Sorry for not posting for a while guys, I've been pretty busy with life. However keep your spirits up! I'll be back posting on monday with some new delights for your senses. To get your motor running here's a delightful tutorial on how to keep fit by doing "The Sexy Dance." Please try to contain your excitement.
I was reading one of my favorite features on The Onion's AV Club, Commentary Tracks of the Damned. This feature offers a new twist on DVD review, offering a detailed summary of the director/actor commentary tracks on DVD's. These are not the insightful delights that you might find on say, a Tim Burton or Frances Ford Coppola Film. Instead, this features the commentary tracks of films that are the abortions of the cultural world, the Paris Hilton vehicle The Hottie and the Nottie being an example. The commentaries usually have one of three tones:
1. Apologetic - "Please forgive us for making this movie. We are so sorry. Allow us to give you your money back. " - Batman & Robin
2. Dismissive/Celebratory - "That's right bitches! We dicked around in the woods for a few months and got paid for it! You all just paid to watch us goof off. Suckers" - Without a Paddle
3. Vindictive and Accusatory - " This film is a masterpiece! Anyone who didn't like this film is too stupid to understand it. You should be shot for not understanding my artistic vision" - Any Movie by Uwe Boll.
It's this last type that caught my eye. A new one came up the other day about Uwe Boll's latest regurgitation on celluloid. I've never heard of the film Postal, and I'm sure you haven't either. It's so appalling that even Sara Silverman, famed for her crude sense of humour turned down a role in it. The entire time Boll defends the film, screaming about his courage for making the film. It's a fascinating looking into a delusional and perverse mind. The guy is seriously sick. It makes you wonder why he's not only allowed to continue making films, but why he hasn't been locked up for insane narcissism. It's actually kind of scary that his obvious racism, delusions of grandure and appalling taste of humour have gone unchecked thus far. It makes you wonder how the Hollywood machine not only allows him to make films, but feeds his overblown ego.
Did I mention all he ever does is video game adaptations?
Moses came home the other day with the complete "Kids In The Hall" boxset. I love the Kids in the Hall - love them. My hip cousins first introduced me to them when I was six or seven and I've never been able to get enough of them. I will admit that I took a brief hiatus from them when I turned to the dark side - Otherwise known as SNL - But in my heart I always belonged to those cross dressing surrealists known as the "Kids in the Hall."
We all have a major regret in our lives. Something that if we could go back and do it all over again we believe we would be a better person. It was not my brief drift away from the Kids to the hacks at SNL that I regret most, but another incident all together. My greatest regret involves my Kids in the Hall and a deep lingering resentment of my own lamness and bizzare need for sleep.
I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar. That much is true. (Joke!) I was scheduled to hop on a plane the next morning at 6:00 am headed to Vancoucouver for an interview that was supposed to change my life. It was for a prestigeous script writing program, something that I've wanted to do since I was a child. They had offered me an interview based on some of my work I'd already submitted. If I nailed the interview the program would get me to a place where I could be writing for television programs within the year. It was a big opportunity and I didn't want to blow it.
At the end of my shift that night, around 11 pm, some of my friends started asking me to come out with them. I politely declined, citing the reason that I wanted to be fresh for my interview the next day. They started to insist, but refused to tell me where they were going. And thus, I decided to be a responsible adult and go to bed. It was the one moment in my life I wish that I'd have done differently.
I blew the interview and upon my return to work was bombarded with people asking me where I had been the other night. They had obviously all been backstage at the live Kids in the Hall Show that had been playing downtown. Apparently one of the producers had come in for a drink and was so impressed with the people's senses of humour (We were all comedians, actors, and writers) that he invited my co-workers to go to the Kids in the Hall after party.
The same after party where Dave Foley smashed a guitar and then all the Kids signed the pieces and gave them away. The same after party where Bruce McCulloch was introducing my friend Andi -Who, co-incidentally is the spitting image of Eliza Dushku - as his wife. Scott Thompson kept hitting on my friend Jose and Mark McKinny was yelling at everyone.
I missed it. I missed meeting my heroes. I've never forgiven myself. And thus, whenever anyone askes me to go anywhere and refuse to tell me where I now, ever so responsibly, jump at the opportunity. I'm always dissapointed.
So I'm burying myself Moses' box set for the next few days. We watched the first season yesterday. It made me feel much better.
To share the joy I've found one my my favorite clips on Youtube. It's called "The Bass Player" and it features Kevin McDonald and Bruce McColloch. It's surreal. I love it. Enjoy.
The other day someone introduced me to Google Translate which will take a block of text or an entire web page and translate it to a language of your choice. In it's efforts to become the Internet equivalent of Resident Evil's Umbrella Corporation, Google has branched into web accessibility and only succeeded in creating a program that confuses and delights me.
You see, all the application does is directly translate the page, ignoring things like syntax, grammar, or even the possibility of homonyms. When you attempt to translate a language as complex as say, Japanese, things are going to get more than slightly confused. Which is why I have spent the last few days with Duncan and Moses reading the translated text out loud from a Japanese Forum and laughing our asses off. We use a self important voice and follow all syntax and punctuation. In some cases you can get a glimpse of what the threads are about, but on a large and general scale the posts are almost totally indecipherable. Which is hilarious.
Keep in mind that I'm in no way laughing at the posters. I'm instead laughing at the program's attempt to boil down a complex language into simple word translations. The site is Yomiuri Online and the forums handle a range of topics, from recipes to relationships to something called "Male DP". Here's some choice excerpts from some of the threads that I found particularly intriguing. Don't try to figure out what they mean. Just enjoy them for their weird surrealistness. If Dali were still alive this is the kind of thing he would lap up.
My Sister's Parents are Known to Spend Money in the Rough with Me
"My sister was handed a result of pig raising was in no man might think."
"My parents are not without a sense of crisis, the very color of his sister, even without remorse and then use the money on the brain that turns out to have a stomachache every day."
"I can not trust remainder. Longer insulting."
I Used to Cook Chestnuts?
"My family is not like sweet things, eating snacks are friends"
"Soy sauce and chicken along with the cooked food is a bargain? Look like a chicken when you look good and beautiful. Let chestnuts and cook in the dust, so use your sense of sweet potato."
"Sweet potatoes, chestnuts to increase the vastness of cloth rather than flying, Sato chestnuts and chestnut cloth to make them? The massive chestnut, with so much sugar not be understated, again with only the touch of a bitch is TANOSHIMEMASU potential."
While Eating a Cockroach Speaking to My (act)
"My husband was later forced to eat me. Bad things are lost…."
"I…. I did not read before noon…. I feel bad…."
"Every man, is not a terrible thing, a diet of the poor, a topic that, it is eating spicy them. "
My work has a thing with nicknames. Everyone who works in the building has a nickname of some type. I honestly believe that I have only actually called each of my co-workers by their given names once before a nickname consumed their identity. Often it starts as a kind of "Theme of the Week" principal. As a random team building exercise a department will decide to assign nicknames based on a specific theme - like weather patterns. Often, these nicknames just peter out after about a week, but sometimes they stick. Out of this Andre became "The Tornado" and Robert became "Drizzle." Robert was less than impressed as he wanted to be dubbed, "The Hurricane." I believe he was lucky that my vote for his nickname, "The Typhool" was overturned. I thought it was clever and I stand by it.
One poor bastard was even stuck with a nickname that it was very difficult to use in public and even more difficult to shake. He suffered from the luck of the draw when another co-worker, sitting in the lunchroom table randomly said, "Okay, next person to walk through that door will henceforth be named, 'Sex Dwarf'." As luck would have it, Cameron was the next one to walk through the door and thus the unhappy recipient of the nomer. It's particularly delightful because Cameron is a 230lbs. behemoth. It's one of those names that stuck.
Other's have chosen their own nickname whether they like it or not. Dave, who works in sales, has the really unnerving habit of singing in public. Constantly and poorly. After a week Dave noticed that it seemed like everyone but him was called by something other than their given name, and he wanted to know why he was left out. "Why can't I have a nickname too?" he whined. "Something cool, OOH! Like "Song Bird." So of course we started calling him that. It took him a month to come to the terrible realization that of the least sexy nickname that you can ask for, "Song Bird" is right up there.
I'm not totally sure why, but Nicknames give us a sense of belonging. It makes us part of a group of people who have re-christened us to a frame they can understand and relate to. Too bad for you if that frame happens to be "Sex Dwarf".
Yesterday I wrote about my frustration with my needs not being represented by the government and it tweaked in me a little memory. When I was in Edmonton a few years ago, I had the great pleasure of seeing Jello Biafra speak. Consider him, with his profanity laced shows and punk rock anarchist background, another Henry Rollins. Still, the show was very inspiring for me and I've followed his career with interest.
I remember he began his set with something like this:
(Forgive me, I paraphrase from memory)
"People complain that when I come to Canada I only speak about American Politics. Well kiddies, on my way through the airport I noticed that you've all got a Federal election coming up. I pick up some pamphlets and in the ride here I have become an expert on what's wrong with your political system. *He throws the pamphlets in the air* Your liberal vote is split to many ways! You have your Liberals, your NDP, your Marijuana Party your Rhinoceros Party. I even thought you had a goddamn Tea Party. I later learned that was a band. Still. You need to pick one and go with it. You can't have your liberal vote spilt all over the place!"
As most of my readers know I'm a proud Canadian. As much as I'm sure that I should care who has their finger on the button that could make the world an uninhabitable nuclear wasteland, I cannot vote for that person. I have no say in the American voting process, you know, what with me being Canadian and what-not. So though it chills me to the core when a politician's entrance is accompanied with hypnotic chants of "Drill Baby Drill" there is nothing I can do about it.
What many of my American readers might not know is that we Canadians have our own decisive election dawning on the home front. Although we may not have the power to blow up a country, this is my home and I care how its run. But first, some back story:
Unlike our American bretherin we have four major political parties instead of two:
The Conservative party of Canada formerly the Canadian Alliance Party, formerly the Progressive Conservative Party, it serves the same purpose as the American Republican Party. They're currently in power with a minority government.Their leader, Stephen Harper, is basically Bush with Brains. In other words, he's a scary scary man.
The Bloc Quebecois exist to give our angsties province a voice in parliment. Enough of them get elected to form a resonable alliance with parties that represent the rest of Canada's interests so that they can fight the conservatives if nessesary.
The Liberal Party
is the slightly more liberal version of the American Democratic Party. It's run by newly elected party leader Stephan Dion...More on him later.
The NDP or New Democrat Party are my main squeeze. They're the most liberal of all 4 main parties. As much as I think they would do good for Canada they will probably never be a leading government force. Which makes me a sad panda.
The next leader of Canada will more than likely be one of the two men that I've listed above. Harper's Conservative governement has, in their last few years of government proposed the following fascist sounding bills such as:
-Making "Unregistered" vitamins illegal.
- Cowtowing to the American Music industry, including a clause in the Bill that would allow border guards to confiscate your Ipod if they suspect you may have illegaly obtained music on it.
- Censoring Canadian-Made film and by withdrawing opportunities to get funding or apply for tax credits if the content does not fit, "The needs of the Nation." The "Needs of the Nation" are unspecified.
- Shutting down funding for artists travling abroad because they don't agree with the "Left wing Radicalism" some of the funded groups promote.
These are reasons that I believe that I might move to Switzerland if Harper gets a majority governement. His appropriately posed picture says it all. However, we are now facing a crisis. The Liberals have decided to elect as their leader, a noodle soggier than one left in the bottom of the strainer in a full sink. A man with as much personality as a Stepford Wife. We're doomed.
This frustrates me to no end. I want to live somewhere where I can vote for a person and not a party. I don't feel like either of the two major parties represent me and my needs appropriately. I'm not a conservative at all. I belive in gay marriage, free university education and a woman's right to choose. Neither of these men reprensent that for me.
What is a democracy if semantics is the only thing that differentiates the parties?
I've played Rock Band. I was good at the drumming and the singing but my guitar playing earned me a damning, "FAIL!!!" Many of my friends became obsessed with this game, spending hour after hour, impotently banging on pieces plastic. When you stop and think about it they probably could get similarly good if they committed the same amount of time to learning actual instruments. Think about that.
It's difficult to believe that my grandmother was ever young. Sure I've seen a picture of her in her younger days. She's staring angelically upwards with soft rosy cheeks. Her Wendy collar compliments the beautiful stylistic black finger wave in her hair. This bears no resemblance to her current incarnation of a matriarchal Jabba the Hutt, who rules the family with an iron tongue from her indent on the couch. Seriously, she's wider than she is tall and tends to make jabbing comments like, "So, I see that you've given up on your jogging." She's that kind of grandma.
You can see how it would be difficult to reconcile the image of the starry eyed nymph with the dictatorial experience that is my grandmother. But something happened while I was visiting her that threw another image into the mix.
We were sitting in her living room having tea when one of my many cousins arrived to present her new boyfriend for my grandmother's approval. My grandmother is a notorious flirt. All boyfriends are warned that if they attend any family function they must understand 2 things:
#1 Homage must be paid to my grandmother as soon as you arrive. This may mean letting her talk your ear off for half an hour or...
# 2 Have your ass pinched until numb. Seriously, I come from a long & proud line of ass pinchers. Strange that we are genetically blessed with chubby stubs for fingers. You'd think evolution would have kicked in by now to produce long sinew-ey pincers.
Anyway, We were all sitting around having tea when my grandmother says, "Would you like to see some pictures Wayne?"My cousin's boyfriend's name is Wayne. He said yes he would and she patted the seat next to her on the couch. He settled down uncomfortably next to her while she opened a decaying brown leather book onto his lap.
Universally the photo album is feared and despised. Thus, the genuine cry of "That's so AWESOME!" coming from Wayne was solely unexpected. He was looking at an old picture of my grandma. It was her as a 20 year old, standing saucily next to her pride a joy, which turned out to be a 1934 Harley Davidson motorbike.
"It was lime green!" she declared with delight.
How the hell have I reached the age I have without knowing that she drove a Harley. Having done my research I have boiled this information to the following:
She was riding a lime green one of these:
While dressed like this:
My Grandmother was a bad ass! This should surprise me less than it does. It also explains a lot about my mother's rebellious nature and my subsequent punk rock bohemian lifestyle. My grandma was a pioneer for the Jane Fondas that would grace the biker scene in the 70's and dozens of women had done subsequently. I am proud of my grandma. I salute her.
Even more so, I am proud that she never got that insanely long dress caught in the wheels.
On my exciting visit to Edmonton I took an exclusive trip down Whyte Avenue. In my youth, Whyte Ave was the hipster street. It's where all the funky kids hung out and where I used to spend my days reading the Communist Manifesto in ultra hip coffee bars.
Sadly in my 5 year absence it is no longer the same funkadelic place with sweet vintage boutiques and quaint cigar shops where bearded hipsters smoke curvy pipes. It has become a street where there's aggressive pan handlers every 2 steps. On a strip that's about 4 blocks long there are over 30 bars located upstairs and downstairs. After dark it's a teeming mass of Slurring Redneck Men, Stumbling Sluttish Women, and more Drunken Shenanigans than Andy Dick is capable of conceiving in a one hour period.
It's also the location of the famed Whyte Riot in 2006 when the Edmonton Oilers beat the Sharks to get into the play-offs. Good times with fire, stabbing and looting ensued:
Yeah...That's a phone booth they've so brilliantly lit on fire. Way to stick it to that hockey team we beat.
Basically Whyte Avenue is not exactly a hotspot of class and dignity, so I was shocked when my friend Kea and I were asked to leave a martini bar because she was 20 year old instead of the 21 that the bar required. The legal drinking age in Edmonton is 18. Kea, as I said before was 20. She dresses extremely well and is working her way into law school. I'm over 21 by a few years and when they asked us for ID and then told us we'd have to leave I treated the uppity short skirted waitress to a questioning look. She sneered at me and said that they had a strict policy not to serve people under 21 years of age; they just had too much trouble with kids not holding their liquor.
I said, "Okay, Look at her. Does she look like she's going to cause trouble at 5 in the evening. She's 4 months away from being 21, would you make and exception?"
She folded her arms and said, once again, that we would have to take our business elsewhere. So we did. It wasn't like there weren't 30 other bars that we could go to. That irked me for obvious reasons but what was even worse was when we were on our way back from the bar down the street we were served at (Drunken incident free I might add) we passed the martini lounge that rejected us. There were 8 drunk out of their skulls redneck men hanging out the open front window of the establishment screaming profanities at passerbys and waving their cowboy hats. They were about 25.
They let these jerks in but they wouldn't let in Kea and myself for a quiet drink.
That's what I get for being polite. Clearly I should have slapped the waitress' ass and called her sweet cheeks as I saw one of the guys do. My bad. Next time I know the etiquette.
Did I mention I love French Pop Music? I love French pop music. I downloaded a neat little sampler playlist the other day for my plane ride and found this one song that had the most delightful beat, fun melody...and g-rated theme.
It's called "Les Cornichons" - The Pickles for you non-Francophones
I just love her little dance at 1:50. She's so damn saucy! Look at her go! I wish I had moves like that.
Anyway, the song is basically about how they all pile into a big car to go on a picnic and then she lists all the things that they're going to bring. So cute!
God I love the French.
I'm going back to Edmonton tomorrow morning. My flight leaves at 5 in the morning. It has been raining for the last 3 days and it will be In the pouring and freezing tomorrow as well. I have come to the conclusion that there is no God. There is only luck. I've been assured through various songs and stories that luck is female. If this is in fact the case I must have borrowed her mascara at some point I am unaware of and failed to return it until it was clumpy. This is how it applies to airplanes. Not only do I usually end up only able to get into these insanely early flights regardless of how early I book, I always end up next to one of the following:
1. A brand new baby, so new that it's still covered in placenta. It's ears are not only popping but it usually has also had a large, flaming diaper pin rammed into it's nethers. The parental units always seem to ignore this. Maybe they find our pained expressions entertaining. I don't have kids so I don't know. I might be missing out on hours of sadistic delights.
2. Siblings fighting over a DS on a 9 hour flight. (On a side note, I can sympathize with this. When I was 16 my mother got into her head that a good idea would be to take me and my sisters on a two week road trip to San Francisco from Edmonton and back. We spent 8 hours/day in the car. We had one Game Boy. We had one game. It was Pokemon Yellow.)
3. Women who explain to me how "Young-uns" (I kid you not) Know Nothing of..........(Pause for dramatic effect, take a deep breath, and...) ART! Which apparently is embodied by Playboy photography. 1960-1977. She had a portfolio to explain her point. It was a 3 hour flight from Edmonton to Winnipeg. I'm still in therapy.
4. Couples that are fighting. This has happened to me twice now. They manage to position me in between them and then bicker over and through me. On one occasion I ended up with orange juice in my lap. It was aimed at Chicken Lips' groin. Mine apparently got in the way.
5. Drool and Leaners. This carries over from the bus. On these early morning flights there is always someone falling asleep. On me. While drooling. I try to nudge them awake gently but suggestively with my shoulder. They're usual response is to hork snot on me as they jolt awake. There are moments when I think that goths have it right when they make their clothing out of Vinyl and PVC.
6. Eager Cheer-Leaders on all night flights to New York.
Wish me anything but luck. All the luck is tainted.
Moses does stand up in a hipster bar downtown every second Tuesday of the month. Yesterday was the first Tuesday of the month. So I didn't go to support Moses. I ended up accidentaly going to support a Poetry Slam.
I knew something was wrong when there seemed to be a larger amount of insanely decorated bicycles outside. Hipsters are not really capable of riding in/on anything with more than 2 wheels. In the case of a couple of people, they had trotted out their best unicycles. Flame covered unicycles. I should have taken it as a warning that this was less the "comedy crowd" and more the "paying to listening to amature poetry crowd." I bought a drink and got a seat, waiting for Moses to come on.
He didn't. Instead a guy with the most bizarre facial hair I've ever seen welcomed us to the Poetry Night. I panicked and started guzzling my drink. The first poet, a girl wearing thick black rimmed coke-bottle glasses stood up delicately. She tugged nervously at her tunic and straightened her striped tights. In a large boomingly confident voice she recited:
My Mother's breasts are soft and firm;
Like those of princess Leia;
Dazzling me in a gold Bikini;
Hutt's Slave Eternal
Just as Mother's were slave to my Father.
And I was out of there! I left my drink and I was gone.
I think I made the right choice.
Life is too short to spend on mildly incestuous, feminist, Star Wars poetry.
P.S. I wrote down the poem in my note book as soon as I left . I can't make that shit up.
I've written before about the extreme ethnic and social diversity of my area. This works out awesome for me because I can eat food from pretty well anywhere in the world if I just step out my front door. A Mexican restaurant opened about a month ago around the corner. It's called Taco Loco - which is totally awesome. It's a little hole in the wall place decorated sparsely with straw donkeys, red, white and green crepe paper, and random cut outs of adorable Hispanic cherubs. ( I assume they're Hispanic. They have dark hair and are wearing sombreros.)
I popped in for a burrito yesterday to see what it was like. The set up is pretty small. Every time I walk by its the same woman I see slaving away over the food warmers. The shop is open from 11 am to 9 pm and it doesn't seem to matter what time of day I walk past, the same woman is always there.
So it didn't really surprise me when she fell asleep standing up while she was making my burrito. It was very odd. She was standing there waiting for my tortilla to heat up when her eyes started to flutter and then closed. Small snoring sounds escaped her nose. I wasn't totally sure what to do about it. I mean on the one hand she looked like she could use a rest, on the other I was worried I would end up with a soggy burrito.
I erred on the side of selfishness when I woke her up with a sharp "Excuse me?" She snorted and apologized and then went back to making my food.
The burrito was the best I've ever had. I tipped her well. I would feel guilty about going back though. I wouldn't want to keep her from her rest. Poor woman.
Moses' Girlfriend, as I have mentioned before, is a screamer. As they are directly across the hall from my room, I have had many a sleepless night listening to the Casaba of Love a'rockin right next to me. The morning after Moses' girlfriend's world has exploded underneath her, I, feeling significantly less fulfilled will drag myself in a sleep deprived Zombie state to my corner coffee shop. There I will sit, nursing a mug of dark roast the size of Zimbabwe with a bar made of oat and fudge resting delicately on a glass plate awaiting consumption. This is the only thing that soothes me. I am at the coffee shop often enough that the Baristas know what mood I am in reflected by my order. It's my own caffeinated Cheers experience.
Yesterday morning, my state of being sparked a rather interesting debate - who's roommates have the most annoying sex. Although I felt reassured that I by no means am alone in my conundrum of loud roommate sex, I am disappointed that Moses and his girlfriend have less entertaining sex than the Baristas' roommates do.
One girl has a male roommate like I do, that goes by the name of Kevin. His girlfriend is a little Asian girl, about 5 feet and 105 lbs. She rarely ever talks, and when she does she's so quiet you need to ask her to repeat herself five times before you can actually understand her. In the sack she becomes a raging owl. Owl, because every thrust is punctuated with a hooting noise.
The first night it happened it freaked her right out. This rhythmic slowly crescendoing hoot of an overly excited owl had her waking up in a cold sweat. At two in the morning I think anyone would be. She only figured out exactly what the hooting was when it reached a screaching pinnacle with the very human statement, "I LOVE YOU KEVIN!!!!!!!"
Think about it...You're laying in bed and suddenly you hear:
hoot.................hoot.....hoot...hoot...Hoot...HOot....HOOt...HOOT..HOOT!!! HOOT!!!!! HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!!!!! I LOVE YOU KEVIN!!!!!
She apparently can't watch Harry Potter movies anymore.
Another guy found that his roomate, also male had a fabulous one as well. Everything was usually pretty quiet until suddenly there would be a earsplitting declaration:
SUCCESS!!!
Seriously. That's awesome.
I really do wish that if Moses & co. were going to be loud they would at least be interesting or amusing. That's my luck though.
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