Meet the Stupid

Although the number one spot on the list of movies I hate is clearly, forcefully, undboutedly and angrily taken, it's important to remember that I only saw that particular pile of aardvark vomit within the last year - meaning there was, indeed, a different pile of aardvark vomit in the number one slot (and one before that one, and before that one, and yes my friends it is aardvark vomit all the way down).

Let's see if you can guess what semi-digested mass of termite remains once held the top spot with a simple hint: here's the article that made me think of it in all it's regurgitated glory:

Recruiting men to nursing remains a challenge (CBC)

Got it yet?

Here's another hint:

DeNiro makes a deal with the douchebag, OR
Suggest your own caption in the commments section!

I mean speaking, of course, of the totally irredeemable "comedy" Meet the Parents, which I saw on the plane during one of my frequents trips home from school, and by "saw" I mean "watched the first five minutes with interest and then slowly grew angrier and angrier as the plot unfolded before turning it off and trying to avert my eyes from the other screens lest my rage overwhelm me to the point that I must be tackled and restrained while trying to use the emergency exit at 10,000 feet".

Rather than recap the whole film (because, obviously, I didn't see the whole thing) let me present to you the scene in which two anonymous douchebags come up with the story:

DB1: Okay, so, our main guy, he's gotta be funny. How can we make him funny?Hmmm...He could be well-written and the centrepiece of a clever film? [pause] Naw, that's too hard.

DB2: Let's give him a funny name, like 'Weiner'.

DB1: Naw, too obvious...kay, let's get back to that f***ker later.

DB2: Focker! Awesome.

DB1: Awesome! [high-fives]

DB2: Okay, now we need to give him, like, a funny job. Something really embarassing...like, outhouse cleaner or something.

DB1: Hey, you know what's really funny to my emotionally-stunted mind? When men engage in activities considered by our society to be feminine, which, by illustrating the arbitrariness of gender boundaries and calling into question the rigid social structures based upon these boundaries, challenges my own innate sense of privilege based on my manly superiority to women.

DB2: Uh...what?

DB1: It's totally funny when dudes do chick stuff.

DB2: Yeah! Like, I have this cousin, and he and his wife run a ballroom dance school, and charge like $200 bucks for a lesson and he's always, like, dancing around with women and shit, and I'm like, dude - that's so gay.

DB1: Yeah, like, why don't you just go be, like, a male nurse or something!

DB2: [laughs uproariously] MALE NURSE! That's awesome. You can't make that shit up. I love it.

DB1: Yeah! So this Focker, he's a [giggles] male nurse, and he wants to marry this hot chick, but first he needs to get her dad's permission to take ownership of his property, because it's not like a grown woman is capable of making her own decisions, and would be angry rather than bemusedly tolerant of her father's inappropriate and borderline-abusive treatment of the man that she loves!

DB2: Whu-what?

DB1: Chicks know their place, and let the men duke it out because that's just how we roll.

DB2: Oh.

DB1: And the dad will be super-scary ex-CIA guy, but then he'll totally love sissy shit, like flowers and cats.

DB2: MAN WE ARE GONNA BE EFFIN' RICH!

And don't even get me started on the sequel. For the sake of my blood pressure, I try to pretend that it doesn't exist.

Related Posts:

• A Tale of Three Punishers
• Why You Do Me So Wrong: Episode II
• Why You Do Me So Wrong, Oliver Stone?

RIP, Ricardo Montalban

He's been in a lot of stuff, mostly things that I'm too young for (Fantasy Island) or too old for (Spy Kids) but Star Trek II? Just right.

And I still can't watch that ear-weavil scene.

Library Love

As in, love for the library, not love in a library, because then this would be a completely different kind of blog ("Dear Floyd, I never thought this would happen to me but [...] and then the reference librarian chased us out with an oversized atlas of northern Canada's waterways.")

No, this post is all about how much I love the library that I currently use, the ones I've used in the past, and the concept of libraries in general. Maybe I'm just on a library high because no fewer than five (5!) books that I've wanted to read for a very, very long time (like, maybe even, months!) all came in today and I just wanted to throw them on the bed and roll around with them but that would be gross a)for me and b)for everyone after me. So I didn't do that. But I did look at my bag o' books longingly all afternoon, waiting for the work day to end so that I could take them home and we could be alone...

Ahem. Moving on. Now, I'm not a super spendy (why yes, that is a real word, thankyouverymuch) person in general, but books have always been the exception that proved that I was a big liar. Graduate school was probably the worst time for this, because I spent so much time with smarty-pants academics with offices lined with smarty-pants books that I spent hundreds of dollars trying to look smarty-pants myself ("look" being the operative word, as the academics with their book-filled offices had, in fact, written or contributed to or worked with the authors of many of those books, whereas I mostly bought them, held them tight to my chest, and then put them on the shelf and admired them from afar) on a research topic which I eventually abandoned. (In a completely unrelated bit of information, if anyone's looking for some collections on the public sphere, I can totally hook you up.) It was just so convenient - go to Amazon.ca, click a few times, enter your credit card number and blammo! Brand new box of shiny books to be read once (maybe) and then collect dust on my bookshelf. I felt smarter just looking at them.

Now, film buff that I am, I've still never had this problem with movies. I love watching them, but I've never really owned many, mostly because there's maybe a few dozen movies out that I've actually watched more than once (although what I lack in quantity, I make up for in...a different kind of quantity, having seen The Lion King 30+ times back when it was the only kid's movie we owned when my oldest younger brother was...er, younger, not to mention having seen each of the Star Wars trilogy 25+ times). There's even fewer books I've read more than once, and yet I have such a hard time parting with them that I've finally realized the real solution is to just stop buying them.

And now, thanks to the power of the Intertubes, getting books from the library is almost as easy as buying, plus free, so if you include the work I have to do to earn money to buy books (which I do now, because that is how I roll) then the library is easier than a frat boy during rush week. (I actually have no idea what rush week really is, but I think it has something to do with frats, so that's my joke and I'm sticking to it.) Instead of going to Amazon, I go to the library site, look up the books I want, place a hold, and then go pick them up at the library when they're ready. IT IS SO AWESOME I WANT TO BARF, THAT'S HOW AWESOME IT IS. I pick out books, and the magical book fairies find them and email me and I come get them and sign them out and it's all FREE FLOYD AND LIBRARIES BFFFS 4EVA.

Of course I guess that makes me a business-hating, economy-killing, tree-hugging, freeloading socialist. So be it. They can have my library card when they pry it out of my cold, ink-stained fingers. Of course, then I'd just go to the customer service desk during operating hours and get a new one. And maybe browse the magazine racks at the same time, suckas.

A tale of three Punishers

One summer, my older brother worked at the local video store, and would come home from late shifts with as many seven-day rentals as we could watch before his next shift, which meant staying up all night with our shared love of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude van Damme, Steven Seagal, and all the other heavy hitters of the “martial arts and/or-guns and/or plot plus lots of explosions” genre of the 80s and 90s.

This is also known as the greatest summer of my life.

It was also the summer that introduced me to the action stylings of one Dolph Lundgren, whose career can be accurately summed up here, or humourously summed up here. And it just so happens that, among my favourites of his many movies is the original Punisher. (Yes, I have more than one favourite Dolph Lundgren movie. Red Scorpion and Universal Soldier are the others, in case you were curious. And I know you were.)

It’s a dark movie - so dark they dye his hair black, which makes the normally blond, blue-eyed Swede look like he has, like, consumption or something. But he’s supposed to be dead inside, anyway (figuratively, not literally) (although a zombie Punisher would just be so much awesome that my head would asplode) so it only adds to the gloomy, morbid atmosphere of the film. Which is essentially about a guy who (spoiler? Maybe? Although you probably know this already if you’re at all interested in the film) takes the law into his own hands after his family is killed by the mob. Literally into his hands, with fists and guns and explosives and swords and knives. And sometimes his feet too. Awesome.

So I was more than a little excited when I was wandering around some European mall in 2004 and saw posters with a dark-haired Thomas Jane and the familiar skull symbol. This excitement was tempered half a second later when I realized that right next to that poster was one with John Travolta (entry #2 in “embarrassing crushes from Floyd’s youth”. Entry #1 can be found in this post). But still, I held out hope, even in the face of the dismal opening and turrrrible reviews. After all, I have liked unpopular, ill-received films in the past.

I finally rented it a few months ago, mostly fueled by the knowledge that a third one was in the works, with every major player (actors, director, writers) from the 2004 version unceremoniously dumped. I needed to know – was it really so bad?

Let me put it this way - if one measures the quality of a movie as being inversely related to how angry it makes me when I so much as think about the fact that it even exists, then the 2004 version of The Punisher is the Worst. Movie. I have ever seen. (I am not even going to link to its IMDB page, out of spite.)

The director, Jonathan Hensleigh, apparently blames this on having only $15 million and 50 days to shoot the movie. The director is an idiot. The problem with this movie is that it forgets the very simple, but necessary, formula of any action/revenge movie:

WBGD<WGDTBG. In plain language: what bad guys do must be exceeded by what gets done to bad guys. If the bad guy kicks a puppy, he should be hit in the face with a bat.If he attempts to rape your best friend and then insults and threatens her, he should be shot. If he kidnaps your daughter, you should slaughter of all his minions, accept his challenge to a knife fight - even though you know he will cheat - and then impale him with a steampipe with such force that it propels him backward into a live generator. It's simple math, people.

(Note – I’m about to get SPOILER-RIFFIC right here. It shouldn’t matter to anyone, though, ‘cause if you’ve seen the movie you won’t care, and if you haven’t seen the movie, do not make my sacrifice in vain by going out to rent it now).

So when the 2004 movie had the Punisher’s ENTIRE EXTENDED FAMILY - down to his second cousins and third aunt twice removed, including young children - BRUTALLY MURDERED ON-SCREEN, it upped the ante significantly in terms of what the bad guys did. Even by action movie standards, these were terrible, terrible men, whose actions went well beyond the comfort zone of what the audience expects. (Aside – and spoiler - Stallone did this with the most recent Rambo – having the bad guys be really, terribly graphically, evil - but then he spends the second half of the movie disposing of them with arrows, a machete and 10 glorious minutes behind a Gatling gun. Again - just do the math.)

So of course, when the Punisher gets hands on a member of the mob family behind this, surely he must exact a terrible, bloody and graphic revenge, right? Right? RIGHT?

Well, only if by “terrible, bloody and graphic revenge” you mean “pretend-tortures him with a popsicle in a scene played for laughs”. And it certainly isn’t what I meant.

Okay, but that guy was just small potatoes, right? And the play-torture was a way to get him to come around to the Punisher’s side, so that the Punisher could get really awesome, gruesome revenge on the real bad guys, right?

Sure, if by “awesome, gruesome revenge” you mean “tricks villainous John Travolta into killing his equally villainous wife and best friend.” Again – no, not what I meant. Tricks the bad guy to kill the other bad guys? Tricks him??!! Dude, this movie is not called The Trickster. It is not called The Manipulator. It is not called The super-dangerous guy who has a lot of guns and righteous anger, but would rather fool people into committing violence than resort to violence himself. Honestly, Dolph Lundgren would have turned in his grave. If he were dead. (Which he isn’t, since he’s currently in pre-production of The Expendables which features a cast that gives me a gore-gasm just reading it: Sly Stallone, Jason Statham and Jet Li.)

Not to mention that, just in case we forgot that these guys had massacred dozens of innocent people right before our eyes, we are reminded of how bad they are halfway through the film when they corner one of the Punisher's neighbors and tear out his facial piercings. Oh no! Shooting children point blank was one thing, but now you've gone and pulled out some guy's nose ring. On purpose!

So when the Punisher drags John Travolta behind his car and sets him on fire in the end, it's just waaaaaay too little, way too late. He should have done something like that to EVERYONE. For Travolta, it should have been even worse. The Punisher should have ripped out Travolta’s still beating heart, and stuck a popsicle in there, and said “I always knew you were cold-hearted” and then beaten him nearly to death with his own heart and then taken the popsicle out and eaten it to keep him cool as he burned Travolta alive, piece by piece, on a bonfire made up of the variously mutilated bodies of all the bad guys who worked for Travolta. And then he should have stabbed him in the eye with the popsicle stick. If that’s too much for you to stomach, Jonathan Hensleigh, than maybe you shouldn’t have made the bad guys do such terrible things. Maybe they could have just threatened his dog and stomped on his azaleas. Then your stupid movie would have made sense.

Man, I am just getting angry all over again.

So it was with a little bit of nervousness that I dragged DD to the theatre last night for Punisher: War Zone. I was hopeful, what with the new cast, including the awesome Ray Stevenson (if you see one new series this year, see Rome), Dominic West (if you see two new series this year, see Rome and The Wire) and Julie Benz, who, strangely enough, plays essentially the same role in this film as in the most recent Rambo (and, if you see three new series this year, see Rome, The Wire, and Dexter). The director, Lexi Alexander (Yes! A woman! Who made a film! Her vagina didn’t get in the way or anything!) was a bit of an unknown factor…

…but not any more. Because the movie? Is flat out awesomeness from start to finish. There are stabbings, and slashings, and explosions, and fisticuffs, and so many bullets that even John Woo is all “What? So many bullets!!”. The bad guys are bad, and they do crazy bad things, and then the Punisher kills them in new and interesting ways, and at the end of the day WBGD<WGDTBG and all is right in my world.

If I had to pick one word to describe my reaction to the film, it would be gleeful. This movie made me so goddamn happy, I just wanted to fly down to L.A. (the city) and give L.A. (the director) a big ole sloppy kiss for bringing some cheer to my holiday season. Unfortunately, with the movie not doing so well at the box office (I guess not that many of us want to start the holiday season with exploding drug-running parkour guys) a sequel is likely out of the question - although if Twilight is any indicator, even surpassing all box office expectations isn’t good enough for a female director to keep her job. Sounds to me like the studio heads need a little...punishment.

Friday Top Five: Favourite Fight Scenes

If you know me/have read this blog for a while, then you know my deep, unabashed love for big, loud, violent movies. (And the shirtless men who often inhabit them...but I'm getting ahead of myself!) So there's no need to ask where I was Wednesday night - obviously, I was at the opening night of Transporter 3.

Which was alright, and far superior to Transporter 2, but not really up to the original's balls-out, non-stop mayhem. But it did get me thinking of some of my favourite fight scenes, and what made them so good.

Overall, I think the main elements of a good fight scene are:

• The match-up: has to be challenging, yet attainable. If the good guy's clearly much stronger, than there's no suspense. If she/he's clearly outmatched, then there's too much suspension of disbelief required when the good guy triumphs. And QUIT IT with the convenient placed sharp objects. Victory by impalement is SO 1995.
  
• Creativity: There are thousands of fight scenes put to film every year, according to a number I just made up. What makes this one different? How is it interesting? Does Jason Statham take his shirt off? are just some of the questions a good fight choreographer should ask.
• Visuals: It's the ultimate tease: the big set, the powerful stars, the dramatic tension, the impending carnage that you know is about to come to a climax...only to have the moment totally ruined by blurry, shaky camera work and incessant cuts which the director thinks makes his film look "gritty" and "realistic" but actually makes it look "blurry" and incomprehensible" and, in my cause, "nauseating". Instead of a big finish, I am left puking in the bathroom. F*** you, Jason Bourne.
  

There's plenty more, but my lunch break is almost over, so here they are: five of my favourite fight scenes. Feel free to share your favourite fight scenes in the comments!

5) The Fellowship vs. a bajillion orcs and a cave troll
There's plenty of action in all of the LOTR movies, but this scene to me has a much more immediate and dramatic feel, with the fellowship forced to come together in battle for the first (and (SPOILER) last time), forging bonds of heart and strength and steel against the terrors of the infinite darkness that...juuuuust kidding, I love that cave troll.



4) Nicholas Angel and Danny Butterman vs. the Sanford Neighborhood Watch Alliance
If you haven't seen this movie yet, go. Now. No, seriously, go. I'l wait. [whistles]
If you have, then take a few minutes to enjoy this unparelled scene of gunplay and mindless violence that manages to be both an excellent action scene while parodying action scenes.

(This one can't be embedded - watch here)

3) The Bride vs. the Crazy 88

I knew this was one for me when the media reports first picked up that parts of the film had to be shown in black in white, because there was too much blood. AWESOME. It's 15 minutes of pure, visceral eye-candy, with multiple bad-ass women and 88 wild and crazy guys who get sliced and diced like it's discount day at RonCo.

Check it out here.

2) Neo, Trinity and many, many guns vs. hapless security guys, a SWAT team and various office building architectural features.

My friend Megan and I actually saw The Matrix three times at the Roxy, and the second two times were exclusively for this scene, which we affectionately dubbed "sexy gunfights in leather!". We would even chant it in hushed voices as the scene neared, something I'm sure the other patrons really appreciated.



1) The Transporter - Jason Statham and a vat of oil vs. a dozen bad guys
Cheesy, soft-core innuendo aside - this is actually an excellent scene, with intricate choreography, plenty of creativity, and beautiful shots. Of Jason Statham's toned and oiled-up abs...olute knowledge of martial arts techniques. Er, yeah. That's the ticket!

Friday Top Five

Top news story: Secretary of State Clinton.

Even if I didn't admire her, I'd be happy with this decision - at the very least, it should mean Amy Poehler returning to SNL for guest spots.

Top way to waste time: Assembler.

This simple little game about moving green crates around is addictive. Whoever solves the level with all the round crates, please give me a clue, 'cause I've been stumped all week.

Top embarrassing dad moment:

B.C. NDP house leader and middle-aged white guy Mike Farnworth using the word "bling" during question period. Stay tuned for next week when NDP leader Carole James scolds the Premier with a sassy "Oh no you di'int".

Top source of schadenfreude: Brokers with hands on their faces

Top photo: the one where Floyd finds her soulmate

Dan Savage vs. Tony Perkins on Anderson Cooper

Sometimes insomnia is it's own reward - yesterday's sleepless night meant I was up to see Dan Savage be his usual awesomeness on The Colbert Report.

He's equally as quick-witted in person as he is on the page - just check out this video of him taking on (heh) Tony Perkins of the insidiously named Family Research Councilwhich I'm not going to link to because it's one of those organizations that uses warm fuzzy words like "Family" "Values" "Life", etc., because "Douchebag fascists who want all up in your bedroom/uterus research council" wouldn't fit on the bumper sticker.

Also - bonus points if you watch the video right to the end, for the "Oh, snap!" moment. My exact word were, "Oh, you just got told, Tony Perkiiiiins!" Leave yours in the coments for double-plus fun.

From the Archives - October Rocks

In honour of my favourite month - a blast from my blogging past.

October Rocks

UPDATE - thanks to Scooter for the heads-up on the current weather conditions in O-town.

Saved from summer reruns

...by Rockstar: Supernova.  My love affair with reality TV pretty much ended this year, but that doesn't mean I can't have one last fling with this totally terrific show.  Okay, Dave Navarro is pretty irritating (maybe it's the impending divorce) (but still, telling a female contestant to "eat a sandwich" is pretty rude) (especially when you're lounging around bare-chested, and said chest is more Twiggy than barrel), and Tommy Lee needs to stop his "I am a big ol' horndog who must talk to women in blatantly sexual innuendo only", but the show itself is pretty awesome.  The singers are very talented, and there's a lot of rocking out, and not too much filler, and I'm actually pretty excited to see who will win (My hope?  Dilana.  My guess?  Toby.)

Anyway - if you're not doing anything Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday nights, check it out. 

Watch out, Melania!

Your husband was auditioning replacements last night...

That's right, it was the 2006 Miss Universe pageant, yeeeeeeaaaah!!!

I tuned into City TV (one of the half-dozen channels I still get, what with the cable being cut and all) hoping for a decent Sunday night movie - and instead happened across this strange throwback extravaganza.  Doubly strange was the fact that watching the first hour didn't make me nearly as angry as one would think (that one would be DD, who was visibly cringing as soon as the credits rolled - waiting for the inevitable "GGGGRRRRR PATRIARCHY" comment that was quickly at my lips, but which never fully-formed because pretty! Costumes!) 

Continuing that thought outside the brackets - oh, the costumes...they were very pretty.  My personal favorite was Miss Trinidad & Tobago, which made her look like she was surrounded by these giant, gorgeous, black and red  floating butterflies.  I also liked Miss Japan because she was dressed up like a samurai, albeit a sexy one, because we are talking about the grrrr patriarchy here.  But she had a sword!  C'mon!  And Miss...Peru, I think, had a big spear.  I am all for arming these women, and I'm not just talking about when Trump's around.

I sat through the swimsuit competition, mostly to hear some former Miss USA try to convince Carson Kressley that his enjoyment of said competition meant he was a closted heterosexual - to which he did not retort (much to my chagrin) that she seemed to be enjoying it just as much.  Honestly, people, it's a freakin' swimsuit show, not an infallible sexuality barometre (YEAH, that's right, I said it, DONALD TRUMP).

Anyway, like I said, I only watched the first hour, but I did tune in long enough to catch the mini-bios of the top ten contestants, in which I learned that Miss Canada was 6'1, Miss Japan spoke 4 langauges, and Miss Bolivia's interests included "Making people happy." I wonder if she also lives in a gumdrop house on Lollipop Lane? And then other women listed things like "Learning about new people" and "helping other people" and I finally snapped and snarked "Why don't they just list "Giving blowjobs" or "taking it up the a**"?" Grr...you know the rest...

But really, I stopped watching more out of boredom than anything else, because at the end of the day, 95% of these women were pretty much indistinguishable from each other, and were all basically trying to compete to fit the mold of "most attractive woman in the world according to standards set by insecure Viagra-addicts who build giant phallic buildings named after themselves, which, incidentally, rhymes with "frump"", and it was just generally kind of boring and a little depressing, but the women themselves seemed mostly pretty cool, and will probably accomplish a lot with their lives, and generally raise the status of women everywhere, as long as they are stunningly beautiful.

March for Life? Fuck off and die

Thank Jebus it only comes once a year, or my head would asplode faster than you can say "Get your own damn uterus!"

Yes, it's the effin' March for Life on Parliament Hill.

I haven't dared do much more than peer out my window, lest I be overcome with the temptation to bash their stupid faces in with their "yes, of course an 8-week old fetus has arms, legs, and eyes, as you can clearly see in this totally accurate photo of a helpless aborted baby" signs.

I just...I can't. I just can't face these people. There is no reasoning with someone who believes that they are divine champions on a holy quest to be saviour to zygotes cannon-fodder adorable little cherubic angels trapped inside an demonic incubator-thing that ridiculously purports to be an actual, living human being with, like, "rights" or something.

What drives me bonkers is that these people are trying to frame the argument in that if you support abortion rights, than you despise babies. Well, I've always known I wanted to have kids. I want to have kids because I want to experience the full power of my body, a woman's body. I want to have kids because I've always loved kids. I want to have kids so that when I grow old I'll have people to nag about not calling me who'll listen 'cause they want whatever's left of my wealth that didn't go to feeding, clothing and educating them.

Whatever the reason - I WANT to have kids. But I want to have them WHEN I want to have them, under the circumstances I choose, with whom I choose, by whatever methods I choose, and that means controlling my reproduction by contraception, emergency contraception, or abortion, and it doesn't matter how much of a sinful whore you think I am, random old guy with a sign, because there's all of four men whose advice I would seek on pregnancy, and YOU ARE NOT ONE OF THEM, and it doesn't matter how fervently you pray, scary young woman my age, you are not going to influence my decision on whether or not to abort, and angry little grandma? Congrats on your daughter's fertility, but fuck off about mine. And fuck off about everyone woman or man out there who DOESN'T want kids, for whatever reason, because it is none of your GODDAMN BUSINESS.

These people, with their righteous anger and their holier-than-thou smugness, and their, "Big Daddy and the sky loves me more than you, nya nya nya" make me physically ill. How they courageously speak up for non-sentient blobs of tissue while ACTUAL, HONEST-TO-GOD children are being starved, beaten, abandoned, abused, exploited, and so forth; how they act like they are all "pro-life" for wanting to impose motherhood on woman, even though pregnancy is more dangerous than abortion; how they probably pray every night for this to be invented...

There are six billion people on this effin' planet. We are not likely to die out any time soon. We are likely to kill each other in a variety of increasingly diverse ways and poison our environment beyond habitability. Drop the anti-woman, anti-choice, anti-reason argument and go and do something that God ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT.

Maaaan...would you believe me that today's post was originally going to be on the suckitude of Hollywood Homicide and the awesomeness of my high school rugby team? See? The fundies RUIN EVERYTHING.

Why You Do Me So Wrong? Episode II redux

Dear contributor to my already obscene amount of personal wealth,

Here you go. Now shut up about it already.

George

True dat! Sort of...

I remember going to see Bowling for Columbine when it came out (and getting hit on by some middle-aged bureaucrat, which: just because I am at the theatre alone, doesn't mean that I am crusing for some tail that is older than my dad. Anyway, this dude thinks he met a nice economics student named Katherine who studied at Carleton, so whatev), and pretty much loving the whole thing.

Except for the one part where he goes to Canada, and goes opening people's doors in Toronto, and then is interviewing random city people, and then this pretentious hipster is all "In Canada, it's, like, locking your door isn't locking other people out but locking yourself in".

Now I ALWAYS lived in a home where the doors were locked, under penalty of getting THE LOOK, and also getting THE GROUNDED and what not. To be fair, I did grow up in one of the most dangerous towns in the country, if danger is measured in flower blossoms. But that's not what bugged me - it was more this "American's are X, and Canadians are Y" mentality, one favored by Michael Moore and devoted scenesters alike, where we get to take two diverse groups and sort them with a short, pithy truism like, d'uh, didn't you know how to tell an American from a Canadian? Just let yourself in to their house - if you can. Without getting shot.

But this is the joy and the curse of the social sciences - that of generalization. It takes a small bit of truth that applies to some and tries to spread it out to cover everyone, or at least as many people as possible, stretching it and thinning it until it's of no use to anyone. 'Cause it's true - Americans and Canadians are different. I mean, a)they're citizens of different countries. But any other statement - Americans lock their doors, Canadians don't, Americans like guns, Canadians don't, Americans like Toby Keith, everybody else wishes he would just shut his one-note, vitriol-spewing pie-hole, etc. are only true in general. Fortunately for Toby Keith, unfortunately for the rest of us with ears.

So - with that in mind - (OH! ASIDE! I'm currently watching Young Guys on APTN, and the guy who plays Locke on Lost is in it...also it's inspiring a future post entitled "From the object of my first childhood crush to walking STD catalogue: Why you do me so wrong, Charlie Sheen?") I'd like to engage in a little generalization of my own:

People who don't own dishwashers are dummies.

I am saying this as someone who did not live in a house with a dishwasher for the first 24.5 years of her life. It is the single greates invention of this or any other civilization (ooh, it's a generalization and hypberbole!).

But if you don't have one, you should put off buying little Jimmy's medicine and get one right now because it is the best investment you will ever make. Plus, if your kitchen faucet ever busts while your dishwasher is on, causing hot water to soak through your house, you will finally get to replace that busted 60s kitchen you hated so much, just like my mom.

Also: Battlestar Galactica is the awesomest show ever and you need to go rent the first season right now and then be prepared to scream in blood-curdling rage as you wait for the second part of the second season to be available in Canada.

Also: Stephen Harper is a scary, cranky man who hates all journalists, ever.

And: Conservatives like to scare little children on Hallowe'en and steal their candy and pray that some day all abortions will be stopped and there'll be more little children to steal candy from.

Okay...I don't know if that is even a little bit true, but I have my eye on you, Kenney. (Okay, I linked to his site, but just try googling "jason kenney stupid" and see what comes up).

Ooh - it's climactic gunfight time on Young Guns! Gotta run!

Seal of Approval!

Dear Celebrity of some note,

It's that time of year again: the glamourous people of the world are flocking to Canada for the nation's signature cultural and economic event. No, not this one. Or this one. Or even this one. No, the one that brings together musicians, tv stars, and aging European sexpots:

SEAL HUNT 2006! The place where all the most CARINGEST famous people go to care!

Looking to branch out from "celebrity" to "celebrity who cares about something"? Aspiring to be a recognized humanitarian with all the prestigious awards and glamourous events that entails? Trying to find that perfect cause that only lasts a couple of weeks and affects one of the most stable, if not overabundant, species in the world, so that when it never goes extinct or even gets so much as edangered you can give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back in between hot stone massages and rolling in a pile of money? Well, this is the one for you!

Bring your hip waders! Wear your fanciest toque! Remember, EVERYTHING goes with white! By which we mean the adorable white fluffy baby seals that you will be photographed with! They're so helpless, they can't get away when you want to shoot them - with a gun or a camera! And fortunately, only the former is illegal, so you can get still get your pictures with them instead of their big ugly parents who'd probably just swim away or try to bite you, and who would look terrible during an awards night photo montage.

Here's what our satisfied customers have to say:

"I love all animals. That's why I'm a vegetarian. That's also why I'm protesting this hunt. Also, my hot, much-younger, former- model wife and I sure looked fab next to those adorable baby seals! Thanks, seal hunt, for giving us an easy out in the field of eco-activism! I'd love to do more to help the plight of the tens of millions of animals brutally butchered in slaughterhouses, but I don't fancy smelling like dung. Cheerio!"
Paul M, England

"These seals are a beautiful gift to the world. Beautiful things must be protected. I should know. If only I'd worn sunscreen when I was young and super-hot. Now, if the world runs out of seals, they will be coming for my pelt."
Brigitte, France

"I wish I really was the characters played on my hit shows, because then I could build a gate to another world using only an empty TicTac box, a spoon, and some ductape. Then my military unit and I would take all those precious baby seals with us to safety. Of course, once they outgrew their cute stage, we'd dump them back on Earth to take their chances with all the other animals, and Fred Savage."
Richard, USA

What are you waiting for? Sure, you could pick something a little more pressing, like third-world debt relief or AIDS, but those are wide-reaching, complex issues with no easy answer and real consequences to the earth and humanity. Maybe some people want the fates of poverty-stricken masses on resting on their shoulders, Bono , but do you? Maybe some people want to piss off the global-military-complex, Michael Moore, but wouldn't you rather just piss off a group of people that can't actually retaliate in any way, like economically-disadvantaged Canadians? 'Cause they don't get much more economically disadvantaged than the Newfoundland fishers and Inuit hunters who participate in the hunt!

Time is running out - for you to get that photo of a lifetime next to an ungodly adorable creature! This year, pick the cause that fits your busy lifestyle - pick Seal Hunt 2006!

Sincerely,

Whoever it is who keeps organizing this goddamn thing every year

Why You Do Me So Wrong? Episode II

Dear contributor to my already obscene amount of personal wealth,

Congratulations on purchasing the single greatest movie trilogy of all time, the digitally-remastered Star Wars Episodes IV through VI. You may have heard that this edition features the cleanest, sharpest footage of these classic movies, painstakingly restored to their original glory. Well, it's true! I had all three films meticulously cleaned and digitized until the droids sparkled and the lightsabres popped. All for you. That's how much I love you, and all the Star Wars merchandise you buy.

You may also have heard that I've updated them...again. Now, based on what little of the outside world I allow to penetrate the sanctified walls of Skywalker Ranch, I have come to believe that a certain rebellious faction were less than pleased by the updates I made when the Star Wars films were re-released theatrically in the late 90s. I believe the term "butchery" was used. You know - a couple of new CGI backgrounds here, a couple of new CGI characters there.What can I say? CGI back then was the Emperor, and I was weak. I was led down the path to the darkside.

Many of you saw the DVD-release as my opportunity to make up to those I hurt the most, my most loyal fans. And so did I! And as I was preparing those DVDs for release, I knew what I had to do. Heed the calls of the fans and release the original theatrical versions with remastered picture and sound and God intended?

No. That would be the easy way out. I had to release a new version, a third version, and prove to all those pimply virgins that when it comes to Star Wars, I am their God, and they'd better like my freakin' creation because it's all they're going to get. If you can't appreciate my unquestionable genius, you can go kiss a wookiee.

Now I know a lot of people out there over the age of 10 have fond feelings for the original theatrical versions, and may tell me that they were just fine as they were, what with the record-breaking financial success, the cultural impact, the landmark achievement, blahblahblah. Look, those first three were good, I'll give you that. But let me ask you this - if Leonardo DaVinci were alive today, would he leave the Mona Lisa as it was just because it was "pretty good?". Because it was a "cultural landmark?". Because there's no need to "update a classic, because classic implies that it's already a timeless creation in its original form?" Hells no, people. If he was here, that lady would not only smile, she'd wave and say "Go buy the Star Wars trilogies on DVD!". Because even DaVinci knows a superior artistic genius when he sees one.

Now, the first time I remastered those movies, that was a mistake, sure. I was eager to jump on the CGI bandwagon. But on the bright side, it did give me the much-needed experience to create the world's first fully-animated character in that unanimously-adored fellow, Jar-Jar! And, when all of you flocked to the theatres, I knew I had a hit. So, no more location shooting for me! No more focussing on narrative and character development! Wacky creatures, slapstick comedy, dialogue more unnatural than most porn films (and I should know), and action sequences which look like they were designed by the ADHD kid next door! And, most importantly, all the CGI you can cram in! THAT'S what makes a great movie!

And those movies gave the know-how to finally give you the version that you've all been waiting for. That's what all my closest advisors tell me. "Yes", they say. "Put in that scene with Jabba the Hutt in Episode IV where Han calls him "a terrific human being" because it was originally filmed with a fat man, but why let that stop you?" Or, "Yes, I think that Hayden Christensen should be in Return of the Jedi, at the very end. Please don't fire me." Or "Yes, what all those movies need are new CGI-aliens all over the place, in random scenes, for no apparent reason, I agree completely, please don't throw me into the digitally-altered pit of the Sarlacc like you did with that guy who kept quoting to you from fan letters that started with "Dear Imperial Asswipe"."

So, enjoy your Star Wars Original Trilogy Version 3.0 DVD box set! And for those of you wondering how I sleep at night after all I've done to a treasured part of our cultural mythology, the answer is "on a pile of money, surrounded by many beautiful she-droids".

May the Force Be With You!

George Lucas

Rick Mercer Strikes Again!

Check out his picks for a potential Conservative Cabinet.

Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesss

oh yeah...that's the spot...

Aunt Phyllis Don't Take No Shit From Nobody

So I’m at the holiday party for a fine up and coming high-tech company called March Networks (remember this name – buy some stocks – etc). And the DJ’s playing all sorts of tunes, from current Top 40 to...well, past Top 40. And, because I can’t just shut my mouth and have a good time, I found myself spending a good part of the night puzzling over the supreme randomness of whoever it is that censors music in Canada.

My guess? Somebody’s spinster aun. Seriously – is it somebody’s spinster aunt? Because I don’t understand why some words make it in, and others don’t. I mean, I understand why Kanye West's ridiculously awesome Golddigger has a radio version. But why can't The Black Eyed Peas tell people that they’re the shit, or Gwen Stefani say that her shit is bananas, when John Travolta can sing about getting his rocks off in his pussywagon that all the chicks cream for?

?huh?

And that’s why I think it’s somebody’s reaaaaally old spinster aunt, old enough to think that John Travolta’s going to be rounding up stray cats in his cars, and really, what spinster doesn’t love a house full of cats? And the other stuff, she probably just can’t make out with her hearing cone, but she sure as heck knows that S-H-I-T spells “moral depravity of our youth!”

Anyway…this was a lot more thought-provoking after six glasses of wine. Hey, that’s not a bad idea…what? It’s almost noon here.

In other news – in case any of you were wondering, the madness last week was two-fold:

1)Planning and preparing for Dan’s surprise! birthday party. Which, in hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have held at the home we both share, because it makes it tricky to hide supplies for 20-odd people, as in “Hey, why do we have three cases of beer?” “Uh…because I’ve taken up drinking! I mean, more so!”

2)Being mistaken for a computer-savvy person, which I blame entirely on my Arts Student's ability to bullshit about anything. Or the fact that, apparently to the over-forty crowd, anyone under the age of twenty-five can do anything on the computer, up to and including designing professional-quality websites. Yes, the knowledge is downloaded into our brains through rap videos, or something. And since it just so happens that this is for a certain election campaign, I have to work on it outside of my full-time hours, which, boo! But it’s all for a good cause, and I think it’s way awesome, and even though I made DD stay up until 3am on the night of his surprise! party putting on the finishing touches, it was totally worth it. Right, birthday boy? Also, I don't mean to imply that I actually designed it, because, uh, no - that's what "hiring talented professionals" is for.

Speaking of the election, I came across an interesting site the other day called The Elections Prediction Project. I’d encourage you all to check it out, even if you’re not political, to see the kind of partisan blowhards I have to deal with all the time. Kidding! It’s a great site and it helps me keep track of what’s going on back home on the election front. BC is one of the big question marks this time around, so I’m curious about what you guys back in Vic City are seeing. Are their lots of signs? Any front-runners? Does anyone even care?

Just when I thought I was out...

As some of you may recall, DD and I recently made the difficult decision (okay – it was only a difficult decision for me) to cut the cord. This decision resulted in the gaining of many extra hours which were previously filled with CSI (original series only), endless Simpsons reruns and whatever heavily edited blockbuster was currently playing on TBS (aside - anyone else remember the TBS "Monkeyed Movie Shorts?" 'Cause those were frackin' HILARIOUS).

So what, you may ask, have we done with all those extra hours? Well, for one thing – we watch a lot more movies.

Well, we signed up for Zip again. Remember that one, where you sign up online and they send you movies right to your mailbox? And then when you’re done, you send the movies back, and poof! More movies. Forget that 10 minute walk to the video store – that’s for suckers! We walk 10 feet to the mailbox – nay, skip giddily to the mailbox – and there they are, our little cinematic bundles of joy, waiting for us like adorable little flat, circular puppies, that just want to entertain us.

And entertain they do – so far my biggest find has been the freakin’ awesome Battlestar Galactica series. If you don’t watch it, you should, because it’s great. I never saw the original series, but I had the feeling it was kind of dorky – well not so with this version. It’s well-written with great actors and way-cool action scenes and the premise is intriguing and the storyline is captivating and – although he is, quite possibly, the homeliest man in all creation – I think I love Edward James Olmos, who plays Commander Adama. Actually, what I want is for him to be my new grandpa, and he and Gran’pa Floyd can form a gang and they would be the toughest, gruffest SOBs who ever cut someone down with a terse remark, stared them into submission, and then whupped them – for their own good (I mean for the individual’s own good, not for my grandpas’).

Zip is also a good way for me to broaden my movie-watching horizons – I mean, y’all know how I feel about good and bad movies. With Zip, I can finally pick out all those movies I keep meaning to watch, but don’t have enough pirate vs. zombie action to stand out in the video store. Now they show up, and I get around to watching them – eventually. Like Atarnarjuat, which is a really, really good movie, once we finally sat down and watched it, which took two rental cycles and three days. But so totally worth it!

It’s also nice because you don’t have to agree on a movie – I can watch The Philadelphia Story (which – awesome suggestion Payton) while DD talks on the phone; we both pick movies we want and watch what we want. Although we do have similar tastes in movies (like how the day after we met we stayed in to watch Army of Darkness – now that’s true romance. Oh, also a good movie!).

We still manage to find time to do other things though – like go to the theatre! Actually, we do that a lot less now, but we did catch a couple of flics this weekend: Aeon Flux (which - bonus - is one of those rare movies that is actually directed by a woman - so go see it and support the cause of doubling the percentage of women-helmed films to 2%!) and Harry Potter (A-Mac – we’ll have to see the next one together to relive the old tradition – try not to be getting more ivy league education then, mmmkay?).

I have to say I really enjoyed both, because I like sci-fi/fantasy and cool action sequences and Charlize Theron is waaay hot whether or not you swing that way. So I recommend both, although one is PG fluff with both cartoony sequences and some surprisingly dark elements, while the other has wizards.

Well, that's all for me as of late - although we did find time to put up our holiday lights, mostly because everyone else in our section had done it already and damn those Joneses if they think we're not going to keep up!

Blogtacular!

So, here I was, wracking my poor little mind, trying to think of a hott topic for today's post…the first snow (also in MTL, for darling Banana…welcome to winter!) of the season; the fact that DD and I are continuing our never-ending quest to fulfill the suburban yuppie dream by taking (don't laugh) ballroom dancing classes (fuckers…I told you not to laugh); the likelihood that this upcoming season will feature my two all-time super duper favourite sounds that I totally love and that in no way make me want to job flaming hot pokers into my eardrums, namely a)Christmas carols; and b)bloated partisan acting "talents" of various federal politicians.

But lo and behold – as I log-on to ramble my way coarsely and incoherently through another post (speaking of which – if you want to see something coarse and incoherent – check this movie out. Unless you are my Nana, in which case, I didn't see it, or even hear about it, or even know what you're talking about because I was busy been reading Psalms. Er, for 6 years) when I noticed a little something:

Happy 100th post! To me. Or you. To everybody!

This kind of took me by surprise, so I haven't really prepared anything. Of course, maybe it was my plan all along to go for broke on my 138th Post Blogtacular! Yeeeeeesssssss….that's it.

Anway...back to our regularly scheduled rant:

SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE

Uh...no. That's why we took lessons. In DD's old high school cafetorium. And yes, that's a real word, although god knows why they couldn't just call it a multi-purpose room like everyone else. Apparently it's an Ontario thing, like calling the game where you play a miniature version of golf "mini-putt" despite the fact that you're putting normal distances, and that it is the field of play itself that is miniature, so that it's like calling a shoot-out "mini-hockey". Anyway, we just had our last class the other night, and let me just say that while we still constantly look at our feet and I occasionally forget to not lead (what can I say? As anyone who took dance in middle school knows, there are always way more girls than boys, and so some of those girls have to be boys, but certain girls absolutely refuse to be boys because nice girls don't want to cross the lines of arbitrary gender roles, so then girls like me are like WTF? I'll be the fucking boy, bitch, and so now we find ourselves 10 years later subconsciously trying to lead, and see where boy/girl sex role crossover leads to? MADNESS!) and we also address each other in phony accents depending on which dance we're currently attempting ("Oh Viscount Charles David Winchester-Smythe, Marquess of Bumbleberry, theThird, you foxtrot divinely" "Quite") we are above and beyond the best of the class, if you are judging on things like being able to do the steps in time to the music.

Now, not to downplay my time as a pupil of a certain middle school dance teacher, but most of it has to do with the fact that DD, unlike the other guys in the class, has rhythm. And if you want to see pain, you should see the look on a woman's face who's trying to do the cha-cha (one-two-three, cha-cha, four-five-six) while her partner is stomping around, as if in time to his own irregular heartbeat (one...twothree...chacha!...fourfivesix...), and she's trying to patiently guide him without leading, because nice girls don't lead, but she's also trying to get him to hear the music "one-two-three-four" and he's staring at the floor and stomping around and it's like some In Living Color sketch with Jim Carrey about how white guys even suck at white guy dances.

Anyway - it's been pretty fun, and we're going to keep it up, but it's not like we're going to the Olympics anytime soon. Unless some sort of mysterious tragedy befalls the Uzbekistan team...MWAHAHAHAHA....ahem...

SCROOGE MCHARPER

If the insipid, blatantly commercial and mind-numbingly uncreative holiday commercials don't get me, then the fine thespian skills of Peter "Keanu" MacKay explaining patient wait times will. Thank God we cancelled cable ("You're welcome" - God).

WHAT$%!!!:????

Yes...we cancelled cable.

Yes...it was my idea.

Yes...I was watching four hours of CSI every day.

Yes...we still have plenty of beer.