Go watch this clip on the Mogwai site. It’s the Iggy Pop interview that inspired their song “Punk Rock” (which you’ll hear during the video).
[tags]mogwai, iggy pop, punk rock[/tags]
Author: Dan Dickinson
The people living in 1304: doomed.
Our patio furniture has arrived. Well, most of it anyway; the the table & benches were delivered this morning, but it’ll take a while to make the cushions.
.:.
While it makes sense that our building has a 13th floor, it’s going to take away a little of my happiness. It always made me laugh a little that people superstitious enough to be upset by a 13th floor would also be dumb enough to not figure out what the 14th floor really was.
If I lived at Cityplace, where there are no 4th, 13th, 14th, 24th or 34th floors, I’d probably laugh myself silly every day.
.:.
There are two types of people in this world: those who find singing animatronic puppets funny and/or charming (past the age of six, anyway) and those who find them a devilish scourge upon the earth. You can probably guess where I stand on the issue. Visits to my local grocery store checkout have become trying as there are whole racks of these things just waiting to tinnily excrete “When I’m 64” or “Roll Out The Barrel” when some kid jostles them.
.:.
Something that got lost in yesterday’s missing post that I feel is worth repeating: last Friday, June 1st, was 10 years to the day since I moved to Toronto. I clearly remember getting off the plane, taking a cab to my apartment at Yonge & Sheppard, being met there by my friend & roommate CBJ and immediately heading downtown to meet friends for brunch at the Movenpick on York Street (which is now a Keg). That seems like…well, 1/3 of my life ago.
[tags]patio furniture, unlucky numbers, movenpick, the keg[/tags]
Best music of 2007
5/12 of the way through the year, anyway.
- arcade fire . neon bible
- besnard lakes . …are the dark horse
- neko case . live from austin, texas
- explosions in the sky . all of a sudden i miss everyone
- kings of leon . because of the times
[tags]best music of 2007, arcade fire, besnard lakes, neko case, explosions in the sky, kings of leon[/tags]
Stoopid WordPress
Gar. I had a long post all written up but WordPress (or possibly my host?) decided to cack and it disappeared. I can’t be bothered to remember it all or write it all again, so here’s the summary version:
- We had dinner last night at Fieramosca with CBGB. That was great.
- I got my hair cut today and ate some gelato. That was great.
- I realized today that I have a paper due next week, and I haven’t even started it. That sucked.
- Darth Vader’s a jackass.
Blargh.
[tags]fieramosca, gelato, darth vader[/tags]
The long road to wellness
Apart from some minor coughing and whatnot, I’m just now getting over my cold. Man. That thing was brutal.
[tags]illness[/tags]
Fire in the sky & day 2 of mesh07
Ummm…what the hell is going on over there? And what’s going on with the moon?
.:.
Today was day 2 of mesh, led off by keynotes Richard Edelman (consensus: kind of boring, but eminently quotable…which is about right since he runs a huge PR firm) and Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist (consensus: half of the people in the room thought this dude was an alien, since he seems to care little for the profit motive, and a lot about the ways his company runs is antithetical to established business doctrine. Me, I wanted to hug him.).
My optional sessions for the afternoon — “New Media – Teaching Old Markets New Tricks”, “Building a Community – How and Why it Matters” and “Is Fake the New Real? Transparency and Trust” — were all okay, but all kind of ran together for me. Good thing I took notes; I can’t remember anything specific about any of them.
Right after the conference finished many of us went to a pub just down the street, which a) was already packed, b) wasn’t expecting us, c) seems disorganized at the best of times and d) had malfunctioning draft taps. As a result I stayed for only one drink, with the eminently delightful Amy Rae who is beyond any doubt the coolest, most interesting, most fantabulous living being ever to inhabit the earth. She’s smarter than you (whoever you are), she can juggle swords and I believe she invented the monkey. She also goes by the name LiquorPig; look her up.
I’m not sure if I’d go again next year. I’m not learning a whole lot of new stuff and, given my introversion, I’m not meeting a lot of new people. What I am getting is a lot of quotes that I can use to persuade my company to get on this bus, so maybe that’s reason enough to keep going. It doesn’t hurt to be re-energized once a year, being surrounded by people who get it.
[tags]mesh07[/tags]
"Coupons…you want coupons, don't you?"
Today was day 1 of the mesh conference here in Toronto. I met up with Colin, cursed the caterers for only having bagels to eat, drank as much water as I could and found a seat before the proceedings got underway.
The first (and best) part of today’s schedule was TechCrunch‘s Mike Arrington. He’s a pretty frank guy, and when he lambasted Ted Murphy from PayPerPost — calling him “the most evil person in the room” — things got fun. He also spoke frankly about how silicone valley is in need of another meltdown, to get all the PR and money-grabbing types out and let the real revolutionaries take over again.
Tom Williams and Austin Hill were also good, giving their perspectives as two guys who got very rich very young, and have devoted their time to effecting social change. Hill talked about an interesting new distributed computing power saving tool; think SETI@home for saving electricity. Check it out at DarkGreenPC.org.
After a sad lunch (strike 2 against the caterers: only vegetarian options were ceasar salad and pasta salad) I saw a very funny panel with Rachel Sklar, Loren Feldman and Cynthia Brumfield about whether or not old media should be scared shitless of new media. The consensus: maybe a little. New media won’t kill old media, but it’ll scare it into reacting.
I also watched panels entitled “Digital Blinders – Are We an Inch Wide and a Mile Deep?” and “The Always-On Generation – What Do Youth Do with the Web?”; the former was more like a university lecture or radio show than panel discussion, while the latter was amusing for how old it made most of the participants feel. A sample snippet:
[panelist] Erica Sum: “How many people in here have been to YTMND?”
[I raise my hand, as do maybe 4 or 5 other people in a room of about 100. Erica then starts talking about how cool it is in a screwy kind of way.]
Confused audience member #1: “Umm, could you maybe describe what that is for people who don’t know?”
Confused audience member #2: “Yeah, like how it’s different than Facebook or MySpace?”
Erica [trying to stifle laughter]: “Oh, it’s not at all.”
You can’t fault the audience members for not knowing what YTMND is, or for thinking it has something to do with social networking, since it’d been the dominant theme of the day. It was just a funny exchange.
Looking forward to tomorrow. Note to self: bring a nutrigrain bar.
.:.
Obviously, if I’m at home writing this, I wasn’t able to attend the free screening of Severance that I won passes to earlier this week. I was feeling too wonky, and have too much to do tonight. As soon as I finish writing this I plan to do an hour or two of work while I watch the hockey game. Dagnabbit…I wanted to see that movie too.
.:.
Things I’ve learned in the last 36 hours: never wear a white dress shirt to the dentist (that pink shit they polish your teeth with sprays) and screens for balcony doors are outrageously expensive (we’ve been quoted >$400 each).
.:.
An instructional video: how to break up with advertisers.
[tags]mesh07, severance, dentist, balcony screen doors, bring the love back[/tags]
Damn you, T-Bone
Why, why would you make me stay out and drink and laugh myself hoarse until 11:00 on a school night? Why?
Luckily, I have a conference tomorrow.
[tags]mesh conference[/tags]
McLovin
It’s a good thing I was super-productive for the early part of this day ’cause around 2:00 I got one badass mofo headache. I assume it’s because of the cold I’m still trying to fight through, but man…it took somethin’ out of me. I managed to do about two more hours of good work, but then it got even worse so I left for home. Now that I have some Advil in me and I can look in the general direction daylight again, I should be able to get some studying and some heavy thinking done tonight.
.:.
I won some tickets today for Severance (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which, according to the TIFF website, is a cross between The Office and Deliverance. I wanted to see it at last year’s festival, but the timing didn’t work out; I guess I’ll still get a sneek preview. Thanks for the tickets, Eye Weekly.
.:.
I cannot wait for August 17th. Why? Because that’s the day Superbad comes out. Watch the trailer. I will watch anything that has Michael Cera and Seth Rogen in it.*
.:.
Also funny: this Dr. Tran clip that my brother sent me. I almost broke my damn elbow falling off my chair. If you have 7 minutes to spare (and are not easily shocked by cartoon violence), watch this one too.
OK, on a serious note…WHY in the Sam Hill has no one told me about Dr. Tran before?
[tags]headache, severance, eye weekly, superbad, michael cera, seth rogen, dr. tran, lonesausage[/tags]
* Except porn, should any exist.
"What is a ghost?"
I finally summoned enough energy today to do some shopping. We had a delicious brunch at Toba, went to UpCountry to buy a new bed and some patio furniture, picked up some groceries and came home to collapse on the couch. This thing is just lingering forever; I’m feeling marginally better each day, but sleep is still difficult, and I still wake up so congested that I have to blow my nose non-stop for half an hour.
Normally, if I felt like this I would never leave home to do a bunch of walking & shopping, but the furniture situation was just going nowhere and we’re tired of living like students. I mean really, who has a futon for their couch? A long time ago we made the decision not to buy furniture until we were in the new place, but now it was time to get on it. Nellie’s mom is coming to visit soon and we need the couch so that the futon can go to the den/guest bedroom.
Next, the final “urgent” purchase: the barbeque.
.:.
Whilst laying on the couch today I watched The Devil’s Backbone (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a Guillermo Del Toro film released before (and related to) Pan’s Labyrinth (which I loved). Though not as good as Pan’s, it’s absolutely worth watching.
[tags]toba, upcountry, devil’s backbone, pan’s labyrinth[/tags]
