I’m thinking that the wife and I should be setting a lunch budget once the two households finish amalgamating mid-to-late October. You see, we work together…well, not side by side but in the same office building (which is only partly responsible for how we met, the local comics shoppe being the other factor) and we tend to eat lunch together practically every day. We don’t keep track of how much we spend either, but it likely works out to $10 a day per person, which isn’t bad, and in fact, I want to keep that figure in place. That’s $100 a week for lunches for us together, which is kind of insane to think we spend about $5000 a year on our lunch, but there you go.
We really need to hardline that budget though, and make sure we’re not spending over that. I’m not quite certain how we do that yet. I mean, if we had better security around the office I’d suggest we keep cash in our desk drawers, $50 per person every week and all the change just goes back in… that way if we have a little extra left over sometimes we can do the beer lunch with the boys. If we run out then we have to brown bag it.
I suspect Aden didn’t eat out every day until she met me and I was eating in the in-building cafe (around $6 per day) regularly before I met her, so we could actually probably do with cutting back the budget by 20% (or $40/week) or even more… 50% even (that would actually give us a challenge).
It’s funny, because as adults I feel like we should be able to do what we want, eat where we want, whatever we want, when we want to, but the harsh reality is money is finite and if we don’t watch ourselves we’ll spend everything, save nothing, and never be able to afford the things we really want, whether it’s a house or a dog or what have you.
This “growing-up” thing is a bitch.
31/08/2007
Lunch budget
Break 1
Well, the moratorium was broken yesterday.. and on the weekend.. no major breakdowns but a bit of bending of the rules and a lapse in judgement…
On Saturday, working behind the table at Fan Expo, I had stocked up on energy bars and whatnot, as well as having some in reserve from the last Superstore grocery visit. One of the energy bars had chocolate chips in it (*gasp*) and while you can’t even tell the little buggers are in there by taste, I justified it by saying “I’d already purchased it before the moratorium went in effect”.
Yesterday, a half-eaten snack bag of Ritz Bitz sat atop the counter and before I even paused I had downed a handful. Then I remembered that Ritz have trans fat, which is why I don’t buy them anymore, and despite the recent spate of commercials trumpeting Ritz’s trans-fat-freeness, they’ve yet to clear the shelves of all the old product, and most Ritz you’ll still find include trans fat (the sneaky buggers have been promoting their crackers as “0 grams of trans fat*” with that meaning their serving size of 9 crackers is essentially zero grams of trans fat, but who eats 9 crackers? You can’t have hydrogenated anything in your ingredients without getting trans fat, dontcha know?
30/08/2007
“The worst among us speak for the best”
- Roger Ebert
Ebert uses the new movie “September Dawn” as a forum for him to discuss his opinion on religious fanaticism, from which the above quote comes. An interesting provocation from what sounds like a dreadful film. At least something good came out of it.
He also has a couple of interesting posts up on his site about the shaky-cam phenomenon (which, for me, first reared it’s ugly, nauseating head during the Blair Witch Project). Also linked is this denouncement of The Bourne Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass’ quick-cut stye… interesting reading.
The Monarch!
In a follow-up to the previous post, here’s a photo of the lads I saw at Fan Expo dressed as henchmen #21 and #28, with one Dr. Girlfriend posed between them.
Thanks to Jordan for providing the snap. That’s incredibly wicked. (Did do the “Ray Romano” voice all day too? LOL).
For those not in the know, go pick up either volume of the Venture Bros. cartoon… easily the best action/superhero/comedy/adventure cartoon ever made.
I’m still a little disappointed that the “THE MONARCH” logo t-shirts were sold out of my size a the con too…
bummer.
IKEA fatigue
The wife and I received a nice pool of money with which to go shopping at IKEA, where we were buying a wall of shelving and a wardrobe. We went on Tuesday, an Autoshare van booked for a few hours, and proceeded to consume!
Stymie #1: the wardrobe we had picked out of the catalogue turned out to no be what we thought and another hour of rethinking and measuring
Stymie #2: pulling the full wall of bookshelves from the warehouse turned out to be a greater pain in the ass than I had though it would, and where one of the needed pieces was supposed to be was instead an empty skid. Blah. Plus it was 10 minutes past close and we were feeling the rush to GTFO.
Stymie #3: upon arriving home and dropping things off, I realized that we only got two instead of the three height extenders that we needed. Grr.
Stymie #4: when I was assembling yesterday I discovered that the single bookshelf I had bought (most of the others were double shelves) was the wrong depth (20cm instead of 40… grrr), which means I have to tape the box back up and return it… good thing I already have to go back
Stymie #5: in planning the wall of shelving I took into mind the display that IKEA had of the modular units, with sliding doors and whatnot. I configured things a little differently in my mind and it was only once everything was built that I realized I had the wrong configuration and the doors and sliding rails wouldn’t work as we had planned… in fact there’s not much we can do in the way of doors at this point (not without making TV watching very awkward) so we’re taking all the doors back too. Dumb!
Stymie #6: the bookshelves need to be fastened to the wall for safety reasons (especially with the potential of a six year old climbing them), so there’s a wacky little system these bookshelves have to affixing them to the wall. Unfortunately there’s crown molding along the baseboards which force the shelves out from the wall about 4 cm, so there’s no way to affix them to the wall the IKEA way. I got creative with an “L” bracket for the first shelf, but that was the only “L” bracket we had… fortunately, my folks called while I was in the midst and my dad suggested using some galvanized stripping to hold things in place. Good suggestion…
Stymie #7: Canadian Tire and its employees suck ass… completely useless the lot of them. It took me an hour to find what I needed, no thanks to any employees who a) either avoided customers like they were lepers, or b) would point the way and then dash off before follow-up questions could be had. Literally, my entire lunch hour was spent trying to find stripping and nobody helped me in the slightest… it was basically walking every tool and maintenance aisle that I found it. Flip off, Crappy Tire… flip off royally.
On the plus side, with the IKEA returns on Saturday we’ll be doing, we’ll now be able to buy new dining chairs… huzzah! Don’t grumble, give a whistle…
28/08/2007
Moratorium update
Just added to the moratorium:
* donuts
* Cinnabons
* Swiss Chalet
* chicken wings from Pizza Pizza
* onion rings
* prepackaged cookies
As for why many of these things have been added, primarily because I’ve eaten them and either felt bad (as in ill) or guilty afterwards.
Store credit and BNY planning
Over the past weekend I worked 20 hours for my local comics shoppe, helping out at the Toronto Fan Expo. I have the option to take cash, but they give you a lot more store credit, not to mention a very healthy (staff) discount on everything you purchase using convention-earned credit. A lot of people work the con with their eye on a very specific prize that they’re hoping to stake claim to… some are laser gun prop replicas or Red Scull models or an old issue of The Amazing Spider-Man. Me, I was just working for store credit. My wife’s been doing the con for years and she always takes the rolling credit in return. It regularly lasts her between 6 and 9 months of weekly pick-ups, which is quite nice (although she doesn’t usually pick up more than three or four books a week… I routinely pick up between 4 and 10 per week, and often a trade or two).
Now, with “Buy Nothing Year” (which I’m half-heartedly thinking of renaming “Acquire Nothing Year”) looming, I’m in a pickle. I have the opportunity to save my credit until 2008 and then start using that in trade for my regular comics. I think this is a good idea on the one hand, however, I also think it’s slightly in violation of the spirit of what I’m doing. In part I’m trying to not acquire new stuff in order to reexamine my old stuff, and if I’m still amassing new product then I’m going to be distracting myself from my task. At the same time I’m planning on helping out my LCS at the spring show they hold, and if I do, then I’ll just have more credit to spend in the year I’m not supposed to be spending so I’m kind of stuck regardless (I guess I could always just take the cash, but comparatively, the cash isn’t very much)
My current plan is to just spend it… blow some of it on trades that I’ve been meaning to pick up and perhaps an action figure or model or two, then just use it up for the rest of the year. If I run out, great, if not then I’ll have a small reprieve for a time. But again, is this a violation of the spirit of my little project? I dunno… I’m still thinking about it.
What I do know is for the past few months I’ve been watching closely the Diamond solicitations and planning, realizing that some of the mini-series’ I’d like to get are going to run into 2008 and if I have to go cold turkey, then I won’t be able to finish reading the stories. And then there’s a few ongoing series which have a finite term that I’m not going to be able to keep carrying.
Here’s a small list:
(* denotes a book my wife might pick up if/when I stop)
Mini-series I might not start since I might not complete them:
Annihilation: Conquest #1-6 (issue 3 comes out in January)
Metal Men #1-8 (issue 6 in January)
Pax Romana (from the creator of Nightly News) #1-4 (issue 2 in January)
Fearless #1-4 (issue 2 in January)
Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus #1-5 (issue #5 in January)
Marvel Zombies 2 #1-5 (#3 in January)
Omega The Unknown #1-10 (#4 in January)
Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters v2 #1-8 (issue #4 in Jan)
Ongoing:
Buffy:The Vampire Slayer Season 8 (number 10 in January)*
100 Bullets (#88 in January… ends with #100 in Jan’09)
Justice League of America (#17 in January)*
Ex Machina (#33 in January)
Blue Beetle (#23 in January)
Nova (#10 in January)
X-Factor (#27 in January)*
Brave and the Bold (#10 in January)*
The Flash (#237 in January)*
Should be finished:
I should be done Y:The Last Man by December (I hope) as it’s ending with issue #60 *
Dwayne McDuffie’s run on Fantastic Four should be completed in December
Action Comics (Geoff John’s Superman/80’s Legion storyline)
New Series which I probably wont give much a shot but I’d like to:
Infinity Inc.
The All-New Booster Gold
Batman and the Outsiders
The Authority: Prime
The Vinyl Underground
27/08/2007
The cons and the pr… oh wait, already used that title
Married day 5 now, and all is still happy-go-snappy in this union of ours. Friday was spent gathering our senses and avoiding humidity. A nice relaxing day in general.
People keep asking if we’re taking a honeymoon or why we’re not taking one, and our stock answer to this point has been “San Diego was our preemptive honeymoon”, but I cam up with another answer the other day which is all things funny, sweet and cornball:
“If we take no honeymoon, then the honeymoon is never over”
Eat that potent potable, Trebeck!
Aden and I spent Saturday and Sunday working the Fan Expo at the Snail booth. Aden having to make sure the little one was okay each morning followed me in a few hours later but for me they were long, concrete-floor-pounding days that surprisingly went by rather quickly if not entirely painlessly. I’m definitely doing it again next year, and any other cons they’ll have me at. I think I enjoy being behind the booth more than roaming the floor. It’s like a little party back there, and somewhat serene being able to avoid and evade the flock on the floor. It also allows for some people watching and the observation is that con attendees, in general are pretty regular sorts, with a few highly unfortunate exceptions… the plastic surgery gone wrong leather lady, the +100 lbs Poison Ivy, the stink-trail guys, the hyper-obsessive Transformers fan, and the girls who put it all out there to get attention (and then complain about it).
The costumes, in general, were pretty blah, but I wish I had a camera for the guys dressed as #21 and #24 (the Monarch’s henchmen from The Venture Brothers) and the guy dressed as Deadpool. Solid jobs there. Also on costumes, I figured out what I’m going to be for Halloween this year: The Phantom Stranger. I need white gloves, a dark blue or black suit, a white turtleneck, a blue cape with a big collar, a blue hat, some eye shadow, (maybe) white contacts, and some bling (which I already know where to get).
I picked up loads of comics, most from the 1980’s which makes me happy. I seem to enjoy picking up sets rather than trades or bin diving for single issues. I like reading floppies the best and getting sets allows me to read complete stories while getting the floppy experience (ads and all). The best score, likely the complete run of Atari Force for $15.
The Snail has a lot of great old(er) comics, including a nice collection of old Action, Superman and Adventure comics which feature Bizarro that caught my eye. But for all the wild and strange covers from the 1950s, the absolute most awesome book I saw this weekend was Ghost Rider #16…
GHOST RIDER v. SHARK = AWESOME!
Working the con has given me a healthy chunk of change in trade, so I’m deciding what to do with it… I think, though, that I want that book…
update
As my wife (hehe, it’s weird but cool getting to say that) reminded me, we also got to take home the 7.0 CCB Graded Amazing Spider-Man #1 Saturday night which was really really neat, but also freakishly intense. We stored it in a laptop compartment of one of our bags so it was nice and snug and only took it out once to show Aden’s brother…when the wee one wanted to look at it I kinda flipped and blurted “DON’T TOUCH”… after which I apologized, letting him know that it was worth more money than I was. On the subway ride the next day all sorts of horrible variables ran through my brain of accidents and damages that could happen. Of course it made it back safely and I thought about joking with the bossman that something horrible happened to it along the way, but that kind of shit really isn’t very funny.
Another realization we had is our anniversary is going to fall on or around the Fan Expo every year, so we will, for many years to come, be associating our wedding with free comic store credit as well as agonizing feet and back pain. Hooray for unfortunate timing, heh. At the very least we could use our credit to buy each other stupidly expensive geek gifts…
23/08/2007
When a blogger gets married…
…he takes time out on his wedding night to upload photos(flickr link to wedding set) and write a quick blog post. (We also have video (sans audio) (coming soon))
He also takes an “At Arm’s Length” photo, because, well, it’s what we do…
The newly crowned Mr y Mrs Kent say thanks to the friends and family and coworkers and everyone else for their support and kindess and well wishes.
We’re so flipping happy… now, if you’ll excuse us… again…
T-minus
Time’s winding down… I just finished my work-from-home day for today, and now I have about 1/2 hour until I need to go pick up the pressed shirt and head over to meet the family. There’s no hesitation, just a little bit of anxiousness and a hope that everything goes smoothly. It’s as uncomplicated as we could make it so really there shouldn’t be any issue, but for all our comfort and smoothness and lax attitude towards it, the heavens have decided to lay the thunder and lightning smackdown on the day, which, I guess, like anything we shall roll with it.
The long-loved but newly acquired Daft Punk’s “Homework” is jazzing up my innards while Sasquatch and Clubber Lang grimace before me, taunting me to fidget with them. A little over three hours to go, but really not. I have 25 minutes before I need to get moving. I’m getting some laundry done and otherwise preoccupying myself with, well, blog. Hi blog.
I’m excited. Genuinely excited.
And happy too.
It’s a nice feeling.
S’posin’ I should eat something. But not too much.
Quality steak dinner and a Marmy-made cake for dessert later, who would want to spoil that?
20/08/2007
In Search Of… a title
Buy Nothing Year is a placeholder. I don’t have an official title yet. Buy Nothing Year does tell you what you need to know in an immediate sense (hey, he’s buying nothing this year, apparently) but it doesn’t capture the nuance of it.
It’s not about not purchasing anything, but rather about attempting to pull myself away from the enjoyable but often cumbersome cycle of keeping on top of and purchasing the latest entertainment stuffs.
If you do a Google search for “buy nothing year”, the top links take you to people who have attempted to minimize all their purchasing in every aspect of their life. That’s not what I’m about, although if that does wind up happening as a result of this experiment, I won’t be surprised… or I may be surprised that I didn’t supplement my purchasing of comics etc with, say, collecting funny ice cube trays or upgrading the wardrobe to swankier clothing or financing trips to Hawaii (all of which could I foresee happening).
I’ve only thought of one other title - “A Year Without” - which I don’t really like, but “Buy Nothing Year” lumps me in with advocacy trusts like Adbusters and I don’t really want to be a blog aligned.
geekent: Unconsumer?
geekent: Unconsuming?
geekent: Unconsumed
geekent: Consumeless?
Thoughts?
Buy Nothing Year will be my default, for now, and will, unless something really jazzy comes up, be in the actual banner come ‘08.
In Memoratorium
(originally published August 14)
In addition to denying myself some various entertainment pleasures in 2008, I’m instigating a food moratorium now. It’s some weird penance thing I’m on.
Kidding.
It’s somewhat dietary, but in part just realization that my metabolism is slowing down, and that thanks to a rather unhealthy summer I’ve lost some of my nice physique (really haven’t gotten fat, but I’ve lost some muscle due to inactivity). To stave off further degradation and ballooning, I’m taking a couple of vices out of the equation for a while until such time that I can appropriately measure my intake:
- Pop aka Soda aka Coke (an easy one… done it before can do it again)
- Booze aka Alcohol (excluded wine, the healthcohol)
- Potato Chips (also includes nachos, tortilla chips and corn chips)
- French fries (mainly forcing me into the salad route)
- Chocolate (it’s going to be bad when the cravings hit… mainly referring to chocolate bars here)
- Hamburgers (because I’ve been having terrible indigestion with them lately)
- Fast food (the bad ones… and, oh, no Wendy’s…ach! Pizza and subs and Mediterranean is okay)
- Mayonnaise (as much as possible)
- salad dressing
- candy covered nuts
- anything with trans fat
(added Aug.28)
- donuts
- Cinnabons (but not all cinnamon buns)
- Swiss Chalet
- chicken wings from Pizza Pizza
- onion rings
- packaged cookies
(added Sep.05)
-ice cream
-Yoplait Yoptimal yogurt
So far that’s the list, but more may be added.
When I was in San Diego, I realized that because I was so sick and my throat so sore and swollen that I ate incredibly healthy, since if I was going to put something in my body that would cause me great pain to start, it better help me out in the long run. I wish to maintain that thinking without being a Granola Nazi about it like those freaks at Veggie Hut who keep pestering the fine folks at Meat Shake.
or whatever.
Preamble: a life in debt
I figured I would get started early, since my Buy Nothing Year (”BNY”) has been flittering about in my mind for months on end now. Close friends will recall me telling them of this idea early this summer. Aden (soon to be my wife in 3 days time) will remember me coming up with this wacky idea around February (’07). In fact, it had been festering for some time longer than that, probably at the turn of the year, 2007.
I really wish I’d journaled or blogged about the gestation of this idea, as it did take a while before it was fully formed, and fleshed out to the point where I was satisfied about it (and, after a short while, very excited to do it). In some respects, this idea started as a means to revitalize my blog. I had been contemplating “3-6-5″ photoblog projects and a book that was given to me for Christmas ‘06, “Everything I Ate” in which a guy documented everything he ate for a year. I was wondering what I could do that was the equivalent but was also interesting to me to do. The percolation started.
After pondering various ideas, none of which even register anymore, I came to look at what I do with myself, what I do with my money, what I enjoy, and what I like to share with people. Looking around my apartment — at the shelves of DVDs, the containers of CDs under my bed, the boxes and storage compartments of comics and the action figures scattered everywhere — I knew. Having written literally thousands of movie, comic book, music and other types of reviews over the past decade, I knew. Having blown tens of thousands of dollars on these, my Earthly possessions, I knew there was something there, something to be done.
But what? I mean, I was already keeping track of everything I bought and I was writing reviews for pretty much everything I saw and much of what I read… what more could I do?
Them’s the brokes
Aden and I started going out July 23, 2006 after having been friends for many months before that. Once we realized just how in simpatico we were, it wasn’t long before we started to discuss things like “the future” and “houses”. For a long time the prospect of a house was unattractive to me, being a low maintenance guy and houses being a high-maintenance lifetime investment. (Bear with me, this all does tie in) But for some reason, with Aden, suddenly having a house to call our own seemed an important thing to me, and the talk of houses is what led to talk of (and even-tu-al-ly) marriage. But Toronto isn’t a middle-income-friendly market, with a simple bungalow costing a half-million dollars, most houses will be out of our reach, unless we take a lifetime mortgage or sell our kidneys.
Thinking about this kind of thing, how much money it would actually cost to buy a house and how long it would take to pay off a mortgage and such got me thinking in general about financial issues… namely my debt.
I got my first credit card via Citibank, a brochure application chosen primarily because of the company’s clever advertisement techniques which preyed upon fears of fraud and identity theft (before identity theft was the “it crime” it is today). I can’t even appropriately recall if it was during high school or University, but as it was so exceptionally well put on Judd Apatow’s Undeclared, “Free money… they’re giving out free money”. And for $800 worth of credit, it was like free money. It didn’t take long before I’d blown through much of it (from many trips to the cd or comic book store or the occasional restaurant bill). Occasionally my borrowing rate would rise… another $200 here, another $400 there, and it wasn’t until one particularly high-paying summer job after 3rd year University that I manage to pay that sucker off, completely, after which I cut it up. Sending payments via cheques to a payment office in Hamilton every month cost me $2 per cheque and $0.4x cents per stamp. Annoying. (A year later, I would get a notice from Citibank saying they were charging me $40 service charge for my inactivity… that’s right, you don’t use the card, they don’t make money, so they charge you a holding charge of sorts. I called them immediately, told them I wasn’t going to pay it and cancelled the account).
I got a Visa card via my bank around then, a GM card from which every dollar spent would earn me points towards a new GM vehicle purchase (this was before I was aware that a) I wouldn’t ever buy a GM car and b) I wouldn’t ever want to own a car again). I used this card a little more nobly… to buy books for school in my fourth and final year, and also to buy some nice things for my girlfriend at the time… oh and like, comics and food and clothes and cds and action figures for myself. I didn’t do too badly this time… a couple hundred bucks, nowhere near maxing out my $2k limit. But, that didn’t last. One purchase of an engagement ring later and I was on the verge.
I moved away from home, found a crappy job at Wal-Mart which barely paid enough for me to survive, never mind feed my comics and cd and Star Wars toy cravings (and it was that Christmas I discovered DVDs, buying a DVD player and soaking up DVDs like mad). I was quickly tapped out. Me and the fiancee at the time (she also making shit money at a bakery) wanted to buy a computer, and to do so I knew we needed some more credit, so I applied for another Visa card when the Bank rep said “why don’t you get a line of credit?”
“Can we?” (We meaning “I”)
(Click clack) “You’re approved for $5000.”
“Oh, I don’t want $5000, I only want $2K”
“Well, $5000 is the minimum for a line of credit.”
“Hrm… can we put a usage limit of $2000 then?”
“Sure”
And just like that more free money was ours.
One computer purchase later and I was further in the hole with no way out. The relationship ended, and I honored the last few months of the lease by paying for 1/2 the rent on a vacated apartment for, oh, 5 months. Paid via my line of credit. I didn’t even get the computer, but I did get out, and my sanity seemed worth the sacrifice.
I returned home and soon a $2000 visa was a $3800 Visa, and with the $2000 cap on my line of credit, it became a $7000 line, then an $8200 line, and with my semi depression and shitty job and new girlfriend and an uncontrollable urge to spend, spend, spend… I had gobs of toys and cds and DVDs and comics, but also a massive debt load that for some reason didn’t bother me.
I quit my job, which was going nowhere, and took off with my remaining line of credit and started moving about the province winding up in Toronto in my first solo apartment ($600/mo) with nothing but a car (that sucked up money like George Hamilton does sunshine) and a duffel bag of clothes. I had a job that was (temporary, but) going to pay me more than I had ever earned before. I figured with this job I could get myself out of hock and move on with life. I just had no idea how expensive Toronto was with it’s plentiful cd stores, it’s well-stocked DVD shelves, it’s abundance of comic book stores, and … Toys’R'Us! There were things like furnishing ala IKEA, parking passes and transit costs and all the eating out and drinking out and grocery bills and plane visits home. Soon I was unemployed and living off my meager government hand-out pittance covering my bare minimum monthly payments, rent and bills, my debt pretty much at its limits and only higher than it ever had been, and it only got worse.
Another relationship, a new job, a failed attempt at paying down debt, only to watch my limits climb and my debt climb with it. I like to say I was trying to keep two people afloat, which is a partial truth, in that I was helping keep two people comfortable, while using my new debt allotment to keep myself in material possessions. Three years later and it was over, my debt maxed out, a perpetual loop of paying down and using up, paying down and using up. I was yo-yoing on my debt, and despite a good job and lots of support over the years, I’ve never been able to make any headway at actually keeping my debt reduced.
I’ve had plans, I’ve made notes, I’ve kept journals, and yet something always came up, something always separated me from my gap of debt. I’ve had plans, yearly resolutions to limit my spending, to restrict my buying, and it’s never long before it falls apart or compulsion takes over. I have a spending problem in that I seem to have no problem spending. And what do I buy? Things that give the simplest of pleasures for a limited time. It’s a good way to live if you’re living for today but if you ever want anything from your future, you’ve got to pull yourself out of it.
And I do want out.
I want out of this $20,000+ debt of (mostly) my own creation.
I did an assessment of my Visa and realized that for all the interest I’ve paid on it in the past 8 years, it would have paid the entire thing off… basically I’ve paid into it already what I’ve gotten out of it, and by the time I pay it all off I’ll have paid over double what I borrowed. I don’t think my line of credit is that bad, but I can see by the time it’s gone I’ll have paid about 75% in addition to what I’ve borrowed.
So yeah, I want out of my debt spiral. I’m done with it, and I know what I have to do to start crawling to the surface. A sacrifice must be made.
Don’t get me wrong, I love music and movies and TV and reading and art and little plastic figurines… I love them with a passion that’s at times scary, obsessive and feral, but I realize these satiations need a perpetual incursion to sustain them. I know going cold turkey and telling myself no every time instead of saying “well, if I buy this this week, then I’ll buy less next week” is the only way I can stop myself. But if I stop buying them, what will happen?
I don’t know.
In a year’s time will I be itching to get back into it all? Will I have discovered new avenues to spend my debt instead? Will I have basically just set myself back a year on purchasing everything I want? Will I no longer be interested with such fanaticism in such things?
Questions like these erupt out of me for which I (obviously) don’t have an answer.
And that’s why we’re here.
Coming up…
A pre-BNY look at my life as a consumer or comics, DVDs, cds and toys.
I’m apeeling
No, that subject line is not a self-affirmation of the Stuart Smalley variety, but rather a literal statement of the status of my hands at the moment. For the past five days starting at the tips of my fingers and slowly working its way down to the palms of my hands in erratic fashion the surface dermal layer of my hands has been peeling off… well, I’ve been peeling it off, but you know, it’s hard to resist the urge when you see that little bubble of dead skin there.
It’s not a dryness issue… I’ve been moisturizing like mad the past few days and the only thing it does is make it harder to peel the dead skin off. It’s not pretty, and it is kind of annoying. I think it’s a result of the antibiotics (for the boil, now a bald spot on the back of my head) working their way out of my system, as they were a dermal-targeting medication. Either that or I scalded my hands on a steering wheel the weekend before last and it’s just taken a few days for the skin to react (less likely). Anyway, not really much to worry about methinks, just kind of gross and frustrating.
17/08/2007
Short Rounds vol. 16 - summer blockbuster
Okay, it’s been a long time between updates and really each of these deserves its own full review but the spirit of long-form commentary isn’t in me so I’ll just pump these off and hopefully have something better for you next time.
Ratatouille
Like big-budget animation via Food TV, the story of the partnership between a rat who can cook and the illegitimate son of a famous chef is probably the best movie of the summer. I obviously can’t say for sure since I’ve only seen, what, five movies this summer, but yes, this was so incredibly enjoyable for both young and old. The rats had a very warm, Henson muppet-like quality to them, like Gonzo or Grover, making them cute and appealing, while the human characters were wildly expressive and the best digital animation has done so far with human characters. Brad Bird, following up the Incredibles (with Cars sandwiched in-between) at Pixar has made the best of their movies, in my opinion, which is saying a lot considering the studio’s long line of exceptionally high-quality films. Perhaps it’s because it does skew a bit more mature in both it’s comedy and story, and thus as well the least marketable of Pixar’s movies to date (not a lot of young boys screaming for toy rats as they were with Cars or Toy Story), but in overall sensibility it’s quite an accomplishment. The voice talent is probably the least star-studded of any of Pixar’s and yet the talent is exceptional, perfect in every role. This may not be “important” like a war movie or some historical drama, but it’s sweet, funny, intelligent and entertaining like few other films are or have ever been. Forget best animated picture, this should be in a best picture category.
-5/5-
Transformers
While Ratatouille may be the best picture I’ve seen this summer (out of my meager selections), I think I liked Transformers the best, which in its own way makes no sense, but I digress. Directed by Michael Bay, whom I’ve never had any love for, Transformers takes a toy line/animated property from my childhood (which honestly I never did care about) and made a rollicking summer action blockbuster that allows you to shut your brain off and enjoy the ride. Oh, it’s not without its missteps, but I think the movie wisely decided that a straight focus on the robots-in-disguise themselves wasn’t going to fly with a general audience and instead crafted three storylines which built up to a number of small reveals and then one or two big ones. One of the stories had no staying power beyond the second act, and the inevitable collision of the three arcs didn’t work quite as well as I’m sure they had hoped, but the cast, by and large, was solid, with Shia LaBeouf’s motormouth leading the way and Megan Fox providing much more than just eye candy (but she’s just like a younger Jennifer Connelly). The impetus for the climax is kind of weird and the chop-chop-chop editing of the fight scenes (patented Michael Bay) is disorienting, but overall it’s actually fairly smart stupid summer popcorn fun. I saw it twice.
4/5
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
I’m not the target market for Harry Potter. Magic kind of bothers me. I like the swords not so much the sorcery in fantasy. Though there may be ground rules, there always a part of me that thinks “you can do anything with magic” and that possibility bores me. Like modern day Superman comics where nothing really threatens the hero. Okay, weird analogy, but I digress. That said, I liked this Harry Potter movie better than the last one… much better. The pacing was right, the characterization was great (even if Harry’s romance was a bit truncated) and the story engaged me better than any of the previous movies. It’s probably because the maturity level of the story has grown with the characters, the weight of Voldemort’s threat growing exponentially and the first wizard duel since the unbearably short one in Fellowship of the Rings that actually looked like an honest to gosh battle. Too bad we don’t get to see much of Alan Rickman and Gary Oldman together… those guys really should star in a movie together. But I’m getting sidetracked. I’ve never caught Harry Potter-mania, and if I did it didn’t last very long… I think this is my favourite of the bunch so far… with a solid story and nice hints at bigger things to come.
3.5/5
Sunshine
The slow-moving space mission has been done… starting with 2001, Silent Running, Solaris (the original and the remake), Alien, 2010, Event Horizon, Mission To Mars, and a dozen or two others. They’re formulaic and each successive one brings little to the table that hasn’t been seen before. Sunshine is the product of director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland’s third pairing, and like 28 Days Later was their homage to the zombie genre, this is their homage to the space mission genre. The script is endlessly formulaic, the fantastic cast (including Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans and Michelle Yeoh) is left to hang with relatively thin characterization, and yet, for all its tedium I still found it engaging, the little nuances of difference between one film’s space walk and another’s still enough to grip me tightly, and the notes of the slightly more unusual or fantastic just enough to stimulate me. They dropped the ball on not dissecting what an Earth with a dying sun and drained mineral resources has become, and it’s a big gaping question mark for me that really should have been filled (via “from home” communications, rather simply). If you dig this kind of thing, it’s a fine if unnecessary entry into the genre.
3/5
Superbad
I’ve been ingesting a bunch of Superbad producer Judd Apatow’s television works (Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared) as well as revisiting The 40-year-old Virgin and, earlier this summer, Knocked Up and there’s a definite theme to his work. As much as it’s about outsiders and the unity within these outside circles, it’s really a potent examination of the male sexual psyche and how hung up men are on sex, and all the thousands of horrifically neurotic permutations of embarrassment, shame and guilt we can bring to it, and really how silly it all is. Superbad is the latest addition, and although written by co-star Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the spectre of Apatow looms over it large, as two awkward outcast teenagers find themselves invited to a senior party and charged with the task of providing booze. Of course, this is a life or death issue for them as the girls of their affection are going to be there, and there’s the chance that if they don’t like them well, at least they may be drunk enough to sleep with them. Tragi-comic twists and turns keep the boys from achieving their goals, as the third member of their triad is shanghaied by the police and taken on his own adventure. The rather juvenile humour mixed with all-too-real neurotic teenaged obsession and conflict, as well as the absurd, yet not entirely unrealistic scenarios, piece together to make a truly hilarious movie. Owing a debt of gratitude for the language boundary-pushing done by Kevin Smith, and in part paying homage to John Hughes, and managing to side-step (for the most part) gross-out humour, this truly has that Apatow feel all the way through.
4.5/5
15/08/2007
Charlie Rose is spinning in his grave
Just caught all six episodes of The Michael Showalter Showalter over at College Humor dot Com, and for fans of irreverent occasionally fraternal humor, it’s kinda fun. It’s basically The State and Stella troupe member Michael Showalter “interviewing” his friends (David Cross, Michael Ian Black, Paul Rudd) for four minutes with “side takes” ala Larry Sanders. Over the episodes you can tell that Showalter is actually developing a bit of a character, one that’s cash-stricken and a little egotistical and just not very good at his job… oh and his friends don’t seem to like him very much.
Looks like he does about one a month, so I’ll check back in another year and catch up, unless the College Humor site tanks by then…
mmmSte3k it
According to the Satellite News, the next volume of MST3K releases will feature:
episode 419- THE REBEL SET (with short: JOHNNY AT THE FAIR)
episode 504- SECRET AGENT SUPER DRAGON
episode 612- THE STARFIGHTERS
episode 811- PARTS: THE CLONUS HORROR
Oh, the memories.
36!
T for 2
Amazon.com has an arm called CustomFlix Labs (now CreateSpace) which allows users to create their own DVDs and CDs. An interesting idea, but this is an even better one: Jon Favreau’s Dinner for 5 (a no-pretenses talk-show where Favreau and four celebrity friends and/or colleagues sit down to dinner and discuss… whatever) will be the first TV show offering up their entire catalog and allowing the customer to select what episodes they want on DVD
I feel like Toast when I say this, but I had this idea a while back. The difference is my idea related to sketch comedy shows like Saturday Night Live, Mad TV, Kids In The Hall, or late-night talk shows like Letterman, Conan, Daily Show, Colbert Report, and they would put up their sketches and segments on-line and fans could pick and choose their own DVDs, make their own mixed DVDs to give to friends and the like.
Imagine if you could make a four hour DVD comedy mix for a friend with episodes of Harvey Birdman interspersed with segments from Wonder Showzen and Colbert Report, followed by D*ck in a Box from SNL and some Cabana Chat from Mad TV, and on, and on… I’d love it.
Hopefully SNL and others will catch onto this and offer up their wares on a create-your-own DVD… fantastic.
14/08/2007
Moratorium
in addition to denying myself some various entertainment pleasures in 2008, I’m instigating a food moratorium now. It’s some weird penance thing I’m on.
Kidding.
It’s somewhat dietary, but in part just realization that my metabolism is slowing down, and that thanks to a rather unhealthy summer I’ve lost some of my nice physique (really haven’t gotten fat, but I’ve lost some muscle due to inactivity). To stave off further degradation and ballooning, I’m taking a couple of vices out of the equation for a while until such time that I can appropriately measure my intake:
- Pop aka Soda aka Coke (an easy one… done it before can do it again)
- Booze aka Alcohol (going straight-edge… fyi, I’ll no longer be fun at parties) update: I’ve excluded wine from “booze” as it’s more civilized (yeah, that’s it)
- Potato Chips (also includes nachos, tortillas and corn chips)
- French fries (mainly forcing me into the salad route)
- Chocolate (it’s going to be bad when the cravings hit… mainly referring to chocolate bars here)
- Hamburgers (mainly because I’ve been having terrible indigestion with them lately)
- Fast food (the bad ones… and, oh, no Wendy’s…ach! Pizza and subs and Mediterranean is okay)
- Mayonnaise (as much as possible)
So far that’s the list, but more may be added.
When I was in San Diego, I realized that because I was so sick and my throat so sore and swollen that I ate incredibly healthy, since if I was going to put something in my body that would cause me great pain to start, it better help me out in the long run. I wish to maintain that thinking without being a Granola Nazi about it like those freaks at Veggie Hut who keep pestering the fine folks at Meat Shake.
or whatever.
13/08/2007
I’m a bad Aquaman
I was tasked last Tuesday with the job of caring for my co-worker’s pet fish, Spike, while she was away… quite a simple task, really… just feed him in the morning and before leaving before the weekend.
No problem. All went according to plan.
Except the part where Spike’s all glassy eyed, laying on his side at the bottom of the bowl when I came into work this morning. Oh… oh frig.
*tap tap tap*
*tap tap tap*
I hoped that there was a last gasp in there or something, but no, fishy was bereft of life.
Looking at his bowl, it seemed to me I just didn’t feed him enough for his high energetic lifestyle, as all the food was gone from the water’s surface. Spike would whip around his bowl in a frenzy for a couple minutes then huddle under his bamboo tree for a nap for a few hours, only to repeat it again a couple times a day. I guess he burnt himself out and starved… oh, the huma… the fishity.
The suggestion to replace him before my co-worker returns was made, but, well, she’s not a 5-year-old, she’ll know immediately something is amiss… plus I just wouldn’t do that to her. Spike had only been with us a little over 3 months… but I guess it was his time to go.
That or I killed him.
Frown.
08/08/2007
News of sorts
Revue Cinema Open House This Weekend!
August 11th from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Be one of the first people in your neighbourhood to visit your old friend, The Revue. there will be popcorn, drinks, prizes, ice cream and lots more.
400 Roncesvalles Ave. 5 minute walk south of Dundas W station. For more information, to get involved, or to donate, please visit RevueCinema.ca
The Spa Treatment
Mon ami, la FreakGirl, est ouvrir un spa:
Holistic Facial & Massage — Approximately 1 hour (usually a little longer), $35.00
Reiki - Approximately 1 hour - $35.00
Contact Joan via The Faery’s Tub (and buy some lovely bath products whilst there)
Hair club 4 men
So the boil rapidly depleted after the first day of antibiotics and has been not so much a nuisance anymore. Of course, I couldn’t stick to my 4-pills-a-day regimen on the long weekend even if my life had depended on it… but I’m back on schedule now. The skin around the area is drying out too, which makes it itchy, so it’s slightly unpleasant but I manage to ignore it.
Unfortunately, all the hair has started to fall out of the spot where the boil was. It’s not quite a visible bald patch (yet) but yea, there’s nothing more distressing than clumps of hair coming off in your hand. Oh well, fingers crossed at it growing back.
Concentration shot
Really can’t focus today.
In from Amazon:
The Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show - this was the mid-1980’s version of the Super Friends show that they spun a wicked toy line out of. The voice actor who plays Darkseid used the exact same voice for Dr. Claw in Inspector Gadget so it’s kind of silly. I haven’t seen this show literally since I was 8, so I’m really looking forward to having my memories tarnished. Hopefully there’s special features containing the classic “You Decide” action figure commercials.
Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law Season 3 - more goofy, rapid-fire, kitschy cartoon courtroom inaneness from the cat with the beak.
The Tick vs. Season 2 - Another full season of Tick, less an episode. Never watched these when they were first on, so I’m still catching up on all of the references used by friends.
01/08/2007
Comic cons, and pros
San Diego Comic Con… or any comic convention for that matter, seems to no longer be of interest to me. As a lapsing “consumer of goods” I don’t really care so much about being “all up on th’ news” or “seeing it first” or “getting it first” or “exclusives” or “meeting (semi-)famous people and having them deface my property with ink”… it’s just not my bag. May have been at one point in time, but I guess priorities have shifted.
San Diego Comic Con is huge… like a foot-ball field sized convention center, packing in about 150,000 people over a 4(ish)-day span. It’s a lot of people in a goodly sized space clamoring for as much attention as they can get and/or give. People in some very respectable homemade costumes dance about the convention floor brushing right past people in some very respectable-but-ill-fitting costumes sidestepping people in some pretty nasty, pathetic or unwashed costumes. There’s regular people, nerds, geeks, trolls, ogres, hags, and a few unclassifiables.
The motley crew that make up the convention goer is comprised of primarily the fan, which is only fitting since conventions (this one, the largest in the world, included) started as merely fans gathering to discuss and share their experiences with comics and characters… then the creators, publishers, stakeholders, and other corporate entities got involved and took over the proceedings, and the whole thing is just a big promotional extravaganza. The fan, at San Diego, is actually more akin to “sheep”, herded in line after line to get to the trough. What’s in the trough is really dependent on the fan… could be an exclusive Hot Wheels Batman t-shirt or the limited edition Yu-Gi-Oh whatever or the Con Exclusive yadda blah blah or a poster signing by Kate Beckinsale or Ed Burns, or the chance to see exclusive footage from whatever new movie/tv show/video game company x is putting out, or it might be getting Neil Adams or Paul Dini to sign your comics… for most its a different feed or feed assortment, but shepherded in and out of lines nonetheless.
Once, I would have been swept up in amongst it all… 5 or 10 years ago, when my geektitude was at its peak I probably would have been chomping at the bit to see Kevin Smith speak live for four hours, or to see exclusive footage from the new Get Smart movie, or to go to the Lost panel or DC Countdown panel or Buffy panel and ask inane questions that I would stew over for minutes, only to realize that I missed the fact that someone had already asked the question or I would forget it just as I was being called. I would have been nervous around creators, my hands clammy and shaking, all Chris Farley like saying “Remember that time you wrote the Flash? That was awesome” and stuff.
Now, it’s kind of, well, not beneath me, because I do still have fannish tendencies, but the whole Convention vibe just seems grotesque in once sense (the whole commercial/marketing aspect) and pathetic, especially in terms of how much stock some people have placed this mass entertainment into their lives.
Aden and I checked out the convention schedule before we left, looking over the panel, looking at the artists and guests, and we decided we weren’t bringing anything to sign and we weren’t going to go to any of the panels. I had thought about the Lost panel, and also one on writing about comics, but decided, almost before arriving in San Diego, that neither were really of all that interest. You see, anything that will be worthy coming out of those panels will be easily accessible on-line in a matter of hours following it… there’s nothing you can learn in a panel that you won’t find out a day or two later with a few clicks of the mouse. Standing in line for 30 minutes to 2 or more hours, not really of interest when you’re in a city that has such beautiful weather and beaches and some interesting attractions as San Diego… why be inside wasting 4 hours of your day when you can waste 20 minutes another day catching up.
I mean, there is the experience of “being there” in a panel but that’s not worth much to me. There’s also the experience of “seeing it first”, when they show upcoming DVD movies like Superman Vs. Doomsday or the pilot episode of Fallen but that’s not really of concern to me either. I’m very much of the “I’ll see it eventually, if I really want to” mode at this stage.
What I did enjoy about the con was more peripheral. I skittered about the publisher’s booths saying hi and trying to make some contacts for Rack Raids in the hopes that we can get some broader publications involved and reviewed, bigger exposure to our growing readership other than the main spandex-clad stuff. While I had a horrible time speaking and I generally hate cold calling, I got into a good groove on Thursday which will hopefully yield positive results. I certainly have some following up to do.
On top of that, I met a few nice people on the way out to the con. Talented illustrators Michael Cho and Steve Manale who were cool people to board a plane with, then deplane with and then reboard another plane with.
The commercial booths, quite frankly, weren’t much different than what you get in Toronto (just more of them). Everybody’s selling the same stuff… everyone’s seem to have gotten the same discounted books from Marvel and are selling them at 50% off, everyone got all the toys I’ve already seen and all the books that are already out and it’s the sort of thing that impresses the con-goers who don’t spend as much time on the internet as I do and don’t have good comic book stores to go to.
I really think conventions are generally meant for smaller-town people who get wide-eyed at celebrity sightings and finding stuff they’ve never seen. If anything, perhaps, conventions aren’t really for me. I enjoy cons most when I’m with people I like. The past few years going to the cons with the old gang were great and being at SDCC with Aden was blissfully enjoyable.
I think maybe if I want to enjoy my cons in the future, I should start a sketchbook… something to give to the artists alley guys and get different artists to draw Space Ghost in their style… that might at least make for a much more rewarding take-away…
It seems to me though that this trip felt more business-like for me though, that I wasn’t there as a fan but as someone, well, not INSIDE the industry, but on the skirts thereof. I think I might be trading in my fanboy hat for a creator’s hat soon, that I won’t be looking at the writers and artists of comics as idols so much as fellow creators, and that even though we may not be equals that I’m putting it out there, contributing instead of just consuming. Eventually.
Ottoman empire
While in a flu-induced haze in between slumber and consciousness last Wednesday at around 1:40am I saw this on the Daily Show
The parody of five guys humping an ottoman on You Tube was hilarious, but that original video, which I’d never even heard of nevertheless seen, has to be one of the most bizarre videos ever put on YouTube in its short history of cataloguing bizarre videos. And it is… there’s no logical reason for its existence, and yet there it is… what were those boys thinking? What girls are they trying to impress? Or are they trying to make furniture f***ing the latest in internet trends? Or were they just trying to be funny… I could try and find out but it’s more fun to question then to actually know the answer.
And the the comedy troupe at A Week Of Kindness show that the history of this kind of activity isn’t so recent…
Buh-zar.