Last night I had a dream that I went back to 3QF, and found out that half my DVD collection was still there, along with Chris and Human Rights Lawyer, who were a) living there together in connubial bliss and b) surprisingly athletic. (This dream could not possibly be related to current anxieties about career, life planning, or the end of the world). The fact that I can remember this dream seems to demonstrate that I did in fact sleep, which does not tally with my recollection, but there ya go. I do recall shoving my now-22-minute Guy in the Sky assembly cut into a kind of rough order before retiring to the bedroom in a spectacularly bad mood, and after that there was a lot of tossing and turning and accidental punching of Zam. Which is fair, given her behaviour lately.

I watched Rhapsody in August the other day, which I rather enjoyed, and puts me within a single movie of getting to the end of Akira Kurosawa's rather significant body of work. (I do then have to do some back-catchup thanks to that Eclipse set of the postwar years that Criterion released recently.) I also redirected some Christmas Chapters money towards The Sinestro Corps War, which is shiny and absorbing and much more enjoyable than The Silmarillion which, Beren and Luthien aside, just ain't any fun any more. I also, after a treat of a date with my ladyfriend the other day, finally found that goddamned Joker, so I can stop prattling about that. I still wouldn't mind finding myself a pair of the socks, though.

Today, I am trying to ride out what has been a spectacularly frazzling work-week with a modicum of grace, before fading into the weekend. I may walk home.

Posted by tederick at 8:54 AM in 3QF & books & comix & dreams & j-o-b & movies & shinydisks & socks & tederick films & toys! & zam!
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When I'm done with all this, I'm going to write a business book called Demonstrate Value or Get the Fuck Out. It'll be about strategic thinking as applies to the corporate world but also your life. It will end up being one of those books you see that get blown out for five bucks on the front tables at Chapters, and you read it and think "well, they'll just let anyone write one of these."

Last night I dreamed I had a baby. I mean, not me personally, but some offscreen wife besotted me with child and then, as I recall, took off (this could not possibly be related to current anxieties about career, life planning, or the end of the world). Babies are goddamned frightening! Especially when they look like newborn Benjamin Button crossed with newborn The Newborn from Alien: Resurrection. Fuck: what is wrong with me?

There is very little else remarkable going on, so I'll go now.

Posted by tederick at 12:02 PM in books & dreams
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Did I dream about the new season of Lost last night: yes.

Did my dream about the new season of Lost involve the revelation of a giant retro robot rampaging around the island, and poor Desmond being turned into a (smaller) robot as well: yes.

Should the new season of Lost, then, be all about robots if it wants to satisfy my desire: yes.

I'm telling you, that Beren & Luthien thing has got to be a movie. It has all the things "the kids" like. They even pull a Zolo when Beren holds up the Silmaril to Carcharoth and the wolf just goes ahead and bites the hand clean off. And whether you call him Dr. Zolo, Minister of Antiquities, or Col. Zolo, Deputy Commander of the Secret Police, he is still just a butcher.

Today I am calling telecommunication companies and eluding their ceaseless marketing campaigns by lies and deceit, and leaving lengthy voice mails for my co-workers along the lines of what Alpine says here. It's fun. While I'm doing that, here's a hot fresh Mamo for your digestion.

Speaking of digestion, yesterday Christy took me out for bruuuuuuuuuuuuuunch!!! (so named because it's so goddamned big.) I am planning to eat again on Tuesday.

Oh: and I might have inadvertently posted some October 2005 blog entries to the front page before re-dating them. So if you thought I suddenly took a turn for the turbo-angsty, that's why. Stupid Movable Type. Is importing HTML-based blog entries into an MT database really that far beyond the ken?

Posted by tederick at 10:36 AM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & books & dreams & podcastery & tederickdotcomdotcom
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Not only is Chinese Democracy actually coming out on Sunday, not only can you actually listen to the whole thing right now on MySpace to prove it, but the Dr. Pepper thing is actually happening too. Get your free Dr. Pepper coupon for 24 hours starting at 12:01 a.m. on Sunday morning.

Do it even if you hate the substance, because they owe us, man. They owe us for 1994 through 2008, man. They owe us for the last three tracks of The Spaghetti Incident? and the first two tracks of Lies. They owe us for the rock n' roll.

Here's where we're at as of this week:

• The TTC makes me so angry I want to punch chickens
• Werner Herzog's Nosferatu does not suck
• Harmful to Minors turned out to be a surprising page-turner
• I would be indebted to anyone who knows where I could find peppermint-striped pieces of 8 1/2 by 11 paper.

Meanwhile, here's an experiment you can try at your job. Don't turn your computer on. My computer ate its brain on Tuesday night and it took security and tech support a stupendous quantity of time to stop scratching their ass holes and actually fix the problem, so I spent Wednesday morning computerless, and was inspired to go the entirety of the day in like kind. I'm an e.learning guy. I needs me some computin'. But just leaving that godawful box in a drawer and sitting on the other side of my desk, working only with my phone and a piece of paper, was relatively liberating. I had my feet up a lot of the time, and I looked out the window somewhat, and I listened to music. I had useful conversations and stirred shit up. Give it a try, if only because when the apocalypse comes, you won't have your computer anyway. Be more of a pirate than not, is all.

Cleaning clown-goo off my fingertips and looking forward to an anniversariffic weekend.

Posted by tederick at 11:19 AM in books & i hate the ttc & j-o-b & miscellaneous crap & movies & pirates & sex (theoretical)
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Well, it's that time of year again, the time I become desperately nostalgic for the days of making movies when I was a teenager, back when making movies was a) fun and b) something I did. Y'know, Mark and Adam and Ryan and Caitlin and I made the third stab at Four Royal Flushes ten damn years ago this weekend. Ruttin' Thanksgiving... makes me all shivery. I often miss making movies, but more even than that, I miss making movies as a teenager, which is an entirely different order of experience for me and much more precious. Time to dig a few things out of storage and see if I can't actually make lasting digital copies of the fucking things this time around, in lieu of anything else...

Y'know, for a long time I blamed York for quashing whatever arrogant glee I used to have around spending my weekends shooting flicks in the back yard with Mark, but I think York really just existed around a life change, rather than causing one. At some point, everyone abandons grace for knowledge. And knowledge is a real kick in the pants in terms of that joyous, spontaneous expurgation of self into creativity. Not to lean too heavily on someone else's metaphor, but I used to be able to find my way down ladders in the dark. Now I have to think my way through every single step. But, taken another way, the things I get to do now are endlessly more interesting and enriching than the dumb shit I did back then. I miss the process a lot more than the outcome.

Saying of which, I finished Once Upon a Time in the North, and wanted to do very little once it was done besides sit on the train and look out the window. So I would say any book capable of doing that is a book worth reading, even if it was slight. Some things happened today and over the weekend which made me realize (as though it needed realizing) that I am quite good where I am, right now. Not that I crave stagnation or expect no change, simply that this is a good place, or better yet a good process, and I am goiing to continue on with it and see what does come next.

Posted by tederick at 3:23 PM in books & poetical & tederick films
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What we did not realize until recently was that quietly growing in Sarafina's back yard over the course of the summer, deceptively coy in their cheerful redness, were in fact the Insanity Peppers of Quetzlzacatenango, which are nominally grown deep in the jungle primeval by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum. We bought the seeds at the Party Farms near her house. Who knew? Suddenly bereft of my Thursday night plans I decided to make tacos, tossed in a single such insanity pepper because I've yet to find suitable chili flakes at a grocery store near my house, and found the resulting taco stuffing virtually inedible due to its extraordinary, tongue-flaying heat. Gulping spoonfuls of plain yogourt I was able to survive, but it was a harrowing ordeal. I made it through the third episode of True Blood and the sixth of Californication, and then passed out, as high as a Christmas-tree pie.

Neither series, incidentally, is what I would call "good." The former is turning into a guiltily enjoyable trash novel (kind of a Southern Gothic Melrose Place with fangs) and the latter is just some sweet pimpin' Duchovny porn (ironic, no?), so it's not like I'm not rabidly enjoying them; just that my enjoyment comes with snide attitude and above-it-all arrogance. As it should.

Once Upon a Time in the North is making me ache quite a bit, but otherwise I'm enthusiastically adoring it; it was exactly what I needed, being an adventure story featuring cowboys and bears. Cowboys are dead interesting when transplanted into unfamiliar climes. (And re: young Lee Scoresby, I have but two words: Nathan. Fillion.) I'm on page 50 and doing my best not to run through the whole thing at a gallop, but so far it's my favourite book of the year. I suppose that wasn't surprising.

It is chilly as a son'bitch in Toronto, and Nuit Blanche is tomorrow night. This year's philosophy is "pick a zone, stick to that zone." But which zone?

Posted by tederick at 9:08 AM in books & foodin' & tv
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Well, it's the first of October, and I have a Dark Materials hurt on like you would not believe. If I'm not careful, I'm going to end up one of those Christopher Lee types who read the book every single year, like clockwork. Not that there's anything wrong with that, just that it would get in the way of all the other stuff I want to read. Fortunately, I bought that Scoresby/Iorek book over the summer and felt it was far too warm out to read it, so perhaps I will read it now. I hope it tastes right. In the meantime I am reading Who Killed Retro Girl? and enjoying it quite a lot.

Hey look, the Right Honourable Evil Space Robot Stephen Harper's Evil Space Speechwriter is apologizing for plagiarizing someone else's work like a third-grader with an essay on peregrine falcons due the next day, when what he should really be apologizing for is peeling back the lie that is marketing-driven politics in the 21st century and thereby freaking out the stiffs. I am so phenomenally uninterested in Harper and his jive that the news on this story didn't even really factor for me, but I must admit to feeling somewhat generally more ornery this time round than I was last time. I blame atheism. I feel underrepresented in the House. Just think - there's at least a game possibility that an African-American is about to become POTUS (which suggests that by early February, asteroids are going to come hurtling towards the Earth!), but I'd put as good as fifty years between us and the first time a major candidate in either the U.S. or Canada is going to have the stones (or the backing) to stand a chance at election on an admission of "I do not believe in the Christian god." Thanks to that rat Bill Maher, I am suddenly rather anxious about arsenals of nuclear destruction resting in the hands of religious fundamentalists, or the environmental catastrophe of the global industrial complex being governed by people who literally believe that 4,000 years ago, God gave us a whuppin' when we tried to think for ourselves. Sigh. Is there a way out of this one with a modicum of grace? Not that I mind spending the weeknights talking freedom and responsibility with Mark on the streets of downtown Toronto when we were supposed to be talking about girls, but I could do with a few days of no news about murder and sexual violence and the end of the world. There's all those pretty ideas to think about.

Posted by tederick at 10:21 AM in books & goddamn politics & the apocalypse
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For my birthday, I would like:

• Anything Mola Ram-related
• Anything Lando-related
• Blu-ray DVDs, as outlined on my wishlist
• This book
• Liquors
• Blaxploitation movies
• And as you probably already know, I am fond of Batman.

Don't buy me this book, though, cuz I bought it for myself today. Pretty! If I have any really rich friends that I don't know about, though: this would look pretty cool on my desk.

I have been to Montreal and back, in class for three days, and have walked from the pits to College Park, twice, all in the past 7 days. Also saw Hamlet 2 (sucked!), had an entirely home-cooked meal at Christys' place (fab-u-lous!), went to the Silver Snail (but not for midnight!) and watched Superman Returns on blu-ray. Tonight is our soccer final: we are playing for first. I never sit down, and I am rapidly running out of things to sit down on, even if I were to find time to do so. Time is getting short. Every last thing into its box, and here we go...

Posted by tederick at 4:40 PM in 3QF & batman! & books & miscellaneous crap & shinybludisks
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Lots more stuff coming out of my house and potentially into yours over the next few weeks. Let's start with some DVDs:

• The Prestige, a film I simply cannot recommend highly enough
• Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
• Ginger Snaps II a.k.a. Ginger Really Snaps

Five bucks a head. That's right, FIVE. If you live elsewhere than here and cannot pick up the DVDs, we can also work out a shipping cost.

Now some books:

• The novelizations of Episodes I and II, in hardcover!
• Memoirs of a Geisha, also in hardcover!
• His Dark Materials
• The Making of the Modern Age, which many of you probably read in history class in high school
• Oscar Widle - De Profundis and Other Writings
• Shadow Moon, the actual novelized sequel to Willow
• Jean Genet - Our Lady of the Flowers

Books are FREE. I don't feel right charging for books. Same rules apply re: shipping if you don't have the ability to come get them in person.

Posted by tederick at 10:28 AM in books & shinydisks
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Look what I bought on the street!!!:

and

and this one I've wanted for a while

yes!! awesome.

Posted by tederick at 10:05 PM in awesomeness & books
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Yes, I am reading The Hobbit again, and yes, I am content.

I toyed with the idea of replacing my copy a few years back, when the LOTR tie-ins were at the height of their prettiness, as I had done with Narnia; fortunately I remembered (after a bit of fuss) that even pulp paperbacks from 1979 can have a little magic in them, and that old paper smells good. So here I am. There's quite a bit to the cloth bookmark with the bear on it that I use to mark my page, too, but I'll share that with you another time.

Suffice to say that right now I am moving things around in my mind, trying to make a story, which is a tricky thing if you haven't done it in a while and an even trickier thing when you feel the book has closed on a lot of old things and a lot of new, different things will have to start opening now. Still, today is fairly sunny and there are places to go and things to do during the day, and I'll blow some smoke rings by dusk on the old back deck. So that's something.

Posted by tederick at 8:40 AM in books & the process
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I gave up on Monster Blood Tattoo; I loathe the truly pathetic attempts to capitalize on everything awesome about the truly great works of fantasy fiction (structure from Harry Potter, language-smithry from Tolkien, parallel worldism from Lyra) as though something new or interesting will come out of the blender-parts of the achievements of the past. Synergize, people, don't just homogenize. Ain't brain surgery. So instead, I'm reading The Indiana Jones Handbook. Which is crappy in an entirely different set of ways but is at least entertaining, especially given all the veiled "the crystal skulls are from aliens!!!" references. It's sort of like The Worst Case Scenario If You're Indiana Jones. I am learning how to pass under a moving truck, how to cut a rope bridge in half (if only I'd known 2 weeks ago!), and how to survive poisoning by a bloodthirsty Chinese ganglord. Given the poor pedigree of the book's writing, most of these involve "well, do the best you can, I guess." Which, to be fair, is probably how Indy approaches life, too.

I never bought The Worst Case Scenario If You're Batman (or whatever it's called). Wish I had. I imagine Batman has a number of seriously worst-case scenarios.

Hey, in the good news, I suspect the postal tag that arrived on my doorknob yesterday is actually my Raiders jacket, back after a 4-month sojourn in its home country of England. Words cannot express how much I've missed having this thing, and how much airplane flights suck when you're not wearing it. It's the all-purpose awesomegarment. Hats are for jerks: jackets are where the real adventure-wear lies.

Posted by tederick at 11:24 AM in batman! & books & dr. jones
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"Perhaps it was the light on your face, but I thought I recognised you from somewhere a long way down, somewhere at the bottom of the sea." - Lighthousekeeping

Did I get sent to work today with a Lazer Tag lunch box filled with a lunch that my girl made for me, and little notes and instructions that say things like "eat the carrots - you need vegetables"? Yes. Yes I did. And yet, she had me at "let's watch Pirates 1 and 3 but not 2." Sooner than that, even. Oh dusty world.

The TTC delay at Vic Park this morning (curses!!) got me thorugh the rest of Lighthousekeeping and out the other side, which is always a horrible feeling - "why didn't I bring more books???" I am now swinging back to H-pot for another Deathly Hallows re-read... this is, what? My fourth? It's in my head a lot these days, in near-Blu-Ray sharpness. I'm also reading a book about e.simulation design! Because I'm a nerd.

Here are some things I called my friend Erin while we were at lunch yesterday:"Gigantor," "Godzilla," "Monster Woman," "genetic disaster from a horror movie," and "something from out of the Deep." Isn't it nice when I express myself?

Now I'm listening to Return of the King and rather enjoying the look and feel of the day. My extended-hours cram session last night got me well ahead on a few things and I'm tackling a few more even as I type. Fabulous multi-screen multi-program multi-brain-lobe multi-tasking! I could teach a class.

Posted by tederick at 10:50 AM in books & h-pot & j-o-b & jedi antics
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Who has my copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (book)? Cuz one of you does, and I want it back.

Oscar nominations are the usual list of toldjaso's, likesay Cate Blanchett getting nominated for Elizabeth and I'm Not There, Johnny picking up his Sweeney nomination, and Ellen Page getting the inevitable actress nod. My feeling of Atonement dread was nicely lessened by the lack of a director nom; the Juno support is heartening, and it'll be hilarious to watch There Will Be Blood get so utterly snubbed on wins versus the number of nominations it actually got. How Golden Compass stole a visual effects nomination will be a mystery to me until the end of time.

The monster in Cloverfield is a giant space beetle from under the sea. That's fine. It's possible that the writer's strike has actually cured me (and North America) of our collective TV addiction; that's fine too. I haven't watched a TV show, or played the Wii, more than once so far in 2008. There's just so much other stuff to do. And this is winter: can you imagine if the doors got blown open and we could all go outside and play soccer, sit at cafés, or read comics in the park? Television itself might cease to exist for ever more.

Posted by tederick at 9:24 AM in books & movies & tv & wii
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All right, I've had it; reading The Rum Diary all week has pretty much destroyed any ability on my part to not be fantasizing constantly about getting the hell out of this town and spending several aimless weeks knocking around some anonymous beach in Dominica in the near and immediate future. Fifteen-degree Tuesdays notwithstanding, I have had it with this cold weather shite. I want to be wearing minimal, loose clothing (if clothing at all). I want to wake up covered in sand-flies. I want to watch the sun rise and only then begin considering finding a bed. Oooh, I like that last part most of all.

Speaking of The Rum Diary, I had the best rum evah last night. We went to Scaramouche for my dad's birthday, and after dinner I ordered a shot of a 15-year-old Demerara rum from Guyana... and holy sweet fucking crap, it tasted like cream mixed with vanilla. Enough of this cheap LCBO shit I've been pumping through my veins - I gotta get me some of that. Although I admit the allure would be greatly enhanced if I was buying it myself somewhere on or near the aforementioned beach.

OK, enough griping. As far as "happiness is": walking hand-in-hand before sunrise, and finding a Lobster Johnson in my bag that I hadn't read yet, have pretty much already made my day.

"The monkeys don't speak, but they move like ninjas."

Posted by tederick at 9:02 AM in books & the rum diaries
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I've been handing out Man of the Year here on the ol' blog since way back in 2000, when this utterly inconsequential no-prize was awarded to the conceptual godfather of the whole deal, Richard Hatch. At the time I was proud - yes, proud! - that no non-dude would ever win the entirely uncoveted "of the year" title here on the site, but from the very early goings in 2007, I was fairly aware that the ship was about to capsize. Men are just so uncompelling these days! And if we're trying to note the person who had the biggest effect on the Tederick.comverse for the calendar year of the award, cast your eyes no further than the little category we like to call h-pot: did anything else in 2007 even come close?

There was a whole lot of Potter prattle over the summer, but I think the entry called Dumbledore's Army does the best job of getting into exactly why this all mattered so much to me. Rowling created a book series; Rowling's book series created a culture. That culture is, beyond compare, the warmest, kindest, most inclusive, most exclusive fan base I've ever had privilege to be even remotely associated with, and it brought the big hugs n' happy for the majority of my year. That's really something.

Doesn't hurt that the book was the best I've read in a long, long time, either.

J.K. Rowling is the very first winner of Tederick.com's Woman of the Year. Previous recipients of the now-defunct Man of the Year include the authors of Civil War, Matty Price, Woogie, Peter Jackson, Master Yoda, Mark, and Richard Hatch.

Posted by tederick at 11:04 AM in books & h-pot & tederickdotcomdotcom
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The events of the weekend did one thing rather brilliantly: they completely erased my memory of seeing The Golden Compass. Like, on Monday morning I saw the poster on the way to work and was like, "oh yeah, that movie." Now I'm (finally) reading Lyra's Oxford again, which is a dessert course that should not have been preceeded by the stew, but whatever, it's still lovely, if far too short. You know, someday someone should do all of these things film-wise. Three features, and however many shorts Pullman ends up writing (there's one about Lee and Iorek coming out in the spring), plus the apocrypha and the lantern slides. That would make one hell of a DVD.

(At this point I'm presuming that New Line will never in a million years bankroll Knife and Spyglass after the pantsing Compass took at the box office this weekend. If we ever get around to a Mamo, I might explain more. Meantime, here's a good bit about the scripts, including the Hollywood bullshit line of the year: “The aim is to put in the elements we need to make this movie a hit, so that we can be much less compromising in how the second and third books are shot" - way to go Chris!)

There is now a floating theory that I am in fact from a parallel reality. This replaces the previous theory that Daniel is the central hub of a web of alternate worlds that only he can interact with, because now not only does Daniel not remember seeing Antenna with me, but I have no memory of seeing Spider-Man 2 with Chris. Since I am clearly the common element in these divergent histories, I must be the one who tumbled in from an alterna-cosmos. Which is fine, but I do miss our old morning ritual of eating cake before breakfast while wearing knit caps. It's the little things that make a home a home, y'know?

It is dead terrific to be out of DVD bankruptcy, internets. Still feels a bit strange though, like I was doing something naughty yesterday when I bought Lost. I also picked up some shiny blu Harry Potter 5, which looks fan-frickin'-tastic. Looking forward to watching that again and seeing whether I actually liked it, or just liked it because it wasn't as godawful as Goblet.

For my next trick, I shall write an entire instructional design plan in just north of 150 minutes. SHAZAAAM!!!

Posted by tederick at 9:06 AM in books & h-pot & movies & shinybludisks & shinydisks
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The tower is broken, DVD bankruptcy is over, I have a blu-ray player in my house, I have replaced my last VHS tape, and Pirates 3 comes out on Tuesday. I ran into Brandy on the street while carrying the blu-ray box and she said "it's the end of the world!" to which I replied "IT'S THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW WORLD!!"

Yeah, I caved to the Sony. Got fucking sick to death of waiting for the Panasonic, and the Sony came down in price and I just don't care enough about the new profile to wait a single day more when it's right there in front of me in the store. The player itself reminds me powerfully of the first VCR my family ever owned, the old iron war-horse. It's big and ugly and slow and dumb. But the pictures are so pretty. Me and the kids are going to watch Spiderman 3 and get drunk. (You know: Spiderman 3. The one with the Spidermans, the Solomons, and the Berkowitzes.)

What else happened? Well, I finished His Dark Materials this morning; that was significant. I feel like I sort of got to know a little more about Phillip Pullman this time around than I had before; when I was gorked out of my mind on Friday night and quasi-stoned with fatigue I was making all kinds of weird connections between him and Mary and the Mulefa and everything. And there's a particular challenge question in the Amber Spyglass Lantern Slides that made me feel like a foolish kid on the first day of school. Just a marvelous experience from top to bottom.

I finished the book over coffee and then went down on this particularly yucky weather day; hung out at the Snail for a while because I hadn't talked to Sheila in for ever, and then I grabbed a burrito and hit the Cinematheque for a screening of Bunny Lake is Missing - which was pretty damn good, except that "Keir Dullea is a psychopath" isn't really as surprising a turnaround as the filmmakers obviously thought it was, because yeah, that guy ain't right.

When the movie was done the weather nasties were really in full force so I jogged over to the Best Buy, made the crisis-support phone call to Matty Price re: the Blu Ray, and made my decision. Now I'm all wound up in HDMI cables and sippin' on rum.

Yup. That went well.

Posted by tederick at 7:43 PM in books & movies & shinybludisks
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"We have the right to refuse to guide them if they lie, or if they hold anything back, or if they have nothing to tell us. If they live in the world, they should see and touch and hear and learn things." - No-Name

"When we were alive, they told us that when we died we'd go to heaven. ...And that's what lead some of us to give our lives, and others to spend years in solitary rayer, while all the joy of life was going to waste around us and we never knew." - the ghost

"I'm going to destroy Metatron. But my part is nearly over. ...We all know what we must do, and why we must do it: we have to protect Lyra until she has found her daemon and escaped. Our Republic might have come into being for the sole purpose of helping her do that. Let us do it as well as we can." - Lord Asriel

"The first ghost to leave the world of the dead was Roger. He took a step forward, and turned to look back at Lyra, and laughed in surprise as he found himself turning into the night, the starlight, the air... and then he was gone, leaving behind such a vivid little burst of happiness that Will was reminded of the bubbles in a glass of champagne." - The Amber Spyglass

"I wanted you to come and join me... and I thought you would prefer a lie." - Lord Asriel

The blogTO piece is still going strong; I'm enjoying sitting and watching the debate unfold (there's a great piece in the Globe this morning), even when I want to step in and start swingin'. I'm doing my best to not do that. A while ago I was carting HDM around downtown when one of the street corner evangelists tried to shove a Jesus pamphlet in my hand; I just held up the book and said "I'm on the other side." But really, that's inflammatory and childish. It's easy to get caught up in the glee of feeling like there is something important and interesting going on, and that something I believe in quite strongly is at the center. But I'm not much for being anti. I'm pro; I'm all for inclusion. For example, I am giddily pro-sin, enjoy watching battle formations if not actual battles, and continue to be terrified of animated mice but like having them in my movies. There's just so much neat stuff in the world, and nothing I believe in is so weak that it can't stand a little company.

Posted by tederick at 9:10 AM in blogTO & books & death
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Apparently a Worf action figure was the key to my heart today. It's a little embarrassing. Star Trek, really? But then I was like "they're gonna make Ezri!!!" and it was all sold. Now I can re-enact Worf and Ezri's awkward post-coital imprisonment conversation from "Tacking into the wind" and oh my god someone just snap my neck, please. Right now.

Still sorta drying out. Actually, more drying in: the next two weeks of my job-life are gonna be motherfuckin' complex, Internet. I've got an all-day onsite development meeting on Wednesday; I'm in a project management class on Thursday and Friday; and then all next week, my boys from Mumbai are in the house. After all that's done, December oughta flatline nicely and I can spend the back nine digging my way out of the holes I'm about to fall into, but yeah... it's psychologically challenging, knowing that you're gonna be fucked sideways for work for the imminent foreseeables, and there ain't nothin to be done about it.

So for the last hair's breadth of interim, I'm gonna go see Beowulf with Matty Price in a couple of hours and then go over to Kimba's for some board games. Right now I'm going to try to get another dozen pages of Spyglass done... and yes, there will be a burrito. I'm at the Starbucks right now trying to get the most recent Terra draft read and maybe do a bit of notemaking on Snapdragon. I sheltered at the Snail for a while. It was when I noticed that the air on the second floor was actually calming me down that I thought to myself, "hmmm... this may have gone too far."

Have added a Secret of String page here. Still have not seen this year's One Minute Film & Video Festival, at T+68hrs. As procrastination goes, that's solid.

We're 12 days out from the Compass flick, which is sort of owning me at the mo'. Oh, I do ever so much hope it does not thoroughly suck. Remember: the big betrayal that the Master prophesies for Lyra isn't what happened to Roger, it's what happened to Pan. Because we can betray others all we want, but it's when we betray ourselves that's the stuff that prophecies are written about. I could not have stated that any more awkwardly! But there you go.

Posted by tederick at 2:18 PM in 1MFVF & books & j-o-b & movies & tederick films & toys!
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New hoodie with thumbholes = the best ever.

I think the show went really well. In spite of it being a snow year (with a shut down TTC, to boot) there was a solid crowd on the floor. I was nervous as fuck beforehand - nervouser than usual, actually, which was strange. But it all came together. Wrote the script, practiced the script, did the script. Weird being that it was the first year where I'd seen none of the films - and couldn't stand to stick around in the auditorium and actually watch them live, either; needed to pace. And pace I did. After party was better than usual, though, and the big heaping plate of poutine afterwards was even better than that (if troubling). And all my people were with me. So yeah: I'm calling fest '07 a win. Another one for our side.

Hey check this out: Jeff sent me the link and I spun it out, and now it's turning into a nice bit of blogTO comment fodder. Shit like this, you don't even need to spin, you just put it out there and let the moral outrage drag your minor efforts down the gulf stream. I'm still trying to get a major hookup for one of my pieces through another, larger site - it hasn't happened yet (though I got close last week with the lightsaber fight) but when it does, I shall laugh mightily.

It's cold, Internet. Damn cold. Big moon you could cut yourself on. I've got a three day layover before the real shit start next week. Gonna lay low and plot.

Posted by tederick at 1:59 AM in 1MFVF & blogTO & books & hoodies
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"Just tell me this before you go. What side I'm fighting for I cain't tell, and I don't greatly care. Just tell me this: What I'm a-going to do now, is that going to help that little girl Lyra, or harm her?" - Lee Scoresby

Lee becomes such a useful character in His Dark Materials because he so early and easily throws up his hands and says, I don't have one damn clue which side of this fight is the right side, so I'm just going to look out for the people I care for rather than spend all my time trying to muck out the delicate workings of the higher levels. That's the kind of reasoning that is both humanity's greatest strength, and greatest flaw, but it is just so perfectly human, that it makes Lee a singular and meaningful voice among the cacophany of witches, angels, shamans, and daemons.

Lee's final gun battle on the ridge just wrecked me today, partly because I could see Sam Elliott in my head when I was reading it, and it's so much sadder when it's a really old dude instead of just some guy in his late forties. All in all it was a good day for reading, cold and clear, and I found myself a really good cup of coffee and a nice hard bench. My dreams last night were troubled by whores and kings, but my new pillows are wonderful and I am rested. I have a new yoga crush, which helps. And my hoodies, as usual, are exceptional.

I am actually downloading all the raw footage of The Tracey Fragments. I don't have a clear idea if I'm actually going to use it for anything constructive, besides maybe teaching myself how to use Final Cut which I still haven't done after all this time. I just feel like if I'm so dead set on the idea that there's something valuable in that flick even if the final product wasn't to my liking, I oughta hitch up my socks and try to find it, even if only for an hour or two. But first, there's work to do today, and it ain't getting fresher for waiting.

Here's some good news: Hearts of Darkness will finally see shinydisk. It's the last film in my top ten of all time that is still mouldering on my shelf in clunky old VHS. That movie was just so damn instrumental to me when I was a teenager. Useful as hell.

I am in the midst of prepping up for winter. I went into H&M today and bought two hats, three pairs of pirate socks, and fingerless gloves. I don't know why I always fall for fingerless gloves; my fingertips are actually the part of my hand that get coldest fastest and are most in need of help. I should get fingers-only gloves. That would be better. But I am a whore for the look of the things. Sigh. Anyways, now I'm looking for a new fall/winter coat - a hell of a commitment, so I'm a bit stymied. I think it shall be grey, though, and hip-length. That is my current thought.

A truly immense collection of Golden Compass stills here. I'll be sitting pretty in desktop wallpaper for months.

Posted by tederick at 1:11 PM in blogTO & books & dreams & hoodies & movies & shinydisks
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Well, it's the next-to-last mail day before the party, and the crowning element of my Hallowe'en costume has yet to arrive. Which is pretty disappointing. But of all the elements of this thing to have to improvise, this is the one I've got covered off regardless, so I guess there are worse things. Still - !! You would not believe how cool this one particular thing was going to be. (I will show you next week, whether it arrives or not.) Oh well. I guess it could still arrive tomorrow.

Otherwise, I bench-tested the rest of the motherfucker just now, and god damn. As I think I've said before, there is absolutely no one who is going to be impressed by what I've done here, other than me. But I am so fucking proud of this deal. And I've got the strut down cold.

What else happened today? Well, we shot Daniel's second and last segment of VCR: The Ninth Gate for one thing, and Daniel taught me a new word: defenestration. Oh, I love it. I think it is one of the loveliest words I have ever heard. I wish I had known of this word from the moment we first conceived of this VCR decalogue; it might have been the title for the whole deal. At the very least, I'm going to have to slip it into the credits for VCR10y. And possibly every other thing I ever write for the rest of ever.

After giving it some more thought, I realized vis a vis the Dumbledore situation that I agree with this guy, at least on the macro scale: there is something morally cowardly about what went on here, and not just the after-the-last-minute outing. But after even more thought on the subject, I also realized that for all my desire to have Dumbledore be the perfect queer icon that the fantasy universe deserves to have, the pieces don't really fit. I didn't give one passing thought to Dumbledore's entire lack of a sexual or romantic life when he was (de facto) heterosexual; I don't see why the sex life of a 115-year-old man should suddenly need to be foregrounded when that sex life involves other men instead of women. This is all part of a very complicated idea, but at least part of this idea bears the veneer of reverse homophobia. So I think a) we had better leave this alone now, and b) Rowling shouldn't have bothered in the first place. Putting this on the table just showed how desperate the table is. It would be nice if any one thing could ever just mean one thing, but that'll never happen. Forcing mandates upon icons just makes them fall down. And good lord, Michael Gambon must be getting weary of his picture being the very meaning of "THIS MAN IS GAY!" this week.

Moving over to the next franchise, I read the end of The Golden Compass today and am now into The Subtle Knife; whoever hypno-whammied Phillip Pullman into supporting the excision of the last three chapters of Compass from the film that shall shortly bear its name should be cast off the highest cliff on all of Svalbard. The bear fight is not the climax of Lyra's arc in the first book. Good fucking lord. Basic screenwriting, people.

Anyways, based on how much finishing Compass got to me today, I am going to be a snivelly, weepy mess when Spyglass dwindles down, a few hundred pages from here. Doing this in the fall might have been a grand, beautiful mistake.

Posted by tederick at 10:36 PM in books & h-pot & movies & pirates & sex (theoretical) & tederick films
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I'm feeling that. It's all stirred up thick and muckity and I'm just a kid! I don't know from corporate negotiations, bedside text messages, midnight parking arrangements or unlooked-for power brokerages of the personal or the arcane. And I certainly don't understand love. I know from action figures and THAT'S IT. I'm just keeping to myself and being watchful; it's enough. But these times, man. These times.

I'm tending to my garments in the meantime. I'm pleased to say that this winter will not be the last season on earth for my beloved Raiders jacket; the good folk at Wested are going to be re-lining and refurbishing the ratty old thing for an astonishingly small figure of money. At the same time, I'm looking for more hoods; I think I even want a hooded jacket. I came across no less than three hooded items over the weekend and will probably end up buying at least two. Hoods are integral to success.

This Thing Is Bigger Than The Both Of Us: The Secret of String, the longest title I have ever had for anything, will be screening at this year's One Minute Film & Video Festival. It's on November 22nd at the Bloor Cinema. I look to be in Vancouver right up till the morning of the show, but I'll redeye it back if I have to. Attend, won't you?

His Dark Materials is throwing me into near-paroxysms of joy this time through. I haven't read it in - what? - two years? Yeah I might become like Christopher Lee for Rings and just read this annually; I am just so freaking happy as I turn every single page. And making connections and asking questions and writing things down. I love this part of the story, where all the random characters just sort of ball up together, totally unaware that about seven hundred pages from now they're all going to save the world. Just think, the people currently collecting around you like lint might be your Scooby gang for the next apocalypse. Wild, huh? Except no one ever knows it at the time. Nobody ever says "the eight or nine of us right here, who didn't know each other from nobody ten minutes ago, we're gong to save the world." Well, since the only downside is that I might be wrong, I'm putting it out there: me and mine? We're going to save the world. Why not?

Posted by tederick at 4:36 PM in 1MFVF & books & hoodies & poetical & tederick films
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I was in the Goo for a 24-hour layover this weekend; I should have stayed longer. I needed a bit more Goo October, a bit more downtown, although I also really needed an afternoon watching Buffy with the Box Girls - more than I would have imagined, actually - and I got that, so no complaints. I agree with TJ in that generally, I think things should be easier; but I am also aware that in the short term they probably won't be, and the long term is anyone's guess. I realized the other day that the real trick in all this is simply figuring out which character you are in the story, and I've had some recent and useful clues.

I spent a good portion of yesterday morning torturing myself about Blade Runner: The Final Cut, which is in theatres in New York and Los (San?) Angeles, but not in Toronto. I'd be fine with it if the entire internet wasn't talking about the fucking thing. (This Wired interview with Ridley is particularly good.) Reading review after review after review (after review) of the thing is like going to the girl I have a crush on's Facebook page and looking at pictures of her for hours. Stupid Blade Runner stupid Final Cut stupid San Angeles! Still, it's a good reason to get a better TV before Christmas. With my credit card currently at a zero balance I'm feeling loud and bloodthirsty in my spending.

Complete Return of the King track listing: here. Some interesting stuff on there, including some stuff I didn't expect. I am quite looking forward to this, not just for completeness' sake but because it's such a substantial thing. Fits the changing of the seasons.

Anyways. As we are coming to the close of the project that has dominated my time for the last six months, I am constrained to work today, much is the pity. I'd rather find a nook somewhere in the October gloom and read. I've stolen a few minutes this morning to start The Golden Compass, though, and am already deeply, deeply engaged. Already the movie is working on me - it may be decades or never before I will read this book again and not see Dakota Blue Richards where my slight, wilder Lyra once was. I don't mind so much with Daniel Craig overtaking my fierce, grisly Asriel, but when I get to Mrs. Coulter I may have a fit. As much as the general principle of movie adaptation remains true - that the books still exist, and the movies cannot harm them - these things do play hell on the internal casting agent and art director.

Soon there will be colouring books and Happy Meals and dolls (here's Big Fuckin' Lyra, by the way, from the people who made my Big Fuckin' Hermione - a 12"-tall 11-year-old at 18" scale... she'd look a bit strange standing next to 12" Qui-Gon, wouldn't she?). This secret corner of the literary world is about to get blown open and out, and for many years will be bloody incommodius - but when I am much older than I am now it may still be possible to, like today, sit down somewhere soft and find my way back into that rich, clear landscape of scholars and poison and Dust, with its attendant thrills, jeopardy, and looming adventure.

Posted by tederick at 9:24 AM in books & jedi antics & movies
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Closer. Far closer:

Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it Please don't drop it

Posted by tederick at 1:03 PM in books & movies
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This morning I wrote pretty much the entire third issue of Snapdragon... I just couldn't stop. Again, being as that I'm doing this with no plan whatsoever I thought that was pretty impressive. Plus, being a comics reader myself, I suspect this is the issue where - if this thing ever sees print - the readers will go, "oh, NOW he knows what do with it." This is the one where the possibilities of the concept overtook the requirements of the genre. I file it under "yay me."

Sorry for all the masturbation on the blog lately, but I am feeling uncommonly calm, clear, and focused right now, and with that being the general state to which I am always striving, I'm just sort of trying to make sure I don't miss it while it's here.

Key among my current joys is the degree to which I am enjoying Dividadero. Holy sweet crap, am I enjoying Divisadero. Ondaatje's writing remains near-narcotic in its effect on me... to say nothing of its equally respectable near-erotic effects. It's been a long time since I've read a (non-Harry Potter) book that literally fell under "can't put it down." I've got a stack of Iron Fist comics that ain't gettin' any smaller cuz I'd rather be in novel-land right now. Been a while for that one, too.

I am on a strict diet of Evanescence and Coldplay right now; not sure why. It's like a 2002 musical wonderland in my head, following the 1987 musical wonderland that was my Appetite for Destruction haze last month.

In the next week I've got Nuit Blanche, a departmental offsite, a team day, three working dinners, a soccer game, yoga, and a Mamo. I've also got minor VCR 9 prepping to do: our first shoot date is booked for the 8th of October, at the vacant lot near my office. Sending out the sides last night I finally began to understand what Adam meant when he said there was no way I was ever going to make this. It seems un-possible, I guess. But it all makes sense in my head...

At work today someone told me that I'm a catch, and I actually took it as a compliment instead of as an incendiary like I usually do. Times have sure as fuck changed.

Posted by tederick at 9:26 AM in books & tederick films & the process
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Wait a minute - if Tatooine is supposed to be the ass-backwards middle of nowhere in a galaxy of ten thousand star systems, how the fuck does Tarkin know what that guy is talking about when he says that the Falcon blasted its way out of Mos Eisley? Isn't that like me recognizing the name of a coffee shop in outer Mongolia?

Well gang, in spite of my best - and if I may say so, heroic - efforts, there will be no 10th anniversary sequel to Fuck: the Documentary, which was to be titled Fuck 2: Fuck You!. Instead, Adam and I will be collaborating on a film about Oshawa. It will combine fiction and non-fiction elements and be called You, Me, the Cannonball, and the Shwa. We aim to go to camera in November, when the Shwa will be at its most Shwa. More details to be confirmed at the latertime.

Meanwhile, I'm getting an awful lot out of the Stephen Prince book, The Warrior's Camera. It's a little annoying that I can actually hear Prince's didactic monologue in my head as I'm reading his words, but that's my own fault for listening to so many Criterion commentaries. I remain intensely distrustful, however, of any analysis that makes it seem like a filmmaker put so much damn work into the pre-thought of his movie. Diagrams and schematics and ethical projects and so forth. Surely nobody actually breaks a film down to what essentially amounts to a masters thesis in philosophy, before he even begins writing it? Surely one just has an idea, sees some themes or concepts that can be articulated through that idea, and then just tries to make the flick as best as one can?

Posted by tederick at 11:22 AM in books & galaxy far & movies & tederick films
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Thank god I can get onto the Tederick.com back end through the One Zone without logging in. I have no idea why that is and I can't imagine it's particularly intelligent from a security standpoint, but whatever, free wi-fi anywhere downtown for blogging purposes only. I'll take it.

So I think I may have made a big mistake. Did not sleep last night pretty much at all thanks to opening night jitters and a cat who, very literally, came within an inch of losing her life to my enraged hands after the 4th or 5th time trying to shut her up at four in the morning. I scheduled my only midnight-to-9 a.m. turnaround on the first Friday because I figured my body clock wouldn't be reset yet and getting up at 7:30 would be no problem. WRONGO. I am suffering serious braindeath here.

But them's the lumps.

Yesterday was pretty fucking terrific all around. I spent the afternoon in Trinity Bellwoods reading comic books and just chilling out thinking about life; I'm also really enjoying reading Nausea, which I'll finish today so that I can start Warrior's Camera tomorrow (it has become a semi-annual tradition to read books about Kurosawa during the film festival). I also ran into someone that I only ever see during the film festival - not at a festival venue, nowhere near one actually, so it was weird that it happened today and not on any of the other days of the year. (Plus: I hate that guy.)

I got home to a bit of meanspirited fucking-around by a certain TGS member who shall remain nameless, but that's girls for you. Doing it just to do it. Otherwise yesterday was tip top. I cruised down to the Elgin at 7:00 and ran into Sonomi (!) in line, so we hung out for a spell and that was pretty cool - haven't seen her in a solid 2 years or more and she's about to vanish to France for a long term stay, too. Some other former Bexites were about but there wasn't much to say other than "hey, you know Bex - so do I!"

Persepolis was my first film of the fest and it was pretty damn good. Animation was gorgeous and it maintained a pretty solid balance between the sheer awfulness of life in Iran and the wry sense of humour with which one, I suppose, is able to survive such things. It didn't so much conclude as just stop dead, which was a problem, and the last act didn't work nearly as well as the first two, but I'm giving it a pass overall if for nothing other than the fact that in the middle of this movie, an old woman actually maps out the meaning of life in about three sentences, and you go "oh yeah: that's really fucking obvious."

Then it was up to the Ryerson for the opening Midnight, and so shitty a Midnight I have rarely seen before. Holy mother of god, Mother of Tears is fucking awful. You kept wanting it to break out into full-on pornography (that was certainly the feel of the thing, between the Z-grade acting and the laboured dialogue) but aside from some titty shots from the Evil Witch Trying To Take Down Rome, no joy. Oh, plus: there was a fire drill right in the middle of the movie. A fucking voice comes over the P.A. system in the balcony of the Ryerson and says "we are about to test the fire alarm, don't evacuate the building," and then a horrible BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP goes off for the next three minutes. With director and star in attendance. Oh Colin. I suspect these opening Midnights might just be cursed. But it was still fun to just be back in the venue... plus I saw someone that I had the world's biggest festival crush on last year (festival crushes differ from regular crushes because they're, you know, festive), and was sort of surprised by how... well, I guess I was just surprised to be surprised. It all seems so long ago. I can't believe how much has changed in a single stupid year, while still feeling like there's so much further to go.

Now I'm sitting outside the Ryerson waiting for Glory to the Filmmaker! to let in, and I can't believe I actually had enough time to get all the way to the end of this entry with no problems.

Posted by tederick at 8:18 AM in books & tiff 2007
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The AFI - who must, once a year, publish a top-100 list to remind us that they exist - has revised their earlier list of the top 100 American films of all time. Fellowship of the Ring is on there now (American how?), but not its successors (hum-nu?), as are various concessions to populism like Titanic and The Sixth Sense, and other concessions to earlier omissions like Intolerance and Spartacus.

Oddly, my own lists (and my own need to remind you that I exist) have been churning quite a bit in the past few months as well:

My favourite movie is obviously not actually going to remain Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, but for the time being... it so very, very is. I love that movie in ways that are not rational, sensible, or explainable. (Reminds me of a girl I used to take out.) I am as happy as a pig in slop that this thing came along and forced its way past Return of the Jedi, though more reasonably it will end up spending its time in the #3 position (behind Seven Samurai) for several years before eventually falling out of favour. Raiders has moved up a step too, by the way.

The current list:

1. Return of the Jedi
2. Seven Samurai
3. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
4. Raiders of the Lost Ark
5. Lawrence of Arabia

My favourite book has suffered a clean upset. His Dark Materials displaced Heart of Darkness and In the Skin of a Lion for the top slot about three months ago. This means Potter is out of the top three as well, and in the Potterverse, Goblet of Fire is being given a run for its money by Order of the Phoenix - which itself would have been heresy just a year ago.

The list:

1. His Dark Materials
2. In the Skin of a Lion
3. Heart of Darkness
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
5. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

My favourite TV show is the only thing that's pretty much unassailable. Ain't nothin' gonna knock MSCL off the top of that list. Six Feet Under did, however, get past Firefly and The Simpsons for the #4 spot.

1. My So-Called Life
2. Star Trek: The Next Generation
3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
4. Six Feet Under
5. Firefly

THE GOBLIN DANCES HERE!!!

Posted by tederick at 9:43 AM in books & h-pot & movies & pirates & tv
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