch down to nab food, but I think only a couple of people actually met my better half. Otherwise, all good. Skirts: so freeing. I loves me the drag.

The party was tons o' fun, and I'm really beginning to think that nobody does H-we'en better than 3QF. Brandy goes nuts with the decorations and the coloured lights, Chris and I set up a/v nerddoms in the living room (silent slasher flicks) and kitchen (Turkish Star Wars on an endless loop), and the music mix was particularly gratifying overall, co-authored by m'self and the B-diddy. A bit bassy on an improvised setup, so I doubt the neighbours are thanking us much right now, but otherwise fine.

As planned, Bex and I experimented upon a new drink concept, one designed to fit the times: the melancholy. Rather appropriately, it turned out to be a merely average drink, nothing special, because that is melancholy too. It consists of:

• 1 shot limoncello
• 1 shot melon liqueur
• club soda (because it's so boring)
• lime.

And the result is a drink that is truly depressing and boring, and yet the most appealing shade of green. Well done. I got sauced on 'em, after I was already sauced on everything else. So much so, in fact, that when Jason arrived, with a Chewbacca mask on, I actually screamed like the devil himself had come to collect my soul. It was innate and frankly, I'm still a little shaken by the moment. Powerful.

Later in the evening, Bex, Stevebex and I used this page to prove that anything Letterman says is funny if you conclude it with "Hey!" Also there's a pretty kickass Dave Chappelle page from Half Baked where pretty much the same rule applies except concluding every phrase with "Pussy." And the Venkman one is not to be missed. (Best end line: "Well then maybe my theory is correct!!")

As usual the party ended while I was somewhere else, but there's something nice about coming down the stairs and seeing the sheer wreckage you've created - both in terms of physical destruction to the home, and psychological destruction to the roomies. Tomorrow's for cleaning, and (as usual with these binge-fests) the hungover soccer. Now's for the spinning further into pleasant oblivion.

Hey! Pussy.

Posted by tederick at 1:49 AM in 3QF & foodin'
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Now there thsi thing. Chris keep sraping me when he's drunk. Is that fair? only inow what? No seriously: Chris get s FUYCKKKKKKKKK this is hard.

When I've been drinking I have difficulty using the space bar.

But here's the thing: When Chris drinks. Chris molests my body. Which, even now, when I am dressed as a woman with boobies, is unusual. That is alll I am saying. Cheers

HEllooooooooooooooooo MaceLod. You are not Macelod, you are MacLeod.

I think this seems fair.

Bex is here, and wearing a dress. (Like me! Yay.)

Posted by tederick at 12:43 AM in 3QF
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Like the adorable redhead said waybacks, Hallowe'en's sure good for getting to be someone else for a little while. And if there were ever a time in my life when I was in desperate need of a few hours of not having to be this particular loser, it's right about... now. No wait, now. No now. It's so hard to tell these days.

Yesterday I was a guest on the fundraising installment of Frameline, and then afterwards Daniel and I went out for lunch and talked about whether or not cigarettes are an emotional suppressant in addition to all the other shit they do (or at the very least, whether they are the exact antithesis of yoga). We also wondered whether or not Sauron was in it for more than just taking over the planet and making people miserable and going "ho ho ho." Then we created a new character for prime time television, who will get his own series: Horse, the Divorce Force. He's a private detective who specializes in busting cheating spouses. Oh, and he's a horse. Obviously.

I have to get a few things for the party, and a few things for the costume (does anyone know how to do a really effective all-over blood splatter?), and then it's nothin' but ganja and girlyparts, oh yeah.

Posted by tederick at 10:07 AM in blood & miscellaneous crap
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Holy shit Sulu's gay.

SULU is GAY.

Holy shit.

I'd love to throw in some kind of "I always suspected" line here, but no, it never even occured to me that Sulu was gay, even when he did this:

Which you gotta admit is fairly gay.

Way to go George! I'm really proud of him, I have to say. He's my favourite TOS actor, and coming out when you're like a kajillion years old and have a whole bunch of fans who expect you to act a certain way, can't be easy. Especially given the franchise-in-question's notable reluctance to actually cop to the existence of homosexuals in the 24th century.

Awww! Sulu has a partner he's been with for 18 years! Man, I love Sulu.

Meanwhile, Brandy informs me that there are in fact 1,040 DVDs in the living room, not 850 as previously estimated. A 190-disk variance, I must admit, is fairly shocking. Way more than the gay Sulu thing.

Posted by tederick at 9:59 AM in tv
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I honestly think this might be the cutest goddamned thing I've ever fuckin' seen. Should I start doing this with Tederick? Because where Kermit leads, Tederick follows.

Posted by tederick at 11:30 PM in miscellaneous crap
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The other day I was watching Commander in Chief (which I am unabashedly, embarassingly hooked on to the point of fever sweats about what I'm going to do when House comes back on and takes back the timeslot) and when it was done, I flipped around and found Air Force One airing on another channel. So I went from watching Geena Davis avert a terrorist disaster that would have claimed the lives of hundreds of school children on Hallowe'en, to watching Harrison Ford kick the shit out of Eastern European terrorists bent on taking down his wife, daughter, and very big plane. (And as much as the visual effects are pretty much the worst put on film in the past twenty years, I never get tired of watching AF1 cartwheel across the Atlantic when it finally crashes.) And rather than become intensely annoyed with all the patriotic do-gooding, I found myself succumbing to a rather significant happy. I do a lot of bitching about the ol' U.S. of A. on this particular web site, but there's one things about those fellas that I find unendingly endearing: they really, really want to believe that their president is some kind of hero. And even if their president is certifiably not a hero, not anything more than (in this case anyway) a largely inept sales manager, they still want to believe the best of the person who sits in that big chair in that strange, round room (like Captain Kirk... who was Canadian... hrm). It's not quite a redemption for the whole darned nation, but it's enough to give a world-weary observer a modicum of hope.

I'm in a good family way around here. I got back from 108 strangely unnerved by the fact that the 'rents had got through a whole dinner without mentioning my imperturbable unemployability and its ongoing imperturbableness. There's been talk of me moving back there, but I en't gonna do it. Past a certain point (and lordy, am I past that point), it's just time to be a grown-up and accept the fact that life doesn't always turn out the way you like it, but you're still responsible for your own shit. I like it here. I like the incest/pedo phraseology in our Simpsons fridge quotes. I like the 850 DVDs in the living room. I like the smell of the three (and only three) meals that Chris knows how to cook. Everyone's all excited about the Hallowe'en party, Brandy's been baking with the Robbie Williams music cranked way up, and my costume is all done... though my penis may yet get in the way. But I suppose the main point of all this is: even if my life is an absolute waking nightmare right now, it's sure nice to live at 3QF meanwhilst.

I had an extremely detailed dream about the Mal/Inara love story in Serenity 2 the other day, and let me tell you, it's damn good. If I had won the 54 million bucks, I'd buy me the sequel to Serenity and make Joss put me in it as some loser that Inara humps at the beginning of the picture. No wait... maybe I'd just buy Morena. We need someone to serve tea around here.

Posted by tederick at 8:56 PM in 3QF & dreams & goddamn politics & joss
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Well there's good news and there's bad news: the good news is that last night's 6/49 jackpot ended up being a whopping fifty-four million dollars, a Canadian record. The bad news is that the winner's in Alberta (and I am not). So I guess that train ride's gonna have to wait a little longer. Fortunately, King Kong's three hours long. (Think that doesn't connect? You're wrong.)

Oh, and to continue a discussion we were having earlier: there are now Kong Arms to go with the Hulk Hands and Thing Feet. The new superhero to be composed of these items grows weirder all the time, yes? What's next, Wonder Woman Kneecaps?

The other day, just to see, I decided to find out if I was any good at drawing Homer:

So it turns out I'm no good at drawing Homer. I am somewhat comforted, however, by the fact that I draw Homer the way Homer draws Homer.

There is a small shard of glass sticking out of my left leg. It keeps changing shape; sometimes it has square edges, and sometimes it is rounded, and sometimes it is a triangle and sometimes it is a rod. Charisma Carpenter put it there. I've been awake two hours now and it still won't go away.

Posted by tederick at 10:41 AM in dreams & pj's playground & simps
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Forget that Daniel Craig jive, here's your James Bond double oh muthafuckin' seven, ladies. He sure growed up pretty, didn't he? Go Dan go!

No wait, it gets better:

CUTEST. THING. EVER. H/R shippers can eat my ass with a lollipop.

Posted by tederick at 9:03 PM in h-pot & miss hermione granger
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William Hootkins
1948-2005
(for real this time)
Sleep well, big guy.

Posted by tederick at 9:35 AM in galaxy far
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It really happened in 1999, though its roots went a few years further back than that, or maybe all the way to the beginning. Nevertheless, 1999 was the first year I started shrieking and smashing things and doing harm to myself. 1999 was the year I should have died, or at least, most wanted to; if wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak and I would have ended my life that summer on any number of occasions. By then it had already been going on for months, or maybe a year; vast periods of utter normalcy which were nevertheless repeatedly shattered by hyper-lucid fragments of time - five minutes here, twenty minutes there - of earth-shaking rage and fear, and manic energy so huge it could only be exploded out my fingertips in brutal, unstable bursts of kinetic force. And also the days of utter nothingness, the fuzzy brown lull periods where for 72 or 96 hours I would be like melted plastic poured over a couch: sickly, gluey; mottled colours and stale, chemical smells.

That was the year when I first understood the mistakes I'd made in high school, when Mark had been in the worst of it and I simply hadn't the experience to get why it just wasn't going away. Everybody who's outside depression thinks, somewhere deep in their hearts, that it's controllable: that to some extent, no matter how minuscule, the afflicted person can take hold of themselves and make a change - snap themselves out of it, get help, make things better. They think that on some level, it's still just a choice, a problem with a solution, an illness with a clearly-definable cure. And for all the arrogance of my own belief in my smarts, I believed it too.

I was wrong. I was a fucking asshole. And when it came for me, and everyone around me was telling me all of the things that I'd believed mere years ago - that all I had to do was get a doctor, that everything was going to be okay, that this problem was easily solved - I wanted bloody vengeance. I wanted to rip their patronizing throats out and play mighty bagpipes in the rain. When you're in it, you feel like you'll never get out. And when you're outside it, you just don't have any fucking idea what being in it is like.

And yet, I got out. I didn't get out through any heroic act or great moment of courage. I got out in the most monumental instance of self-involved spite of my entire life. Someone who mattered to me more than anyone had told me, in a moment of supreme foolishness, that I didn't deserve to be happy. And before I actually destroyed her for it, I wanted to be sure that she wasn't right. It was that simple. When I make war, I don't fuck around... but I like to be sure my head's on straight before I do it.

So I signed myself up. I got the help. I told the whole story for the first time in my life to a woman who'd spent all of twenty minutes in my presence; I admitted to her that I'd been hurting myself, which only one other person even knew about... and as spiteful as my initial reasons for seeking help might have been, doing that took courage. Staring into the face of someone who actually has the means to help you, and having the balls to go all the way and admit just how far down into the shit you've let yourself fall - fully detailing the scope of the problem that you are now at the mercy of this other individual to solve - that's heady, heady shit. I've had only a couple of moments like that in my entire life. (The others were more fun.)

She gave me over to a psychiatrist, a fat Jamaican man in his fifties or sixties who took one look at me and put me on Paxil and told me that I was to come see him once a week for psychoanalysis. I didn't like one single bit of it. Didn't like that it was so easy, didn't like that the appointment took all of twenty minutes, didn't like that it didn't make me feel any better coming out of that office than I did going in, didn't like that the answers were still weeks and months and years away. Didn't like the process. Still don't. Still want miracles and instant fixes. Tonight in my journal I called it wanting a bus-crash-level change in my life. They do happen, those miracles, but they're random and rare and thereby worthless. Everything else is the tiny shit that takes way too long and seems way too hard.

Three weeks later I was completely unable to come, and probably more manic than I'd ever been in my life, a pair of Paxil symptoms which dovetailed rather neatly together in that horrible night when I spent five hours masturbating to no good effect. Out went the Paxil, and in came Wellbutrin, and to my astonished horror, that fucking pill was literally a purple emoticon of mental health. The goddamned curved lettering on the face, the eye-and-nose-like scoring above... who writes this shit? The Happy Purple Pill, as I inevitably started calling it. It wasn't a small amount of glee that saw me writing a giant, purple, talking happy face into the script for I Have a Hibachi at my Wit's End a few years later. Some things, you just can't make up.

My shrink pissed me off completely by continually dragging our conversations back to my relationship with my mother and father; I would much rather have been bitching about my absentee girlfriend or the general horror of having coasted out the tail end of my university career without a single fucking clue of how to achieve all the grand illusions roaming about in my head. He was pretty dogmatic about his Freudianism, though, and maybe it helped, or maybe I just needed the pills. It's the great secret of the anti-depressants: they aren't ends unto themselves, nor should they ever be (and it's sickening to witness the degree to which they are prescribed as such), but the people who hate and fear meds just because they're meds are about as misguided as the people who think a depressed person can just snap themselves out of it. When used properly, anti-depressants simply relieve the omnipresent emotional pressure that has been eating your mind since the depression began. They take some of the weight off your shoulders, and maybe with a little coaxing, you'll actually be able to take a few steps on your own. Life takes over and does the rest for you: there is no cosmic force more proactive than the simple realities of momentum. Once you get going, it's harder to stop than to stay moving.

It took a while, but things took hold. By that winter, weekly psych trips were no longer necessary; by the following spring, I asked to be taken off the Happy Purple Pill, because - without exaggeration - I was literally perceiving a happy, pinkish glow about the edges of the tangible objects in the world. It felt like an achievement, and still does; looking back, I really haven't achieved much that I've wanted to in my life, but I solved that one. It almost feels superheroic; at the very least, it's a big part of The Story. The nightmares now only come when hearing tales recounted (which I'd never heard when I was younger, and which probably would have helped) of the years of mental unhealth that have plagued generations of my family back a hundred years; I am so fucking glad that I was born when I was born, when the wool of misunderstanding about depression was finally being lifted from the eyes of the world. Fourteen months of suffering in helpless silence was long enough; I can't imagine a decade. Or two. I can't believe it wasn't until a year after his death that I even knew my grandfather had fought this monster for longer than I even want to think about. The secrecy - the "we don't talk about that" that has always surrounded the disease - is as bad as all the common misconceptions about what it feels like to have it.

Well anyway. That's the first part of the story.

Posted by tederick at 11:58 PM in poetical
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The above statement is the greatest fakeout monkey trick in the entirety of Western civilization. It might very well be nothing more elaborate than the leading research tool of some massive social behaviour study being run by eeeevil men who rub their hands together and say "hrrrm" a lot. Men who are spattering ink on the walls of mankind, and asking if we are seeing a) some nice flowers or b) a dog with its head split open by an axe. Why? Because by accepting that the above statement is true, we are undergoing the single greatest act of faith required of us as human beings: that this process actually has a continuation beyond the simple act of our clicking "send" and bombing the employment universe with our carefully-worded resumés. That someone out there is listening. Most importantly, it's an act of faith that is directly opposed to the dissociating properties of the telecommunications labyrinth in which we currently find ourselves. We are communicating with the void, with absolutely no requirement of reciprocation. We have already aleviated the void of any responsibility to ever fulfill its end of the presupposed bargain. By communicating with it in the first place, we have implicitly agreed to the requirement that we are subjugated to its will, and must play the game its way. That's faith.

Relatively speaking, I could believe Jesus. Dead guy, wakes up on the third day, seems far more plausible than the possibility that those people are even reading these resumés at all. The whole thing is a trick upon the cause and effect relationship that has, thus far, governed our entire lives. In daily, tangible terms, there seems to be no quantifiable outcome to sending resumés out at all. Having done so for uncounted tracts of time has resulted in no relational result whatsoever, meaning that each and every such action was in fact pointless. On the assumption that someday this will work, though, we keep doing it, like Bart Simpson endlessly reaching for the cupcake that gives him an electrical shock, just in case next time it will be different. "Is my brother dumber than a hamster?" Seems so.

Where does this faith come from? Does it even matter? The daily sweep of repetitive action rapidly overtakes the need to question the viability of the process. Before long, the same part of the brain that questioned why you're doing it is having difficulty imagining ever not doing it. So very quickly, "outcome" becomes "process," "goal" becomes "mode." Faith numbs the need to ever get to the point, and the first thing to go is the questioning why. "Acceptance" is the new "achievement."

Every 108 minutes, the code must be entered. A guy came running out of the forest and told me so.

Posted by tederick at 2:17 PM in miscellaneous crap
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Every single season, rafts of Simpsons fans bitch to me endlessly about how the show just isn't as good as it used to be. It's season seventeen now, and this has been going on (in my memory anyway) since at least season ten, and probably a few years before that. Hell, even I bitched about season nine. (Ugh... season nine.) This year's no different from any other; after each and every episode I encounter at least one person who wants to tell me that the show's no good any more.

This has to stop.

I'm not one to make definitive aesthetic judgements about anything, but in this case you're all just Wrongy Wrongersons. I might even, next time I hear from any of you, be forced to call you Wrongface McGee. You are wrong with a capital Wrong. Here's why, and it's the grand secret to The Simpsons over at least the past decade of its existence (and possibly the whole thing): The Simpsons is the television equivalent of chili con carne. Cook it up and eat it straight off the stove, and it's pretty good. Leave it overnight, though, and it's the best fucking thing you've ever tasted.

I've been watching reruns from season sixteen over the past couple of weeks, and episodes that didn't make me laugh once during their original airings last year now have me rolling on the ground with tears leaking out of my eyes. The Simpsons is the quintessential example of a show that ages well - that's why we're all chock-full of Simpsons verbiage which we whip out in conversation at any appropriate (or inappropriate) moment. That's why we really could organize a fundraiser evening where everyone is required to speak only in Simpsons quotes, and could probably pull it off for hours on end. And the stuff that you instantly pass over on Sunday night at 8:00 because it just doesn't seem to be as sharp as the old episodes is the stuff you'll be quoting ad nauseum a year from now. Dollars to doughnuts, when that shiny Moe Szylak-headed DVD set of season fourteen comes rolling around, you'll buy it without a second thought because half of the episodes on it are "your favourite." Like the song said: They'll never stop The Simpsons. Have no fears, we have stories for years. Like, how about a crazy wedding? Where something happens, and doo doo doo doo doo?

This rant was brought to you by Jasper Online, still kicking ass in season seventeen.

Posted by tederick at 12:54 PM in simps
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The sibs and I took the Westin Harbour Castle for a pony ride this morning, which was yet another installment in the bizarre, unending series of opportunities for me to mooch free food off of something I'm technically completely uninvolved in. It's almost worth a series of one-minute movies. I left the hotel with my pockets full of marmalade and ketchup (not blended together) and a whole mess of tea, and my belly full of breaky. (It turns out that I don't like breakfast sausages. I confirmed this by trying them, realizing that I don't like them, and then trying them again five minutes later for no reason at all, and realizing that I still don't like them.) Then it was a soccer game in the spit against the Magic 8 Balls, who are always our favourite team to play on an annual basis. We even managed to tie it, thanks to my intimidatin' manner more than my actual offencemanship. But hey, score one for a little male-female contact with the 8 Ball Hottie, even if you have to deduct points for it being me checking her in the box (the soccer field box, not the other box). Still, energetic.

On the way home, I did not buy Batman. It doesn't feel like a victory.

Posted by tederick at 4:31 PM in batman! & foodin' & sockey
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Bar mitzvah for film critics: a quote from this very Tederick.com has ended up on the back of a DVD jacket (Flyerman). And to really bust the cherry, it was taken completely out of context and used to uphold a film that I gave a mediocre review to! Which is how you know you've really arrived. Sweet. Later I'm going to put on a skullcap and dance around with my shirt hanging out of my pants. Although to be fair, I was going to do that anyway.

My intended efforts at cat rescue today have gone unfulfilled, as the cat in question has vanished. I did, however, buy a dress. I don't know if I'll buy Flyerman. That would be vain. (I'm vain, though, so it's up in the air.)

And it occured to me this morning while driving around in the rain that I owe my mother a big honkin' "I told you so," for all the times when I was a teenager and I was recording all the episodes of TV shows I really liked, and she said that no one else in the world would ever want to re-watch whole seasons of television they've already seen. Of course, my vindication came years ago and I only just now managed to notice, so I guess it wasn't burning me up any more. Nothing burns you up the way it does when you're fifteen.

Posted by tederick at 2:26 PM in shinydisks & tederickdotcomdotcom
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Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a new motion picture event from yours truly:

Posted by tederick at 3:16 PM in movies
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Have you ever seen the effects of precocious puberty on a two-year-old boy? Well, now I have. Cripes. Seriously, parents, if you're changing the diaper and little Johnny's wang hits the floor with an audible "thump," get him to a doctor. It's all fun and games when it comes to female precocious puberty, but with boys there could be a brain tumour. Brain tumours are bad.

(No, clearly it's not fun and games with female precocious puberty either, but it's fun to contextualize.)

I had an uneventful pubescence. I almost regret it. Every time there's a documentary on puberty or some sort of puberty joke on a network television show, it's all about how horrible it was. Mine was not horrible, nor wonderful, nor anything in between. I found it relatively interesting, or at least more so than my math homework, but nowhere near as much fun as Star Trek: The Next Generation or throwing paper airplanes out my third-floor bedroom window. It simply didn't take up much of my attention. The zits were really upsetting between 15 and 17, and in spite of the degree to which it's popped into the popular conscience since then, I had no damned idea what was going on with the morning erection thing... my one slice of puberty that really did make me think I was the "only one." Otherwise, my development was roughly apace of the other boys in my class, my height and build were satisfactory, my knowledge on the subject (though basic) was rounded enough to give me a general chart of what was going on, my voice never cracked in front of the class nor was I caught out with an erection, and my penis represented itself with aplomb. That's right, 14-year-old Tederick.commies, I am a symbol of hope. Follow me and sing my name. (Don't really.) But boy, wouldn't it be fun to be back in the grade 7 locker room with the knowledge I have now. The things I could do with one well-placed reference to Optimus Prime... (or a giant inflatable penis costume)

Posted by tederick at 10:30 AM in sex (theoretical)
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I wasn't even on the guest list at Level tonight, and yet they gave me not one not two but four drink tickets. I made it my business to use those drink tickets. After all, I'd only accepted the last-minute invite in the first place to play for some free food and social entertainment. I used to be a club whore, for about twenty minutes. (No, really. I used to go to Canada's Wonderland, too.) Nowadays it's just fun to grab those random opportunities to give myself a hearty reminder of why places like Level are just so uniformly hilarious. The non-Albas swinging on the podia in spandex hip-huggers with pieces missing; the medallions of flesh that were supposed to be chicken but tasted like reconstituted gluten; the dude running up the stairs shouting "BITCH! BITCH!!" to get the attention of the woman ahead of him... boy howdy, good times. And the phones. Lordy, the phones. I wanted to put a Mamo card in the hand of every Ted-worthy female in the room, but we only had 35 minutes, and it seemed more important to use those drink tickets. At one point we were on the roof (where the impotent smokies, now stumbling into the darkening winter, were forced by law to conglomerate) and I was staring at the heat lamp and wondering what it would be like to wrap my big manly palm around its red, glowing metal. But I was pulled away before I could find out.

Posted by tederick at 11:19 PM in foodin' & jedi antics
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Gotta admit, Hasbro is doing yeoman's work trying to keep the Star Wars action figure line interesting in its first post-saga year. I mostly thought I was done with the hobby after the astromech 10-packs that I continue to salivate over until their January delivery, but this recent list of the 2006 line has all kinds of dandy surprises. Finally a new Boushh and R5-D4, and the gigantic cumshots of seeing Major Derlin (Cliff Clavin his own self), Moff Jerjerrod, Graga the gorgmonger, Hem Dazon (the first head that pops up in the Cantina scene, at long last), and Chief Chirpa (one of my faves from the vintage line) finally on their way to shelves. Fuck, they're even doing the Coruscant Fire Fighter Pilot. Did we ever even see one of those guys on screen? Either way, he'll happily stand next to my Cloud Car Pilot among the greatest unseen characters ever to hit plastic.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a very slim year with a gigantic number of repacks, but that suits me just fine: ten or twelve new toys to buy over twelve months, and a mightily eased pocketbook.

Posted by tederick at 2:47 PM in toys!
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Here's something Bex and Jess wrote for us. I'll let Bex explain:

Unsent by Jess "Mennotits" Macleod and Bex "whenwilligettodoabrown" Wood

So over the summer Jess and I collaborated on a Brown-centered rewrite of the Alanis song Unsent. It's funnier if you know the general tune of the original, but meh, we found the content enjoyable enough. It's been slightly altered since the original in the summer, but it was very effective in letting us procrastinate for our upcoming midterm tomorrow.

UNBROWNSENT

Dear Matthew, I like you a lot.
I realize you just got out of a relationship with someone right now and I respect that.
I would like you to know that if you're ever up to it in the future
and you want to
come visit me at the Box
I would be
open to spending time with you and finding out how old you were
when you wrote your first film.

Dear Mark Brown I liked you too much.
I used to be attracted to boys who were much older than me,
and think solely about soy protein,
and you were plenty into scary movies for my taste at the time,
I used to say
the more frightening the better.
The truth is whenever I think of the Sesame Street remix
your dance comes up with a vengeance like it was yesterday.

Dear Ryan I love you muchly.
You've been nothing but tall and blond and a former Gueljiver, and willing to
take suggestive photos for my friends.
I kept thinking about your gyrating hip motions as doctor Vesuvius and how much
I want an action figure with realistic movement,
I'd keep it by my bedside table where I could masturbate to it, or possibly,
with it.

Dear Adam, you rock my world.
You have a charismatic way about you in conversation,
and you got me seriously thinking about, riding your meat claw.
I haven't spent too much time with you, but I generally have fun when we
finally get to talk.
It's too bad Matt said I'm not allowed to be friends with you
because I find you ridiculously cute.

Posted by tederick at 10:09 AM in blogsphere
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It's a tale told many times, but you just can't help wondering what the 14-year-old checkout girl at Shoppers thinks when you show up at her counter and drop lube, a whole bunch of moisturizer, condoms, a Maxim magazine, a lottery ticket and a really stiff brush... I mean I know there must be sensitivity training at the SDM mothership or something like that, because they're always so effortlessly unsurprised by your purchases, but still, it's a riot of mental possibilities. One time I really did buy nothing but KY, rubber gloves, and tampons. There's no explaining that. Just imploring eyes that say too much in the wrong direction. And a whole lot of chuckling afterwards.

Tonight we had the first bifurcated Lost episode, in that it was flashback-centered around two characters instead of one, both of whom are Korean. I don't think that was why, but it raises the question. If the next episode flashes back to the youths of Michael and Mr. Echo, we'll know we're onto something. Meanwhilst, here's everyone who could get killed in the next ep, and why it will suck:

• Sun - would suck because we really want to see the Sun/Jin romantic reunion in four more episodes.
• Claire - would suck because if they had her birth Turnhiphead, only to turn around and kill her (because once a woman has offered up the fruit of her womb she's no longer relevant), I will be forced to be offended.
• Kate - would suck because she's supposedly the star of the show and she looked mighty fetching when she was wriggling through that duct. And also puts a nasty residual spin on the Kate/Sawyer/Jack three-way.
• Shannon - would suck because she's finally not annoying, and is in fact interesting, what with the voices and the grief and the whole new dishevelled look. And also killing the sister of the guy they killed last season smacks of favouritism. Oh: and she's hot. A lot.
• Michelle Rodriguez - wouldn't suck particularly much at all because let's face it she's annoying as hell, but one would hope they didn't introduce a Hispanic character just to whack her three episodes later.
• The New Chick - would suck because if they went to all this falderal about an imminent death, only to kill the New Chick without ever really introducing her, they're fucking rude bitches.

I probably shouldn't say anything yet because it's still entirely first-trimestery, but I took the advice of MacLean and wrote a bitchload of new script today. Nearly twenty pages actually, of a script that was not even a twinkle in my eye this morning other than its title. (One of those "Hmmm... that would be a good title for something sometime" situations.) I can tell you that it's entirely the product of grief (like The Site five years ago) although in a distinctly more veiled way, and otherwise falls under my usual rubrick of end-of-the-world shite (though in an unusual, totally-ripping-off-a-movie-I-like manner). Oh: and I think it's the first time I've had to write a twelve-year-old boy since about 1994, so that's interesting. Boys are different from girls. They have penises.

"That's all the dialogue I can think of today." - Marlon Brando

Posted by tederick at 10:08 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & sex (theoretical) & the process
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I've been dreaming about travelling quite a bit; two nights ago it was a surprisingly detailed revisitation of the Indianapolis trip, and then last night I think Matty Price and I were on the road again in the States... though not to North Carolina, more likely to someplace new. Maybe we were Amazing Raceing in this new, horribly land-locked American edition they've smited us with. When Phil Keoghan was explaining the origins of the mission in New Orleans last night and said "This historic building is the pit stop for this leg of the race," I fully expected him to instead say "This historic building... is gone." But no such luck.

This quiz said that when it comes to the intellectual sexiness, I'm a "hot tamale." Boy was that ever not a surprise. Anyways my response was poorly written so I'm not going to reprint it here, but at least the questions were moderately diverting.

I used to lapse into daydreams about going to the Sahara desert and just walking straight in, disappearing over the horizon. That was about five or six years ago and I think I stopped having that fantasy as soon as the smiley-faced purple pills were flowing down my throat every morning. As with many things once the prevailing problems were "solved," I never fully investigated the origins of that fantasy or what it meant to me. It wasn't a death wish thing, because I never stayed in the desert long enough to die. It might instead have sprung from the old proclamation that the desert "is clean." The elemental cleanliness of a land made of nothing but dirt. And the quiet... boy, the peace and quiet.

Time to go make like an X-man. It's opium, and I know that, but one can only spend so much of one's time dreaming of wastelands.

Posted by tederick at 2:24 PM in dreams & sex (practical)
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This couldn't look worse if they hadn't spent ten damn years trying to put it on the screen. Jesus, Gary, give me a break!

Posted by tederick at 10:37 PM in galaxy far
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What the hell, I haven't done one of these in a while and I was feeling Memish.

1. Name someone with the same birthday as you: Hermione Jane Granger, born September 19 1979. No wait you meant my actual actual birthday didn't you. Fine then, Amelia it's your latest visit to the Tederick.comverse.

(where's #2?) Honestly, why do the people who write these things have so much trouble with numbering?

3. Have you ever seriously vandalised someone else's property? I don't think so. The only incident of vandalism I remember was writing that my gym teacher was gay, in grade 7 in the boy's bathroom in like the tiniest handwriting ever on the inside of the toilet stall. It was my big act of defiance.

4. Have you ever hit someone of the opposite sex? I don't hit no woman. Them's fragile. Wait actually... no. I still don't think so. At least never on the head. Plenty of spankings, though.

5. Have you ever sung in front of a large number of people? Never solo. I was conscripted into various choruses (chorii?) in high school. I had a manly voice.

6. What's the first thing you notice about the preferred sex? My head-to-toe seems to start with clothes and move quickly to the way she fills them. Pants quality tends to be graded almost instantaneously.

7. What really turns you on? Deep, beautiful eyes. People who are into their shit. ...wait, what am I trying to say? You know what I'm trying to say. And of course: everything flesh - biting, bleeding, stinking, wriggling, snuggling flesh.

8. What do you order at Starbucks? Ack - you caught me. Coffee. Sometimes they make fun of me when I say "just coffee." Like, "What? You come all the way to Starbucks and don't order a mocha java frappa wacka bang-bang latte deluxe with sprinkles supreme macgiver yes how because chillagro bean wowiesauce?"

9. What is your biggest mistake? I'm not much with the "look back in regretfulness." Although I have, more than once, thought that I missed a bet by not living in residence during uni. But then I remember what the third floor of Winters smelled like in February.

10. Have you ever hurt yourself on purpose? Sure. I prefer the ones I can control.

11. Say something totally random about yourself. I have two parallel rips in the crotch of my jeans right now which are obsessing me way more than they should be.

12. Has anyone ever said you looked like a celebrity? Constantly. Tom Hanks more times than I can count; also B-Ffleck and once I got Liev Schrieber and was amazed that the person knew who Liev Schrieber was.

13. Do you still watch kiddy movies or tv shows? Of course.

14. Did you have braces? Nope. Shoulda, might have quelled the Letterman gap.

15. Are you comfortable with your height? I really shouldn't complain but I wouldn't mind being 6'1" instead of six even. My cousin Ryan remains the god of my idolatry. I think he's 6'2".

16. What is the most romantic thing someone of the opposite sex has done for you? Is it bad that I can't even think of something?

....No wait... I can. Private as hell though.

(No #17 either, huh? Wiseass.)

18. Do you speak any other languages? Can say "Fuck everyone in the universe to death" in Chinese. And I keep pretending that I can "get by" in French.

19. Have you ever been to a tanning salon? Good lord no. Stupid Oompa Loompas.

20. What magazines do you read? Res, Cinefex, Premiere occasionally... Will buy Maxim once in a blue, if the cover model is hotter than usual.

21. Have you ever ridden in a limo? Besides the damn airport ones? I don't think so.

22. Has anyone you were really close to passed away? All four grandparents, a couple of schoolmates....

23. Do you watch MTV? Fuck no. Not MuchMusic, either.

24. What's something that really annoys you? Construction, the TTC, yappy dogs, and cigarette smoke.

25. What's something you really like? I'm not adverse to October weather.

26. Do you like Michael Jackson? Even when he was great, I was merely respectful. Now I live in fear.

27. Can you dance? Yeah, but you'll never see it. (Checks downward in the blog; shrugs.)

28. What's the latest you have ever stayed up? What am I, fourteen? I've gone 40+ hours with no sleep, more often than you.

29. What was your least favorite subject in school? Zwuh, probably chemistry. That shit was no fun for anyone. I got yer covalent bond right here!

30. Have you ever been rushed by an ambulance into the emergency room? I wish! But unfortunately, I am indestructible.

31. Do you actually read these when other people fill them out? Surprisingly often.

Posted by tederick at 10:21 PM in miscellaneous crap
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Posted by tederick at 4:56 PM in photoblog
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I wish I lived there.

Posted by tederick at 8:40 AM in miscellaneous crap
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I get the call when I'm squirrelled up in the rubble of my room eating a not-too-indecent snatch n' grab Subway sandwich involving cheap chicken and ranch dressing, watching a Golden Girls episode that actually makes me laugh out loud at several points in spite of the fact that I've probably seen it ten times in my life, and slowly letting the soccer rough-and-tumble drain out of my aching body. Programming meeting for tonight is merrily shitcanned, and unnecessary anyway, because I've almost got a working order in place and the web site will come to life tomorrow or the next day. Two pieces of chocolate to substitute for the wraw and riggling, and into the shower. When the water hits me my mind is lost, between how Alex Dziena has vaulted to the honourary Keira Knightley position on the "pervs looking for pedo pics" search statistics for this very Tederick.com, and how my right assal muscle has been hurting since an ill-advised bike ride in the gale this morning, and how my bedroom looks and smells like that of a teenaged boy (which it does every once in a while, and not necessarily badly). Moments later, I'm in nothing except the single greatest shower of my entire freaking life, because getting really cold, and really sweaty, and getting the living shit kicked out of myself six ways from Sunday not once, not twice, but every five minutes for an entire two hour soccer game under a vicious slate-grey October sky, all becomes pathetically worthwhile when the shower actually cooperates for once and takes all the troubles away. And now the only problem is that my grand ambitions of making this night Mean Something are dribbling away in all the wonderful steam, though I really should try to get at least one of the eighty things done before turning in. I can't find work, can't get the munny, am scraping the poverty line like I never have before ever, am so sick to death of this period of my life and all the useless waiting. Right now an eight-month coma under neon lights in some mindless work factory sounds just about right, one long hit from the suburban cookie-cutter bong and wake up in April out of debt, no closer to achieving anything meaningful with my life, sallow and heavy-lidded with legs like wet noodles and a stiff neck from too many ties, but mercifully so much farther past the wreckage and smoke that maybe I can think forward for once instead of this gear-grinding neutral, spraying dirt backwards and making Rorschach patterns on the stucco garage wall. This one's a bat, that one's a smily face, here's a whole lot of money and that girl's wearing braces. We all jump forward. Carriage return, back to one, the song begins again and this time we can dance.

Posted by tederick at 7:17 PM in poetical
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Here's my radio weblog;

Here's me running for the U.S. Senate (about time!);

Here are my
lovely woodprints.

Here I'm gonna be a doctor;

Here's where I indulge my passion for athletic photography;

Here I'm a star!

TARGET="_blank">Here are famous things I've said.

Here I am primarily a fiddle player influenced by various sources from John Salyer to
Benton Flippen;

and here, I have not yet entered any information.

Posted by tederick at 5:44 PM in miscellaneous crap
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That 3-disk special edition of Titanic is coming to shinydisk in a couple of weeks, which is both good and bad; good because it's about damned time, and bad because the package isn't as strong as it could have been, nor do I have the money to buy it. Still, it got me into a contemplative mood and I ended up doing what I've been meaning to do for several years now: I wrote a lengthy piece about the film. I don't know if it's a "review" at all; I've called it "a remembrance," and it's so unabashedly personal and sentimental that it almost made me cry while I was writing it. But hey, that's showbiz for ya.

(Wait... "that's showbiz for ya"?? Boy, when I can't think of a closer, I just throw in anything.)

Posted by tederick at 10:54 AM in reviews
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I had the time of my motherfucking life reviewing Domino!

Posted by tederick at 4:12 PM in reviews
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Having fun with the sex quizzes. Oh marvellous internet, and your strange abilities to determine that I am truly depraved, and attracted to cute bums. How ever did you learn my deepest secrets?

First I scored Hell Level 2 on the Sexual Hell Test, which I suppose is somehow related to that Dante's Ten Levels of Hell test I took last year, where I ended up crammed somewhere between Lusty and Gluttonous. I scored a Level 2 on that one too, so maybe they all come out Level 2. Or maybe I'm just a deeply Level 2 kind of guy. In any event, it goes like this:

HELL LEVEL 2 Raw score: 76% You're just about as deep in sexual hellfire as a person can get. Virtually no urge, however demented, will go ungratified; practically no boundary will go uncrossed. You're probably proud of your adventurousness, and, honestly, you should be. Few people are confident enough to pursue pleasure on their own terms. Your morals could sink a bit further, sure, but it's likely that you've got a pretty good idea of what you're into and what you would do...above all you're honest with yourself with what you want. If more people were honest with themselves, you'd have a lot more company down in the flames. AVOID: the lost souls in sexual heaven and (above all) the denizens of sexual purgatory. You don't need any prudes or wishy-washers in your life. [Ed: Amen, brother, amen.] How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 51% on hellishness

I love being marginally hellish.

I enjoyed that one so much that I decided to take the Tits, Ass, and Cuteness Test to find out what kind of girl I find attractive. This one was a no brainer:

Cute & Small Boobs Raw score: 29% Big Breasts, 54% Big Ass, and 84% Cute! /P> Thanks for taking the T and A and C test! Based on your selections, the results are clear: you show an attraction to smaller breasts, larger asses, and sexier composure than others who've taken the test. Note that because you scored small on breasts but large on ass size, it might appear you like girls bottom heavy. That's probably not the case. What's more likely is that you notice curvy, voluptuous butts, and you don't like big, fake boobs. Big real boobs are even worse because of the sag. Anyway, my third variable, "cuteness" is a mostly objective measure of how innocent a given model looked. It's determined by a combination of a lot of factors: lack of dark eye makeup, facial expression, posture, etc. If you scored high on that variable, you are either really nice OR you're into deflowering teens. If you scored low, you are attracted to raunchier, sexier, women. In your case, your higher than average score suggests you appreciate a cuter, nicer look. Kudos! Recommended Celebrity: Hilary Duff, because she is the ultimate in cute! Especially since she lost that baby fat! [Ed: Ugh. Just... ugh.] How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 10% on tit-size You scored higher than 65% on ass-size You scored higher than 96% on cuteness

I know that they mean something else entirely, but I love that I scored 96% on cuteness. Because I'm adorable.

Yeah so that was pretty much the most sexist test ever. And could they have had even one normal-ish looking girl, other than Kate Winslet who doesn't really count because she's the normal version of hotttttttttttttttttttttttt? Well, whatever, I come away satisfied. But then, I'm a white male heterosexual liberal living in North America. Pretty much I always come away satisfied.

Posted by tederick at 11:13 PM in sex (practical)
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Paraphrased from conversations during Lost last night:

[Sun, Claire and Shannon all on screen at once.]
Me: "They're gonna kill Claire this season and I'm gonna be really upset."
Matty Price: "They're not going to kill Claire. I think they're going to kill Jin."
Me: "They can't kill Jin. He hasn't learned how to speak English and thereby achieved his apotheosis as a human being."

Ten minutes later:

[trailer for upcoming episode of Invasion begins]
Matty Price: "Invasion really sucks."
Me: "Yeah, I'm not watching it any more."
[trailer for upcoming episode continues on screen]
Me: "Wait, are there hot girls on that show?"
Matty Price: "Yeah, the daughter's hot, and that newscaster is really hot."
Me: [picks up remote, presses record]

Posted by tederick at 10:52 AM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & tv
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Easily falling under the best pieces of junk mail I've ever received, today my inbox was graced with "The G-Spot News." It was bullshit, but man alive there needs to be an actual weekly G-Spot e-mail newsletter. We can call it e-G. It will be a multi-formative weekly survey of G-spot related articles, news items, and minutiae. Headlines like "Alberta Woman Finds G-Spot... in the Yukon!" or "'Litre of Fluid' Myth Debunked; Erotica Writers Furious."

The most interesting thing I learned about G-spots in the vagina book (aside from the fact that mine and theirs are the exact same damn thing) is that there's actually three completely distinct "types" of G-spot tissue formations, which also have an enormous amount of variance between them... so yeah, every single one really is its own perfect little snowflake. 66% of women have the prostatic tissue clustered close to the urethral opening; a smaller number have it concentrated adjacent to the bladder neck, and even fewer women have the tissue diffusely distributed along the whole urethra which makes for a mightily tricky and insensitive G. Sucks to be in the last group, but you can't argue with your parts. Play and be played!

Posted by tederick at 6:35 PM in sex (theoretical)
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What I had in the kitchen: Cheddar cheese, white bread, onions, capers, salt and pepper, and a relish made out of sundried tomatoes and olives.

What I had under the sink: The Snackmaster. Problem solved.

Posted by tederick at 9:36 PM in foodin'
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Collecting together the Hunt footage over the weekend put me in a high-schooly frame of mind and I was reminded of something that I honestly haven't thought of in probably close to a decade: why I broke up with my first girlfriend. I was late coming to the party as many of my over-educated under-stimulated brethren generally are, and the Girl in Question had a bit more experience than me and was therefore very exciting and all kinds of "the hot." She had this boyfriend, who we'll here call Biffy, who was a self-styled artist-warrior-poet type who had the smallest penis I've ever seen on an adult male (though his pride of it set the standard of "size doesn't matter" for ever after) and who made the mistake of going off to South America for March break, leaving me all alone with his girlfriend. Push came to shove, yadda yadda etc., and by the time Biffy got back, the Girl in Question and I were making the goo-goo eyes and some tentative smoochies. Biffy was actually okay with this - big Mr. Free Thinker and whatnot, and he'd probably scored like crazy in Cartagena or wherever the frick he was - and he wished us well. But then he slipped in the deuce, the most obvious deuce of all time in retrospect, but I was so patently naive back in those days that I didn't see anything nefarious in his plotting until years later: he said something along the lines of "I hope you can handle her." I gave the blank stare. He expounded: he asked me if I'd ever gone down on a girl. I gave the blank stare again, because - and I'm not 100% sure on this point, but I suspect - I had never heard that term before. (I mean I knew what oral sex was by this point, but "going down" must have given my lexicon the clean slip.) And then, and I remember this very clearly, he mimicked the throes of ecstasy to which his own oral ministrations had caused the Girl in Question to succumb, which involved a lot of screaming and slapping the wall behind him. I sloughed it off at the time, playing confidence I didn't have, and (though it took me a few days to get up to my running speed) I fled shortly thereafter from anything and everything having anything even remotely connected to the Girl in Question. There is nothing in the world that is easier than convincing a teenaged boy that he can't make a girl happy.

Now here's the thing: when I finally did first get around to making a girl slap the walls and bite holes in the pillow cases, this incident must have been (mercifully) completely erased from my mind, because I was not intimidated at all. I count this a dear gladness, because otherwise the freight of Biffy's moment of brilliant sexual terrorism would probably have destroyed something that I otherwise immediately took to like the huppiest duck in the biggest pond in the whole wide world. There's the first time I had sex, and there's the first time I went down, and I have no illusions about which was more fun. No unconscious fear, no conscious fear either. Maybe Freud had a fanged asshole.

Posted by tederick at 9:57 AM in galaxy far & sex (practical) & sex (theoretical)
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I spent most of the day putting together the making-of supplemental video feature for the DVD of The Hunt, wherein I appear in my underwear in all my mid-pubescent glory and prove that a man pushing six full feet tall can indeed only weigh a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet. Aside from the fact that I can't find the footage from the making of the underwater shot anywhere, drifting down this particular flick's memory lane sure was entertaining. Why? Because it was the last time I was ever truly "ambitious." Don't believe me, huh. Well, wait for the DVD.

After sitting in front of my computer for three or four hours doing that, I lit out for the coffee shop and dissected The Art of Revenge of the Sith fairly effectively. I love these things, but they're also somewhat heartbreaking for me; it's difficult to see so many great visual ideas go unutilized. Don't get me wrong, I'm not jumping on the "Lucas fucked it up" bandwagon, because he's one filmmaker and I'm another filmmaker and the things that set his hair on fire would naturally differ from those that ignite mine. But it's hard to see a kilometre-long gash in the surface of Coruscant caused by a Star Destroyer that crashed into the back half of the Jedi Temple, or Padmé moving towards Anakin on Mustafar with a knife concealed behind her back, and not get to thinkin'. I loves the thinkin'.

Posted by tederick at 5:38 PM in galaxy far & tederick films
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I arrived at yoga about 40 minutes early, which was strange and unexpected, and sat outside reading Traitor until the Jo-Lowe showed up. We got to talking about turkey day, because of course today is indeed turkey day here in the C-da, and I was lamenting the fact that I'm a few years past being able to look forward to a gut-bustingly large meal. It simply no longer appeals. Especially this year: my body's a lot harder than it used to be. I like being able to move and breathe and absorb water. I no longer relish filling myself with concrete and waiting for the effects to wear off. I retaliated by undergoing, I think, the single best yoga class I've ever done - my body did every single thing I asked it to. Every single thing. Was I flat-out yogi perfect? Of course not. But I hit or exceeded my own level in every single case. Maybe the point of all this was learning what to ask of myself.

Posted by tederick at 2:45 PM in jedi antics
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Just like that and we're over the edge, down the face of the shale cliff and we won't see another evening above twenty degrees for eight and a half months. I remember it so clearly from last year, too, that one tangible day when every molecule in your body vibrated with the fact that it was the last one, the last day for patios and beer and riding around town on the bike for no reason other than to do it. From here on out, everything is merely functional.

A good screening at 3QF, and a good crowd, and a good deal of laughing, and some good drinking for afters. I made three films this year, two of which (Nuns That Fuck and Far, Far Away) I showed tonight, and called it even at that. Now I'm completely inert - not writing, not thinking about writing, not planning the Next Thing at all. I have one big problem I'm still trying to solve, and a host of other big problems I can't even start with until I get this one under lock and key. It's surprisingly centering, though, so I don't mind siphoning strength off its singular consumption of my life. It's very zen: you focus on one problem, and all the other ones just go away. Solving problems by not solving them. I am the river.

Still, my skin aches. It hangs off me like elephant folds. Underneath is a layer of fresh pink cells that has never known touch, and also won't know what it's missing, will never complain, never make noise, never ache. But the baggy sack that surrounds me right now is livid for touch. It's quite distracting really, rubbing the hairs on the backs of my arms to try to get some kind of sensation up, and failing. It's like tickling yourself: you never laugh.

Posted by tederick at 12:51 AM in poetical & tederick films
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I think I've only ever had two crushes on guys. We're talking actual crushes here, not that thing I've got with Bradley Cooper right now where I want to throw him over the prep table and show him my nonstick all-purpose spreader. Or the thing where Brandy forces me and Chris to make out. No, I mean the thing where I get all giggly and girly (more than usual), over a guy. They were both straight boys so nothing ever went anywhere (even reasonably assuming that I had the willpower or the manpower to make anything go anywhere, which is a stretch), but they certainly stand out in the ever-increasingly-crowded line of doomed crushes and love affairs that files off to the left at the door of the Matt's Mega-tainment Life Emporium and Whiskey Bar. Mostly because they're taller than the others.

The first was a beautiful blonde boy when I was in my late teens, and man howdy, growing a hefty crush on a guy when it's never happened before, even if you've always accepted the limited possibility, sure knocks you on your ass. More like, it sucks the wind right out of you. But in a nice way, where there's gasping for breath that reminds you that you should have been breathing better all along. This dude was a year or two younger than me, and entirely too clever, funny as hell, had the muscles without going too far with the muscles, and the clearest eyes I've ever seen on a male. I don't want to comment specifically on the butt, but there was butt. And so, there was much lusting. There might even have been scheming. The camera certainly loved the kid, and he loved the camera, and that's as far as it went. I haven't seen him in near a decade.

Boy #2 was the real deal. Made Boy #1 look like boy parts. Boy #2 was a co-worker, and I lusted on him for like nine solid months. And I had a girlfriend at the time (so did he). I would have dropped mine like a bad habit if something ever actually happened with Boy #2. Or more accurately, would have gay-cheated on her like crazy and insisted that it didn't technically violate the terms of our relationship, because it didn't. Boy #2 brought out all kinds of nasty in me. He was tall, lean, and vaguely British-descended, but without the accent. He was surprisingly warm and friendly to me, and interested in my shit, which only furthered the problem. The farthest it ever got was getting to see him in his underwear - red briefs, holy cattleprods create a fetish for me right on the spot - but I had years of good times with that one. After I left the job, I think I ran into him maybe once or twice on the street or something, but we didn't stay friends. But he still wanders through my thoughts with appreciable regularity.

And that, for now, is that.

Posted by tederick at 3:37 PM in sex (practical)
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I have to admit, I'm fairly tempted by this. Don't get me wrong; SeaQuest DSV was a terrible show. I recall enjoying maybe five episodes from the first season, and I wasn't exactly the most discerning sci fi fan at the time. I imagine that revisiting this puppy on shinydisk would be somewhat like volunteering for a dental exam. Nevertheless, there's no denying that it was part of an extremely special time in my life, when everything Spielberg and Spielberg-related lit my hair on fire. I even lurked outside the soundstages of SeaQuest while they were shooting an episode (I was at Universal that day on blind coincidence) and got all excited when Jonathan Brandis came out. Yes: Jonathan Brandis. I admitted it, why can't you? Anyways, that was before there was a talking dolphin and a whole lot of really bad Renderman CGI effects. Back before I realized that the show's theme song was an exact reworking of the theme from E.T., with the beats moved around. Back before the whole "jumpsuit and turtleneck means the future" thing got really old. SeaQuest? Heck yes.

Posted by tederick at 9:17 AM in shinydisks & tv
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...thus rather awkwardly stating the bulk of my life's mission.

Posted by tederick at 3:49 PM in miscellaneous crap
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Something really weird happened to me last night: I liked The Incredibles. Now truth be told, I "liked" it the first time, too; I didn't love it, and I had serious problems with it, but I enjoyed elements of the film (the production design, the score, the entire third act) enough to make me pick up a copy on DVD, provided I could find it used for under ten bucks. (I did.) I watched that DVD straight off, and had almost the same reaction as the first time. Then, for some reason, I slapped it in the player last night after making dinner, and ended up watching it cover-to-cover and enjoying it quite a bit more than I ever had before. Why? Because I was finally empathizing with the characters, that's why. The big problem with the Pixar shtick is always the uncanny plasticity of the image, preventing any real identification with the pixel-people. It seems that audiences worldwide are able to get around this fairly quickly; it now seems that I can get around it too, but on a longer time frame. It would appear that it takes me about five hours to begin to identify with a computer-animated character. (That's a serious generic drawback, but hey, who's counting.) Suddenly, the whole first act of this film - y'know, the part when they're not superheroes but are rather involved in the day-to-day grind of insurance sales - actually worked for me, and that makes a helllllllllllllll of a lot of difference. Am I now a card-carying Incredifan? No, not really; no film should take three whole tries to work. Do I really want to see Incredibles 2? Of course, but that was true the first time, as well. Is there any point to proclaiming this revelation at all? No, but I had nothing better to write today.

I'd be very interested to see some actual scientific data about the way the human mind interacts with animated characters, particularly comparison studies. What's the cognitive difference between our interactions with Elijah Wood versus Gollum? How about Belle from Beauty and the Beast versus Violet from The Incredibles? There's a very unreadable PhD dissertation waiting to be written here. Maybe I'll write it. I have little better to do than spend half a decade learning about cognitive theory as it applies to the human apprehension of motion pictures.

Posted by tederick at 10:56 AM in movies
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is here. Just make sure that when you click the zoom-out button, you're humming the five-tone Lost "mystery theme."

Posted by tederick at 11:10 AM in 4-8-15-16-23-42
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Saturday was up in Aurora on the set of Dave's music video; I call it "Dave's music video" because for the life of me, I don't think I ever knew the name of the band, and right now I can't even remember the name of the song. It was pretty cool, though; as far as days of shooting go, this was definitely the one to be on. Dave (being Dave) concocted a massive house-facade that was to be driven down the road on the back of a pickup truck, and it was one of those quasi-mystical moments that we filmmakers (at this budget bracket) almost never have, and which filmmakers like Peter Jackson must get all the time, where you walk onto a set and something that existed only in your imagination a couple of weeks ago is now large and live and being lifted onto a truck by two dozen strongbacks like something out of the barn-raising scene in Witness. I think the only moment that really comes close to that sort of thing for me personally was when Mark went running out into the middle of Spadina in full costume for the money shot in Bone Daddy; every single moment of imagination, from mental icon to flesh-and-blood existence, that had lead up to that point just sort of crashed through my brain in a heartbeat and I thought unto myself, "Wow... that is exactly what I thought it would look like."

Gratification.

Speaking of filmmakers, Kevin Smith is doing one of those video journal-y things like Bryan Singer and Peter Jackson for Clerks 2, only wayyyyyyyy worse. I mean I loves ya Kev, but you have got to get a better crew on this thing. I was (coincidentally) re-watching the crossover installments from Kong Is King / Blue Tights over the weekend, and the difference between those and this is just a bit too wide. I guess I've reached my Smith "low budget is good" limit.

Went to see Grizzly Man today; loved it, and loved reviewing it even more. Mamogrified this eve. And of the many other things I had planned to blog today, I say only this: I kicked the ball and it spun like a top. LIKE. A. TOP.

[Opposite of gratification.]

Posted by tederick at 8:59 PM in askew & jedi antics & podcastery & sockey
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