The cheesiest Tederick.com title ever???

Quite enjoyed screening The Silent Partner last night, not just because I will get behind any film that features Toronto's old bright-yellow police cruisers, and not just because it continued to reinforce my ongoing assertion that Christopher Plummer could kick Christopher Walken's ass and walk away smiling. You can see why Curtis Hanson is hanging on to a piece of that flick with an intend to remake: it's a slick job, and if that Inside Man movie could make money, a remake of this thing could pull it in hand over fist if the right cast was put together. The screening was fortified with a designer cocktail called Plumber's Crack, which came with a single gossamer strand of Elliot Gould's blood, a lovely image which turned sour when Plummer hacked off the vixen's head with the side of a broken fish tank. I really, really, really have a problem with broken glass. This has become regularly plain to me since the shattered wine glass incident at 3QF a few years back. I was reflecting a few weeks ago that I'm not one of those people with a primal fear that can turn me completely willy-noodle, but it's becoming less and less true. I don't like snakes, but man, I really don't like broken glass. Ugh. I get nauseous just thinking about it, so why am I writing about it? Tell ya what, though, I'm gonna have a honey dilly of scene about it in a flick someday.

I also now think every movie should have a scene where two characters have a toast "To Success!"

I've been putting some time this morning into the archaeology of the movie nights at 3QF, being that I am now designing the 2009 slate. I think statements like "Nightmare on Elm Street 3 is the primal scene of my entire horror psychology" are the reason I do them. But I feel like I'm missing some of the events in my notes, so if you remember any that I don't, please send them in.

Posted by tederick at 9:25 AM in blood & movies
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Pirates 4 watch: ongoing. Elliot and Rossio back, summer 2012 they're saying. You know what, I cannot fucking believe they are making another one of these things. I'm the biggest Pirates trilogy fan here, and even I am so mugwumped by the very idea of bothering with another story that I can't get all the way to believing it's real - not the "oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!" kind of I-can't-believe-it's-real, but the other, "they've gotta be kidding me" kind. I was watching a bit of At World's End this morning - you know, while I was getting dressed, like every morning - and I just started feeling seasick. I'm foured out. You know who would make a great villain for a fourth Pirates movie? Aliens from another dimension, that's who. Let's leave it be.

Meanwhile, I am trying to sort out whether I actually like Grant Morrison's Batman comics or not. I got scared back into the run by this whole "R.I.P." business (Batman dead? Retired? Or just batshit crazy?) and this final arc is proving utterly incomprehensible thanks to Morrison's seeming distaste for connecting any of his pages to the pages before or following, but I also went back and looked at some of the early work in his run on the comic, and it actually does make a kind of weird sense, if you look at it with an eye closed or in a mirror or something. Plus, that Joker issue, "The Clown at Midnight," remains fairly goddamned incredible reading. And the promise of a Gaiman-penned come-down from the Morrison run at least lends the thing the semblance of significance. 881's just such a weird number to close on.

I am finally going to see this tonight, easily several months before Hollywood will have a chance to start fucking it up. (Apparently I'm now protective of intellectual property I don't even know if I like yet.)

Posted by tederick at 11:30 AM in batman! & blood & pirates
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"...as plate after plate of fluffy poached eggs, cartilaginous peameal, and lakes of sunshiney goo continued to pile up over time, I realized that if I don't start catalogueing these excursions in some formal manner, a great field of human knowledge would be lost. Hence, the Benedict Chronicles..."

What says the gaybourhood, re: benny? Let it never be said that I am a man averse to experimentation, even in the wake of that gorramned horrible filet mignon disaster at Fran's last year, the one that resulted in me awarding stains of virgin's blood instead of eggs out of four to represent my displeasure. No, I'm a fella who, when confronted with a new and bizarre incarnation of the salty old Benedict war-horse, is gonna pony up to the trough and have an equine go at a solid gallop straight to the stables, or whateverthefuck. So I went to the Village Rainbow Café and had the Eggs Iceland.

"Eggs Iceland." Not an unappealing name, if you're into volcanic rock and crystal clear water, and/or Dave Tebby. I am. I'm also fond of those instances where someone inventively changes one of the key components of a benny and rebrands the name. (Eggs Blackstone, they one where they swap out the bacon for smoked salmon, is the gold standard. Boy, I could go for one of those right now.) In this case, Eggs Iceland means that they've Blackstoned the benny - salmon instead of ham - and then promised some caviar on top.

Caviar's another thing I really don't mind. Actually, in the right circumstances, I'll eat my weight in it. But here, as with the filet mignon disaster, I really shoulda known better. Don't ever order caviar in a diner, ok? The "caviar" in question turned out to be that unappealing smear of crimson in the photo above, which unfortunately was painfully reminiscent of the aforementioned virgin's blood, and therefore put me off my meal rather a lot. Once again, the fault was entirely mine: ain't no two-dollar dive in this town gonna give me actually worthwhile fisheggs to put on my breakfast. Fuck no. This is what I get for having faith in stuff.

Anyways, the only other thing worth noting here is that the Village Rainbow Café uses the exact same canned hollandaise on their bennies that the Golden Griddle uses. Which means that either a) this non-hollandaise goo is available in bulk somewhere and I must have some, or b) the Griddle makes a sideline selling their shimmering hollanpaiste out the back door. Either way, I was pleasantly delighted.

I shall tar the Eggs Iceland at the Village Rainbow Café with a frigid one and a half eggs out of four, but at least we're not counting in blood.

The Village Rainbow Café is located at 477 Church Street in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 3:17 PM in blood & the benedict chroncicles
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Funny how that looks like "sword" to me, given the number of extra letters.... anyways. Springtime. Comic books. Fresh air. It's all happening now; even Big Brown Mountain is melting. I dreamed of whips, blood, and quickening rivers. Glaciers moving, but slowly.

Fortifications: holding. So tired was I of the various off-project interruptions that plague my day, and so delighted was I to find that my trebuchet is finally a useful piece of artillery, that I set it up on my cubicle floor. Then I sent an instant message to my brother: "C'mere, I gotta try something." He strolled through the door and PAZOWWWW!!! there was a rubber eraser flying exactly at his head, launched by the ancient technological powers of ballistics!

This, to me, makes it all worthwhile.

Continuing on with Y: The Last Man, and into the meat. The Wizard of Oz issue was just tremendous. Sex and death, sex and death... Bondage and baptisms and my blood in my ears. All snuggled up reading last night, and then wandering around the rainy streets looking for something to eat... we ended up going to an Ethiopian restaurant at Bloor and Ossington, and fuck-damn, it was awesome and solved the whole night for me. I have bad associations with Ethiopian food, like that time Mark tried to make it and I said (rather memorably) that it tasted like a shirt. Or the inevitable reality that no child of the '80s can hear the words "Ethiopian food" without a single-frame nightmare-flash of Sally Struthers feeding a kid paste. But last night's meal rocked my socks clean off and around the block, and I only wish I hadn't left the leftovers in Sarafina's fridge this morning. I'm hungry as a bastard.

The noises coming out of my big project are finally, officially, the rattles of imminent death. I shall dance into the mist. I'm going on vacation in 20 days. You can't come.

Appropriately (somewhat), my work on Captain Napalm and the Legions of Havoc began with arts and crafts - glue sticks, specifically, and tiny piece of paper.

Posted by tederick at 3:13 PM in blogTO & blood & comix & dreams & foodin' & j-o-b & sex (practical) & tederick films
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I have such a crush on Stuart Immonen right now, it would almost be upsetting if it weren't making me so damn horny.

Today's pretty good. Midday blood test to ensure that I am still sane - oh, those ruby vials - so I'm working from home which = working at the Starbizzle. It's amazing how much more fun writing training plans can be when you're doing it pirate-stylie on the run from the law. Got a date with my best girl tonight; got my big project on the very doorstep of being done done done with finals pumping out of my computer right now; got a bunch of actual honest-to-god I-actually-get-paid-for-this-shit creative writing to do this afternoon... Shit, if there was ice cream I don't know what I'd do with myself right now. Yeah, it's pretty good.

One more and then I swear I'm gonna stop talking about this: X-Files poster. Y'know, I've had the teaser poster for the first flick on my wall for, literally, ten damn years. It's all faded and shit but I still really like it. Back when I was in university and I would get in a fight with my girlfriend, I would just stare at it. I was thinking this morning, next time I move, it's probably not going along. But I am damn fond of it, much more than the movie or even The X-Files. It just sorta ties the room together, y'know?

Right. I'm going to get so much done in the next 24 hours, it'll make your head spin.

"Girls have soft bits. Agents of H.A.T.E. shouldn't have soft bits." - General Dirk Anger, director of H.A.T.E.

Posted by tederick at 1:22 PM in blood & comix & j-o-b & movies
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Ugh. Real life sucks sometimes.

I have a tiny but deep cut on my left middle finger. The result is that there is a really gorgeous blood stain on the "e" key of my nice white keyboard at home, along with a supporting horizontal smear along the top of my screen where I use my middle finger to push it open in the morning. OK, to everyone else, this seems gross. To me, it's proof I exist.

Matty Price and I recorded the year-in-review Mamo last night; you may enlisten by enclicking this enlink. Large tracts of it will come as very little surprise to anyone who is, oh I don't know, reading this blog right now, but I do find it entertaining that my partner and I have ended up on opposite sides of this divisive format war dealie. In fact, I'm feeling very much like a man on my own in the cold lately: Chris went HD-DVD, and so did my uncle. I am the Sole Blu.

I am going to have to start re-cracking Snapdragon tonight or tomorrow. I've let it - and everything - slide for a really, really long time. (Have you seen Extreme Steve lately? No, neither have I.) I also have a new funnybook in mind that I might try to draft out for Sasha to draw, and at least one script idea that it is officially well past time I got started on. Let's make it a productive January, rather than an oh-god-I-wish-I-was-dead January like usual.

On a more meat-and-potatoes-and-bedroom-windows level, there is a very wide gulf between the things I am doing, and the things I would like to be doing. But I can see the other side from here.

Posted by tederick at 1:00 PM in blood & podcastery & shinybludisks & the process
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"...as plate after plate of fluffy poached eggs, cartilaginous peameal, and lakes of sunshiney goo continued to pile up over time, I realized that if I don't start catalogueing these excursions in some formal manner, a great field of human knowledge would be lost. Hence, the Benedict Chronicles..."

I went and had this benny with Matthew and Leah a couple of days before the film festival started. Why did I wait seven weeks to review it? Because it was fucking awful. I mean Jesus, even thinking about it right now I'm getting nauseous. Fuck Eggs Princess, Internet, fuck it (her?) hard. God Jesus fuck fuck, I don't even want to be doing this. Let's get through it fast.

NEVER GET ANYTHING AT A DINER THAT CLAIMS TO HAVE FILET MIGNON ON IT. I guess that's the "key learning" here, as we'd say at the office. You know what filet mignon is? Delicate, that's what. You can't keep it in a Fran's freezer for a month and then sling it on a benny in place of the peameal and expect the motherfucker to taste good. It does not. How could it? Christ's bandages I don't know what I was thinking ordering this thing.

Eggs Princess gets rid of the peameal for filet, and throws a few wilted pieces of asparagus on top, and costs a goddamned insane fifteen dollars for its awfulness. Stay away. Do whatever you have to do to never, ever consume this meal. I can't give negative eggs to convey my displeasure, so instead I'm giving this thing four splatters of virgin's blood out of four, i.e. it is the worst fucking meal I have ever had, ever. FUCK.

My perennial Fran's is located at College and Yonge in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 8:44 PM in blood & the benedict chroncicles
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You get broken down to every teeny tiny bit of yourself, live there for a while, and then in a few days, you'll build yourself back up fresh; defragmented. Today was the first day I forgot my tickets at home, the first day I got off at the wrong subway stop. I feel fine. I am an androgynous monkey-lizard swimming through a river of time. I am a gorilla riding a yak. The towers of this city shall be my Redwood trees; my skin is a map of the tattoos I haven't drawn yet. I am sexless; I am wind. I am a ranger. I am blood and oil.

Matty Price and I have started calling actors almost exclusively by the title of their most significant film - "Kick his ass, Die Hard!" "Hit that bitch with a frying pan, American Beauty!" "Direct the shit out of that film, Fitzcarraldo!" As with most things at this point, this is amusing only to us. Mongol is this year's Bugmaster (why? I'll tell you why). In this obscene wilderness you find a new kind of sense. Tiff (the person, not the festival) branded me the Silver Snail groupie today. I guess that means I've arrived. My eyes are clear.

In the limited moral universe of Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream, the drama only stems from the question of what meaning is assigned a specific act before, and after, its execution. I side with Ewan McGregor: once you've killed, you'll still have to find a way to live the rest of your life; prison is irrelevant.

In the Antarctic waste of Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World, scientists prophesy the coming apocalypse; view us as day-players on a world whose interest in us is fleeting. In unintentionally direct retaliation to this, two scientists play electric guitars on the roof of their hut in the middle of the frozen waste. They bring the defining triviality of our species - art - to a place that cannot hear it, understand it, or record it for later use. They do it just to do it, and on we go.

I am sitting at Queen & McCaul, cross legged with my laptop, against a giant wall billboard for a competing laptop brand, wearing my blogTO t-shirt and blogging about TIFF on Tederick.com. I am this city.

Posted by tederick at 4:26 PM in blogTO & blood & poetical & the apocalypse & tiff 2007
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I sat next to Alan Ball. That's right I sat next to Alan Ball. Alan Ball Alan Ball Alan Ball. Yeah. That was me: next to Alan Ball.

The flick was Une Vieille Maîtresse, I sort of stalked him just a tiny bit when I saw him just outside the door, and sat down right next to him and Peter Macdissi. Macdissi didn't say shit. Alan Ball, on the other hand, was quite friendly and we chatted for a bit about Nothing is Private, and whether or not the subject matter is actually as shocking it's being treated, and so forth. It was quite pleasant. He asked me about my films and I talked to him about Six Feet Under and yeah, that's about the best celebrity encounter I think I've ever had at the film festival except for maybe Gus Van Sant who was also, after the Gerry screening five years ago, very gracious with me and fun to talk to. But yeah: I am a sweet fucking happy man right now.

Oh, and the movie? Hottest fucking thing ever. One of the best I've seen so far, too. Catherine Breillat, all stroked up and crazy, was here in person. And the movie just got me, hook line and sinker. I'm officially calling a "will the real Asia Argento please stand up." She was fucking terrible in Mother of Tears, and so fucking good here it blew my mind. All kinds of crazy, eating blood off the bullet wound her lover took because he insulted her, shrieking in the fucking desert because her little girl got killed by a scorpion... man howdy, if there is a prevailing theme for the festival so far for me (one that isn't the official "cultural overlap" theme), it's powerful female characters. I am fucking drunk on them right now, I've seen so many. This one was every single kind of poison, but just so unbelievably enthralling and... herself. Wild, like in the old stories. I think I knew a girl like that once. Hell, I think I almost married a girl like that once.

Posted by tederick at 8:55 PM in blood & tiff 2007
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In Mongol, Genghis Khan goes to reward a dude and says "Give him a hundred horses and put his yurt next to mine." Yurt proximity is now the measure by which Matty Price's friendship with me is measured. When we piss each other off, we tell each other to back the yurts off a bit. When he does something nice for me, I tell him to connect his yurt-door to my yurt-door so that we can't ever get out but can only visit each other. Right now I'm saying that when I get up in the morning, I hope that Matty Price's yurt is reasonably close to mine, though not close enough to smell, because that's gross.

Also in Mongol: excellent use of blood in the battle scenes. I know that's a weird specific thing to notice, but I really noticed it. For whatever reason the blood sprays and gobs of hack-justice that came a flyin' while old Genghis went to his Khanin', looked really really real to me. So I'm saying if you want to see blood splattering done right and not for comic shock value, look to the Mongolians. They had it right. Or wait: the filmmakers who made this Lord of the Mongolians flick complete with Pellennor battle had it right.

Right now I'm getting grinded up in the Ryerson pulp mill; Juno and Nothing is Private and Dead back-to-back-to-back in the same theatre, and all running late and all very crowded. The entire fucking cast showed up for Juno - Alias, and Teen Wolf (2), and Kitty Pride, and J. Jonah Jamison. All here for the little movie about the knocked up 16-year-old and her merry pregnant adventures. Which, by the way, ow my soul. It's like Little Miss Sunshine without the intense post-manipulative-cinematic-crap need to shower for about a hundred years. In other words, it's gloriously heartfelt, achingly funny, and thoroughly earned. One of the best films of the year.

And yes, I was the guy in the balcony who, when Jason Reitman said something along the lines of "you're going to know this girl's name very soon: Ellen Page," yelled out "YEAH - I KNOW HER NAME." This is because, as has been proven umpteen times before, I should not be allowed to say words. Ev. ER. Didn't hurt that I wanted to plant a sloppy wet one on Allison Janney by the time the movie was over, or that the screenwriter's name was Diablo and she was, in fact, a perfect human. Actually, it only really hurt that Page's character in the flick - the titular Juno of the growing belly-bulge and the many witty wordplays - made me miss Grimlock a bit, and the movie in general made my nipples hurt. Otherwise, Juno is the happy dance. It's a little ball of happy lovin' sunshine and I heartily hope it makes sixty-five billion dollars.

Posted by tederick at 8:56 PM in blood & tiff 2007
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God motherfucking DAMMIT. And then there was one. My impromptu summertime game of Twentysomething Survivor has reached a ferociously bloody climax. Like, Throne of Blood bloody. Like, attacking the Third Castle in Ran bloody. Yeah, I've been watching a lot of Kurosawa since declaring bankruptcy. There's something to be said for the cathartic theatricality of actually using bright red paint for screen blood. Suits my mood.

Random act of violence alert: I was riding my bike home last night, and some guy just came at me. Made to hit me with his bike, and then took a shot at me with his foot. Missed on both counts, because he sucks. (And also: because I rule!!) He scarpered immediately thereafter, giving me the finger the whole way and catcalling for me to follow him and do something about it. Which I did not, because as usual, I was sort of too stunned by the pointlessness of it all. Hmmm... "Stunned By The Pointlessness Of It All." Yet another potential Indian name for me.

Right then, so the interesting thing about reading The Sentry and New Avengers and Secret War and Mighty Avengers in their entireties all in two weeks is, I pretty much understanding the Marvel U completely right now. Which has, like, never happened before. I even went and re-read House of M (again) and actually knew who everyone was, how they got there, and where they went afterwards. It all makes sense. Honestly, I'm better at Marvel history now than I ever was at Canadian history. But then, Canadian history didn't have Jessica Drew. I think that would have helped considerably, particularly during Champlain's problems in Ticonderoga.

I'm supposed to be writing right now. And instead I'm... writing. FOOLISHNESS!!

Posted by tederick at 6:29 PM in blood & comix & jedi antics
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I have a long, deep scratch down my left bicep and a small diagonal scratch across the tip of my nose. It's possible that I'm running illegal, underground boxing clubs while I think I'm sleeping. That would also explain why I'm so g.d. tired. That, or the furious workout of riding all the way to Sunnbrook Park only to end up punted into the offense for most of our soccer game, before having to ride back home. I am fucking exhausted, Internet. It's nothing but coffee and Buffy music today to keep me going. Whoa shit the trigger song that made Spike go kill-crazy just came on the iPod. Should I open someone's throat with my fangy-fangs? Mmmm jugular. I'm blood-lusty.

But hey, driving practice! Yeah I had something I haven't had in fifteen years yesterday: a driving lesson. Matty Price is teaching me how to drive standard. This is so that if I ever accidentally get thrown into a cross-country death race, I'll be ready. One can never be too prepared for a cross-country death race. Well anyways learning standard once you know how to drive is a hell of a lot better than learning it when you don't know how to drive. Yeah I'm still lurchy, but I'm getting there. Two words: Dodge Challenger. Two more and some letters: BMW safety training. Yeah.

So as for my Lost theory: I made a list of all the things on the show that my theory doesn't currently explain. Stuff like who the whisperers are, or why they killed a character as awesome as Dr. Arzt after only one apperance. I'm not publishing until I can either explain or disregard all the elements on that list. But I'm working on it.

Posted by tederick at 9:04 AM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & blood & sockey
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Blood just fascinates me. I did a number on my finger about a half an hour ago doing the dishes, when one of them broke in my hands and took a fairly significant gulp of my right index knuckle, and I watched the blood go for a few minutes... and then I busted out the camera and started taking pictures. (See below.) Anyways it's ironic that my mousing finger should come to grief while I'm attempting to finish the long-procrastinated fine cut of Standoff, but that is indeed what happened. I have bandaged things up as best I can and am pressing onwards - it's very close now, I am just doing a final pass to clean up a few cuts that aren't quite as smooth as I wanted them to be... but the flick should be picture locked this afternoon which means I can move on to colour grading and sound design... which at the rate I've been going oughta take me another half a year, but I'm committed to getting this done by Christmas so I guess I'll have to ramp up the production speed a bit. Was that sentence just really long and meandering? How many times have I used "just" in this paragraph? Boy - how much blood did I lose here? Woooo.... zee.

Off to buy Spider-man bandaids and polysporin. I'll put the bloody picture after the jump (never used the jump before!) because it's sort of like Tederick.com: The Horror Movie and you shouldn't have to watch it if you don't want to. Like The Passion of the Tederick.com. And seeing the snap right at the top of the page would send my mother into paroxysms of grief and make my father pass out, so best that they not see it when they come here looking for Benedict reviews.

More after the jump...

Posted by tederick at 12:31 PM in blood & tederick films
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"...as plate after plate of fluffy poached eggs, cartilaginous peameal, and lakes of sunshiney goo continued to pile up over time, I realized that if I don't start catalogueing these excursions in some formal manner, a great field of human knowledge would be lost. Hence, the Benedict Chronicles..."

In our last episode, Captain Picard was being held captive by the Borg, Locke had blown open the Hatch but we hadn't gone down inside yet, and Bex and I had eaten some truly atrocious eggs benedict at a dive called McSorley's on Bayview. We had only ourselves to blame, being as how sheer lethargy had kept us from walking to the Fate Bistro (our first choice). At the end of our McSorley's meal, Bex and I looked at each other and then began weighing the pros and cons of going over to the Fate and having the benny anyway.

Reason, health, and common sense would seem to suggest that this was a horrible idea.

So off we went!

Now, Tederick.com does not advocate the wanton consumption of eggs benedict. This shit is not good for you. Do you have any idea how much butter goes into a hollandaise sauce? I do. I've made it. I'm damn good at making it actually (I will post my benedict recipe in a future BenChro for your perusal). So do you think it's a particularly good idea to eat a meal that consists of no less than four eggs (two poached, two hollandaised) and half a stick of butter, twice in one day? It is not. Kids, play safe. Use condoms, and don't try this shit at home.

Fate's eggs benedict runs you $7.50 and is already a significant improvement over the McSorley's garbage. There's not enough hollandaise, to be sure, but it's served on a well-toasted english muffin, with well-fried peameal bacon, and the poached eggs are to die for. Cooked a smidgen under a medium to allow for some runniness (but not too much runniness... think blood rather than water. Damn why have the last three posts made reference to the consumption of blood? What the funk?), and white and fluffy as can be.

Hollandaise very decent, and side salad was all right if I hadn't just eaten another full meal an hour prior. The real gold star here goes to the coffee - this is the best coffee I've ever been served alongside a benny. It was worth it for the coffee alone.

Fate is a nice place that can't quite escape its office spacey vibe, but it serves a solid benny and I wish I'd just gone there in the first place, rain or no rain. Three eggs out of four!

Fate Bistro is located at 214 Laird Drive in Toronto. The Benedict Chronicles is an ongoing, non-regular series.

Posted by tederick at 4:59 PM in blood & the benedict chroncicles
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It would sound somewhat strange to say it, but right around the moment when Borat and his manager were in a drag-out naked wrestling match on their hotel bed over a pinup of Pamela Anderson, and Borat had his moustachioed face stuffed right into the voluminous folds of his manager's flabby ass crack, something like a great cosmic tumbler clicked into place in my soul. In some way, I knew immediately, I have been travelling my whole life to get to this moment. And now that I'm here, I can see filthy Kazakhstani butt-hair for miles.

I watched I Am Curious: Yellow last night, a film that was seized by American customs and labelled obscene when it was brought into the country in 1969, because it showed penises and pubic hair and oral-genital contact. I published my first sex column today on blogTO about how you can't buy Lost Girls in the city any more, but I can look over from where I'm lying in bed right now and see my copy of that naughty, dangerous work on my shelf. Over in the Goo, some or all of the Box girls are going to see Shortbus at the Book Shelf, because they can. Shortbus will be on my list of the best films of the year and will be marked alongside all these other beautiful, treacherous things that are doing more than just treading the status quo on the planet Earth. Real art still breaks like VCRs, and the noise still gives me THE SHIVERS.

And in its way, Borat is in there too, because man howdy, you can't do that shit on television. But you can do it somewhere, and I can see it here, and not get shot. Pretenders beware: when someone really cracks the mold, it is readily apparent not just that they have done it, but that everyone else has not. Thank goodness we still get to see things like this, and all the nauseating brilliance of their ruined flesh.

Posted by tederick at 1:01 AM in blood & movies
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I went to the doctor this morning to have Bernard looked at. Bernard who is in fact gone, but left behind a hematoma the size of a golf ball which everyone in my office was convinced was going to mean the amputation of my leg. (A hematoma is a pocket of blood.) Well, it turns out everything is perfectly normal and healthy, but that the hematoma will probably be there for months, slowly draining. Suckballs.

These are pretty disappointing. I mean, I know that the plan was to do scenes instead of true action figures, but the problem with scenes is that it's up to the designer to decide what moments he considers "iconic"... and Kate standing in the bamboo ain't iconic. Kate blowing a bunch of folk away, wearing her hot-ass orange tank top... now that's my idea of "iconic." I admit, the nailed the shit out of Jack, Hurley, and Locke, but I don't see a lot of collectability on my end here. I don't do statues (often).

It's sort of amazing, given that I just watched the whole cycle in the spring, how much I'm craving Six Feet Under right now. That can't be healthy. It's a moo point anyway given that the ex-girl (who smited me with the Sfoo affliction in the first place, as I recall) has the key shinydisks. So instead I listen to Coldplay music and think of rain. It works.

Scored me a double pass to the Clerks 2 sneak tonight, so me and my man Chad will hit that shit and report back.

Posted by tederick at 1:01 PM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & askew & blood & miscellaneous crap & toys! & tv
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I called my doctor first thing in the morning and got a 2:00 appointment, so I left work early and made my hourlong way into midtown from the sticks. The doc performed a very thorough examination, and the good news is that I'm essentially fit as a fiddle - blood pressure normal, heart rate normal, everything normal with the exception of the whole system going kerflooey in the middle of the night on Friday. Yet more blood was drawn. My left and right arms are pock-marked and scarred. At this point it's looking entirely possible that the whole incident was nothing more than an utterly random event of minimal consequence. The thyroid medication overdose angle is being pursued, but it's unlikely. And there are no other causative factors in the time leading up to the attack. So... bully for a chaotic universe.

On the subway on the way home, an old woman had the nerve to tell me that I didn’t have the right to a seat because I am too large and was “shoving her” - which I was not. I bit back hard. No miserable old witch is gonna fuck with me when I’ve just given up three ruby vials of my damned blood. Fuck! Admittedly I had my full dark on all day so it wasn't particularly hard to shout at the elderly. But so very satisfying.

I came home and watched Revenge of the Sith. This will sound slightly surprising to some, but rarely have I enjoyed it more. In fact this might have been the most I've ever enjoyed the flick, ever. There's no denying that I have a total love-boner for that movie these days anyway, so I guess it musta peaked today. The reason that the film works for me is the reason it always has: unlike any other Star Wars movie, I still feel it. I see the way things are going to turn out for everybody, and I want them to turn out another way. That's some good tragedy. Poor little Ani!

Posted by tederick at 8:10 PM in blood & galaxy far & miscellaneous crap
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7:30 Monday morning and I'm already covered in blood. Human blood. And not even the fun kind; this blood's all mine. Damn! Slippery drippery ooey gooey blood. Mmmmmmmmmm blood. Showers and dreams and sodden sheets. Blood.

I've been reading Kevin Smith's blog sporadically for a while now, during this period of anti-Smithdom that has descended upon me since I realized that if we knew each other in real life, K-Smitty would really hate me. But lately he's been writing this surprisingly detailed (well, actually not so surprisingly) multi-part epic tale of the junkiedom and recovery of one Jason Tomcat Mewes. And it's put me right back on the Smith bandwagon, I tells ya. Suddenly he's all types of "my hero." I even watched Clerks special features last night with my pizza and beer and had a swell old time, and I took my signed Silent Bob action figure - which was a stone's throw away from Ebay - and put it up on my wall. It's like the summer of '02 all over again.

The Epic of Mewes begins here.

Posted by tederick at 7:45 AM in askew & blood
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You would not believe the size of the piece of meat that was served to me last night. I didn't believe it; I still don't believe it. Somewhere out there a cow is walking around with a hole in his ass the size of a toddler's head, and he's going "owwwwwwwwwwwww...." (or possibly "cowwwwwwwwww") It's amazing to me that my mother could fully sanction my eating of this gigantic chunk of flesh (it was her bithday and we was celebratin' at North 44) but read me the riot act every time I even talk about wanting to eat the steak the steak the size of a toilet seat at Lone Star. At least that one would be flat.

Regardless, it's the end of February, and the last dregs of winter have combined nicely with my infant-skull-sized steak experience to tell me that it is seriously time for a health food kick. My eating habits have taken a hit in the new work schedule; it's time to solve that. And buy yoghourt. And Pom. And many, many grapefruits. And next week, a bike. My body needs some clear waters and fresh airs.

In like kind - and this might have been because of the meat run-off or it might just be the spirit of the season - but man I had some delicious dreams about at least one of Bex's friends last night, and possibly two. Lips and skin and hair, and that little spot of ribs underneath the left breast. I'm in a full-on craving for physical sensation right now; I am very aware of my body and all of the things it comes into contact with. Reds seem more vivid to me - everything is blood. A semi-permanent flush all over me and all around me. Everything is thick and full.

I live in a pitiably arrogant culture, one that is so certain of its prevalence even over death that we meet each new loss with inreasing waves of anger and outright disbelief. In like kind, this self-fulfilment obsession - the idea that there is this one perfect happy out there for each and every one of us, and that we will all determine what it is, pursue it in due course, and will not be capable of true satisfaction until we ultimately achieve it - is ruining my entire generation. The "grass is greener" generation, no longer content to employ the pragmatic realities of their daily lives, but insistent upon the eventual arrival of something better, just on the other side of what we're doing now. In the event that this belief ultimately pays dividends, perhaps all will be forgotten, but until then, we are all of us impotent... and if content to simply wait, then dangerously so. There's no doing besides what's being done.

Posted by tederick at 10:53 AM in blood & dreams & foodin' & poetical
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I’ve come to bury the dead. I’ve gathered the stones, brought fire for my little plastic rocket. The sun is setting on the first day of the world. Now for the first time I can feel the past fall finally behind me, equal in my mindfulness to the present and the future. The tendrils of my thoughts stretch outwards, stretch sideways. I can see father than I have before. I can see myself, and the feeling is new - or at least, I haven’t felt it in a long while. I’m me again. Or more accurately I’m the new me, the one brought by great change, made in cataclysm - a whole new person both new and the same with all the scars and cracks and breaks and tears and blood and long, weary muscles. The same eyes a different colour. My blood is finally now neither to vein-bustingly thick nor thought-drainingliny thin. Just right: red, and rich, and soaking the soil. I rather thought I’d hate being this new me (having been so personally satisfied with the last one), but now it doesn’t seem so bad. I’m graver a bit, I think, and more amused and more curious, and rather surprisingly more powerful; I broke the bonds of my own inner molecules when I wrestled the Great Eye, and I suppose not surprisingly the energy released has been fairly vivid. Who knew nothingness held such hidden juice, but I might have guessed. I’ve been forced forward against my will, but there have been rewards. And now with the birth pain finally receding - the great cracks in the earth rock growing still, the tremors fading - I can look around and breathe the fresh air. The sky is the grey non-colour, just before dawn. I can smell the spring hidden in the mists, beneath the slate green muck.

I think I shall go for a walk.

“Love. You can know all the math in the ‘Verse, but take a boat in the air you don’t love, she ain’t keepin’ up just as sure as the turning of worlds. Love keeps her up when she ought to fall down, tells ya she’s hurtin’ ‘fore she keens, makes her a home.” - Captain Malcolm Reynolds

Posted by tederick at 6:56 PM in blood & poetical & scars
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My life makes absolutely no freakin' sense right now. What I said this morning notwithstanding, at some point recently - I am not sure of any exact date, though I suspect it was 4-6 weeks ago - I simply stepped aside and let this be the case. Whatever pain, anxiety, depression I was feeling in such great quantities must have blown what gaskets currently reside in my cranium, because a strange, detached peace has descended upon me of late. Most of the time, I just regard these various goings-on as being not unlike some great circus act, complete with sideshow attractons barking at me about things that go bump in the night and red-clad divas stripping down to nothing in the middle of the street just, you know, to do it. Honestly, there's a giggly astonishment about the far-fetchedness of the proceedings, like watching a bus hit a car which hits another car which flips over and hits two more cars and then falls off a bridge landing on a car, causing two other cars to hit that car and then cartwheel into a ravine where they land neatly upon a car... and then thirty clowns jump out unscathed and start trying to sell you dental insurance. You know, like that.

So, essentially what I'm saying is: don't ask me, man. I don't even work here.

Meanwhile, I'm reading From Hell, and I literally can't put it down. I've been avoiding Alan Moore for years, mostly because I'm afraid of him, but I had managed to accumulate a rather hefty stack of "indispensable" Moore items that begged attention, so I started with Killing Joke and then moved through Watchmen and Miracleman, and now I'm here. Best thing I've ever read, or near enough anyway. Reaching deep inside myself and twisting things around, and working on my mind and emotions in harsh, unexpected ways... the extraordinary placement of sexuality and the human body on the stage of the storyline... the rich, too-well-thought-out structures of history and myth being drawn into the Gull character.... the strange, post-hypnotic trance state that the story seems to go into immediately following each murder, each of which seem to come upon the reader not unlike a sexual rush before fliipping to the other side of the thana-coin to show all the dread that man is capable of. Blood in every frame of a black-and-white comic book. There's something really vampiric about it, actually, and I'm drawing that together with a bunch of things I've picked up in the Fighting the Forces essays... and I'm thinking about Jung a lot, and therefore The White Hotel, and suddenly "only connect" is as much a mantra as it was back in grade 11, back in good old 3A6. It's quite good, really. The mind is going to new places, even while the external world is turning somersaults. It makes me see the humour in the tragedy, the misery in the comedy, and the throbbing undercurrent of balance that lives in every single thing we do.

"I shall tell you where we are.

"...In order to escape, we must go further in."

Posted by tederick at 6:30 PM in blood & comix & poetical
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Shhhh. I've ordered more dollies.

I'm in the midst of a jam-packed week that looks to last until at least next Tuesday morning, which is a sensation not unlike being the ugliest girl at the dance for the last six months and then suddenly becoming the prom queen. I'll tell you all about it sometime, but for now, I just wanted to pop in a nice footnote on my Dark Hours post yesterday. The flick's being destroyed in papers all over town, except apparently for The Globe (search for the review on Google if you want to read the whole thing), which must have received some sort of editorial mandate to "support Canadian film no matter what," given the wide variance between its review and pretty much everything else. Aside from the usual z-grade Globe writing talent, the review is notable in its unwillingness to do anything but summarize the plot and then describe what other movies Dark Hours is like. Surely, it's capable of being a few things on its own? Or do you actually have to have seen A History of Violence to understand why this is anything other than a piece of shit? Honestly, the papers would be doing the Canadian film industry a bigger favour if they just stopped giving press to projects this bad altogether. Wanna be in the papers? Make a movie on par with anything else being released this weekend. If Dark Hours came out of the States, it wouldn't even be listed today.

Rushing around like a hatter for the rest of the day and most of the weekend, but I've got good, moody November weather for it at least. And I keep dreaming about the taste of blood...

Posted by tederick at 3:45 PM in blood & dreams & movies
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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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