So, I mentioned in a post last week that I was planning on listening to all of the Polaris shortlist entries before the awards are handed out in September.  Not only that, but I'm planning on doing it along with a few other Toronto-area music fans and writers, AND we're going to be doing a blog about it.  I'm seeing this as a great music-learning opportunity for me, as I have only one of the albums shortlisted (Metric's Fantasies) and aside from Metric and Joel Plaskett, the other shortlist nominees are all cyphers to me.

http://www.polarisprize.blogspot.com

So, if you have an interest in the Polaris Prize, and want to learn some more about the nominees from the perspectives of people who are fans of music, rather than being music industry professionals or critics, check the site out over the summer.  We'll be picking one album per week (starting this week with Hey Rosetta's Into Your Blood) and each providing our thoughts on it.  This could end up being something really damn cool.

I realized that I started using fff as a journal tag for flash fiction Fridays, but that's not going to work, as other people already use that acronym.  F3 sounds nice, so I'm going to use that instead.

( And now, on with our story! )

We went down to Fort Erie last night to see the Trews.  It was a great show by them, as always, although Colin sounded like he's coming down with a cold or something.

Opening act was a group called Crash Karma:
Which was a little weird for me, but kind of cool at the same time, because it featured Jeff Burrows from the Tea Party and Edwin from I Mother Earth (among others).  Tea Party were the first band that I really got into the habit of seeing repeatedly (21 shows, I think, by the time they broke up?), as well as being the first band that I got into trading bootlegs of and of being part of a 'fan community'.  I Mother Earth was one of my favourite mid-90s rock bands as well.  So it was kind of interesting seeing them in a "whatever happened to" sort of way.

At the same time, I got a bit of a feeling that they weren't really using their talents to their fullest (JB especially), so it was a little sad - I think I would have enjoyed the band a lot more if there were other people involved, because  I wouldn't have had the same expectations.

This was fun. I will definitely have to do it again. Other people seemed interested in doing it, as well, so I set up a google group for people to join to post, read, and comment on stories for those who might be interested: http://groups.google.com/group/flashfictionfridays

So, onto the story!

Title: The Angels Are Coming
Genre: Supernatural Horror
Length: approx. 960 words

******************************************************************************
( Read more... )

I entered a flash fiction contest recently, and lost.  I think part of why I lost was that I don't really have a strong feel for flash fiction, the same way that I feel like I understand how a regular short story or novel is supposed to be structured.  So, how do we get better? PRACTICE.

So I'm going to start trying to do Flash Fiction Fridays. I know some people can manage a regular-sized short story per week, but I am not one of those people -  I don't know how long I'll keep it up, or even if it's going to be an every week type thing.  I've got an idea that I'm going to try to write up tomorrow at some point.  It is, oddly enough, Twilight related, despite my still not having read any of the books or seen the movies.

I think I'll float the idea on twitter as well, see if it's the kind of thing that other people might want to join me in.  You're all welcome to join as well, livejournalites!


(For those of you who have no idea of what I'm talking about:, a "flash fiction" story is something shorter than a short story.  Between 100 and 1000 words).

So, a while ago I joined this writing group called Nocturne.  It's a group dedicated to horror fiction, and the idea behind it is you post your short fiction on there, and other group members read it and provide critiques and suggestions for improvement.  Then, when they have something that needs critiquing, they do likewise and you can provide critiques for them.  The whole thing's done from a mailing list and password-protected site, so you don't have to worry about your stories going into the wild before you're ready for them to do so, and you don't have to worry about it being "published" to reduce your ability to send it to other publishers.  Also, as all of the work is done online, it fits well with my suburban lifestyle, and allows for more productivity than I think an IRL group would allow.

The whole experience of being there has been great for me because it's helped me get some stories critiqued, and also because the act of critiquing has, I think, helped me with thinking and planning my own fiction as a result.  I've also gotten to meet some pretty cool writers through the group, as well.

Lately, however, a lot of the writing I've been doing hasn't been horror-oriented at all, but more in the areas of science fiction and fantasy.  So, while I think they would benefit from a critique group, they wouldn't really be appropriate for Nocturne.

Which is a long, roundabout way of asking the writers here: is anyone involved with a similar group for sci-fi/fantasy writers that is looking to increase its membership?  Failing that, would anyone be interested in joining one if I were to try to start one up?  (I'm not looking for a commitment at the moment, more just a show of hands)

If you're reading this, you're more than likely familiar with Star Wars, as a cultural touchstone if nothing more. After the success of the original trilogy, Lucas authorized the continuation of the story in a series of novels, the first of which was published in 1992 and looked at the attempts by the Rebels to build a new galactic order after the death of the Emperor. The New Jedi Order, specifically, picks up the story 20 years after the end of Return of the Jedi, where a new generation of Jedi have to stand against a new menace that threatens their very existence.

( Cut for length and for spoilers ... )

Thoughts on the world record attempt/luminato thing later, but for now, this:

When we moved into the house last summer, we were quite excited to be gifted a new barbecue.  It was an older model, but suited us just fine until this spring, when the handle came off one of the support pieces.  It was an old handle, and had always been a little loose, but then it just rotted off.

When this first happened, I thought "no big deal, I'll just buy a new handle and put it on."  What I learned, though, is that no one sells barbecue handles.  I went to five different hardware/department stores, and none of them had replacement handles.  They did have huge-ass barbecues that could each be used to feed an entire barbarian horde, as well as countless gadgets so that you would never, in your life, have to be cooking on anything other than a barbecue, but no handle.  I would be damned before I would buy an entire new barbecue when I have a more-or-less perfectly working one already

I ended up mentioning the problem to my father-in-law, and he mentioned a perfect solution.  It took a couple of false starts (because I am not, by any means, a handy individual), but today I finished this:

Coincidentally, the next time I was planning on having people over for some barbecued dinner was Canada Day, so I think having an old hockey stick as a barbecue handle carries a certain poetry to it :o)

Venue: The Molson Ampitheatre, Toronto
Date: June 2, 2009
Performing: Street Sweeper Social Club, Nine Inch Nails, Jane's Addiction

( Read more... )

So, I've already posted about this on Facebook and Twitter, so a couple of you might be sick of hearing about this, but I thought it might be of interest to a couple of you here:

This Saturday, the Luminato festival is putting together an attempt at the Guinness World Record for largest guitar ensemble.  The current record is 1802, and they're aiming for 2,000 people.

The song they've chosen is Neil Young's Helpless.  It wouldn't be my first choice, even within the category of "Neil Young songs" (I think  Rocking In The Free World would have been excellent for this), but I imagine they wanted to pick a song from Neil's 1971 Massey Hall show, as they're recreating it later this summer and Helpless therefore has Marketing Synergy.  I mean, it's also a good song, and it's an easy one to play (important for something like this), but I think that Synergy had to have been a consideration in the song choice.


If you're not familiar with the song, here's Neil playing it with The Band:

So, if getting together with 2,000 strangers and playing guitar sounds like you're thing, head down to Yonge and Dundas this Saturday at 2, and bring an acoustic guitar with you!
I'm going to be heading down with a few friends, and am anticipating great fun and chaos :o)

If you want more info on this event, check it out here:
http://www.luminato.com/2009/events/44

I'm going to be a father.  Eep.
I actually first found out a few weeks ago, but my wife wanted to wait until after the ultrasound before we let people know.  The due date is, as far as we know, around the third week of November.  No word on the gender yet.

I haven't really tried to put what I've been feeling about this into words yet; the feelings are all still really intense and overwhelming if I think about them too much.  It will prove itself an interesting, amazing journey, I'm sure.

This is Stan Bush:

Bret McKenzie was in Lord of the Rings!  Probably not surprising, since at one point approximately 87.8% of the population of the entire country was employed, in some fashion, by making that movie.

He appears very briefly in Fellowship (I had to zoom in to notice it was him), and then again very briefly in Return, where his character says 7 words.  And yet, he has fansites.  The internet is truly an amazing place.

Note: Spoilers for the current season of 24 below.

As anyone who knows me knows, I've read a lot of superhero comics in my day. One of the character types that tends to reoccur is that of the patriotic hero, most popularly seen in a character such as Marvel's Captain America. It's an interesting character type, because it allows for an analysis of a country's ideals versus its reality. As a recent example, there was Micah Wright's Citizen Soldier in Stormwatch a few years ago. The plot of the arc was that there was an undying "Spirit of American Revolution" that acted like a guardian angel, being reincarnated in moments of great crisis for the American people. The current Citizen Soldier was one that felt the Bush administration had commited gross and egregious crimes against its own people, and as such waged war against the American government.

While it started as a comic book hero archetype, it's been applied in other media as well, and I think Jack Bauer from 24 is an interesting iteration of this hero type. 24 has been criticized, in some quarters, of having an unfair right-wing bias. When you first see it, as well, it's easy to interpret it that way; the world of 24 is one where America is constantly threatened by terrorist threats that are real and credible, and as such its defenders have to take extraordinary measures in order to combat those threats.

Despite that, though, I've felt for a while that there's a lefty undercurrent of subversion to the show at the same time. While there are terrorist threats against the US in the show, they show time and time again that the greatest source of those threats are the military-industrial complex, if not those in the halls of government power. For each of the past four seasons, we've seen that the greatest threats come from within.

What's most interesting, and most subversive, though, is when we look at 24's own Captain America, Jack Bauer. Jack is, at heart, someone who wants to be a good person. He has committed horrible acts, and has admitted to such, but we've constantly seen in Sutherland's performance that doing so has slowly torn the man apart. Much like the Operative from Serenity, he believes in building a Utopia, but realizes at the same time that it is a place that he could never comfortably live. When you've taught someone to be nothing more than a killer and torturer, what becomes of him when there are no more wars left to fight?

In the current season, we see that taken to its logical conclusion; Jack was exposed to a "prion variant bioweapon" that is destroying his mind and body. This is the end of Bauer; his wars have brought an end to him, with the commentary being that America has brought itself to the verge of destruction in its actions over the past decade. Hopefully, as much as I've enjoyed watching Jack over the past years, this will be his swan song, and he'll be able to rest after this season, reflecting the new government administration's hopes to end the failed policies of the "War on Terror".

(Generally speaking, I don't like mixing LJ posts and Twitter posts, but sometimes it's necessary)

So, last night I retweeted this post that Jian Ghomeshi had made about rating the awesomenes of  things on a scale using exclamation points, with ! being 'good', and !!!! being 'Bowie'.  Christine mentioned that she approved of this scale, but the more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I became with the idea:

1. Awesomeness, by definition, is greater than mediocrity.
2. We can witness, however, that awesomeness increases without an increase in the size of the thing that it awesome.
3. Therefore, we can assume that for any given volume, awesomeness has a higher density than mediocrity.
4. By definition, denser objects have higher mass than objects that are less dense.
5. From Newton's law of universal gravitation, we know that objects with larger masses exert a larger gravitational field.
6. As Bowie is the highest possible rating of awesomeness, we can safely assume that any given Bowie would be incredibly dense, and would exert a large gravitational field.  If two Bowies were to exist simultaneously, the effect of their gravitational fields would increase exponentially.

Now, it's been awhile since I've had to do any calculations of force, especially of gravitational force, and the last thing I want to do is to seem alarmist, but  I believe there is a good chance that the force generated by two equally strong Bowies in close proximity to one another might be enough to split the Earth in two; as a result, I cannot condone the adoption of the Bowie as a unit of awesomeness.

American politics fascinates me.  You talk about providing people with universal health care and you end up with a bunch of teabaggers talking about Marxism, but a plan for workers to own the means of production gets nothing.

So I've been watching this show Harper's Island - thankfully, it's not Stephen Harper's island, but sadly not Ben Harper's either. The idea of it is that this massive bridal party is on an island in Washington state prior to the wedding, and that there's a killer on the island, killing off guests at the rate of at least one per episode. To further complicate matters, there was a serial murderer on the island 8 years prior, and one of the guests lost her mother to the murderer.  A lot of the characters are the annoying types of characters you see in horror movies, but that just means you spend half your time rooting for the killer, which is always fun  :o)

I'm usually horrible at sussing out the perpetrators in mystery stories, but I'm going to give this one a try. It's still relatively early, so my guess might end up being way off, but ...


( Cut for spoilers ... )

Is anyone else watching it?  If so, any thoughts?  I haven't been following any of the Harper's Globe stuff (because if there's one thing I'm worse at than than whodunnit's, it's staying up to date with ARGs), so after I get acquainted with the content their, my theory might change.

So, B, Ash and I went to Massey Hall last night to catch Flight of the Conchords.  A great time was had by all!

We were up in the second balcony/gallery of the Hall, but it being Massey the sound was still good.  There was a fairly tall gentleman sitting in front of me, but I was still able to see for the most part what was happening on stage.

The opening act was the guy who plays Eugene the landlord on the Conchords TV show, who is actually named Eugene.  I think it may have been the first time I've ever seen a stand-up open for a musical group, but it fit really well and he had moments where he was really funny.  He had a bunch of bits, though, that involved reading off of or showing printouts from the internet, which seemed kind of like the sort of avant-garde-performance-art-comedy thing that I only really previously experience in people parodying it. 

Conchords themselves were hilarious.  I knew the songs were going to be really good, but the between-song banter was really funny as well.  They for some reason seemed to think that anyone yelling from the crowd was heckling them.  I don't know if that was a New York thing, or a comedian thing, but it was funny seeing them react to it.  The live show really served to remind you, as well, that they really are talented musicians who use comedy as part of their music, rather than just comedians who use music as a gimmick.

The setlist for the show included, but was not limited to:

• If You're Into It
• The Most Beautiful Girl In The Room
• Foux Du Fafa
• Mutha Uckas
• Bowie
• Sugalumps
• Too Many Dicks (On The Dancefloor)
• Hurt Feelings
• We're Both In Love (With A Sexy Lady)
• Demon Woman
• I Told You I Was Freaky
• Freebird (Yes.  Freebird.  The same one you're thinking of.  Someone shouted out a request for it.  They didn't do the entire song, but enough of it to please everyone who would be pleased by that sort of thing, myself included.)
• Epileptic Dogs (with remix version)
• Pencils In The Wind
• Jenny*
• Stana*
• Awkward Bus Tour*

(songs with an asterisk are ones that haven't been featured on the show.  Jenny was on their HBO special, though)

I'd have to say Hurt Feelings, Bowie, and Jenny were the highlights of the evening.  The other stuff was all good, but some of it, like Ex-Girlfriends of the Past and Mutha Uckas, work much better as skits in a TV show than they do as songs in a concert setting. 

http://media.nettwerk.com/BNL/6242840120 56.zip

If you're a Barenaked Ladies fan you no doubt know the band's in a transition phase right now, after Stephen Page leaving the group.  In order to help acclimatize people to their new normal, the band recorded their first show as a four-piece and are providing it as a free download from the link above, which I think is pretty cool.

As for the show itself ... I'm not sure what to think.  I think it's obvious that they're still trying to adjust, and still trying to figure out who they are now and what everyone should be doing, but it's admirable that they're soldiering on,  I think.

Gee, it's a good thing we didn't elect that Liberal government in the fall, or else we would have wound up with a huge deficit in the budget.