I am never going to get to see Adaptation. Made it as far as the theatre lobby today, with Kyle and Joe in tow – they’d come down to do some Christmas shopping and see the film – but the film was already about 98% sold out and the remaining 2% would have been right up at the front. I saw The Green Mile from the front row and all I really remember was staring up at Tom Hanks’ big jowelly face. I don’t need that from two Nicholas Cage’s. Maybe next week…

Spirited Away is now playing at the Bloor. I may go on Tuesday since there’s no early sneak preview screening of The Two Towers as there was last year for Fellowship. If I want to see it, it’ll have to be at 12:01 AM, and that’s not happening. Maybe I’ll duck out of work a little early on Wednesday and catch a matinee.

I got my dad a copy of Casablanca on DVD, so I’m almost done my Christmas shopping. And wouldn’t you know it, as soon as the mug exchange at work is over, I can’t walk into a store without finding interesting mugs. Go figure.

Music links – A full show from Loose Fur available for download here and a selection of live Yo La Tengo tracks can be gotten here.

np – Yo La Tengo / And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out

I’m not usually one for poetry, but Joe Pernice’s Two Blind Pigeons is really something. Not exclusively verse, there’s a fair bit of prose in the form of short vignettes, this work shows he’s a truly evocative writer no matter what medium he’s working in. The themes are classic Pernice – melancholy and the lives ordinary folks struggling under the weight of day-to-day existance. It’s a brief read, barely 40 pages, but Pernice manages to convey a world of emotion with an economy of words.

Updated the MP3 of the week. This week, Marine Research covering Built To Spill.

np – Velvet Crush / Free Expression

Added a new section to the site… MP3. It’s not so much new as a reorganization of some stuff that was elsewhere on the site. The Lake Holiday mp3s are here now, as well as what will become a running history of the MP3 of The Week. I’ve also posted some of my own little compositions, separate from the Lake Holiday Experience. Mostly random noodlings that bear some resemblance to songs – I could call them kernals of songs that will become more fully-realized in the future, but I know better than that.

I think I had Doritos for dinner.

np – Heavenly / Heavenly Vs. Satan

Right now through February 2003 at the Toronto Reference Library is the Celebrating Sixty Years of Curious George: The Art of H.A. and Margret Rey exhibit. It’s a nice little exhibit showcasing a lot of the original artwork from the Curious George children’s books. I had no idea this was going on, I just happened across a poster advertising the exhibit at Vortex and stopped at the library on my way home.

The Curious George books were my very favorites from since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, so it was a real treat to be able to see the original drawings and artwork from the books, including this classic where George gets into the ether…

I got some more of my Christmas shopping done, found a used-but-pretty-much-mint copy of the original Bogart/Hepburn/Holden Sabrina on DVD for my dad. I’m also going to get him a copy of Casablanca. It’s a Bogart party! And for myself I found a copy of Sleater-Kinney’s All Hands On the Bad One.

Rented Brotherhood Of The Wolf last night – it had been recommended to me on the grounds of it being a crazy melange of kung-fu, fantasy, horror and mystery… and yeah, it was all those things but not in a particularly effective mix. The special effects seemed to have been done by a monkey with ADD, and not one of those clever monkeys that actually knows how to effectively use slow-motion and sped-up video editing techniques to enhance and action sequence, but the other kind. The plot was both cliched and incomprehensible, if that’s possible. Some of the action sequences were impressive, editing notwithstanding, but overall the payoff wasn’t sufficient, especially for a film as long as this one. Disappointing.

np – Sleater-Kinney / All Hands On the Bad One

Five Seventeen has been asked if Lake Holiday wants to put a song on a compilation for The Unlike Label. I’m game, but am not sure if we’ve got anything worthwhile in the can right now, everything we’ve recorded may already be earmarked for something else. After all, we have to make sure there’s enough super-limited edition (read: ultra-low distribution) collectors items out there for the faithful after we become superstars. Also, Brad’s peeps down in Chicago are finally getting down to recording the drum tracks for the always-forthcoming album, hopefully we’ll have those to work with by the new year. Either way, it looks like there’s going to be more recording on the sched.

And in a related note, a deadline of next Thursday has been imposed for completing recording of those songs that we’ve been writing for God-knows-how-many-months now. Which means I better get liquored up and write some lyrics.

“Because you just said: ‘No

I’ve got somewhere else to go

And the plans I’ve made

Don’t include you, I’m afraid’

And that’s all that you would say”

— David Gedge, “Montreal”

np – The Wedding Present / Singles 1995-1997