...boys and their joy....

.....what is it with guys and the soul patch?

It's becoming more and more prominent these days..... and on guys who, three, two years ago, would ust not have had that as the facial hair of choice.....

.... I saw a guy, prada sunglasses, white and pointy runners, ex-PEN-sive jeans..... sporting that patch like it was the skinny little guido chin strap of the new millenium.....

really, the thing collects food like nobody's business.... and is really not that fun to kiss, a girl can get used to it, but i had a boyfriend with a serious SP once, and i practically had to build up a chin callous to counteract the scratchy hairs.....

.... do you think it's supposed to act like the little swatches of hair that are on display in the dye aisle at the drugstore? So that when you are talking to some dude in a bar, you have a little sample of whats 'down the road?'

....do you think i got 'em?.....

.... "Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes was the # 1 hit song, according to the Billboard charts on the day I was born.

Check Josh Hosler's Database to find out yours... it dates all the way back 'til 1890... so you hundred and seventeen year olds won't be left out.......

.... design makes me horny.....

....apparently it has the same effect on Grace Bonney.

her blog, design*sponge, is one of the best i have seen in the last little while (my own excluded, of course).... she has an amazing enthusiasm for all things aesthetically pleasing, and a really friendly and accessible way of writing it all down.... click on through to the link and check it out....

her recent adventures took her through the stationary fair in New York.... that's right, there are enough people out there still writing things... ON PAPER... to merit an entire expo for the sale and exhibition of interesting products TO WRITE ON!!!

...so much for popscle sticks.....

.....Lori Nix puts your diorama's to shame.....


....so fucking cool..... check it out

.....but who will remind us to control the animal population?....

..... there are gonna be way too many kittens and puppies out there after june......

and an entire television era comes to an end

...light enough to travel....

...I just saw a chick walking around in Nike Shox. I have to say.... she looked ridiculous.... every time her foot hit the ground it seemed to bounce up again....

... I have seen people walk around normally in these shoes before... This particularily waifish girl, however, didn't seem to have the body weight to keep the shoes from having a wicked recoil....

... call me foolish... but I think your shoes really should not make it HARDER to walk around.... but then again... I wear 5-inch stillettos.... so maybe Ishould just shut the fuck up about it....

.....it's still got it.....

I went to go see HIGHWAY 61 last night on the big screen. FilmCan, was celebrating their ninth issue by doing a small tribute to Bruce McDonald, one of Canada's amazing contemporary, off-the-wall, independent, cinematic auteurs.... A better bio can be found for him on the Canadian Film Encyclopedia, but it can't be hyperlinked directly... so you are just gonna have to look it up if you are interested.... but you should... it's great (and i am not just plugging it because it is a part of TIFFG and i see the people who toil on it til midnights most days... it's actually awesome)

But back to H61..... the movie is from 1990... and I saw it somewhere in and around 2000 (when I started really going crazy for all celluloid Canadian) and its just a whacked out road film that follows a barber, a roadie and a corpse from the northern tip of the route of Rock'nRoll, in Thunder Bay, down to the roots of Jazz in New Orleans.... and, I have to mention, they are being chased by a nutty entrepreneur who believes he is Satan himself, who is trying to redeem the soul of the dead guy, who traded it to him for a bus ticket....

Going in I was a little nervous that I wouldn't love it as much as I did the first time... I have to admit, I have recently begun to be so high on Canadian film that I am wont to push for it, sight unseen, and even if I know it to be... well, "not the best". But I honestly love this film... it is one of my very favourites, Canadian or no.... and it was just like the first time all over again....

Bruce McDonald, and Don McKellar (bleh... I will explain another time my problems with this guy, in this movie, I love him) were in attendance and, as every time I see them, revealed really great stories that typify the behind-the-scenes of Canadian film, or any grassroots, no money, gootta love it production scene. They really are the reason I stay involved in film....

I was asked once by a Canadian director, who shall remain nameless, what makes a Canadian film Canadian. The man was cynical and disappointed by a distribution system for films in this country that just does not work. He had made a GREAT film, another one of my favourites, and it had flopped at the box office, when it didn't deserve to. He was tired and drained and angry and just didn't want to be a representative of a Country that the industry he was trying to gain respect from just had no time for. I couldn't answer him at the time.....

....but now (in the classic fashion of coming up with a witty retort waaaaaaaaay too late) I have to say..... Canadian film is a noble tradition of guerilla warfare.... monkey warfare.... It is a collective that has in common, at its heart, not a theme, or subject or nationality, but a love to succeed in a place where no one is pulling for you... to make your way out into the world to say "look at me, I am weird, and funny, self-deprecating, important, and I have got something to fucking say......" and doing that despite given the obstacles and bureaucrativ hoops that are thrown at you every which way..... it is going to New Orleans, needing a biker gang for a scene and putting the call out on the radio, so that you have actual hell's angels show up on their hogs... its getting beat up by those same Angels, after giving them $100 each and all the beer they can drink, letting them ride drunk around your government-paid for equipnment and having a raucous good time doing it.... it's geting the shot and cutting it together... its, almost two-decades later, talking about it like it was the best time of your life.... It's a love of the doing and not the respect of having done that makes you a Canadian filmmaker.....

....It's still around.... and I FUCKING love it!

.... thats insane!!!!!!......

.... is what i exclaimed when i found this.... but i think its cuz i was boppin' away to MJ singing 'Rock With You' in his gol;den king of pop years while i perused it..... the perfect tune for polishing my pearly whites!!!!!

...musical interlude...

...so, i know it seems strange, as I was in a choir for...oh, perhaps a cumulative decade.... with many kiwanis, Maytime Melodies, concerts at Massey Hall and other Recital-type performances.... but there have only been two, count 'em... one... two... times that I have felt good singing in public.

The first one I was on a huge gorgeous deck, late at night, with all my friends... and my friends all happen to be musically inclined. The range of guitarists, bassists, drummers and singers is astonishing.... as is their collected talent.... and we were rocking out after a few too many.... and I had, we'll say, some 'inspiration'.... but i have to say, in that moment, my voice really melded with everyone elses... the harmonies were amazing and we created a symphonic cacophony that I can recall with crystal clarity to this day....

...The second, I am not gonna lie, I was loaded.... I was 20 and waiting in line at LeSwimming, a bar that I have been mourning the closing of for a year now. The thing about the line at Swimming was that, since the bar was on the third floor there was this long narrow stairwell and a hallway out into the street for people to stand in, outside of the frigid Montreal winter.... well, at the bottom of the stairwell, I was swaying in place, keeping my head out of the spins by listening to the resident homeless guitarist do his thang.... playing all the classics by bon jovi, acdc, aerosmith et al.... and when he turned to me (chuckling at two decades of drunken giggles poured into heels) and asked me what I wanted to hear I was overcome by my request.... and I not only asked for, but sang along to "Black Water' by the Doobie Brothers.... I have no illusions about this one... I must have been AWFUL.... karaoke without the benefit of crackling speakers and echoing backup music.... just me, hobo and his guitar... But it was AWESOME!!!! I was so into it, and the line got into it too, and by the end I had all the Montreal hipsters rockin' out southern style..... that kicked ass.....

I thought about that as I had to fight with myself not to sing along to Black Water this morning on the streetcar, when it cam on my ipod..... Somehow I thought..... the 8am work crowd just wouldn't get riled up the same way....

..... My musical failures.... that's fodder for ten other posts. I recal several bad renditions of Bacch's minuet in G on the piano.... and an echoing 'CHAW" yelled for emphasis at the wrong moment, into total silence, during a high school choir performance... and that's just off the top of my head.