Now bearing firmly in mind that this is no longer the case, a few years back, there was a period of six weeks or so where I could not do dishes without starting to cry. I enjoy doing dishes: I find it very therapeutic. Well, the problem with therapy is that sometimes it loosens the internal knots sufficiently to allow a bunch of crap to come pouring out. I just kept losing it, about half a minute or so into feeling that warm water pour over my hands, the sponge gently stroking the plates. Like clockwork: dishes = tears.
At around that time, I also had what could be called an anti-religious experience. Call it a pure visual hallucination brought about by a toxic overdose of bad brain chemicals, but I actually saw something - probably the very kind of something that causes zealots to run to Christ, only in my case, it was divine proof of the absolute absence of anything. A few years on, I've certainly accepted that there was no pragmatic reality to any of the understandings I came to on that particularly hallucinatory day. But fuck, it was scary. In fact I'd say only two products of my mind have frightened me that much in my entire life. They work in a kind of neat parallel:
1. When I was a young teenager I had a dream that I discovered a nuclear weapon in the basement of my parents' house, with a countdown timer in the 20-seconds-to-go range. I crouched behind the washing machine and prayed to God to give me another chance at life, and at that moment, I woke up.
In rational terms, I had a nightmare and I woke up from it. In metaphysical terms, God did what I asked. That particular dream remains the single most vividly terrifying experience of my entire life, and the lingering (though foolish) questions about the nature of reality which subsequently haunted me, still sorta haunt me. I try not to think about it.
2. The aforementioned hallucination at the tail end of the summer of 2005, which gets referred to coloquially around here as "the great eye."
The thing is, I don't have any particular desire or need to live in a world without God. I don't think anybody does. I think that's why God was invented: we have fragile psyches which are, in a vast number of cases, possibly structurally incapable of fully understanding a universe without a divine creator/protector figure who has some ability to gather us, parent-like, into His arms and protect us from the Big Bad Nothing. (Sure, Gmork, the relentless terror-wolf from The Neverending Story, was scary... one of the scariest. But that raging cloud of dark absence, The Nothing, and the promise of utter existential annihilation it brings? A bit more on the nose than most people might think on first blush.)
I have seen things in my life that make me want to believe that I am being pushed in certain directions by a benevolent force of some design, be it almighty or otherwise. I have seen other things in my life which enforce with affirming dispassion the utter meaninglessness of it all. I believe in human beings, and I believe in our ability to create and associate meaning. (Look at all the mythic meaning I've created out of, 1, a bad dream, and 2, a misfiring synapse.) The reason I ultimately have to foreground our internal realities before any expectation of external intelligence is the peculiar pickling effects of the things that live in my own brain. I am, as discussed prior, occasionally prone to rather sensational bouts of chronic depression. In these instances, rationality itself unhinges from the spinal column of my soul. I suddenly become very, very aware of how little is actually tied to anything by indestructible means in the meathook reality of our lives. It's not a comforting awareness, but it returns with unsettling regularity often enough.
Inevitably, it's a hard thing to lose any thing that you love, and stay all the way sane. Anyways, it all turned out all right. And that, somewhat abbreviated for time, is the story up to now.
OK Edgar Wright: I am calling you out. We need to get to the bottom of this thing, you and me, because my girlfriend pointed out that if Scott Pilgrim is successful and sequels are warranted, you are gonna keep coming back to my goddamned city and throwing everyone in the place into an unalterable tizzy. And that is unacceptable. I live here. I do my best to make a living in these stressful economic times. And I can deal with the fact that half the people I know are falling over their own feet for a chance to meet you, and I can even deal with the fact that you're making Scott Pilgrim in the first place. But on my days off, I go to my local comic book shop and must now listen to the staff wax philosophic about how much they would like YOU to pop by. So since clearly and officially, this town officially ain't big enough for the both of us, and since I obviously have no means to support myself anywhere else, it's time to meet behind the gym at 3:30 and see what's what. You know what gym, so don't play coy.
Today's wardrobe choices were inspired by: 70s cop. Matty Price was right (he's rarely not), I really shoulda watched Life on Mars while I had the chance. I guess it'll come out on Blu-Ray eventually.
Tell them how it went, Steve. OK, let's do it! Well, on the whole I would say that the last 2 weeks went exceptionally well given their complexity. I think I could have done a bit better at the tail end of this one in terms of really bringing it all to a meaningful close. But a lot of good teamwork got done at the j-o-b; I literally have 12 pages of notes and items to take forward, but action item #1 is getting my work/life back into balance now that the rough period is on its way to done. 7.5 hour days - it is possible. Bill Gates told me so.
It also occurred to me this week that I tend to be self-deprecating and embarrassed when I'm asked what I do and have to answer that I build online training for [insert and rotate company name here]. I presume that's not the optimal state, especially given that on a theoretical level at least, I am quite stimulated by what I do. It's just so far-afield of where most of my contemporaries landed; I feel like I'm Life on Mars, fuck the TV show. Mars is a ring of towers just east of the Scarborough Town Centre, a canopic ecosystem of jealousies and betrayals and lines in the sand. And yet occasionally, I actually get to tell a room full of people that our next project is gonna be named after the Egyptian frog goddess of fertility and resurrection, and explain why. It's not without appeal.
Last night was pizza and Eternal Sunshine and couch-bed; today was supposed to be spent getting my life in order. Instead, through the miracles of scope creep, Little Detour and I mostly just spent the day wandering about, enjoying the burgeoning springtime. So in other words, best day ever.
Headache, maybe because it’s so grey today. Is my head “me gulliver?” Anyone know what a gulliver is? Clockworks reading this? Well I’ve got a pain in it, whatever it is.
In times of heightened work activity, I rescind the no-scone rule, and read comic books on my commute, because they are easily digestible (like stomach lining). Quick, tactile pleasure-experiences are more approachable psychologically than long-term storytelling or higher-brain analysis. I get up in the morning or get home at night, and Porno Guy is still watching porno… how did we never notice this? This much porno, this much of the time? though now he has drawn his blinds; they block about 45% of the porno, which still puts a generous 55% porno out into the world. Like a beacon for smutty superheroes, called forth by video images of penises on a screen large enough to make them the size of rotweilers. To the pornomobile! What do porno-superheroes fight – chastity? Or even worse depravity? I guess they could do both. They hold the middle ground.
The headline of today’s Metro (Toronto’s free transit rag) is simply “Math questioned.” I suppose the idea that the entire concept of mathematics was brought into doubt is amusing enough, but I rather prefer the notion that someone did away with Geography, and Math was brought into the station house for interrogation under the hot lights. But they let Math go (there was no motive). Math’s reputation is not what it once was but until Math does it again, Math goes free. This is justice?
Let the right one in… to your home! Last year’s vampire classic (last year’s only vampire classic) comes out on shiny blu today. Own it before that Cloverfield guy remakes it. Me, I’m gonna snap it up after drinks & apps with the work folk at Kelsey’s (yes Kelsey’s), and then go home and watch Yet More Lost, which is the other only thing my brain can handle in times like these.
This morning I saw an ambulance with “emergency” written on the hood in the usual mirror-writing, except that the writing was also upside-down, because apparently in whoever painted it’s version of the world, Objects In Mirror Are More Inverted Than They Appear. What a fucking terrifying vision of hell that would be, if every time you looked in the rear-view the road was flipped skyward, but everything in front of you was normal? I’m nauseous just thinking about it.
Are you like me: do you just not care a whit any more about Watchmen, at all? I don’t see how anything that might be on that screen on Friday would be worth this quantity of noise. They offered me some of the character posters at the Snail last week, free, and I turned them down. If there was a way I could download the experience of seeing the flick into my brain without actually having to take the time and trouble to go to the theatre and do it, I would. Stupid event movies. Stupid everything-that-isn’t-Terminator-fucking-Four right now.
Today is the first day in about a month that there are actual half-hour cracks in my meeting schedule. Who knows what I will do with this new, strange freedom?
It is also the first day upon which, in a variety of matters and in no way related to the actual temperature outside, I can feel the springtime coming, with all of the things that come with it. And baby, you ain’t kiddin’.
Now officially getting high off the sheer speed of the thing, I am down day 2 of 10 exceptionally complex, hundred-task days, after which I intend to sleep deeply, and perhaps go for a nice long walk. It's quiet in the office after hours, and I am beginning to think I like it.
"Behold, one pissed as all fuck John Connor." - Harry Knowles
"Two winners and a loser is what we have. And that's unacceptable." - Me
"I'm Switzerland." - Co-worker #1 "What does that make me?" - Me "You're Iceland." - Co-worker #2 "Great. So I'm not involved, but my economy is falling apart." - Me
Spent most of yesterday afternoon doing some goal setting - I now have an actual notebook starting with plans, goals, strategies, and a KKGI matrix, along with a second hardbound Napalm Journal in which to collect bits about Captain Napalm. Had dinner with my lady and talked out some of my thoughts. I feel better. I had a lengthy and surprisingly enjoyable dream about babies and moviegoing, which we will presume to be a good sign.
I had an hour to kill last night between events and yes, I watched bits of Pirates of the Caribbean and blissed out. Haven't done that in a dang long time. Remember when I fell in love? I'm a lucky feller.
Arrived at work today after a nice morning walk and a coffee, to a yet more vasty avalanche of shit, and am putting into place my overall unstated mantra to not get so sad about it. Things will be as they are; the flux is elsewise.
It's possible I'm going to have a heart attack. Like, soon. Can’t count the number of days of this hollow, malfunctioning feeling in my chest. If you're checking the blog over the next and there's a sudden cessation of new postings, it's probably because they didn't get me to the hospital on time. (Or maybe I won the lottery! Fuck all y'all!)
STRESS.
Things at work got bad. Really, really bad. They will get worse. This I know. In the home life, I am directionless and utterly without point. There's this movie I've wanted to make for (and now with the literally) ten years and I frequently do not make it.
This is, I presume, how one's life becomes one's life.
For a big watershed year where a lot of things would change and get decided, so far, I hate the living shit out of 2009. And where's my hoverboard, Zemeckis? I am getting mightily tired of waiting.
Somehow, things got to a very bad pitch here. The economic (and forthcoming environmental) recession is a poorly-transparent metaphor for the recession in life. I need a stimulus package of the soul.
Silver Snail sold out of Scott Pilgrim: FAIL. Grimlock sighting. (!) (!!) Stairs: STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP. Girlfriend: hug: cute! Feel better. Fish taco. Buffy. Cold cold cold cold cold cold subway cold cold cold cold, 1,000,000 Comix, I HAVE THE PILGRIM (holds sword aloft)! SO GODDAMNED SHINY cold cold cold cold cold. Under covers: Zam (fat. warm.) Couch. Laptop. Beer. Book. Would like to do a little writing, a little something else. Soon enough.
On Friday I freaked out, and have many thoughts about that.
On Saturday I finished the rough cut of Guy in the Sky, at 6 minutes and 40 seconds (sans credits), and have 2 spots I would like to tighten, and 2 parts I would like to rework, and one missing (pivotal) shot I will send to Industrial Light and Magic cuz there sure as fuck ain't any way to make a plane fly straight and true at 17 storeys up.
On Sunday I engaged in various acts of thuggery for Boss Eliopoulos, which included (but were not limited to) dragging a guy down a hallway, throwing him into a chair, manhandling my machine gun, and lying dead on a sub-zero concrete floor for several hundreds of hours.
In a surprising number of ways, all three of these things are significantly related. Many, many photos to come. But in the meantime...
Some days are Jack Daniels days, and Jack Daniels (generally speaking) is little more than sour mash by way of shite. Today the Teet got one over on me again; what I cannot understand is
why they refuse to admit when the system has broken down, and
why (if the system breaks down every 2 days like clockwork for the entirety of December-March) they don't have a series of processes and procedures in place yet.
Every single time is like it's the first time it's ever happened; pandaemonium reigns in the streets. Nobody knows the answers, information is unavailable, phone calls have to be made. Guys - the system breaks every 48 hours. WRITE A MANUAL ABOUT IT OR SOMETHING.
While entombed in the rolling ball of vomit that is a TTC shuttle bus in winter (all windows fogged to utter opacity as it dips, weaves, and spirals through rush-hour traffic), I read this article about research into female desire being conducted at Queen's University; many comments about Queen's relationship to sexual research have been made on Facebook already, so I shall not add to the pile. I will, however, say that when leafing through the digest-sized bits of information that is the New York Times mobile site (i.e. what you're reading when you're reading it on your BlackBerry), I considered what the digest-sized information squirt of a typical tederick.com entry would be. I think it would go like:
TTC complaint
Sex article and/or concern about the end of the world (could be shortened to: sex and/or death)
Comics discussion and/or Lost theory
Comment on weather and its relationship to mood.
Alternate with occasional film reviews, Mamo! postings, and pithy rejoinders about cyberspace anomalies, Batman, or work stress, and you've covered the gamut.
Today I started my 200th journal. The very first one, I believe, was started in the summer of 1989 when I was 12 going on 13 years old. As I recall, it concerned my thoughts about my family, some information about Woogie and G.I.Joe, and some Andrian Mole-esque commentary on my progress through puberty. So, as you can see, little has changed.
If you were a castle, I'd be your moat, and if you were an ocean, I'd learn to float.
Folks, last week was crappy. Between my work computer self-destructing and me getting sick, I basically lost a whole week. An entire five-day span slipped into utter nothingness, as though it had never been. That's a surprisingly disconcerting feeling. But it's over and done now, and one trip to the Central with Sarafina later, I am aces. What a difference a date makes.
Yesterday I sat in on Demetre's casting session. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, but casting is a damn strange business. It's nice to sort of get to toe-test the filmmaking universe a bit without actually having to commit to spending every second of my day and night worrying about a project that's going off a week from now, but sitting in a casting room you become very uncomfortably aware of why the world is the way it is. You actually can't just go by objective performance merits; you have to consider whether the girl's boobs are too big, or whether your lead character can be ethnic, or whether the gay guy comes off too gay. You become so instantaneously hyper-aware of every goddamned cliché, stereotype, and unwanted subtext that could possibly flood its way into your picture just by picking any one person who is not statistically identical to you (6 feet tall, male, 32, white). It's amazing anything interesting ever gets made at all.
Nerd alert 2: I am sick beyond words of hearing about Dollhouse. I feel like I've been hearing about this crappy show with no definable premise for half my fucking life. Just get it on the air so you can cancel it already, Fox! It's Joss Whedon's, which makes it an obligation, but also means it will be canceled by its second act break (having been moved to a different timeslot during its first). Get 'er done.
A big fancy feast (and further fondue frip-frappery) this afternoon, a lovely end to a week (or start to a next), and now having felt like I've not had ten minutes to myself for 72 straight hours, perhaps a bit of couch, perhaps a MacCutcheon, perhaps some television like regular people.
In the Kirk Cameron have-you-broken-a-Commandment test, I am ten for ten. YES! I have defied all of god's laws! This is a lovely gloss on Cap'n Malcolm Reynolds' line quoted above. I am as filthy sinful as it's possible to be, even if being so requires hanging my commission of murder and adultery upon defining murder (as the bible does) as having even a moment's hatred in your heart, and defining adultery (as the bible does) as ever having lusted after a woman, at all. Fuck, if that's the definition, I have committed adultery just by looking at my own girlfriend when she got on the train just now. (She's cute.) I cheated on her with... her. Way to go!
Today was one of those days they warn you about when they tell you not to sell out to "The Man." Phone never stopped ringing. Wall-to-wall meetings. Benefits claim rejected. Overdue invoice got sent to the wrong place. And so forth. God is aware of my sins, and he is comin' at me! HALLELUJAH.
I'm watching The Long Way Down, which is the sequel to The Long Way Round, which is the continued adventures of Charlie Boorman and Ewan McGregor on motorcycles around the world. This time, Ewan=no beard. It's sort of the perfect life, isn't it. Be an actor, become well off enough that you can afford and organize a massive 10-man expedition across the planet, go and tape it and have the world's best-produced home movie to watch in your rocker when you're a hundred and eight. Not a bad life. I've been thinking a lot lately about sustainability and where it's all going and what we're all supposed to be doing, and I guess chugging around the planet on a diesel engine isn't really useful along those lines, but then neither is sitting here, doing this. It's excess traded for excess, and I bet on a highway in Zambia, even burning through dinosaurs, you're probably on balance eating less of the world than I am right now. And there, there's wide open spaces and a sense of direction. Here everything's vertical.
Well, fuck. Here it is the next-to-last day of the whole darned year and all I can think of is the word "Benjmobutt." It is obsessing me. I can't get it out of my head, it's calling me even now, it isn't even fucking funny and wasn't to begin with and yet here it is: Benjmobutt. Frig.
Here's what's also obsessing me:
My chest hurts. My chest hurts, my hair is turning grey, I can't breathe particularly well at night any more, and my mind has turned into a leaky fucking trap. That's what happened in 2008, for those keeping score: I started getting really fucking old.
"Leaky trap"? THAT ISN'T EVEN AN EXPRESSION!!!
Further summarization of 2008 isn't really possible because I have completely lost the thread of what went on here and why. I know that I had, on balance, a pretty terrific year. I know that a lot of people around me did not. I know that the year coming up is going to have serious, significant, ongoing life challenges to it and that a year from now, pretty much everything I currently consider a "core" element of my life has the strong potential to be gone or unrecognizeable. That freaks me out.
Well, on the good days it "seems like an exciting challenge." On the rest of the days it freaks me out.
Tederick.com's Woman of the Year is Sarafina, because, I mean, well obviously.
On a completely unrelated note, it is likely that I am within a stone's throw of no longer being able to manage my stress. This was the year everything started rushing, all the time.
Their exploits were as black as sky-kissed crude showering down on the souls of harsh labourers who know nothing beyond their own mean sensory needs; as dark as leathery wings set against the midnight sky of a foul and stinking city rotten with crime. They were men of strong liqour and sharp edges; men who walked with purpose and furrowed brow; men grappling with righteousness in the dirt of humanity's soul, with lost, bright eyes glaring out into impenetrable doom.
One was an oil man. The other was Batman.
On Friday night we screened There Will Be Blood and The Dark Knight (in that order), something I've wanted to do since July and maybe since the day I was born. The results were mixed. While the company was excellent and the egg nog milkshakes were divine, the collision needed to be more seamless and I think the pairing probably required some discussion questions, perhaps in a little booklet, to be handed out. (Is the oil fire sequence in There Will Be Blood a September 11th touchstone, and if so are the two halves of the film, before and after, comments on the then-and-now states of America, and if so what is the significance of the image of the flaming eye?) I wanted to introduce Daniel Plainview to the Joker and see them move in a straight line - they share the same theme music, after all, and glare at one another from separate corners of the emotional and moral void of post-apocalyptic America - plus, I really wanted to sink into those thick blu-ray images. The blizzard outside was a good idea. But starting two two-and-a-half-hour movies back-to-back at nearly 9:00 robs the evening of a certain frisson. And starting with TWBB, though deliberate, is a little like what the Joker says about starting with the head - makes the victim all "fuzzy."
Next time.
Yesterday Sarafina and I went shopping on the busiest shopping day of the year, which was exhausting but surprisingly enjoyable. We found a Chairman Mao alarm clock that we could have had for peanuts, and enjoyed samples of a rather amazing vodka at the LCBO. (This is a thing now? Handing out free vodka in the middle of a Saturday afternoon? Our world is improving.) After mooning over a blu-ray copy of When We Left Earth at HMV and looking at more pairs of earrings than I know what to do with, all of my Christmas shopping is actually, really, genuinely complete. Nothing left now but to take the orphans to breakfast on the 24th, attempt to devise a gluten-free cheetsa recipe once I've made the regular version with my mom, and watch sixty movies on Boxing Day starting with Superman II. I wish the snow would stay. I am feeling snuggled.
So as it turns out, watching my rock star girlfriend play her rock star songs turns me into a 12-year-old girl and I can only communicate in OMGs and LULZs. Yep, I've tried to write this paragraph fifteen times but every time I finish with "Parkside played the Cameron House on Tuesday night," everything else I could say is just overexcited chipmunkly gibberspeak. Hey! I'm in love with a rock star! Leavemealone.
YEAH! PARKDALE!
I took the day off yesterday and Sarafina and I watched, get ready for it, the entire fourth season of Lost. All of it. For a long time I've presumed that such a thing was theoretically possible but I never had the wherewithal, or the enabler, to support such an action. Well now I've done it, with the only person I'd ever want to have done it with, done it with Swiss Chalet and couch-bed and deliciousness and general decadence, and I'm willing to call it the best day ever. Oh, what naughty schoolchildren we.
I have to day off, too. I haven't even turned on my phone, I wonder what's going on. I may start a "communications down" approach to my life, to compliment "slow down. Maybe the problem is just that all our communication is just too fast. I was reading my own auto-responder this morning and it occurred to me that we are now officially way too immediately communicative: we have machines to communicate for us even when we're not there to communicate. This is, of course, one step away from robots ruling the world. If I deleted my entire inbox, and left my cell phone off, what would people do? ...slow down.
I can't write worth shit today. Let's play, "what's it got in its pocketses?"
Wallet (empty)
$2.87 in loose change
1983 mail-away Emperor action figure
Mini-DV tape case (empty)
iPod
pocket knife
Notebook and collapsible pen.
Remember all that in case you need to identify me someday.
In case you were worried, The Dark Knight is the Blu-ray you're gonna be showing all your friends when they come over to your house, for pretty much the rest of time. I watched about half of it on Tuesday night before the show and it actually stuns the mind, it's so goddamned pretty. It's worrisome in some ways that we are now (well, have been for a while) at the point where the potentiality of home display actually outpaces the quality of the average film print. Print stock is cheap as shit these days, and I'd swear there are colours and dimensions in that Blu-ray (which, admittedly, has been digitally enhanced and all that jive) which I never saw on no big screen, IMAX-included. I was gonna go off on a rant the other night after seeing Ballast at the Carlton, because I was once again in one of those closet-sized theatres and wondering why I didn't just watch a movie at home, but I will admit there was still something useful to the theatrical experience on that one. I'm lonely, but I ain't that lonely yet. But I suspect these days are fading.
Let me share something with you that I've been working on: slow down.
I know these are hectic times, I know you have a lot to do, I know it's snowing. But take your time. Think about your decisions, think about what will happen after your decisions, think about other ways you could achieve the same thing. Relax: stop freaking out. Guage your level of concern against your level of impact. When was the last time you took a deep breath? Do that. Stand up, roll your shoulders, walk around the room. Look out the window. Think about your task list - can you relax any of those items? Do any have long-term implications that you haven't explored? Maybe you need to do something a bit later to think out those long-term implications a bit more. There's nothing wrong with planning. Planning and a slight delay are way better than no planning, insta-service, and trouble later.
Think about the people around you. Everybody wants what they want. Everybody thinks their own thing is as important as your own thing. Take a look at it from a higher altitude: what are the really important pieces? Everybody has an opinion, but which opinions reflect the greatest common good, or the greatest positive impact? Which are the quick wins? Which are the big wins? Which aren't really wins at all?
Keep looking out that window. Watch the snow. It'll come to you.
"Breathe, man, relax!" - Mark Brown in How to Piss Under Pressure
It was near around exactly a year ago that a certain young lady and I woke up on a snowy, too-cold-to-go-outside day just like this one, and she suggested that we watch Pirates 1 and Pirates 3 but not Pirates 2 because it sucks, and thus did I immediately know I was never gonna not love this person. And last night she suggested we order a bunch of Indian food and watch Star Wars, and thus confirmed what I earlier bethunk. When the food arrived I uncorked a Dan Aykroyd cabernet merlot that I've been cellaring for several months now - let me tell you, that is a huge wine! In this case it was the "huge" of Dan Aykroyd popping out of the bottle covered in sweat and rotten fruit and giving you a long, unasked-for hug, but still: huge. It's also the only wine, by the way, where I've ever seen "pizza" as a recommended accompaniment on the label. Huge. Simply huge.
All full up with pakoras and baingan bharta, Sarafina and I lay back on the couch-bed with our huge wines and considered ourselves very content. We were gonna watch The Empire Strikes Back this morning - because Matthew has it pretty good - but she's got a movie to make and so do I, and better we get to that sooner than later, so it was a brief excursion to Party Farms and tea and croissants for me watching the commentary on Blade Runner, and now, to work.
Howdy internet, I am as giddy as a 13-year-old girl-who-just-saw-Twilight-on-the-weekend today. (Differs from other days... how?) I had a beautiful weekend of champagne and candlelight and overall awesomeness, and feel that I have been properly romanced. The freight train of workplace bitchiness that hit me at 9:45 a.m. didn't even phase me. Didn't even phase! Woo. It's all rose petals and starshine right now.
The big news of the day is that my days of Google-translating phrases will soon be coming to an end, as Sarafina and I will be taking French classes in the winter. It is my anniversary gift to her but also me. Francais! It's been on the "I've been meaning to do this pile" for almost as long as it was on the "I will never need to learn French" pile, which itself merely replaced Mme. Zaleski's assertion that absolutely, no matter what, I would regret dropping French in grade 12. (She was right.)
Once we have conquered French, it will be on to Italian, followed by Japanese and finally Mandarin, with side tours in German, Spanish and Portuguese, with the ultimate goal being, essentially, to be Indiana Jones. (Differs from the usual goal... how?)
Further in terms of expanding my mind, I am finally attempting The Silmarillion, after ten years of dithering. I expect to be finished in 2012. Meanwhilst, I went back to yoga on Saturday for the first time since the 24th of June, and compensatorially received a lovely massage last night to keep me from actually going insane with aches n' pains. Wow! Muscles! We used to be friends!
Brothers, sisters of the faith, it was at three in the morning when I was sitting in couch-bed watching Batman Forever on VHS and trying valiantly not to puke, that I reflected to myself, this is the lowest I have ever sunk. Now crouched over this feeble laptop in the neon horror-hole that is the McDonalds across the street from my house - that Dawson's Creek song is playing, to give you an idea of How and Why this is Hades Infernal - and anxiously circling the McMuffin which will either heal all my ills or murder me (either the skunk or me must die, certainly; neither can live while the other survives), I cast my eyes bleerily forward. No wines. No more wines.
Soon I must go north to grapple with Quantum of Solace, which is getting unutterably shite reviews, which either means I am going to hate it with the Lord's vengeance or spend a year wondering aloud why people don't understand how awesome it is. Time to kill before then, though; reading Harmful to Minors is proving as upsetting as watching Lake of Fire two years ago. Americans and their hypocrisy - well, everyone and theirs. The whole verdammt planet. A family - three girls and a mum - trying to scrabble back across the street in the rain, to the hotel, where their wet weather clothing must be waiting for them, because they certainly are not here. All three kids in t-shirts and thin Lulu pants, on a rainy Saturday in November in Toronto. That's sloppy parenting.
The McMuffin has passed. I live. The coffee is tasting better with each sip, which must be a horrible sign. There's a sale at the Snail, but I do not have my metropass. I love. Maybe a rain shower will do me good.
among others which I choose not to post out of sheer laziness.
Matty Price and I oughta do a better job of keeping track of where and when we hike, but in the meantime I will say only that I did not get outdoors nearly enough this year and I am rather disappointed with myself about that, but I guess I can only endeavour to do better next time. Cripes, there's a pool in my building that I haven't even been in yet. It's time for some focus.
D-Coc came over the other night and we went over some obstructions I have set up for myself for new writing projects, and today I started to try doing that old five-pages-a-day thing that worked so spectacularly well for a couple of years there and then started to really, really not work. It seems we are still in the "not work" phase of that, which translated in my journal to a very boldface MY WORDS ARE MUD out of sheer frustration. But who knows, maybe if I get enough gunk out on paper I'll eventually be able to not suck again. Until then, this feels like razorblades.
I am strongly considering giving up coffee, for environmental and personal reasons.
Hey! It's Thanksgiving. The one day of the year (that isn't Christmas) (or my birthday) where I don't just wanna be a carnivore, I wanna prove shit. Be a fundamentalist about the affair. Right now my brain is in a single staccato repeat of "bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird bird." When word reached my ear of a friend of Sarafina's making a turducken the other day, I wanted to make my way there just to encounter it, just to see what it smells like. I didn't get there. But apparently sausage is involved - apparently "turkducken" is an underexaggeration. It's actually turduckenage. I sort of want to see a turkduckenage take on a tofurkey at some sort of Caligula dinner party. Don't worry: I want to be fair about things. I want that tofurkey to sing tofurkey awesomeness. It's the excess that attracts me, not the culinary philosophical contretemps. And then I just want to see those two balls of opposing gustatorial confection - the height of their respective antithetical branches of a food industry's technological brow - meet each other on a playfield of decadence, to see what happens.
Yesterday napping and last-of-the-season long weekend sunshine was taken to a high art form, and then I drove the sisters DiFelice to B-fo
HOLY SHIT THE DEVIL JUST WALKED IN
THAT'S THE DEVIL
He looks like an average white guy, slightly overweight, could be shopping at a Wal Mart in Pennsylvania, except he has horns and is wandering around the room right now looking out the windows
The devil.
Anyway, - wow, real life intervened there for a second, walked around a Starbucks and threw me off my shit, I'll be right with you -
OK. So I drove the sisters DiFelice to B-fo last night for the long weekend, and I've got my family affairs later today. The place still feels strange when it's just me there alone, kept trying to hug Zam all night while in the throes of listless sleep, but I got up in the morning and embraced bachelorhood, ate Pop Tarts and wrote about action figures and watched the last of season 1 of Californication a little bit high. You know, that show turned faintly tremendous toward the end there, or at least as close to as it's likely to get, because there's no denying I just cared so much when that little whelp stole his manuscript. Perhaps I am sensitive to plagiarism, artistic thievery, and not getting to claim the awesomeness that is yours. (Remember when that kid stole my web site back in '01?) But yeah, those last three episodes or so when suddenly the good guys (Mulder, McElhone, Bendis, and the potty-mouthed and stone-cold-stoned lesbicurious Brazilian waxer Marcy who is, in her way, the funniest character on earth to me right now) were very much a unfocused, disspirited mess, but the bad guys (ho-girl and ho-secretary) were lining up to be all evil and whatnot, and even that stupid Wednesday Adams daughter seems terribly effective all of a sudden and I sorta had to sit on my new grey Ikea couch-that's-a-bed-also and say "Yeah, apparently this works" cuz I'm just so agitated about everything.
And now it's nearly 1 and I would very much like a sandwich, except that I would also like to be hungry later, and I would very much like to be out in the sun reading comics, except that I'd like to write something first and laptops work in sunshine like vampires work in... sunshine. (Shit.) But in the meantime, I am thankful for every single thing in my little life. And gratitude is success.
Helloooooo internet! I am 32 years old now, which is the age between 31 and 33. This technically still qualifies as "early 30s" but really feels like "in my thirties" which translates to "soon I'll be dead." You might just as well be reading this blog from beyond the grave. Wouldn't that be something.
For my birthday, Sarafina took me to the ROM to see the dinosaurs. This turned out to be excellent. You know how we all griped about the crystal for a really long time? Unnecessary! The crystal makes a hell of a dino-display case, even if it had to be connected to the ROM proper with rickety gantries that even Indiana Jones would be nervous about crossing. Anyways, here's me with a short-faced bear:
There were also giant turtles, stegosauruses, and mean-looking Tyrannosaurs with their wimpy arms. Plus, in other parts of the museum, mummies, dresses, and Shanghai. Not to mention the Stair of Wonder, which is really just a staircase, but give the ROM points for upping the rhetorical ante with their naming conventions. There's really a lot going on down there.
Later on in the evening, 1701 hosted its very first BYOC party - bring your own chair, cuz I ain't got none. Sarafina made ninja cakes: cupcakes which are ninjas.
I got some Duchov-love from Bex, plus my first household plant from Demetre. It's a Reggae Breeze, which is a type of Hydrangea... an awesome type of Hydrangea. Plus several other excellent people came by and sat on my floor. So it was pretty decent as these things go.
Then it was the Reservoir Lounge for somewhat down-tempo swing dancing, but it was still fun. Here's me and Mark and Sarafina, c/o Demetre's camera:
I like those people a lot. Unfortunately there are no pictures of us dancing but I guess that's just as well since I never really mastered "dipping" Sarafina.
2 a.m. eggs at the Griddle, 9 a.m. wake up call for driving to Brantford, lovely downtown Brantford all day Saturday for the Brantford International Jazz Festival, and then stuck on the QEW for what seemed like the rest of my frickin' life because nobody thought it was worth mentioning that all arteries into and out of the city were going to be closed on Saturday night. Sunday cleaning house and watching Spider-Man 2, perhaps a little high, which was an excellent way to end an excellent weekend, and that brings us to here, whereupon I am actually feeling good again for the first time in six weeks, and not just tired. So all right: I likes me some September, and walking around town with my love, and thinking forward to the next thing.
Well my work here is done – I am on the train out of Montreal heading back to Toronto after a whirlwind 2-day tour in which names were kicked and ass was taken. The imminent 2-monthday of baby Thomas reminded me that I’ve been in my “new” job for a full quarter at this point. So I guess I oughta stop smirking every time someone asks me an important question.
In the bullshit leadership sweepstakes, I won the Powerball. I picked up a kickass team of people who are superb at their jobs and willing to tackle pretty much anything; all that’s left for me, under ideal circumstances, is to simply get out of the way. I used to say that my boss was my shield against bureaucratic crap; now I’m the shield, but the bureaucratic crap is easier to scare away. So it’s an even trade.
Meanwhile, I am moving in 12 days, picking my TIFF flicks in 8, and taking leadership classes for the next 3. At some point in the next 9 I need to sort out my key objectives for the 2nd half of the year, and in exactly 1 month I’ll turn 32. Oh: and I can smell Hallowe’en, as of today. Still no idea what I’ll be or where I’ll go, but I am fairly content with the simple fact that the next 10-odd weeks really are my very favourite time of year.
Since our last installment, I inadvertently celebrated Canada Day by going for an impromptu 1-hour walk that became an impromptu 3-hour hike, which then required an impromptu half-hour climb out of the Don Valley through some rich guy's goddamn back yard, which then dovetailed nicely into an impromptu picnic, then an impromptu sunset lounging with Sarafinaprovised drinks, then an impromptu balcony barbecue till well after the firecrackers were pounding the night sky. Then impromptu sleeping at Sarafina's house when I had none of my things for work with me, necessitating an impromptu 6:30 a.m. wake up / stopover at 3QF to resupply before going to (promptu) work. Finally: back on promptu. But it was a grand way to spend a day, Canada. I like it here.
Trolling the LCBO web site this morning (as is my practice), I discovered that a store very near me has not one, not two, but seventeen bottles of the El Dorado 15-year-old Demerara rum that I spoke of so fondly back in February. So needless to say, I plundered that secret cache and made it my own. It's a little thank-you present to myself for being so awesome, and also to the world for making great rum. But mostly, I want to thank Pirates of the Caribbean, for selling me so many toys. Shit, I'm babbling.
If your eyelids aren't sticky, you're not doing it right
Happy Pride everybody! I hope you all did something suitably queer-positive. I no longer truck much with the parade(s), so after the spanktastickest buffet brunch ever at the Bloor Street Diner, I helped Demetre move a series of belongings from one St. George high-rise to the high-rise immediately next door. Which meant I spent my yesterday with four dudes hoisting shit sweatily; queer-positivity: check. Plus, I am metrosexually jealous of his new place. Spacious, well-situated, good sized living room for Blu-Ray film viewings. I've got one last 3QF Double Feature to unroll this summer, and then I have got to find a place with similar attributes in which I may live for the foreseeables.
Wall-E action figures! I wouldn't mind an EVE to sit on my desk and come to my meetings and blow shit up, although the lack of articulated fingers suggests that the toymakers underestimated the degree to which that movie is about hand-holding. Meanwhile, I wrote in my journal that Ben Burtt should get a Nobel Prize for sound design. (No mere Oscar will suffice.) Between Wall-E and Artoo he’s done a thing that no regular audience members will probably ever notice or think about, but is utter artistic transcendence. Yikes, I'm going to cry. I'm going to cry about sound design.
After seeing Wall-E on Friday night, Sarafina and I took a dreamy walk down College to Kensington, and ate Mexican food on a patio as the sun went down and the margaritas flowed. We could have been anywhere, anytime. The hum of the world sort of matched the hum in my heart. That kind of sound design. Yeah.
Giving away boardgames is bloody challenging; oddly enough, it was Episode I Monopoly that was the hardest to part with. I kept Globetrotters. I have a lot of papers to go through - do people keep files any more? I have to do a book-off; I have to do a DVD-off. I have to get rid of my old TV and my old monitor. I am leaving behind more furniture than I'm taking. Plus, yet another Operation: Annihilate!, all the food in the house must be eaten. Two months out and I'm already obsessed. I played F-Zero on the Wii. Things feel right.
Well, here comes a big motherfuckin' storm. Rock on, Toronto!
Being now quite thoroughly besotted with all things Scott Pilgrim, I went searching through the stacks this morning for the Free Comic Book Day issue I picked up back in '06... and found it undeniably gone. I AM SO PISSED. Admittedly, there was a "get rid of the FCBD garbage" comic stack purge earlier in the year, but being as Free Scott Pilgrim is one of the three FCBD titles I can actually specifically remember enjoying, I'm sorta irritated that it's missing and stupid shit like the Viper Comics sampler survives. Stupid piles of garbage and nonsuch! They foil me.
So what else is going on? Well, it was goddamned hot over the weekend, that's one thing. The natural answer was: barbecue. But the problem with that was: I don't know much about barbecues. So I did proceed to, if one is looking at it technically, purchase the briquettes that go with a non-gas BBQ, and then used them on a gas BBQ. The result was... er... significant. Fortunately, nobody got blowed up or died, and there were iced creams enough for all. Praise.
Plus! Soccer! It was a hot sonofabitchin' humid mosquito-infested oh-god-are-dinosaurs-coming-out-of-those-trees-to-eat-us? game last night, but we held a decidedly excellent 4-4 tie in spite of being outnumbered 148 to 1. It was our Crazylegs vs. their Crazylegs (ours won), Everywhere She Needs To Be Stacey like a goddamned psychic defensive dervish, and The Man With No Name Whose Name Is Actually Demetre with seemingly boundless energy and laconic squinting. The memories more than make up for the morning ouches.
This BlackBerry Pearl deal is crazy! Did you know I can receive my email while on the go? The world is insane, and sushi is delicious.
A hot rock star girlfriend who can cook a dinner where the main matches the walls and the side matches her dress
Enough stickers to mail away for that ultra-top-secret crystal skeleton that Indiana Jones kept looking around for
Tickets to a Jays game where they will serve NO BEER!
Scott Pilgrim, Volume 2.
Plus, I saw Sex and the CityandTroll 2, which are comparably fascinating cultural documents. SATC because it was exactly like going to see a fanboy movie - only it was for girls! I mean, the entire audience actually gasped aloud when Big showed Carrie her new walk-in closet. Kinda like how all the dudes in the audience for Hellboy 2 will go "YEAH!" when Hellboy brings out his new big shotgun. And as for Troll 2... well the good news is that Sarafina won it on DVD at the Bloor on Saturday night, so I think there are going to be trips to Nilbog aplenty this summer. A bit of smoke, a bit of wine, a bit of soup, a bit of perfect if you ask me.
I have re-Feng Shuied my cubicle and bought myself a Seven Samurai poster. Tonight I am attending what could actually be described as a family reunion. I need a haircut, but otherwise I clean up pretty nice. It's a Tuesday. Davy Jones is coming.
"I guess the closest thing women have to Indiana Jones is Carrie Bradshaw."
- Sarafina
The clock tower has been damaged, the town square destroyed
A big fire swept through the backlot at Universal Studios last night, and among the casualties was my actual favourite part of the lot: the Hill Valley town square from Back to the Future. (The clock tower evidently survives, but was damaged; no word on who or what traveled where or to which time period.) If all this is making you nostalgic, I might point out that they have the goddamned Flux Capacitor at the Silver Snail now. It certainly prompted two or three minutes' of unabashed staring from me.
I Rode for the Heart this morning; a big thanks to Erin Booth, Helen, e-Becca, my aunt Beth, Jocelyn, Matthew Fabb, Demetre, Jeff, Chris, Meredith, my parents, Steeeeve!, Christys, and Sarafina for sponsoring me. Hey, here's an idea: next time I want to do a 75K on this thing, someone remind me to actually train beforehand, yeah? And by "beforehand," I mean for several goddamned months like a real grown-up would do, not a few weeks of half-assed riding. I did the whole thing in about four and a half hours this morning and it damn near wasted me. I was not prepared.
Let's post-script two things:
Lost! While on the whole I'd say that Season Four has been fairly kickass, I gotta call the finale weak. Not as bad as that disastrous tail-ender to the first season, but still not nearly as absorbing as last year's "we're in the future now!" slam-o-rama (though to be fair, what could be?) nor even as action-adveturey-science-fiction-terrifico as the Season Two closer with Desmond. So instead of debating the fiddle-faddle of who was in the box or who got blowed up on what freighter, I'll just give two bits of human interest on the whole thing and then call it a year: 1) they pointlessly brought Harold Perinneau back just to get rid of him again, because he did indeed go "boom" with the boat; and 2) here are some hilarious alternate versions of the final shot, featuring other non-Bens in the coffin from Season Three. Anyways, I'm sort of glad the year's done, as my interest in the show was sort of lessened by the strike gap. I'm sure I'll be back on board for Season 5.
X-Men! In like kind, I'm glad Astonishing X-Men is done. Joss' lack of commitment to the publishing schedule made the final arc really difficult to enjoy, and the final one-shot was a solid B minus at best; the high-mark work in the arc took place earlier with Scott, not in the bullet with Kitty. It was at some point this week that I realized that I've been regularly reading three X-titles and pretty much don't care about any of them any more, so I think it's time for an X-break. At least until Ellis takes over AXM.
Yesterday I rode down the Lakeshore path all the way to my soccer game at Jane and Eglinton, just to see if I could handle something in the 30K range. Well: I can't! But I did okay. The muscle memory is returning. So being as that the Ride for the Heart is now 6 scant days away,
SPONSOR ME!! if you haven't already. This is now, officially, my final message on the subject.
