I get up around seven
Get outta bed around nine
And I don't worry about nothin', no,
'Cause worryin's a waste of my... time
- Guns N' Roses

I've been wanting to get back to the Brownstone and do a Benedict Chronicle for a while now. We had a few production meetings down there back when we made Project Six in 2001 (long, long ago), and I remembered liking the benny. It was on the "must get back to" list.

The Brownstone staff was a bit... tetchy when I showed up solo at noon on Saturday and asked for a table during the brunch rush. I guess that's to be expected, but hey, if you're only going to serve brunch on the weekends and only for a few hours a day at that, a sociaphobe like me has little option. I bellied up to the table and ordered the "Classic Eggs Benedict" and a cup of coffee and glass of water.

Classic my ass!! If this is how they did it in the old days I'll eat my hat. Actually this entire benny plate was notable only in the number of ways it was different from the regulars. It used ham (but expensive, fancy ham) instead of peameal; it went light on the hollandaise; and it came with home fries covered in rosemary, like the ones you used to have with roast beef when you were a kid. Beefy breakfast? Crazy.

As benedicts go, this one wasn't great. The eggs were perfectly cooked but someone went salt-happy in the hollandaise, and the overall result wasn't as nice as it could have been. There was a lot of salt in the home fries, too, so on the whole the entire meal left you gasping for your glass of water. I'm a fucker what admires a sense of uniqueness, but this plate wasn't worth the $9.95 it cost. If I were feeling more charitable this meal mighta got to a pair of eggs out of four just because I like the place and suspect this wasn't their best effort due to the rush, but on an objective level I can only give this benny an egg and a half.

Brownstone Bistro is located at 603 Yonge Street, at Gloucester. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 6:24 AM in the benedict chroncicles
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I don't much want to toot my own horn, but I just wrote the best fucking thing ever. Or at least, of all the things I've written this year, it was the one that most precisely hit the mark of what I was going for. Man, I've got a fucking physical rush on right now, just from reading the measly paragraph I just spat out. Hot diggity. Between this and finishing my really, really, really overdue Terra pages yesterday I'd say the pieces are falling into place rather nicely. If I can just finish my Portrait storyboards now, it'll be game set match, or whatever the tennis metaphor is. What? How would I know tennis?

Hot Docs is pretty much done. Last night I walked out of Super Amigos - it wasn't bad, it just wasn't very good, a mighty example of a documentary subject (Mexican wrestler superheroes!) fully failing to live up to their concept potential ("superheroic" only in that they organize rallies and shit). I might go see Call of the Hummingbird tonight to top things off. (How can I resist a "full frontal eco-manifesto"? Can't, that's how.) And yesterday afternoon I saw a flick (Garbage Warrior) about a guy who's experimenting with self-sustainable housing in the New Mexico desert. Building houses out of Coke bottles and tires and shit. My grandfather would have loved this guy, and I thought about Grandpa a lot while watching the movie, which was nice because I rarely get opportunity to bring the old dude into my daily life any more. Anyways I'd nominally put something here about how I'd love to live in an earthship-style house perched on a rock in the wilderness that generates all its own heat, power, and water, but I suspect it's irrelevant, as the survivors of the coming apocalypse will inevitably end up living in such structures anyway, and I fully intend to survive the apocalypse. So we'll table that for now.

Teen Girl Squad (plus one) is sunbathing in the back yard even now. It's good to be alive.

Posted by tederick at 1:52 PM in 3QF & movies & tederick films & the apocalypse & the process
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Therefore, I hate my job.

Posted by tederick at 10:10 PM in j-o-b & youtubery
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New place on the must-visit list: Père-Lachaise, in Paris. I saw a flick about it last night (Forever) which was just goddamned terrific. Actually it made me realize what I really go for in a movie - anything that absolutely transcends its genre. This was a "documentary," sure, but it was also a thoughtful, meditative contemplation on what the director called the three constants of human life: death, love, and beauty. I really agree.

Flipping tracks, can someone please explain to me the appeal of Scott Pilgrim? I'm not anti, necessarily, I'm just not "with," and it seems to me that the world wants me to be "with." So, Scott Pilgrim fans of the world, untie: what's the deal?

Standoff has popped its film festival rejection cherry! Worldwide Short, who never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever EVER programs my stuff, has added Standoff to the rejection pile. I wouldn't mind if it weren't for the submission fee. As far as I'm concerned if you're going to charge a submission fee for a short film there oughta be at least some transparency into the vetting process so that you know whether or not you're wasting your time. I hadn't submitted to Worldwide in a long time because they never took any of my stuff anyway but I made an exception with Standoff and now I'm just out another thirty bucks for nothing. It's the price of doing business, well enough, but maybe a bit more definition around why my work doesn't fit the concept? If I submit Cobra Commander to a Holocaust survivors film festival in the Netherlands, at least I know why it doesn't get picked up.

Having finally seen it - that was some damn fine Lost, my friends! Squirty McBrainsalot coming back from the dead, the 5x sperm count scenario (damn, that's a lot of wriggly sperm), Juliet's redemption-until-the-next-time-she's-lying, the best fight scene in the history of television (you picked on a former mob enforcer why exactly?), and the revelation I've been waiting for since Greg Grunberg coughed his last almost three years ago: the other Flight 815. Mwa ha freakin' ha.

Posted by tederick at 3:32 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & comix & movies & tederick films
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There is no such thing as the northbound streetcar on Bathurst at College. It simply does not exist. I have never, ever, ever, ever been able to catch a streetcar in that direction from that corner. Tonight I waited with a crowd of 20-30 people for about fifteen minutes for this Polkarooesque streetcar, and then gave up. I have taken cabs from that intersection, I have seen three streetcars travelling in the opposite direction pass that intersection, I have walked to the station from that intersection without being passed by a northbound streetcar once. Somehow, streetcars are materializing in the Bathurst station streetcar bay having teleported there from the foot of the run at Bathurst and Lakeshore. They never travel north. And that is my final word on the matter.

When I was a kid, here's what I thought were the lyrics to Michael Jackson's "The Man in the Mirror:"

I'm talking to the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
Ain't no moustache on the man in the mirror
If you wanna make the world a better place
Better look at yourself and make that change

It's a minor difference but a critical one. Literally I must have thought the moral of the song was if you want to make the world a better place, you'd best lose the pushbroom. This is also probably why I didn't trust Alex Trebek.

Posted by tederick at 11:53 PM in miscellaneous crap
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Second vibrator post in as many weeks:

The iBuzz apparently never managed to hop the pond, but its North American equivalent can be found in the OhMiBod music-powered vibrator. Awesome videos on the site of women on the street reacting to an OhMiBod demonstration (in the hand, not the vagina, though that would be some excellent video too).

I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to buy this just for my own goddamn amusement more than any vain hope that I would actually get to use it with a partner. I think it's just a good thing to have on the dresser. CAYA's got it for a hundred bucks. And just like your actual iPod, you can buy a designer sleeve for it... although I think the designer could have been a bit more creative.

Posted by tederick at 8:34 AM in vagina fridays
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We're hearing very rumour-y word on that being the title. I like it. I'd like it more if the movie is literally about Indy finding a town where all the gods just hang out. All of them. And the prophets, and the saviours, and the martyrs and the saints and everyone, all in one town. A complete refutation of denominational religion in the guise of an action-adventure serial. Yahweh chatting with Krishna, Buddha playing cards with Mohammed and Zeus, and in the back, Jesus putting the wood to Kali. Plus some gods we've never even heard of because they're the Martians' gods. (Martians need gods too.)

Points against Indy IV: 2
Points for Indy IV (if title is true): 2

Meanwhile, Kryptonite has been found, and it's in Ottawa. A rise in supercrime in the Ottawa region is imminently expected.

Posted by tederick at 10:36 AM in comix & dr. jones
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Posted by tederick at 11:29 PM in extreme steve
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Powers letter column this month: funniest thing I've read since I read Chris' future that one time. Everyone's trying to get a chance to guest-write the next lettercol so they're writing all kinds of weird, random shit (under 25 words). So I'm pimping my circ-scar for a shot at the gold. Canadian doctors = nefarious evil! Hey that woulda been way better if I'd come up with an anagram for Canadian doctors that was the equivalent of nefarious evil, but no such effort is in me.

Oh, also? That issue of Powers (#24) was the best one. Ever.

Those geniuses (geniuses!) at the Golden Compass movie's promotion department decided to ape the omnipop internet trope of surveys that tell you which superhero/blaxploitation character/bar of soap you are, and have created a Meet Your Daemon dealie. And so....

Surprisingly effective. I wasn't expecting to see a tiger staring at me, but the name is dead on, and yeah, I think I can buy a tiger. Lyra sure wasn't expecting a pine marten. Fuck, I had to look up "pine marten" on the internet! And there ain't no internet in Lyra's Oxford.

Secular humanists rock.

More storyboarding for Portrait of a Young Artist in My Bed tonight; I did it at Chapters while reading Daredevil (and working out a rather satanic if-I-ever-wrote-Daredevil arc while I was at it). I've really been slacking on the storyboarding on account of how I hate doing them, so I'm planning to crank things back up and get it done in the next few days or so. I'm through the end of scene 14 now. Having fun in spite of myself. One of my descriptions reads: "...drift inward at tail of scene to remove Serena's head and focus on Mark for amazement re: pop." And that is why I do what I do.

Drive shitcanned; Matt once again questions why Fox develops new television series at all. Also: cable's out; no Lost. Fuck TV.

Posted by tederick at 8:28 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & books & comix & scars & tederick films & tv
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I have serious problems with not doing these things. Every time I see one! It is self-regard taken to the level of an art form.

A- AVAILABLE: Yes. For anything, at any point. Or as they used to say, "equal to the time of day."

B - BIRTHDAY: Same as Hermione Granger's.

C - CRUSHING: Oh boy, am I crushing. I am giving new meaning to the word "crushing." If my 15-year-old self could see me now, he'd fucking relax about Nicki Fung already.

D - DRINK YOU LAST HAD: As mentioned previously, I am on water exclusively right now. I am drinking water even as I write this.

E - EASIEST PERSON TO TALK TO: I don't know. Honestly, seeing this question, it occured to me that I don't think it's particularly easy for me to talk to anyone. Which is not to say that it's necessarily hard, but I feel a general communication deficiency when I speak to most people, even the people I'm closest to. It's been a long time since I've had someone in my life where there was just that flow, in the Amanda Alton sense of the word - last such person was probably Kate and that's a ways back. So in lieu of, I'm going to say Sandy. It is startlingly easy to talk to Sandy.

F - FAVOURITE BAND: I was on an embarrassing, and unexpected, Gwen Stefani kick about a month ago, and yes I am calling her a band. But U2 has been there the longest and ain't going away.

G - GUMMY BEARS OR GUMMY WORMS: Always with the bears.

H - HOMETOWN: Teeeerawnna!

I - INSTRUMENT: The only instrument I currently "play" is the didgeridoo, though until I can circular breathe I'm not willing to call myself a true practitioner. Anyone can blow through a tube for 30 seconds. Back in the day, though, I played the French Horn, which I then considered the height of nerdery and now consider the height of cool. Man, why in fuck did I ever give up the French Horn!

J - JUGGLE: The wussy-ass two-object juggling that any five year old can do.

K - KILLED SOMEONE: Only "with kindness."

L - LONGEST CAR RIDE: Here to Florida - about 2100 km.

M - MILKSHAKE FLAVOUR: I refuse to recognize the existence of milkshake flavours that aren't "chocolate."

N - NUMBER OF SIBLINGS: Two... that I know of.

O - ONE WISH: Must I hammer in the point yet another time.

P- PERSON WHO CALLED YOU LAST: My man Richard called just before I wrote this.

Q- QUICKIE? Not preferred, but hardly in a position to turn one down.

R - REASON TO SMILE: Superman Returns on my iPod. Like, the movie, not the music. I can whip out some Superman whenever things are getting me down.

S - SONG YOU LAST HEARD: Was sort of amazed that they were playing "Dancing Queen" at lunch yesterday while we were eating our cake. It fit the moment.

T - TIME YOU WOKE UP: Seven in the damn morning. I'm trying to move my wake time backwards, to 6:00, in an effort to improve my lifestyle a bit and get more fresh air and exercise before work starts. It might not work out.

U - UNDERWEAR: Love it.

V - VEGETABLE YOU HATE: Lettuce. I realized recently that I hate lettuce. And worse, I do not respect lettuce. Lettuce is a miserable, worthless vegetable who contributes nothing to our lives yet is pretending to have value. It's like that guy who can only define himself by his friends. "Look, an onion and some tomatoes are hanging out with me and this olive oil is all over me! I'm so fucking impressive!" Fuck off.

W - WORST HABIT: "The boy has no patience."

X - X-RAYS YOU'VE HAD: Not many. The usual dental ones and maybe a few others but I think that's it.

Y - YOUR NUMBER OF FRIENDS ON FACEBOOK: Probably tens of thousands but I'll never know cuz I'll never sign up for the useless motherfucker.

Z- ZODIAC SIGN: Dragon.

Posted by tederick at 8:35 AM in miscellaneous crap
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...this one's actually even better.

Strange feeling, because I haven't been this excited about a Potter flick in 5 long years.

Posted by tederick at 3:25 PM in h-pot
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Ah, water. I was already all into water, but now I drink water pretty much exclusively. Well, water and coffee, but never together. Ewww! Yeah anyways this is something I should have done a long time ago but dropping pop and juice out of my diet has already had fairly spectacular results. I actually went down (up?) a belt notch - whichever the thinner one is, that's where I live now.

Last night I was flipping channels after Heroes (ick!) and I came upon an episode of the third season of Slings & Arrows. I fuckin' love that show and it's a mark at just how spectacularly bad the Canadian television industry is at promoting itself that I had no idea there even was a third season. Shitheads. It's the Sarah Polley season! (All Canadian television programs are required, by law, to have a Sarah Polley season. Just like all indie Canadian films are required to cast Callum Keith Rennie.) Anyways the season's coming out on DVD in July so I'll finally get to get caught up on my Lear. Actually I might have a Lear summer - see it at Stratford, burn through my Ran DVD, and watch Slings & Arrows. Daughters, man. Useless!

I've been meaning to comment on the collapse of Premiere magazine, if only because the mag had a small space in my pre-film school education (the Iron Jim article back in '94, about Cameron on the set of True Lies, was near-biblical for me, though that led to problems later on). God knows their writing went into the ground in the tail end of the '90s, but for a few years there, Premiere was a terrific little oversize magazine. As with all things, I worry about what happens to the art form when responsible criticism on even this relative scale (Premiere ain't Les Cahiers du Cinema, folks) can't cut it. One of these days Ebert's gonna up and die on us, and then what are we gonna do?

Meanwhile, we finally have the answer to what the Simpsons movie is going to bring to the table that you couldn't get on the TV show: Bart Simpson's penis. My money's on circumcised. How about you?

I've been knocking this script idea called Glow around in my head for some time now; I think I've mentioned it before. It's based on a first draft of a ghost story I wrote about a girl who appears in an old black and white photo at my cottage, who no one can put a name to. I've tried launching the script a few times before with no success; something just ain't there yet. But I feel like all the pieces have been revolving around in my head lately and sooner or later they'll click into place. I want to be writing again. (Er, something that isn't a comic book.)

It's my parents anniversary today - thirty-five [expletive deleted] years! Man, that snuck up on me. Which is my way of saying "no gift."

Posted by tederick at 8:24 AM in foodin' & movies & simps & the process & tv
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So fucking good.

Also: Mamo.

Posted by tederick at 7:27 AM in h-pot & podcastery
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I have to say, I have been performing some pretty spectacular hand-to-hand passes in the last few days. I mean, I think they're spectacular. Maybe I should go for broke and carve out a career as an illusionist. I could be the prestige!! Hey, that would have been cool, if the prestige in The Prestige turned out not to be the final component of a magic trick after all, but an actual person - the Machiavellian puppetmaster villain who was behind it all the whole time. "It was never Borden at all, Mr. Angier! It was the Prestige!" And the Prestige is played by Paul Newman, a prestige actor.

OK maybe.

At some point in the first twenty minutes of Japanimated coming-of-age fable Brave Story this afternoon, and for no reason directly related to the movie that I could detect, something good happened to me. I suddenly became far less negative about making movies, working my days at the j-o-b and my nights staring up at that big silver screen, crushing on unattainables and spending mornings and weekends breathing deep and running hard. Later on with the fierce evening sun setting and walking along Charles Street having just spent some minutes chatting to Amy and Stephanie about nothing in particular and on my way to a sinful Quiznos dinner with the Superman Returns score playing on my iPod, I realized what the exact feeling was: it was like my soul exhaled. Became loose again, shook free the must and started flapping in the breeze. And right about then my whole chest opened up and unlocked and all the needless stress shattered and flew away like plum blossoms, and I could see clearly. Felt good.

Then I went to see Zoo, which is about a guy who died because he made a horse fuck him up the ass. It was very slow and very creepy and very pretty and ultimately tremendously unaffecting, probably because I just can't relate. The most interesting thing about it was sitting next to a woman and a teen-or-twentysomething who I must presume were grandmother and granddaughter, seeing the movie together. I took my grandmother to see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; I sure as hell would not have been able to handle taking her to see Zoo. (Actual conversation exchange overheard: Grandma: "Started giving the stallion a what?" Grandkid: "A blowjob.") So bully for them for the bonding.

After that it was off to the Bloor for Manufacturing Dissent, but I took off after about twenty minutes. I just wasn't in the mood. I was way up in the crow's nest (by choice), and it was about a hundred and fifty fucking degrees up there, and I didn't want to spend another hour and change watching a movie that was, really, just a flick about an asshole being an asshole, even if it's an asshole I happen to like. Once they trotted out Noam Chomsky to explain something, I left. Only Noam Chomsky can explain some aspect of Americana in a way that both makes sense and is relatively horrifying, like when your dad explained to you what happens after you die. Noam Chomsky is like the dad who gives us the bad news straight.

Well I suppose that's it for this weekend, Internet. Thanks for listening.

Posted by tederick at 10:54 PM in movies & poetical
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It's all happening on blogTO right now.

Yesterday afternoon I went to see Off-side, the second film I've seen with that title in under nine months, and a decent if unspectacular tween drama from the Netherlands. Hella lot of cursing though, and sex talk from the kiddies, which lead to the walk-outs. Man if you can program a flick at Sprockets that's causing walk-outs, I'd say you're really getting somewhere.

After that I had some time to kill so I bought some Spider-Man comics and went to read them on the Pauper's patio in the unexpected springtime sunshine, where I promptly got Basic Instincted by a supremely drunk girl in a short black dress. She was there with her boyfriend and they were on maybe the fifth or sixth beer apiece by the time I arrived, and they were all into each other at every moment, except for when he would get on his cell phone. So at one point he gets on his phone and she looks over at me with my Spider-Man comic, and unfolds her legs revealing the entire lack of underwear going on below her waist. Holds the position till he gets off the phone and then folds up again. So I guess spring has officially sprung, being as that I'm mooning around like a 10th-grader on happy purple pills, and girls are dressing like they're on their way to a semi-formal, minus the undies.

Hey, speaking of comics: new to the blog-crawl, and best new blog title I've read lately, Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed). Now, my idea of hot in comics is Serenity Rose, not Black Widow, so I'm already predisposed to raise some of the flags that this blogger now seems to have dedicated a regular chunk of her life to, so bravo to her. And besides, girls reading comics is hot. So hot!

And speaking of girls: GIRLS ROCK!!! Oh man, I've been looking forward to this thing like crazy all week. I was phenomenally disappointed to learn that this movie is receiving a very narrow release and not until next year at that; the flick should be required viewing for... uh well I was going to say something else but let's go with "everyone." Yep this was definitely the best I've seen at Hot Docs so far, in the "saw it, loved it, got a poster to prove it" sort of way.

My review of that, plus geek-chic fetish must-see Helvetica, are up here... and I just noticed it's also linked on the Girls Rock site. Why? Because I rock. In a decidedly girly fashion.

Got one last Sprocket and two more docs tonight, then a few days off from the film viewing. I'm working from home tomorrow so that I can nip out and cover the TIFF groundbreaking in the afternoon, which won't really allow me an opportunity to bag any extra sleep, but will at least let me spend the morning in my jammies eating toast.

Posted by tederick at 1:27 PM in blogTO & blogsphere & comix & movies & reviews
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If I could do this for the rest of my life - "this" being just spending my time watching movies at film festivals and at home - I'd do it, to the exclusion of anything else. Last night I found myself gobbling down noodles after a film screening, sitting across from a chair I'd filled with the Hot Docs festival guide, the Miramax book, and the Bande à part DVD, and I thought to myself, I'm not even going out of my way to stop being so transparent on this fucking point, am I? If I stay at my job indefinitely, I will eventually crack up, and as for making films professionally, there isn't remotely enough evidence on the ground to figure out whether I would even enjoy doing that - lord knows my enthusiasm is a cold ember compared to what it used to be. But the festival-crawling, subtitle-reading, argument-inducing filmie lifestyle... that's all right. It can't be normal to spend this much of your year wishing it was September. Last night I looked up at the sky at 8:00 and said, "in September it will be roughly this dark at roughly this time." I swear, I used to have a life.

Thursday night was In the Shadow of the Moon and last night was Let's All Hate Toronto, which did nothing more than to firmly entrench me in my belief that I never want to live anywhere but here for the rest of my life. (Sorry Vancouver.) The film was pretty terrible though. The sketch comedy across the country was all right, but the damn thing just goes dead in the second half as "Mr. Toronto" - already a fucking annoying and utterly guileless comic cypher - tries to counter the ten top complaints about Toronto. Like Fuck last year, it was like once the filmmaker came up with what he presumed was an iron-clad movie concept, he decided to call it a day. Still, the screening bore the veneer of "it," so it was nice to be able to flash my badge and walk right in and feel generally meritorious. Plus, I'm fairly certain Amber Tozer was in the flick, making non-verbal noises at various points. And I find it enjoyable that I can pick three 2-second Amber Tozer shots out of a 75-minute movie, given that the only time I've "seen" her was as an animated character in the Tozer Show shorts.

I am essentially living on coffee at this point. This is not healthy nor was it by design, it's just sort of the way a rough week at work and some strange hours and commitments fell out this time. Not a lot of square meals. Going to go get some breakfast and plot out my coverage for the second half of the week, and then I've got a Sprockets screening and 2 Hot Docs before nightfall. And... well the other thing but that's not important right now.

Posted by tederick at 10:18 AM in blogTO & j-o-b & movies & reviews
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Ultimate Spider-Man, that is. Yes, after great resistance, I have fallen once again under the spell of Brian Michael Bendis. I mean, I dig on what Straczinski did with Amazing Spider-Man during the war and all, but I would never read that book full time. Ultimate, on the other hand, is yet another pithy example of my jumping onto something really great, right before it's about to end. Oh well. There's trades for that.

Meanwhile, Spider-Man fever is thick in the air these days. It's even got me excited. Well, the toys have me excited. Toys are innocent, they don't know anything about shitty writing or cartoony visual effects. But the movie? Fuck it, fuck it hard. I get a naughty smirk every time I see Tobey's big dumb face on a billboard the size of a tenement house: I shall resist you, Tobey Maguire. You have no hold on me.

Admittedly, there is exactly one person in the world who can get me to go see Spider-Man 3. And what a treat that would be. But I'm holding low odds on that one.

Check out the Department of Mysteries rough riders!

Too bad IMAX-3D sucks so many heavy, pendulous balls; Prisoner of Azkaban in IMAX was fucking spectacular, but I can't have another Superman Returns on my conscience. I will have to settle for seeing HP5 the old-fashioned way.

I treated myself to a Coca Cola today! Yes I did.

Posted by tederick at 1:52 PM in comix & h-pot & movies
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I can't really get away with lavender or heather blue, otherwise I would go and buy me a uterus t-shirt. There is a page for men as well but the colour choices remain the same. I don't see why they couldn't have made a uterus t-shirt in a charcoal grey or something; charcoal says uterus doesn't it? ... well maybe not.

Thank goodness I have canned VF posts written up to the middle of May, or I'd be totally content-screwed these days. No time!

Posted by tederick at 9:17 AM in vagina fridays
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Last night I dreamed about: hostages, my teeth, Jessica, Quentin Tarantino, pregnant women, picnics in the park, British gangster movies, staying at a hotel, and Robert Rodriguez. And maybe some other stuff too. Boy sometimes I wake up and it's like a hand grenade went off in my brain. I had steak and Lost last night. Might have been the hand grenade in question.

I do enjoy that Desmond fellow very much. He might be my favourite. We'll see, pending his action figure. And last night certainly seemed to confirm my Standing Theory on the Kate/Jack/Sawyer Triangle (Kate loves Jack but thinks she's too damaged to be worthy of Jack's Tremendous Awesomeness) while still leaving room for some hot Kate/Sawyer tent-humping. And the mix tape line? If that's not a Brian K. Vaughan, I shall eat my red converse.

Literary pet peeve #1: when a (bad) author learns a new word or phrase at some point in the writing of the book (usually near the middle) and then uses it over and over again because it's new and they can't control themselves. I think this falls under "bad editor," too, because if an editor isn't there to catch stuff like this, who is? The book I'm re-reading right now, Down and Dirty Pictures, was the book that first alerted me to this issue. Biskind decides he likes "buttonhole" as a verb about halfway through the book, and proceeds to use it literally every other page for the remainder of the thing. It drives me out of my tree. The pirate book I read a couple of weeks ago was also rife with this. There should be some kind of literary equivalent of "locking the code" (which you do on a visual effects project so that the last effects shot you create is rendered at the same level of quality as the first, instead of having improved through various technological leaps undergone during the production process) so that the lexicon you have when you start writing a book is the only one you're allowed to use throughout. That would be fair.

While we're on the subject, Literary Pet Peeve #2: The following phrase: "Harry realized Malfoy was going to do something and that he, Harry, would have to stop it." (Emphasis mine.) As you can probably infer, J.K. Rowling is the empress offender on this one. Yes, I know it's grammatically correct. It's still annoying as fuck. I'm capable of keeping track of sentence structure well enough to figure out who your pronouns are referring to, without having to have each one tagged with a name. As far as I'm concerned, this one should be illegal. We'll see how many pages into Hallows she gets before she trots this fucker out on us one last time.

It's interesting when I stumble across a review that I clearly wrote while stoned. Today it's Ocean's 12. Good review overall but... man, slippery!

Posted by tederick at 9:03 AM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & books & dreams & h-pot
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Another night in the fives: a girl falling down the stairs leaving a surprisingly vigorous trail of blood behind, two separate intrusions by the police to remove individuals from the stands, a recalcitrant Sox fan who somehow didn't seem as mouthy after the Jays pulled ahead in the fourth on a walked-in run by disintegrating Boston pitcher Matsuzaka, one kid who somehow managed to convince the entire crowd to throw bottles at him, a pack of guys beer-funnelling using one of those blue trumpets, and a girl who flashed the crowd with her A-grade tits not once, but twice. And all of this nicely coinciding with the fifth-to-eighth-inning lull that would otherwise have reduced last night's Jays victory over Boston into an exercise in tedium. I'm telling ya, nothing better than the bleeders on a two-dollar night. It was a pretty damn solid night's entertainment.

So basically my life is overrun right now. If you're one of the thirty people I owe an e-mail back to, I apologize. I'm about three days behind on everything except top priority messages, and looking to lose more time in the days ahead rather than making time up.

I realized last night that the thing that's keeping me from moving to Vancouver is Burrito Boyz. I was gobbling down an 8-inch tube of meat and I said to myself, this is the actual specific reason I am staying in Toronto. That, and the Snailers. I am heartily addicted to the Silver Staff. I mean I'm sure I'd miss my friends and all, but something about getting a bag-tag and going into the back to shit about X-Men gets me all.... nipply.

It's BKV's first episode of Lost tonight, so I must off.

Posted by tederick at 9:46 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & comix & foodin' & jedi antics
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Posted by tederick at 8:57 AM in extreme steve
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Overall really, really weak, but worth it for the reveal on the car towards the end and the five minutes of money shot that followed. Boy, is it all about the Dodge Challenger these days or what? Gotta get me one of those. Drive like a real man. Get me a blonde and a thumping remix score made up of electronicaed road classics and head for the coast. Yeah. I like having Melanie Lynskey and the Amy Poehler wannabe in the same car. And I pretty much want everybody else to die in a flaming car crash. Boy how many of those do you think we're gonna get? Probably not many. It'd be nice if they'd decided that no matter what, the show's only 30 episodes or something. Then you could nuke a car every five eps and still have enough for a three-way finish in Hermosa Beach.

Aaaaaaaaand we're out.

PVR's been acting up like a son of a bitch, though, chopping shows into tiny little segments, so I called their help service to waste some of their time pretending I don't already know exactly why this is happening. First round goes to them, though, because they pretended they could actually fix the problem. and put me into the system. Well played, Rogers!

Posted by tederick at 8:38 AM in tv
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A girl I went to high school with died quite suddenly yesterday. Diagnosed on Saturday and gone on Sunday. Her sister is friends with my sister and I'm just sort of stunned and wrecked by the whole thing. She's the second of my graduating class to pass away in the last few years, and I just... well fuck I don't know what I'm trying to say here. Just that I'm sad. And also obviously that any of us who think we have a whole lot of time left don't have one sweet fucking clue about a single goddamned thing.

And there's also the Virginia Tech shootings, the worst gun rampage in U.S. history, which was one of those news items that sort of crept into my awareness by a kind of osmosis - first thinking it was something I'd heard about before, then thinking it wasn't a very big deal, and then slowly realizing just how horrific something like that really is and that you're standing on the edge of a cresting wave that's about to become the Big, Big Deal for a long time to come.

And that's about all the "powers of ten" I can do on death today. I'm sure a hundred thousand people also got killed somewhere else in the world today but I've officially reached my limit.

Posted by tederick at 7:09 PM in poetical
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This sucks. Big hard oinky balls. I don't want some new dude chickenshitting out of dealing with the asps. ONLY SALLAH MAY CHICKENSHIT OUT OF DEALING WITH THE ASPS!!!

Points against Indy IV: 2
Points for Indy IV: 1

So I am finally above the threshold on blogTO! What this means is that I'm writing enough on a monthly basis to actually start getting paid for it. This was one of the key objectives related to quitting the podcast (though admittedly, it's kind of a pick-'ems cuz I was getting paid for the podcast anyway), in allowing me to free up more time for actual writing.

Anyways my post stream is here and with Hot Docs starting this week it's going to be lively through the end of April. I still haven't got my shit together on the "Comic Shop Crawl" column I wanted to launch, and having to leave Tn'O last month kinda scared me off attaching myself to anything regular or time-sensitive right now. But I'm drafting my Free Comic Book Day post already, and hoping to get the comic column thing back on track before the summer.

Posted by tederick at 2:55 PM in blogTO & dr. jones & miscellaneous crap
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So fucking stupid. So fucking good.

You've gotta admire the gormless simplicity of it. Some executive at ABC four years ago was actually dumb enough to say, "we should do a dramatic version of Survivor," and now, some executive at Fox outdid him by saying "well, what other reality shows could we do?"

I don't much appreciate seeing Amy Acker get downgraded from flamethrower-wielding shieldmaiden to hostage-on-a-stick, nor having Nathan spit dialogue so fucking clumsy it's amazing he could get his tongue around it. But it was nice to see Richard Brooks again and Charles Martin Smith was awesome, and what can you say about Melanie Lynskey other than "give me more." I loved the closings of both episodes, for I am an admitted whore for the obvious sentimental flourish. (The fucking space shuttle?!) I could watch this all year. But then, I'm the guy who liked Smith.

Let's see... Firefly was cancelled after 8 episodes, Wonderfalls after 4, and The Inside after 2, so Drive should have been cancelled at about 9:01 pm Eastern, just as the dumb blonde's parents were being spin-dried out of their station wagon. Let's assume no news is good news.

Posted by tederick at 10:11 PM in tv
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"The violence is as hard as the women are beautiful and when it comes time for the naked knife-fights - look out!" - from the Amazon page for the Pinky Violence Collection

Sometimes I draw diagrams of my entire life. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I use a white board. Sometimes I can do it all in my head. Today it was post-it notes on my PC monitor, and now those post-its are in my notebook in a condensed-but-still-coherent facimile of the original format. This is what my recent work experiences have taught me is a Heavy, Heavy Green Response to stress. I think the problem is that as I roll along, I accrete miscellaneous tasks that I keep doing and doing and doing and then sometimes their general unconnectedness just throws me for an anxious loop and I need to stop, step back, and look at the structure again. God my life is so much like screenwriting it's actually nauseating.

When the Show Tent Came to My Town was all right but not as good as the movies yesterday. Japanese boys are fucking hilarious in those tiny little athletic shorts. The only thing the flick made me realize is that I am really, really bad at picking up on obvious plot twists. This movie had a new girl arrive at a prep school, who just happened to arrive at the same time as a local carnival, and yet when they reveal in the final reel that SHE'S THE WOLF GIRL!!, I actually hadn't seen it coming. What is wrong with me? Have I not seen enough movies yet to know that the new kid is always the wolf girl??

Hey there's an official site for Penelope! And a pretty lousy trailer.

Actually looking very much forward to Drive tonight, and I've got a wicked dragon roll craving on right now so I'd better get to that.

Posted by tederick at 5:27 PM in movies & tv
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I fucking loved this movie. Holy crap I want to see it again right now. In fact, it's repeat-screening twice next weekend; I might have to skip one of my other Sprocktix and just go see Island of Lost Souls (that's what De Fortabte sjæles ø means, duh!) again.

For one thing, it roundly kicked Harry Potter movies' ass. All four of them, and solidly. And also: scarecrow. Maybe that doesn't mean as much to you (having not seen the movie) as it does to me, but it's a key point. And at the end? Out-Voldied Voldy. And at the very end? Almost out-Buffied Buffy. Yeah that's right. Yeah.

Uh, the other film was good too. I spent the day travelling around town from theatre to theatre, and listening to podcasts. Hearing Quentin Tarantino ape a point about Death Proof that I made on Mamo almost word-for-word gave me pause. Also wanted to give a shout out to Lord of the Geeks Wil Wheaton for reviewing the episodes of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation on TV Squad. That ain't for the faint.

Anyways. I spent a lot of the day sort of stewing to myself re: my previous post... symptom of the situation, I guess, which is that I am both a) relatively dissatisfied with a lot of the way things have currently fallen out in my life, but b) becoming more and more lethargic by the day about actually doing something to change things. As I get older my perspective widens out a bit and it feels like wisdom, but it's really not. It's just self-defeatism couched in the oh-so-attractive tropes of the power of experience. Well like I just told Rebecca on the phone, I don't know a fucking thing. Probably now less so than ever before. So... in lieu of sitting here feeling sorry for myself, I'm going to order a pizza, watch a movie, and await the dawn.

Posted by tederick at 7:35 PM in movies & poetical
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My next door neighbour is getting the wood put to her right now. Either that or they're jumping up and down on the bed. I only mention this because I think this week has been the first time I've heard that outta next door since I moved to 3QF, so congratulations to her! Either her sex life is improving, or my ears are.

I remember the Saturday morning bone. Vaguely.

It occured to me recently that when I say I'm going to be single forever, it's pretty freakin' probable. My last date was in August, and after that I put it "on hold" for a while, and then I never went back, nor do I ever really want to. I don't have the time, I don't have the inclination, I certainly don't have the patience. So unless a team of women shows up and throws me into the back of a van, I think this is pretty much it for the Saturday morning bone. Or the Thursday afternoon long lunch. Or the all-day Sunday double-barrel double-breakfast double-feature. I'm almost okay with it, if it means I never have to pretend to care about the life history of a total stranger again.

Kids playing Spider-Man! Way better than the movie. Speaking of which, I'm going to Sprockets today, tomorrow, and next weekend, though I can't really remember which movies I picked or what they're about. Meh. It's Sprockets, what's to know? If you get lost, meet your parents at the teddy bears and balloons in the lobby.

Posted by tederick at 8:53 AM in movies & sex (practical)
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It's Matt vs. Matt vs. Pirates vs. Spidey vs. You, The Listener. Enjoy!

Posted by tederick at 1:37 PM in podcastery
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New in sex toys for girls, the Pure Wand. Seems to be working along the same basic concept frame as the Cone - i.e. why does a sex toy for women need to be so specifically penis shaped? Although I guess a curved hook of stainless steel could be mistaken for a wang, in Metropolis or a Brita ad or something.

The review I've linked to here goes into better detail about the wand than I ever could, and is highly entertaining reading. I haven't seen one of these in person yet but CAYA has 'em for a hundred and fifteen bucks, if you're feeling spendy.

Posted by tederick at 1:35 PM in vagina fridays
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Kurt Vonnegut - dead!

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Movie - not coming to Canada!

All-Star Superman #7 - awesome!

Transforming Megatron - fucking impossible!

Lost 3.19 - flashbackless!

Hot Docs press pass - achieved!

And the rest.

Posted by tederick at 10:14 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & comix & miscellaneous crap & movies & toys!
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Apologies for not Losting it up last week, because I did in fact have something to say:

Last week's episode really, really sucked. Not that the Black Mama / White Mama rumble in the jungle thing wasn't awesome and sexy and all that, but the episode so completely destroyed the character of Kate that they might as well have ended by killing her off altogether. I mean, she's just a fucking idiot now. And given that the producers have now elected to point out to the audience in no uncertain terms that her crime was completely unjustifiable and psychotic, there is no end point to her storyline that American morality will accept: she either needs to a) die on the island, or b) go to prison for the rest of her life. And watching tonight's episode (particularly during Juliet's rant at Sawyer and Sayid) it occured to me that this is a show with a greater-than-average proportion of bad guys as the protagonists. What's Sawyer's end game? Charlie's? Jin's? How many of these storylines can end with the audience conveniently forgetting that they're watching murders, junkies, and sociopaths?

Tonight's episode was significantly better right up until the flip-turn at the end, which completely ruined it. As Matty Price pointed out to me recently, it's now utterly useless to invest in any of these storylines at all - every character could be either lying or wrong at any given moment, so there's absolutely no credibility to a single line of dialogue or movement of plot. Juliet could even have been lying to Ben throughout the final scene, meaning that the big reversal will itself be reversed. And if she wasn't, then who gives a fuck what her agenda is anyway? They just spent 44 minutes trying to package her as a misunderstood hero (and the Others as misunderstood villains) and then yanked it all away yet again, leaving absolutely no coherent sense to the sister plotline or Juliet's relationship with Ben. I hate "it was all a dream" endings, and I'm starting to hate "it was all a lie" endings just as much.

New theory: the island is a giant probablity/coincidence resonator. There isn't a physical "magic box" so much as that like the mutant Domino, the laws of chance just work differently around there. Oh and also there's magnets, and no cancer, and Old Smokey. And it might actually be in another dimension (as evidenced by the roofies requirement before riding the yellow submarine). They will Clockwork Orange the teenagers and read Carrie in book club. The island is governed by no rules but its own!

Posted by tederick at 11:03 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42
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Man, packaging sucks balls. Wait, listen: you hear that really faint slurping sound? That is packaging, laying tongue on a pair of balls, right now. Packaging is the big killjoy of toy collecting. I picked up both my Takara Megatron and Adventures of Ace and Ion today, and would have been happy as a felt rooster if I coulda gotten at either of them in less than fifteen minutes of futzing apiece. Plus, I am becoming more and more aware of the enormous environmental impact of my particular hobby. Given that I'm not a "keep it in the package" fellow by any stretch, I'd really love a toy company to get its shit together and start offering mailer-bag alternatives for collectors who don't need to gouge through a cardboard backer and three vacuformed layers of plastic bubble, and then go at the twist-ties with needle-nose pliers, to get at their toy. Fucking mail it to me as is. I'm happy.

Anyways the Megatron is freaking awesome - the kind of awesome where I put other toys away because I only want to look at Megatron - but something's not quite right with Ace and Ion. It's like they just don't fit with the rest of the toys. They're small and quiet and different. And so the fact that they don't fit actually makes me sad. Like actually physically sad. They're fuzzy and cute and seem optimistic, and they just don't know how to make it in my toyish world. Shit I might start crying here. Maybe I'll make Megatron their big brother / protector. OK am I empathizing a bit too much with the playthings? Yeah I think so.

Switching tracks: things are generally going well. I've got a colleague in from Vancouver this week (sweet, wondrous Vancouver) and we got some pretty goddamned good work done today if I do say so myself, like really excellent creative problem solving, which tends to thrill me no matter what. The bad news is that I seem to be getting sick, which is not surprising given the sheer quantity of germs I've been exposed to in the last ten days... the office is a freaking cesspool right now. Anyways it's been circling me for about 36 hours and my body seems to be putting up a really spectacular fight, because the illness is holding in the "cold and floaty" stage without moving on to the dry throat or the sniffles. So maybe I'll beat it off. Yeah. I think some beating off is in order.

I started storyboarding Portrait of a Young Artist in My Bed on Monday. I'm demi-proud of myself because at one point I became aware that I was doing the exact same shit I always do i.e. the bare minimum required to cover the scene, so I stopped, took a chill break (actually a Watch the Special Features on The Fly DVD Break) and in about fifteen minutes I was racing back to my sketchbook with a pretty lovely solution to the boring shot in question. Not by any means a filmic revolution in shot form, but a good keystone for the look of the flick as a whole and definitely not Business As Usual for my post-York visual style.

As I was telling someone today, I think writing the Terra comic book is genuinely improving my muscles when it comes to laying out a story visually. I'm thinking of writing my next movie script in comic book script format instead of as a traditional screenplay. It's just endlessly more interesting to be thinking visuals from the get go instead of waiting until after the other shit is there to start putting together the actual look of the thing. Dunno. It's a maybe.

OK, Steve just showed up for Lost Wednesday. I'll get back atcha later.

Posted by tederick at 9:24 PM in j-o-b & tederick films & toys!
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Posted by tederick at 7:02 AM in extreme steve
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When I was a kid, Megatron looked like this.

He turned into a gun that looked like this.

Now in the new Transformers movie Megatron looks like THIS!!! and he turns into some kind of whackshit dumbfuck space whozit that looks like THIS!!!

Here's the old version and the new version standing side by side in case your memory is shot.

What. The. Fuck. No seriously, someone explain this to me because I don't get it. First of all, you don't fuck around with Megatron; Megatron fucks around with you. Second, Megatron does not need improvement; you're just lucky Megatron lets you walk around as flawed as you are. And most importantly, Megatron will fucking tell you if he needs to go somewhere. He doesn't need to fly there himself.

Thankfully, and perhaps in retaliation, I now own this. Respect the True Megatron.

Posted by tederick at 5:24 PM in toys!
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I am very slowly getting things done. Last couple of weeks a lot of things have been tossed on the "I'll do that later" pile and I woke up this morning with a keen interest in actually getting the entire list off my desk for good and ever, and although I am by no means working it fast because I am, after all, a lazy fuck, I am crawling through it. A lot of housekeeping stuff and a few creatives as well. I even picked up Terra again - which wasn't even on my list for today so I guess I was procrastinating other stuff by doing it, but it felt good. Wrote for a couple of hours, finished my pages (well, most of my pages), like my pages a lot and they were hard pages so there. Now I've got like three more things to do for the rest of the day and I am dragging my ass like crazy. Like, I just spent twenty minutes positioning Obi-Wan Kenobi on my desk. But now he looks tight.

I am really into SModcast right now. My self-indulegence meter should have gone off like a fire alarm long ago yet I can't get enough. It's like a Smith/Mosier commentary every week, about nothing. Way back in the day Bex and I were going to do a podcast about nothing where we just sat around and talked about whatever we wanted, but I figured nobody would listen to that shit. Well I guess I was wrong.

In a weird bit of they're-on-my-tail-and-I'm-not-moving-fast-enough, this TV pilot is pretty much the exact concept that was the conceptual predecessor to subculture, i.e. the script idea that Jared came from before I nailed down the subculture idea. You know, sometime I'm actually going to make something of my life and THEN WHAT, HUH? Then other people will be listening to my podcast about nothing and bemoaning the fact that their old script ideas are being turned into my new TV series and I'll say "now who's the dean?"

Posted by tederick at 3:17 PM in askew & the process
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