Pop Culture Blog: Music, Movie and Humor

Leveraging low-hanging synergies outside the vertical fruit box since 1999.

Archives for June 2006

Wednesday Weigh-In #7: Better Late Than Porky.


in

Hello kids – the clunky, sporradic application I wish I hadn’t started this blog – called Blogger – has been down all day. I apologize to those of you who have been waiting with baited breath for this week’s rotund results. Put down your frozen concentrated orange juice tube full of bacon grease and pay attention.

– Monster >> Current: 266 / Last Week – 268 / Target 255 / Lost 2
– Smash >> Current: 136 / Last Week – 137 / Target 129 / Lost 1
– Pyeman >> Current: 226 / Last Week – 226 / Target 215 / Lost 0
– DVS >> Current 246 / Last Week – 248 / Target 210 / Lost 2
– Aubz >> Current: 131 / Last Week – 132 /Target 125 / Lost 1
– BDoyle >> Current: 182 – / Last Week – 184 / Target 175 / Lost 3
– Sly >> Current: 211 – / Last Week – 213 / Target 175 / Lost 2
– Piglet >> Current: 144 / Last Week – 146 / Target 135 / Lost 2
– Not Lance >> Current: 166 / Last Week – 168 / Target 161 / Lost 2
– Greg >> Current: 179 / Last Week – 183/ Target 170 / Lost 4
– Venditti >> Current: 229 / Last Week – 230 / Target 219 / Lost 1
– Ka-Rista >> Current: 158 / Last Week – 158 / Target 140 / Lost 0

I’ve definitely hit a plateau. I think I will be able to get down to 220 in the rest of the time alloted, but 215 is a pipe dream at this point. It’s just as well, because I’m not prepared to cut off an arm. I don’t know what I was thinking. Smash continues to drop, probably due to her recent move, and DVS claims his scale is broken – which doesn’t exactly bode well for him. I haven’t heard from Venditti or Ka-Rista in 2 weeks, and I will be busting chops Thursday to get all of the results in. Stay tuned.

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A New Radio Pye? Maybe.


in Pye in the Face

Last FM is extraordinarily cool. If you’re not familiar with it, sign up now. I have added a chart in the left hand nav where you can see, and listen to, the last few songs I have played for myself. It tracks all my preferences and creates an on-the-fly radio station which has no boundaries in terms of artist catalogues, bandwidth or diskspace. The only problem is it looks like crap.

Do you really care at what time of the day I listened to one of these songs? You probably don’t care that I’ve listened to them at all. If I can figure out a way to get the box narrower, it will be staying. If not, I’ll keep looking for another musical solution for PITF. In the meantime, you’ll have more Pixies, Happy Mondays and Tragically Hip than you can shake a stick at. Just walk away.

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Shut Up, Annie Lennox.


in Musical

Here comes the rain again. Have you looked at the forecast? Looks like the sun may make a brief appearance Saturday afternoon, but other than that as of tonight we’re going back to Waterworld. This is actually good, because I have people coming to fix my roof Thursday and they’ll be able to spot leaks while they’re doing the diagnostic. And by ‘spot leaks while they’re doing the diagnostic’, I of course mean cancel the appointment because they don’t work in the rain.

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Stronger Than A Pot of Tim Horton’s.


in Consumables

“Three tonnes of ammonium nitrate, thrice the amount used by Timothy McVeigh to demolish a government building in Oklahoma City. Cellphone detonators. Switches. Computer hard drive. A 9-mm pistol. Soldering gun. Camouflage gear.” – Toronto Star

This weekend’s terrorist arrests (read this) in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) will hopefully bring a renewed – or first-time to be more specific – sense of urgency to Canadians, and are incidentally of absolutely no surprise to me. Thank God this new awareness of the realistic domesestic threat level is going to stem from this news – and not an actual flattening of the ACC, Rogers Center (Skydome) or CN Tower. I have long maintained, and you can ask multiple people who’ve been bored to tears by my theories, that Canada will be the next Western country hit by a major terrorist attack. The new government was a welcome power-shift for me, and Harper’s era is probably just in time. Harper, from yesterday:

“The raid that netted 17 Toronto-area youth and men proves Canada is not immune to violent attacks. Canada is a target because we value freedom, democracy and the rule of law.” I’m going to take a stab at another translation here, and it’s not because he was speaking French – Canadians are perceived as infidels by extremists, just as surely as Americans are. We’re all North Americans, and we’re all fair game. A flag-on-the-knapsack works well on rude German waiters, but it might as well be a bullseye to the radicals, mon ami.

I will never forget walking back to my Boston apartment on September 11, 2001, watching people crying into their cellphones as they tried to reach or get news on their loved ones in New York City. I worked near a bonafide potential target, so was sent home around noon on that day. At the time, I had a pretty devious analog cable descrambling method, and was able to get a live feed from MuchMusic which is the equivalent of Canadian MTV (except they actually play music videos). They filled a room with high school students and passed a mike around – the opinions expressed were painful, and resonate with me to this day.

To paraphrase: “Yeah, well… like… maybe now the States will wake up and see that they can’t, like, push the rest of the world around anymore or nuthin’.” This distancing sort of opinion has only gotten worse over the last five years, and Iraq – regardless of how you feel about the motivations – is the first American-involved conflict that Canada has not contributed forces to in over a hundred years.

I am not going to pretend to have any special insight into world affairs. But I do read the news every day, from multiple sources, and consider myself reasonably informed. I was worried at the dialogue coming out of my home country, and I am exstatic that these bastards were nabbed by the CSIS before they could do anyone any harm. I take a great comfort in the new awareness that will likely stem from this incident. That was a close one, and there’s a silver lining.

“This isn’t just slumming with jihad. For the benighted who claim that the war on terrorism is terrorism: Here is your war.”

UPDATE: A great editorial from the Globe and Mail.

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July Sublet Sought.


in

Two friends of mine are coming to Boston this summer for a month in order to make a documentary. They are based in Sweden and are just looking for an apartment for the month of July. As I know many of my readers are Boston-based, some of whom even like me, I thought I would throw that out there. Drop me a line if you have an, albeit brief, opening. They are a couple and would need one room. God forbid they should stay with me. This place is already like a bus terminal.

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It’s OK To Be A Little Excited.


in Movies

I read a lot of “insider” movie news websites where folks in the industry leak really sensitive and current information under silly pseudonyms. So basically “Highlander79“, who is actually a 47-year-old studio executive, leaves the boardroom after a major meeting, sneaks up to his office and spills the non-disclosure beans while probably cloaking his IP address. All the internet nerds then rejoice by dressing up as Jawas, masturbating to the deleted scenes from the special edition Legend DVD and then feeding a mogwai after midnight. At least that’s a normal Friday around my apartment.

I usually keep what I read on these movie sites to myself, as I would actually like to reproduce some day. However there have been some doozy rumors floating around lately and I’m just a little bit excited, in spite of my attempts to only appear marginally really excited. OK – Here are the big two:

– Indiana Jones 4 is sorta, almost, nearly a go. Keep your “…and the Temple of Geritol” jokes to yourself. Harry can still whup some ass. Although as he’ll now be much older, I guess Indy will probably end up fighting communists of some sort. There are so many good jokes here but I have to get this written and get out to an appointment. George Lucas on the script he’s been working on for 10 years – “I think it works like crazy“. Let’s just make sure we get around to it before Connery dies.

– Die Hard 4.0 could begin filming at the end of the summer, and the existing script is an “epic“. It’s called 4.0 because it has McClane battling internet terrorists with the help of his young hacker-genius son. “Yippiekayay Motherfu… – I mean Yippiekayay!”

And just because I love YouTube:

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Friday’s Quizzlet: Get By With A Little Help From My Lens.


in Monday's Quotelet

Appetizer: On a scale of 1 to 10, how funny do you think you are?
Let’s face it – people who think they’re funny, usually aren’t even close. People who are indeed naturally funny don’t have to try. People who say “just kidding” everytime they make a joke, are right up there with Colombian death squads and mosquitos on my list of things that must be eradicated immediately. I seem to have a good knack for making people laugh – but then we have to remember there are people like Jim Norton, Sean Cullen, Dave Chappelle and Dave Attell in this world. I think I can give myself a solid 7/10.

Soup: Name a local restaurant would you recommend to a visitor to your city.
There’s a little known, highly secret, hidden Greek restaurant near the Galleria called Desfina. I found it by chance when I was wandering around that neighborhood with a friend one day a few years back. Boston has some other Greek options – Meze being the foo foo, $100 a person venue, while Steve’s is tasty – but more of a lunchtime place. There’s also a decent stand in Quincy Market. But for a quaint, two-fisted Kourtaki Retsina drinking, casual, full dining and extremely affordable Greek feast you can get to on the T – Desfina is the way to go.

Salad: What’s a lesson you were lucky enough to learn the easy way?
This question is rubbing me the wrong way. I dunno, flashcards for my times tables? British Comedy rules? It’s better to watch somebody else get hit by a train? I was always good in English. That was pretty easy. Riding a bike? Blazing Saddles is the funniest film ever made? I give up. Maybe someone else can run with this one.

Main Course: Where would you like to be 5 years from now?
In the home office of a building I own working for myself. Listening to the Happy Mondays on the attached private roofdeck, before watching Blade Runner and falling asleep to play poker with John Belushi and Chris Farley. Yes, this is a blatant spidering exercise – but I added cool videos to all those lenses last night and you may want to check them out. The first sentence was genuine, anyway.

Dessert: If you could see the front page of a newspaper from June 2, 2106, what would you imagine the headline might be?
Dave Pye’s Cryogenically Frozen Head Finds Cure for Cancer; Tells Hepatitis to ‘Watch its Ass’.

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Bhu And Gooch Need Work.


in

I sincerely hope that today’s news doesn’t spell the end for Sleeman. It’s a truly delicious and unique beer that was a big part of my University experience. It also probably lengthened my University experience by about 4 semesters, as I wasn’t a huge ‘attender’ of morning classes, even without a crippling Dark hangover.

I have a few friends who live in Guelph and work at the brewery. When I was up at Christmas recently I got a tour, a shirt and a few small paper dentist tasting cups full of the wonderful stuff. If they’re having as much financial trouble as they’re claiming, with too many brands and a high cost of production, then maybe it’s a good thing. Just as long as they keep the name and recipies intact.

If anyone up North knows or hears anything – let me know. If the legacy is coming to an end, I’m going to have to drive up and stockpile. Either that or invite Gooch to come visit again.

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Trailer Park Boys Video Clips


in Television

“Got a grey kitty, white one and a tabby too – and a little orange guy who puts snakes in my shoe. Mad MC skills leave ya struck, and I roll with my kitties and I’m hard as fuck!” – Bubbles.

I’ve lost a little steam in regards to my affection for Squidoo. The first couple of months it made me some money – but now it’s slowed down and a lot of people have abandoned it. It’s still useful in terms of SEO, but if I’m not at work building lenses for clients – I don’t really touch it at all. Squidoo, that is.

Yesterday all that changed. The most recent versions of Flash have enabled great and easy video compression, and sites like Google Video – and especially YouTube – have blasted through the roof. Now anyone can upload massive sized videos and have them compressed on the fly for all to see. I uploaded some clips I shot at the Pogues concert back in March, and they got tons of traffic and I even received emails from other people who were at the show, saying hello. A big honking community has built up around it.

Now Squidoo has a YouTube plugin, which enables you to choose thumbnails of your favorite videos or even embed the player right into the lens full-sized. I wanted to give ‘er a test last night, so I opened up my Trailer Park Boys lens for the first time in a while and integrated all of the funniest clips I could find. There’s Bubbles rapping, a Jim Lahey drunk montage, Ricky trying to get his grade 10 and many more. If you’ve been curious about the show, or just want to refresh your memory, visit Sunnyvale to watch all of the readily accessible new videos. Or maybe don’t.

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