Category: Uncategorized

More running around

Yesterday was a good day at work; afterwards I went to the Coop Car office on Granville and picked up my ‘fob’ (all the cars have little onboard tracking systems now) so I can rent a truck for Mike to help him finish his move (the alternative being putting the Road Apple on the road temporarily, which involves getting it running first) and then I came home and found Jeff looking porely on the chesterfield.  I stuffed pork chomps, fried mushrooms and onions, chickpea salad and tater tots into him and he perked up somewhat. 

Tonight, the clean underwear runs out, so laundry it is. 

Only a couple of weekends until Conflikt II. Looking forward to it, but I have to rehearse….

Sculpey!!!

Katie and I went on a shopping expedition yesterday, and it was a success!  She liked her new camera (her first picture, of me, was the WORST PICTURE EVER TAKEN OF ME and no, I’m not posting it because it makes me look like I’m drinking beer with a face made out of jello (it was tea, actually, but in a beer stein)) and loves her new hat, which has flowers in the pattern so Dax won’t ‘borrow’ it.  It’s a very nice hat, the kind that Gwen Stefani or one of them other stylin’ broads might wear. And I can hear my ancestors bellow “And it should be, for what you paid for it!”  A day with Katie is always fun.

I also picked up for free a replacement feather for Keith’s hat.  I also went to Opus at Granville Island and picked up Sculpey, a clay gun, acrylic paints in zombie heart colours, and then I made this object!  Yes, it needs painting.  I will paint it sometime today.

zombieheartbackzombieheartfront

If your initial reaction is “Blecch!”  Yay me for the win!!!!

Katie’s art work, for which no pic alas, was a beautiful chess piece (a knight).  She’s going to make a chess set eventually.  I’d like to make a chess set too but I have to figure out how I’m going to do it because there’s kind of a technical challenge involved BEYONDS the fact I haz no skills.  I’d like to thank ScaryClown for letting me know about Sculpey.  Clay guns ARE FUN!  I recommend them for insane amounts of stress relief – there are no fewer than 20 discs for the various shapes (which is how I did those veiny things on my Zombie Heart).

Et alors, Biscotti pour Tom.  C’est mon métier!  Then Keith comes over for lunch and then I’m off to the Lunderhaus.

PS it snowed yesterday.  April is NOT the cruellest month.

Year end round up.

I tried to sit down and write out a list of what I accomplished in 2008 so I could work out what was good and what was bad and what I should be focussing more energy on, and there seem to be two BIG THEMES.

The first one is when I look back on when I was happiest in 2008, and I did have some happy moments, for sure, I was either doing something that would last, or having that evanescent, you had to be there, fun of hanging with friends and not doing much of anything at all except by being present. Like Conflikt I, or Baumfest.  I was so happy at Baumfest I’m sure I glowed in the dark.  I am seriously thinking of organizing a company camping trip this year.  I wish I’d been blogging when I went to my first company camping trip.

I posted Youtube videos, wrote some songs, although I feel like my creativity in the song writing department is stuck in a drawer, gave a homily, worked on forgiveness (with some people), established some boundaries (with some people), continued working on an appropriate quid pro quo with Jeff, quit smoking, reduced my alcohol consumption (although I’m going to keep working on that), took my first stammering steps towards exercising regularly, really started addressing some interpersonal stuff with Keith and Paul, gave about a thousand neckrubs, unjammed the photocopier about 16 times (including removing staples from where they ought not be), shoveled a walkway so people could get to their cars here on my street, paid the fare of a homeless person, fed lots of people, got a new fandom, gave more money to charity than I ever have in one year in my life, including money I will not get back on my taxes, and including supporting other artists and bloggers with cash, went to France, saw Dave in Toronto, went to a Pondfilk, paid tuition for Katie (wee!) with help from folks and ex, went to Conflikt and listened to 30 people sing the Tapioca Song, had my bad manners result in the departure of the worst neighbours evar, and learned some very hard lessons about what a dipshit I can be at times.

So 2009…. Inoculate myself against feuds, make up my mind which church I’m going to go to (Beacon is SO far away, and in this weather it might as well be on Mars, but I scarcely know anybody in the Vancouver church), write more tunes, make sure I spend at least one weeknight exercise, and play live music at least once a month.

Re the blog, more long posts and fewer roundups.  Maybe quit worrying about posting once a day…. thoughts?

58 things I learned from being a movie buff

  1. If you call in a robbery in progress, and the robbers have automatic weapons, and you hang around to watch, you will be LUCKY if you only get what’s coming to you. (44 minutes).
  2. If you are cool, your life has a banging soundtrack.  If you are not, the soundtrack of your life is your neighbour’s dog, Viagra come-ons and shills for feminine protection. (all of them)
  3. You can kill a guy with a carrot, more than once, although you’ll need a new carrot. (Shootemup)
  4. You can kill multiple guys while having sex without making the baby cry or breaking your girl’s concentration (Shootemup).
  5. Princesses are grumpy (all of them).  If she’s not grumpy she’s probably not a princess.
  6. People will do really whacked out things to get home (Wizard of Oz, Eric the Viking, ET).
  7. Horses don’t need food, guns reload themselves, nobody needs to take a dump at an awkward time and somebody’s always got a map.  (all of them)
  8. The obesity epidemic isn’t happening. (all of them)
  9. There are no atheists. Everybody’s always thanking god, seeing a priest or minister, or going to weddings, funerals and christenings. (all of them)
  10. I learned to feel sorry for people who aren’t getting money for the product placements in their kitchens. (pretty much all of them),
  11. The walls pull away so you can get a better shot. (all of them)
  12. Natalie Portman, in addition to being able to act, looks fabulous with her clothes off (Darjeeling Limited).
  13. George Lucas should goddamned well retire. (and I need to prove my point because???)
  14. The Wachowskis only had one good movie in them because they STOLE the idea for the first one.
  15. The Wilhelm scream was by Sheb Woolley, and once you know about it, you hear it all the time.
  16. Video games don’t make good movies; they are just an extreme case of product placement.
  17. There are movies that nobody has seen that everybody refers to.
  18. Remakes should all have a generic title “The beancounter, the asswipe screenplay, the washed up actor and the witless director”.
  19. Steadicam oners are da bomb.
  20. Script first, direction second, editing third, lighting fourth, actors fifth, catering sixth.
  21. Whoever’s editing action movies these days needs remedial help. (Notice how bad the fight scene editing was for Dark Knight?  It sucked hair off a mop).
  22. Vancouver City Hall is screwing up the local industry by being chuckleheads.
  23. Not a single movie has been made in the last thirty years that realistically depicted the use of firearms.
  24. Being a science fiction movie fan is a lot like Waiting for Godot.
  25. The ratings system is hopelessly fouled up, and the creeps responsible for it should be bastinadoed with licorice while listening to “It’s a Small World after All”.
  26. It chapped Spike Jones’ ass that the most money he ever made was on Inside Man.  Mind you, it’s the best American caper film in years.
  27. Acting doesn’t run in families.  Doing what your folks did for a living runs in families.
  28. Milton Berle had an enormous penis.  I actually know this because I was working in a hotel he was staying at and he kept answering the room service knock with no trousers on and a big stogie in his face.
  29. Computers are simple to break into and all operating systems are easy-peasy and graphical. (Where do I start?  The Net, the Matrix, Jurassic  Park, Untraceable, and on and bloody on….)
  30. Your phone only rings when that chunk of dialogue is complete. (All police procedurals)
  31. You always have your phone ready to hand.
  32. Bad guys have lousy teeth. (All of them).
  33. There’s a picture of Johnny Depp in an attic somewhere. (It’s not just his bone structure, folks).
  34. Not all actors are gay, but that’s the way to bet. (This is a joke…. based on repeated and increasingly truncated conversations with Jeff).
  35. Set decoration is an art form and I salute its practitioners. (I’m thinking of True Blood).
  36. Heroes drive convertibles (this is actually a family saying, but I thought I’d throw it in.)
  37. If there’s been a movie that realistically depicted aircraft in the last 100 years, I’d sure like to hear about it.
  38. Virtually every actor I admire has a serious, serious work ethic.  Screwoffs burn out or drop dead.
  39. I loathe continuity errors, and I’ve been catching them since I was ten.
  40. It’s just as hard to make a frothy comedy as a serious drama, but you don’t get praised for doing it well.
  41. The risk free life is not worth living.  I would rather have a good bunch of people give me two thirds of a good movie trying to do something unusual than the usual gang of idiots playing it safe.
  42. I wish Charles Laughton had directed more movies. (Night of the Hunter was his only one).
  43. If the people who made SF movies spent more money on the scripts I would be happier.
  44. I really don’t like horror films – even psychological ones like The Haunting – and I only watch zombie movies as a concession to my brother.  I realize my inability to stomach violence is a serious personal flaw, but there ya go.
  45. I am prepared to forgive a movie all kinds of lapses if it’s stylish.
  46. Graphic sex is not nearly as disturbing as graphic violence.
  47. Henry and June was HOT.
  48. Watching people smoke cigarettes is a drag, especially if they don’t smoke and they are faking it (Keira Knightley in Domino, William Petersen in Manhunter).
  49. When I want to watch a movie again, it’s almost always because of the nature and quality of the human relationships in it, not because it was visually stunning or had cool special effects.
  50. I really like long takes.
  51. I really like eating takes.
  52. Most of the time, the critics are wrong.  When they aren’t wrong, they’ve still missed something.
  53. Anybody can walk into your hospital room, get hold of a doctor, get hold of a nurse, and have plenty of room to stand around and chat.
  54. It’s easy to be in the same room as a corpse.
  55. Your closest relatives can die and it doesn’t completely f*ck you up for months afterwards – you just keep on working and doing whatever you were doing.
  56. Work is just an excuse to hang out with your friends (why not, works for me).
  57. Men like to kiss way more than they let on in real life.  Women- at least usually.
  58. Food happens instantly in restaurants.

Three whole days off

I have a list of things to do which includes:

Usual Life Maintenance

Food shop… no veggies! bad girl!

Heading off to Renfrew Pool at least once this weekend.

Checking into the family history website to see my mom’s blog… I find it weewy fwustwating that her blog is password protected! Okay, I can take that off my list of things to do.  My mOm is a very busy woman and I very much appreciate her family history work.

More biscotti…

It would be nice if at some point I picked up the mandolin!  I have not been feeling like practicing at ALL.

And of course more messing about wit’ Garageband.

questions

Okay, now that Jeff’s watched the last of the True Bloods for this season, I can ask the following questions of an uncaring universe.

What the hell is Sookie going to do when she meets Jessica (world’s most annoying teenaged vampire and made by Bill)?

What the hell is Bill going to do when Sookie finds out about Jessica (he already said sorry, but Sookie didn’t know what for…)?

Is that Lafayette’s corpse or unconscious body?  If his corpse, is it possible that he might be made and now be a vampire?  Who killed him if he’s dead?

If it isn’t Lafayette, is that Tara’s mum’s body and we’ve been faked out?  I doubt it because the writers pretty much play fair with the audience.

What kind of magickal creature is Maryann, where does she know Sam Merlotte from, why isn’t he warning Tara?  If she’s not a shifter, is she some kind of Celtic minor deity?  The pig is amazing, by the way.

Why the hell did Sam clean out his safe?  Where’s he going with the money, and why?  What other properties does he own in Bon Temps, and why? 

Anybody else find it kinda creepy that Sookie turned Bill over to face the daylight and Sam had to haul him inside (after getting his ribs kicked in!) so Bill didn’t fry?  We know that Sam’s a dog and therefore a loyal kinda guy, but this is taking self-sacrifice to interesting extremes.

WHO DID BILL FEED ON?

What the hell is Jason Stackhouse doing in a church? Nothing good can come of this.

What plot twists is Terry Bellefleur being saved for?  He becomes increasingly important over the last two episodes, and has the single best line. “I don’t listen to politics anymore, I get a seizure.”

Is Detective Bellefleur going to smarten up?

Is Tara being hypnotized by Maryann?  Is Eggs an aspect of Maryann?  He sure talks like her!

Is Maryann more than one person at the same time? 

Was the pie eating dude not one of the greatest bit characters in the show so far? 

Is Mr. Skarsgard not awesome? I like Pam too, she’s SO matter of fact.

Was Amy a skanky and sociopathic ho or just a self-indulgent hippie chick?  We’ll never know, but that final scene was incredibly shot.

Was the guy who plays Jason deliberately cast because he looks like a hot young version of George W. Bush?  The resemblence is pretty funny…

Anybody else notice the one point in the show when the guy who plays Bill completely lost his accent?