February « 2008 « geekent’s stuff’n things

29/02/2008

Re-Review - The Sandbaggers Vol.1

Filed under: ReReviews, TV on DVD — geekent @ 8:10 am

Source (purchased/given/ borrowed/the wife’s): purchased
Date Acquired/Borrowed: June 27, 2002
Original Review: All I can say is goddamn this series is good.

Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances: I always describe this series to people as the West Wing meets James Bond, but that’s just the easy way to pique peoples’ interests, because there’s really nothing like this show. I first heard of The Sandbaggers via an essay in the back of the first issue of Greg Rucka’s comic book series Queen & Country, wherein he noted that he took direct inspiration for Q&C from this series. After embracing that comic book wholeheartedly, I knew I needed to see that series, and for over a year it remained on my “must-have” DVD list.

One day, unemployed and trolling slowly through HMV killing time, I came across the first volume set of this series. Three discs, seven episodes, and about $50 (which I likely couldn’t afford), it was like striking gold. I don’t know if I continued shopping, but I clutched onto that BFS Video collection like an old lady clutches her purse when punks cross her path at the mall… nobody would take it from me. According to my blog, I watched all seven episodes in one sitting, and had my mind absolutely blown. Ever since, I’ve held this series aloft at the top of my “best TV show ever” list, and I’ve yet to see the show that can dethrone it.

Re-Review: Best. Series. Ever. I’m not being hyperbolic, I mean that. This is in my opinion the best TV show ever made. By the time I came to it, The Sandbaggers was already 14 years old, and usually after time has passed the potency of a TV show begins to leak. The fact that this series is still so immeasurably strong, intelligent, and captivating is a testament to it’s brilliance. It’s an ITV series with usual British production standards, which means it doesn’t look like a million dollars, but at the same time, that works it its favour. The bare-bones office settings, the dingy remote shoots, the unglamourous wardrobes and hairstyles… it’s all exemplary of how non-James-Bondian real-world espionage is.

28/02/2008

Re-Review - Legion of Green Men: Floating in Shallow Water

Filed under: CDs, ReReviews — geekent @ 12:16 pm

Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife’s): purchased
Date Acquired: 1999
Original Review: N/A

Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances: I first encountered the Legion of Green Men (”LoGM”) back in my Brave New Waves-fixated days (circa 1994) when I would record those radio broadcasts and compile mixed tapes for repeated listening pleaser. The LoGM song “Synaptic Response” was easily one of highlights and still remains one of my all-time favourite songs in any genre. It’s a brilliant techno composition, and I loved it immediately (loving it even more after catching its video on Bravo a year later). I made it a mission to seek out the LoGM album hosting that song, Spatial Specific, only to be quite disappointed with how… un-engaging it was, with “Synaptic Response” being one of few highlights. But based on my continued love of that song alone, I sallied forth and bought this follow-up album from LoGM, and again, was completely disinterested in it. Sometimes, I realized some time ago, I need to distance myself from something that I have an initial response to, and then return to it to see it more objectively. Sometimes opinions change….

Re-Review:…and sometimes they don’t. The opening track “For Maria, Wherever I May Find Her” is a peppy, lounge/Caribbean-inspired song, hard to dislike but utterly incongruous with the rest of the album which explores sonic ambiance and spatial sound. Most works having a lot of room to breath and explore their trance-like assemblage of electronic tones, pulses and clicks. Some rhythms or deep bass will occasionally find their way in helping add movement and progression, but on the two-part “Patience” or the broaching 10-minute “Constellation” the sounds linger on far too long, the long-lead to an eventual destination of nowhere. I’m not unreceptive to soundscapes or transient music (hell, I’ve made some of my own) but there’s still got to be a hook. The third and fourth tracks, “Owls In The Apple Tree” and “Gammaland” seem to understand how to engage and work with warmer, progressive textures, and track nine “Logarhythm Two Point Three” is like floating in dark space, nothing but electronic signals to keep you company, which isn’t particularly enjoyable listening but it is interesting. This album also features experimental CD tracks requiring use of an old fashioned disc player. It has a track zero (Which requires you to rewind from the start of track one) and a sub-audible track 11 which requires the volume to be cranked near full to be heard.

Sometimes a diverse album really works, but this album lacks consistency or a recognizable theme. I can’t fault Floating in Shallow Water for being experimental, and it does yield a few tracks of some interest, but the bulk of it results in detached listening, which I don’t think is ever the objective of any musician.

Rating (sell/keep/undecided): sell

Bonus: Synaptic Response video

27/02/2008

Acquisitions: February

Filed under: acquisitions — geekent @ 3:28 pm

Just because this is my “Buy Nothing Year” it doesn’t mean things aren’t coming my way to enjoy or review or whathaveyou. Beneath the cut is what’s come my way over the past month and links to any reviews that may have come out of them. Anything with an asterisk (*) remains to be reviewed.

26/02/2008

Re-Review - Starman: Sins of the Father

Filed under: Comics, ReReviews — geekent @ 2:50 pm

Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife’s): the wife’s (but I bought the original series run back in the day)
Date Purchased: N/A
Original Review: N/A

Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances:What do I remember about Starman? Well, I was sold on Starman even before it arrived on the stands. Spinning off (sort-of) from Zero Hour back in 1994, Starman was one of a handful of titles DC was launching with #0 issues. I don’t remember if each of the new series were given 4-page previews in, erm, the Previews catalogue, but Starman for certain did, and within the first four pages of the zero issue, the new Starman, David Knight, was shot dead out of the sky! It was such a huge and dramatic moment, that I was invested immediately in knowing why, and how a book would carry on when it’s lead character is killed. Beyond that Starman delivered something altogether different, seemingly a collaborative project between writer James Robinson and artist Tony Harris, both invested themselves immensely into the book and it’s lead, Jack Knight, and in doing so becoming two of my favourite creators, following them obsessively for some time. Over the next 40 or so issues, Starman proved itself not a book about superheroes, but a book about Legacies and families, about feuds, reconciliation and redemption. It turned the concept of heroes and villains from stark black and white to abstract colours and shades that spoke to the humanity with which Robinson and Harris imbued their characters. I got frustrated with Starman about the time he took to the stars on an inter-galactic adventure in search of his titular namesake, the thought-deceased Starman Will Payton and although I haven’t read the title since the series ended, my affinity for it hasn’t wavered. Like Robinson’s The Golden Age, and unlike most other ’90’s books, I had no doubt that Starman would hold up.

Re-Review: The “Sins of the Father” trade paperback consists of issues zero through five of the ongoing series, and by the end of the first chapter it’s evident exactly how special this series would become. David Knight is shot dead, Ted Knight, the original Starman (and star of TV’s “Too Close For Comfort”), suffers a concussion when his home and lab are destroyed, and Jack Knight, collectibles shop owner, finds himself staring down the barrell of a gun as his livelihood goes up in flames. The Knights have been targeted and the gloriously art-deco Opal City (introduced in this series) they protect is meant to suffer. It all happens at the hands of Starman’s golden-age nemesis, the Mist, and his chip-off-the-old-psychopathic-block children.

24/02/2008

Re-Review - X-O Manowar: Retribution

Filed under: Comics, ReReviews — geekent @ 4:47 pm

Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife’s): purchased
Date Purchased: sometime 1993
Original Review: N/A
X-O tpb.jpg
Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances:Ah, the Valiant universe. From 1991 through to 1993 (perhaps even into 1994), thanks to the speculator boom fuelled by Wizard, Valiant books became hot, hot, hot. Valiant’s thing was story above art, which seemed in glaring contradiction to what Marvel (and later Image) were practicing at the time, and without any “hot writers” or “hot artists” on board, the line of titles at Valiant proved good reading. The biggest boost to Valiant’s business, early on, was their obscurity. Their first few titles came out with little fanfare or hoopla to low, low numbers, meaning once people did catch on, the resale value of the first 20 or 30 issues Valiant published went through the roof. Literally, in the time of the speculator boom, some books were over $100 within a year of being printed. Valiant, seeing a market to exploit, pushed the “collector-friendly” angle and began all number of schemes to make their books collectible, including cupon redemptions for “zero-issues” and later specialty covers and 3-D “Valiant Vision”.

X-O was part of their first wave of titles, introduced in the first year. All those early book were guided by the hand of Jim Shooter, who seemed bound and determined to have a superhero universe to call his own (later he was turfed from Valiant and started up the short-lived Defiant universe) and had his sights on taking mighty Marvel down a peg or two. Appropriating old Gold Key heroes like Solar, Magnus and Turok as his baseline, he then introduced original characters like the Eternal Warrior and Rai, as well as Marvel deviations likeHarbinger , which was an interesting spin on the X-Men, and here, X-O Manowar, which was a melding of Conan and Iron Man.

I remember the Valiant universe as being good reading, at least better than most of what Marvel and DC were doing in the early to mid 90’s, but I can’t recall what specifically I liked about it. My collections of Valiant titles are all scattered with only one exception, Archer and Armstrong which I have a complete set of, and next to that, X-O Manowar has only a few gaps. I tried a few issues of nearly every title, but most were ignored after three, with some random character crossover issues filling it out.

I haven’t actually read any of my Valiant books since I stopped reading their title’s altogether after the company’s acquisition by Acclaim in 1995, and the general flavour of the line turned sour (seemingly more keyed on collectible covers and “hot books” more than story). With a Hardcover X-O collection solicited in this month’s Previews, I thought I’d take another look and see how it stands up.

22/02/2008

What I won’t be buying - supplimental

Filed under: The Want List — geekent @ 4:21 pm

Aw… Aw man…

Addendum

Review - Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis

Filed under: Books, Reviews — geekent @ 1:02 pm

Format: Hardcover
Release date: October 16, 2007
Date acquired/borrowed: December 25, 2007
Pages: 672
Start reading date: January 16, 2007
Finished reading: February 21, 2007

My earliest recollections of the Peanuts gang was a green felt wall hanging with Linus on it, the slogan “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere” sagely written above Schulz’s deceptively simplistic character drawing. It hung in my room for some time as a wee lad, I recall, but don’t remember when or why it was removed. From my grandmother’s house I had claimed my Uncle’s old Snoopy toy as my own. You could pop his limbs off easily, I remember frequent pullings-apart, but he always went back together. I watched various”…Charlie Brown” specials on tv featuring Great Pumpkins and Christmas pageantry, and I read Peanuts in the Sunday color comics, but not as frequently the dailies. I’m sure most of us born a few years before Charles Schulz’s retirement from comics have (or will have) similar recollections from our youth, scarcely a life in North America — and millions more globally — that hasn’t had some exposure to Snoopy, Charlie Brown and company.

If you were a child of the 50’s or 60’s, you probably remember a much different Peanuts than what the rest of us grew up with, the commercialized property with seeming omnipresence, inescapable, unavoidable. Perhaps, like me, you never cared as much for Peanuts as what came after it: Garfield; For Better Or Worse; Calvin and Hobbes; Doonesbury; The Boondocks…. Virtually every newspaper comic strip since Peanuts came on the owes a debt to its creator, and whether you truly appreciate the man’s craft or not, you can’t deny Charles “Sparky” Schulz’ influence on the field of cartooning.

21/02/2008

Re-Review - Thom Yorke: The Eraser

Filed under: CDs, ReReviews — geekent @ 12:26 pm

Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife’s): purchased
Date Acquired: July 18, 2006
Original Review: **1/2 (two and a half stars, no write-up)

Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances: Well, I really like Radiohead, but as a band they peaked for me with “Kid A” (although because of Buy Nothing Year, “In Rainbows” will remain as but a wee pang of longing). Thom Yorke’s solo project wasn’t much of a diversion from the (4-albums-in) now-typical Radiohead fare of vox, electronic warps and gurgles, sequencers and instrumentation, and by the unsupported 2.5/5 ranking I gave it 19 months ago it didn’t really strike a chord. I cant even remember if any Yorke tracks made it onto my massive 4-disc 2005/06.5 compilation, and with, like, 75 tracks on that puppy, if he wasn’t included that says a lot about how into this disc I was (which is to say not very much).

Re-Review: At this stage, I believe I’ve listened to “The Eraser” more times in the past week than I have in the 19 months combined. It’s forty minutes of Thom Yorke singing hauntingly against sequenced loops, pianos, and minimalist compositions. I love Yorke’s voice, it’s soothing and relaxing, but the man has power that, when he chooses to use it, sends shivers up your spine and makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Yet here one track blurs into another as the downtempo glitches and tones backing Yorke’s vocals set an equilibrium from which it can’t escape and never tries. There’s no adventure here, no sense of exploring his limits, in fact it appears Yorke spent a more concentrated effort on the sequencing than working on song structure, vocals and lyrics. The man’s talented, without a doubt, but working solo on all this left him devoid of the collaborative spirit that’s made him an excellent frontman for Radiohead and phenomenal guest vocalist with the likes of Bjork and PJ Harvey. In fact, if Yorke wants to do another “solo” album, he should serious contemplate doing duets.

If there’s a standout track, I’m remiss to find it. Each song has its moment, a clever lyric or curious loop, but the moment passes quickly. None of these songs linger, none stay in your mind, to be recalled at inopportune moments, or nag you incessantly until you listen to them again. There are no bitter songs here, nothing that will put you off, but there’s nothing outright stimulating that will rope you in. I’ve always called “Kid A” a great album to fall asleep to, but “The Eraser” is an album that will just plain put you to sleep. I want to like it because it’s Thom Yorke and I want to hate it because I’m disappointed in this, but it’s just such an innocuous work that I can’t muster the passion for either. The more I revisit it, the more I search for something to hang onto, and find very little. If only his refrain from the title track - “The more you try to erase me, the more that I appear” - actually applied to this album. The more you erase this work, the less it matters.

Rating (keep/sell/undecided): sell

20/02/2008

Project: Next Top Amazing Loser

Filed under: Debt Spiral, Tele — geekent @ 9:51 am

Our episode of Maxed Out aired yesterday at 8:00 and 11:00 (if you missed it, you can watch it after the Oscars at 11:30 on Sunday) and, ego centrists we are, we watched them both. Adrienne had been fretting about the show, primarily because she worried about being non-photogenic, but she looked beautiful. Don’t know what was up with my hair though, and is my smile really that askew?

The show, for the many hours we put into it, moved along at a tremendously fast clip. I guess when you have days of memories, distilling it down to a 22-minute retrospective leaves a lot (in some cases thankfully) lost in that mix, like the kerfuffle between myself and Alison over selling the comics collection in full was pared back to Alison stating, “It’s all about making choices” and me responding “Exactly.”

19/02/2008

Review - There Will Be Blood

Filed under: Cinema, Reviews — geekent @ 5:42 pm

Viewed: In theatre
Release Date: January 11, 2008
writer: Paul Thomas Anderson
director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Upon seeing the trailer for There Will Be Blood for the first time, a haunting, screeching score backing a few glimpses of the oil baron and the evangelical minister, I wasn’t interested until the directorial credit for Paul Thomas Anderson appeared. With every PT Anderson film, initial impressions can be deceiving. Though he only has five films under his belt, with Boogie Nights the most notorious of them, after Dirk Diggler became almost a household name, he became one of the must-watch directors of the ’90’s. With every film he’s done since, something audacious, something unique has emerged, sometimes worth ceremony, sometimes just as curiosity.

With Magnolia, a 3-hour meditation on mood through multiple interweaving and independent storylines. It was a cinematic experiment tying themes, colours and music into the core conceit, and it’s worthy of as much of its praise as it is its derision. It was a disappointment at the box office, a failure with many fans and critics cited as boring and pretentious, but just as much it’s garnered its defenders who are willing to give it the patience and investment it requires to fully be understood. For Anderson to then turn to low-brow huckster Adam Sandler for redemption was an unexpected move and Punch-Drunk Love was Anderson’s interpretation of the “Sandler formula” of film, and he made an honest-to-god actor out of the comedian, even if the film wasn’t nearly as smart or funny as it could have been.

But here, almost six years later, Anderson has more than fulfilled the promise that Boogie Nights‘ champions wanted out of his follow-up works. In fact, Anderson has moved away from the layered textures of Magnolia and Boogie Nights into something more straightforward, something more iconic, perhaps not quite Citizen Kane territory, but certainly analogous to it. Fond of the big film, this one doesn’t shy away from epic, as it spans decades and over two and a half hours, but it surprisingly never yields to dull. Much of it can be attributed to Thomas’ direction, the editing, the cinematography, but most of all, it’s Daniel Day Lewis who carries almost every frame of this film in another Oscar nominated (and had he a nude fighting scene, a sure-fire winner for best actor) performance.

What I won’t be buying (comics for May)

Filed under: The Want List — geekent @ 2:34 pm

Every month I decide to torment myself by making a list of what comic books look interesting from the solicitations for books shipping 2 months down the road. Of course, with a little bit of store credit remaining I’m not completely unable to get things, but with that little resource well drying up, I may actually be out of luck for May… we’ll only have to wait and see.

18/02/2008

Two points

Filed under: Comics, Debt Spiral — geekent @ 11:12 pm

1) We finished inventorying our floppies (well, our on-site floppies) today… I recorded every issue and the cover price (U.S. cover) and the grand total came out to just under $14,000. I haven’t recorded the thousands of comics still remaining at my parent’s house, and the value doesn’t take into account that on most books we paid anywhere from 20 to 40% more for Canadian cover price. So yeah, over the past, erm, 18 years, we’ve bought a lot of comics with a lot of money, but really, not that much… I suppose. Next step, figuring out what gets kept and what gets gone.

2) I realized today that aside from various food products, I have actually bought nothing for myself so far this year. I mean, that’s the point of Buy Nothing Year, but I haven’t bought any clothes or accessories or… other such things not on the BNY list. Mainly, it’s because I have no money. But today, on “Family Day”, the wife and I, sans the little guy who’s at his dad’s for the holiday, went shopping, which seemed to be the general consensus on what to do for most of us lucky enough to have this new holiday off (with crappy weather and, well, being mid-February, maybe June would be a better time for a “Family Day” holiday?… how about “Shopping Day” for the third week in February? Call a spade a spade). Anyway… I bought two sweaters and a collared shirt, total cost of just over $25 (and not on credit). Thanks Indonesian children! Kidding. If it didn’t have a red “sale” tag, then I didn’t bother looking at it, and most of the items were 70% off (or more). A little treat for myself for being so good.

16/02/2008

Re-Review - Tenacious D: The Complete Master Works

Filed under: ReReviews, TV on DVD — geekent @ 11:33 am

Source (purchased/given/ borrowed/the wife’s): borrowed
Date Acquired/Borrowed: May 2006
Original Review: n/a

Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances: In the year 2000, what was once (and sometimes still is) referred to as “the future”, a young lad who looked a lot like me only, you know, younger and less bearded, was experimenting with revolutionary software called “Napster”. Using a deathly slow dial-up internet connection, the young man would search and retrieve .wav and .mp3 files from this new file-share technology and burn unusual mixed CDs for his friends of these found sounds. One mixed disc was of a certain wintery/Christmassy theme, and having just been informed of the brilliant Jonathan Richman song “Abominable Snowman in the Market” by his best friend and his best friend’s brother, he searched and found that song. Then he tried searching for “Yeti” with no results, followed by “Bigfoot” and “Sasquatch”. The latter led this handsome fellow to download a track called “Sasquatch” by a band called Tenacious D. After downloading, this clean shaven kid gave it a listen, and marvelled at its absurdity:

“There were some scientists/ trying to figure out the sasquatch riddle/ and they figured out it was the missing link./ “In search of …Sasquatch”/ that was a kick-ass “In Search Of…”/ with Leonard Nemoy/ kickin’ out the jams/ haiiii”

He listened and enjoyed on repeat a dozen times, thinking something was missing, however… a visual component perhaps, and thought to hisself (perhaps aloud), “I must have more”. And he downloaded more in all his handsomeness, coming across “Tribute” and “With Karate I’ll Kick Your Ass” and “Rocketsauce” and “Kyle Took A Bullet For Me” and “Kyle Quit The Band” and “Lee” and “Double Team”. It’s when this charming twenty-something kid heard that last one that he remembered hearing it before, on a Saturday Night Live performance (Season 23, hosted by Matthew Broderick, 05/02/1998) and didn’t like it much then. 2 years older, suddenly gave him wisdom and perspective and he could see that it was not true arrogance on the part of the performers, but faux arrogance masking insecurity. Or something.

15/02/2008

Re-Review - Unrest: Cath Carroll ep

Filed under: CDs, ReReviews — geekent @ 5:17 pm

Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife’s): purchased
Date Acquired: mid-late 2001(?)
Original Review: n/a

Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances: I first heard “Vibe Out!”, the second track on this ep from the long-defunct no-wave band on the now defunct but nevertheless classic CBC Radio late-night program Brave New Waves. This was during the time that I was insane about catching the show, staying up listening from until 2am and then pressing record for an extra 45 - 50 minutes of the 4-hour broadcast to listen through the next morning. Since I did this nightly, I’d take catchy tunes from the previous night’s broadcast and transfer them to a separate mix tape, one of which was “Vibe Out!” With it’s early digital Speak’n'Spell introduction stating “Vibe Out!” (naturally) launching into a faltering bass line and tinny guitar strumming which then made way for Bridget Cross’s soft, self-accompanying layered vocals alternating between droning drums, bass and guitar until the three and a half minute mark where the trio just Vibe Out and jam for another five minutes, no vox, just some sweet, unaggressive bass, guitar and drums action. It would be half a decade before I’d actually buy any of Unrest’s recorded material… lucky for me, the first thing I would acquire was this ep which included that song which accompanied me, hands pounding on the steering week in rhythm, on many an evening car ride back home. I always liked this album, four tracks, the final, Hydro, a 33 minute jam session, but Vibe Out! still remains my first and favourite Unrest song

Re-Review: It’s only now, with the miracle that is Wikipedia, that I come to understand the unusual format of the “Cath Carroll ep”. “Developing from an experimental approach of never playing the same song twice,” Wikipedia goes on to say that Unrest create “finely crafted pop songs interspersed with strange avant-garde percussive and sonic tracks.” The “Cath Carroll ep” starts with one of those finely crafted pop songs, the titular track, and after it’s completed it’s 3:20 run, an ensemble of organized chimes and clashes along with that ever-pulsating bass and looped percussives pipe up and for the 10cc Mix for another four minutes. “Vibe Out!”, in all its glory, follows up, which leads back into another pop slice called “goodbye”. “goodbye” has a “Lush”-like sweetness to it, full of jangly britpop-like charm from the Washington D.C. trio, with a moderate tempo occasionally pushing towards tambourine-driven upbeats before reigning itself back in. The crowning glory is, as stated before, the 33:23 “Hydro” which is a straight-up bass, guitar, drums jam, the miracle of which is once it’s over, I’m sad to see it gone. “Hydro” after the first minute or two no longer presents what I like to call “active listening” but it’s steady-driving, occasionally switched-up, always rockin’. This is the kind of song I like to have on in the background when I’m working, writing, or just doing stuff that requires a bit of concentration. It keeps those rhythmic pleasure centers active but doesn’t shock your brain into paying attention to it for over half an hour. If I were making music, every damn track I’d do would be like this, just going for it, nodding your head, tapping your feet and playing off your peers to create something that may not be Beethoven, but is intriguing solely for its freedom from confined premeditation. I can listen to “Hydro” over and over again and not get bored, and it’s comfortingly familiar, even if it doesn’t really stick in the brain afterwards (and if Unrest is never “playing the same song twice” the jam method is one way to ensure that. Conceptually stimulating and passively engaging.

Rating (keep/sell/undecided): keep for sure and find more Unrest eps when BNY is over. I forgot how much I liked them.

Three debts, one month

Filed under: Debt Spiral, Tele — geekent @ 12:06 pm

As you will see on Maxed Out on Tuesday (8pm & 11pm EST, W Network, repeated again 11:30pm Sunday the 24th), I have some debt. By the show’s account, around $23,000 worth of debt. Well, that was a few months ago, and with host Alison’s help Adrienne and I have been very disciplined in how we deal with our money.

I don’t know, having not yet seen the final product, how much information will get out there, but here’s an approximate breakdown of where my money was owing:

Credit Card #1: 5600
Credit Card #2: 3300
Line of Credit: 14,000
Back Taxes (recently discovered): 600

Where this debt came from? Spending, and almost all of it non-essential spending over 7 years. I spent it on trips in other countries, my entertainment habit netting me hundreds of dvds and cds and comics and toys, eating out and drinking out, car rentals, furniture, my car (since departed), cinema, live theatre (although not often that), and, on vary rare occasions, covering rent and groceries. I’m sure there are others, but I’m sure if you went over my years of buying, 98% would be on the above. It’s foolish, self-indulgent debt and it’s been a thorn in my side for almost as long as I’ve had it.

Oh sure, I’ve been comfortable with my massive debt load for a long time, but now being married and trying to figure out this whole “future” thing, I’ve realized that it’s just a big wall in the way of establishing some security for myself and my family. Damn, the sounds of growing up is abrasively pleasant, like Aphex Twin.

Well, thanks to a lot of work on the part of my wife, myself, the staff of the show and our bank adviser, Adrienne and I are now in the black. Oh, I still have debt, but our assets now officially outweigh our debts. What’s more, Credit Card #2 debt: gone. Credit Card #1 debt: will be gone completely at the end of the month. Back Taxes: gone. Line of credit remaining owing: 13,000.

We’ve had the good fortune of receiving a few bonuses and Aden has 2 years of tax refunds due so our advanced schedule of debt repayment has been fast tracked well beyond our imagination. That 13K on Line of Credit, I’ve projected, will be completely gone by the end of July. From my initial forecast of 1 year (December - December) to the show’s forecast of 9-months (January - September) to now what looks like 7-months, we’re so far ahead of schedule, I’m elated. To have 0 balances on my credit cards almost brings me to tears, it makes me that happy.

What this allows me to do is look ahead, and for the first time I’m actually able to plan ahead like this. As of July, all the money Aden and I bring in will be ours, with no creditor stake hold. It’s brilliant. I’ve already got ideas on how my money is going to be distributed with the primary goals of a) buying a house and b) saving for retirement looking rosy already. In fact, by the looks of it, Aden and I are going to be able to start house hunting in April 2009, which is about half a year ahead of when we originally had predicted, and by the looks of it we’ll be in an immeasurably stronger position to buy that house than we were before. It’s exciting, a little scary, and also a little intense, knowing that we have a lot of thinking to do about where we want to buy before we get there.

Life, if not great, is pretty damn good.

13/02/2008

what not to buy… miscellaneous edition

Filed under: The Want List — geekent @ 3:37 pm

Books
Contract by Si Spurrier (release date - out now)
America Unchained by Dave Gorman (release date… April in UK, later this year in NA)

DVD
Dave Gorman in America Unchained - (release date - Feb. 11, UK only)

toys
(out today, sigh)

Moratorium Ketchup

Filed under: Moratorium — geekent @ 3:13 pm

A month and a half into Buy Nothing Year and I really haven’t stated how my Diet-Nothing-Year (not a good name at all) is going. Well, I have to say, I’m not doing too badly, but not goodly either.

the Rundown

- Pop , normally not a problem for me but…
- Booze (excluding wine), … I’ve taken to having a little rye and ginger or gin and soda lately. About on a week average
- Potato Chips … well, the in-laws gave us a huge bag of leftover tiny bags of Hallowe’en chips which I divulged myself in on New Year’s Eve. Also, succumbed to a craving two weeks ago.
- French fries, only two breaks here, one forced upon me while shooting the show, the other voluntarily ordered in a moment of weakness.
- Chocolate, hard to avoid sometimes as it sneaks itself into various loaves of bread or granola bars. I’ve stayed away from chocolate bars, but again, the in-laws provided us with a tray of chocolates and, well, I’m weak okay.
- Hamburgers, eaten with voluntary fries above. But just that once.
- Fast food, I’ve actually been able to stay away from this. It helps that most of it is indigestible tripe.
- Mayonnaise, the occasional sandwich has arrived with mayo on it, and Aden recently bought some Miracle Whip which has made it onto one slab of bread or another, but we’re stingy with it.
- salad dressing, I only have it if it comes on my salad without me asking
- candy covered nuts, done and done… we went the other way and have been buying nuts in shells, leaving the nut bowl on the coffee table between the couch and the tele, meaning we snack on nuts more than anything else, and the additional effort to get at them means we eat less. Knowledge.
- anything with trans fat (Yoplait Yoptimal yogurt, pogos), been about 95% successful. Every now and again I wind up eating something only to read the label while eating it (a cereal or granola bar, yogurt, cheesies[ahem])
- donuts, with the exception of the occasional Timbit that gets thrust into my face, yup
- Cinnabons, love the smell, not the bloated uncooked dough and obscenely sweet icing that sits in the stomach after ingesting, so yeah, it’s easy to stay away.
- Swiss Chalet, success!
- chicken wings from Pizza Pizza, ditto!
- onion rings, tritto!
- packaged cookies, we got a tin of cookies from somewhere that I dove into in one or two of my weaker moments. I’m not proud of myself.
- ice cream, belly remains unsullied by ice cream, thank you.

Overall, I’m not doing too terrible, as I don’t consume any of the above on any basis that could be determined as “regular” but also, do break the moratorium quite frequently, more than I think I should. I mean, Aden and I eat quite healthy for the most part, making nearly everything from scratch as opposed to buying something premade or frozen, but at the same time, we do indulge our cravings every so often which isn’t good. Every time we indulge a craving, it resets the crave-o-meter back to zero, and we have to start again. Because, you know, when your crave-o-meter reaches 110, you’ve broken your craving. Really.

On the budgeting side of food-related things, we’ve reduced eating out for lunch about once every two or three weeks (chile, stew, sandwiches, lasagna and soup are our regular lunch fare these days) and our eating out is about the same, once every two or three weeks. We don’t count the occasional pizza into “eating” out, since it’s a nominal expense ($10 - $13 feeding three plus one additional lunch, value!).

12/02/2008

Review - I’m Not There

Filed under: Cinema, Reviews — geekent @ 6:10 pm

Viewed: In Theatre
Release Date: November 28, 2007
writer: Todd Haynes & Oren Moverman
director: Todd Haynes

I’m going to start by saying I’m not a Bob Dylan fan nor am I overly familiar with his musical repertoire (aside from the obvious “Mr. Tambourine Man”/”Blowing In The Wind”-like songs which are inescapable). Now you may say that since I’m not a Dylan fan I’m therefore not a music fan. Maybe you’re right. Regardless.

I’m Not There is a film about Bob Dylan and his music, but it’s not a biography. If anything, it’s an anti-biography, wiping away any trace of the Walk The Line, La Bamba, Ray-style formula that musical bio-pics tend to fall into. Todd Haynes, a noted avant-garde director, has created a film that is unrestrained by convention, and as such is a marvel of intrigue, if somewhat indecipherable. Fans of Dylan — the real die hards — will likely be able to decode the enigma that Haynes projects, and the lay-fan will get it, but for someone like myself it’s the beauty of an oil spill. It’s a big, disastrous mess, but something still majestic about it that kept me watching well beyond the point of understanding the chaos.

Review - Eastern Promises

Filed under: Movies, Reviews — geekent @ 8:54 am

Viewed: DVD rental
Release Date: December 27, 2007
writer: Steven Knight
director: David Cronenberg

Warning:Spoilers

I hate spoiling things in a review, but in this case I can’t help it. The first thing I need to talk about in regards to Eastern Promises is the four-minute fight sequence between Viggo Mortensen’s Nikolai and a duo of Chechen mafia thugs. It’s a brutal sequence in which the vulnerable Nikolai, naked in a steam bath, is taken by surprise by two broad-shouldered, leather jacketed, thick black-soled boot-wearing, blade wielding toughs. There’s an utter vulnerability to this stoic Russian mafioso, robbed of his dignity of a fair fight in any sense, it’s a horrifying proposition, an actually effective variation of the old horror trope of the unsuspecting assault in the bathtub. Unlike more vainglorious starring roles, Nikolai is not in any sense a superman or James Bond, and within just four minutes of straight-on fighting he’s completely depleted. Slashed and bleeding, his life seeping out of him from numerous locations, and having tussled for control of blades and guns, he’s exhausted, but can’t give into his fatigue until he’s sure he’s not threated anymore. It’s powerful filmmaking, full of meaning to be extracting, but the immediacy of its situation, that being the nakedness of the film’s star is utterly distracting.

It’s possible you might be uptight about male nudity and put off with the utter sight of the penis, or perhaps uncomfortable in your own sexuality and recoil in disgust, or you might be completely at ease with the whole nudity thing and unphased by any nakedess, or you could generally get quite excited the see the old manatomy on screen, but regardless of how you react, it has the same effect: it pulls you out of the film… immediately. Despite how you may feel about viewing private parts, and it’s the same when a noted female actress bears her breasts on screen, it’s just surprising. Halle Berry won an Academy Award for doing it, well that’s what people like to say anyway. Will the same magic happen for Viggo? Unlike most situations in which a woman winds up topless, there’s little in the way of sexualization to this scene and perhaps that’s even more alarming.

11/02/2008

Air Date

Filed under: Tele — geekent @ 2:07 pm

It’s official:

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 - 8:00 PM/11 PM (EST)
S3, Episode #042 Financial Quest
Graig and Adrienne are focused on the future or at least they want to be. Graig’s consumer debt and past bad habits are keeping these newlyweds from taking the next step - home ownership. Can Alison put them on a plan to manage Graig’s debt and save for their house?

The show is Maxed Out, the network is W.
Our 15 minutes of fame has been transitioned into 30 minutes of reality TV infamy (nonfamy?).

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