Just got back from Word On The Street with Stanzi. Spent about an hour there, walking around, picking up magazines (Taddle Creek and Saturday Night). We saw Jack Layton and Olivia Chow at the Eye booth.
I’m glad it’s at Queen’s Park now. There’s so much more space; last year on Queen Street it was a titanic struggle just to get 10 feet down the street.
Last night, after months of anticipation (my brother told me about the movie almost a year ago) I finally got to see Shaun Of The Dead (imdb | rotten tomatoes). My expectations were high, but justified; the movie was hilarious, scary enough in bits to make the crowd jump, almost like a date movie in parts, socially relevant and to top it all off had my girlfriend in it. What more could I want? The day Shaun available on DVD I’m plunking down my money. This is one I could watch many, many times.
To prep, we rented a few classic zombie movies before hand: Night Of The Living Dead and Dawn Of The Dead (the original) just so that we’d catch a few of the in-jokes contained in Shaun (“We’re coming to get you Barbara!!”). Both started off kind of slow but got better; I loved how Dawn was more a satirical poke at us than a zombie movie; the zombies were hardly scary at all, just lumbering around trying to negotiate escalators and simple doors. I wish they’d been able to keep that same satire in the remake.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club‘s “Spread Your Love” + Goldfrapp‘s “Strict Machine” = this.
I’m proud of my home province. Yesterday Nova Scotia quietly legalized same-sex marriage. Let the gnashing of conservative teeth in the Chronically Horrid begin.
Finally, progress. They’ve begun construction on our condo building.
A CD arrived in the mail last night. It was Badlands: A Tribute To Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. As Nebraska is one of my favourite discs I downloaded it, gave it a listen and decided to buy it. A few of the songs are throwaways, but it has some standouts:
“State Trooper” and “My Father’s House” are fairly faithful recreations of how Springsteen recorded them. “Nebraska” is slower and, somehow, even starker (pardon the pun) than the original. But what really haunts me is Son Volt‘s version of “Open All Night”. It’s strung out like a honky-tonk ballad, and when it’s playing I have to stop whatever I’m doing and just listen.
So, something weird happened yesterday. Alice Wu — writer and director of Saving Face (which I wrote about here, here and here) — left a comment on my blog. At least, he/she claimed to be Alice Wu, but I have no reason to think that someone would pretend to be a writer/director that few people have heard of (sorry Alice!). You can read her comments here.
Does this mean that real people are reading my blog? Actual, creative, intelligent people I don’t know?
Nah.
From Soulshine: Ben Harper Teams Up With The Blind Boys
Folk-rock artist Ben Harper and his band the Innocent Criminals are back with a new album, which they created along with the Blind Boys of Alabama. The record is called ‘There Will Be a Light’ and houses 11 collaborative tracks by the two groups. The majority of the songs on the album were written by Harper, with a few gospel standards thrown in. ‘There Will Be a Light’ is released today (September 21st) on Virgin records.
The recording of ‘There Will Be a Light’ was finished in just two sessions, with both Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama getting equal face time. The bluesy gospel sound of the new record is sure to satisfy fans of both Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama, a more traditional sounding group.
The Blind Boys of Alabama have existed in some form since 1939, so it’s no wonder that the album sounds as if it’s a true return to music’s roots. Check out a video of the recording of ‘There Will Be a Light’ at http://www.benharper.net.
Pickup basketball starts again tonight. How happy am I? PC, Pack, T-Bone…I’m comin’ for ya!!! [insert emphatic Hulkster-style shirt-ripping here]
Truly, the world has gone mad. Thank you Tom Ridge. Thanks ever so.
From SecurityPipeline: Bookmark Gets Teacher Booked
TAMPA – (AP) — Federal officials say a schoolteacher charged with carrying a concealed weapon — her weighted bookmark — into Tampa International Airport may soon be cleared.
Kathryn Harrington, 52, of Laurel, Md., was flying home from vacation Aug. 17 when airport screeners found her bookmark, an 8 ½-inch leather strap with small lead weights at each end.
She had carried it on several flights since the 2001 terrorist attacks, even through Tampa, but screeners had never noticed it, she said.
This time they did, and thought it resembled a weighted weapon that could be used to knock people unconscious. Airport police charged her with carrying a concealed weapon.
“It was a bookmark,” Harrington, a special education teacher, told The St. Petersburg Times. “It’s not a weapon. I could not understand why I was being handcuffed and put into a police car. I cried for hours.”
Harrington, who also is a Sunday school teacher, faced a possible criminal trial, a $10,000 fine and the stigma of being deemed a security risk.
This month, state prosecutors declined to prosecute the case. Still, even without a criminal charge, Harrington faced a federal civil fine of up to $10,000.
A spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration said Thursday that the agency will probably not seek the fine.
“I think at this point we’ve decided not to pursue a civil penalty,” spokeswoman Lauren Stover said. “It will be sometime next week before all the paperwork is processed to drop the case.”
Harrington attorney W.F. “Casey” Ebsary Jr. said he hopes travelers will take the case as a cautionary tale.
“That will not be in my purse ever again when I fly,” Harrington said of her bookmark.
September 18, 2004
By The Associated Press
