Month: August 2007

All the goodness I'll be missing

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I’ve gone through the film festival book and picked out the films I want to see. Of course, I’ll only be able to get tickets to maybe 1 or 2 of them this year, but the rest will go on the list and wait for release dates.

Here they are, all 77:

  • 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days
  • amal
  • atonement
  • battle in seattle
  • before the devil knows you’re dead
  • bill
  • body of war
  • breakfast with scot
  • cassandra’s dream
  • cleaner
  • closing the ring
  • control
  • darfur now
  • death defying acts
  • disengagement
  • eastern promises
  • emotional arithmetic
  • encounters at the end of the world
  • everything to gain: a conversation with jimmy and rosalynn carter
  • frontière(s)
  • fugitive pieces
  • garage
  • honeydripper
  • i’m not there
  • in bloom
  • in the valley of elah
  • into the wild
  • it’s a free world…
  • jar city
  • joy division
  • juno
  • just buried
  • king of california
  • l’ âge des ténèbres
  • l’ ennemi intime
  • lars and the real girl
  • lust, caution
  • man from plains
  • margot at the wedding
  • married life
  • michael clayton
  • my enemy’s enemy
  • new york city serenade
  • nightwatching
  • no country for old men
  • normal
  • nothing is private
  • one hundred nails
  • operation filmmaker
  • paranoid park
  • ploy
  • rails & ties
  • redacted
  • rendition
  • reservation road
  • romulus, my father
  • run, fat boy, run
  • sleuth
  • smiley face
  • starting out in the evening
  • stuck
  • the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford
  • the babysitters
  • the brave one
  • the dictator hunter
  • the home song stories
  • the orphanage
  • the passage
  • the savages
  • the stone angel
  • the time is now: a conversation about darfur
  • the tracey fragments
  • the visitor
  • the world unseen
  • those three
  • weirdsville
  • young people fucking

My schedule limitations and the popularity of some films during the advanced draw should make my choices pretty straightforward.

[tags]tiff07[/tags]

[Braveheart] Freedom!! [/Braveheart]

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The cast came off around noon today. It feels good to have my opposable digit back. Simple things like being able to write and tie my own shoes feel like significant accomplishments. Best of all, there was no nasty odor as some people had predicted there would be. I have, however, scraped several layers of dead skin off my hand. Pretty.

My wrist is still pretty sore, as if I just sprained it yesterday. I don’t need rehab, but I think I’ll keep wrapping it for a while.

.:.

Today, while waiting to see the doctor, I finished The Tipping Point. I liked it a lot; I think I’ll just go straight to Blink next.

[tags]broken wrist, malcolm gladwell, tipping point, blink[/tags]

The waiting game

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Sitting in the fracture clinic waiting room. I’ve been here since 8:45, almost two hours. Last time it was much faster than this, and my CT scan earlier this morning was superfast. I guess I was due for a long hospital wait.

If they just glance at it and tell me I have to leave the cast on, I’m gonna punch somebody leftie-style.

[tags]broken wrist, st. mike’s hospital[/tags]

I want everyone like such as to love me

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By now everyone’s seen the video of Miss South Carolina displaying her dumbassedness to the world. I’ve watched it about a dozen times since Sunday morning and, while it hurts me, it still makes me giggle.

This morning in the Toronto Star Antonia Zerbisias’ column addressed the famous video and ensuing fallout (she even took the time to transcribe the labyrinthine response), and rightly points out that Miss S.C. is now more famous than she could’ve ever become had she won the pageant.

By the time this has run through its full news, blog and late-night comedy cycle, more people will have seen this clip than have watched all the beauty pageants on U.S. TV in the past year. She’ll be a superstar.

What’s more, Upton has already entered the inevitable “redemption” phase of the process, with talk show appearances and high-fives from network TV hosts.

She also points out the stiff competition Miss S.C. faced:

And who was [the winner] again? Oh yeah, Miss Colorado, Hilary Carol Cruz, who was challenged in the question round with a choice between Paris, Nicole and Lindsay.

After professing that none is a role model – only not so grammatically – she went on to say she prefers Paris “because, in the end. She showed that she knew what was right and what was wrong.”

Meanwhile, Miss North Carolina Kaitlin Coble (second runner-up) said something about Canada being “down there.”

I really hope the “down there” comment was a Simpsons reference.

Maybe I’m reading it wrong, but it seemed like AZ’s column was defending Miss S.C. on the grounds that she’s managed to turn embarassment into fame. Certainly, being publicly idiotic in a country whose entertainment industry rewards public idiocy is an easy way to attain temporary celebrity status, and perhaps those who’ve figured this out (hi there, Paris) deserve respect for gaming the system, if not for any real merit. However, to think that Miss S.C. had this all figured out and was gaming the system might be a bit of a stretch.

[tags]miss south carolina, antonia zerbisias[/tags]

Everything be broken

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The recent radio silence is due to a couple of things:

  1. Our den (aka, the BlogCave*) is being painted and my computer is piled in the middle of the room under a tarp. Because of my broken wrist I’m trying to avoid shlepping my laptop home at night, which means I’m forced to use Nellie’s laptop now, and I’m trying not to hog it too much.
  2. The TIFF bible came out yesterday, so I spent most of the night going through to see which films catch my eye, even though I can’t go to any this year. This essentially becomes half of my wishlist for the upcoming few years. After two hours I was only halfway through the book so I have another night’s work ahead of me yet. There’s no rush, really; I’d just much rather read about movies than study.

.:.

It occurred to me this morning that I am not at all prepared for my trip in a couple of weeks. I’m not talking prepared-but-not-up-to-my-usual-clinical-standards. I mean I’m not ready at all. I should get on that.

* note: I don’t really call it that. But I might, starting right now.

[tags]painting, tiff07, trip planning[/tags]

"I wanted you to be present."

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Last night we watched Caché (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a rather unsettling French film. It built tension slowly and steadily, but never plodded. It showed how terror can suddenly bubble up after years and years of a low, quiet simmer. It wasn’t until the end of the film that I realized the two most effective devices: excruciatingly long POV shots and a complete absence of music.

Highly recommended if you have an adult attention span.

.:.

Liiiiink linkity-link-link-link:

* note: I do not have a happy dance.

[tags]caché, alberto gonzales, google transit planner, pogge, onion[/tags]

"Thank you, bank robber!"

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Some entertainers taking part in Buskerfest, just down the street from me. I didn’t have my camera when I walked by them earlier so I shot this when I got home.

.:.

Fatblogging check-in :

  • Original weight: 233
  • Weight last week: 225.5
  • Weight this week: 224.5

I seem to be holding steady at one pound lost per week. At this point I can’t possibly get to 214 by Sep 1 (unless I go on some kind of crazy-ass weight shedding regimen to make a fight weight) but in the two weeks before I go away on course I should be around 220. The tricky part is maintaining weight while on course; we never get to use the gym anymore, and as a (near) vegetarian my meal options aren’t great so I usually end up snacking a lot more.

I really haven’t changed my eating habits too much, but I’ve noticed lately that my brain has retreated from the insanity that got me to 238 last Christmas. For example, I no longer feel the need to eat every piece of chocolate in a 10-metre radius…just some of it. Now, when I’m about to overindulge I usually hear Yoda saying “Control, control, you must learn control!” in the back of my mind. I realize that sounds geeky (and kinda dirty too) but whatever works.

.:.

Watched Inside Man (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night. That was some gooooood movie-watchin’. Just Spike Lee enough to be a Spike Lee joint, but not too over-the-Spike-Lee-top. Good plot, good pacing, and the cast was like an all-star game. Highly recommended, if you haven’t already seen it.

[tags]buskerfest, fatblogging, inside man[/tags]

Like the ghost of Jacob Marley, but with a tail

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This morning, as the fog and haze lifted, all the buildings seemed to be breathing strangely.

.:.

Listen, I’m all for supporting our troops, and I have no problem with a stretch of the 401 being renamed to honor them. But really, can we not come up with something a little less cheesy than Highway Of Heroes? That sounds like a fucking Hallmark movie. Please, Ontario government, I’m begging you: give the highway a name that doesn’t sound like a Valerie Bertinelli vehicle.

.:.

My mother just sent me this email. For context: Stryder is my parents dog (a very big rough collie with a snout like an anteater), Tigger is my cat who died five years (who, for some reason, Stryder always idolized) and my mother is deathly afraid of mice and the like.

“I’m still shuddering. Someone had come for maple and we were talking in the yard when I see Stryder coming with something in his mouth. He drops it at my feet and it is a mouse! Still alive! The humans are trying to get away from him and he keeps bringing the mouse closer, trying to pick it up in his mouth. He must have had memories of his teachings from Tigger on how to catch and torture a mouse! I finally got him to drop it and come in the house. It might be playing ‘possum’ but right now it is lying belly-up. Stryder wants back outdoors but I’ll keep him here until it revives or your father comes to remove it.

I can see Tigger’s spirit watching, ‘That’s my boy!'”

I feel bad for the mouse, but I have to say, that made me smile.

[tags]401 highway, highway of heroes, collie[/tags]

Seul

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Sometimes it’s the ones you weren’t trying to take that you end up liking best. I was taking pictures of some fireworks going off over the Distillery District, et voila.

Seriously, though, I can hardly rely on this kind of serendipity next month. I need to learn to use the friggin’ camera.

.:.

Nellie’s away camping with the girls this weekend, so I have the run of the place. I can’t enjoy it too much, really; whether she’s here or not I’d be stuck in front of the computer all weekend learning about bond duration and Basel II. Still, it’ll be nice to play Mogwai all night and sprawl across the whole bed.

[tags]fireworks, distillery district[/tags]