…let’s remember what’s really important.
[via Bruce MacKinnon at the Halifax Chronicle Herald]
Author: Dan Dickinson
Bookmark me, kids, I'm a reference!
I’ve noticed incoming traffic on my blog from Wikipedia, of all places. This blog post from 4½ years ago is referenced in the English Wikipedia entry for ‘Movie theater’. Presumably they’re linking to me because, scofflaw that I am, I included the full content of the now-archived Globe and Mail article in my post.
Hey, if I’m the presumptive authority on the death of cheap Tuesday, then I’m ready to lead. Can someone grab their general a Tribute magazine on the way in please? Thanks.
.:.
In other news, this is the funniest thing I saw all day. Courtesy of John Moltz, by way of Joey DeVilla.
Musical inbox
Here’s what’s on deck for me right now:
- bonnie prince billy . lie down in the light
- bowerbirds . hymn for a dark horse
- calm blue sea . the calm blue sea
- cold war kids . loyalty to loyalty
- damien jurado . caught in the trees
- dears . missiles
- deerhunter . microcastle
- eels . electro-shock blues
- fembots . calling out
- frightened rabbit . sing the greys
- spiritualized . songs in a & e
- tallest man on earth . shallow graves
- new year . the new year
- thievery corporation . radio retaliation
- tindersticks . the hungry saw
- walkmen . you & me
Now…to find the time to listen to them.
Things I've learned in the past 24 hours
- I’m getting sick. Not enough to make me feel like I need to stay in bed, but enough to drain me of all energy and motivation to, you know, move.
- The Rob Zombie remake of Halloween (imdb | rotten tomatoes) started off better than I expected, in that it gave us a Michael Myers preview, but the remake part was just standard slasher fare. The only thing I liked better about it than the original was that Myers moved like a normal guy…fast sometimes, normal speed the rest of the time, instead of at a slow zombie pace.
- Sometimes our cats will sleep quietly through the night. Other times they will stage a Bob Fosse revival on our bed at 3AM. Last night was the latter.
- We need a new coffee table and over-sized (but not too over-sized) chair, but aren’t having much luck finding them. Lo and behold, I read this in Thursday’s issue of Now, and figure we should give it a try.
- Even when the Canadiens are down 4-1 going into the third period, I should still finish watching the game, especially when it’s against a soft team like the Islanders. The Habs scored 4 goals in the third period and won. They’re playing .850 hockey so far this season, the best of any team in the NHL.
- The Raptors look pretty good, having won their third in a row to remain perfect in this young season. Bosh looks better with O’Neal there to take the pressure off, Bargnani looks better coming off the bench than he does starting, Calderon looks better without the T.J. Ford of Damocles hanging over his head, and Kapono just looks better. But the defense is what seemed different last night…not all the time, but a lot of the time. Players like Michael Redd and Richard Jefferson have carved through the Raptors like butter in recent years, but last night, the Raps seemed to challenge more. Anyway, we’ll see how they fare against real competition like the Celtics or Lakers.
- John McCain isn’t funny.
I can't let it go
A few weeks ago I came to the realization that I couldn’t bear not returning to the Rockies next year. We have some unfinished business to attend to.
Weather and injuries kept us from hiking to Lake MacArthur last year, and I’d also like to do the Opabin Plateau since we’re going back to Lake O’Hara. There’s another spot near Field I’d like to see, and I’d never turn down a chance to stay at Cathedral Mountain Lodge or eat at Truffle Pigs. We really want to drive back up the Icefields Parkway and visit Jasper again, and have always regretted not hiking Wilcox Pass. We even regretted not getting to stop at Crazyweed on our last trip through Canmore. We even plan to tack a day on each end of the trip in Calgary and Edmonton so we can visit friends there…that part usually gets skipped in favour of mountains.
It’s not that there aren’t other places we’d like to see. There’re plenty. But I feel like we left a lot on the ground in the Rockies, and Lake MacArthur is becoming my white whale. I want to go back now, as a matter of fact, but I’ll just have to wait until next year. Then I can rest easy.
Misery loves company
There’s been a lot of talk lately about Toronto getting a second NHL team. Many have weighed in, both pro and con. Sure, the market could support it, but it sounds more like the kind of fantastic speculation that Toronto fans and sports writers engage in when the Leafs aren’t worth watching. So, daily.
I, for one, support it based on curiosity alone. It might help to solve the mystery, or at least dispel some myths, about the Leafs fanatical fan base. Lots of sports analysts have asked whether Toronto fans love the Leafs or love hockey. I say it’s neither. First, Torontonians seem to hate the Leafs as much as love them. Second, I don’t think a strong case could be made for them simply loving hockey, or they’d have stopped watching during the Ballard years when the product on the ice barely resembled the sport. No, I’d suggest that Torontonians are infatuated with the Leafs, but infatuations are fleeting. If a second team appeared with a legitimate shot at the Stanley Cup, how many Leafs fans would jump ship? I suspect more than in other hockey-crazy markets who’ve enjoyed success in recent decades like Detroit or even Montreal, even though Leafs fans typically refer to themselves as “better” fans than any others.
Anyway, I think Gary Bettman would rather give Bob Goodenow a hot oil massage than allow another Toronto team, and Hamilton might well lose their collective shit and blow up the Kings Highway if their city is passed over for expansion in favour of Leafs II, so I guess my social experiment will have to wait.
"You Are In Control — "FULL AUTO ROCK & ROLL"
According to this AP story, a young boy accidentally killed himself yesterday at a gun show in Massachusetts yesterday.
With an instructor watching, an 8-year-old boy at a gun fair aimed an Uzi at a pumpkin and pulled the trigger as his dad reached for a camera.
It was his first time shooting a fully automatic machine gun, and the recoil of the weapon was too much for him. He lost control and fatally shot himself in the head.
So I have a couple of questions:
- What kind of father takes his 8-year-old son to a gun show?
- Retard father aside, what idiot hands a loaded Uzi to an 8-year-old?
- Why do gun shows even exist?
I feel bad for any father who sees his son die like that, and I know this sounds harsh, but deep down he must know that it’s his fault.
Honestly, I don't know who's more pissed
Nellie because they’re remaking Footloose with Zak Efron in the lead, or me because Zeppelin may tour sans Robert Plant.
Actually, I do know who’s more pissed: Nellie, because she knows her nightmare scenario is more likely. I know that Zep fans would never stand for a tour without Robert Plant, whereas the average movie studio head would have no trouble breaking the heart of an entire generation of girls and gay men if it meant stealing a single box office weekend.
British + economist + financial crisis = funny! No, really!
This post in the Economist’s blog today made me smile. For the record, I rarely smile at The Economist, especially of late, but today the sarcasm would be dripping if it weren’t so devastatingly dry.
The latter, notably, published a book in 2004 called Bullish On Bush: How George Bush’s Ownership Society Will Make America Stronger. As best I can tell, it was not written as parody.
Zing! Then later:
I have to tip my hat to Mr Laffer. I’m not sure I could author something this wonderfully, artistically wrong, were I to labour at the effort for months. Bravo.
No, no. Bravo to you, sir.
"This is Ground Zero. This is my site."
We watched I Am Legend (imdb | rotten tomatoes) yesterday. It was a little better than I was expecting. [WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD]
New York looked great: the overgrowth, the isolation, the decay…it all looked amazing. The animation, though, especially on the infected…ugh. Bad. Like, took-you-out-of-the-moment bad. So that was unfortunate.
Oh, and any movie that puts an adorable animal in jeopardy for long periods of time will make me extremely tense, and if/when that animal eventually dies, I will get sad and pouty and kind of want the main character to die, just to make it fair. So bravo, writers…you’ve kicked off a depression among my wife and I not seen since we watched Sharkwater two weeks ago.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 