My brother’s fired up his very own blog over on t’other side of the ocean. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for The Plummet Onions.

(the silly boy hasn’t yet published the link to this site feed.)

This is a t-shirt I wore as a kid. I was obsessed with Rick Springfield. Well, not with him, with his music. Seriously. 

From Still Memory: a 360 degree aerial view of Toronto.

I love how, in the shot of the bank towers, you can see them replacing the BMO logo on the south side of First Canadian Place. The logo on the west side (which you can see in the picture) has been replaced, but looking south out my window right now I can see that the old north-facing logo still hasn’t been done.

From The Onion: Where Are You Now, When We Need You Most, Rage Against The Machine?

I spotted this on chromewaves. I like doing these things. Whee.

My answers:

First Record Bought: Rock ’83 (Technically my mother bought it, but it was at my request. The first tape I ever “owned” was either Freezeframe by the J. Geils Band or Abracadabra by Steve Miller. I would’ve been 6 or so)

First Concert: The Cult. Sonic Temple tour, at the Moncton Coliseum. Bonham opened.

Favourite Music Movie: Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Tribute concert. Highlights: Johnny Winter, Sinead, The Clancy Brothers

Favourite Music Book: Heavier Than Heaven, Charles Cross

Favourite Songwriter: Bob Dylan. Or Bob Mould. Or Johnny Cash. Or…frig.

Favourite Producer: Can’t say

Favourite Record Label: Matador

Favourite Magazine: Eye

Favourite Bassist: either Georg Holm (Sigur Ros) or Michael James (Explosions In The Sky). I saw Holm play Salka live by striking a drumstick against the strings. James, on the other hand, laid his bass on the stage and beat the crap out of it with a tambourine.

Favourite Album Cover: Blink 182, Enema Of The State. Hey, it’s Janine. There are few contests she wouldn’t win.

Favourite Teen Idol: I admit to a slight and vaguely illegal crush on Lindsay Lohan

Artist Who Broke Your Heart: Jeff Buckley. For the longest time I’d never heard of him, then I discover him, then I find out he’s already dead.

Artist You Will Always Believe In: Matthew Good, though god knows why. Really, he’s sucked for years now but I still hold out hope that he’ll reclaim his balls one day.

Singer Who Makes Your Skin Crawl: Scott Stapp, Creed

Singer Who Makes You Swoon: Neko Case

Favourite Sound: Blues, played on the slide guitar

Album You Will Always Defend: Rush, 2112. Any album that can paraphrase an entire Ayn Rand novella to music…

Album You Own That No One Else Does: A Million Evil Pennies. I used to work with the singer. See also: Jester’s Destiny and Non-Sufficient Funds.

Classic Album You Own but Don’t Like: Simon & Garfunkel, Greatest Hits

Artist You’re Supposed to Like but Don’t: The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, The Beatles (I like them, just not as much as I think I’m supposed to)

Song You Can’t Stand by an Artist You Like: Black Girlfriend by Porno For Pyros

Band That Should Break Up: Red Hot Chili Peppers

Band That Should Re-form: Sugar. I’d give anything to hear another album like Copper Blue.

Guilty Pleasure: A Very Special Christmas 3

Favourite Music DVD: The Last Waltz

Concert You Wish You’d Seen: Nirvana…nah,too obvious. Pumpkins, circa 1994.

Dream Collaboration: Bob Mould & Frank Black. They could call themselves the legendary bald men. Of course, Bob would have to revert to his Workbook-era stylings, but just imagine it! Alternatively, I’d like to hear Ben Harper do some old folk songs with The Be Good Tanyas…maybe cover a Johnny Cash song.

From the Star: Stewart gets serious, why won’t reporters?
U.S. journalists keep kid gloves on
ANTONIA ZERBISIAS

Do not adjust your set: U.S. TV journalists are finally asking politicians the tough questions they should have been posing in the run-up to the attack on Iraq.

Trouble is, more often than not, they’re asking those questions of Democrats.

For example, two Sundays ago, which should have been a good press day for the John Kerry-John Edwards team on a post-convention high, along came another terror alert. That afternoon former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean told CNN that he was “concerned that every time something happens that’s not good for President Bush, he plays this trump card, which is terrorism.”

The next morning, there was CNN’s Bill Hemmer hammering John Kerry, demanding to know if he was “distancing” himself from Dean’s remark.

In fairness, there has been some harder questioning of Republicans lately but it’s tough to shake the sensation that it isn’t coming so much from the media per se but from Democrats who, after nearly three years of cowed silence, are at last criticizing the administration.

Meanwhile, newscasters act as stenographers, as if publishing what each side says — or at least edited bits of what they say — serves the public, let alone the truth. Since when is journalism tape recording?

This is why, on the day after the Democrat National Convention ended, I was screaming at CNN and MSNBC as they ran uninterrupted live coverage of President George W. Bush’s speech in Missouri, where he chanted his meaningless new mantra, “Results Matter!”

“When it comes to improving our economy and creating new jobs, results matter!” he cried, to enthusiastic applause. “When it comes to better securing our homeland and fighting the forces of terror, results matter! (More applause.) And when it comes to choosing a President, results matter! (Still more applause.)”

Uh, what results? The slowing economy and net loss of jobs? The renewed terror alerts? How Osama bin Laden, whom Bush once wanted “dead or alive,” is still out there? There was no such deconstruction of his speech on either of the news channels.

For that, you had to turn to the The Daily Show With John Stewart, which provides more incisive non-partisan political analysis than anything else on TV.

The half-hour, which airs Monday to Thursday at 11 p.m. on the Comedy Network and at midnight on CTV, is seen by some 300,000 Canadians each week, and is the top-rated talk show in the Toronto-Hamilton market.

If it airs past your bedtime and you’re VCR-challenged, you can go to http://www.comedycentral.com and download video highlights, such as Stewart’s recent interview with CNN’s Wolf Blizter who admits that the media, “should have been more skeptical” about what was coming out of the White House press office the past few years.

Nice that Blitzer did a half-hearted mea culpa — but he’s still firing rubber bullets. His Sunday interview with national security adviser Condoleeza Rice let her dance around questions about the validity of the latest terror alert and the unbelievably stupid undermining of the “war on terror” caused by the outing of a double agent working inside Al Qaeda.

The Bush administration continues to massacre the truth with almost no contradiction from the media. Last week, there was Vice-President Dick Cheney, lying again, in a speech in Minnesota, where he repeated the popular Republican refrain of how Kerry and Edwards are the number one and four “most liberal” members of the Senate.

It’s a line that the right has been using to beat up the Kerry-Edwards ticket for weeks — but never had I seen it explained or sourced by anybody on TV. Not, at least, until last Tuesday’s Daily Show.

Stewart interviewed the too-slick-for-his-own-good Texan congressman Henry Bonilla, who worked on the Republican’s truth squad during the convention. It was his job to counter the Democrat spin.

Fair enough. But not fair when it’s a load of bull re-heated and served up by Big Media. Those who watched the convention coverage picked up the stink.

Stewart, on the other hand, did not allow Bonilla off the hook. He kept jabbing until Bonilla looked like an obfuscating fool. The best moment came when Bonilla implied that all kinds of objective groups were involved in compiling the rankings.

“You have conservative groups on our side, there are business groups, there are people who track tax bills and spending bills and things like that, trial lawyers track us, unions, and all of these groups are kind of the, ah, understood authorities,” he said.

Replied Stewart: “You know who seems to be the only people not tracking you? The American public. We’re the only ones!”

But then, if journalistic watchdogs aren’t sniffing out the truth, who will do the tracking for the public?

This morning T-Bone and I were leaving Tim Horton’s (I needed a muffin in the worst way) when, coming the other way down the street, is this alarming-looking woman and her twinkie boyfriend. I say “alarming-looking” because she was wobbling on platform shoes, seeking stability from wobbly & twiggish legs, peering through so much makeup that she resembled the antique dolls my mother once played with and fighting the wind resistance her hair was putting up. But what caught T-Bone’s eye at first were the tits. Barely encased in the zip-up shirt she wore, they caught the eye of every sighted person in the immediate area. Truly, if the Hood had sported bow guns such as these the Bismarck would never have sunk her. I was a little surprised that T-Bone saw them before I did, but being at eye-level she had an advantage. I barely got a look at them — again, surprising; I normally actively search these items out — but I couldn’t stop looking at the technicolor car wreck of a face that she wore.

Her twinkie boyfriend was showing her off like a prize he’d won at the fair (wouldn’t it be delicious irony if he won her by popping balloons?), but he wasn’t much classier…I’m guessing he does his shopping at “Wifebeaters & Bling R Us”.

So, we would’ve had a giggle (T-Bone said, “Oh yeah, those are real” as we walked toward them) and not thought much of it, but for the fact that at lunch, in line at Green Mango, there they stood…ol’ Bling & Bow Guns themselves. He barked orders at the servers, she squeaked hers. Every person in the place stared alternately at her plunging cleavage and her Vulcan Mask Of Makeup ™…everyone except the servers that is. They’re used to strippers from the Brass Rail coming in each night for dinner. I can only assume this young lady was headed there herself for the 2:00 shift. Remind me not to go for the lunch buffet anytime soon.

Dammit, why can’t we see Salma Hayek coming out of Tim Horton’s!?!?

We watched 3 movies last weekend. We’re trying to catch up on the Hollywood releases before the TIFF starts.

• The Manchurian Candidate(imdb | rotten tomatoes | metacritic) was excellent. Really, really, really good. First of all, I don’t think Liev Schreiber or Meryl Streep could be anything less than amazing even if they worked at it. Secondly, Denzel was better than I thought he’d be; he gets on my nerves sometimes, but he was good in this. And the way Demme layered in the news reports, seeping into the foreground through the ears while the eyes focused on Denzel’s seemingly paranoid delusions, or Streep’s evil fucking grin. The movie managed to quietly bloody both Bush and Kerry. Tremendous. I need to see the original, just for comparison. Go see it. Now.
• Collateral (imdb | rotten tomatoes | metacritic) was almost as good. I’m a Michael Mann fan, so there was no way I’d miss this. And who’d have thunk it? Jamie Foxx impressed me! Tom Cruise surprised me! I actually found Jada Pinkett-Smith hot! Mark Ruffalo wasn’t in it enough! OK, so that’s a criticism, but I can’t have everything my way, can I? No. So…the conversation between Tom & Jamie was great, the little field trips they took were equally snappy. Maybe it was the Stockholm Syndrome talking, but they seemed so close, connected at times. Go see it. Now.
• Evil Dead (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was…uhhhh…a classic, I guess. Like any movie made in 1982 that’s dubbed a “classic”, it seems ridiculous today. But I can at least appreciate how scary it must’ve been for people 22 years ago. Or maybe it was just as campy back then…in which case it was genius. Go rent it. Later tonight.

My god, this is brilliant. People are now offering up classic novels — Ulysses, for example — which can be downloaded, a page or chapter at a time, with an RSS reader. From Lockergnome:.

Ever feel like you just don’t have the time to read, anymore? And isn’t the desire to recapture some of that time one of the reasons you find RSS so helpful? Like chocolate and peanut butter, perhaps literature and RSS were meant to commingle as two great tastes that taste great together! Maybe you never got around to reading Ulysses by James Joyce because it seemed like an insurmountable summit (or because you think Joyce was a pompous windbag, but that’s neither here nor there)? Perhaps you’ve seen the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland, but never immersed yourself in the original, magical works of Lewis Carroll that inspired it? Well, at a page a day, why not?

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” — George Bush, 5 Aug 2004