The Swamp

Wee way wowza wooza, am I up early.

December 7th, 2004 at 7:31 am (Tales of the Swamp, Arts & Culture, Swamp Reviews, Music)

I really just want to go back to bed. In order to encourage my alertness, I will use this early moment to blog about Average Lime. I made a note of this band on Thursday when I saw them play at Clark Hall Pub, but never blogged about them.

I can’t really get excited about much at such an early hour, but they are sublime. Their bassist is marvelous. Turns out I got drunk with the guitarist/ singer at some point during the beginning of the semester; Thursday night, we ran into each other in the JDUC and he was like “I can’t remember your name, but you have to come see my band play,” which is cool, because I had no idea what his name was, either. Come to think of it, he repeated it that night but I still don’t remember it.

Oh wait, it’s Jay. I know this because Caitlin was in love with him in high school. LOL, crazy times.

Psych! *thumbs up*

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I went to the Frosh concert tonight

September 11th, 2004 at 12:20 pm (Swamp Reviews)

My brother is the biggest fan of Protest The Hero. I object to the awful name, but the music is decent. They’re definitely better live than in their shitty shitty studio album; the guitarist shreds exquisitely, as does the bassist, and their metal posing is to die for. They really ham it up. Their singer is a pussy, however. The mosh pit also sucked, but I was only in the pit when Sum 41 played. A mistake on my part. I was pretty sure it was going to either suck or blow, but I knew I would regret it if I didn’t go in at all.

In general, a good time was had.

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Why’d You have to go and make things so complicated?

August 15th, 2004 at 1:25 am (Tales of the Swamp, Arts & Culture, Swamp Reviews, Visual Stuff, Music)

I just watched The Princess Blade, a Japanese movie, with Spanish audio and German subtitles. I translated it into broken English so Kelly could understand. The movie was good, except for the broken English part. Sorry Kelly. I love how my main problem was thinking of the English words, and not the other way around. Oh yeah, and the whole thing with putting verbs in the middle of the sentence, that a bit of a problem was.

I like going to Kelly’s place (or any residential area close to an old city for that matter), because all the houses have windows like this:

Anyhoo, why is nobody blogging anymore? What is up with that?

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A clarification from last night

July 28th, 2004 at 12:06 pm (Tales of the Swamp, Arts & Culture, Nerdz0r3d, Swamp Reviews, Life Lessons)

Reciprocation is when you buy your friend a beer because she bought you one earlier on. The Canadian-American Reciprocity Treaty was a trade treaty between the colonies of British North America and the United States. It covered raw materials and was in effect from 1855 to 1866.

Also, Napoleon Dynamite is killer. KILLER. Thank you, Lang, for taking me. Best Date Ever.

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Ode to the Trabi

May 3rd, 2004 at 1:28 am (Arts & Culture, Swamp Reviews)

Good bye, Lenin is a great piece of work. It follows Alex Kerner, an East German, whose mother goes into a coma before the falling of the Berlin Wall and wakes up 8 months later with the DDR gone. (By the way, that’s Deutsche Demokratische Republik, not Dance Dance Revolution. Close, but no cigar.) In order to avoid exciting her, he creates a replica of the world she once knew, and discovers how much has changed. It sounds sappy the way I’m describing it, and I suppose it is a bit of a sappy movie, but it’s brilliant nonetheless. It reminds me of when I was a kid. Of course, I was only 5 or 6 and I saw it from the West side, but a lot was similar. The foods we ate, the cars we drove, the cheesy ’90s German television we watched was all the same.

What I remember most about Germany as a kid was the Trabant (or “Trabi” for short). Seeing them in the movie brought back all this nostalgia. After the Wall fell, the West was flooded with Easterners, who primarily drove these cars, so they were everywhere. Although high-class for the East, they were actually really shitty cars, so all but the sturdiest have rusted away by now. Bodies were made with Duraplast rather than steel, and parts were reused again and again to save money and supplies. I have a little toy replica in my room, and it always makes me sad whenever I see it. Trabies were my favourite cars when I was a kid, and they remind me of so much. I remember discovering one in Berlin a few years ago and going crazy. Goddammit, I miss Germany. How am I supposed to wait until 2006?

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Eternal Sunshine

April 30th, 2004 at 2:27 am (Arts & Culture, Memes, Swamp Reviews)

Just got back from dinner and a movie, although not in that order. The dinner was poached pears and chevre in a phyllo pastry, and the movie was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Both were delectable, although the latter was interrupted twice due to sound problems. The flow of the movie was disturbed, so I’ll likely have to watch it again to fully enjoy it.

I didn’t like Eternal Sunshine as much as I did Being John Malkovich or Adaptation, but it was impressive nonetheless. (Props go to Michel Gondry, who is gradually becoming one of my favourite directors.) The movie is capable of standing on its own, which means that Charlie Kaufman hasn’t yet gotten to the level of fame/laziness where he can just slap together any old thing and call it a screenplay. That makes me happy.

Inothernews… Name your favourite movies of each actor listed. Alison’s right, it is dumb. Click MORE to read my responses.

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“Here’s your list of friends in the order they died.”

February 24th, 2004 at 11:53 am (Tales of the Swamp, Arts & Culture, Linkage, Swamp Reviews, This Blog is Self-Referential, M*A*S*H)

That was much darker than I intended for a title. It also sounds a lot like a M*A*S*H announcement, if M*A*S*H was about an all-out killer deathmatch instead of a group of wisecracking surgeons.

Jo was lamenting last night that she had checked my blog just the day before and she was already behind, so I thought I’d do my part to continue the she- being- behind bit by blogging some more. I went to get my ritual patch sewn on at the Quick Sew near the A&P yesterday. 3 dollars and only a half hour wait! I bided my time by walking around Chumleigh’s and ended up buying “Sailing the Seas of Cheese” by Primus, which I’d been seeking for a while.

Instead of doing work, I joined Brian at the Brass for drinking and drinking. It was a good time, despite the vast number of insipid girls who were there. Everyone left pretty early, but seeing as Jo had unwittingly ordered another pint while people were disappearing, she and I were left at the bar to sit around and complain about the awful Matchbox 20- inspired live music. (It was really bad. The guy butchered everything!) We went back to my place afterwards, made some Mr. Noodle and watched Battle Royale without subtitles. Chiaki Kuriyama (otherwise known as Kill Bill Vol. 1’s “Gogo Yubari”) was in this one, which both surprised and pleased us. At one point she stabs some guy in the balls. She always gets the best roles. “How about now, big boy? Do you still wish to penetrate me? Or is it I who has penetrated you?”

If you’ve seen Battle Royale, you can’t ever tell me that Lost in Translation was an unfair play on stereotypes. Watching the perky girl on the “fun to kill your classmates!!!” instructional video made my neck-, smiling-, and high- pitched- yipping- muscles hurt.

Inothernews… BABIES!!! (Cheers, Dave.)

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