Wicked! I’ve been nominated for “Best Personal Blog” over on myBlagh.com! I would like to thank the Academy…

Round one of voting starts on November 24th to November 30th. Make sure you’re there to cast your votes!

Check it out!

While we scramble to fix things, please enjoy this Robot Chicken clip that sums up Star Wars perfectly.

Transcript from my cell phone voicemail.
Call from: 905 XXX XXXX
Time: 1:10am

“Hey. This is Leo (Could have been “Theo” or “Neo”). Uh. I know it’s late at night. *mumble* like 1am. I was just callin’ you know. Just wondering how you *mumble*.

Anyway I was just got up and *mumble*. Like lots of memories.

(Pause)

And I haven’t even met your dude yet. So call me. I know it’s late. Maybe call me tomorrow, like around noon.”

The poor guy sounded pretty desperate. I knew a Theo back in the early 90s but he’s in London Ont and could not have got my cell number from anywhere, anyone. The only Leo I know was a customer from the Eagle who I would not give my number to. The only Neo I know is stuck in a matrix.

I hope he found the boody he was calling.

What would you give to hear what people thought of you, candidly, without them knowing you were listening? Your own private blind focus group.

While at a house party a few weeks back, Sharkboy, three other guests and I, were discussing a painting hanging prominently in the living room of our hosts. As I turned to look at the canvas, I noticed that the artist, James Huctwith, was sitting behind us, his eyes darting from his work, to us, to his shoes. The others in our group either didn’t know he was there or just didn’t know who he was. The painting we were all speculating on was a rich, dark red image of a profile of a man lying on his back. Viewed from mid-stomach up, the man is shirtless, hairy chested, goateed face towards the heavens, and had a puff of smoke or breath coming from his mouth.

“I think it’s his last breath,” says one guest, eerily.

“He’s hot.” Pause. “Sexy hot, not warm,” says another.

“He’s smoking,” suggests Sharkboy, churning up the homoerotic.

“It’s quite well done,” I say, to stoke this barrel of monkeys to provide James with some comment or criticism on it’s execution. Call it a focus group giveaway for his eavesdropping.

“It is,” they conclude. Nothing more. Damn.

I poke again: “I think he’s lying on some velvet in a meat locker waiting for the butcher to come suck his dick,” I say. I look at James. James is smiling at an unseen guest across the room. Sharkboy comments on how smoking is hot but disgusting and the conversation turns. There you go James, I tried.

Flashback to 2003. I am standing in line at Timothy’s Coffee Shop waiting to purchase a tea. In front of me, Dennis O’Connor, head of Church St B.I.A. and owner of O’Connor Gallery is chatting with Kristen, the owner of Timothys.

“What do you think of the art?” Kristen says waving at the canvases of comic book pop art.

Dennis makes a face that resembles someone removing a hangnail from his freshly stubbed toe while sucking on a lemon while listening to Britney Spears give birth to her first sprog.

It was my artwork up at the time. Kristen was trying to illicit a comment candidly the same way I was doing for James. And I appreciated it. I know that you can’t please everyone when you put pixel to monitor, paint to canvas, pen to paper and the negative comment was accepted with a grain of salt. I was thankful for the unfettered input and was actually pleased with Dennis’ reaction.

Flashforward to last night. I am again hanging art at Timothys (I’ll post images later) and I’ve asked an older gentleman to vacate his seat for a few seconds so I could hang my robot-on-top-of-a-car-highway-surfing painting. With my back to this guy I hear him mutter “disgusting” or “ridiculous” not sure which. It certainly wasn’t a mumble of art appreciation.

And like before, I was glad of the honesty. I would rather have someone honestly tell me what they thought of my art or work than to coo coo me into a false sense of security.

I bet that a couple artists who read this blog (Darryl, Evil Panda) have had similar situations where they were privileged to hear comments of their work without the commenter knowing they were listening…

We’ve all had this happen. We grew up on a story or book that in some way has touched us. We put the book down and our lives are changed. Our perspective is solidified for most of our lives due to the written words on a page. Thus it was for me with the book I, Robot by Isaac Asimov.

I read a site almost daily called Dark Horizons (dont bother…spyware galore) which isnt the greatest in new media reporting. The author is from Australia but he seems to get some juicy tidbits every so often. When I saw the first report that I, Robot was bought and in pre-production I was happy yet apprehensive. Im still sore from Bicentennial Man and A.I. (Kubrick should haunt Spielberg for 10000 years for that crap ending), so when I heard that this book…this marvel of short stories dedicated to human condition and logistics…was going to be made into a movie I got worried.

The first indication that this movie will be bad is that its being filmed in Vancouver. Oh Vancouver friends and lovers, take no offense, but your fine city is not the model city of the future even with all the street dressing in the world. Maybe Chicago or some place dirty would make a good near-future villa (heee! Evil Panda). I am sure the movie is going to resemble some cheap assed Paul Verhoeven sci fi film (see: art direction for Total Recall).

The other indication is that Will Smith is starring. Okay… Ive read I, Robot a few times. There aint no black lead character. I seem to remember a Susan Calvin as a character that is re-occuring throughout the book. An introverted woman nerd. Not a black male music artist.

The final indication is that early set reports have Will Smith as a police officer. WTF? There’s a reporter who is never identified but no police in any of the stories. So its safe to say theyre deviating from the stories somewhat. Can you read the sarcasm, kids? Mike (from Vanc.) tells me that the set was admonished the other day because of gunfire at an early morning shoot. Gunfire. Im flipping through the book. Nope…other than a massive raygun blast that levels a mountain there are no firefights in it. I may weep openly.

So Im sad. As more stuff comes out from the set I will keep you posted about my utter disgust.

So at work today, three guys came onto me. Which made me wonder where the hell these guys were a few years back when I weighed 180. Now at 210, I seem to be a beefy guy magnet. Not that Im buff or anything but guys do seem to appreciate a gut. Im generalizing but hey, its my blog. So these three guys were not bad but two were coupled in an open relationship. It was clear that one was more into me than the other and I hate that. They didnt come right out and offer a threesome but it was on the table, as it were, and I would have cringed back like Anna Nicole Smith at a vegan food fair if they had offered. I hate threesomes. Threesomes are twosomes with one guy dissapointed. Its a rare thing for both partners to be into the same guy. I digress. So Im fat, Im being hit on by lonely coupled bears and I dont have any epiphany to relate. It was, however a great ego boots. Now I’m asking myself if I should go enter the Toolbox’s Mr Box Bear contest. Imagine the political hell if I did…

We’re camping this weekend and I guess this is the last entry until Tuesday.

Thanks for playing!

Here’s a pic I took this morning through some mirrored glass of a ground floor office.

I can seee you!
I am trying to
work please
go away!

How could I not take that picture?

C U Next Tuesday!

Why are people afraid of change?

I dont mean the “stand in front of a tank, waving your arms wildly as the world watches” kind of change. I mean the coinage in your pocket kind of change.

Tonight is laundry night. I forgot to go to the bank at lunch to “legally” get change. That is, to get change without guilt, attitude or question. So armed with a twenty, I had to scour the neighbourhood to get some laundry machine fodder.

The first place I came across was Dominion up by where I work. I ask the Service Desk drone politely if she could break a $20. “A roll of quarters and ten ones if you have it.”

“Loonies come in $25 rolls,” she tells me.

“You dont have any loose?” Nope.

I take the roll of quarters optimistically and head to Lawrence subway station.

I hand over the ten I now have. “Can I get some change?” I ask the goof in the booth. He’s fat. And short. Perched high on a barstool like chair so that his nipples are just level with the counter. Without comment he’s tossing me quarters, a couple loonies (yay!) and a twonie and a fiver. As this barrage of change is coming at me, I try to push the quarters back in and say, “Can I get like, $5 in loonies?”

He says nothing. I take the singles and leave the rest. “Can I get all loonies for this?” I ask again.

Arms crossed. Looking at the change. Looks up at me and without a word of a lie, a look of disgust comes across his face, like I’ve just asked if I could poop on his chest while he sings Britney Spears. “No,” he says.

I angrily take all the change and deliberaly drop a token into the slot. There! Take that you rude fuck!

I hoof it to Lawblaws by my apartment. It’s not the most stellar store. The produce is never fresh, there’s always a spill in some isle and the last time I went there, the checkout guy stayed on his cell trying to iron out the drunken haze that was his weekend. The phone never left his face as he swiped my purchases. Not even a thank you. You get my drift…the place sucks for customer service. I am not hopefull. I am downright dejected and ready for defeat. In my head I start to cut back on my laundry.

While I waited for the Service Desk drone, I avoided the stares of all the people in line for the 1-8 items line who all gave me dissaproving looks as if I was trying to jump the line. I wondered when asking for change became such a guilt ridden activity.

The drone arrives and I ask, waving a fiver, “Can I get five singles?”

“Singles?”

I had just broke some Canadian law by not saying ‘Loonies’. “Loonies,” I clarify.

“For…?” he leads.

“For this $5?”

Oh! his face says. And promptly gets me some change. Irony.

Haven’t made a post about my iPod in a while. As usual I am weeks late catching up to a meme: iTunes 4.9’s podcasting feature!

I’m listening to the following podcasts all available from iTunes:

The SciFi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica. It’s like listening to DVD extras for a tv show. Executive Ronald D Moore explains the “why” of this surprisingly good show. For semi-to-hard core fans.

Z100 Phone Taps. Not much new here in the way of creative phone pranks but its super funny to hear NYC accents try to talk over each other. “Yooah deaahd to meah!” “No! Yooah dead to meah!”

Dawn and Drew Show. I listen to these two faithfully. They’re not much on content, in fact they ramble quite a bit but they have a spark that is infectious. Its like eavesdropping in on a couple deep in love, chatting away behind you. They’re candid, playful and chatty and completely addictive.

Zug. (not from iTunes yet. Get it here. Drag and drop the link into your Podcast folder) On his site, John Hargrave pranks up big business which borderlines on culturejamming. For his podcasting, he only has three past articles converted to audio but expect more from him. He needs to step back from the microphone a bit but he’s going in the right direction.

These aren’t podcasts, but I am loving this collection of Gerry Anderson/Barry Gray MP3s. Space 1999 to Thunderbirds (highly reccommend you download the theme to UFO, it’s frikkin groovy!), including some wicked remixes. FUN!

Any reccommendations, kids?

Dinner with the playwright brother last night:

“How many hits on your blog?” he asks, as we settle in, post nosh.

I puff out my chest, “Over a million a month!” *

Collectively the eyes of everyone sitting at the table bug out, Mom included. “A million?!” Mike blurts.

“Yup!”

“You know, you’re doing what I do for a living… Free.”

“Uh.”

“Did you enjoy that pie? Soulpepper paid for it.”

Don’t worry. My site is still ad free and there are no embarrassing “tip jar” links anywhere.

Yet.

Though, it was a nice pie.

* I don’t mention that “hits” are pretty relative, especially if you’ve had a computer virus associated with a missing file from your site. But it sounds good. I actually count “page views” which, despite being down for 8 days this month, have already passed the halfway mark of last month. Thank you, faithful readers!!