I’m sitting in my bedroom, working on my wireless laptop, finishing & submitting my economics assignment. Nellie’s in the den working on the other computer.
I send a message to my gmail account knowing that an alert would pop up on the desktop with the subject line, which reads “Nellie stinks!”
I hit send.
I wait a few seconds.
“OH REALLY!?!!!!???!”
[grin]
What an age we live in.
The best movies* I’ve seen all year:
The best of the rest, in alphabetical order:
* Keeping in mind that I haven’t yet seen The Aristocrats, Be Here to Love Me, The Best of Youth, Breakfast On Pluto, Elizabethtown, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Everything Is Illuminated, Hustle & Flow, King Kong, Lie With Me, Munich, North Country, Proof, Shopgirl, The Squid And The Whale, Thumbsucker, Touch the Sound or Transamerica.
My ten favourite albums of the year:
The best of the rest, in alphabetical order:
There were two other albums that I left off the list, but felt they deserved a mention: Mogwai‘s Government Commisions: BBC Sessions 1996-2003 and the complilation Sunday Nights: The Songs Of Junior Kimbrough.
As I do every year I’m sure I’ll change my mind as I pick up more 2005 music in 2006, but for now…this is it.
We went to see Brokeback Mountain (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night, and $5 says I was the only heterosexual male in the movie theatre. Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal getting in on ponderosa-style? If I were gay/female I’d probably dig it too.
It’s a beautiful story (how did Annie Proulx fit that all into 40 pages? They *must* have added material for the screenplay), the scenery is mindblowing, and the performances — especially by Heath Ledger — were incredible. Don’t believe the hype about how the sex scenes will make you uncomfortable; they’re much tamer than you’d think. In fact, the hetero sex scenes are probably racier (who knew Anne Hathaway — Ms. Princess Diaries — was so hot?) than the Jake-Heath love.
Put it this way: not everyone will like this movie (it’s a talkie character drama…certainly not everyone’s cup of tea), but anyone who avoids it because they’d feel icky about the two male leads making out probably isn’t capable of enjoying everything an intelligent, emotional film has to offer anyway. They should stay home and watch Fear Factor.
Shopping? Done.
Economics assignment? Done.
Hallelujah.
“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.” –Thomas Jefferson
Merry Christmas, everybody!
Ack. Not only did the Canadiens lose last night, but I was finally knocked out of first place in my hockey pool. My guys have just sucked ass lately.
Today was a nice light pre-xmas day. I took my time getting to work, my right ear still ringing from last night’s Rheostatics concert (which I’ll be talking about on radioDan later tonight). I took care of a few things in the office before my team went out for its holiday lunch thingy. Tried out the Bishop & Belcher down the street, in its new transplanted location (that website still points to their old Queen Street home). It’ll be a nice addition to the local pub choices. Anyway, the snow started during lunch and most people fled the office shortly thereafter; the rest of us who didn’t have to worry about driving didn’t stick around long either.
.:.
Speaking of snow it’s really started to come down out there. Supposed to get 15-20 cm by tomorrow morning, all told. It’s times like this I’m glad we don’t have a sidewalk to salt & shovel.
.:.
Once again the magazine situation has gotten out of hand as my time spent reading economics has increased. I have this week’s Eye and Now, two issues of Spin, Esquire, Toronto Life, Playboy and Stuff. These should be the last issues of Spin, Playboy and Stuff as they were gifts from Nellie and I’m not renewing them; I’ve decided to take a stab at reading actual novels in between chapters of textbooks.
I’ve seen the Rheostatics four times now, I think. The most recent trip was two years ago and it wasn’t as good as the first two visits, so I’d planned to avoid the Winter (nee Fall) Nationals this year. However, M2 informed me that Wednesday night was “Whale Music night”, and they planned to play the entire Whale Music album (not the soundtrack) in order. Since that’s one of the best Canadian albums ever made, and my schedule had freed up a bit, I couldn’t resist.
So to the Horseshoe I went, along with Nellie and Stanzi. We met up with M2, H2 and their friend (who I think I’ll call “Backhander”) around 9:30. We sat, had a drink, debated the existence of ligers* and watched the opening act: Great Aunt Ida. Half of the band members were Rheostatics filling in. It was a little dreary, but I kind of liked it. You can check out her stuff at the New Music Canada site.
After nearly an hour of setup and tuning (during which Martin Tielli wore a giant wig that made him look like Brian May) Dave Bidini popped on stage to introduce Paul Quarrington, who wrote Whale Music (the book, not the album). I liked this a lot; it’s not often you get a Governor General award winner out to set some context for the concert you’re about to watch. Quarrington read a few pages from the book and then called the Rheos to the stage. All seven of them.
Seven, you say? Yes, seven. The usual suspects — Bidini, Tielli, Tim Vesely and Michael Phillip-Wojewoda — were there, but they also brought Dave Clark back to play the drums alongside MPW, recruited Ford Pier to play keyboards and, of course, had Lewis Melville on hand to accompany them as he had on the album. Having seven people made the stage pretty crowded. It also made them very fucking loud.
As promised, they played the entire album start to finish. At least, I trust they did; I split after the tenth song (“Shaved Head”) and they still had seven to go. I just don’t like the last third of the disc that much, and I knew that Nellie was sitting at the back (alone, as it turns out; Stanzi managed to stay almost as long as we did, leaving after about four or five songs) so I decided to head out. I easily felt I got my money’s worth. Highlights:
I’m glad M2 found out about Whale Music night and got us tickets. I’d hate to have missed that.
* I told you they exist. Suck it, bitches.
You’ll notice that I turned off the title field. It’s because I hate the title field. Always have.
.:.
Last week I linked to the Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant podcast, and today I finally got around to listening to it. I almost broke the chair from laughing so hard during the monkey news in the first episode. Go download it, it’s half an hour well spent.
.:.
I’ve added two more CDs to my wishlist: Rogue Wave‘s Descended Like Vultures and The Rescue by Explosions In The Sky. I’m still mulling over the new Broken Social Scene, and I decided against Raccoo-oo-oon‘s The Cave Of Spirits (though I do love one or two of the songs.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 
