the pod bay door

¦¦ From Blogcritics.org: I will preface this (first) review by noting that it will be quite biased. Jessica Owen is also known as The Artist Formerly Known As Jessica Schoenberg. The review is biased because when Jess lived in Edmonton, I performed alongside her for a couple years (93-94), and played guitar on and arranged most of her first album, Sounds Like A Plan, released on cassette only.
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¦¦ The world will get more complicated and frightening this week. One of my colleagues mentioned “war anxiety” today. I’m thinking I’d like to lighten things up a bit, so I’ll mention the upcoming film A Mighty Wind, which features the legendary 60s acoustic group, The Folksmen. The first I heard of The Folksmen was in the mid-80s on SNL, when they reunited to sing their Top 70 hit from 1962, “Old Joe’s Place.” Be in line on April 16th! (BTW, any and all feelings of deja vu re: Spinal Tap, is intended.)

¦¦ The new Steely Dan album, Everything Must Go, the follow-up to their Grammy-winning Two Against Nature, will be in the stores on June 10th.

¦¦ The Beatles Anthology will be released on DVD in a couple weeks. The Beatles’ web site is dedicated to this release, but it’s a bit frustrating to have to move the cursor around the screen to locate the “hidden” video and info nodes.

¦¦ In other news, McDonald’s outlets in three US cities will offer one hour of Wi-Fi to customers that buy a combination meal. Geoff, we’ll have to check this out in NYC in June.

¦¦ I guess it can’t be all fun all the time. Read this scathing indictment of the US education system, Learning To Be Stupid In The Culture Of Cash. The author laments the absence of awareness and knowledge geography, history, philosophy, and political science among her students. This may sound familiar to Albertans. In the early days of Ralph Klein, our current premier and de facto King, some members of his political party, at a convention in Banff, seriously considered having the philosophy and psychology departments at universities in Alberta closed down, because they didn’t generate money or wealth. Dumbing down, anyone?

¦¦ The Edmonton Journal published a feature on blogging in the Friday 14 March 2003 edition. Written by Mairi MacLean, the two pieces feature comments from a number of locals, including Geoff, Robert (in Lethbridge), Jen, myself, and a mention of Kelly‘s site as well. Given the small amount of coverage available in a newspaper, I thought Mairi did a good job introducing blogging to the EJ readers. My only quibble: the URLs for the websites mentioned were not included in the print or online(!) versions of the articles.

¦¦ In the world of You-Gotta-Be-Sh*tting-Me, a woman in Germany began emerging from a 6-year coma when her parents took her Regensburg to listen to a Bryan Adams concert. My favorite take on the story left me in tears from laughing. Previously Bryan Adams was known only for Waking Up The Neighbours, not comatose fans. Meanwhile, in Kenya, sadly, three people died trying to retrieve a mobile phone that fell into an open-pit latrine.

¦¦ It’s unfortunate that you need to subscribe to read stories from the NYTimes Magazine online. The March 9 issue features three fascinating articles on: face transplant surgery, “smart-mobbing” the antiwar movement, and a disturbing piece on Mel Gibson and his father, orthodox Catholic theologian Hutton Gibson. Discussed is The Passion, Mel Gibson’s upcoming movie on the last 12 hours of the life of Christ, with the actors speaking in Latin and Aramic only. There will be no subtitles. “Gibson has has said that he hopes to depict Christ’s ordeal using ‘filmic storytelling techniques’ that will make the understanding of the dialogue uncessary.” (NYTimes, 9 March 02, p53) The publication of the article has infuriated the younger Gibson. What is disturbing about the article in the NYTimes Magazine are some of Hutton Gibson’s beliefs such as: the Sept 11 jets were not flown by Al-Qaeda operatives but were remote-controlled, and that the Holocaust never happened.

¦¦ Why are there not enough hours in the day to do what you want to do?

¦¦ Forthcoming project: to record in a notepad every song that appears in my head in one day from wakeup in the morning to going to sleep at night the same day.

¦¦ Today was a busy day at work: I attended three meetings and worked a shift in public service. Somewhere in there I was able to fit in lunch. After my final meeting, I headed for a quick workout, and then to dinner at the home of my friend and colleague, Kathryn, who is an amazing chef: Nova Scotia haddock, asparagus, sapphron rice, delicious salad, apple cranberry crisp. This was, you see, a bribe to entice me to join her at the Edmonton International Film Festival gala screening of Marion Bridge, the first feature film by director Wiebke von Carolsfeld. The film stars one of my favorite actresses, BC native Molly Parker, whose films include The Center of the World, Sunshine, Men With Brooms, and one of my favorite films of 2002, Max. During the drive down, I mentioned that the gala screenings at the festival usually feature the director and an actor or two from the film, and I jokingly suggested that maybe Molly Parker would appear. When we arrived, I learned that in fact she was there! My smile grew very wide!

Marion Bridge film tells the story of three sisters in Cape Breton, who are facing their mother’s impending death and the need to exorcise some of their own inner demons and past secrets. Molly plays Agnes, who returns from Toronto to be with her sisters and mother, and decides to stay for an extended period of time. Agnes is dealing with past drug and alcohol addiction, and her return is met with her sisters’ scepticism. Rebecca Jenkins plays the oldest sister, Theresa, apparently divorced/separated from her ex-husband/partner, but who cannot leave her past life with him alone. The youngest sister, Louise, played by Stacy Smith, seems to be not much more than a bump on a log – endlessly watching her shows on television and otherwise doing much of nothing, trying to numb out the world.
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¦¦ It’s lunchtime here at the ol’ SciTech Library, and as I munch down my spinach salad, covered with cooked chicken breast, tomato, and shredded mild cheddar cheese, I discovered a story that makes me so proud to have been born and raised in Manitoba. A pizza delivery driver in Selkirk MB, also a single mother, stopped to help a gunshot victim, and was dismissed from her job shortly afterwards. In fact, her boss had driven by and saw her before she’d even left the scene. He stopped and told a policeman that she would be dismissed. The manager noted: “She wasn’t dismissed because she was at the shooting scene,” he said. “She was away from her job for no good reason” (my highlight).

The story is receiving North American press coverage. The Winnipeg Sun received dozens of e-mails denouncing the restaurants owners and calling for a boycott.

Now that’s compassion defined, dontcha think? I hope the residents in Selkirk rally around her, and stop buying pies from Frank’s Pizza. Maybe it needs a new slogan: Our Pies Are Delivered Hot, Unless You Get Shot. The story has been picked up internationally, and the manager, Jason Boyd, is getting skewered royally. Read some of the comments on Foodinc.ca. I encourage you to submit comments here as well.

¦¦ With all due respect to my many dear American friends, occasionally you shake your head in disbelief at what some of them do to get attention, especially in the name of so-called patriotism. Will the “average” American ever learn that there is sentient life outside the 48 contiguous, and, gosh darn it, that it matters too?

¦¦ Another pronouncement from the established media that blogging is now mainstream.

¦¦ Late night musical discovery: Secondsight, from North Carolina.

¦¦ It makes good sense that my friend and colleague Stephen Abram is a member of the Internet Librarian Hall of Fame. My question is: how does one qualify, and who makes decision to induct?

¦¦ It was great to see SNL pay tribute last Saturday to Fred Rogers. Horatio Sanz sat on stage near the end and sang a song in his honour. In the past, SNL skewered him mercilessly, the high water mark being the early 1980’s with Eddie Murphy, when he did Mr Robinson’s Neighborhood. National Lampoon was in on it as well, satirizing him on one of their first albums. Read a most heartfelt tribute to Rogers from PopMatters.

¦¦ Make your own online kaleidoscope! The Internet justs gets better every day.