Somewhere around Barstow..

Has the end of TV season made me a better person?
Reasons for:
1. I'm trying new things, by accident I converted the Yeah Yeah Yeah's song Maps into a country ska hyperballad. Ska in the way I arranged the "new" chords and country in the way I was playing the solo. I also found the coolest voice to sing it in, it's my Mickey Mouse impression taken down an octave and layered with existential longing. I don't know good or bad or weird?
2. I am running 8k every day instead of 5K.
3. I have finally created the ultamite gym workout routine

Reasons Against:
1. I have taken up watching too many movies, I don't know if that is as bad as T.V. but I assume that lying on the couch and screaming out quotes from "Raging Bull" while shaking feverishly isn't good.
2. I have yet to implement this ultamite gym workout, it is still on paper.
3. I've become too Douglas Coupland-esque in my outlook on life, but what worries me the most is that it's only steps away from becoming Brett Easton Ellis-esque.

I wonder what it is good, bad or ugly?
"he who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." -Dr. Johnson



P.S. If anyone has read the new Doug Coupland book JPod, I would really like to hear from them, so send me an e-mail.

King of the Road

The energy crisis and Mad Max. When I originally saw this film I had no idea that there had been an energy crisis, let alone that this film had been made during the 1979 energy crisis. Seeing this film again recently, I realised it's actually a very smart allegory on this energy crisis and the fears and "malaise" associated with the recession. Not only is it a cool and original action film but it also carried a message and that message was "This is the only good Mel Gibson movie you will ever see."

I Can't Stand up for falling down

So I saw X-Men (last stand) last night, at midnight, technically I guess it was today. It was such a let down: they had no pacing whatsoever and it all seemed contrived, like a bad attempt at imitatitng the previous ones. Wolverine was such a pussed out version of himself, Anna Paquin was utterly wasted, so was Mystique and the ending verged on utter melodrama. There was nothing really good about it and all I got out of it was a headache. What a way to end a good series, the only two funny lines were 1. Mystique: "That's my slave name" 2. Somebody yelled out in the audience after Storm says "The school stays open," "Yay" the whole audience proceeded to laugh.

After a storm, there must be a calm...

The king of ska is gone but not forgotten. Renowned ska artist Desmond Dekker died thursday of a heart attack at 64. I suppose this begs the question, Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty four?

Honestly this is the guy who got me into ska, not Sublime or the Specials, Desmond Dekker! Although I thought he was already dead, he will be sorely missed.

I'm LOST at sea, don't bother me.

I think my theory about LOST is falling apart, slowly but surely. In all honesty it wasn't a great theory anyway. My idea was that Sawyer was pulling a really long and thought out con in order to steal Hurley's money (and possibly Claire's baby). This is probably not the case. My top four questions about LOST right now are:

1. What the fuck is up with the beard, seriously is that some plot joke?
2. Why was the station/hatch at the others camp a fake?
3. Judging by the size of that statue they would need a lot of stone, how come no one has found a quary yet?
4. Was Henry Gale not wearing any shoes? Do people wear shoes on the island? I can't remember, it seems like they should.

I don't know about the finale, I wish that some of the plot was solved, instead they didn't solve anything and just brought up more fucking problems. I guess they solved some metaphysical ones but those don't count. I can't remember half the mysteries anymore and I think that's what the writter's want because neither can they.

Lindsay Lohan, smarter than you think?

So what do renowned authors Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez have in common with Lindsay Lohan?
Their work's often have elements of magical realism.

What is magical realism you ask? In it's most simple terms it is a genre in which magical elements appear in an otherwise realistic setting.

Off hand it could be said that Lohan's movie choices contain magical realism by chance, that she has no agenda in choosing these films, however I beg to differ, their frequent occurence suggests that she in fact selects these films in order to make a point. Examples of this intended selection are films like "Herbie the love bug", "Freaky Friday" and the recent film "Stroke of Luck" (or whatever the hell it's called). As Mr. Marquez once stated "My most important problem was destroying the lines of demarcation that separates what seems real from what seems fantastic" but analysing her films, this could have just as easily been uttered by Lohan. She like Rushdie and Marquez seeks to describe her reality and comunicate it as an artist. She through her own choices in films, tries to describe and comunicate her world, and she feels the best way to do so is through the use of magical realism as a genre. Like Rushdie using physical transformations in the chracters to describe mental states and alienation in the Satanic Verses, Lohan uses character switching in "Freaky Friday", to describe the human condition and the weight of the ego. So next time you think of her as the next Tara Reid burnout, remember her contributions to the magical realism genre.

Summer movie madness

I am not proud of saying this but don't judge me, there is extenuating circumstances...
As you know I was forced into reading the DaVinci Code, well I finally finished it, it kinda sucked, it was readable but it still sucked. I don't think I would have ever actually read the thing if I wasn't subtly forced too (and didn't have way too much time on my hands). So I read it and I went to see the movie, yes I said it, I went to see the god-damn movie. I can't really justify going to see it, I think it was basically a combination of boredom, entertainment industry inspired zeitgeist and sticking it to the catholic church. Anyway I saw it and here is a brief synopsis:

Evil albino monk shoots guy, guy creates elaborate scavenger hunt while dying, Hanks gets sucked into the hunt (French think he killed guy). Amelie helps him decode the clues, says some borderline cringe worthy material, elude cops instead of explaining themselves. Go to Swiss bank, solve more clues, get a codex containing the secret location of the grail except they don't know the code (No their isn't any Nazi Gold I'm afraid) . End up at crazy Ian McKellen's house, they find out Jesus was married had a kid and Mary Magdalene wasn't a slut, they capture the evil monk. All of them head to England, go too the wrong place, Ian McKellen says "Never trust the French", the butler betrays them, sets monk free, captures McKellen. They Head to West Minster abbey, to Newton's grave, it takes them forever to solve a simple riddle, the code is Apple. Turns out McKellen's the bad guy, Butler dies, Monk dies, bishop Doc Ock lives. They solve the riddle McKellen gets arrested screams about the sacred Magdalene, we find out Amelie is Jesus's descendent. Hanks and Amelie talk metaphysics, chew the fat. Mary Magdalene's body is buried under some pyramid made by I.M. Pei at the Louvre, Hanks cops out and keeps the secret too himself.



The only good thing Ron Howard ever did was Arrested Development, and that was basically just his voice. DaVinci code was watchable but neither innovative nor revisionist, it is doomed to movie of the week status. The only redeeming things were Ian McKellen and the locations. The movie basically was the perfect adaptation of the book: It was an ok, marginally entertaining, waste of time but hardly worth the controversy surrounding it.

Supergrass, then and now

According to the music press, supergrass fucked up bad or in the most moderate of terms, matured. A lot of people do not like their new album Road to Rouen, they feel it is not the same Supergrass they had come to love, this mature sound is now more pensive and heartrending.

I do not feel this way, I love the new album. I for one had never conciously heard a Supergrass album before this, so I was unaware of their experimental and fun music. Hearing this album, specifically "Low C" and "St. Petersburg," was a moody and cathartic experience and it plucked on my fucking heart strings, it was a worn down, weathered sound. I applaud Supergrass for their change in style, optimistic fun only works for a while until you realize how truly cruel and sadistic this world really is.

This show will be the death of us all

The real world, yes the real world.
As I am a Canadian, you may know, we just recently picked up MTV, which is like a pandora's box (minus the Hope) and I was addicted to there blasé emptiness and deadpan irony, but it got old quick, all but the Real World. What can I say, I am fucking addicted, I understand that most people are fed up with Real World, but honestly this is my first time watching it and it's amazing. The show is so realistic and yet fake at the same time, of course there are some scripted elements but there is a certain foreboding reality to it that just scares me, as though this is what we have become as a society souless machines and emotional time bombs consumed by either sex or mind numbing chemicals. I have yet to see something that would contradict this decent into emptiness, I feel for Paula, at least she has problems that are larger than simply sex and drinking.

Music stuff

I can't believe there was a time in which I could actually listen to a Magic Numbers song. Fuck they are so annoying, their pop is so light that it should just float away. Oh, I heard some David Bowie news, apperently he hasn't been doing anything for a while just sitting around the house watching movies, one day he watched 3 Woody Allen movies, that is the fucking life.

Trapped in New York

I'm trapped. Not literally of course, but I am in a predicament. My parents came home from Texas with a copy of the DaVinci Code. They already have a copy but have leant it to someone else. Working on two absolutely ludicrous assumptions, they believe that 1. I wanted to read the book and 2. That I really wanted to see the movie. Neither of these have a grain of truth. I am well aware of Mr. Brown's writting and his popularity, however I don't really like books where you don't have to think about what you're reading. I think it's the equivalent of watching some detective show on T.V. entertaining but fruitless.
So I am stuck in this situation where I have to appease my parents for purchasing this book as a gift. The best solution I came up with is to read through it as fast as possible, conveying to my parents that I am very interested in the novel, while also allowing myself to return to reading Midnight's Children as soon as possible. I made it 150 pages into the novel in two days, which is suprising I never ususally read that fast. It's amazing how my contempt for Mr. Brown's work has allowed me to read so quickly. It may also be because the novel was written at a grade six level and goes into details that are covered in any rudimentary art class. I have never even had to reread a single line, and I feel like I am better than the author because I know most of the details which he feels he needs to delve into. For a book obsessed with codes and hidden meanings it is suprisingly pulpish.