Archive for March, 2005

Here’s something to consider… how not to watch The Godfather Part 2. Now, I’m not unfamiliar with the Godfther movies, but I’ll admit I’ve never seen any of part three (as far as I know) and hadn’t seen all of part two when I started Saturday night. CBC, as you probably know, is playing three movies every Saturday night because there’s no NHL.

The first step you need to take in order to not watch The Godfather Part 2, is to start watching it after having Mr. Holland’s Opus on in the background while painting and follow that by sitting through Groundhog Day.

After watching the first half hour of the feature movie, you’ll be sufficiently hooked to want to watch the whole thing, but you’ll be tired enough to decide to tape it and watch it later. This is where the second step comes in. Step two must be performed at some previous time. It involves taping something else on your “whatever” tape that sits in the VCR for spontanious taping. Start recording on this tape and go to bed feeling confident that you have the required three and a half hourson tape for the rest of the movie.

Next, start watching the rest of the movie on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Enjoy it. Get your wife to translate the Italian for you without using sub-titles. You’ll have a good time. Now, here’s where the final step comes—and it’s a passive step. Simply stop watching (after investing a little over three hours) when the tape runs out and you don’t have the last few minutes of the movie.

Take it from me, I tried this method of not watching The Godfather this weekend and it worked great! Next time, I think I’ll try watching it.

I was thinking this morning, as I walked to the corner mail box to drop of some Easter cards (don’t wait by your mailbox unless your last name is Foulds, Sheil, Lammers or Lopez) and I was thinking, “Gosh, it’s cold.” My little desktop weather doo-dad says it’s only -10°C, but it feels cold. Much colder than last year at this time.

So, I looked up one of my first blog posts. I remembered it was about getting out on my bike in March. Last year I was out on the 9th. Not so this year. In fact, the Rideau Skateway is still going strong. Never the less, I hope to be peddling around before the month is over. I’ve seen a number of bikes out the last week—even one riding down the skateway—but it’s still too cold for me.

In other news, I haven’t had a haircut since last year. That’s probably not a big deal for many of you, but I’m a boy with short-ish hair who’s trying to keep his job. I figure I can mix these two things together though and wait until I can ride my bike downtown for a cut.

So, earlier this week, I crossed out some of the stale blogs on my blogroll. And as it turns out, I’m getting quite stale myself. Especially after my last “moldy” post, I’ll have to be careful. On the positive side, I’ve added two more blogs to the roll this week, so that’s a good thing.

I’ve been trying to get together some of my more unconventional art together to add to my portfolio (or to create a separate portfolio with.) I’ve scanned in a bunch of sketches that I’ve made over the years but haven’t added them yet. In fact, the whole look of the thing is going to change in the next few days. Never the less, you can check it out if you point your browser over here. If you want to see something I’ve been working on the last little while, feel free.

In an attempt to find a reason to have my own internet radio station, I’ve been working on making an “us” radio station. I’ve been going through the (often unlabeled) CD’s and mp3′s in my collection looking for this “us” stuff. I’m working with the definition of “us” as being the community of people I know who do music for fun and that I’m somewhat connected too the production of (or at least not far removed.)

Anyways, I’ve hauled out some tapes and have been surprised with what I’ve found. North and the Sea, for example, recorded a tape and CD in the summer of 1997 and for the past seven years I’ve regarded it as the definitive collected work. But it’s not! I’ve found three or four additional “throw away” songs that we played live and recorded in Robin’s dad’s basement. It’s really neat to hear the three of us working through early versions of the songs. It’s also brought back great memories of playing just a snare drum and little splash cymbal with a tambourine around my ankle. I wonder if I can find Bears In The Woods somewhere? Crazy stuff!

So, last Saturday night I went to see Constantine with a friend. I still don’t really know what I really thought of it. It was close enough to being a good movie, and at the same time, very far away. The premis is this… John Constantine tried to killed when he was a teenager, went to hell but was returned to life—I don’t remember why. Knowing that he was destined for hell, he’s now on a mission to kill as many demons as he can to gain access to heaven.

On the surface the move is an entertaining (if somewhat horrorish) supernatural action, mystery flick. There are also some close to right on (in my oppinion) views about salvation expressed in the show. Constantine is told early on in the film that he can’t gain access to heaven by doing any ammount of favours for God, rather he must believe. And not just know but trust. You see, Neo knows God exists because of his death experience and so on. That’s almost commendable for a Hollywood movie.

Unfortunately there’s lots wrong, theologically speaking, with Constantine. In addition to belief, one must perform a selfless deed to get into heaven, Jesus doesn’t figure into anything—oh, and God and his equal Satan are engaged in a wager to see how many people they can get into their respective clubs.

Still, there’s some cool looking stuff, a few corny lines to laugh at and it might be a springboard for some worthwhile conversation. As a side note, I bought the Spongebob Squarepants Kiddie’s popcorn, pop and free treat. How do they figure it’s free if I have to pay to get it?

Last night I started skipping around the old interweb looking for one thing, then finding another and stumbling to something new. Anyway, I found a lot of neat things and figured I’d share them with you. It all started on Friday when Jenn took me to the Ottawa Interior Design Show and we saw the results of a contest. Four or five artisans were each given an old television set and told to make it into something interesting. One of them was transformed into a fish tank. I thought it was great and it reminded me of some of the Mac aquariums that I had seen online (and would like to make some day if I can convince Robin to give me that old Mac I gave him a few years ago.) So last night I hit the web…

Techquarium was the first Mac aquarium site that I spent some time with after doing a Google search. From there I went to Spy mac to see some other photos of Mac aquariums. In one of the photos I saw a Rubick’s Cube sitting on a desk that was being used as a perpetual calendar. I found a really neat site with virtual Rubick’s Cubes, inculding the perpetual calendar. The fellow who put together that site also has a huge collection of old Amiga animations that are viewable—including a (complete?) collection of Eric Schwartz animations.

Anyway, that should be enough to get you going.