Inter the View

Free continental breakfast this morning, and another free paper. This Comfort Inn is all about the free. And free high speed internet, luckily Carla brought her laptop along. As she was surfing, I noticed something odd. CFQC, the Saskatoon Global station was one of the channels in our room. What up with that, dog?

We had to be out by 11, and Carla's interview wasn't until 3:20, so we had plenty of time to kill. We drove around for a bit, poked around in a couple of stores and then went for lunch.

We thought it would be fitting to have Japanese for lunch. Masa is a nice little Japanese restaurant about five minutes from campus. I really do enjoy the Japanese food. I always think I won't be full when the food is set down in front of me and then I am always full before I'm done. Deceptive, ninja-like food. I had a New Zealand roll, there was lamb in it. Interesting.

U of M has a nice campus, with a river running alongside it. Probably looks even nicer when the river isn't frozen and the trees have a leaf or two on them.

The parking experience was quite an... experience. Carla wasn't sure her van would fit in it, so I had to get out and reassure her. So I did, and I did. There was plenty of clearance. Yet, from inside the van, it looked like we were going to scrape the roof off the van. We both scrunched our necks down and tensed our shoulders up even though we knew that there was no problem. It was a freaky experience, man. My brain knew that there was nothing to worry about, yet it worried all the same.

One day at work a few weeks back, I heard a couple guys talking about how Winnipeg had the highest ratio of good looking girls of any place they had been to. They both swore they were serious. And they were. Most of the girls on the U of M campus were well put together. I would have liked to spend more time looking around.

Maybe Regina is just really ugly.

Eventually it was time for Carla to have her interview. I waited for her as she was grilled. I saw some of her competition, I think she was better than all of them. I also watched some JET promotional videos. Gotta love those promotional videos. Especially the synth scores. Actually, one of the girls in the videos looked strikingly similar to Kierra Knighley. That was nice.

Carla didn't seem to think that she did to well on her interview, but that's just the way she is. I had to be even more entertaining than usual to keep her mind off the interview. Luckily, the weather turned to crap, so that kept her mind occupied. Have I mentioned that I'm glad I ain't driving? Cuz I am. The roads looked pretty horrible to me, but Carla didn't seem to have any problems. Until we couldn't consistently see the road. That's about when we decided to call it a day. We stopped in a little town called Moosomin, and checked in to the Prarie Pride Motel. Carla called her parents to assure them we weren't dead, and I checked out the weather channel. The highways around Regina were all closed. The Ring road in Regina was closed. There had been a twenty car accident in the city and a fourty car accident just outside of it. Good thing we had decided to stop when we did.

We set up Carla's laptop and watched a movie. Comic Book: the Movie to be Precise. Let me consult my notes to see what I thought of it. Here's exactly what I wrote down after watching it: meh. That about sums it up. A lot of geeky cool people in this movie, a lot of cool cameos but the stuff that holds it together doesn't really do a good job of holding it together.

Then we slept.

Road Oning

Drove up to Winnipeg today with the lovely and talented Carla. She has an interview with JET. I do not. I am tagging along to provide moral support and such. For I am the most awesomest of fiances. Not so awesome that I did any driving. I hate driving, especially in the winter.

I have never been to Winnipeg before. I'm so very excited.

We don't actually plan on doing anything other than go to Carla's interview during our stay in Winnipeg. I'm so very excited.

The national highway becomes non-devided for a good long stretch between Regina and Winnipeg. Sure glad I ain't driving.

We stayed at a Comfort Inn in Winnipeg. Nicer than I was expecting. We got complimentary soup when we checked in. Cream of Mushroom soup. And a copy of the National Post.

Being tired and lazy, we just ordered in some pizza. From Big Time Pizza. We don't have a Big Time Pizza in Regina. Oh, the many splendoured delights of this Winnipeg. The pizza was good, I especially enjoyed the spicy sauce.

That's about it.

John Cena did not come to my arena.

Which is about the only bad thing I can say about last night's wrestling event. All of the radio ads promoting the Smackdown show last night had John Cena rapping about how he would be at our arena. Generic, to be sure, but still. Also, some other ads referred to it as Paul Heyman's Smackdown, but Heyman was also a no show. Cena I can understand, he screwed up his knee at the Royal Rumble, but why no Paul?

We pulled into the fairly full parking lot, found a spot nowhere near the entrance and made our way to the Cena-less arena. Nothing makes you feel more attractive and smart than a live wrestling crowd. Boy there are some fat, ugly, stupid looking people in this city. There were a few normal looking people scattered about but they were in the vast minority. Where were all the skanky wrestling groupies? I didn't see any. At least, I hope I didn't see any. If some of the girls I did see were groupies, I feel sorry for the wrestlers' penises. We, my brother Seve and I looked around for a bit at all the stuff we wouldn't buy. I am not that picky when it comes to clothing. I wear t-shirts with comic book characters on them (lesser known characters, so most people have no idea that I'm wearing a comic book shirt), I wear a Man Whore shirt, I wear an offensive shirt that has a crude drawing of a flying me throwing eggs at a terrified pope who runs from me and swears. What I'm trying to say is that while I aint that picky when it comes to what I wear, I don't think I'll ever wear a wrestling shirt. In addition to the shirts, there were thongs and belts to buy as well. And a big poster of Torrie Wilson in a wet t-shirt. I was tempted by that poster. I know that Torrie's boobs are fake, and I usually don't like fake boobs (actively dislike them to be more accurate), but I like Torrie Wilson's fake boobs. Any wrestling girls fake boobs to be completely honest. I guess it's all about context. If I'm going to choose to invest myself in fake fighting, I have no real reason to object to the fake boobs. Our tickets were for row 27 down in the floor section. It turns out our seats were in section two row seven, so we were WAY closer than we had first thought. Seated next to us was a very old lady with a thick accent (Greek, maybe?). She talked to us about wrestling for a while. This was her first live event although she never misses it when it's on the TV. Seated in front of us were a bunch of young kids. With signs. Worrisome. Behind us was a perfect example ugly. Group ugly. An ugly guy and three ugly girls.

The show started with the announcer making all kinds of announcements about how to behave, and what behavior would get you escorted off the premises and what behavior would have you facing criminal charges. Then we all rose for the national anthem. The entire crowd, (the Agridome was more than half full, but less than three quarters full) stood silently as the music to Oh Canada played. When the music was over, we all cheered.

The first match of the night was Nunzio, of the FBI(Full Blooded Italians) versus Billie Kidman. Billie Kidman is a little lightweight wrestler (and I believe the lucky bastard is married to Torrie Wilson), whilst Nunzio is much bigger. One of the ugly girls behind me lusted after Nunzio quite vociferously. If she could, she would have ripped off and thrown her vagina at Nunzio's crotch. I was mildly disturbed by her comments. The match was pretty decent. Lots of power moves and a few high flying moves. And the good guy (Kidman) won.

A word now on cheering: I had planned on cheering for the heels (bad guys) through all the matches. But the old lady liked all the good guys and seemed to not like it when I booed them. But at the same time, the kids in front of me also didn't like me booing the good guys. I felt bad for bothering the old lady but pretty good for bothering the little kids. I gave up and cheered for the good guys pretty early on.

The next match was... damnit I forget. That sucks. It was another singles match between some undercard guys. Ah screw going through the card match by match, I'll just recap the pertinent points. Rey Mysterio is very short. The Big Show is Very big. Bradshaw took a beer from a girl in the audience and drank it. It was like spinach to Popeye and he was able to push the Big Show around for a bit. But then Big Show chokeslammed him. Wrestling seems much more violent and painful in person. Watching it on TV you sometimes take for granted the risks that they take. And somewhere near the beginning Dawn Marie, the WWE's resident crack-whore announced that by order of Paul Heyman, John Cena is suspended. Then she showed off her ass and left. I don't like Dawn Marie's boobs. They frighten me.

During Chavo's match the crowd chanted "EDDY! EDDY! EDDY!", it seemed to bother Chavo. That was fun. Chanting along with a stadium full of people is fun, even if most of the people are ugly and stupid. I love Tajiri, even though he didn't get to do much during his match. No Tarantula, no Green Mist, no Buzzsaw Kick. Tajiri didn't get to do much, but he was still fantastic. Kurt Angle wrestled Hardcore Holly and Kurt mostly dominated and gave Holly the finger fairly often. The crowd cheered whenever he did. Either Shelton Benjamin or Charlie Haas screwed up a spot. We, being the polite crowd that we are did no start chanting "You fucked up!" The Airline lost Rikishi's luggage co we were spared the sight of his ginormous be-dimpled ass as he instead wore a much more reserved track suit. That said Big Daddy on it. Rhyno wrestled, but didn't gore anyone. Thus, the crowd booed him.

The last fight of the night was Eddie Guererro versus Brock Lesnar for the title. LOTS of chanting at the beginning of this one. The wrestlers didn't DO anything for around ten minutes, they just let the crowd work themselves up. Instead the crowd got all confused. Some sections chanted "EDDIE!" some "YOU TAPPED OUT!" still others "GOLD-BERG". Sometimes the crowd would settle on one and chant their little hearts out but then it would degenerate into the unintelligible mess again. Eddie just reclined on the top rope, seemingly loving every minute of this while Lesnar stalked around the ring, telling everyone to shut up. The wrestlers stretched for a bit and then got down to it. That Brock Lesnar is a big boy, boy howdy. But Eddie is crafty, and not above the occasional thumb to the eye. Brock dominated the bulk of the match but Eddie managed to reverse an F-5 into a DDT and land the frog splash, but that wasn't enough and Brock came back, hit his finisher and that was that. I wonder if that's how they're going to finish the match at the PPV? Probably not, Goldberg needs to be in there somewhere. Anyways, great match. Most of the matches were fun to watch. Live wrestling is a good time.

For the audience at least. I wonder what it must be like to go from working sold out massive arenas on a regular basis to a definitely not full Agridome in Regina/Middle of Nowhere. That must do things to a man's mind. Some of these guys are millionaires and still they're busting their asses in Saskatchewan. I don't know, man, I don't know.

In other news

I had a wonderful lunch with Carla today at the new Japanese restaurant in town. Best Tempura ever. The rest was pretty good too. I want to get back there soon to try out their evening menu.

Please Just Fucking Stop

I work at a TeeVee station and I have had more than enough of this breast related scandal. What's so scandalous? It was a boob. The nipple was covered. It wasn't an accident. It was carefully calculated to generate publicity for Janet (she's got a new album coming out this month doncha know), the Grammies (this week on CBS) and every network operated by Paramount. Will Janet go to the Grammies? Do actual real people care about this trivial shit? I mean, I get paid to watch Entertainment Tonight and I don't watch it. The older I get, the more Hate Filled I get.

Training Is Fun

I don't like being trained at new stuff, that isn't always fun, but training someone to do your job is great. You teach them the basics and then let them do your job for you. Occasionally, you give them disapproving looks or cluck your tongue and watch as they try to figure out what they're doing wrong. Man I love being an ass.

Damnit

I had something I wanted to talk about, but I totally forget what it was. Hmm... In other news, shooting things in slow motion is a fantastic basis for games. I played a fair bit of Max Payne 2 over the course of the weekend and loved most of that time. The gameplay is tight, and there are a lot of weird little touches that I very much liked. All the stuff that played on the televisions in the background was gold, Jerry, gold. And now I'm all talked out.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday

Whooo! Superbowl!!! I could really give a crap. I worked during the game, at a television station that aired the game, and I don't think I could name both teams that played. Maybe the Colts and Patriots. I'm not 100% sure who won, either. And I sometimes edit the sports. Crazy, man, crazy. And how about that tit? Man, wow, man. I feel like a tool for even mentioning it, because that's what they want for me to do. So never mind about Latoya's tit or Marky Mark's grabbing of it. Let's talk about something else, like doggies. I like doggies.

I Think It's Pewter

What do you get for the nine year anniversary? It doesn't matter till you actually get married, I guess. It's our anniversary today, and what did we do to celebrate? Stayed in bed for a long while and then shoveled some snow. And then I went to work. Fun stuff, kids.

brrrrrr

I woke up today to the soothing sounds of the wind howling and screaming and whipping around. Waking up like that, it's hard to work up the motivation to do anything that involves leaving the house.

Yeah... It's Blizzarding

Carla and I had planned on going to see The Eye and maybe grabbing some sushi. Instead we had some overcooked and bland spaghetti and meat sauce and then went to her house and watched many hours of Firefly.

I had really wanted to see The Eye, but spending a night in with Carla was pretty nice. We don't get to do that too often.

Not Much

I'm not really a big Oscar type person but I just wanted to mention a couple of things.

1) Yay! Depp got nominated for best actor! For a big time summer action movie! And Yay! for Bill Murray as well.

2) The Matrix sequels got skunked. No nominations. Not for sound design or effects or editing or anything.

And that's about it.

What's Cooler Than Being Cool?

-52 Celsius out there right now. That is really damn cold. My car couldn't move because the transmission fluid was frozen. That only happens when it's really damn cold out.

The only good part about it being so cold out is that it's neat to take a mug of boiling water outside and toss the steaming water into the air. It turns to snow and ice before it hits the ground. True story.

The Glory of Love

http://www.lanceandeskimo.com/flash/quest.html

I'm still not used to refering to Carla as my fiance. I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Anyway, my fiance threatened to charge me a dollar for every day that I don't blog. So I'm updating.

In other news, my fiance hasn't updated her blog in well over a month.

My fiance also said she'd make me give her a dollar for every day I don't go to the gym.

In other news, my fiance hasn't updated her blog in over a month.

20 Days Later

Hmm... Meant to update this damn thing sooner. Carla sent me an email bitching at me to update this thing last week. Or was it the week before? Dunno. Doesn't matter. What matters is that I'm here now and we're together again, sharing a special moment.

So, let's try to think of all the stuff that's happened since last I loosed myself upon this page.

I've gotten less sick. Which is good.

My JET application was rejected. Which is not as good. I don't know if I'd call it bad. There's plenty of other jobs just waiting for me over there, with better hours AND pay.

I received an invitation to submit my film to the Sex and Death film festival. I'm always well pleased when stuff like that happens. My film has been in a grand total of NO festivals, (or is it one?) and yet people still know about it. How does that work? It's like there's some kind of weird film... thing that people know about and I don't. Whatever.

I should submit my film to more places.

I finished reading the latest of Stephen King's Dark Tower books. Wizard in the Glass is still my favourite, But The Wolves of Calla is still a mighty fine read. I'm off the opinion that this series of books is easily King's best. I'm know in the process of re-reading the previous books in the series. Backwards. I still have volumes 2 and 1 to go.

Saw Paycheck. Woo continues his descent. Wait, let me take that back. I just said that to sound like a cool internet type jaded film critic. The truth of the matter is that I really enjoyed Face/Off. It's probably in my top 5 of Woo films. And MI2 was enjoyable, the last half hour is just good, slick fun. And I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Hard Target. I'll admit that none of his American work comes close to his best Hong Kong stuff. But now I'm way off topic. Paycheck doesn't' feel like a Woo film. At all. Sure, there's a dove, but it looks fake, like the studio put it in after the fact just to reassure people that they were in fact watching a John Woo film. The action is almost strictly by the numbers. More importantly, the characters are... meh. Ben Affleck does a serviceable job except for when he's called upon by the script to be charming and spontaneous. He comes across as a confused and annoying lunkhead. Uma Thurman looks like a crackwhore. A crackwhore with a radiant smile. And the script doesn't' have anything for her to do other than look like a crackwhore with a radiant smile. There are some interesting ideas raised but then they are just dropped without a second thought.

The best part of the film, and by best I mean most laughable, is near the begining when Ben gets his memory wiped. There are pictures of these memories on a computer screen behind him that get deleted as the corresponding memories get zapped. All these pictures have Ben Affleck in them. His memory takes place in third, not first person. Maybe that's why he looks so all the time confused.

Also saw Return of the King. Very good. Very impressive but not the be all and end all that other people are raving about. There are definite pacing issues. But who the hell cares about little stuff like that when you've got such neato looking effects?

I'm supposed to be keeping track of my spending, but I'm doing a real piss poor job.

Hey, I know. I'll use this web page to help me remember what I spend on what. How inconvenient for me and terribly exciting for you. Spent 24.40 on pizza yesterday. 20 bucks on food on Chinese New Year's Day. 5 bucks the night before. 9.50 on Paycheck. 9.69 on ROTK. 6.48 on a combo from BK. I forget how much I've spent on comic books. See? Isn't that exciting?

Other stuff: beat Prince of Persia (great game), beat Beyond Good and Evil (really good game), beat Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga (fantastic game).

That is all for now.

Shout

I finally figured out what they sing during the chorus of 'Shout' by Tears For Fears. Today I am truly a man.

Gigli

This movie was made the way it was on purpose. The director was also the writer. This was his vision. That's just amazing. And as a director, he had done some decent work in the past. His Beverly Hills Cop helped Eddie Murphy become the superstar that he once was. His Scent of A Woman revived Al Pacino's career. And Midnight Run is just a fucking funny movie. So what went wrong with Gigli? Imma gonna go out on a limb and say: "As a writer, he makes a decent director." Brest Had no hand in writing Beverly Hills Cop, Scent of a Woman or Midnight Run. Gigli is a horribly written movie. Character motivations are never clear. Affleck and Lopez are supposedly two hardened thugs, but they balk at cutting of an annoying character's thumb. More to the point, they think that cutting off someone else's thumb will be just as good. Cuz who the hell fingerprints a thumb right? Characters show up for no reason and then leave never to be seen again. Christopher Walken walks in, rambles about pie and then leaves. That was the highlight of the movie for me. Al Pacino appears, yells a bit, shoots a guy in the head and then vanishes. The movie is filled with awkward pauses in the dialogue. The dialogue is so bad I almost think it's that way on purpose. That vagina monologue? Gobble Gobble? Dear Christ in heaven. And it's all held together with some of the worst music ever. An annoying acoustic number for the most part that turns to weepy string music almost at random.

In spite of, or maybe because of all this I can honestly say that I enjoyed watching Gigli. I laughed on multiple occasions. It inspired discussion afterwards. One of the most interesting failures I've ever seen.

Again

Once again I've found myself awake at 2:30 in the morning. I work in a little over three hours and those few extra hours of sleep sure would be nice. Maybe tonight I'll stay up until three and see what that does.

For Christmas this year, I got clothes (including a nice suit and a suede jacket from the lovely Carla) some CDs, some other stuff and one game. Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga for the GBA. It's a very good game. Very cute graphics and sound and easy to control. It's an RPG but every battle is a little test of skill because you can avoid or reverse every enemy attack. Good times. Carla got me that too.

Odd

So I've been really quite sick for almost two weeks now and tonight was/is my first real chance at getting a good night's sleep. It ain't going so well. I'm doing the whole in and out of consciousness thing. Never a good time. But it makes for some interesting (?) dreams. I had this dream about reading an article/interview with Nicholas Brendon, the actor who portrayed Xander Harris on Buffy. This article/interview was in some kind of non-specific entertainment magazine. For some reason I want to say Premiere, but I'm sure I never actually saw the cover of the thing. On the opening page of the article/interview was a picture taken with a fish eye lens of Nicholas on a lawn chair on some green, green grass under a blue, blue sky in front of a small portion of a somewhat boxy one level house whose colour I forget. The picture changed slightly to the door being open a crack with some faces peering out. The faces of Nicholas, his wife (I have no recollection of what she looked like), and his two kids (not only do I have no idea what they looked like, other than both being blond, I have no idea what sex they were. The wife was blonde too. And pretty). Then the article began and the picture changed again, by beginning to move. Nicholas opened the door, welcoming the interviewer and apologizing about the hectic scene, but they were trying to get the kids off to school. I have a sense of the article kind of flowing like the usual puff fluff that is in such publications but also of it jumping around a fair bit and I'm not sure if I actually remember reading any words. From the intro it went on to very briefly allude to Brendon being very busy during the recent pilot season in L.A. and then moved very suddenly, almost awkwardly to the end of Buffy with Nick being both diplomatic and a little untoward towards Sarah Michelle Gellar (it seems to me he made a point of not mentioning her name. Maybe it was just me). He also cried and then apologized saying "That question got way more personal than either of us intended."(referring of course to the interviewer) The article then moved on to Nick's wife and how they met. (Here's the thing: I got the sense that this was the first marriage for both and that neither of them had kids prior to the wedding. How did they become old enough to be ready for school?) He said something that I wanted to write down because it made me think of Carla. He said, of his wife and why he decided to ask her to marry him (or to go out on a date with him, I'm not sure, but the following sounds like the trivial stuff you learn while dating, not before), "I know I liked her, that we owned the same CD and DVD machines, that we had a very similar CD collection. That we both liked stuff." See that sounds like something I'd say about Carla at our wedding. Except most of that stuff doesn't apply to us. The facts don't match but the flavour does. It was right around this point that I realized that I was awake. So I went downstairs, grabbed a drink of water and began writing this blog entry and now I'm done.

Except I'm going to go upstairs and grab my Buffy box set and make sure that I spelled Nicholas Brendon's name right.

I did.

Happy thing with the day and the year with the new

How did Carla and I ring in the new year? We were at my friend Trev's house. Carla was asleep on his couch while the rest of us (myself, Trev, James, Kim) watched Gigli. We didn't even notice when midnight came and went. Yeah, we're cool. That Gigli movie is a little bit of amazing. The mind boggles. It's just so... wow. And it was made that way on purpose. I'd go into specifics but now it is time for my nap.