We watched The Poseidon Adventure (imdb | rotten tomatoes) this weekend, another in the long line of 70s disaster films. It wasn’t terrible, but I wouldn’t call it good either. First of all, child actors should have to pass some kind of…well, screen test before appearing in things like this. Where did they find that kid? I could pull a 12-year-old off the street and he could do better. Anyway, Gene Hackman and Shelley Winters were good but the rest were just way too over the top. The effects, good for ’72, seem a little sad now. I’ll be curious to see how tonight’s TV movie and next year’s feature film remake turn out.

Walk The Line (imdb | rotten tomatoes), on the other hand, was excellent. Joaquin Phoenix did about as good a job playing an icon as you could, and Reese Witherspoon played June Carter as well as she could without really being able to replicate the voice. It was predictably biopic-y, but never veered into shmaltz or fairy tale endings. Go see.

Two things that really struck me while watching it:

1. People 10, 20, 30 years later must’ve just shaken their heads at having the good luck to see Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins all in one show.
2. I miss Johnny Cash.

Henry Porter of The Guardian contrasts his experiences in America with his week in Toronto, and says the US should pay attention to us to see how to act. It’s oversimplified; too bad he didn’t have another thousand words to really get into it.

And all this talk of The Canadian Identity ™…do we really still do that?

The list is light on novels, but heavy on the history.

Kids, meet Pee & Poo. They are easily the weirdest thing I’ve seen all day.

[via]

We started the exam yesterday at 9:00; by 11:00 I’d finished, checked out, caught a cab and walked in my front door. The cats were happy to see me. I was happy to see the couch.

.:.
My computer decided to melt on the same day I returned from a course called, “Using IT.” Who says irony is dead?

I’m watching last night’s ER. It had Parminder Nagra in a paramedic uniform *and* a Serena Williams guest appearance.

Lord have mercy.

There are big fat snowflakes flying by my window as I type this. There were some flakes in the air yesterday but nothing that stuck. This stuff is already starting to cover the courtyard. How depressing.

.:.
A few of us went over to the TV rooms in the bar last night to watch The Office on DVD, but there was a huge crowd of supremely drunken idiots in the bar singing (and I use the term loosely) karaoke so loudly that we had to crank the TV to have any chance at hearing the dialogue. It was painful. I considered shoving a pencil in my ear just to end the torture.

Like I said, some of them were crazy drunk. Like, screaming into the microphone, have to held up by my friend/boyfriend/skeevy-guy-who’s-about-to-take-advantage-of-me drunk. I can’t imagine it’ll be awkward come Monday. Not at all.

.:.
Right. I’m off to the exam. Shouldn’t take me too long, unless I’ve forgotten how to write. Yep, that’s right: we have to *write* the exam, avec pen and paper. No laptops for the IT exam. No irony there.

All set to go for the post-exam cab ride home tomorrow:

• Maria Taylor . “Song Beneath The Song”
• Ben Folds . “Your Redneck Past”
• Troubled Hubble . “What We Do”
• Uncut . “Understanding The New Violence”
• Nada Surf . “Imaginary Friends”
• …Trail Of Dead . “Let It Dive”
• Arcade Fire . “Rebellion (Lies)”

The presentations are over, so all that’s left now is the exam. I don’t have to study much at all, so I think I’m going to do a bit of work, flip through my notes and have a few beers.

The Raptors are now 0-8. Look out ’99 Clippers.

.:.
We finished working tonight before most groups. We stopped working at 10:45; some people seemed to think they’d be there for *quite* a while.

As of this minute we’re 70% done this course. We’re also 30% of the way through the MBA.