Ice Age
May 30 2004 - 11:46 p.m.

Phew. A lot going on today. A lot of bullshit flying, which I'm not particularly happy about, but then I guess I never am about that sort of thing. I often get complimented about my friends - when someone new meets some of my longer-term amigos, they're usually very impressed, and I make no bones about it. I have great friends. I have a lot of great friends, who are, each and every one of them, great people, and a treasure in my life. So this is why I honestly get completely and utterly spun when I come upon folk who just aren't up to that level. I don't get dishonesty, I don't get gossip, I don't get politicking and maneuvering. I understand why people like to make other people feel small, but I don't like it, and I try not to keep it around. I guess that makes me priveleged, because I can honestly say that there is no one in my life that I don't trust... and that's what it's all about. Or, if not all, then at least most, like 98%, excluding only the portion dealing with cats, Buffy, and action figures.

I'm off on a rant there, so I'm stopping. The point is that there were some miscommunications today for which I am partly responsible, but I think it's all taken care of now. Moving on.

On the whole it was a good day for news about friends: an engagement, a baby, and Jason was among those who broke a Guinness record this afternoon, by being the largest group of people to ever play a song on their saxophones simultaneously. Many accomplishments, all far larger than anything I did.

But, admittedly momentous, was that in a big to-do this afternoon, Brandy and I inducted Tina, Chris, Dave and April into the legions of Buffy fans who are down with "Once More With Feeling." It was their first time, my eight thousandth, and it was all I could do to keep from singing along, or at least, tapping my feet. That episode just rocks.

We won our soccer game again, in a really tight match against some great opponents. We came out of it 7-4, which was sweet. We've apparently been playing on smaller-than-regulation fields the past two weeks, because when we stretched out on the real thing today, it was just murder: I lost my wheels after fifteen minutes, and had to fight to get them back for the rest of the game. Still, good game, good fight, good to stay on top, no matter how precariously we may be perched there.

I'm done singing, I'm done dancing, I'm just moving along.

Float the rose
May 30 2004 - 3:21 a.m.

Well it's almost 3:30 in the morning and I can barely string two sentences together, so I'm gonna go to bed. But I saw The Day After Tomorrow tonight and it really freaked me out. I kept thinking about my cat. If the world was overcome by a new ice age, what would I do with the cat? I can't particularly feature taking her with me, because she'd basically destroy me from head to toe in her unending efforts to wriggle free of confinement. But then leaving her behind would mean certain death. It's a pickle. Tederick, at least, will be okay in a backpack.

Oh yeah the whole web site changed today. But you noticed that.

I had a dream last night that I met up with Geoffrey MacDonald, my childhood best friend. I was my age now but he, of course, was still twelve or thirteen, the age at which I last saw him, before he vanished off the face of the earth. We had a surprisingly affectionate conversation, but then we went through a lot together. Oh and he admitted that he was gay. It's funny, because in the dream all I could think was, "shit, I gotta blog this, this is so cool!" and even though it turned out to be a dream, here I am, blogging away. This raises Matrixy questions I'd rather not deal with at this late hour, so I'm outta here.

One last thing: Captain Tightpants in Saving Private Ryan?! Bizarre.

Whoa, shit dude, where'd the blog go?!
May 29 2004 - 8:55 p.m.

It's right here, dumbass.

That'll put marzipan in your pie-plate, Bingo!
May 28 2004 - 9:35 a.m.

Wow, there aren't many DVD fuckups that will actually have me still pissed off in the morning. I'm clearing it. This'll help:

She's back! Rumours are flying everywhere that Mutant Enemy is in the process of producing a presentation reel of Buffy: The Animated Series to shop around to the networks. This is the project that was attempted, and shitcanned, a couple of years ago. It would feature Buffy in her sophomore year at Sunnydale High - but in the alternate universe created by the monks, i.e. the Dawnie version of history.

Wow. So the Buffyverse was dead for all of a week.

And we're all stuck inside his wacky Broadway nightmare
May 27 2004 - 11:52 p.m.

I got Buffy Season Six today. I just put "Once More With Feeling" in my DVD player... and it's non-anamorphic.

Skip ahead if you don't give a fuck about this stuff, but I am absolutely heartbroken about this. The episode looks like absolute fucking gash on my TV. It looks as bad as my VHS. I literally just stared at it with my mouth open for close to a minute, because I just couldn't believe that Fox Home did this to us - until today, I would have called their DVD products, across the board, simply the finest in the market. This is an error in judgment that actually extends beyond my ability to comprehend. This shit does not happen.

The Region 2 version of the disk is anamorphic. There is simply no reason at all why this had to be. I honestly don't get it. And I am so fucking pissed off right now that I would set my DVD on fire and throw it out the window if it would do any damned good.

E-mail to foxmovies@fox.com or feedback@tcfhe.com, those are the only addresses I could find. Mutant Enemy can be reached at PO Box 900, Beverly Hills, CA, 90213, while Fox Home Video makes its viper's nest at the same mailing address, but 90213-0900 for whatever reason.

Jesus, what a fucking godawful disappointment.

Girls' pants
May 27 2004 - 8:15 p.m.

Let's talk about pants. More specifically, the pants that girls wear. They are key. They are, in fact, integral. I never even noticed them until a couple of years ago; I had to be dragged ass-backwards into the pants appreciation fold by one of the original founders of this study, Mark Andrew Brown. And now, they're pretty much the whole show. They're the first thing I check out after the initial "Wow, she's cute." Not the eyes, not the hair, not the body. It's the pants. The sentence has become "Wow, she's cute... how are her pants?" (Or, in extremely rare circumstances such as the one I had yesterday while downtown, the sentence is "Wow, she's cute, awesome cape, but how are her pants?")

The reason for the pants-prominence (pantsinence) is that even more so than the eyes, the pants are the window into the soul. If a girl knows what she's about, has a creative side, and might be even slightly off-center in terms of her mainstreamedness (all fundamentally important traits), it's going to show up first, and most prominently, in her pants. It's the getting-to-know-you shortcut of all time. Would I ever walk away from someone just because I don't respect their pants? It hasn't happened yet, but I'm not ruling it out.

The living master of good girls' pants is Mark and I's friend Kim, who has a collection of awesome pants so incredibly large and varied that I don't think I've ever seen her in the same pair of pants twice, and yet every time I see her, I take a full and luxurious moment to reflect, "damn, those are good pants." Kim should teach classes on the aquisition, care, and use of pants. Now, Kim's a brilliantly attractive person in her own right, so she could probably make a food sack work out for her, but still... the pants. The pants. I defy you to encounter her on the street and not marvel at the pants.

I know what you're thinking: "What makes for good pants?" Well, as usual, it's not the pants themselves so much, as how they're worn. I've seen girls make classic pinstripes work like firecrackers, if said pants tweak the overall look just enough to suggest that the person is one step ahead of the game. Girls in mens' jeans... brilliant. Extranneous zippers, pouches and pockets are a big yes. Patches never hurt. A widening cut that turns the girl into a standing triangle like some kind of animé skater punk is the very essence of where it's at.

I'm not ruling out skirts, I have nothing against dresses. I hear they're "in" this summer and that's fine. I have a bit of a quandary when it comes to low-cut jeans, because frankly, they scare me and tend to cause cycling accidents. I'm not convinced they're good pants in their own right; they're probably just coasting on the estimable currency of their own revelations, rather than their merits as pants. But again, it's all about how you wear it.

I think that's all I have to say about pants for the moment... I'm thinking about it... yeah. I'm done. Have a good summer.

Another fresh episode
May 26 2004 - 5:15 p.m.

Latest purity test results are in:

Like a map, girls.

(I should probably point out that this is a purity test... so a lower percentage is more impurity / wanton sexual ardour... or so I'm told. Otherwise, I must be a big closeted space-monkey.)

Meanwhile...

Related?

Sour grapes
May 26 2004 - 12:52 p.m.

In a perfect world that exists only in my mind, I become known as a successful feature filmmaker with a notable fondness for fantasy-based or fantasy-inspired storylines. I then become to His Dark Materials what Peter Jackson was to The Lord of the Rings. I direct a trilogy of movies back-to-back, based on my own adaptated screenplays. All is good.

The reason I know that this perfect world exists only in my mind is because New Line just hired the guy who did AMERICAN FRICKIN' PIE to write and direct the movie versions of Pullman's trilogy. Let's hear that again: The guy. Who did. American. Frickin'. Pie. FUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

Lyra. Will. Pie-humping Jason Biggs. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

Well, no use crying over spilt poison and the cat's already amongst the pixies on this one, but Chris Weitz had better turn out to be the best fucking filmmaker in the whole history of mankind because if he fucks this up, he will rue the day he crossed swords with Captain Sour Grapes. We're talking imminent rueage.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. (Argh.) I'm going to go parlay with the Whedon, and try not to imagine this wanker casting Dakota Fanning as my Lyra...

Score
May 25 2004 - 5:53 p.m.

I know it's only been two games, but since this is completely unprecedented, check out the current league standings for Unstoppable Yellow Wall.

Yeah. We're number one.

Now that I've earned four weeks of unmitigated ass-whuppings for the team, I think I'll retire wistfully to my chair and reflect upon years gone by where the fact that my soccer team sucked ass was the one thing I could count on in this life.

Kill your TV
May 25 2004 - 11:17 a.m.

Gone, gone... my precious is gone...!!!

(And saying of which: did anyone catch the preview for Lost during the Alias finale? Dominic Monaghan on a deserted island looking all scruffy and not like a Hobbit? More than enough reason to reassert my cable package in the fall...)

Well, yeah
May 25 2004 - 10:34 a.m.

Or at the very least, I wear a spider-shaped hat.

And it costs only pennies a glass
May 25 2004 - 10:05 a.m.

Joss Whedon has a great interview here, where he reveals who wrote the best line in the X-Men movie. (It's not a surprise.) Joss's Astonishing X-Men arc hits the stands with issue #1 tomorry, and for at least two of us, there is no word for the excitement.

Two weeks to go on Serenity.

Damage done
May 24 2004 - 10:32 a.m.

Third week of Freaks & Geeks, continuing to be excellent... and the episode "Tests and Breasts" went right to the top my cool books, for so accurately chronicling that one surreal day when, for the first time in your life, someone you know comes over to you in the locker room, and has a whole conversation with you, bare-ass naked, as though nothing's nothing. I won't mention any names, because god knows enough people Google themselves and find their way here... oh what the fuck it was Jeff Ross, he'll never find this page with a name like that... I was thirteen or fourteen, he was a good half-year further along in the la-la-land of puberty than I was, and he had nothing to hide. And I had completely forgotten about the whole thing until tonight, and now I can remember it as clear as yesterday, so clear that I could probably draw a fairly accurate sketch if given the right colours of pencil crayons. Wild. I've been lucky in my life in that nudity has never really been a particularly troubling issue for me, and even at the time I remember thinking "this shouldn't be weirding me out, he's just naked," but there's no way around it: it's a damn weird day.

Thank you Freaks & Geeks. Perhaps someday you will also document that other tremendously surreal day: [shhhhh!!!] "naked with a girl...!" Although based on the way things are going for the various geek males, I don't see us getting there in 18 episodes.

And here's my own geek pride moment of the day: As they did last year with Buffy, Space ran their Victoria Day Angel marathon today to close down the series. And my personal fave, "Damage," hit number five... almost certainly because I voted for it about a hundred times over the past month. Yeah. I'm that geek. I may not have been able to win Lex a million bucks, but I damn well ruled the nerd station between 5 and 6 tonight. Mwa ha.

Shit the MAN don't want you to know
May 24 2004 - 10:32 a.m.

Tederick.com is too badass for the Sheraton in Los Angeles. Chandra's there right now and can't get here, because their content blocking program has sussed us out and declared us revolutionary. Or at least, profane. To which I say: fuckin' cunts!

On the other side of the U.S., the premiere for Prisoner of Azkaban was held yesterday in New York. Cut to the picture:

Cute! But now I'm going to have to endure innumerable whinging from the uninformed for weeks to come along the tried-and-true-and-irritating (adopt extremely whiny voice) "they're getting too old!" lines. Allow me to use my humble public forum to put a major misconception to rest: the kids grow up. They're 14 in Goblet, which they're shooting now. And if that ain't a batch of 14-year-olds, I don't know what, mate. Rupert looks like the kid from Elephant's badass redheaded brother.

Then I found this picture, which proves that if you really look at him, Daniel Radcliffe looks like an ostrich:

More good news on the HP front, another great character actor has been added to the group, with Brendan Gleeson cast (and bloody perfectly so) as Mad-Eye Moody for Goblet of Fire. That's gonna be a hell of a lot of fun to see.

And also in New York, but not particularly related to Harry Potter, "Sensitivity" has been selected to screen at the Rooftop Films Summer Series on June 25. I'm not sure a one-minute movie is worth a trip to New York, but then again, it's not like I've got anything better to do anyway. There will be mullage.

Eco-Challenge: Toronto
May 23 2004 - 10:08 p.m.

There's been threat of thunderstorm all day, but I went up to soccer anyway, on my bike as with last week. The game was at Keele and Lawrence. By the time I got there, the thunderstorm warning had been upgraded to a tornado warning. The other team didn't even bother to show up so we won by default, but then (keeners that we are) everybody wanted to hang about and play anyway. I was reluctant, but I got talked into it, and it turned into a great, friendly game... and I scored. Twice. Well, once and a half. But still. Points for Matt.

Then it's getting really dark and dreary out so we call it a night and I head home on the bike. I just know that my decision to stay at the game through two uninterrupted hours of non-rain is going to get me the big karmic smackdown, and sure enough, I'm at the top of the hill at Avenue Road and Eglinton and the heavens just open up. BOOM. And suddenly, it's a bathtub outside. It's, literally, half an hour of monsoon in the city of Toronto, and I'm on my bike, nowhere near a subway station, and way too juiced to even consider stopping.

So I go for it. I pull over to a bus shelter, doff my pants which were now seriously limiting my mobility, tie up my backpack good and tight, and launch myself into this deluge. Now I'm screaming through the streets, skin-diving with my clothes on, hollering at the sky such obscenities as "IS THAT ALL YOU GOT MOTHERFUCKER?!"

Well, don't mess with God.

The rain got worse. Now I'm soaked clean through, the rain is running off my helmet's visor in an inch-thick jet of water, the water's six inches deep in the street. And I'm still going. Yeah it was dumb. It was also the best fucking thing I've done all year. Fortunately, the streets were almost entirely deserted, and my watchword was "controlled braking," so I never really put myself in harm's way.... well, maybe in harm's way, but not in harm's hand. The only real scaries were the thunder and lightning, which were splitting right over me for most of Avenue Road.

When I was stopped at a red light at one point, there was this woman in her damned Fiat who's just staring at me like I'm a serial rapist so I turn to her and cheerfully yell "Joan Wilder? Welcome to Columbia!" (That was for my sister.) By the time I get to Bloor I'm singing numbers from the Buffy musical; "What Can't We Face" seems to be working best and it's certainly getting the best responses from the people around me. And before long I'm crossing the Viaduct and it's finally, mercifully, stopping.

I got home. I dragged my bike up the stairs, my shoes squelching on every step, water still literally draining off me. I tore off my gloves and helmet. And I collapsed to the floor, grinned, and sighed, "...that was nifty!"

Have a weekend
May 23 2004 - 1:35 p.m.

A lot of people have written in to ask, "can the frog tap dance?" And the answer is, hit it!

I kinda accidentally hit on the world's best way to spend a long weekend: throw your own film festival. I watched Sweetback and From Hell on Friday night, The Bourne Identity yesterday afternoon and Them! yesterday night, and I might try to sneak off 8½ or a western before I go to soccer. Then there's my wide-open tomorrow. It's actually been a great deal of fun.

I also took advantage of the free time by further reshuffling the bones of Tederick.com in a radical, yet mostly invisible, way. Tederick Films? Gone! Bone Daddy? Gone! Tederick.com Theatre? Gone! Tederick.com Archive? Gone, and all old blog posts shuffled into the Deeper Well. And I'm just getting started.

Were I unwed, I would take you in a manly fashion
May 21 2004 - 9:43 p.m.

Are there nights when Batman just basically can't get anything going? Where he just trolls the streets endlessly, but finds no criminals to pummel, no assaults to prevent, no robberies to quell? Or are we to believe that you can't walk four blocks at night in Gotham City's downtown core without finding some poor sod in need of saving? This occured to me tonight at around 8:20, when I too felt like I was completely unable to get anything going.

Work was a bit more hectic than I usually like today - basically worked furiously from 10 until 4:59 without a single break (I got up at one point to get an apple). At 5, I got the fuck outta here with absolutely no idea where I was going to go or what I was going to do. I ended up literally walking the streets, but in a good way. It was a great night for it, people were out on the streets, the air was clean, the music was good. I went to Queen West, I went to the Annex, I went to Yorkville, I went to Yonge & Dundas. It was four and a half hours of walking, using the On-The-Go playlist function on my iPod to cook up, I think, the best walking playlist I've done to date. Among other things, five versions of "Don't Fear the Reaper." All in a row. That's good walkin' music.

I was hunting for a DVD; I just didn't know which one. I thought it was Dead Alive, but when I found it and didn't buy it, I realized I was wrong. I thought it was From Hell, but when I found it and did buy it but kept on searching, I again knew I was wrong.

I got to HMV, and my hand to God, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" was playing on my iPod, and that's when I saw it:

SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG.

Oh.

Baby.

Yeah.

And, my hand still to God, my iPod just went dead at that exact moment. Out of batteries. Search ended, time to go home.

It's night like this that I really wish I were a ganja fiend, like a friend of mine who is literally addicted to the reefer. It would make the next 97 minutes pass a hell of a lot more smoothly. But fuck it, I'm high on life.

More with the crazy
May 21 2004 - 2:59 p.m.

I've just reorganized the Reviews section pretty much from the ground up; this was done because the sheer number of uncategorized reviews in there was just making it impossible for me to find anything. And since I matter, I took a whole mess of time I don't actually have, and made with the shuffling.

If you notice any broken links or images, let me know. This is your chance to look cool and/or smug and superior. And my review of I'm Not Scared is up.

Two by two, hands of blue
May 20 2004 - 11:52 a.m.

What the fuck, I have nothing better to do today anyway and I hate leaving anything incomplete: Firefly, the Top 21 episodes of all time.

No power in the 'Verse can stop me
May 20 2004 - 10:43 a.m.

Wow, a world without television... surprisingly peaceful... the mind clears... the cat becomes more interesting... groovy!

As I did with Buffy last year, here's my list of the Top 21 Episodes of Angel. "Not Fade Away" ended up making the list, but just barely. I'm sure I'll revise the sucker endlessly as time goes by, but for right now, that's the that.

The peace of wild things
May 19 2004 - 10:31 p.m.

Thank you. Love you. Miss you.

"There's a hole in the world."

You know where I'll be...

You and me baby ain't nuthin' but mammals so let's do it like they do on the.... uh.... I forget the rest
May 19 2004 - 4:55 p.m.

I just overheard my ever-voluble neighbour committing one hell of a sexual faux pas, and now I feel a lot better about myself. I may not get to stay up all night, lie around watching TV all day, and cook myself up some steaks in the middle of the afternoon on my backyard barbecue, but I damn well know enough not to do that.

I've said it before, and Randall said it before me, and yet I'll repeat it here: This job would be perfect if it weren't for the customers. I think it's time for a new emoticon. How's this one? I call him Mr. Stabbedy, and I shamelessly pilferred him from a Buffy board whose indifference to my recent White Willow fuckover has earned them my eternal ire. Yeah, he's tall, but that'll make him stand out against Green Smiley and I'm So Sad I'm Blue Man. ( )

Finally bagged the theme from Shaft in Africa on Kazaa... I've been looking for that mo-fo for, literally, three years. It feels good to have closure. And Shaft in Africa, man... what a flick. I'm going to have to give it another go one of these days.

Listed among "The Stupid Things Matt Does:" I actually bid on the Survivor: Africa buff signed by my guys, Lex, E.Z. and Big Tom. Then I had to sit in horror as my bid remained the top bid for five days. Fortunately, I got outbid today, so no expensive Survivor memorabilia for me, thankyouverymuch.

So I'm off to buy cranberry juice... Chad and I are going to drown our sorrow in seabreezes tonight.

Apocalypse Nowish
May 19 2004 - 9:51 a.m.

So this is the end? It doesn't feel like the end. Twelve hours from right now, it's all done, but I ain't feeling it. I'm not mourning it. It's done.

Then there's this:

Ugh. The Digital Bits, which I trust with my life, is saying this absolutely definitely will be in the DVD of Return of the Jedi this fall, which absolutely definitely will be the "Archival / We're Mucking With Them For the Last Time" versions of the films. Then again, TheForce.net, which I also trust with my life, is saying don't bet on it, chumpy. So I don't know what's going on. It seems extreme, even for FuckyBoy Lucas. But whatever. Once again, I've got my pirates. Which are rapidly becoming better known as "little shiny gold."

(Or, I guess, all gold is shiny. But it's usually not in disk form. "Little disky gold.")

(....Unless you're talking coins. I guess they're diskish.)

I didn't get up to watching Phantom Menace last night; instead I watched Colonial House, the latest House series from those whacky Housemongers at PBS. When the Governor's daughter showed up at the Colonial House from the real world, screaming and crying because her husband had been killed in a car accident, and the girl in question turned out to be fourteen, I did a very Malcolm Reynolds "huh." Can't keep those Americans down, can ya?

I didn't think I was a big Tony Randall fan, but now I can't get the Odd Couple theme out of my head, so I guess I'm going to miss him.

The Fandom Menace
May 18 2004 - 10:40 a.m.

Five years of lining up, talking about lining up, collecting toys, lurking in chat rooms, hitting each other with plastic swords, playing geeky boardgames, geeking out generally, making costumes, wearing costumes, running into each other on the street without costumes and not recognizing each other, ignoring each other in bars, laughing our asses off at the "really geeky ones," doing Jar Jar impressions, and getting into more arguments about a single movie than I ever even thought possible. Happy anniversary everyone, thanks for making May '99 one of the best times of my whole darn life.

God I miss my Padawan braids.

Flyin' Again
May 17 2004 - 9:38 a.m.

Adam Baldwin mentioned this weekend that the first full cast read-through for Serenity is taking place today, this very Monday. If that doesn't get you glad to be entering a new week, I don't know what will. And in the News From Nate front, we have the admission that while Saffron and Badger will not be in the film, all nine principals definitely will. And more significantly, he mentions that Whedon's deal with Universal precludes resurrecting the series after the film's release, so if the film does well, the best we can hope for is.... more films.

And here's a Joss interview for ya. Gives good dish. Mentions animated Buffy. Again.

Wow, the tumbler just clicked over in my mind for good and ever. Buffyverse gone. Firefly Verse coming. Everything in forward motion. (Do the job, get paid, keep flying.)

Kate: The Epic of Kate
May 16 2004 - 10:04 p.m.

Kate Kated her little Kate heart out today, Kating us to a Kate-tastic 3-2 Kate over the other Kate. Thanks in Kate part to some outKating Kate-tending by Chris MacKate, and a Kate trick scoring combination by the Katest Kate in our Kate, Linc McKate, the Kate was a Kate Kate Kate by everyKate who Kate. I personally Kate Kate Kate Kate with Kate. Go UnKateable Yellow Kate!

Yes, I rode all the way home from Lawrence and Keele. I have power and skill. And legs like tree trunks.

Lost in translation
May 16 2004 - 11:34 a.m.

I got lost last night. I got lost in the city of Toronto. I got lost on my way to a party that I really wanted to attend, had put effort into attending, and could not find for the life of me when the chips were down and it was cold as all good morning out. To say that this put a damper on my spirits is something of an understatement. I literally wandered the streets at Queen and Bathurst for an hour before finally calling it quits and going home. Of the long, long list of loserish things that have happened to me in my life, this ranks highly, though somewhat below that whole thing in Grade 6 with Heather's class photo.

What happened was this: the invitation didn't contain directions, so I looked the street up on 411.ca and headed down. Unfortunately, 411.ca was a bit too general in this street's location - when I got to where the street was supposed to be, there was an entirely other street. I started to fan out, trolling the surrounding neighbourhood in an ever-expanding grid search, but to no avail. I got lost. Me! I never get lost! I navigated my entire family through downtown Los Angeles in the middle of the night in a rental car with a map printed on the back of a fucking cocktail napkin! Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Mutant superpowers my ass!

Now here's what I don't want: I don't want the endless chain of phone calls from people saying "wow, you got lost, huh?" Yes, I got lost. That's what it says directly above. I've revealed this embarassing news, now leave it alone. This is a web site, not a call-in show! Fuuuuuuuuck.

Here's the good news: Keith Richards is reportedly in, playing Jack Sparrow's father in Pirates of the Caribbean 2 & 3, shooting back to back next summer for a 2006 Matrix-style release. Arrrrh!

Because maybe deep down, we're all 12-year-old girls
May 15 2004 - 9:09 p.m.

Five years to the damn week after it was the de facto hangout for the Star Wars Long Line, Mosquito Moe's is gone. I discovered this today while bussing along Eglinton. They're turning into some filthy mcnasty Philthy McNasty's or something. That totally sucks. And with a Hooters and a Philthy's now on the same block, within three hundred feet of North Toronto C.I., I msut again ask: they couldn't have done this while I was still in high school? Fuckers.

Well I'm pissed. I had some good times at that Moe's. Not only was it the Phantom Menace line gang's hangout of choice, it was also FORP's default meeting place, where we crafted both Project Six and The Mosquito Minute, and had three out of three Lord of the Rings post-show debates. Sure, the food was terrible, but man, good times.

Well anyways. You know how my mutant super power is jaywalking? Well, today I figured out what my X-men code name would be: Crosswalk. It's a wee play on words, get it? This is what I would look like:

I told you, I can do anything in Photoshop.

Anyways. I would accompany the X-men on urban missions, squire them safely across busy streets, and then hang back and let them do the fighting. It's still a hell of a better superpower than "the ability to control the weather."

Also in superhero news, I was at Toys R Us today and found a four-pack of Marvel Mini-Mates that included the original red Daredevil, along with the red Elektra (and Bruce Banner and the Hulk... it was like a "2003 Marvel Movies That Nobody Liked" four-pack). So I'm pretty happy about that; they look fucking awesome, and I'm looking forward to pitting DD against Eyepatch Xander when Palisades gets to Buffy wave seven.

Wanna buy me stuff to show me you love me? How about Lex's torch? Or better yet... Skip's pants?! (!) (!!!)

Great balls of fire
May 14 2004 - 10:28 a.m.

Good news... plans are officially underway for Hellboy 2. While the first flick was not without its flaws, I enjoyed it a hell(boy) of a lot more the second time, and am expecting to really geek out on it when it hits DVD this summer.

(And the 18" Hellboy doll pointing its gun at my head right now is in no way making me write that.)

So I've officially finished my run on SURVIV.ORg Reborn, the fourth (!) incarnation of, and fourth (!!) season of coverage on, my Survivor-only web site. I will never, ever, ever do this again. (Unless Lex plays in All-Stars 2. Even then... probably not.)

Joss writes X-Men in less than 2 weeks! WAAAAAAA!!!! (It just hit me.)

Watching Raiders of the Lost Ark last night, I finally had the answer to a question that has plagued me since I was a boy... why does the Well of the Souls have a door in the ceiling? Answer: it doesn't, that's just one of the many rectangular panels that makes up the roof of the structure. As you can see, not all of the "geeking out" will take place this summer.

It's a UNIX system... I know this...
May 13 2004 - 5:27 p.m.

Took some time out of my busy day and scratched an itch I've wanted to scratch for a really long time, jotting out reviews for two more Spielberg flicks, Jurassic Park and its sequel, The Lost World. One's a rant. The other's a rave. Guesses?

Procrastinate some more, Matt!
May 13 2004 - 10:44 a.m.

Further to the running-your-own-business, I just used "disbursement" in a sentence.

And the best new game ever is going over to my cat, ignoring her, but staring intently at her right forepaw. It freaks her out.

Working naked
May 13 2004 - 10:21 a.m.

Well no, not really. Actually I'm wearing underwear. But let me reiterate, in case it hasn't been said before: running your own business out of the house? Not the worst thing in the world. If you are currently reading this from any kind of an office environment, air conditioned or no, I brand you "sucker."

It's gonna be a smoker today, kids, hence the nude. My apartment has exactly two modes: "Too Damn Cold" and "Really Fucking Hot." Saturday was the last of the 2DC and everything since then has fallen under RFH. I'm valiantly withstanding the urge to install my air conditioner, because then I lose the ability to ventilate using just open windows - which, on gorgeous May days like this, is invaluable, especially in the mornings. I love that fresh air. And I love May sunshine - it's the most honeyed light of the whole year. It's almost coral. Between about 7 and 9 in the morning, this city gleams like a period movie.

Anybody up for a ballgame?

So I got 2 out of 3 jobs done yesterday (the little ones, natch) and the big one is pretty much my whole day today and possibly part of tomorrow. We'll see how it goes. If I weren't watching my sugar I'd make my ass a big pitcher of iced tea and just see how the day progresses.

Come what may
May 12 2004 - 11:18 p.m.

"If this is to be our end, I would have them make such an end as to be worthy of remembrance!"

"To wives and lovers... may they never meet."

"I hate to be the little demon that cried apocalypse nowish, but uh..."

Spike raised his hand first.

Why do I suspect that the next week of my life is just gonna suck? I suppose I could have been left with an even more gaping cliffhanger than having the Fang Gang commit to their blaze of glory, but still... daaaaaaaaahhh!

I dig it, though. I dig what this is about, I dig where this is going, I finally dig why this shit has been obsessing me lately. The big A, kids. (Why do I always talk like Eve when I'm talking about this shit?) It's been here all along. It doesn't get solved in a 42-minute series finale. It'll be here when we're all dust. So there's only one thing for it: fuck with it as hard as you can for as long as you can, until you drop. Bloody hell yeah.

Several months back I thought it might be fun to get through every single Angel-featured episode of the entire Buffyverse before Wolfram & Hart closed up shop for good... that makes for about 175 episodes all told, and guess what? I'm eight away from completing my masterpiece. I finally get what John Tesh was talking about back in '96, man, it just feels awesome to stick the landing. And as with doing any complete canon in a total and obsessive manner, by the time you're done you feel like you understand everything in a bigger way, like you can see clear all the way from here to Texas. It's the natural bi-product of completely frying your brain.

and.... GO.
May 12 2004 - 9:34 a.m.

There's nothing like being really really busy to make sure you won't enjoy the astonishing weather we're having lately. Still, I don't mind; it's a nice way to round out my career. I spent Thursday, Friday and Monday in a tough slog through a major site overhaul, and now I've got three new mid-to-huge-size projects on the go for the rest of the week. Far from being a drag, I find this kind of workload pretty energizing - days when I listen to the entire Star Wars saga's worth of CDs from start to finish as a means of pacing myself. Yup, I'm a geek... but I'm a happy-go-lucky geek.

So since I'm going to be tied up all day, do me a fave and vote for Lex.

Tilda Swinton has been confirmed as the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe... meh. Neither a grand slam nor a ground out. My casting choice was always Grace Jones. But then again, I'm insane. (And I would have made hella better Narnia movies than "director" Andrew Adamson, probably as a direct result.)

Eek! Sour grapes! Sorry, gentle readers, I didn't mean to go awry so early in the morning. I thought I was over that Narnia mojo anyway and more interested in bagging His Dark Materials. But I guess you never leave your first love, or your first septet of adapted screenplays. Fuckin'... fuck.

Well anyways. Consider me a patent-holder: when you Google "goo-loph," all you get is Tederick.com.

You'll never take me to hell, Pavayne...!!
       ....Oh. Well, that's just something I say.
May 11 2004 - 1:41 p.m.

Behold the Unleashed incarnation of the cerulean avenger, Aayla Secura:

You can check out the rest of her wave on Starwars.com right here, including a fairly kick-ass Bossk. Why have I always been a fan of Bossk? More so than Boba Fett? Dunno. But I'm considering making Unleashed the priority of my collection. Life would be significantly less expensive that way.

Along those lines: I bought my 450th basic SW action figure on Sunday. It's General Madine. And for some reason, my lifelong fondness for him almost rivals my feelings for Bossk. Again, why? It makes no sense.

So guess what? I just finished a major upgrade and overhaul of one of our biggest clients' web sites, and then got gang-slammed with three more gigantic jobs: a total overhaul of a similarly-large site, and two big content updates for two other web sites. Suddenly, this is the busiest week of my life. Am I dismayed? Nevaaaaaah.

Vote for Lex. (I'm just going to keep banging on this until Thursday, so you might as well get it done now so you don't have to feel guilty.)

Glistening
May 10 2004 - 11:34 p.m.

Well tonight was just awesome. In fact the entire day was just awesome. Remember how it was 2 degrees and hailing on Saturday? Well it's the middle of frickin' July today, complete with the comical 6-minute thunderstorms with no warning that clear up just as fast and turn right back into gorgeous blue skies weather. No complaints here.

And my bike. I love my bike. Screaming down the Danforth in shorts and a scrub top, I felt lighter than I have since last summer. I strapped my paint box to my back and rode to Lise's place for the inaugural Freaks & Geeks party, a.k.a. Freaks & Geeks & Grilled Cheese & Hand-made Postcards, cuz why have one theme when you can have three? I lotused on the floor and painted four postcards in quick succession. Bob Ross was right: that Phthalo Blue will eat your whole world up in a heartbeat, but I found that when mixed with the right amount of Viridian Green the resulting turquoise is just fucking fantastic. And it was nice to have paint on my fingers again, for the first time in years.

And Freaks & Geeks rocks. It was great to see Sarah Hagan - I didn't know she was in it, and I didn't know I missed Potential Slayer Amanda until that crazy-lookin' skinny girl was swaying next to Linda Cardellini at the homecoming dance. But give it up for Bill. I'm not saying I was anything like this kid. He's way funnier than I ever was.

I rode home in a torrential downpour that just made me feel happy, man. And I'm just going to put it out there: getting home after a night like this and stripping off and then just lying on the couch watching "Harm's Way" is one of those things that it's going to completely suck to lose, when my solo home life is eclipsed by the advent of the roomies.

I finally have all the X-Files, but I do not have a White Willow. I am both a freak and a geek. And if you understood what the fuck I just said, you are one too.

The end of all things
May 10 2004 - 10:03 a.m.

I fully expected to write my last Survivor post ever last night, and I ended up writing what is essentially a euology for the series nevertheless, but still, there's going to be more. There's a second million-dollar prize to be handed out, picked by the viewers over the next few days.

So here's where you come in, Tederick.commies. This especially applies to everyone who doesn't watch the show, because you don't care one way or the other: Click on this link, and vote for Lex. Do it because you love me. Make up whatever answer you want for the next two pages, but on page 1, go to the bottom of the left-hand column and click the little circle next to LEX.

Do it again tomorrow.

And the next day.

Hell, do it six times today. Do it sixty times. Bombard them. Do you really have anything better to do today than award a million dollars to a man supporting a son with autism, and another son with both epilepsy and an incurable degenerative kidney disease which he inherited from his also-afflicted mother? Oh really? What, then?

Vote for Lex.

Moving on: Last night was a big syrupy mess of a television night, but I also caught the Prisoner of Azkaban preview on ABC last night and guess what? It's actually got me excited. So, problem solved. But boy howdy, Rupert's getting big. This doesn't worry me as much as it does the people under the delusion that the kids don't grow up over the course of the seven books/films, but jesus the boy's getting large. It's nice to see him finally taller than Dan, which is how it was supposed to be all along.

That dog won't hunt
May 9 2004 - 2:38 a.m.

I love it when girls immediately assume that men are sexually incompetent. It makes them look so... "cute."

Gender mishegoss aside, I'm bored. I'm so bored I'm in a bad mood because of it. Maybe I'm just hungry. But no. I think I was bored before I was hungry. I think I'm actually more bored than I've ever been in my whole life.

I know what you're thinking... "how can a guy with a big fuckin' Hellboy and a working lightsabre within two feet of his left hand possibly be bored?" Or maybe you were thinking "go to bed, fucknut." Well, a) good point, but b) I'm still too caffeinated (and hungry) for bed. So eat it, whitey.

Hang on, I'm going to make myself a sandwich and swing the sabre around and maybe knock over Hellboy.

Okay I'm back. (That one was for Matthew.) The sandwich is PB&J, the old standby. Gotta go easy on the milk or I will definitely have to pee about a half an hour after I go to sleep. These are the kinds of insights you get treated to when I'm blogging at quarter to three in the morning cuz I'm just so damned bored. Behold the stream of consciousness. Too bored to edit.

Boredom somewhat abated. Swung the sabre around just as two cars were reaching the end of Browning, and since my lights are off, all they could see was a big green glowing somethin' flailing about in the dark. There was almost an accident. Stupid fucking rubberneckers. Man I wish I had my own all-night talk radio show. Just taking calls, man. "Hey, this is Earl, I'm on the road tonight, Matt. Driving the big rigs. I'm driving a wide circle around Toronto right now. 401 to the DVP, down to the Gardiner and over, up the 427 back to the 401 cuz fuck it why not, am I right buddy?!"

Maybe this is the night I finally post pornography on Tederick.com? But no, I don't do that shit. And I've also recently quit the drinking. I am as chaste as a Christmas tree virgin. Monk-like in my ascetic approach to the material temptations of life (he says with his back to the 312 DVDs and his nose full of Hellboy gun). You will see no boobies here.

All right, I'm in a better mood, but now I'm out of things to say, and the cat has that "let's play some Yahtzee!" look in her eyes so I'm gonna sign off, it's 2:51 in the morning, chilly in T.O., but somewhat more interesting than it was fifteen minutes ago.

Rubber Duckie
May 8 2004 - 8:57 p.m.

Mark has offered me the free use of his vagina, because he is a true friend.

So today almost turned out to be the most unproductive day of my life, but man did it feel good. ROTK good. Napping on couch good. Eating cookies good. I salvaged it all by going to the Cup and doing a bit of work on subculture - just trying to get things back on track after the crash nastiness of the Nicholl draft last week. Still, give it up for on-the-fly writing... there are some transitions and links made in those dirty thirty pages that are better than anything in the whole script. I'm feeling good about that.

I'm not feeling good about two things that should be making me crazy with anticipation, and those things are Episode III and Prisoner of Azkaban. Episode III's anticipation is falling by the wayside in favour of Serenity yearnings, while I think HP3 is suffering from the double curse of a) overexposure and b) being stuck in the worst-looking summer movie slate I've ever seen in my whole damn life. So here's a pic that I found today while trying to psyche myself up:

Check them out being all teen-punk-badass. And here's another:

Which comes right out of my mind's eye for that sequence. And I'm still not psyched up. I'm so not-psyched-up that I don't even mind not having enough money to collect the Lego this time around. Bugger. WHAT WILL BECOME OF MATT...???

The eye of the enemy is moving
May 8 2004 - 12:57 p.m.

I swear I was gonna go to yoga. But then it was raining and the lure of the Ring was so strong...

Yeah. I got my Return of the King DVD this week. I watched it on Thursday and I'm watching it again right now. Maybe I'll watch it every 2 days for the rest of my life, cuz why not? It's like a colonic for the soul. The thunder of hooves on the Pellenor drowns out phone calls from nasssty clients, and there's no putting a price on that.

You know what this means, though... it's getting very nearly time for me to sacrifice a whole 10-hour block of my time and watch all three movies in a row. I'll go theatrical on Fellowship and extended on Towers because that is my way. The distinctions between the films are becoming less and less solid in my mind... it's becoming one big mega-movie, as it was always meant to be.

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't care.
May 7 2004 - 3:49 p.m.

Quarterly Star Trek status report begins now:

Don't worry, complimentary Digital Bits comments notwithstanding, Enterprise still sucks hard, hard ass.

You came and you gave without taking
May 7 2004 - 1:20 p.m.

I want exactly one thing from the Angel finale, and I'm relatively certain I'm not going to get it: I want the show to fade out to a shot of Angel walking off into the night, as "Mandy" rises and overwhelms the soundtrack, right at the song's bridge. That is what I want.

The devil was behind me
May 7 2004 - 10:25 a.m.

So I'm on my way to see The Hebrew Hammer last night and the Devil got on the subway with me. Dude was six four, wearing head-to-toe black, and had horns sticking out of his head. Yeah. Horns. And he gets off the subway as I'm getting off. I played it cool for a while but I have no shame in admitting that after a few moments I just freaked out and ran up the stairs and out of the station. The damn Devil.

Well, actually, more likely an underdog dæmon, since we all know that Britney Spears is the Devil and she is unlikely to have taken six foot four man form for the evening in order to wander aimlessly around the Annex. Or would she???

Meh, I dunno. I got up at five to seven and rode my bike down to Richmond and Spadina to meet Mer and Lise for breakfast, and that perked me right up in spite of having basically not slept at all last night. It's finally starting to feel like spring around here.

One thing I can tell you about The Hebrew Hammer that I won't actually put in my review: 1) Bone Daddy was better, and 2) I am so glad Bone Daddy wasn't 90 minutes long. Actually I guess that's two things. Whaddaya want, it's Friday already, I feel like it's mid-Tuesday, I'm all discombobulated.

I'll be Claire Fordue
May 6 2004 - 10:01 a.m.

So this is it, folks, the big one, the one we've all been waiting for since the last one we've all been waiting for. The Hour Of Television So Huge, You Will See It Even If You're Not At Home. Which works out great for me, cuz I'm going to see The Hebrew Hammer at the Jew-fest and will not be home to watch the final exploits of those crazy, crazy Friends.

When I told my parents about HH, they asked me who I was going with. I said, "With my jews. Of course!"

Series finales that have been awesome:

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• My So-Called Life
• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
• the last ten minutes of Cheers

Series finales that have been ass:

• Seinfeld
• Star Trek: Voyager
• The X-Files
• the first hour and fifty minutes of Cheers

Overall I expect that the Friends slamdango will be pretty decent. The series remains a true rarity in television in that it genuinely has not experienced any major quality dips in the ten years it's been on the air. In fact, I'd say the first season was the weak one, and it's been rock solid since then. That's just hard to do. So unless they pull the cardinal sin and turn the finale into a clip show, the ep oughta get the Matt seal of approval. Which Jennifer Aniston is currently at home sitting by the phone waiting to receive.

The girl in question
May 5 2004 - 10:20 p.m.

BREAKING NEWS: WHEDON TELLS FANS "GET OVER IT!"

Yeah, yeah, Joss, we get the message. We loved her, she's gone, she's not coming back, we should get on with our lives. Fine. But did you have to torch Spike's coat?

Chad brought up a good idea tonight: on May 20th we're both going to write Joss a letter, informing him that we're cancelling our cable subscriptions until the next time he has a show on the air. Just like movies are gonna suck this summer (and probably till Firefly), TV ain't gonna be worth paying for in the fall of '04.

The twenty dollar shell game
May 5 2004 - 5:58 p.m.

I just watched a guy steal twenty dollars from the Silver Snail. He was ahead of me in line. He bought something that rang up to two dollars and one cent, so this thieving son of a bitch hands the cashier a twenty. The cashier is clearly new on the job - I've never seen him before anyway, and he seemed pretty unsure of himself - but he asks the thief if he has a penny, as they always do. The thief hunts around in his pocket, discovers a penny, a toonie, and a fiver, so he gives $2.01 to the cashier. The cashier gives the thief his twenty back. I see the thief slip the twenty into his jacket pocket quick as you please. He holds out his other hand - which still has the five in it - for the receipt. The cashier gives the thief the receipt, and then the thief asks, all casual, if the cashier had given him back his original twenty yet.

The cashier seems to think that he did, but as I said he's unsure of himself. The thief puts on a good show of searching his pants pockets. He draws out a fat wad of five dollar bills and shows the cashier: "Look, see? All fives, no twenties." The cashier reaches into the till and pulls out another twenty to give this now-very-much-a thief.

I intervene. I tell them both that I saw the guy put the twenty in his pocket. He searches his pants again. I tell him it was his jacket pocket. Thief boy starts sweating. He reaches in there - I hear the crinkle of paper - and he pulls out a toenail clipper and says that that's all that was in there. The cashier gives the thief the second twenty, and the thief is outta there.

I should have just reached into the pocket and yanked out the bill, but I figured based on the look of the guy that there was at least a 50/50 chance that a syringe would have been waiting for me in his pocket, so I didn't. Now I'm just pissed off, cuz while it would have been nice in theory to go all Batman on his ass, Logic Brain stepped in once again and sent me down the other road.

I'm really beginning to hate Logic Brain.

So that's how you steal from the Silver Snail. But don't try it when I'm watching you, cuz I'm liable to go all Batman on your ass out of sheer overcompensation.

The Fifth Obstruction
May 5 2004 - 10:56 a.m.

On Sunday we obstructed Brandy. Since Brandy ain't exactly the most prolific amongst our number, we considered this more of an "instruction" than an "obstruction," i.e. "just make a movie already." We are intending to ply the same technique to an even greater extent next month, with Obstruct-o-Mer.

But in the meantime, Obstruct-o-dy went thuswise:

See how easy? For a complete history of this Obstruct-o-madness, check out www.forp.org, which I actually update with this information but nobody ever visits. Yes, it is in dire need of a better design.

One of the pieces we watched in preparing for the obstruction was a music video Brandy did for "Cry Little Sister," the theme song from The Lost Boys. That really took me back. I haven't seen that flick in fifteen years or thereabouts, so I borrowed Brandy's DVD and watched it on Sunday night. Now I have a new goal: to convince Joel Schumacher to let me do the sequel, The Lost Girls. The lynchpin? Casting those hey-look-we're-old-now Olsen Twins as the HVOCs (head vampires on campus). Emily Perkins should be in it too, but in the "and" role, maybe as a troubled teen mentor or somesuch. For the lead I'm thinking Michelle Trachtenberg, just cuz she's here in Toronto right now and it would therefore (in my ever-widening fantasy) be easy to convince her to be involved.

So the moral of the story is, if anyone sees Michelle Trachtenberg this month, tell her I need to talk to her.

I gave my garbage can a bath
May 5 2004 - 10:09 a.m.

I am the meaning of "meticulous."

The last Hell
May 4 2004 - 9:46 a.m.

At the beginning of every month, I send the invoices, renew the domains, and update the usage statistics. I call this day Hell. And guess what? I just had my last one! Hell is officially behind me.

How's everybody doing? I have an enormous backlog of stuff to mention but no particular desire to go into any great detail, so I'll just say that I bought the big Hellboy. That pretty much sums it up. He's so big, he doesn't really fit on my desk, so his gun is kinda shoved up my nose as I'm typing this. He makes my new 12" Spike look like a wee little puppet man.

Oh, and check out Serenity Rose if you're into goth witch comedy. I didn't know I was, until I was laughing my ass off reading Issue #3.

My penis is named Bartholomew the Enthusiastic Trouser Snake, largely thanks to Brandy. Joss Whedon's penis, on the other hand, is named Albatross the Ultrasonic Weapon of Mass Destruction, so once again, I am envious of him.

I got my Nicholl Fellowship application in on time on Friday, and my taxes filed on time as well, both of which were rather notable in that they occured under severe time pressure and yet went off pretty much without a hitch. This is good news. The bad news is that Rogers and the TTC have fucked me over so badly in the past four days that I will, when rich enough, have to buy both companies and then fire every single employee without severence, benefits or pensions, because they all deserve it.

The NT posse met up in Goo-loph on Friday night, just to see each other and also to informally commemorate Liz and Ron's engagement. The wedding is in July. Don't tell anyone, but I'm going to ask Mark to be my date. He's ever so lanky and vegan, he's just dreamy! And girls, traditionally, have to be either congenitally insane or statutorily illegal to want to have anything to do with me, so the dating-your-male-cousin-even-though-you're-not-gay thing works out better and better by the day. If it was good enough for my prom, it's good enough for the wedding, consornit.

Rebecca Wood is a damned hippie. Spread it.

A few things about Woogie
May 3 2004 - 12:11 a.m.

Let me tell you a few things about Woogie.

Towards the end, Woogie was not in good shape. The tumour in his cheek that grew over Christmas had receded, but the left side of his face was literally dissolving away. In spite of all of this, he remained the single sweetest cat in the whole wide world. Pick him up, and he was happy as a clam, purring away like a buzzsaw. He had the softest fur of any animal I have ever met in my entire life, so much so that whole gangs of veterinary staff would often flock to him at his checkups just to feel it for themselves. And he was very enamoured of all of us. He loved people. He trusted his family implicitly, even when they were dunking him in soapy water or driving him to the vet.

A few years ago when I was still living at 108, I would invariably be the last person to bed at night, meaning that I would end up being responsible for putting Woogie to bed in the basement for the evening. He spent his nights in the basement for most of his life, because he was a loud, ornery, insistent son of a bitch and could wake the whole household at dawn in his attempts to get to his breakfast if he were not safely squared away downstairs. For years, he would race me to the top of the basement stairs every time I put him down there. For a while this bothered me because I thought I must have been seriously messing up his mojo (no pun intended) for him to want out that badly, but on the occasions that he did beat me to the top of the stairs, he would just sit there waiting for me to show up, panting and out of breath. It was all a game to him.

Woogie's breakfast was only the first of his many daily devotions to his single favourite thing in the whole wide world: eating. To get between Woogie and his food could be a dangerous game. In his later years he developed a fondness for Kraft Dinner so fanatical that he could literally not be stopped from eating off my plate: he would keep coming and coming, climbing tables, chairs, couches, and stuff his face into the food with a disgruntled bark. As he was scarfing down mouthfuls of the stuff, he would occasionally talk with his mouth full, probably saying something along the lines of "Oh yeah, that's the stuff."

Woogie had a number of irrational fears. There were a couple of years when he was afraid of napkins. When he was 17 or 18 he fell off the couch and landed his forepaw in a cup of hot tea; following that, he was afraid of tea. In spite of all this, he was never afraid to stick up for himself with the neighbourhood cats, which culminated in the event last year when - at the age of 20, mind you - he worked out his inner Yoda, and attacked two cats a quarter of his age who had cornered Mojo. When the fight was over, he picked up his cane and hobbled away as though he hadn't been kicking serious ass, only a moment before.

Woogie was hit by a car when he was around two years old, and this severely messed up his back. In spite of this, he lived to be 21 years old. For a while now I've suspected that death simply would not come for this cat; the reaper got scared away during the car accident, and was not coming back. Every time a vet told us that Woogie's days were numbered, he'd just keep on going. This past Christmas, we got the worst prognosis in a long list of them, when the vet told us that he would not last more than a few days, but he proved them wrong yet again. Adam put the best capper on it on Saturday, as we were pulling into the parking lot at the vet's: "Wouldn't it be funny if we were hit by a car right now and we were all killed but Woogie survived?"

"Woogie" was not his original name; when we got him, he was named Tiger. This begat "Shny" which begat "J. Woogles Shny Brown," which then contracted simply to "Woogie." Among the many other nicknames visited upon Woogie in his lifetime, there were: Wooger, Booger, Boogie, Jumper, Shmoo Baloo, Smelly Belly (may be the literal translation of "Shmoo Baloo"), Bumhead, Stinky, Murray, The Bagel, Oldie McGee, Monsier LeBelly, MacDuff, Crazybelly, Mr. Boo, Mr. Belly, Mr. Pee Pee, Stinky Pete, Thumper, Belly Cat, His Royal Fatness, His Royal Cuteness, Shniggely, Jabba the Cute, Black Lips, Mow-roooooooooooo, Meng-yaaaaaaaaaaaaang, Poopmaker, Shmoogles, Shnoogles, Boogles McShny, Mr. Magoo, Lt. Col. John Woogie, Kato, Gee, Old Gee, Crazy Old Gee, Farty, Zitty Kitty, Flabby Tabby, ManMan, Woogie's Twin Brother Bloogie, and PissMaster Prime.

That's a few things about Woogie.

Woogie
May 1 2004 - 3:00 p.m.

Woogie
1983 - 2004

The Deeper Well