Words At Arm’s Length

Wooooo! Going to Chicaaaago! Lollapalooza is upon us! Once I’m finished what promises to be the longest, most soul-crushing shift at Inteleservices ever, I’m leavin’ on a jet plane with my best buds to one of the most culturally relevant cities on the continent. The meditative quality of doing laundry has put me in a rather mellow state, but that’ll last until about 3 minutes into my shift at most before I start freakin’.

So, I’m definitely bringing my notebook and pen for writing purposes. I expect to have a few band-specific reviews and and overall review of the festival posted once I get back. Also, if I can snag a camera I might actually post some pictures.

Eeeee! ^_^ s’gonna be awesome

Floyd: Wow, you look great!

Liz: Do I? I’m pretty tired from playing as hard as I work.

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Jack: You know who hates unicorns? Mark Wahlberg.

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I amuse easily. Please let the sleep come.

I get overly excited about things. From new comic book day to the last fifteen minutes of my shift, my reactions to the smaller things have elicited worried looks from people in my vicinity. I am a spaz, and spaz I did yesterday when I discovered this:

Few people understand my love of this woman. I’m going on record now to say that Joanna Newsom is one of the best songwriters currently working right now, and she’s definitely my favourite (sorry, Spencer Krug. We can still have sex, right?). Newsom’s Ys is easily my favourite album of all time, and since her Joanna Newsom & the Ys Street Band EP came out last year, a steady trickle of new material has surfaced from various bootleg recordings, like this number right here:

Now, I don’t think I’ve really followed an artist’s live material as closely as I have Newsom’s (with the possible exception of the heyday of my Yeah Yeah Yeahs obsession [who I still love]), but it seems I’m not the only one. In the first video, she makes mention that people have been angry when she’s made changes to her new songs in concert, even though they haven’t even been recorded yet. Holy ownership debate, Batman.

I find it really strange that fans who catch glimpses of new material on YouTube feel entitled to dictate what this material should sound like when all is said and done. The great thing about music is that it isn’t set in stone. Bands themselves rework their own material for live recording. A band like Xiu Xiu will have live versions that sound nothing like their album counterparts and are still amazing. Joanna Newsom herself re-wrote a lot of her harp parts for her solo ventures and performances with her touring band. Some artists do covers of songs that completely rethink the original, and though you’re bound to find people who scoff at the idea of covers and outright loathe when they sound too different form the source material, you’re bound to find a few fans here and there who appreciate the de-/reconstruction. I would be honoured if someone read something of mine and decided to completely recontextualize it (for the sake of their art), and I think artists themselves should be able to make changes to their music as they see fit. We’ll always have previous recordings if we really love a certain version.

I am incredibly excited for Joanna Newsom’s upcoming album, in spite of a lack of release date. This country/folk vibe is totally working for her. I highly doubt that she’ll match up to the grandiose arrangements of Ys, but I don’t think that’s the point and the growth she’s shown as an artist so far makes think I’ll be spinning new records from Ms. Newsom for a long, long time.

Okay, tell me again why the Olympics, a symbol of international unity, are being held in Beijing?

I know in an earlier post I sort of defended China, but that was due more to terrible media coverage pegging them as backwater hicks with no sensitivity to people with disabilities. Well, it seems China is at it again, forcing bar owners in the city to sign pledges not to serve black people. Outrageous, no? Well, read that article and tell me if your blood doesn’t boil just a little bit more.

As an English major, I learned to dissect texts. Sometimes I do it more often than I should, but that article made me burst out in the explicit exclamation that is the title of this post. This is the part that got me:

“Beijing police have been visiting bar owners in the popular Sanlitun area and asking them to sign pledges agreeing to not serve black people or Mongolians and ban activities including dancing.

Bar owners said that police have been clamping down on black people and Mongolians, who are sometimes implicated in drug dealing and prostitution, as part of an Olympic clean-up campaign that they and locals fear will make for a secure but sterile Games.“

Fuck me blind, did you REALLY need to tag that part in? Because the Beijing “locals” (implying native Chinese and not any ethnic subdivisions that might be in the city) have nothing to do with any of the prostitution that might be going on in their own city, I’m sure. And, as the title of the article suggests, the biggest concern people have is that the Olympics aren’t going to be “fun”. Fuck you. Blacks, Mongolians and gays are being denied basic freedoms, and the biggest problem you have is that it might take some of the fun out of the Olympic experience?

Debacle. I hope the Olympics bomb this year. Sorry, amateur athletes, I realize you’ve worked hard to get where you’re going, but if you can abide this then you’re kind of missing the point, right?

ARGH.

I knew you had it in you St. Catharines. Beneath your artless exterior and epic levels of sketch, you still manage to be capable of unabashed fun. Kudos to the gentlemen who organized last night’s Red Square revival, it was one of the best nights of dancing I’ve had in a while. And kudos to the people who showed up! The thing that ultimately killed the Red Square was attendance (with many factors contributing to the lack thereof, I understand), but last night the dancefloor was teeming. It really felt like old times.

What the fuck was with that video though? Entertaining? Yes. Trippy? As all fuck. I believe the words “slovenly cunt” appeared in subtitles on one of the frames, and I am now officially adopting the phrase for my own purposes.

SPOILER ALERT: Thar be SPOILERS in this har reeee-vue. Continue at your own peril.

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I apologize if this sounds like a fluff piece, but good Lord, what a fantastic piece of filmmaking that was.

Pretty much as soon as the bank scene started the momentum just didn’t let up. The Joker starts off as a cold-blooded criminal and slowly transforms into this insane force of nature, a manifestation of chaos, and Heath Ledger made it work so amazingly well. I was sold by the Joker’s second scene, wherein he faces up the mob and performs his very own brand of “magic trick”. Any misgivings I had about Ledger’s performance from the trailers vanished in that very shocking moment. His Joker was manic and unpredictable, and it was really a treat to watch. But holy shit creepy, and not just because he’s dead now. The Joker invokes this feeling of dread as you progress through the movie and realize just how dangerous he is. Just awesome. This was exactly the Joker I wanted to see, and Ledger and Nolan deserve major kudos.

Then there’s the rest of the cast, who all did amazing work. By the end of the movie, Christian Bale’s “Batman voice” was starting to get a bit…I dunno…forced? And coupled with the speechifying that was going on I did have a moment where I wanted him to just friggin’ talk instead of do the raspy-shouty thing. But it didn’t really detract that much from the scenes and the conclusion of the film was satisfying regardless. Also, I wish they had cast Maggie Gyllenhaal in Batman Begins, because she made me not hate the Rachel character. If Katie Holmes had been in this movie it would have been poorer for it. Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, all aces. Whoever cast this movie deserves a pat on the back.

So yeah, pretty much every plotline in the movie was fascinating and there was no wasted time in the entire film. Christopher Nolan has made the best superhero movie of all time. Good luck topping it, other filmmakers! You poor bastards.

It lived up to the hype. Go see it.

I really don’t know what else to say.

How the fuck are they gonna make a sequel?

(Thanks to Dorothy Parker for the title.)

Fuck lawns. Fuck them to death. For some reason I’m the only one in my family who has mastered the ancient technique of mowing (pull cord, push, add gas when needed). Now, I realize I’m a lazy bastard and I should probably force myself to mow more often, but living in a neighbourhood full of senior citizens who do nothing but garden and talk about gardening all day has made the sporadic upkeep of our lawn look even worse by comparison (also large trees and weird root systems have left our lawn patchy, which further adds to my grief). Now I dunno who the fuck thought it was a great idea to have large squares of grass that you have to constantly cut down in the hottest season in order to maintain some kind of domestic beauty standard, but if they’re not dead yet they bloody well ought to be, writhing furiously in the darkest, rankest pit of Hell. Let’s just fucking pave over it all and have our barbecues on chic rooftop patios where people get paid to tend to the little bit of artificial wildlife that we choose to have up there.

Aaaand I’m spent.

I’m about to enter major geek territory here (comics and sci-fi TV) so bloody well watch your step. You might stumble into something nerdy.

Both Marvel comics and Battlestar Galactica (BSG) have rejuvenated what I’m calling the “bodysnatchers” narrative (after Invasion of the Bodysnatchers). I don’t know if it has a name already or that it really applies in BSG’s case, but I’m rolling with it. Anyhoo, what it is is a narrative where human beings are revealed to be alien impostors, and the remaining humans in the story are left wondering who they can trust. In BSG, the “bodysnatchers” are the Cylons, a race of advanced machines who evolved and developed the technology to take on the appearance of humans. In Marvel comics, the current Secret Invasion arc sees the shapeshifting Skrull race replacing many of the major and minor superheroes in order to tear them apart from the inside out and eventually take over the world.

I’m kind of loving both right now. The main Secret Invasion book is alright, but it’s the way the infiltration was orchestrated as shown in Mighty Avengers and New Avengers that’s getting me. Brian Michael Bendis, the creative lead on the project, has clearly done his homework. As for BSG, Season 4.5 cannot come out soon enough. I’m pretty sure the ending is going to blow us all away.

However, it’s the ending of these things that usually screw the proverbial pooch.

Marvel has a lot of potential here to make a huge and lasting impact on upcoming stories. However, they also have a convenient way out of unwanted character development, essentially having free rein to change characters however they please by using the excuse “he/she was a skrull all along!” The way I see this working is, once the crossover event is over, the creators will revive whoever the hell they want back in their books and just ignore years of continuity. This has been a beef of mine with comics since I started reading them and I will be severely pissed if everything just resets to zero when all is said and done. Each comic book character has a life of his or her own, shaped by several writers over however many years the character has been around. To undo years of work for shock value or mere convenience is doing a disservice to people who have been following books for a long time and the writers who put a lot of effort to make these characters who they are.

Although, to be fair, I expect much more from Marvel than its main competitor, DC, these days. That whole company is a retcon clusterfuck and probably needed a complete reboot about 8 years ago.

BSG, conversely, has had most of its major character revelations. 11 of the 12 Cylons have been revealed and the success of the finale basically depends on how awesome/lame the pick for the final Cylon is. The great thing about the way BSG handled the bodysnatcher narrative was that the Cylons never really “replaced” so much as “integrated”. Every character on the show who’s been a Cylon has been a Cylon the whole time, so the question of character development getting fucked up is pretty moot. Yeah, to be fair, the “final four” reveal changed a lot, but no so much that I felt cheated by it or that the character development in the episodes prior were at all diminished. If the final Cylon is who I think it is, then I think it’s going to be a rather awesome ending.

I really want both series to succeed. BSG has shown me that a sci-fi can have all the character development, symbolism and depth that you can get from any film, and Secret Invasion is showing me just what is possible with the comic book medium on a grand scale. Both projects have a lot to lose from potential botched endings, and I’m waiting white-knuckled to find out what happens next.

God, so nerdy.

Security measures

hardcore corporate commands

hands off my cell phone