Spider-Man 1. It was Spider-Man 1. And now Danny Elfman will now be a selly-outy sucky wanghole for ever and ever amen.

Yesterday my soccer team won! Which is frickin' unheard of! And I (me personally) had an actual good play! Which is also fairly rare! So tonight's the night for betting on horse lotteries, folks. If it weren't for the TCSSC shipping us further and further into the hinterlands of Ontario on fields that can absolutely not be qualified as "Toronto" or "Central" (or even "Social" or "Club," so I guess really the league should just be called "Sport!" with an exclammation point), I'd say this soccer season is shaping up fine.

Meanwhile, the city of Toronto stole my blue boxes. All four of them. They were there, they were beautiful, they were mine, and now they're gone. We are reduced to pitching empties out the kitchen window at the upright bin in the driveway. Who do you call to charge the city of Toronto with theft? 3QF is going to make it to the end of our tenancy on fucking fumes. By August 31 the only things left in the house will be a broken kitchen faucet, the noise the fridge makes, and six floorboards.

Posted by tederick at 12:36 PM in 3QF & movies & sockey
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Last night the 3QF cinematheque hosted perhaps its final double feature of the season, Krull vs. The Machine Girl. In an odd bit of unintended synergy, both films featured the same five-bladed starfish weapon. The latter, though, also featured a schoolgirl with a machine gun arm. It's tremendous what they're doing with movies these days.

Food on hand for screening: Crullers and sushi.

Coincidentally, around the same time we were doing all that, Warner yanked Where the Wild Things Are from its release schedule altogether, after having previously shoved the release to late '09. The bulljive is in full swing in the press release, and lord knows I'm no great Spike Jonze fan anyway, but I wonder if we're now ever going to see what he conceived as the proper approach to this unmakeable film - an approach which, regardless of how it turns out, is inherently way more interesting to me than anything that "delivers for a broad-based audience." It's a feature-length adaptation of a 15-page children's story, and if the rumour mill it to be believed, it's gonna have giant walking puppets. Honestly, I don't care if it sucks; I just want to see it. There just aren't enough amazing things in the world any more.

Admonitions like that, however, lead to Hellboy II. And it is, unfortunately, time to report that I don't want any more things to lead to stuff like Hellboy II. I am declaring a moratorium on underwhelm: let's get back to kicking some ass, shall we? Review snippet follows thus:

For all his prodigous gifts with the look n' feel, Del Toro has always suffered from recurring skill gaps in his writing: an over-reliance on form; a lack of substance in his English-language dialogue; a tendency to see hererosocial relations from only the male point of view; and what's with all the clocks? Pan's seemed to herald the completion of a successful leap upward from the young director of able adventure stories like Blade II and even the first Hellboy. With Hellboy II, sadly, all of Del Toro's weaknesses as a writer have come roaring back, and have brought some friends. The thing looks fantastic, but goddamn, this is some piss-poor storytelling.

And full review is here. I can't help but notice that I'm writing a lot more bad reviews these days than good ones. I do hope this isn't because I've become an asshole, which I admit is becoming more and more possible with every film I see. I suppose it's unlikely that every single goddamn thing sucks. HB2 has many admirable qualities and means well, if "meaning well" means to plumb whatever street cred Del Toro has amassed in order to make a nice chunk of summer-movie coin. (I don't even begrudge that. Who wouldn't want to make coin? Coin buys condominiums.) I just want a flick to have appreciable achievement in all areas of filmcraft, not just one or two, y'know? Or at least, transport me so spectacularly into its own idea that I come out unable to help admitting that yeah, that thing was a movie, a thing of the world worth making and bestowing upon others. (Like Wall-E, and in a completely opposite series of ways, like The Machine Girl.) I'd like to stop rounding up.

Posted by tederick at 11:42 AM in 3QF & movies & reviews
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I can't seem to get the Juno "pie balls" line out of my head today. I've also taken to using "turducken" as a swear word... though the latter is more of a secret, vulgar ambition than a curse.

When you're moving, you want to move as little "stuff" as possible, so I've stopped mending socks. That's right: sock pops a stitch, sock go bye-bye. The socks are terrified. They saw what I did to these bastards, and they're running scared. My side of it is brilliant; not only do I get to terrorize my socks, but I also get to look forward to a mid-September socking spree. New socks!

Now watch as I tear a strip off this: What is the deal with the Facebook Friend Finder? That thing is retarded. Never, not even once, has a single person who appears there been someone I can identify by name. Am I getting someone else's picks? Whose Friend Finder do I show up in? Maybe they invented the FF as some kind of second law of thermodynamics motivator within the naturally-structurecentric Facebook universe. Where we attempt to build logical roads between the cities of our social profiles, the FF tunnels through the earth to random out-points that are unrelated by any commerce to our Facebook cities. (Yikes... that metaphor barely held.) The inevitable result of following the Friend Finder to its disconsolate ends is utter entropy across the board: networking with everyone rather than select few; "friendship" as a meaningless watchword in a hazily homogenous Facebook fog. Fie!

Well anyways. I've had coffee, and written in my journal about two or three of the more beautiful things of the last 72 hours, all while sitting in the sunset rays of my soon-to-be-erstwhile home of the Danforth. I remember the summer of '04, when I did nothing else...

Posted by tederick at 5:56 PM in 3QF & miscellaneous crap & socks
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Right now Matty Price is in Philadelphia having cheese steaks with his son, and I'm in Toronto, where even my stupid fucking horrible cat refuses to spend a modicum of time with me. Life: teh suck.

I'll say this for moving out: it forces the landlord to actually pay attention to the quality of the house. Stairs to the third floor? Fixed, two days after she found out we were leaving, and four weeks after she found out they were broken. People don't give a sweet fuck about you, ever, unless it costs them an enormous amount of money not to. Remember that, internet; let it scour your veins like oxaliplatin. Meanwhile, B-diddy (not to be confused with Bone Daddy) has successfully located her new home, Chris is Hugh Hefnering his way around the main floor, and I have not even started apartment-hunting. Should I be paranoid about not having secured a September 1 move-in date, when it's the fourth of July? I feel like I should, given that I'm so frickin' roped up about everything else these days anyway. What's one more slice of freak-out on the big freak-out pile.

You ever been to Sushi Train? Give it a try. A little conveyor belt brings the sushi to you. Ambulatory sushi is a thing worth having, even if it is indescribably precarious as a business model.

Right now, somewhere out there, Larry Hama is being awesome.

Posted by tederick at 12:56 AM in 3QF & foodin' & miscellaneous crap
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I'm moving - and in answer to your next three questions, I don't know, no I'm not, and September 1st. This has kicked off a purge that will make all prior purges look like wussy little boy purges, a purge whose tally already rings five full contractor-grade garbage bags of stuff thrown away and two recycling bins; and this purge has only gotten started. The toys that I still own are now the survivors of a genocidal fire that has claimed fully 70% of their civilization, and makes tremble my books, DVDs, and comics, all of whom are also about to see Black Plague-level deaths. The short version: I (used to) have too much stuff.

Somewhere amid the rubbish, the bags upon bags of shattered CD-Rs, Episode I frisbees, and creased photographs of old girlfriends, are the VHS tapes. Lots and lots and lots of VHS tapes. They are the soul of the thing in a weird way - for the first time in my life, VHS tapes are beautiful. They are so goddamned odd-looking, the WALL-Es of home theatre, anachronous boxy-forms of pure functionality, before things had to be functional and pretty. (I hate Mac.) The tapes break at the drop of a hat (or a tape, down a flight of stairs, as at least one of my old Star Wars cassettes discovered today); they're also oddly indestructible in a way: I found a copy of Raiders with the back door broken clean off, which I had apparently continued to use faithfully for years. It still played fine, even this afternoon; I have factory-spec DVDs which lasted a tenth as long. Old VHS doesn't actually look too bad on the Bravia, and the warble of electronic noise is comforting and serene once worries about reference quality have been banished from one's head. And yeah, if I may indulge in being the last person to jump on the analogue bandwagon, there's something about the trundling hum of a pair of reels being slowly revolved while their thread of mylar slowly unveils its electrons that goes straight down to the heart of me. At the end of it all, film fetishism is not for me - I was a VHS baby. Streamers of celluloid run pale next to the taste sensations of that first Canon VHS video camera, whose recording deck hung saddle-bag like at my side while the camera itself had to be supported (with difficulty) with the other hand; the floor-to-ceiling library of tapes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (commercials painstakingly edited out); the beaten-up copy of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves that was, in fact, my first home video purchase. (I do not have the heart to replace it.) I have the theatrical cut of The Phantom Menace in VHS only; it will never exist in any other medium. I have decks of Tom Snyder and Letterman and Bob Ross; an episode of Young Indiana Jones where Old Indy still appears; two blissful camcorder hours on the back lot of Universal Studios in 1993. It's all wreckage, but it's still here.

Inevitably, this brings us to WALL-E. Officially, I no longer need to review films, because the Village Voice does it for me. (Other recent instances of "they said it better than I could say it myself" include The Last Mistress and Indy IV.). Unofficially, WALL-E is so much about
1) how obsolescence is a lie;
2) great, great, great movies;
3) love. Stupid, gorgeous, I-wanted-someone-to-hold-my-hand-and-now-she's-doing-it, love. And that's all I'll ever need from it, or anything else.

Posted by tederick at 3:21 PM in 3QF & i hate mac & movies & poetical
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"It was a lot easier, the single life." - Chris
"Fucking upsetting as hell though, wasn't it?" - Matt

In the past two months, I have:

• Learned of two people connected to me who have been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome
• Read descriptions of three films (one fiction, two documentary) featuring principal characters with Asperger's Syndrome
• Been asked to play someone with Asperger's Syndrome in a film directed by someone with Asperger's Syndrome.

Inevitably, I feel a cold coming on.

Since lists are fun: in the past month, Teen Girl Squad has attempted to recycle the following items:

• A coffee maker
• Four sheets of cork.

(Two items pushes the definition of "list," I know, but look at those items!)

Teen Girl Squad is, unfortunately, coming to an end: Rachel is moving out next week, and Jessi's in France for the summer, so really it's just Two Dudes I Don't Know Who Live Downstairs Squad (2DIDKWLDS) for now. 2DIDKWLDS seems pleasant enough, and my semi-psychotic next-door neighbour is volubly glad that she will never have to worry about her 12-year-old son falling off the garage roof in another attempt at scoping out the oft-available exposed breasts. But really, sunbathing topless is so 2007; I'm going to recommend that 2DIDKWLDS take a page from the crazy old woman who lives behind us, and go the whole hog in the back yard every morning. Summer's coming.

My agenda book in grade 7 (and yours too, probably) was emblazoned with the epigraph, "If we plan to learn, we must learn to plan." Well, I don't plan to learn much but I certainly intend to do some serious plansmanship tonight. I feel, in the parlance of my people, a bit "unbalanced," like I've been driving down the same stretch of highway for a good while now, without really paying attention to the exit numbers. Time bloody well races on, doesn't it? I've been pretty blessed, these last few months, but decadence and chicken wings don't really eradicate the pervading sensation that I oughta check my mirrors every once in a while. I crave certainty about certain things, and uncertainty about others, and sometimes, I don't get those things. Those are the moments for zooming back, seeing the patterns to the land and the position relative to the whole. You get those chances but rarely, and there's usually something else about to happen anyways.... Make mental notes, set the priorities. Learn to plan.

Posted by tederick at 6:58 PM in 3QF & miscellaneous crap & poetical
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Sittin' in the Starbucks, rockin' the Indian pop music.

Siegels triumphant! With everything else seemingly Superman-related this week (and for some reason, I'd just read The Escapists last week, which made me think about reading Kavalier & Clay a second time), half of Siegel & Shuster (or the descendents thereof) now co-owns Superman again. (Shit, I fucked up the tenses in there somewheres, but the sentence is too complicated to go back and fix it.) Neil Gaiman twigged to the most interesting idea, which is that technically, the Siegel family could negotiate Superman licensing with a company that isn't DC. Not that I am particularly advocating a Superman vs. The Sentry smackdown in the Marvelverse, but it opens the mind to the possibilities. I'm all for creators (or their great-grandkids) getting their share, but at some point Superman should just enter the public domain. Ain't nobody owning the copyright on Jesus, is there?

Meanwhile, Dr. Pepper will give a free can of pop to every person in America (except Slash) if Chinese Democracy actually gets released in 2008. Frankly, this just makes me want to see how they'd even manage it, were they called upon to do so. How do you pull off a day-and-date complete-citizenry mass distribution? Well, I guess it wouldn't have to be day-and-date. But not doing so might actually be even harder, logistics-wise.

(I think too much about logistics.)

I have read the entirety of Nextwave, and have pronounced it good, and cruelly short.

Yesterday was goddamned thick and satisfying. After the stock was done bubblin', me and Sarafina went to Little Italy in search of Italian music; then there were non-B-Boyz burritos at Burro Burritos, which are just sensational, by the way. Check 'em. Then there was gift shopping aplenty (they're really starting to like me at the Labyrinth, I'll tells ya), then there was dinner with Christy and the widest cost-to-noodle-bowl-size ratio ever, and then a completely directionless and in many ways amoral Mamo with Matty Price at Marché in the middle of the night. (Oh, if only "night" were spelled with an M.) Lots of stuff jammed into a day and with fresh air in the... er... air, finally enough stamina in me to actually allow for all the running around.

There was, as I'm sure you've heard, also Earth Hour, which meant flicking the switches on all the power bars at 8:00 and sitting in the living room at 3QF drinking curiously strong wine, with candles n' shit. I've been saying it since '03 and I'll repeat: screw this one-hour deal, let's have full dedicated blackout nights 3 times a year (when it's warm). We shouldn't need reminding about things like this.

Peaceable times to you all.

"Oh my god, in a minute and thirty seconds I'll be eating burrito." - Sarafina D.

(aaaaaaaaaaaaand I love that girl.)

Posted by tederick at 10:21 AM in 3QF & comix & foodin' & podcastery & the apocalypse
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"That elf is coming at you with a shovel." - Sarafina D.

It's gonna be a long night in the laundromat - this place is a fucking madhouse right now. I'm stealing WiFi from some dude named Jaco and waiting for a dryer to open up. I should have eaten before I came here. It's been a long day already; in fact, it's been a long month, and by month I mean February, and by February I mean "depressing." I have not been myself for the last little while - though I am nonetheless on cloud fucking nine about how certain bits of the past two weeks have gone. Did you know I can still get nervous on a date with the above-quoted elf-spotter? I didn't, till Friday. I'm not sure why that makes me happy, but it really does.

Speaking of eating, yesterday was Teen Girl Squad's one-year anniversary at 3QF. I bought them a box of salt to commemorate. They commemorated by playing thumping electronica while I was trying to watch Nicholas Roeg's Walkabout; a pretty decent film, and worth seeing. I spent all of yesterday doing some contract HTML work on my living room floor and watching Deep Space Nine, which is not a bad way to spend a Saturday if you have nothing else to do. The "I never sit down" feeling is subsiding; now it's turning into "I just want to go outside." What I could really do with right now is a nice long walk. Like from here to, say, the Ex. And then maybe up to Christie Pits. I wonder if my iPod (whose battery, like every other battery in every other electronic gadget I currently own, has gone to shit) would last that long.

Today while waiting for a table at the Bay/Bloor Starbizzle and contemplating the Manulife Shield which prevents all incoming and outgoing transmissions, I happened upon a ten-year-old blonde boy who was absolutely losing his shit; he couldn't find his father. I tried to help him out some, and when his father finally arrived, the man turned out to be a rather standoffish Brit who immediately started scolding his son for a) not being able to find him, b) losing his shit, and c) dressing his coffee wrong. I was relatively cheesed off after that so I went and made friends with a 3-year-old named Daniel, who (without prompting, mind you) confided in me that "Darth Vader is the scariest." It sort of made my day, along with realizing that I've been sort of muddled and anxious in my mind lately, but that it's all right, and not permanent. "All right and not permanent" actually describes most thing we get all knotted up about. I may have to make a little card I can carry around in my wallet.

Dryer's opened up, 6 minutes to go, and I'm done.

Posted by tederick at 8:41 PM in 3QF & i hate mac & jedi antics & miscellaneous crap & movies
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Chris and I got our yule on last night, trimming the traditional 3QF yule tree and making many jokes about our yule logs. No wait: that was just me. Anyways the living room now smells appropriately pine-fresh, even if I've come to the conclusion that my ornaments pretty much suck at this point and are in dire need of cooler, ironically-viable replacements. The girls threw a Christmas party last night, too, at which I tried (and failed) to turn Beckers crap-ass egg nog into something drinkable. It's my own fault for not making real egg nog this year, but still: gwwahhahhhhh.

Here's a dude who got Neil Gaiman to propose to his girlfriend for him. (Yet another of my patented steal-a-link-from-Jocelyn moves.) This opens up a raft of possibilities. Things I would like to get Neil Gaiman to do for me:

• Write the introduction to my next e.learning module
• Explain my tattoo to my mother
• Consult on my next hat-shopping expedition
• The dishes
• and I'd not say no to a Pirates marathon, if he were willing to snuggle.

Meanwhile, I hate Drew Struzan. Well "hate" is a strong word, but that poster sucks. I don't think I've really loved one of his since Last Crusade B, though there were design elements of Phantom Menace B that I liked even if the whole thing didn't quite get there. Anyways: this thing couldn't look more Photoshoppy in a million years of trying. I do, however, admittedly admire their fortitude in including a giant crystal skull. "Oooooh, it's crystal! You can see clean through it!" Why couldn't they get Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio to write the Indiana Jones movie? Seriously.

Points against Indy IV: 7
Points for Indy IV: 4

Indy IV is getting its ass kicked.

Posted by tederick at 9:36 AM in 3QF & blogsphere & dr. jones
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Keel over topsails, and always with the spinning, spinning, spinning. So:

Last week was hard, but really awesome. I learned so much. Everything from simulation structure to how to eat rasmalai. My ducklings were terrific company even if they did keep me on my toes from about 8 a.m. Monday to just before five on Friday night. So 2008's goal has pretty much become "come up with a business case that gets you to Mumbai." It's only fair; I inflicted a week of Scarborough winter weather on these guys, plus two sixteen hour flights. If I time it right I can hit a rainy season and be as stunned by climate divergences as they were.

Saturday was the office Christmas party.

Holy god it was like the wedding from hell. I took off after the Rod Stewart impersonator kicked the Supremes impersonators off the stage and started singing "Maggie May." Plus there was the whole conspiracy/ambush/"I sense Count Dooku" aspect, to which I dutifully replied "spring the trap." Even ended up getting my goddamned prom picture taken. (Which I never did at my actual prom, now that I think about it, so at least I finally have one.) Damned if nearly the best thing about the deal was that I bought myself what I would enthusiastically describe as a fucking kickass suit. (I also found a oddly uncanny imitation of the Emo Spider-Man suit, i.e. the one he buys and then starts dancing in the street, but I chose not to purchase it, for its use is limited.) Anyways, ultimately this neon-nightmareland was at the very least an opportunity to drink scotch, and a twelve dollar martini, and red wine, and white wine, and rum, in that order, so I guess it was all right. Plus my people were with me. So I give the office Christmas party an A+ for effort, and acknowledge that the competition for my engagement was fierce.

Here's me and the Cannonball:

Me and Al and Al:

So thennnnnnnn, I went back to 3QF and found it once again without power. Which is hilarious in summer but vaguely alarming in winter. Rachie came home drunk and proceeded to give Chris and I about twenty minutes of the funniest fucking free-associative comedy I have ever heard, about her life and her problems. Then Sarafina came over and we decided, yeah, survival wasn't in question and even in a blackout 3QF has charm. So that turned out all right, even if we couldn't watch DVDs. Plus, candles: enjoyable and can make for impromptu, unintended profundity. (Let's go with..... imprunitendundity.) We made up for the movie-watching the next day when the power came back and we spun up Pirates 1 and then Pirates 3 (and it wasn't even my idea!! holy crap), with sushi in between and rum for the latter one. Plus there were crepes and waffles with caramel, and a hoodie. Right: that kind of heaven. It doesn't sound like a lot, but somehow it gobbled up the back half of the weekend, so here I am now. Cripes on a swizzle stick, who is writing my life?

I took today to slow things down, work from home, do some group-support with Jessi, and take a deep, solid breath.

Posted by tederick at 3:21 PM in 3QF & hoodies & j-o-b & jedi antics & photoblog & pirates & the rum diaries
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