Author: Dan Dickinson

Us kids know

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Just got back from the Arcade Fire concert at Massey Hall. I’m very tired and I need sleep so this will be brief, but suffice it to say that since AF concerts are legislated under government law to kick ass, we enjoyed ourselves. Point form recap*:

  • I couldn’t take my eyes off Regine. She was completely full of energy tonight, and seemed to be having a blast. The way she was dancing during “Haiti” or strutting around the stage during “Antichrist Television Blues”, she was just magnetic. I watched her far more than I watched Win or anyone else.
  • Chill moments: the end of “No Cars Go”, ‘I don’t want to live in America no more…’, the end of “Haiti” (always so much better live), “Rebellion (Lies)” start to finish and the 2nd encore: “Neighbourhood #1”.
  • I apparently missed the memo, ’cause I wasn’t wearing a hoodie.
  • Massey Hall good: I can walk home in five minutes; Massey Hall bad: the crazy ass seats. No matter how many times I sit in them I will never get used to them. I guess it doesn’t matter; the second AF walked on stage we were on our feet.
  • There were a lot of…umm, older folks at the concert.
  • I have a crush on Sarah Neufeld.
  • The middle of the show dipped a bit, just because the 2nd-tier songs on Neon Bible can’t keep up the intensity of the anthemic songs from Funeral. It was kind of nice, though, to have that texture sandwiched in between all the bombast. I just wish people would resist the urge to clap along to a quiet, lovely song like “Neon Bible”.

Many thanks to my friend BN for miraculously finding us some tickets at (almost) the 11th hour, and to M2 for picking the tickets up and coming along.

Good night.

* “Point Form Recap” would be a great name for a band

[tags]arcade fire, massey hall, sarah neufeld[/tags]

Six of one…

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I don’t get all the hubbub about Scientology. Why is it such a big deal? Why is everyone so freaked out about Tom Cruise or Kirstie Alley or John Travolta being part of this religion? Why would a BBC reporter yell things like “Are you a member of a sinister brainwashing cult?” at Hollywood stars as they walk down a red carpet? Or, more to the point, why wouldn’t he yell it at Christians? Or Jews? Or Muslims, or Hindus, or Buddhists, or anyone else who’s public* about their religious beliefs? Because really, can anyone explain why Scientology should be taken any less seriously than any other cult** that’s currently in vogue? Does anyone give Madonna grief about her designer religion*** as she’s walking down the street?

Obviously, I religion’s silly in general, but I find it particularly baffling that one religious person could look at another and think they’re silly for acting that way.

* really though, in the grand Hollywood scheme of things, the afore-mentioned Scientologists aren’t very public at all. when was the last time you heard someone thank Xenu at an awards show?

** yes, cult; after all, what’s a religion but a cult with some longevity?

*** waitaminnit…is Kaballah even fashionable these days? you never hear about it anymore…

[tags]scientology, religion, kaballah, hollywood[/tags]

Lather. Snort. Repeat.

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My shampoo is tingly. Really, really tingly, almost to the point of burning or poison ivy or something. Anyway, I’m sure it’s meant to be good for my scalp or my hair or both, so I don’t mind the tingliness. However, today, I somehow took breath in just as a big blob of it was running down my face and happened to be just in front of my left nostril, so a bunch of this tingly-ass shampoo shot up my nose.

This, I don’t mind telling you, was not how I planned to spend my nice hot relaxing shower. Now I had to do something, but I also had a bunch more frothing shampoo about to run in to my eyes, so even as my sinuses were disintegrating in the face of this new terror I had to calmly rinse the rest of it from my hair, all while blowing all the air out my nose that I could manage. I wasn’t really thinking about how stupid I must have sounded; instead, all I could think was that maybe I should give baths another try.

Anyway, I didn’t care what the bottle said, I was not going to repeat.

.:.

Last night was the first chance we’ve had in ages to just sit and watch some TV. Actually, to be clear, we didn’t watch TV, but rather watched a few episodes of The Sopranos on the laptop. We’re trying to catch up for the final episode; there’s no way we’ll be able to avoid hearing about the series finale.

.:.

So, we knew it was inevitable that we’d eventually lose some of our view, but we didn’t think it would happen so soon. I suppose those buildings — at the foot of Yonge Street, just west of the Redpath sugar factory — won’t be built for a while, and it’s only a small chunk of our view, but it’s one of the best views we have of the islands. Perhaps, both for the sake of our view and the good of the waterfront, city council will find a way to stop the development and put a park there.

[tags]shampoo, sopranos, toronto condos, yonge street[/tags]

Umm, so…when can I get a 40 exabyte Zen?

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It’s been a beeeeezy day. I was up at 6:30; never really got back to sleep. We got a lot done with the condo today, actually; I cleaned up the den and collapsed a bunch of boxes, and we did even more once Nellie got home. Took a pile of stuff down to our (very small…grrr) storage locker and recycled piles of old cardboard & newspaper. We also set up most of the stereo (no surround speakers yet as we have to buy stands). Somewhere in there Nellie went for brunch and a wine & cheese tasting; I had time to knock off a ton of errands, set up my new Zen, watch a hockey game and a football match (Toronto FC: 3 goals (!) and a win) and get my mother hooked on a web 2.0 geneology site.

.:.

Go watch this. I wouldn’t say it’s the world’s best presentation, but it’s informative.

[tags]moving in, unpacking, zen vision m, geni.com, shift happens[/tags]

"Like Bynes, or Hope."

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The Office is the ballsiest show on American network TV right now. If you watched tonight’s episode you’ll know what I mean when I say Pam’s speech was a great example of that. They could’ve done the easy, obvious thing, which is precisely what most other shows would do. But they didn’t, and it was one of the best single minutes of TV I’ve seen this year.

[tags]the office[/tags]

PeanutAllergy Inc.

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If the Globe and Mail weren’t such dicks about their online content, you could read this interesting article by Russell Smith about the recent spate of anti-religion books, Christopher Hitchens’ (which I talked about here) being the latest. Smith made the point that, even if it’s not dressed up as a cult/religion, slavish devotion is still hard to take. He even comments about how allergies that never used to exist suddenly afflict half the population: his example was half the population of Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood claiming to be allergic to wheat gluten; I’d suggest that the current generation of children all seemingly being allergic to peanuts is another good one.

Update from the comments: Joe dropped this great quote from the recent Lou Dobbs interview with Hitchens: “Religion ends and philosophy begins, just as alchemy ends and chemistry begins and astrology ends, and astronomy begins.”

.:.

Google Analytics has revamped their reporting engine. Holy crap. Magnifique. I’ll never use StatCounter again.

.:.

Walking home from the grocery store tonight we noticed that a bakery is going in on the ground floor. Sweet. Dangerous, but sweet.

[tags]globe and mail, russell smith, christopher hitchens, google analytics, bakery[/tags]

"Life all comes down to a few moments. This is one of them."

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There will be a sequel to Wall Street. This will either be very cool, or just hilariously awful. That movie worked in the 80s for a reason; I don’t know if it can still be pulled off.

.:.

I took my new Zen out of the box last night, fondled it for a minute and then put it back. This weekend, my lovely, I promise. The time will be right. The stars are aligned. Get ready…my 39GB of music is on the way. “It is at this point that I will fill your hard drive to the break of dawn.”

[UPDATE] I just re-read the last paragraph. I sound like Smoove B.

[tags]wall street sequel, nomad zen vision:m[/tags]