http://www.tederick.com/blog/ It's possible in my old age that I have become cantankerous en Copyright 2008 Sun, 17 Aug 2008 22:40:08 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Cats simply should not be able to do anything that awesome.]]> http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/cuteness_overload.html http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/cuteness_overload.html youtubery Sun, 17 Aug 2008 22:40:08 -0500 he kicked me in the fucking shin!!: Jerk. Over here, Moriarty calls foul on that favourite fanboy watchphrase, "George Lucas raped my childhood." He's right: inarticulate losers reaching for an ugly overemphasis of their hurt feelings through violent sexual overtones are not doing the world, or the discussion, any favours. Moriarty, though, has become the film criticism community's biggest pansy. He has been so completely spun by the birth of his child and the "development" of his middling screenwriting career that his reviews have gained an imperious, "I'm seeing this from a higher level than you" level of smug that is simply useless to both his direct audience (AICN fanboys) and film criticism in general. And the fact that both of those changes in his personal life have softened any ability on his part to look at a piece of film objectively without either going gooey-eyed over how the flick speaks to his h opes and fears for his child, or rose-hearted about how it's just so hard (sniff!) to make it in tough-ass Hollyweird, means that his opinions have become useless to me as well. Sigh of frustration. When Roger Ebert kicks it (and they're taking him down in chunks, these days), film criticism will die. For a few months I've been remarking that I really have no idea what's coming out, movie-wise, next summer. Well, others seem to have noticed the tentpole gap in summer 2009, too, because following Star Trek into a release delay is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, bumped from a November '08 show-date to July '09 to run riot over the relatively limited field of box office competitors next year. I'm not particularly disappointed, if only because my overall interest in the Potterflicks has dwindled precipitously since Order (even though, as blog-memory serves, I liked that one), and this gives me the opportunity to build a bit back up again. They'll never go down as the biggest cinematic contributions to my life, but there's something reflexively nice about going to a Potter movie with Rebecca and just magically freaking out a bit. And with five down and three (!) to go, I do also have an appreciable sense of the scale of the thing, once it's all finished. So I'm ploughing through Y: The Last Man for the second time, sort of like when I read all the Potter books consecutively since this time, I don't have to wait for subsequent volumes to be released and can treat it as one big story. In addition to all the other stuff Brian K. Vaughan is doing, I am really enjoying the degree to which the story gets to be about the way men think about women. All the myths, misconceptions, psychological fracture points, broken chivalry, noble (and not) ambitions, outright needs, subconscious lacks, complete and utter raging misunderstandings... just so eerily, pleasingly accurate. What 13-year-old boy hasn't stared into that gaping chasm of proposed femininity and refused to take more than a tentative step into the dark cave, out of the sheer unknowable otherness of it all? We can be so patently bad at knowing ourselves when it comes to sex, love, and our position on the gender coin; one of the best things about Y is the way that fully selfish and immature male-ness (which is now too happily fostered in modern North American life) just tracks for Yorick through the story, into a genuine process of maturation and change until he does become, like Jung woulda said, a fully individuated person. It'd be nice if this could happen to everyone, or at least, me. I kinda wonder if Vaughan has actually Figured It All Out, or if he's just a smart enough writer to know that he can just parlay his own experiences of relating to women throughout his life into a reasonable psychological arc for The Last Man, and let the arithmetic work itself out. Either way, it worked great. It's chilly. It's actually chilly. Fall is coming.]]> http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/whys_and_wherefores.html http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/whys_and_wherefores.html comix galaxy far movies toys! Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:07:44 -0500 It occurred to me recently that, I guess, I have a beard now. I am a person with a beard. This occurred to me only recently.]]> http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/laugh_it_up_fuzzball.html http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/laugh_it_up_fuzzball.html miscellaneous crap photoblog Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:31:48 -0500 "I'm not sure this is worth it!" - Maya "BBQ chips? That's for junkies and crack whores!" - me "Does it taste like free?" - Jacbo "Tastes like wet free." - Admo]]> http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/rain_is_rain_but_free_hamburge.html http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/rain_is_rain_but_free_hamburge.html j-o-b photoblog Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:36:47 -0500 bad. I mean that guy gives positive reviews to pretty much everything. Well, last night Harry Knowles wrote a scathing indictment of The Clone Wars, and this morning... he pulled it off his site. I suspect conspiracy. There's a good tract of it here, and reading the thing last night - talk of racist Ziro the Hutt, and cutesy Stinky, and how terribile that tweener Jedi girl actually is - cemented my complete unwillingness to engage George W. Lucas on any matters Star Wars-related, ever again. It's an amazement to me that The Phantom Menace didn't dim my SW enthusiasm a jot, but a bad Indiana Jones movie is apparently enough to buy back ten years of disappointment and grief. And I tend to be on the "charitable" side of this argument. I miss the old days. Everything's funnelling down toward September now, the boxes are stacked ceiling-high at 3QF, my vacation is booked and the prep for 10 days of TIFF is well underway. I do a lot of rushing about. Scraping twenty minutes to read some Y: The Last Man in the rain. Sometimes though I spend a Sunday night watching dumb sweet Juno with my dear one, and afterwards, there's a bit of singing as we're getting ready for bed. And that's enough to get another week underway with.]]> http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/it_started_with_a_chair.html http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/it_started_with_a_chair.html galaxy far the apocalypse tiff 2008 Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:29:43 -0500 ]]> http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/isaac_hayes_is_dead.html http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/isaac_hayes_is_dead.html movies youtubery Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:36:31 -0500 ]]> http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/and_shit_is_blowing_up_all_ove.html http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/and_shit_is_blowing_up_all_ove.html blogTO youtubery Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:35:52 -0500 "I will take you outside and fuck you in the street!!" - Ed Begley Jr. "That is spicy. I don't think that's for cats." - Adam I love that photo a lot. Sarafina and myself went to the Pineapple Express movie last night, and ate fish burritos, and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. I would say there are at least six things in that film that are outstanding, four things that are just really pretty, and the rest is overall very well done. Additionally, I read the second neo-Fray arc issue in Buffy, and was so goddamned thrilled that I almost didn't know what to do with myself. Actually, I probably embarrassed myself in public spaces with my near-constant glee. The densely-woven futurespeak is new (I suppose we can presume that in the previous self-contained storyline, we were seeing "translated" futurespeak, as we would see translated Chinese in an issue of Iron Fist) but very well done. And as for the spoiler... well yeah. I fell for the Dru fake-out rather nicely and was aptly rewarded at the end, but the bones of the thing now are just gorgeous to look at. Something happened in this issue that never happened before - the modern-day Buffyline just gained a fuck of a lot of context, a place in the world. It's not limited to Sunnydale any more, it's not even limited to the naughties any more; with the past and present accounted for and the future now added in, the Buffyverse feels dense. I like. This crazy son'bitch built the Batman Beginsmobile. There was a phantom DeLorean that lived somewhere between my ex-girlfriend's house and my parents' place, back in the day... you'd be driving along at night and it would just appear behind you, and you (meaning I) would freak right out. Imagine how you (meaning I) would feel if the motherfucking Batmobile started tailing you instead. Holy cow. Finally, for everyone who (like me) is still having trouble sliding the oily oyster that is "Quantum of Solace" down their gullet, there's a Joe Cornish fake theme song floating around YouTube that's quite enjoyable. They had me at "great big man-tits."]]> http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/the_time_of_your_life_part_2.html http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/the_time_of_your_life_part_2.html batman! comix joss movies youtubery Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:48:26 -0500 Ex Machina storyline is really rather breathtaking. As Shortbus pointed out, there's a unique relationship between 9/11 and blackout '03, and also a lot to do there in terms of massaging our own fond recollections of the night the lights went out (vs. the morning CNN would not go away). In narrative terms, the summer of '03 also makes for the middle of his storyline, doesn't it? I am liking that title more and more with each book that comes out. Sockvivor continues. I've thrown away my lucky socks - I guess sixteen years is simply too much. Things are getting lean around my place - more and more stuff siphoned off to 108, to friends, to the trash heap. I feel cleansed, for the first time in forever. I have a fondness for Star Trek III that is disproportionate to its worth.]]> http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/sorry_the_new_facebook_is_temp.html http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/sorry_the_new_facebook_is_temp.html 1701 comix miscellaneous crap socks Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:17:28 -0500 This 30" CRT Samsung 16x9 beast is sitting in my bedroom. It is six years old - I bought it for $1800 in 2002. It is in good shape. It is NOT Blu-Ray compatible, though, so make sure this thing plays forward into your home entertainment plans over the course of the next five years. It has component inputs only, no HDMI. I am selling it for $250 BUT THERE'S A CATCH if you are willing to come and get it yourself, and get it out of my room yourself, I will part with it for a mere hundred dollars. That's right - not having to move this thing down my stairs myself is worth a bill and a half to ya. The TV is, in terms of fair warning, HEAVY AS A SON OF A BITCH. But if this sounds like you, get in touch. Still on from previous bake-offs:

• 17" CRT computer monitor (a Samsung SyncMaster 900 IFT)
• Game Cube - no games, no controllers
• Ginger Snaps II a.k.a. Ginger Really Snaps

]]> http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/may_i_suggest_you_buy_this_3.html http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/may_i_suggest_you_buy_this_3.html miscellaneous crap Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:06:38 -0500 It's just a blip, caused by my opponent and I both registering our scores so early after the game. But what a game. On no subs, we held a strong team to a shutout, and scored on them once per half. We played our standard roster in the first half and then changed it up to 1 offense, 1 mid, 2 defense, 1 sweeper for the second half, and it just drove the bad guys bugfuck crazy. I played offense - me! I literally stood in their half for the entirety of the latter of the game, waiting. I didn't connect with the one beauty pass from Dave, which otherwise would have got me my annual goal, but otherwise it was a stupendous game all around. Man, we are on an uncanny good ride this season. I'm missing the double-header next week for some cottage time, but I expect that works in the team's favour.]]> http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/unstoppable.html http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/unstoppable.html sockey Sun, 03 Aug 2008 23:32:29 -0500 the Gargan action figure. Which here matters because, as mentioned previously, she is the last one. It's actually been thirteen years, give or take. Thirteen years back I got off the Steeles bus outside my grandmother's condo, took a walk across the street (it was snowing), and into Toys R Us, because I'd heard that Hasbro had re-established the Star Wars action figure line - they were calling it "Power of the Force 2," the sequel/continuation to the line's failed attempt at continuing past Return of the Jedi, circa 1984. And... hey, what else am I about if I'm not about about that? So they had a few of the new figures there, including this Ben with a really long lightsabre, and they all looked goddamn weird and awkward but I bought the Ben anyway because he generally looked the most like a human and, c'mon, it's Ben. Then Light & Magic happened and I bought a few more, and then at some point in 1996 I was standing in that same TRU with Adam holding a Jawa 2-pack in my hand, and Adam said something along the lines of "I'll take one, you take one, we'll split it" - yes, these are two 20somethings here - and as far as I'm concerned, the deal was done. Something kicked off in both of us (though he turned back far sooner than I), and the avalanche began which, a baker's dozen years later, lead to something in the neighbourhood of six hundred of the things as a final tally - although right at this moment, over half of them are gone again. Still... six hundred. Droids and jawas and Jedi and pregno-Padme; Jabba aliens by the fucking bucketfull, so many that I even started making my own; and Lukes and Chewies and Slave Leias and Bens beyond measure; and insignificant characters, lord man howdy, how I loved the insignificant characters. Sio Bibble and this guy and Aunt frickin' Beru with her blue milk. And this stated a bunch of other things too, what with Sideshow and Simpsons and really expensive pirates and I even have a vintage Toht, and one on card too, yeah. But the best of all of it was always and ever shall be Darth Vader with Removable Helmet, which they've re-made a dozen times since but never come close to making as cool as they did on the first try, the tiny piece of plastic in which a shred of my 10-year-old soul permanently resides. And that was in... 1997? Early '98? When the best year of your hobby is ten years back, it's time to look for an exit. Gargan seemed like a good fit - they tried to make her back in '85, but as I recall the prototype got shitcanned because she has so many boobies. Six of them! No self-respecting toy line should ever have a six-titted prostitute as part of its character line, one presumed, at least until whatever phenomenal conversion shift I myself was a part of in the late 1990s, when toys stopped being made for kids and started being made for me. They made Gargan, the Fat Dancer, and I'm out. (If they ever make Bea Arthur, I'll come back.) And with all that done, I came home with my action figure firmly in hand and, upon entering, found one of my Jack Sparrow dreadlocks lying on the floor in the doorway to my room. Thinking at first that Zam had - as is her way - destroyed something I cared about, I became riled, and then I had a look at the wig. And, in what can only be described as a rather perfect little Pirates of the Caribbean moment, I turned the thing over in my hand to find the back of it eaten out by grubs. Some unholy combination of the heat, the humidity, the age, or just the primordial fucking filth we now live in at 3QF, conspired to turn my custom-made Jack Sparrow pirate wig into a couple months' worth of food for a colony of mealworms. And as the thing literally decayed in my hands while I stared at - the sheer action of bringing it down off the shelf upon which it has sat since my rather lovely Hallowe'en, was enough to tear apart the few remaining strands maintaining the wig's shape - it ceased to be a thing, and became a former thing, nothing more than a cluster of digital photographs, really warm memories, and at least one Jack Sparrow bolt-in-terror moment when that damn Obeah woman asked for my number. Here's the thing: I hang on to things. Tangible relics of stuff that otherwise live only in my head, or in my eyes, or on movie screens across the nation, literally clutter the very ground I walk on. My grandmother used to have a glow-in-the-dark Virgin Mary next to her bed; I have a glow-in-the-dark King of the Dead. It comes to the same thing, which is a talisman by which to channel some inexpressible force that flows through my life; without the relics to hang on to occasionally, I become nauseous and indistinct. But this is, after all - and today was not the first time I have realized this - an imperfect solution to a larger problem, because all matter is so frustratingly impermanent and vague. I used to say there was something I liked about having a tiny, perfect Luke Skywalker standing on my desk with his lightsabre in hand, that it said something to something in me in a language beyond arcane. But that same relic melts, turns sticky, gets dusty and loses its colour, gets handed down to kids (because kids are supposed to have these things) or thrown out with the trash. Matter doesn't matter. These are all just signposts on the way to the larger, glowing somethingorother.]]> http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/the_last_star_wars_figure_the.html http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/08/the_last_star_wars_figure_the.html death galaxy far pirates poetical toys! Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:45:14 -0500 No more cell phone driving Ontario? OK. The telecommunications industry and its foibles has been much in my mind of late, but due to various conflicts of interest I will have to publish my findings at another time. Until then, please do not call me while I am driving. In the more immediate future, I need a couch. On another topic, I'm not entirely sure how we got a hundred and nineteen shows into this deal before stumbling upon the title "Mamo a Mamo," but we've finally arrived, and with that clever bit of pun titleage, my esteem for Matty Price has grown another hectolitre. Here's Mamo #119: Mamo a Mamo, in which further Batmania is discussed. And in the "let's further prove that we just don't get it" sweepstakes, Sony is trying to widen the Spider-Man movie platform with a Venom spin-off. I for one couldn't be more thrilled: Spider-Man 3 being the only entry in the series that I can actually enjoy (I own it on Blu-Ray!) and Venom being the worst thing about that awful, awful movie, I must expect that a Topher Grace-headlined Venom flick would be fan-fucking-tastic, not just in a so-good-it's-bad way, but also in a so-bad-it's-hallucination-inducing sort of way. I can see molten rivers of obsidian CG goo in my mind's eye right now... hopefully they relocate the story to a smaller city in the American midwest where Venom arrives as a hapless outsider on the run... and have an orphaned kid involved, who forms a tender bond with the oil-slick-with-a-heart-of-gold Venom... It'll be the story of us, man, who we are right now, all us loners and losers and people made of glop out there. Yeah. That's moviemaking.]]> http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/07/google_some_fishes.html http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/07/google_some_fishes.html 1701 j-o-b movies podcastery Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:32:31 -0500 this is the one to have. Tell me this ain't some scary shit. Damn the Japanese are weird. Unsurprisingly given the storm clouds over my head today and also the obvious cinematic parallels in The Dark Knight, I've been thinking about There Will Be Blood quite a bit lately. The TWBB blu-ray remains one of the highlights of my collection and the flick is just, well... "even better every time" don't cover it. It's goddamned stunning. In fact I think a blu-ray TWBB/TDK double feature (to be subtitled: The Night America Stole Your Soul) would be quite the crushing experience of cinematic awesomeness, examining the complete dissolution of moral certainty in the 21st century, and I may stage such a viewing at 1701 in the fall sometime. That's right, 1701: behold the tag for my new domicile, in which I shall be living solo starting on September 1 of this year. I signed the lease on Friday. Now I'm all bound up with labour and logistics. More detail to follow.]]> http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/07/i_drink_your_milkshake_eli.html http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/07/i_drink_your_milkshake_eli.html 1701 galaxy far miscellaneous crap movies toys! Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:49:37 -0500

Ginger Snaps II a.k.a. Ginger Really Snaps

Books for free:

• The novelizations of Episodes I and II, in hardcover!
• Memoirs of a Geisha, also in hardcover!
• 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
• Jean Genet - Our Lady of the Flowers

Keep an eye on the comments to figure out what's sold and what's not.]]> http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/07/may_i_suggest_you_buy_this_2.html http://www.tederick.com/blog/2008/07/may_i_suggest_you_buy_this_2.html miscellaneous crap Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:01:50 -0500