Oh god oh god oh god. I forgot my headphones at home. I feel so… exposed. Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh.

UPDATE – Mark has taken pity on me and lent me his iPod headphones. Rage… subsiding. Chances of causing physical harm to co-workers… decreasing. Endorphin count… rising. Ahhhhh.

The new Fountains Of Wayne website is now up, just in time for the release of Welcome Interstate Managers tomorrow. Still pretty sparse, but at least it’s there.

The perfect companion piece for the free synth I linked yesterday – Build your own beatbox. Now you too can be almost as funky as Beck (who had to cancel his Field Day show on account of slipping in the rain whilst dancing to Underworld and breaking a rib).

np – NOTHING! NO HEADPHONES! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH.

Congratulations to Magnet on writing what is quite possibly the dullest cover story ever on the dullest cover story subject, Pete Yorn. To save you the trouble of reading it, here’s a synopsis. Pete was born in New Jersey. He was a jock. He went to college and joined a fraternity. He smoked a lot of pot and played acoustic guitar at parties. He moved out to Los Angeles and worked really hard and got a record deal. His first album was good, the new one isn’t so much. Chicks dig him. That’s about it. But I guess slapping his mug on the cover will sell a couple more issues (chicks dig him, apparently), so that’s okay. The story on Evan Dando is far more compelling, and while I haven’t read it yet, I imagine the Grandaddy feature is as well. It couldn’t possibly be less.

Instead of going out last night, I sat at home and watched the MTV Movie Awards. It’s amazing how out of touch I’ve become with mainstream popular culture – I didn’t know who many of the presenters were, beyond maybe “oh that’s that guy from that movie” or something. There were some truly funny bits – mainly the prerecorded material – but much of the live presenters fell flat flat flat (Harrison Ford – please tell me you were on a lot of drugs). And T.A.T.U. – well, I know that canned performances are the norm these days, but their schtick was extra depressing. Even with the hordes and hordes of schoolgirls who, at the end, tore off their uniforms and were cavorting about in their underwear, kissing each other. It was just sad.

But one thing the MTV awards did prompt me to do was to go see Old School, which was the matinee at The Royal. It was a not unpleasant way to pass an hour and a half. There were some laughs, and while I certainly don’t expect much from a film of this type, it did get disappointingly fractured in the second half, like they let a trained chimp into the editing room. It was though they realized they were running out of time and randomly slapped gags together hoping no one would notice or care. And in one for the irony files, it’s interesting to note is that ten years ago, there was another frat-house movie that came and went, called PCU, starring one Jeremy Piven as the crazy frat house leader. The same Jeremy Piven, incidentally, who is also in Old School in the role of the Evil Dean. A changing of the guard.

Looks like it will be Radiohead at the Molson Amphitheatre on August 16th with Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks opening. From Tiny Mixtapes.

np – Wilco / Summerteeth Demos

Another afternoon, another couple apartments looked at. The first had a lot going for it – great location, second floor with lots of light, reasonable price if you consider it included hydro, heat, cable, A/C, laundry… what it didn’t have was space. No closets, and the rooms would have been barely big enough to fit the furniture I currently own. That just wouldn’t have worked – I wanted to come up with a way, but there wasn’t one. So moving on – the second place also had a lot going for it. Nice and bright, large rooms, hardwood floors, all inclusive. What it didn’t have was a door. When the lady on the phone said ‘no separate entrance’, I thought that meant, well, a shared front door. This place was quite literally the upstairs of a house. No separation. Sorry, I can’t work with that. Cross that one off the list.

I am wondering if maybe I am asking for too much. Granted, my target neighbourhood is pretty specific, but that’s more out of practicality than pickiness. If I were to define a really broad area, I would be overwhelmed with the sheer number of ads in the Star classifieds. All I want is for someone to come up to me and say, “here’s this great cheap one-bedroom apartment with lots of light and a reasonable amount of space. And the girl who lives downstairs is single and hot and digs geeks”. Is that so much to ask? I think a large part of the frustration is being entirely on my on this (which is the point of moving out by myself, I know, check the logic at the door) and the fact that I hate being left to my own devices which is ironic because I do most everything on my own anyway.

I went by the Bloor to try and get tickets early for Just An American Boy, only to find that since NXNE is presenting it, the theatre won’t know till just before showtime how many tickets they have to sell. Screw that, I can wait till the film is actually finished and gets a proper release. Of course, that means half of my evening’s activities are toast. Maybe I will still go to the ElMo to catch a couple bands, though I could just as easily sit at home surrounded by magazines and comics and CDs and sulk. I am a rock, I am an island.

Ever wanted to make your own bleepy-bloopy synth sounds? Check out this free software synthesizer. I imagine it’d work even better with a MIDI keyboard/controller, but it’s pretty cool to just spin knobs, hit filters, smack random keys on the keyboard to generate tones and voila – you’re Thom Yorke (less the droopy eye). It’s available for Windows AND Mac. You can’t beat that with a stick.

np – Fruit Bats / Mouthfuls

This is turning out to be quite the week of movies for me. Four so far, and five if I catch Just An American Boy tomorrow night. Tonight was Lost In La Mancha, the documentary about Terry Gilliam’s doomed attempt to make Don Quixote into a film. I’ve always liked Gilliam’s work – even when it doesn’t quite do it on a narrative level, such as Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, it’s still visually satisfying, and when it does work on every front – see Twelve Monkeys or The Fisher King – then it’s just spectacular. The Man Who Killed Don Quioxte, as the film would have been titled, is troubled from the get-go. There are tight budgetary restrictions and issues with actor contracts and timing, but as glimpses of Gilliam’s ultimate vision come into view during pre-production, you can’t help but become excited about the work unfolding before you, egged on all the while by Gilliam’s exuberance and enthusiasm.

By the time production begins, however, things quickly come undone. The first day of filming is interrupted by the roar of passing F-16s from the NATO bombing range next to the shoot. An intense thunder and hailstorm wipes out another day of shooting and washes equipment away. Star Jean Rochefort comes down with a double hernia and is unable to ride a horse. After a single week of shooting, almost everything that can possibly go wrong has, and Gilliam is at the end of his tether. To see the man, who has so much invested in this film professionally and personally, try to bail water from the sinking ship is just tragic. The parallels made earlier on with Gilliam’s previous professional albatross, The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen (which I LIKED!) seem awful prophetic by the time they pull the plug.

It’s all a terrible pity, because from what little of the movie they managed to film and you get to see, it looks like it could have been spectacular. Gilliam is still trying to get the film made, so hopefully someday there will be a proper film to which Lost In La Mancha would be a fitting companion piece. In the meantime, however, I feel like I should read Cervantes’ original work, even though it’s a massive read – after all, it’s not as though I can just see the movie.

np – Bedhead / Beheaded

So I took today off – though since we only do half days on Fridays, it was only a morning off. The point is, I got to sleep in, get a haircut, listen to loud music and play guitar instead of going into work. And no, I didn’t spend such a gorgeous day inside – the afternoon was spent raiding the library for comic books and riding around Little Italy looking for houses with ‘apartment for rent’ signs. Surprisingly, I got about a half-dozen phone numbers. Will anything come of them? We’ll find out tomorrow.

The Delagdos discuss their new album and do a post-mortem of the recent North American tour.

np – Space Elevator / Space Elevator