Sunday, June 29th, 2003
This afternoon I went to see the Jays play the Expos for maybe the last time (since the ‘Spos will be hightailing it out of La Belle Provence at some point in the near future), and a right royal thrashing was laid on the hometown. A two-hit 11-2 rout by the Expos. Ouchie. But it was nice to just veg at the ballpark for a few hours.
R.I.P. to Katherine Hepburn. I think I saw On Golden Pond about a zillion times when I was a kid, on account of it being one of maybe three movies that my family had on tape when we first got a VCR.
Maybe… Just MAYBE, someone in the music industry is getting a clue:
” . . . The problems at Sony Music, as in the rest of the music business, run deeper than costs. They also run deeper than Internet file-sharing, the industry’s favorite scapegoat. In fact, with some critical interpretation,
the rise of Napster and its successors can be seen less as a cause than as a symptom of maladies that are profound and structural – ranging from overpriced CDs to formulaic product to an outmoded business model based mainly on distribution and marketing muscle. The movie business may be screwy, but it’s not fundamental broken. The music business is.
“Sir Howard [Stringer, the new vice chairman of Sony,] agrees. ‘The music industry has offended the consumer,’ he says. ‘It has offended the retailer, offended the artists, offended the publishers. The radio stations are basically a duopoly now; they’re not helping the situation. MTV is no
longer playing music videos – they’re doing something weirder. You’ve got all this anger out there, you’ve got all this fragmentation, and so the music business has to be reworked, reinvented, and reorganized from the ground up.’
“That Stringer sees this – and that he’s not simply yelling ‘Piracy, piracy!’ – is the first encouraging sign for the future of Sony Music. . .”
[Credit: Business 2.0, July 2003 issue, page 37 – part of an article entitled “Can Sir Howard Save the Music Biz?” by John Heilemann]
np – Unrest / B.P.M. (1991-1994)
Saturday, June 28th, 2003
The last couple days have been a reality check for me in regards to my apartment search. Another reality check, it seems, in a series of many. Last night I went to look at a place that was probably about as nice a basement as I was going to find, and it was still disappointing. I don’t think I can live anywhere that I have to duck to get around in. This morning I went to see another place that was terrific in almost every aspect – except the lack of a proper kitchen. Only a bar-size fridge, no oven, two counter-top stove elements. I know I don’t cook much, but I would appreciate the option. It was really nice but simply too small. I have accepted that I am going to have to raise my limit for how much I’m willing to spend to find something above ground, but even finding places that aren’t basements to look at is proving to be more difficult than anticipated. With July rolling around, my target of an August 1 occupancy gets that much more urgent.
I was pricing flights to New York City for the Labour Day weekend, and it’s surprisingly cheap via JetsGo if you book early. Like $90 each way. Even after taxes, that’s less than $250 round trip. Okay, so it’s to Newark and not NYC proper, but that’s not a big deal. A good price is a good price. Now – does anyone know of anywhere inexpensive but not gawd-awful to stay in New York?
This afternoon was spent hacking up and rebuilding the Lake Holiday website. It looks pretty much the same, but is built better. Fuck frames! Let the people scroll.
Ticketmaster’s allotment of tickets for the Rolling Stones show are already all gone. All 150,000 of them. I am going to try and snag one from A&P, but failing that, I guess I’ll be sitting this one out. Selling out of 400,000 tickets will be quite a feat. Oh yeah, Rush are now on the bill as well.
It’s Pride weekend in Toronto. The dykes are marching! The dykes are marching!
np – American Analog Set / From Our Living Room To Yours
Friday, June 27th, 2003
Some good stuff in the new issue of Exclaim!. The cover story belongs to lovely T.O. ex-pats Metric, whose debut album Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? won’t be out till July 22, which explains why I’ve had a helluva time finding it (it is available online from one source, but I’ll wait till it’s out proper-like) though I will probably just pick up a copy when they tour through Toronto at the end of July. They play Guelph’s Hillside Festival on the weekend of the 26th, and I expect the Toronto date to come shortly after.
They (Exclaim, pardon the digression) also have an article on weblogs and their effect on journalism and criticism and a brief history of Metallica that could have been subtitled, “A Roadmap To Suck”.
Now you can get your very own “I Survived Toronto” t-shirt. I think it’s a little premature – after all, it’s only the end of June. There’s plenty more plagues that can strike Hogtown before Labour Day.
Rainer Maria play the Horseshoe July 24. I am NOT missing them this time. I know I said that the last two times they came through town, and I did, but this time I mean it!
Went to see A Mighty Wind tonight. Fine, fine comedy. A loverly time was had by all.
np – Sigur Ros / Ágætis Byrjun
Friday, June 27th, 2003
This is long, but worth reading.
FRANK PIERSON’S COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS TO THE 2003 USC FILM SCHOOL GRADUATES
Frank Pierson is a writer/director. He is presently president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and formerly the president of the Writers Guild of America, West. He has directed a Star is Born, Citizen Cohn, Conspiracy, and most recently the critically acclaimed Soldier’s Girl which is playing on Showtime. His writing credits include Cat Ballou, Cool Hand Luke and the Oscar winning Dog Day Afternoon.
_________________________________________________
I’ve been around a long time. As I look out at all of you graduating today, I think back to my graduations. All the kids in my graduating class from elementary school are dead.
All the people in my junior high school graduation are dead.
All the people in my high school graduation are dead.
The people I graduated from college with are all mostly dead.
Are you all feeling okay?
You will soon be the Hollywood of tomorrow, and I’m here to give you a little taste of the past. And my sense of the future you face.
Hollywood was once a small company town, where everybody knew everybody, and if you dropped your pants at a party or punched a reporter or danced with a prostitute in the parking lot, it wasn’t on Entertainment Tonight-tonight. It was even hard to get arrested. Every studio had a publicity department which paid the Los Angeles cops to stay away from show business people. The police didn’t arrest movie people. They drove them home.
We all went down to the film factories every day-at Warner Brothers even actors, directors and writers punched a time clock until the mid forties. We ate in the studio commissary, where the writers’ table was preferred seating because the jokes were better there. If the New York writers were in town, slumming, sneering at the movies and cashing big fat paychecks you found yourself sitting next to Dorothy Parker or F. Scott Fitzgerald. You could wander off to a sound stage and watch John Huston or Willy Wyler shooting a scene with Bogart or Hepburn or Peck. No security. We all knew each other.
It was up close, and personal.
Read the rest of this entry »
Friday, June 27th, 2003
Season three of 24 picks up TWO AND A HALF YEARS after the end of season two. Why that’s enough time for them to replace Palmer’s damaged bits with cybernetic implants, and obviously the storyline will have him cutting a swath of destruction across Los Angeles as he hunts down those who did this to him. Jack will have to hunt him down and stop him. Just wait and see.
Complain about them as I might, the fact that Pitchfork is on hiatus until August 1 makes me all anxious. I will have to find more music news sources to fill up my mornings.
Nude As The News offers up some reviews on the Uncle Tupelo reissues.
My four-and-a-half day weekend starts NOW.
Uh, any ideas what I should do?
np – American Analog Set / From Our Living Room To Yours
No Comments
facebook
![[Valid RSS]](http://www.chromewaves.net/images/interface/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed"){kind=small}