the pod bay door

:: This morning, while at dim sum at New Tan Tan, the lights went out. A power failure happened somewhere in the downtown area, perhaps due to the high winds. The staff passed out candles, and also had to deal with the tropical fish tank, which began leaking for some reason, after the power failure.

:: This weekend, I saw Ocean’s Twelve, and Kinsey. Both enjoyable for different reasons, although in discussion with Taras this afternoon, I had to agree that Ocean’s Twelve falls apart in the last 20 minutes. Kinsey contains a set of remarkable performances from a cadre of actors, and also has perhaps the funniest scene in any film I’ve watched this year, including Team America: World Police, which had me howling throughout the picture. I saw Kinsey with my friend Marissa, at the same theatre we saw The Machinist a week earlier. It was déjà vu all over again.

:: For me, the Christmas season brings mixed blessings. I cannot go into details here, but I take great comfort knowing that I have the support and friendship of family and friends who care. In the end, what more can anyone ask at Christmas?

I had planned to be off work from December 18-January 3, but will head in tomorrow to try to clean out my inbox, and finish some paperwork.

:: Here it is: the new song, with lyrics written by the up-and-coming young wordsmith, eight year old Aidan Murphy of Prince George BC, son of up-and-coming sf writer and good friend, Derryl Murphy, and the music by legend-in-his-own-mind, hack guitarist Randy Reichardt.

Background: Aidan wrote the words, and Derryl posted the lyrics on his site, Cold Ground. The recording was done in the basement of the Wests’ house, with Niki doing the engineering and recording on her little digital studio. We recorded it yesterday, it was a lot of fun. The voice and acoustic guitar tracks were done in one take, but the “bass” line (actually an electric guitar with mucho effects) took about 7 or 8 takes.

This isn’t the first time I’ve added music to lyrics written by a young one. There is something inspiring about the creativity of a child, but kid yourself not: it is a lot of fun for me too, to write and construct a melody and chords around the words.

“I’m Going Down In The Middle of Town”: lyrics © 2004 Aidan Murphy, music © 2004 Randy Reichardt.

:: My pal Jennifer lives a few blocks away from me. We’ve known each other for, good God, almost 15 years. I drove over to her place tonight to meet her sweet 16-week old little girl, Charlotte. Check out the cool pic of Charlotte and Uncle Randy. It was nice to get out of the house, meet the Little One, and hang with Jen Jen, and go for a nice walk. The weather was overcast and mild and humid and just right. Thanks, Jen!

:: Speaking of some of my previously mentioned friends, Derryl is close to having a collection of his short stories published in book form, and about time, too!

Tony offers a heartfelt story about a Catholic nun, who was also one of his clients. Despite struggling through a terminal illness and lack of support from her order, she had the strength, conviction and compassion to continue her ministry with the poor, and it had an lasting and positive effect on my good friend.

:: Edmonton is getting four new radio stations, including a modern rock station that promises to play actual NEW modern rock music from the 21st century, thus giving us an alternative from the other completely interchangeable, bland, dull, lifeless, classic rock stations in the city right now. Absolutely amazing and satisfying that we will be able to choose to listen to a station that plays and supports new music, indie artists, and the like. I hope they are successful.

:: Tonya has a new web site, Challenge of the Week: “The purpose of the COTW initiative is to gather together handfuls of people seeking a springboard from which to challenge themselves to make changes – big or small – individual or communal.” It sounds like a good idea, especially if you believe that big changes can only emerge from small beginnings.

:: Cindi posted this cool site which displays the subways systems of the world on the same scale. The images looks like a group of small webs woven by spiders on major hallucinogenic drugs, or a series of strange cracks in glass windows.

:: I discovered two nifty spell check applications tonight. ieSpell is for Internet Explorer, and works with text-based entry in blogs, web mail, forums, etc. It installs an “ABC” button (with a checkmark) in the IE toolbar, and also allows works with a right-click on the mouse. SpellCheck.net is a free online spell checker that lets you enter up to 20,000 characters before checking for errors.

:: Congratulations to my friends, Chris (in Castro Valley, California), and Jen (in Edmonton), on the recent arrivals of their firstborns.