I have seen the future of rock 'n roll...

Wow. You gotta check out this Norwegian band, Serena Maneesh. OK, maybe I'm a little behind the times, as I guess this self-titled record that's got me all excited came out last August, but it's really hard to get over here. So hard to get, I had to track it down through not-entirely-legal means, if you know what I'm saying, but don't worry, I'm going to have my local record shoppe order it in for me. It'd be a disgrace if a band I like this much didn't squeeze a few bucks outta me for their hard work. And I've been legitimately buying a whole lot of music lately, too, so lay off me, man.

Serena Maneesh are a pretty fascinating hybrid, stylistically. They're all nebulous and breathy like My Bloody Valentine or the Jesus and Mary Chain, but also pastoral psychedelic like Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, and super wigged-out skronky like the Stooges. And they can chop it up post-punk style with the best of the contemporary kids too. However they're playing, though, it's all about the sound of the guitar for them, which is what really makes it great to listen to. You know when you can tell that a musician is just enjoying the SOUND of his or her instrument as much as you are, regardless of what notes they're actually playing, and you feel privileged to be invited along on the exploration of its possibilities? I feel that way about Thelonious Monk. Well, these guys are really really into the sound of distorted guitars. The main guy even seems like he's trying to look like Jimi Hendrix.

The whole album builds really nicely to an insane climax, so it's hard to pick just one track that'll show you what I mean, but this one seems to encompass at least some of the stuff I'm talking about. Enjoy.

- Andrew

Under the covers, behind the glass...

Ali started this post the other day (which is why the date says Friday even though it's Sunday), but the photo inserting wasn't working, so I'm finishing it for her while she works all day assisting on an Aliant photo shoot, about which I'll let her tell you. I'm pretty sure these were the two shots she was going to put up. Buster's been found completely under the covers of our bed a few times lately, though he'll never come in when we're in it. Weirdo. The mannequin family lives just up the street from us, and always gives us a pretty good chuckle when we walk by. I'm not sure why none of them wears pants.

Here's my first attempt at drawing Stephen Harper while I was watching him on TV. Something's not quite right. I'll have to keep working on it. Is it my imagination or does he wear an awful lot of turtlenecks? Maybe they just keep printing pictures from the same day.

Today and yesterday I got up at five in the morning. The first time was because I woke up from a nightmare that all of our stuff had been stolen, and today was because of something out the back window that sounded like a gunshot. But who would shoot anyone at five o'clock in the morning? Anyway, both days have been mild and sunny, and it's been really nice having so much time to get stuff done. I may even go to the gym today, which is unheard of on a Sunday. I've been stressed out and super cranky all week from bad work vibes, so a relaxed and productive weekend is just what I need.

- Andrew

Where's Ali?

Hmmm. This worked for Jason, so maybe I'll give it a try. Alison has an awesome picture which she should be putting onto the blog any time now, and maybe if you're nice she'll tell you a little bit about what's going on with her too.

- Andrew

Paradigm Shifts Required

We have a new prime minister. He looks like the creator of the bad smell that the last one always seemed to be inhaling. The new guy is less middle-of-the-road than the old guy, but we voted him in because the old guy was starting to seem like he was motivated by things beyond keeping us middle-of-the-road, and the only other guy was even less middle-of-the-road than the new guy. The new guy looks less like a deer caught in the headlights and more like a lizard sitting perfectly still and unblinking on a rock. As a nation, our motto is "Give us the status quo or give us death."

I saw a science show last night about a huge glacier in Greenland that is moving faster than it should. Glaciers typically move about a foot a day, but this one is moving about 113 feet a day, and steadily speeding up, even in the winter when it shouldn't really be moving at all. It turns out that this glacier has been melting so much, due to global warming, that the water it produces has been making its way down a hole in the middle of it, all the way to the bottom. You would think that water travelling through miles of ice would freeze back up before getting all the way through, but there's so much of it that the sheer pressure has forced it all the way down underneath the glacier, where it creates a little pool on which the entire glacier is now floating. So it's moving across the land and dumping itself into the ocean at a much faster rate than anyone thought possible, and this particular glacier accounts for 4% of all the sea level increases worldwide. Meanwhile, the exact same thing is happening with other glaciers all over the place.

We went to yoga last night, which was great, but I think I kind of overdid it. It's supposed to make you feel good, but today my back and legs are a little bit aching. Guess I was thinking too much about the goal and not enough about enjoying the process. No gym for me today!

- Andrew

The Wizard of Id

[In an effort to get Castpost working for me again, I'm taking off all copyrighted materials. This was My Ever Changing Mood by The Style Council. 3/27/06]

Here's another tune guaranteed to get you through the winter. Well, if you're anything like me, I guess. This one's getting maximum rotation on the mp3 player as it seems to make any and all surroundings into a movie montage of maximum joy. Bipolarity has never been so celebratory.

Does anyone listen to The National Playlist on CBC weekday mornings? It's a nifty concept and a fun show hosted by young and handsome tolerable Canadian goofball Jian Ghomeshi. They've had Grant Lawrence, host of CBC3's weekly podcast, on all this week, and his naïve but authoritatively delivered musical opinions have been driving me crazy. Today Ian Thomas, who is one of the other panelists, didn't like one of Grant's bland choices, so Grant started on a sarcastic rant about how hip hop is a new style of music Ian might not have heard about and how much he loves a particular Ian Thomas song from the 70's. It was really mean and made me so mad that I unsubscribed myself from the CBC3 podcast, even though he sometimes plays some pretty interesting Canadian indie rock on it.

Yesterday, on returning The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin to the video store while our clothes dried at the laundromat, I ran into the father of my childhood best friend, who was coincidentally the one who introduced me to the show back in the seventies. Very strange. I told him that I'd rented it and it hadn't really held up, and he didn't seem too surprised. In fact, he barely remembered the show. It's funny that in my memory it was his favourite show and the times spent with him and my friend watching it in their den were some of the greatest examples of hilarity and male bonding ever. Just goes to show you what a uniquely personal, Rashomonian version of events memory is. He asked me if I was still in Sloan.

Last night I dreamed for a long time that I was at a party at which I expected not to know anyone, but ended up seeing a lot of figures from my past with whom I'd fallen out of touch. It was a little uncomfortable because I didn't really know the hostess very well at all, and certainly didn't know how they all knew her. More and more people gradually populated the place, and it started getting louder and harder to move or hear, or even think. Just as it was reaching a fever pitch and I wondered how I was going to ever get out of there, someone yelled my name from upstairs, loudly enough that it cut through all the hubbub. I looked upstairs to see who it was, but there was no one there, and I suddenly realized that everyone else had also disappeared the moment my name was bellowed. I woke up confused. Then I went back to sleep and had an equally long but much more pleasant dream wherein I was sitting in the back seat of a car driving at night and watching the car ahead of us in our headlights through the windshield. Nothing happened, and I couldn't see anything else because it was pitch black, but it went on and on like that. It was a great relief and very relaxing after the previous dream. I don't really know what either one means exactly, but the juxtaposition seems significant.

- Andrew

Finally!

[This was it, but now it's gone. Golden Brown by The Stranglers.]

Got it to work. For all you Soulseek-deprived people.

- Andrew

Hulk Smash! Revisited

Blaaargh! This is really too much! 8:00 in the morning 'til 7:00 at night with no lunch and no review to boot because there wasn't time. One stinkin' new client -- whom I won't name -- is hogging all our time and refusing to be satisfied with our work no matter how ugly and unreadably packed with small type we make it for them. Suffice it to say that they offer a morally sketchy service to psychologically sketchy customers who give them money in exchange for the excitement inherent in the probability that it won't be given back. I was supposed to be working all day on one biweekly project for another client which takes a day and a half every time and is due tomorrow afternoon, and I hardly got to do anything on it because I was constantly doing major revisions to the work I went in for yesterday, which work of course turned out to be a total waste of time. The work was due today as it's to air on television on Wednesday, but I still haven't gotten approval. So now I have to go in early again, which means no gym again, which means Mr. McCrankypants will be sitting at my desk tomorrow.

Plus, on the way home, swaggering along to "Jockey Full of Bourbon" by Tom Waits and therefore feeling pretty cool, my ears are suddenly filled with the sound of a submarine's warning alarm like in the movies when something's gone terribly wrong and the camera shakes from side to side and people hurl themselves around with dazed expressions on their faces, only this one is broken so that instead of going "EINH, EINH, EINH,..." it just goes "EEEEEEIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNHHHHHH!" I try to pause the mp3 player, then I try to skip to the next song, then I try to turn the volume down, and finally I try to turn it off, all to no avail. Removing the batteries worked and it seemed fine after that, but it's a little disconcerting, especially if I'm going to use that thing to play live shows. Not to mention the fact that I pulled a total Kramer in the middle of the street and felt like an idiot.

And to top it all off, I can't get Castpost to work at all. I think maybe they've given me the boot because I keep putting copyrighted material on there or because I've used up more memory than I'm supposed to have, but I haven't gotten an email from them or anything. Strange. So I'll have to just tell you the song I was gushing about yesterday: "Golden Brown" by The Stranglers. Did you guess it? I'm sure Tim did. Not nearly as much fun as actually hearing it; sorry. None of my older sound files are working either. Has anyone heard of some kind of electronic fist software I can shake at the internet gods?

- Mr. McC Z8^(3

Haven't been able to get the song up yet. Try and guess what it is.

Here's my favourite song right now. I'd completely forgotten about it, but it popped up in this Australian movie we watched called He Died with a Felafel (sic) in His Hand. Noah Taylor was in it, whom we both love, and it was pretty darn good. I put the song on our mp3 player, which I've got narrowed down to an elite selection of 53 perfect songs. I've actually started walking around with it on, even though I'm in principle against all this deliberate insularity going on these crazy hypermodern days, and I have to admit it makes everything pretty enjoyable.

Listening to the song now, I just love the rapturous melancholy of it. Wouldn't it fit right in on a Wes Anderson soundtrack? I've got to get that harpsichord up and running so I can make beautiful music like this, but I never seem to have time.

Work has gotten so busy these days that I had to go in for six hours today to finish off the ugliest, most jam-packed newspaper ad ever, and some stills for a related television spot. Plus there's a meeting at 8 in the morning, so this will be a short post. Oh yeah, and I have my first review tomorrow, so I may be getting a raise. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Our yoga teacher, Michi, is back from her Christmas vacation in Japan and we had a class with her on Saturday. It felt so great and put me in a really nice mood for the rest of the day, even though I felt like I was getting a cold. She brought me and Alison each a 5 yen piece. She's so nice. We start another, longer weekly class with her in the North end on Tuesday. Should be good.

The above-mentioned cold, by the way, I seem to be fighting off with plain old ginseng. I know that's what Cold F/X is extracted from, and that always works for me, so I thought I'd try just ginseng this time, since we always have it on hand. I'm happy to report that the experiment seems to be a success so far -- the cold is definitely retreating in shame. Of course, any decently-designed experiment should be a success, since as long as the hypothesis being tested is either confirmed or disproven it has done its job. But let's not be pedantic.

People keep asking me and Alison when we're going to play again next. It's kind of weird and awkward, because I'm not sure Ali really wants to do that anymore, so it's something we have to work out between ourselves. We usually get all sheepish and don't really know what to say. I wish people wouldn't ask, though I understand and am flattered by the motivation. Maybe if they could just ask one of us at a time it'd be OK... It's kind of like asking a couple when they're going to have a baby.

Also, for some reason, people are lately pointing out that I could stand to gain a bit of weight. I finally just took off the ten pounds I gained over Christmas, for Jimmy's sake! Do they think I'm completely unaware of what kind of shape I'm in or something? It's weird how people you don't even know that well have no qualms about giving you health advice. I've decided to start offering snap psychological assessments in response. "I don't really find passive aggression a more acceptable outlet for anger over lack of parental approval than the eraser full of thumb tacks you think you're hiding in your desk drawer, but that's just me."

That's a pretty sour note to end on, but I've got nothing else to tell, really. Sorry. Oh, I know, we've been watching the second series of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Remember that British comedy from the seventies? It's kind of weird. The guy's more of a jerk and less funny than I remembered, but it's still quite entertaining.

OK, that's better. Later.

- Andrew

We apologize for the delay...

Man, I have really been out of sorts since the holidays. I guess I'm not alone in this feeling. At the risk of repeating myself, #*@*!!¿†* Christmas! My regular schedule got thrown all out of whack and putting it back into whack has proven next to impossible, as I was up late every night last week rehearsing for a Link Wray benefit show. The show was on Friday night, and it went pretty well, fun times, etc. Alison took some pictures, most of which didn't turn out so hot. But here are some of the better/kookier ones. I'm on the left hunched over my little MicroKorg.




I've also been spending pretty much any free time I've had getting a poopload of work done for my one remaining freelance client, as she's off to India for a month and had to tie off all loose ends at her store before leaving. So besides feeling generally bummed out and like there's nothing interesting to say, I have actually not had time to blog it up. Yesterday I finally sat down and tried to post something, but because I was morose and unverbose I had to get Alison to play a game with me where we would take turns writing the next word. After kind of a long time, it ended up being some fairly hilarious gibberish that sounded like a retarded person whose first language was not English. But then I tried to do some fancy adjusting of text under one of the photos I'd posted, and accidentally lost the whole post, thereby getting so discouraged that I had to give up entirely. May I take this opportunity to recommend the "Save as Draft" button? Such an undervalued little blue rectangle.

Then this morning I woke up in excruciating pain, basically from being heavier than I should and doing nothing for too long, and felt so super bummed that I didn't even want to get out of bed. Ever. I'd meant to go to the gym and finally get some exercise before work, which probably would have helped a lot, but I couldn't even force myself to do it. Instead, I got up at the last possible second and trudged off to work wondering how much longer I would have to suffer through this physical world.

But I think whack is in sight now. Working all day and getting some projects finished off helped a lot, plus Ali and I have started this five day "cleansing" diet where you eat, like, nothing but fruits and vegetables and drink ginger tea by the gallon. Oh, and you have to eat a teaspoon of sesame seed and raisins after every meal, for some reason. My brain seems at least temporarily back to its semi-normal state and I no longer feel like I was accidentally channelled into the body of an ancient cripple. Tomorrow I am definitely getting up early enough to go to the gym, and you can kick me hard in the kneecap if I lie.

- Andrew Z8^B

First Dream of the New Year

I've been having some strange nightmares lately, and last night's was particularly strange. In it I was Satan, walking around cheerily after dinner one evening with a group of friends. I don't remember who the friends were. I imagined that they didn't notice they were walking with the devil -- even though I was much taller than all of them and had horns, long bony hands, and the face of a monster -- because we were all laughing and having a good time.

But they were much smarter than me. At one point a brick fell off a building onto my head and hurt me quite badly. Everyone appeared surprised and concerned, and they convinced me that I should crawl into a hole in the side of the building to rest and heal. As soon as I got into the hole, though, I realized it was a coal chute that led into the empty, multi-chambered basement where I lived. Instead of tricking my friends out of their souls, I had been tricked by them back into hell.

This scene played itself out over and over again for some reason, with slight variations. The last time, I noticed that one of my female friends was in love with my servant, a man in a suit who had been following us covertly on the other side of the street. He would always show up in the basement a few minutes after I got there, to see if I was all right. So I convinced my friend this time to come down the chute with me so that she might be with my servant in private. She seemed quite content to be in hell once he showed up, and he seemed happy too to have a companion. I left them alone in one of the chambers. It was a happy ending.

- Andrew