Category: Friends

Personally, I think she may have lots of babies in lots of places

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I had a pretty good day. I got a lot done at work this morning (partly because I did a lot of prep work last night), and then at noon our department had a barbecue and team-building thingy outside. Ate a burger, drank some water, found some shade and then took part in the little team competition. I caught and returned a soccer throw-in, identified some flags, figured out the world jumble (the trick: don’t look at it for a few seconds) and kicked a penalty shot (using a winnie-the-pooh ball) past my VP. Alas, my team came in second, but we won some chocolate medals. Score.

I then had coffee (well…frozen icy chocolate beverages) with my friend Amy. She was the first person I met at this company, back in 1997, and after all the different roles and different departments for both of us (including a two-year stint at another company for me and a year of mat leave for her) we’ve ended up working on the same project. She’s like a big sister to me, but she also happens to be a very trusted colleague, so it’s great that we’ve ended up working just a block apart.

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From Yahoo: Britney Spears may have baby in Namibia.

If you care about this story at all, I fucking hate you.

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I am both excited and guilt-ridden about what I am about to do: turn off the computer and just watch a movie. How sad is that?

[tags]team building, britney spears, namibia, protestant work ethic[/tags]

The Auld Spot

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Last night, since Nellie didn’t feel like cooking and I didn’t have the energy to do it either, we decided to head out for a bite to eat. We called CBGB and decided to meet up at The Auld Spot, a pub on the Danforth I’d heard much about and which they’d visited once. Despite being dog-tired, I had a great time there. The food is much better than your typical pub meal. I had some huge, spicy shrimp to start and the fettucine jambalaya for my main; no chicken fingers or club sandwich here.

I dare say we’ll be going back. Perhaps with TimmyD and SWMNBN when they visit; I think  they’d dig it.

[tags]auld spot[/tags]

Sex, gambling and bullshit

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Kinsey (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was yet another “biopic”, that semi-dreaded genre which has been getting a lot of critical acclaim the past few years, but this one was a little better than most in that they focused on Kinsey’s passion — the questioning of convention and preconception through science — rather than on the intricate details of his life. Instead of swelling on childhood torment and drawing ham-handed parallels to later triumphs over adversity, the movie touched only briefly on Kinsey’s childhood sickness; his troubled relationship with his father actually became an important plot point as opposed to a clumsy emotional suckerpunch.

Given that slightly differentiated approach, the interesting subject matter (you’re tempted to think that we’ve come a long way in how we deal with human sexuality, but a quick glance through the news shows otherwise) and how well Liam Neeson, Laura Linney and Peter Saarsgard performed, I enjoyed it. Recommended.

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Last night T-Bone had us (and half a dozen other folks) over for a barbecue and some poker. Since neither Nellie or I had played before we got our asses handed to us, but it was all good fun. Perfect weather for a barbecue too…finally. In fact…we’re heading over to CBGB’s in a little while for some more! GB’s celebrating his birthday by, uh…cooking. Annd I say, all the power to him.

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The marketing textbook is dead. Long live the marketing textbook. Granted, I still have some additional readings to do, but I’m glad to be rid of that monstrosity. If I had to read one more time about what a “hip website” some company had created, I was gonna heave it into the construction site across the street.

[tags]kinsey, barbecue, poker, marketing[/tags]

R.I.P., Connor

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CBGB had some folks over to their place last for night for a housewarming…ironic, since yesterday was an unseasonably cold & windy day. Still, GB fired up the barbeque in style and dashed off more than enough food for all. There were even some thai appetizers that I avoided…wisely, as it turns out; Nellie had one and spent ten minutes fighting off tears. A good time was had, etc.

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I know a few friends who could use the services of LBA (Lip Balm Anonymous). Time for an intervention.

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We watched The Wild Parrots Of Telegraph Hill (imdb | rotten tomatoes) over the weekend after it sat on the PVR for months. It was yet another documentary that deserved to win the Oscar more than March Of The Penguins, but whatever. I figure I must be getting soft in my old age, ’cause the personalities of the parrots and the dedication Mark Bittner showed to them were pretty touching. It sounds like it’ll be a boring movie but it’s not. Highly recommended.

[tags]lip balm, wild parrots of telegraph hill, march of the penguins, documentary[/tags]

In A Soldier's Footsteps

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Our fourth documentary was In A Soldier’s Footsteps (hot docs), the story of a Ugandan refugee who’d been a child soldier in the rebel army (which eventually formed the country’s government). A Danish film crew followed him on his return to Uganda to retrieve his son, and then tried to track him after his sudden disappearance. After that the plot thickens, as they say, and the intrigue builds as in any political thriller. I gave it four out of five on my ballot; through no fault of their own the filmmakers couldn’t really wrap things up or answer many questions for us, but they told a hell of a story.

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Walking down Bloor on our way to the movie we ran into pacman and his lovely wife. Funnily enough, just two seconds before he’d yelled “Dan” (I’m still not sure what that was about…they said something about a nametag). Anyway, it got my attention and I saw them when I looked around, just before they saw me…so I couldn’t figure out why they seemed surprised to see us if they’d just been yelling my name. Yeah, it was probably funnier if you were there.

.:.

[tags]hot docs, uganda, denmark[/tags]

CBGBBQ

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The Star has once again started dumping free newspapers outside my door. They do this a couple of times a year, unprompted. Normally a free newspaper is a good thing, except that I feel compelled to read a newspaper if it’s put in front of me (well…unless it’s a complete shitrag like The Sun) so I end up getting to work late every day. My own fault, I suppose, but dammit, they’re enabling me.

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Carl Bernstein, a guy who knows a thing or two about impeaching presidents, asks in the HuffPo if the president should be impeached. I have a recommendation, but I don’t think I get to vote on this.

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I’ve won tickets from Now Magazine for the second time in as many weeks. This time it’s for The Sentinel, which probably won’t be quite as good as Brick, but hey…it’s free and I was gonna see it anyway, so 3 shy little hipster hoorays for Now.

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This month’s Toronto Life, in addition to humorous letters, contains an article about the Don Valley Parkway. They make the point that further north — near Eglinton or Lawrence — it feels like a big, dead, cold highway, but the further it gets into the downtown core, it paradoxically becomes more and more green…more trees, more grass, better conformity to the landscape. Near the Bayview extension you can see the Don River, trees, fields, and the downtown towers pulling up over the trees. The first time I rode down the DVP with a friend, shortly after moving here, I was blown away as we neared the bottom of the valley at sunset, shocked by how green space I could see (I lived at Yonge & Sheppard, so I wasn’t used to seeing any), and then suddenly we were on the Gardiner and I was looking at the incredible cityscape. I remember it was the first time that I liked looking at Toronto.

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CBGB had us over last night for a barbeque, which was pretty sweet. It’s never a bad thing to have friends who own meat grilling equipment and live within the city limits in quick transit distance. And, of course, are nice enough to invite us over on a whim on a sunny Sunday afternoon for some red wine & red meat. It made us [sigh] look forward to the day when we have our own barbeque.

"Only people who'll remember this is us."

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We just finished watching Gunner Palace (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a documentary about an American field artillery unit who took over Uday Hussein’s old palace in Baghdad. It was a bit uneven and slow at times, but overall a pretty informative slice of (shitty) life for these guys and the Iraqis they deal with. The soldiers have to duck rocks, worry about IEDs and deal with the fact that no one back home will every understand what their time in Iraq was like. The Iraqi people get held at gunpoint, woken up in the middle of the night by soldiers and sent to prisons like Abu Ghraib without much evidence against them.

“I don’t think … anywhere in history has someone killed someone else and something better has come out of it. It’s just … not possible.”

Whatever you think about the war, you have to respect the soldiers for the work they have to do, and feel sorry for them when the situation sometimes pushes them over the line. Gunner Palace was a good look at a bunch of soldiers standing at the edge of it.

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I also watched Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior (imdb | rotten tomatoes) this week. Dopey martial arts movie, but holy smokin’ Joe Kubek, that Tony Jaa is one bad-assed squeaky-voiced mofo. No effects, no digital tricks, no “bullet time”, just a little dude kicking and elbowing and jumping and kneeing his way through a whole raft of baddies, including one creepy voiceboxed chief. If you appreciate martial arts movies for the action and don’t mind the thin plot or dippy dialogue, pick this up.

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The Canadiens all but eliminated the Leafs tonight, winning 6-2 after beating them 5-1 two nights ago. Atlanta lost, so Montreal moves back into the 8th playoff spot. The way things are going, the Montreal-New Jersey game we have tickets for in two weeks could be big indeed.

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Clubbed today: protestors in Minsk, baby seals.

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My old friend from university, Farm Boy (ironic that he got the name, since I grew up on a farm and he did not) visited today. He, his wife, Nellie and I had lunch downtown at the Irish Embassy and then caught up for a bit before they left to have dinner with his brother. They were enamored with the cats; who wouldn’t be?

They're no here

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Ooh, almost forgot: Chromewaves’ Frank noticed that Mogwai will make a stop in Toronto after all. Like him, I think my ears have healed sufficiently since I last saw them. I shall see if M2 is up for it.

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Ever see Ripley’s Game (imdb | rotten tomatoes)? I just watched it this week; don’t even remember how it got onto my Zip list, but I’m glad it did. I liked it very much; Malkovich is better than usual here, and that’s something. I like movies with style; this one has it. It’s subtle, but it’s there.