Keel over topsails, and always with the spinning, spinning, spinning. So:

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

Saturday was the office Christmas party.

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

Here's me and the Cannonball:

Me and Al and Al:

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

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

Posted by tederick at 3:21 PM in 3QF & hoodies & j-o-b & jedi antics & photoblog & pirates & the rum diaries
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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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I AM EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH, INTERNET!!! Wowsers. Only took two damn years but man that's satisfying. I used my corporate points to buy a 3-man tent. I was going to go with a gardening tool set that comes in an attaché case, because I figured it would be like I would be the gardener equivalent of a contract killer: I'd show up in your back yard and be like, "We are doing some fucking gardening, bitch" and then whip out my annodized grass shears. But no, I went for the tent instead because now when the apocalypse comes I can just lit out for the hills with my tent on my back. Aragorn-style. It pays to be forward-thinking on matters of the apocalypse; the post-apocalypstic wastes will offer little opportunity for gardening (due to soil atrophy).

I haven't even bought the Blu-Ray player and it's already giving me trouble by way of the format war. Two titles are out of my reach: the forthcoming Zodiac special edition, which is a Paramount title and therefore format-specific; and Transformers, which is a godawful movie but man fucking sweet pants do I want to own that on Blu-Ray. In fact, it was the flick that kicked off the entire Blu-Ray decision in the first place because who doesn't want ultra high definition splendourific awesomeness of Megatron trying to crush Shia LaBeouf like a bug? Stupid DVD companies and your wars! Don't you see it's your war, but our world??? Shame.

My new hoodie has thumb holes. Oh, I love it. But remember: you can't marry a hoodie. A hoodie cannot love you back, even with thumb holes. It can only keep you warm and make you feel awesome.

Iorek and Lyra are on the wall of the Scarborough Town Centre across the street, sixty feet tall. It's going to be a glorious winter.

Posted by tederick at 1:36 PM in hoodies & j-o-b & shinydisks & the apocalypse
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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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Last night my iCal said this: "Dinner with Kate - bring guns." But no, it all worked out fine. I didn't have to murder her at all! In fact a lot of things that have been left undealt with for far too long (hey check that out, I made up a word and used it in a sentence at the same time!) got brought out and sorted out and put away. So that's... well that's just solid, is what that is. The wheel never stops turning.

I can't tell you how good it feels to be walking around in pants that aren't so oversized that they're hanging down to my ballsack right now. It's like a whole new me.... in pants.

My telly sources inform me that Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered a mighty 20 years ago today... two thirds of my life. That's just goddamned insane. If you want to go back and read some really, really bad writing on the subject, I reviewed the whole show back in '02 when the DVDs came out, starting here. But otherwise there's little to say beyond the obvious fact that this series, probably more than any other, turned me into who I am. Not a direct line, certainly, but for formation of the psyche you can't do much better than being the television obsession of a 14-year-old boy. Besides, remember Data with that beard that one time? That was crazy.

OK, the number of lower-than-z-grade acquaintances, i.e. people I maybe met once, who are seeking my friendship on Facebook are making me feel like a very rare baseball card that everyone wants to collect just to say that they have it. Only in my case, the gum is apathy.

I'm hoodied up, very focused, and calm.

Posted by tederick at 10:23 AM in hoodies & miscellaneous crap & tv
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Like shutting off a light switch - the real world comes rushing back, the temperature drops ten degrees, I pop out of bed at 8:30 like I'm about to go to yoga, problems are lurking in the wings like unsolvable land mines. I am blithe (and bonny). No sense fretting - before, during, or after the last day. The next little while is going to be governed by one sad little phrase: "Everything is going to change."

For one thing, I have a fairly solid beard starting.

I'm shedding the accumulated crap; emptying my bag. I no longer need maps and guides and emergency garments. After Terra last night I emerged from the theatre into a driving rainstorm; I sprinted four blocks along Bloor, straight into the Gap, straight to the second floor and into a hoodie. I have a complicated relationship with hoodies; almost spiritual, how they arrive exactly when I need them (I could not have found a hoodie in this colour and shape a week ago; I know this because I tried, in this exact store), how I don't even need to try one on any more to know it will fit like a piece of old skin. Soon everything I wear will have a hood, even my underwear - hood for the cock, hood for the balls. And my socks. Tiny little individual hoodies for ten individual toes.

Terra, along from having the best title of any narrative work ever, nearly got me. For about ten minutes at the beginning of the film, I was actually crying at how unbelievably powerful and beautiful a world was unfolding onscreen - how dare this director, this man from Montreal, reach right into my soul and find something I couldn't articulate in a million years of trying. The visual design, the music, the use of flight (straight out of Flight)... but when the engine of the story got going, the story was merely B+ acceptable rather than A++ mind-blowing. I was bummed about it, but also relieved; I was in no fit state to have my soul blown open by a new, scorching beauty.

Every festival needs its canvas survey and mine this year was the Hollywood Chinese doc; this was a competent look at the place of Asian-Americans in American cinema in the past hundred years. It hit what I would consider all of the main points except that it didn't linger long enough on the question of sexuality for women (Asian women are whores) or men (Asian men are sexless), two of what I would call defining characteristics of Hollywood's use of Chinese culture in film, even to this day. Otherwise it was solid. Son of Rambow, the family movie from the UK, was solid as well, although here, I would have liked to see it speak more directly to my own experience making movies as a kid - there was none of that. When you're a kid making a movie, it's never about the gag (slingshotting one of your actors into a tree) as how the fuck you're going to achieve the gag (the hours and days and weeks of planning that go into the slingshot); this was what made Raiders Adapted so much fun or at least fun in concept, but without focusing on the actual craft of how the boys make their movie, Rambow left no real window for me to get at the characters. So it was merely charming.

By this point Brandy and Matty Price and I were locked in a rotating windmill of Ryerson exits and re-entries. I got cock-blocked clean into the next decade while waiting in line, by someone who (admittedly) had no idea he was doing it; I no longer care. Heterosocial relations are a game for the living. I found yet another Far Bathroom before the midnight and didn't get lost this time. For one thing, other patrons are exploring the lower reaches as well; you find them in the most unusual places. We saw Weirdsville and then DAINIPPONJIN. With the former it was nice to see Telefilm's name attached to something that isn't utter garbage, even though the film still didn't have one sweet fuck of a clue what it wanted to be for about the first half hour; it was also nice to confirm that my Scott Speedman crush remains strong and comfortable. DAINIPPONJIN was great as well, but wayyyyyyyyyyy too subtle for a Midnight screening - the comedy was fantastic and fantastically low-key, but really quiet and small. Matty Price bailed after the second reel; I bailed after the fifth.

But as it turns out, sleep is something my body no longer needs nor desires. I am in a perfect perpetual state.

Posted by tederick at 10:28 AM in hoodies & tiff 2007
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