What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Tuesday, November 27, 2007

   CAN'T GET HER OUT OF MY HEAD

Still feeling sickly after anything I eat. No fun.

Nothing like impulse shopping to cheer myself up and hey, X the new Kylie Minogue album is here. Braving a sudden and intense blizzard that hit for (I kid you not) five minutes (and just the five my dog and I happened to be outside), I ran to Sunrise records and picked it up.

I got a funny email from my friend Mark, who wrote:

You're really going to go and buy a CD? Really? Are you living in 1999? Well, enjoy your compact disc. Just don't try to play it on your 8-track, luddite! :)

I replied that I can pirate as easily as the next man but the people I love get my money. Make a CD, DVD or book that moves me in some way and I will happily hand over my money. Besides, after all this time, there's still a spark of pleasure in tearing open the plastic wrap, opening the jewel case and placing the new disc in the tray and hitting play.

I bought Kylie's CD because I think she deserves my money. Not that X is essential, of course; it's all totally predictable, utterly disposable electro-pop but damn, these songs are fun and sometimes you just want a cheeseburger. I especially love this one:


Kylie -- "Like a Drug"

It's hilarious -- the lyrics are a cliché-a-thon of dancefloor cheese but still that irresistible synth line and sugary chorus just makes me want to get all sorts of inappropriate.

Why do I give Kylie a pass on the nasal-voiced sex kitten purr that makes Britney look so ridiculous to me? I think it's her age (all this "woman of experience" vibe is far more credible coming from a late-thirty-something), her looks (she's a gorgeous late-thirty-something) and her silence. As a pop star, Kylie is a throwback to an earlier era where we don't have to hear about her every rehab stint, redneck boyfriend or opinion on the Middle East peace process. Kylie just gets on with making fun music.

Oh, and if she decides she wants to act again and signs on for Doctor Who?
Even better!

Labels: music, technology, tributes

"She deserves my money" - now that's a sentiment you don't frequently hear voiced about sexy pop singers! Nice.

-- Reply posted by  Whisky Prajer at November 29, 2007

 

Post a Comment

Look out, everybody -- here comes an Old Man Rant!
Years ago, I found this great little lamp in Chinatown. It's a little brown cube with rice paper sides and even a scented oil warmer up top (adorable!). It appears in that first 'day in the life' video I made:


Thursday, September 22, 2006

A few months ago, tragedy struck. The halogen bulb burned out and those are tricky to replace. I went to Canadian Tire, showed them the old bulb and left with a recommended replacement -- one that instantly popped and burned out when I plugged it in. I went back, got no further advice from them and began trying a couple bulb variations but with no luck.

I began to think the lamp itself might be the problem so, earlier this week, I brought it to Dudley's Hardware in my neighbourhood. Frank, I'm told, does small appliance repair. He explained to me that the wiring in the lamp is fine but the voltage of the bulbs I'd been recommended was too low. Since this little store doesn't carry such bulbs, I went back to Canadian Tire. I had questions about some other things too but, for the first time in a while, I found the staff there even less help than usual. Everyone just kept passing me off to someone else who didn't know either -- my favourite being the girl who directed me to an empty counter. "Just wait around here," she said. "He'll come back." When I got home, the new bulbs didn't work either.

In desperation, I decided to schlep out to Gerrard Square, where there's a Home Depot. I loathe Wal-Mart and its big-box ilk but here I found someone who instantly took an interest in my wiring problem, hooking my lamp cord up to an electrical reader and testing the bulbs. Everything worked fine, just not together, and he too was stumped. Another Home Depot employee came over to see if he could figure it out. In the end, nothing was solved but it still felt great just to have people at least try to help. And during my time spent in the store, I could see a much more interesting and varied collection of things for the home than at CT. I hate having to lose a perfectly good prejudice but Home Depot won me over.

Monday, I'm going to Paul Wolf industrial lighting supply. They're my last hope. In the meantime, however, I'll remember that Frank at Dudley's looked at my lamp the same day, gave me solid advice and didn't even charge me a nickel. I certainly know where I'll go next time.

Labels: money - lack thereof, repair, technology, Trawna, tributes

Oh, I completely felt for u for the C.T. comments. I shop there all the time due to their weekly sales and wide variety of choices. However, their staff are just so little trained. They always point me into a totally wrong direction when I asked to find something. Furthermore, sometimes they're just too exhausted or too rude to even talk to me. They told me to wait there and just left to finish their work, leaving me standing there waiting like a fool.

Since then, whenever I shop at C.T., I depend on my own senses and observation and it worked better than their staff most of the time. ;-P I could be more familiar with the shelves and location of products at the downtown and Queensway store than some staff there... lol

Good luck, Scott!

Wingo

-- Reply posted by  Anonymous at November 19, 2007

 

I generally prefer Home Hardware to Ca-knucklehead Tire, partly out of convenience (got one in the village) but also because they're usually smaller stores with a staff that's geared to help in any way they can. After all, they're competing against the big Home Cheap-os and all their ilk.

-- Reply posted by  Whisky Prajer at November 19, 2007

 

Post a Comment

There's a charming interview with David Lynch in Entertainment Weekly on this week's release of the beautiful "gold box" DVD set of my favourite TV show, Twin Peaks (oh how I need this!). Lynch explains how the series was hobbled in mid-stream by the network's panicky insistence on wrapping up the show's central mystery as quickly as possible:

"[The] question of what happened to Laura Palmer was the goose that laid the golden egg. Then ABC asked us to snip the goose's head off, and it killed the goose."

This is ironic to me for two reasons: first, ABC is now the home of Lost, a maddening show that has remained popular over three seasons by constantly unveiling more mysteries than it solves.

Second, and more important, is the example of artists treated badly by their business partners. Companies like ABC are now panicking over the writers' strike set to begin on Monday. There's been some terrific new TV this fall (I'm loving Life and Reaper) but it's all about to dry up for quite some time because producers can't see why they should share profits from DVD and Internet versions of shows with the writers who created them. They argue that the whole Internet distribution thing is so new, there's no guarantee they'll make any money from it. This thought obviously occurred to them while passing the owners of Amazon and Google panhandling for change on Sunset Boulevard.

Here's the point: since I won't be buying the Twin Peaks set just yet (not until someone can explain to me why this brand-new product is $90 in Canada and $65 in the States), I decided to soothe my lust by buying the fabulous new soundtrack album from iTunes. I could have easily found it for free on the BitTorrent sites but I happily paid the ten bucks and had it playing on my computer within a few minutes. The network people, along with the movie studio executives, record industry thugs and software developers, don't understand this because they view their customers as potential criminals. They refuse to understand if you treat talented people badly and fill the marketplace with crap, the public will respond with the same amount of respect, no matter how many "you're a pirate thief" ads they place before the movie begins.

David Lynch created a weird and wonderful little series and I'm happy to reward him for it...well, him and the pack of corporate weasels who killed the golden goose but still get 95% of its egg. Stay strong at the bargaining table, Writers Guild of America!

Labels: media, music, technology, TV, writing

I never could get into MySpace -- too visually-messy, a lot of work setting-up for seemingly little reward, and virtually everyone on it was 15 years old. I happily accepted my decrepit elder status, until a bunch of people almost simultaneously started badgering me to sign onto Facebook.

Result! It's been great fun and very handy for keeping track of friends both near and far. The only downside is how it's eaten into my tiny, precious blogging time so now I'm setting up a newsreader for my blog to link it into my Facebook notes.

I barely even know what I just wrote.

Labels: friends, technology

Now that cheap editing software has made it simple for even Luddites like me to tinker with songs and movies, while the Internet has made it simple to broadcast the results, the "mash-up" is becoming a great source of fun and fascination. There are legal issues, financial issues, ethical issues and artistic issues, all wrapped up in one clever little mp3 or YouTube.

As always, first comes the silly: I once heard a track that put Tom Jones' vocals from "Kiss" over "Funkytown" by Lipps Inc. It was literally better than both songs put together. Then the track that used the Dandy Warhols' guitar riffs to turn the cheesy dance song "Horny" into something joyous. Then the mash-ups got smarter. In 2004, The Grey Album's controversial-but-brilliant blend of the Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's The Black Album (duh!) by DJ Danger Mouse was banned, while American Edit from 'Dean Gray' performed a public service by revealing exactly where the chord changes in Green Day's American Idiot came from (Oasis, the Doctor Who theme and, whoa, Glen Campbell -- who knew?).

A San Francisco DJ calling himself Earworm has practically conquered the bastard genre, with songs comprised of over a dozen others. My favourite is "Stairway to Bootleg Heaven" which puts (get ready) Laurie Anderson, the Art of Noise, Eurythmics, the Beatles, Pet Benatar, the Beastie Boys and Dolly Parton(!) through the wringer. As Truman Capote famously said of Jack Kerouac, "That's not writing, that's typing." In true open-source tradition, Earworm has published a mash-up how-to guide so others can play in the sandbox as well. But will he share the profits from his book? That's what artists and the record companies would like to know.

Assuming their opposition is more than merely financial (I'm generous that way), I assume record companies are upset at how easily these kind of remixes reveal the limitations of pop music. Let's face it -- most rock and pop tracks really DO sound the same and are easily blended. But didn't the mighty Ramones teach us that back in the late '70s? They took their parents' classic pop-rock style, sped it up and spit it back at them. They recorded an album with girl-group guru Phil Spector, for Joey's sake! Mash-ups are just the latest way of showing that pop culture is just a stack of Lego bricks. There's lot of colours and shapes but they can all fit together. Every kid has played with Lego, I think every kid should play with Lego, and some of them turn out to be architects because of it.

And if not? Well at least they're having fun. There's a UK outfit called Thriftshop XL that does great tweaks of music videos. They've sent Justin Timberlake back to 1992 and made a strong case for the Knack suing Franz Ferdinand, with Run-DMC as the lawyers. And then there's this -- a track so gloriously silly, I can't get enough of it:



Is a track like this an act of destruction or creation? Perhaps the best recent example was the now-legendary re-edited trailer for The Shining that stripped away the horror elements and added happy audio to make Stanley Kubrick's film seem like a family comedy. I discovered a pair of YouTube bits that hilariously pit Doctor Who against his most terrifying foe -- the French -- and make the high-seas hero Horatio Hornblower campier than Liberace. What was once some of my favourite TV is now something I'll have a hard time watching without snickering. Again, are these edits acts of vandalism -- or creativity?

I ask these questions because I'm now as guilty as anyone. Since discovering video editing software, I've been playing with the Lego bricks, too. The results have been quite cute (a jolly tribute to the original and still best Queer as Folk), rather peculiar (a Cyberman video for the Pet Shop Boys' sinister track "Integral") and now somewhat unsettling. Where the notion came from, I simply have no idea, but I felt compelled to combine Terry Gilliam's dark masterpiece on bureaucracy and terrorism with the bombastic giddiness of (God help and forgive me) the Electric Light Orchestra -- it's "Mr. Blue Sky Goes To Brazil":



And this is where the debates came in. Did I just ruin a brilliant film with musical cheese? Or did I taint a beloved '70s pop tune with creepy imagery? Or both? Could I be sued for this? Don't I deserve to be? Or will anyone just appreciate it for the peculiar and silly trifle it is?
Questions, questions...

Labels: MeTube, music, technology

If I wasn't born a geek, growing up in the 1970's certainly sealed the deal. It was a crap decade -- Vietnam, Watergate, the oil crisis, Jonestown, Barry Manilow -- so people tended to become either desperate for nostalgia or fascinated by the future. Seventies pop culture wallowed in sci-fi: there were happy futures, terrifying futures and futures I'm not sure which. "Star Wars" managed to be futuristic AND nostalgic at once!

Somewhere in all that -- way up in the Canadian fringes past even "The Starlost" -- was a cheap little Global TV show called "Science International." Host Joseph Campanella (an actor who's appeared in every TV show ever) wore a groovy black turtleneck against a black background so that his floating head could explain the scientific innovations that would change our lives. Each segment ended with his breathless exclamation, "What will they think of next?" He said it so often that the producers eventually threw their hands up and made it the new name of the show.

That sort of gee-whiz glee is largely passé these days though my old boyfriend Bryce worked for Telus Mobility and excitedly told me in 1999 how hard they were working on video games for cellphone colour video screens. "But what's the point of that?" I asked. "Who cares?" he shrugged, "It's just cool."

Today, though, I got a genuine dose of that old-school 'wow, futuristic!' vibe when I read this piece on what Proctor & Gamble has been working on:

Chemists have developed a powerful household water purification system that puts the cleansing power of an industrial water treatment plant into a container the size of a ketchup packet. The researchers have shown that the tiny packet, which acts as a chemical filter, can be added to highly contaminated water to dramatically reduce pathogen-induced diarrhea — the top killer of children in much of the developing world.
...
Worldwide, approximately 1.5 million children under age five die each year from simple diarrhea acquired from pathogens found in drinking water, according to public health experts. That translates to about 4,000 children dying each day as a result of contaminated water.
...
A single packet can decontaminate 2 ½ gallons of drinking water, or enough drinking water to sustain a typical household for about 2-3 days, Allgood says. The packet is added to a large container of impure water, stirred, filtered through a cloth to remove impurities and then allowed to sit for 20 minutes. The net result is clear, safe drinking water, the researcher says.

What will they think of next?

Labels: Canada, technology, the 70s

Working for a computer animation studio these last couple months has been a great experience (though I'm unable to discuss any of it -- curse that confidentiality agreement!) and it's certainly given me an appreciation for the efforts of the animators and the art of CGI in general.

With that in mind, my friend Jeff and I went to see "The Polar Express" last night and not just the regular version in theatres now but the Imax 3-D edition down at the Paramount. We were enthralled right from the start and the entrance of the train itself is both spectacular and haunting. Much has been written about the film's new "performance capture" technology that creates a sort-of middle-ground between computer animation and real footage of actors. The human characters in the film are the most life-like to date, the rest of the animation is at times breathtakingly beautiful and the Imax 3-D creates a near-unbelievable level of depth for a thrilling experience.

So why did I hate this film with the fury of a thousand white-hot suns?

I loathed this movie. I couldn't wait for it to end. I felt claustrophobic in the giant Imax theatre and all but fled at the first end credit. Once safely outside, Jeff and I laughed out loud at how incredibly appalled I was at this movie. It's bizarre how I just can't stress enough how much I hated "The Polar Express."

I don't think I've ever seen a film so utterly lacking in soul. It's not just that the almost-but-not-quite human characters look stiff and a bit creepy (especially in the eyes) but that the movie takes what is apparently a charming little storybook (I'll have to check it out now) and pads, pads, pads it to 90 minutes with one formulaic "thrill-ride" sequence after another. The first 'train-as-rollercoaster' sequence is a genuine thrill but the fourth is just tedious.

Then, amazingly, they finally reach the North Pole and the movie gets worse -- every Christmas cliché grimly trotted out with no warmth or joy. Then there's the overbearing soundtrack that rips off Danny Elfman's "Edward Scissorhands" score (he should sue!) and cranks it up to 11 to make us 'feel the magic' at all the right moments -- absolutely dreadful. Worst of all was the heavy thump of the film's moral -- that the smart, investigative kid who Doubts is saved from "Losing the Magic" of Santa Claus by being ordered to Believe (and yes, you can hear every capital letter). I like smart kids who doubt and ask questions and I hate seeing that quality squeezed out of them by syrup like this.

As an adult watching movies aimed at kids, one normally has one of two reactions. One film will recapture a bit of your childhood, making you feel like ten years old again (I think of "Pirates of the Caribbean" or "Pee Wee's Big Adventure"); another film will grimly remind you that you're not ten year old and never will be again (sigh -- "Star Wars: Episode I"). Judging from the manipulative treacle on display here, I am very thankful for that.

I hated having to keep asking myself, "Am I just a old grouch?" but no, dammit, I'm not. Last year, I was shocked to find myself getting teary during parts of "Finding Nemo" (tell no one) -- a film with genuine wit and warmth, a story of faith and family, and a theme that resonates without giving us a moral bludgeoning. Even the "Shrek" films have moments of real sweetness.

"The Polar Express" is the kind of movie that makes you want to tell a total stranger to run and see it for its incredible visuals, while you tell another stranger to avoid it at all costs for its dispiriting absence of humanity.

Labels: friends, holidays, introspective, movies, technology

ESCAPE FROM THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The computer on my bedroom desk was built in 1994. In technology circles, that date is followed by a 'B.C.' "Buy a new computer already," the experts insist but, out of loyalty mixed with poverty, I stubbornly cling to my pokey Pentium.

Last month however, I decided to move one step closer to the twenty-first century by installing Windows 98. My silence on this site shows just what a success that idea was. Not only was I unsuccessful in loading the new operating system, I somehow erased the old operating system.

In a panic, I called up my computer-literate friend Josh in L.A. and explained how I'd turned my computer into "the world's most expensive paperweight." "I'm sure there are diamond paperweights," he suggested. Good thing he's in California.

After weeks of similarly-whiny pleas and phone calls, I was able to cobble together enough info, boot discs and courage to get my computer back in fighting shape. The rickety old thing is bringing my e-mail, saving my files and even syncing to a PalmPilot, which the computer salespeople I talked to said would be impossible. For the first time in a life of dealing with these thuggish beige boxes, I feel victorious.

Best of all, with the money I'm saving from not buying a new computer, I'm heading down to Josh's wedding in Los Angeles. Obviously, more on that in just a bit...

Labels: friends, technology