Transforming Electronic Device Engineered for Rational Infiltration and Ceaseless Killing
Nov 29 2002 - 12:31 p.m.

I have posted many a Stupid Link in my time, but today's might very well be the stupidest, and the most glorious. Behold: the C.Y.B.O.R.G. acronym generator! For I am Mechanical Artificial Technician Trained for Hazardous Exploration and Warfare. Fear me.

Opposable Thumbs
Nov 28 2002 - 7:13 p.m.

2002 is winding down, but like the barnstorming year it has already been, it's not going to go quietly. I am pleasantly double- and even triple-booked for many events in the next few weeks, Bearshark is embarking on the first large project of 2003, and other things are in the works. Plus there's all the usual holiday cheer to spready around. I'm about halfway done my Christmas shopping and it's not even December; that's a new record for me.

And hey! Two Towers in three weeks. Groovy. I've listened to PJ's commentary on Fellowship and am absolutely apalled by the amount of things he's already told us he's not doing in the next two films, the Scouring of the Shire being the most notable deletion. I now have visions of a Willowesque final scene where the four hobbits get back home and the village throws a big party. Grrrrr.

Having been in my apartment for close to a month now, it has yet to quite completely feel like "home," although it no longer feels like "somebody else's place that I'm housesitting." I'm going to try to (finally!) get some pics of the place up in the next few days, for all those who won't be able to visit personally in time.

Meanwhile... fairly apalling to find that most people disagree with me completely on Die Another Day, but hey, any success of the film is a win-win scenario for a Bond fan like me. Here's to 20 more!

If I can get through the next three weeks without slicing into any more appendages, all will be good.

Boned, Slickly, with the Bone
Nov 26 2002 - 11:04 a.m.

No Buffy till January 9. GRRR. ARGH.

(And they said "the emotional pallette of Tederick.com is limited to block capitals with exclamation points and little yellow happy faces." Actually, nobody ever said that.)

Had a good time last night vetting the colour timing on Bone Daddy 2 on my TV, which makes it look pretty much like an actual movie, whowuddathunkit. Gotta re-do an effect here or there but for the most part we're off to the races. Might have to host the screening at my place....

Lease sez: no cat. Matt sez: yes cat. What shall we do? Wait till '03, that's what.

Weekly Buffy Drool
Nov 25 2002 - 8:01 p.m.

Wuh-oh. So it seems the timing of the Season Three boxed set couldn't be better - the episode you're looking for is the Christmas show, "Amends." Anybody else get the feeling the 6-week hiatus starts now? Sigh. When the Watchers' Council blew up, I damn near fell off my seat. Ditto when Spike came through the wall for Andrew. But that's nothing to the sheer gut-wrenching happysad of Buffy's little speech to Spike. Just when you might have started to think this season was going to be a wuss out with the whole "back to the beginning" thing, Joss & Co. pull it out and show you what the beginning was really like.

Jeffrey Jones
Nov 25 2002 - 5:47 p.m.

I ain't gonna comment on it, I sure ain't gonna condone it. I'm just going to say "man alive!" and repeat the names of his past work in hommage and respect.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Beetlejuice.

Howard the frickin' Duck.

Amadeus.

Even The Hunt for Red October.

Post-script: Tim Burton really knows how to pick 'em, huh?

What the Hell is a Jigowatt?!
Nov 25 2002 - 10:28 a.m.

The march of madness continues.... with a review of the Back to the Future trilogy, due on DVD the day before Two Towers comes out. Like I have time for that. (Unintentional time-related pun.)

UNSTOPPABLE
Nov 24 2002 - 9:03 p.m.

There's no polite way to say it: we FLATTENED them! The Team Formerly Known as Look Out Sixth played its final game of the season tonight against Magic 8 Ball, and despite the impressive skills of our opponents, we won in a 4-0 shutout. The game was held at 1-0 until about ten minutes before the end, when Linc, Steve and Julie - finally! - scored in quick succession. Major kudos, of course, to the always-ample goaltending skills of C-Mac, and also to our most-improved player, Diane, who gives new meaning to the term Unstoppable Yellow Wall.

Me, I had a couple of good runs in defence and took one hell of a tumble over the back of an opposing player. I videotaped large portions of the game and will be constructing the UYW web site as soon as I can find the time to do it.

We finish out the season in ninth place overall, and have had such a wicked good time, I'm bummed way out that I won't get to play again until May. The cleats are hanging in the closet...

Closet Space
Nov 23 2002 - 2:30 p.m.

I have neighbours! (Downstairs neighbours. You've already heard about the next-door fuckmachines. Actually it was only once with the loud sex, so who knows, maybe I should feel sorry for them.) The downstairs folk are a young couple, haven't had time for more than a meet and greet yet but they seem nice enough. They're not formally moving in until next week but they're shipping some shit in today. Do they have any comprehension of the degree to which I will minutely detail their lives for all the internet to see? No, of course not. They're rumbling around down there right now, blythely unaware that I'm up here, writing about them.

In case you thought I had hardened in the five years since its release, I would like to reiterate that I am a Titanic fan. Sure, I spend a lot of time in the closet to make the simple folk less uncomfortable, but no longer! TITANIC TITANIC TITANIC!!! Mwa ha ha ha ha. So I bought the movie-only DVD and it turns out to be bloody non-anamorphic and it serves me right! But I don't care! MWA HA HA HA HA!!

And I got the Bone Daddy and the Big Score banner nicely mounted and will be putting it on my wall this evening, along with the posters for Episodes I and II and the vintage Kenner poster. And I got a big orange.... sumthin'.... to put in the bedroom. So all in all it's finally starting to look like somebody lives here. Which is good, because the lingering "why am I in somebody else's house?" feeling every morning was starting to give me a sour stomach.

How's Today For You?
Nov 22 2002 - 5:10 p.m.

I've seen Die Another Day, and I am not impressed. Here is the review. Spoiler warnings abound.

On a whole other level of film quality, I've finally finished the video features on the extended Fellowship of the Ring set. Now I've just got 14 hours of commentary to go through. My favourite jaw-drop moment remains PJ's virtual reality simulation of the cave troll sequence. It's gonna be a lot of fun when I get to play with these toys. And I'm quite in love with Kieran, Elijah Wood's scale double. Well, more specifically, I'm in love with Viggo's impression of him.

Ditch the... Cheerleader
Nov 21 2002 - 3:56 p.m.

My total domination of all Survivor guesswork continues. Say bye to Penny. And for those interested: I'm 5 - 1 - 3. (Right - spare - wrong.) Or make that 6 - 1 - 3 cuz there will be no wrongness this eve.

Good news for trekhogs: Paramount has nixed Shatner's plea to do an extended cut of Star Trek V. Which means purists (such as myself) won't have to buy that awful, awful film twice. Well actually I was kinda looking forward to Captain Kirk's electro-funk zombie battle. But mwa-hey.

I Have Nine Foot Ceilings? This Deal Gets Better All The Time
Nov 20 2002 - 10:17 p.m.

Finally! I got my Hermione banner! She's now guarding - and guarding very well - the door to my living room. It's kind of a spooky effect, actually. When I get my camera back I'll take some snaps, for now you'll have to content yourself with the image on the right and your own feeble imaginations.

And man alive I must have tall ceilings because the fucking thing hangs perfectly from ceiling to floor. I'm happy as a baked Alaskan clam.

SMACK - Bird Hits Window
Nov 19 2002 - 1:31 p.m.

Looking increasingly official: Birds of Prey is a goner. Now admittedly there was a mega drop in quality post-premiere - that Reese/Helena thing is just becoming irritating - but things have been picking up a bit lately and it'll be a shame to see the series go. But then again, when do I ever have time to watch it?

Look Out Snow
Nov 19 2002 - 9:56 a.m.

It's just a small harbinger of things to come, but here it is folks, the weather-enhanced team photo for Look Out Sixth:

I'm going to try to put the team web page together sometime next week, which of course will be after the final game, but hey, that's life.

Weekly Buffy Drool
Nov 18 2002 - 9:04 p.m.

Mmmm... Magnolia-Buffy. Yummy.

(This will count as final warning for all visitors: I now watch Buffy on Monday nights through the Atlantic Canada feed, which is immediately followed by the current episode of Angel. If you're spoiler-sensitive and watch Buffy on Tuesdays or the following Saturday, duck your head.)

It's always a pleasure to see Giles, and I wonder if the "gather them" line was referring to our planet's Slayers and soon-to-be-Slayers, uniting together in some massive battle with Morphy the Big Bad. On the whole however I was a bit disappointed that the answer - and solution - to the whole Spike Situation was the most obvious one, but who knows, in a season with so much deception it may be yet another red herring.

Meanwhile, Angel continues to bore me to tears, yet I continue to watch in hopes of understanding the Big Picture once Faith comes back to town.

And I just got confirmation (mostly unnecessary) that Joss did indeed write "Mrs." for the Anya episode a few weeks back, and not only that, he wrote it in ONE NIGHT, in the midst of directing an episode of Firefly. And the "Whedon is a Super Cyborg from the Future" theory is given yet another boost.

The Battle of Hoth
Nov 17 2002 - 4:57 p.m.

"Unstoppable Yellow Snow" being the alterna-title there, but the SW geek in me just couldn't resist. Yes, we played, although the other team didn't bother to show up. We played a pickup game against ourselves, and Jeff and I made good on our promises of the past few weeks and finally scored one goal apiece because we are Manly Men. (My goal was ably assisted by Meredith, who is a... Womanly Woman? Is that a good thing to be?)

I also fell down a lot. I mean, a lot. This would be all right if everyone was doing it, but I was pretty much the only one. Tumbling all over the place. Near the end I was restricting my attacks to AT-AT Walker mode because standing all the way up was just too bloody exhausting.

There's some great photography of the game which is going to go up on the team's official site as soon as I build it. And we took the team photo today, which was a funny choice for so many reasons.

So if TFCSSCCSSSSC cancels today's games after the fact I will be damn pissed off. Because we were there, man, and we have the photos to prove it.

The problem, then, with coming home and thawing myself out in a hot shower was that as soon as the anesthetizing effects of the cold were gone, everything on my body from neck to nuts started hurting like a sunuvabitch. But them's the breaks, and how many times in your life to you get to do something like this?

Now floor hockey is being bandied about for the wintertime. Look at me, I'm all butch all of a sudden. (Yet I use words like "bandied." It's a rich tapestry.)

Good news: the IBP DVDs, and the Tederick Films DVDs, may yet take a while, but at the very least a DVD of Project Six should be completed in the next few months. Commentary tracks and everything, made funnier by the absence of Samara. Oh, and Samara-related easter eggs. Really the whole thing is a running gag to diss Samara.

Winter Wonderland
Nov 17 2002 - 10:23 a.m.

"Sweet Fancy Moses, this is Insanicrap!"

(I said it before and now, I've said it again.) Got a soccer game in 3 hours and there's several inches of snow on the ground, with more still pummeling down. It's downright nifty, it is. Granted, it's probably the only heavy snowfall we'll get all winter, but it's nice to see.

Speaking of snow: snowboarding. Loose plans now in effect to give snowboarding a try this winter. Which I know, flies in the face of everything I've ever said about the pointlessness of skiing, but what can I tell ya, I'm curious.

Longer
Nov 17 2002 - 1:00 a.m.

It's a good thing PJ beat me to this punch or I might be concerned: the theatrical cut of Fellowship of the Ring remains the definitive edition of this film. The extended edition, which I finally got to watch today, is certainly interesting from a literary/historical point of view, but there isn't a single deleted scene, or even beat, that I felt was appropriate for the original cut.

Among the good moments in TEE were the extended Hobbiton introduction, Legolas' even longer bowcraft in the final battle, and the handling of Gimli's gift from Galadriel. I was also impressed with the degree to which nominal scenes were also reshaped for this cut, with alternate angles, edits and inserts. It's certainly an "entirely" different movie, in that the new material doesn't just jut out from the existing whole - the entire rhythm of the 3½ hours has been adjusted to include the new bits, and that's interesting.

But yeah, I'll keep the 3-hour cut, thank you very much.

The drinking game, incidentally, fell by the wayside in light of tomorrow's mad soccer game in the snow. And I love the snowfall - it's put me in a very good mood.

Apparently, I've Been Expelled
Nov 16 2002 - 3:19 a.m.

So today was tons of fun. Yes, I enjoyed the hell out of the movie - see below - but of course, I also enjoyed the hell out of going to the movie. For the morning screening, I picked up a gaggle of 8-year-old boys, who were absolutely hysterical. Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans were, for that few hours anyway, the single most amazing thing on the planet, and we discussed them endlessly. And of course, you can't do better than 8-year-old boys for Simpsons quotes. They made me look bad.

Evening screening was absolute insanicrap, very poorly handled by Famous Players, but that can be fun too. That audience really dug the movie - they started applauding 3 minutes before the end, and didn't stop until the credits rolled. So that's all good.

In the midst of all this, She Who Must Not Be Named snapped my wand in two. Which would have been fine in a "hey I'm just like Ron" sort of way except that she went and broke it a second time after the show. Now the tattered pieces are as you see them above.

That's neither here nor there, I spent a good hour today walking through the city carrying a paddle, and that will change anyone's opinion of a freedom-loving society. Now it's late and the LOTR-FOTR-TEE extravaganza begins in about nine hours, and no, Diane's last-minute scheduling of a counter-party shall hold no purchase against the Hobbits.

(Big Sigh of Relief)
Nov 15 2002 - 5:10 p.m.

Yes.

Yes yes yes yes yes.

The Chamber is open, and the review is in...

Mwa Ha Ha Ha
Nov 15 2002 - 9:09 a.m.

Paramount has confirmed Deep Space Nine season one for February 25th... my mom's birthday! She'll be so thrilled. The cover artwork is nothing short of bizarre. Well enough about that: I'm off to see the wizard!!!

NYC? NYC?
Nov 14 2002 - 2:11 p.m.

Well the common wisdom would hold that it's finally Ken's time to go, but having picked the cop last week, I'm a tad hesitant on re-naming him... but what the hell. Ken to go, Merge to happen, and I'll pick Penny as a spare.

Ranch Hand
Nov 13 2002 - 4:07 p.m.

Just got back from Travesty which means I got the complete Skywalker Ranch debriefing from Wyeth. Yes, he saw a potential animatic for Episode III. Yes, the Lucasfilm publicity department is evidently lousy with deadend.com paraphernalia. And yes, Mr. Lucas himself may actually have visited deadend.com by now, which is frightening in any number of ways.

I tell ya, the amount of money I've pumped into that place, they oughta fly me out and give me the tour. (THERE'S NO EMOTICON FOR WHAT I'M FEELING!!)

Actually, there's very little begrudging. Mostly because a) I'll get there, and b) the designs for Tederick Ranch are bloody spectacular.

I Have a Very Bad Feeling About This
Nov 11 2002 - 9:02 p.m.

So. Here we are. The first six episodes were just moving the pieces into position. Tonight the real game began. Tonight Buffy bit back hard and left noticeable teeth marks on my head. GRRR. ARGH.

Okay. The Tara cop-out. A real shame and I don't know exactly what went wrong between Joss and Amber, but hey, if Azura Skye's available, go with what ya got. Still it would have been neat - and a lot creepier - to have the real deal. (A lot of Willow's lines sounded like they came from a version of the script where Tara was in, so I'm wondering just how down-to-the-wire it all got.)

And Spike. Spike Spike Spike Spike Spike. I had a feeling it would come to something like this. There never was a Good Spike, just like there never was an Evil Spike. There's just Spike, and he's a real fuckhole sometimes. But that seems to be the going motif; everything's just degenerating into utter chaos. Blood will out. You can't be anything but what you are.

Sigh. Now with the waiting....

The Groove
Nov 11 2002 - 4:44 p.m.

Today was my first day back at work since the move... made a little more complicated by the fact that I don't have my work station set up yet, I'm just making do on the kitchen table. But fortunately the brushfires were few and easy to control.

Getting back into writing is proving more difficult.... my brilliant 4-pages-a-day strategy crumbled like a bad pie crust a few days before I moved, and I have yet to pick it up effectively again. It's just this sort of ongoing procrastination that the original strategy was developed for in the first place. So, tonight.... I'll start it up again, by hook or by crook. God writing's hard. Why is writing so hard?!

Defending...
Nov 11 2002 - 12:03 p.m.

I don't usually publicize other peoples' theory here, but this one's just too damn well thought out: Defense of the Clones. It's here because basically, I'll never have the time to write it myself. There is a wealth of viable interpretation of various symbolic/mythological elements in Episode II and the rest of the saga... and a few things I'd never even considered before. I love it when anyone can teach me something about Star Wars. And yes, he even finds mythic justification for the Greedo Edit.

And Thank God For This: JK Rowling has delivered Harry Potter 5 to the publishers. Expect it to hit the shelves as early as March.

Mmm.... Public
Nov 10 2002 - 11:21 p.m.

Forget it - Hi-Def PBS is the best thing that's happened on planet earth in the last fifty years. I'm absolutely fascinated by all this. Frontier House is cool enough, and tonight I caught Ewan McGregor's polar bear documentary... There's this one wicked shot of a polar bear swimming beneath an ice shelf, creating a furrow as he moves, and eventually he bursts through the ice to attack. And all I'm thinking is Bearshark bearshark bearshark bearshark bearshark... There's a hell of a movie in that somewhere. I wonder if Ewan would star in it? Hi-Def, man, it's the way to go. Here's hoping Discovery never etablishes an HD station... I'd never leave the house.

The Writing Is On The Unstoppable Yellow Wall
Nov 10 2002 - 7:54 p.m.

Our season of measurable improvement panned out today, when Look Out Sixth finally won. Not tied, not defaulted, but actually won in a lovely 4-2 match-up with the iron-willed (if friendless) isolationists of Individuals I. So that was pretty cool. This concludes our regular-season play: we're now heading into two weeks of playoffs, where it looks like ninth place may be ours to lose.

(And by the way: yes the team is called Look Out Sixth but the name came from a league with 8 teams, so in terms of actual improvement we've bested our hopes.)

Slim Shady Stands Up
Nov 10 2002 - 10:07 a.m.

So 8 Mile is on track to double its estimates and gross a whopping $50 million this weekend... can you say HUM-NU?! What the hell is it with this flick? Everybody's talking like it's the best thing since sliced (white) bread. Well hell - I gotta see this thing now. I'll let you know.

Raining. Last regular-season game and it's raining.

Sucked In
Nov 8 2002 - 7:29 p.m.

I tell you, digital cable is some addictive shit. And Hi-Def digital cable on my pretty baby is bloody enthralling. I'm really fascinated by Frontier House, which looks nothing short of razor-sharp in HD and is a pretty interesting program/concept to boot.

Meanwhile, my beloved Tallship Chronicles is coming to an end in a few weeks... Here's hoping they release that on DVD (fat chance), because it's one of the most visually breathtaking reality shows I've ever seen.

I'm glad Ken didn't get axed last night - and I'm glad I won't have to see the ugly bags of mostly water ever again - but the discontinuity of characterization from episode to episode this season is proving a little hard to follow. There used to be a little more artistry to creating heroes and villains, instead of this portrait-of-the-ejectee-of-the-week shit.

So.... life goes on. Had a good week off and have a billion more things to do for the apartment, but basically things are in place. Still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

NYC! NYC!
Nov 7 2002 - 2:33 p.m.

If Ken's gonna get booted from Survivor, tonight's his night. Still dunno about the merge.

Mmmm.... Thumping
Nov 7 2002 - 10:43 a.m.

It was at 9:12 this morning that the inevitable co-tenancy demon reared its ugly head and I was woken by the empassioned sexual congress of the folks on the other side of my bedroom wall. Now I know I'm living in the city. What the hell, it got me up, and that got me watching E2 supplements. The Fellowship boxed set glares at me from my coffee table, saying endlessly, "why won't you love me like you love my little brother?"

Lion King last night was a hoot. On the whole I liked it, although it really draws out the inherent weaknesses of the original storyline. Still, just the delight of seeing how such non-theatrical sequences as the stampede, and the Mufasa's ghost sequence, were reformulated for the stage was worth the price of admission. Most of the additional music was nothing to write home about but I liked how melodies from the original score were reapplied as counter-melodies in new songs, and I gotta say I dig the "He Lives In You" number which pops up in both acts. And yes, Rafiki on a swing is all good. On the whole our Nalas fared better than our Simbas, particularly the girl playing Young Nala, but hey, that's true in the movie too, isn't it?

It's All Worth It
Nov 6 2002 - 5:38 p.m.

Sometime a few months ago - probably September - I set a goal that I would watch the Episode II DVD in my new apartment, on my new TV. This was back when the apartment search was going very badly and I wasn't really sure if I could meet the deadline.

Well today, with the last-minute addition of a progressive-scan DVD player, I finally fulfilled the wish.... and it was pretty fucking cool. First of all AOTC is the best-looking DVD I've ever seen, even topping the phenomenal standard set by The Fellowship of the Ring. We'll have to see if the Extended Edition of the latter holds up to its theatrical predecessor. (I got that today too, but can't open it until the 16th due to obligations to my FORPmates. So if you have it: don't spill any beans.)

I really like the additional beat at the end of Anakin's confession scene, and once the lightsabres start whirring, you'd think you'd died and gone to heaven. I haven't been into the special features yet but at this point, on Disk One alone, this puppy's taking DVD of the year.

Cue the U2
Nov 6 2002 - 11:05 a.m.

Lion King tonight, and I'm about to go pick up my Episode II DVD.... It's a beautiful day......

(Yes, I am experiencing cat withdrawal.)

Meh. New Apartment.
Nov 6 2002 - 1:17 a.m.

Went to see The Ring tonight and was thoroughly unamused. But hey, I swore I'd review every film I saw so here it is. Good news is I also saw IMAX Clones a second time, so that's all good. And might get the DVD sooner than next Tuesday.

No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You To Make a Fifth Film
Nov 5 2002 - 8:40 a.m.

Great to hear that Pierce Brosnan has accepted Eon's invitation to make a fifth Bond picture after Die Another Day. I've warmed to Pierce considerably in the torrid years since Goldeneye.

Bong!
Nov 5 2002 - 12:26 a.m.

Is it November 5th already? Here's the review for Season Five of Star Trek: The Next Generation.... bet you're wondering just how many of these I have under the hood....

On the Front Lines
Nov 3 2002 - 9:14 p.m.

So obviously, a lot has happened.

I'll try to put up some kind of a walk-through of my new place in the future, but for right now: I'm in, I'm really frickin' tired and I offer my humble thanks to my movers, consisting of my entire family and Mer and Steve and Mark and Jason and even David, the guy who sold me my TV.

(TV looks fabulous by the way.)

Anyways I'm foot-in-the-grave tired so I'll keep it short. But I wanted to mention: Look Out Sixth clobbered its own best-goal record with a heartbreaking 5-5 tie today. We're putting together a pretty wicked little team here.

My apartment still looks like a bit of a war zone but I'm making headway. I'm taking the whole week off - blessed, merciful silence - to get things in order. I've waited a long time to drop a grand at Ikea and now I've finally done it; and the really sadistic thing is that I didn't buy nearly enough.

I really miss Woogie. And my old room looked damn weird with all my stuff out of it. But it sure is neat to have to many shelves. No exquisite sin greater....

Okay. Sleep now. Or more realistically: digital TV until 3 in the morning then sleep.

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