December 2013

Which is better: Drive the movie or Drive the soundtrack?

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We're watching the movie right now so I'll get back to you on the soundtrack part but so far it's pretty kickass.

I can tell I've been playing a lot of GTA 5 recently because at the beginning of the movie when Ryan Gosling was driving around listening to the police radio all I kept thinking was

it's a shame he couldn't see their radars right now.

I've been playing so much of it because we've been on Christmas vacation which basically has resulted with a lot of drinking with my friends, sleeping in, going to the gym, reading a few books I've been meaning to get around to, and playing a lot of video games because it's fucking cold outside.

Tomorrow is NYE as you all know and I should probably be reflecting on the past year and I probably will at some point

all the cool shit I did
the university I graduated from
the jobs I got, lost, and have now
the people in my life

but not right now because Ryan Gosling is being too dreamy.
 

Hello Christmas vacation

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hello wrapping gifts

hello glass of wine

hello The Killers Christmas song

hello sleeping in

hello getting paid to eat too much, too drink too much

hello half-assing it at the gym in a couple of days

hello GTA 5

hello Dr. Who

hello book club book

hello more free time than I know what to do with.

Aww yisss.
Tags: Pink

 

Today is Brad Pitt's birthday. He's 50.

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Which is both depressing and inspirational, because on one hand Brad Pitt is already 50, but on the other hand...



Damn. He still looks pretty fine for 50.

Giving men everywhere hope that if they're really lucky, and work hard, they can stay hot forever.

Or at least as long as they can afford to maintain their youthful vitality.

The thing I love about Brad Pitt isn't actually his fine, fine looks

(though those help)

but his serious acting chops. Looking over my list of most watched & loved movies it's not all that surprising that he's got a major role in a lot of them.

So in honour of his birthday here are my top 10 favourite Brad Pitt movies:

1. Fight Club
2. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
3. 12 Monkeys
4. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
5. The Tree of Life
6. Se7en
7. Inglorious Basterds
8. Burn After Reading
9. Snatch
10. Interview with the Vampire

HBD Mr. Pitt!

Tags: Pink

 

The Uniter Fiver

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Local university mag The Uniter is holding a competition called The Uniter Fiver where you can go n vote for your favourite artist ad they win stuff (I think?) and get some much-deserved local cred.

I'm lucky enough to know not just one but two of the super-talented guys who submitted videos and even though you can only vote for one I'm gonna plug 'em both anyway, because they're both brilliant and they both deserve it:



"Crows" is a collaboration between Co-pilot, Mumbles and my friend Abstract Artform aka Shea M.

I met Shea through my friend Colin a few years back on a patio at Beachcomber's. In between charming all the waitresses and probably the waiters too he totally won us over as well.

After we'd had our fill of slushy drinks & beers he insisted that we go to karaoke at Saffron's on Corydon where we had one of the best, most random and entertaining nights ever.

In addition to being a sweet and unbelievably genuine person, Shae is also super-talented, and you should definitely vote for him.



Aband*nthecar is a one-man synthpop band aka my very dear friend John L. I don't know much about his music so here's his description of his setup for this video: I use a Boss RC-300 looping pedal with a single drum sample, the Little Phatty mainly for the arpeggiator, and the MicroKorg for the vocoder and leads.

I first met John several years ago when he was dating Kat, who is my best ladybro.

We were all at Wine Fest and ran into each other about 2/3's of the way through the night and even though everyone else decided to go off in search of more, differenter wines, John and our friend Teri and I decided to stand around the port table for close to an hour and drink there.

This move has basically become a staple of every Wine Fest since, and with good reason (port is great).

In addition to being one of my best friends and one of the cleverest and most outrageous people you could hope to meet, John writes some of the most charming and catchy tunes I know and you should definitely vote for him.



I don't actually know anyone from Bear Clones but they get a special spot in this post because of this cover of Faust from the epic 80's rock opera that almost nobody knows about Phantom of the Paradise.

I can't in good conscience tell you to vote for them since I'm plugging my friends, but I highly recommend you check out their stuff and definitely recommend that you watch Phantom of the Paradise.

Happy voting, and good luck boys!

xox yr Shaner
 

Fred Penner played a show at the WECC this past weekend

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One of the best things about being born in the late 80's is that it was a really good time for children's programming. I grew up with wicked shows like Under the Umbrella Tree, Lamb Chop's Play-Along, and Fred Penner's Place which was a show that ran for a decade or so on the CBC.

I always wanted to crawl through that goddamn log like he did at the beginning of each episode. What a boss.

What was really cool about growing up with Fred Penner's Place is that he's actually from my city, so pretty much everyone I know has either seen or talked to him at some point, or knows someone who dated one of his kids or something like that.

There's even a small local tumblr that features people taking pictures with him in the background

because people from Winnipeg are sneaky like that and we really, really love Fred Penner.

Anyway in addition to other shows he does throughout the year he always comes back to Winnipeg to do two sing-along shows each year right before Christmas

-one for kids during the day and one for us nerds at night.

Tthe kids show is probably just the same songs, but the evening show must be way more fun because we're all drunk and belting out the words to the songs that we thought we'd forgotten years ago.

Plus it's super cool to have omg Fred Penner play the song you requested

(even if we all know we're all secretly there to hear him play his version of The Cat Came Back, but never mind that)

because there's something about sitting with yr friends drinking beer singing along to songs you learned when you were 5 that just melts yr heart

even when it's -35 outside and everything else is frozen solid.
 

The web pages I frequent summed up by the general types of posts I see:

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Facebook: “All the people on my friends list are going to pile on to 1. Defend your point or 2. Go on at length about how wrong you are.”

Twitter: “You made a valid point! Let’s discuss like adults and have a productive conversation.”

Online newspaper publications: “I like commenting anonymously because I can say all the ignorant things I want about issues I know nothing about.”

Reddit: “Your statement makes me feel bad about myself. Time to take it personally and out of context and fight with you about it for a day and a half!”

4chan: “DICKS. EVERYWHERE.”
 

Watching Flight

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with the cats and blankets and tea and advil because I can't sleep, haven't slept, since the night before last because even though decongestants help me breathe they don't stop the sting behind my eyes

and nothing is worse than trying to sleep with sore eyes.

I don't recommend it.

Anyway since I can't sleep and I'm not going to watch any of Dr. Who without Tyrone I figured I'd write a little message to you lovely people

who still come around n read this nonsense all the time even though I don't update as often as I should

to say that, so far, Flight has been a terrific movie.

I figured it'd be good since there was a bunch of full-frontal lady nudity in the very first scene and also Denzel is in it and I love him

but it's been really intense so far and I only got to the part where the airplane just crashed.

Which was terrifying and awful and stressful to watch even though I know that flying is actually the safest way to travel and shit like that rarely goes down

but it's terrifying nonetheless and makes me realize that pilots actually have balls of steel and are a million more times hardcore than I could ever be.

Not astronaut hardcore, but pretty effing close.