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.

Posted by tederick at 10:36 PM in j-o-b & jedi antics & obi-wan kenobi & the apocalypse & tv
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Adam and I's crack scheme to buy each other do-it-yourself muppets for Christmas was tagged and bagged by the sudden unavailability of the product on the FAO web site, in favour of the same kind of "I.O.U." they used to deal out when the Star Wars figures ran out back in '78. Still, the notion is goddamned appealing, especially since we are entering into the project double-blind (i.e. Adam will design a muppet of me, I will design a muppet of Adam, and neither of us will see the other's designs until the toys arrive). Plus, this saves me the bother of ever having to figure out how to make a muppet of Stanley J. Keramidas. FAO can make the muppet Stanley for me, and muppet Stanley could then co-chair my team meetings from here on out.

Less than 2 weeks out from shooting Guy in the Sky and everything is peppermint paper and rock n' roll. I'll even have lavolier mics this time around - lavs, and no storyboards. I'm flying a whole new kind of plane this time around, and if things go really well, I'm gonna figure out how to shoot something on the Scarlet next year. I even have something like a mission statement, the rules of which I am consistently breaking on a daily basis but regardless, folded up in my wallet right now, alongside a poem that I like quite a bit. Inspiration started small but once it got going it was everything good and loud about the world.

In the meantime, I am Indiana Jonesing one step ahead of the giant rolling ball, until at least Thursday at 3. I have my boots on to help me with this.

"Well if service providers could think, there'd be none of us here, would there?" - me at a team meeting, paraphrasing Obi-Wan Kenobi

"Pickles are ruining my life." - this woman

Posted by tederick at 3:09 PM in ADAM & j-o-b & obi-wan kenobi & tederick films & youtubery
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Why don't we just go ahead and call this Obi-Wan Kenobi Appreciation Day. Fuck, why not? That dude had it all figured out.

Posted by tederick at 7:06 AM in obi-wan kenobi
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I recused myself from soccer on Sunday night because of my very, very tired legs... and regretted it immediately! It poured rain like crazy through the entire first half, so mostly I just spent the game standing on the sidelines freezing to death and yelling semi-constructive cheers. Still, it was a terrific game to even be peripherally involved with, as a number of our regulars had business elsewhere and Janice brought in some excellent replacements. Man, I love playing in the rain. I'm gonna be regretting that one for a while.

Sideshowbi-wan 2: Old Ben! Freaking fantastic. I'm going to be trading up my Hasbro one - which has, admittedly, some sentimental value - for this one for sure. They're really getting it done over there. And I like how the Leia hologram looks like some weird little blue jade Buddha.

Lots going on at the office, and I'm working from home today to shortcut ahead on some projects (because one can never underestimate the value of hours of uninterrupted work, especially when held in contrast to the hours of constantly-interrupted work that are otherwise my mainstay). Other than that, I have little to report, other than that I officially no longer understand Revenue Canada, at all. They just sent me a fuck of a lot of money, when every presumption held that they were going to send me a monster bill. Is the monster bill still coming? Is this how they maintain their reign of terror: through juggernaut tactics designed to destroy one's ability to predict their next move? I... I just don't know what to do right now.

Posted by tederick at 3:25 PM in j-o-b & obi-wan kenobi & sockey & toys!
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New Ewan McGregor / Charley Boorman motorcycle road trip series! Yeeeeeeee!

No Lost on DVD till December 11! FUCK THE WOLD!!!! And I just gave all the tapes to the Mennonite. Fuck. The. Wold.

Posted by tederick at 11:34 AM in 4-8-15-16-23-42 & obi-wan kenobi & shinydisks & tv
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I can now independently confirm what others have been telling me in the 20-odd years since I last saw the film: Superman III is a fucking terrible movie. I guess I liked it when I was a kid, but man alive! Watching that movie is like watching the drop ship crash in Aliens. At first it seems to be kind of flying okay and then the wing banks a little and Ripley gets all freaked out and then the wing clips that embankment and the ship is spinning, spinning, and Hudson's running his ass off and KA-BOOM the shrapnel is over our heads and Newt is talking about how the mostly come out at night. Mostly.

(That was a very specific example.)

ITEM!: For a guy who doesn't keep toys in the package, I sure have a lot of toys in the package. This is because for several years I had a minor ambition to own a carded version of every Obi-Wan Kenobi action figure. I got all the way to Revenge of the Sith and had 'em up on my wall and they looked very pretty, thank you very much, but I don't really want them any more. They've been in a box under my bed for over a year. So I'm giving the majority away to the CHUM City Christmas wish. I rather like the idea of a flock of Obi-Wan Kenobis from my hand floating through the karmic ether this Christmas. Particularly the notion that some kid out there is going to get the crazy longsabre 1995 version - which many a Star Wars nerd would consider a fundamental oddity worthy of museum status - and toss it over his shoulder saying, "this thing sucks!"

Posted by tederick at 4:39 PM in movies & obi-wan kenobi & toys!
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You know what? This was a damn good week. The holiday blahs finally cleared out on Monday, and everything since then has been up and up. This was helped along considerably by my job finally kind of settling in and fleshing out, which makes it a little less like combat and a little more like work. Which is nice. And as for dropping a cheque in the ATM and then coming home and hitting my credit card debt with a gigantic whackload of fresh earnings... well, maybe to some folk that sounds trivial, but to me, it's about the most satisfying thing in the world. It has indeed been a long winter.

I got home and Amy dropped off the postcards for this year's 1MFVF call for submissions; I'm sufficiently excited about the design to want to spend at least half of my Saturday building the '06 version of the site. So that's cool. And following up on my Obi-Wan dollie rant from last week, I'm off the waiting list and onto the "you're actually gonna get what you want" list. Which is cool.

And for the stupidest thing that occured to me all day: I finally sort of understand why Friday night ended up being date night. After an actual work-filled Mon-Fri 9-5 under flourescent lights and in front of a computer, I just don't have any desire to be at home doing nothing tonight. I was completely spastic and hyper all day. End of the week, that energy boost hits you, and you want to take yourself into the weekend with a bit of grinmaking. (I know, I'm discovering all kinds of things this month that most normal people have known all their lives. What can I say? I sit at the back of the bus.) Add to the fact that girls smell nice, and suddenly, it all makes perfect sense.

Well anyways, I'm outta here.

Posted by tederick at 7:06 PM in 1MFVF & j-o-b & obi-wan kenobi & toys!
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Ain't no two ways about it, I got screwed today, and not in the pleasant way. The Sideshow Obi-Wan Kenobi doll - sort of the toy I've been waiting for all my life - went on sale at 1:00. I didn't take a lunch today, just so that I could actually be online and and at my desk to order the thing as it became available. Except, it never did: the Sideshow server crashed at 12:56, reasserted itself well after two, and yet somehow by that point (in spite of, by my experience, an absolute impossibility of accessing the site at all... I mean the domain itself was unresolvable, let alone what must have been going on with their server) the toy was long sold out, meaning that it's gonna cost me mightily to pick one up on Ebay - probably in the $250-300 range. Sideshow could not have fucked this up better if they'd sat around flinging dog shit at their customers. Really, there should be a notice posted in the offices of all vendors: you do NOT mess with Matt Brown on issues of Obi-Wan Kenobi. You just don't.

Posted by tederick at 7:45 PM in obi-wan kenobi & toys!
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"I've been looking forward to this." - Count Dooku

Posted by tederick at 7:39 AM in galaxy far & obi-wan kenobi & toys!
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I really liked the show at the beginning, because it was just so goofy. After a few eps, though, I became less and less enchanted with as it. Boorman kept acting like a smary little shit, and McGregor seemed like the world's biggest ADHD-addled spoiled brat, and the fact that it was very much EWAN MCGREGOR and his friend Charley and their disaffected Swiss camera-flunkie Claudio was a bit preening and irritating. I mean, it's lovely that we're all celebrities travelling around the world, but if you're not going to take yourself seriously in terms of the workload, nobody else is going to either, even the guy feeding you a steaming bowl of goat testicles in Kazakhstan. Not to mention the Russian mob boss who breaks into song after dinner while hoisting his AK-47 into the air.

Fortunately, the team has now reached Siberia and the proceedings have become appropriately mythic. They're in parts of the world where they're forced to use roads that haven't been used by anyone in years. They occasionally come to bridges that have gigantic, 40-foot holes in the middle of them because no one has come this way since the winter before and noticed that the river-crossing is no longer passable. McGregor's grown a gigantic, Faustian beard and looks like he's been to the ass-end of hell and back, and his attitude and demeanor have therefore become enormously more humble and agreeable. Boorman's actually stepped up somewhat and has stopped being Ewan's preening little buddy, showing himself to be more of a leader in his own right. (Claudio's still helpless.) But best of all, they're at a point in the journey where pretty much the only option available to them is to continue, no matter what obstacle is ahead of them. With "let's just give up" no longer an option, they have to find a way to solve every single problem, from broken fuel lines to man-eating bears to 10-foot walls of rock in the middle of the thoroughfare. The answers are brutal in some cases, masterful in others, but always come down to that last, great trope of human life: if you dismiss your illusions and focus on the task at hand, you can move a lot of rock.

Posted by tederick at 3:12 PM in obi-wan kenobi & tv
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