Keek The Geek

On Commencing Semester 2 of Graduate School: A Haiku

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HLP is coming. Start thinking about your outfit.

I really cannot stress enough how much you need to go to this:

Here's the website: http://hardliquorandporn.com/

Familiarize yourself with the details and figure out something to wear. (You can get maribou in bulk on Queen St. West.) I'll see you there.

Ohhhhhhh. August fourth. Riiiiiiiight.

Addendum to today's post: August fourth isn't someone's birthday. I mean, I'm sure it's somebody's birthday, but that's not why the date resonates with me. August fourth is the anniversary of Skynet going online and handing humanity its collective ass shortly thereafter. Thank GOD I have a ThinkGeek calendar. That could have haunted me for weeks.

Rats on smack! Now that's what I call entertainment!

Is today your birthday? I feel that it is the birthday of someone I know, but nobody has come forward to claim the date. If it's you, you can wait to find out how long it will take for me to figure it out and phone you (approximately forever), or you could call and release me from of this agony of uncertainty. I guess we'll see by your choice just how good a friend you are.

First off, in the cool-friends-doing-cool-things department, friends in Riot A.C.T. (Action Creation Team), a group to which Mr. Keek belongs, were in Pasadena last week for the Action On Film Festival. Three of their shorts - The Breakout, Ante Up and Thirst - were official selections, with The Breakout nominated for two awards. It ended up taking the prize for Best Martial Arts Action Sequence in the short film category. Srsly. I've touched the certificate myself. Congradgerlations, Riotactonians! Anyone interested in quality entertainment will want to view trailers for all three films, available here on the Action On Film Festival website.

And more wonderful news, this time from the rats-on-smack department: for fans of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 who were left wanting more more more, Movie Riffing 2.0 is here! Cinematic Titanic is the latest schlock-'n-commentary project from our heroes at MST 3000, every bit as rude and funny as the original series. If you're unfamiliar with these guys and their work, watch the trailers here at the official CT website. If you're a fan of these guys and their work, watch the trailers here at the official CT website. The rats-on-smack references will all make perfect sense, Scout's honour.

Shout out to Rob, the guy who reads this blog. Despite overwhelming evidence that I'm one lazy G*D* blogger, he still wants me to contribute to his new blog Rebel Alert. And indeed the subject matter is right up my alley. If ever you need to get your geek on but quick, wander over. It's a frothy bubble bath of Star Wars-inspired hilarity - intentional hilarity, that is, as opposed to the unintentionally snicker-generating dialogue of Episodes 1, 2 and 3. Seriously, don't they all make the first trilogy scripts look a whole lot better? Anyway, in 48 hours Rob has managed to generate three times the amount of content that I have in, what, two years? Two years. He's, like, Stephen King-level prolific. Exhausts me just thinking about it.

I've been trying on different styles for this site. There's psychology behind colour and font choices, and I haven't yet found the best feel. Right now we're test-driving 'Porpoise' after giving 'Tokyo Skyline' a whirl. The problem is that so many of these templates feel to me like those make-your-own business cards. Whenever I get handed one of those cards I should think, "Hey, somebody's got it together! Snappy cards!" Instead I usually think, "Hey, somebody has Publisher! And knows where the Avery aisle is at Staples!" This may mean that I am a jerk.

Apropos of nothing, someone sent this to me and it immediately made me think of terrible funny things I could have done with Barbies:

 

Although we did stage some horrific accidents between the Barbie Corvette and Barbie Airlines. That must be why they came out with Lawyer Barbie - they know what lurks in the hearts of little children.

My Optimism Is Not Unfounded, Dammit

I've been rabbiting on to friends and strangers about why I believe that five years from now, the Toronto film industry will be back on its feet. Although I admit a predisposition towards wanting to believe that things won't still suck then to the degree that they do right now, I swear to God that there are actual reasons behind my belief that they won't just not suck as much, they will actually rock. (Is that grammar? Maybe not.) Here are those reasons:

1) Filmport. Here's a link to their very pretty Flash site: http://www.filmport.ca/ (Maybe skip the live webcam view for now - what you mostly see is smog. Check back in six months for something more inspiring.) Funding is through Rose Corp., ComWeb and Ken Ferguson. Will-they-won't-they-get-it-built-type rumours circulated for years about Filmport, but they've got the sucker up and running with the first soundstages opening for business this last March. It's going to be one hell of a facility when it's finished, and they've got some groovy concepts about how parts of it will be integrated with the community around it. These are persistent people who've been very tenacious about seeing this project through, and they obviously plan to make it work.

2) Pinewood Studio's purchase of Castlepoint's Sterling Road land at Bloor and Landsdowne. Pinewood's been looking to expand beyond Europe and picked Toronto for a new studio site. They won't have a mega-soundstage like Filmport, but so what? Like we need two in the same city anyway. Here's a thread on the subject on Urban Toronto, with some notes about the land and buildings: http://www.urbantoronto.ca/showthread.php?t=679. Playback Online echoes my optimism in this article from April of this year: http://www.playbackonline.ca/articles/magazine/20070430/shot.html So if I'm drinking funny Kool-Aid, I'm not drinking alone.

3) Richard Florida. You may wonder what last year's arrival of a US economics prof at U of T has to do with the Toronto film scene. Professor Florida, who is unexpectedly young-ish, hip and stylin', has some interesting and increasingly popular theories about how the economic fortunes of a city are tied to what he calls its "creative class". His book The Rise Of The Creative Class made an impression on a number of people, including those running Toronto. Even before he moved here his views were influencing those in charge; Toronto's Culture Plan for 2003 makes mention of his research. Here's the press release on Mayor Miller kissing Richard hello: http://wx.toronto.ca/inter/it/newsrel.nsf/7017df2f20edbe2885256619004e428e/f233eb13e9e525a885257385006a4009?OpenDocument

At a point in time when Live Update isn't hogging my computer's resources (I am vereeee angreeee with Symantec these days) I will write more concerning Professor Florida's theories and the debates surrounding them. I like them, but not everyone does (for what I think are asshat reasons, but whatever).

4) TIFF. The Toronto International Film Festival has become a festival that matters. In this article Roger Ebert explains why.

There ye be. If this works for you, in future I may promise to spare everyone my long-winded explanations and refer them to blog posts instead. This may sound like a cheap substitute for conversation, but if you've sat through any of my long-winded explanations you'll know that this is the option, if any, that you want to take.

Thus Spake Keekustra

I would like to state, for the record, that I know that the new building next to ours is called 60 Bathurst. I KNOW that. I refer to it as 'Zathustra' because it is enormous, black and featureless, much like your average giant space monolith. Surely to God I am not the only person who hears that music when I look at it. Unfortunately I seem to hear only the ominous beginning part, not the glorious, triumphant ending. Well, that's modern architecture for you.

KeekCat Is Not Amused

I created the most righteous post about the LOLcat phenom, and when I tried to post it I discovered that I'd been logged out of Typepad at some point during the writing process. When this happens, Typepad cheerfully dumps whatever you're trying to save and presents you with the login screen instead. I have spent the last fifteen minutes in serious denial, trying to find evidence that my post lives on as a draft somewhere. Alas, it does not. You will have to take my word for it that this post was a comprehensive treatment of my take on the subject and had some very entertaining links. Perhaps I will rewrite it at some point, but for now my muse has flown.

McSweeney's-style List #1: Ways In Which My Stepfather Has Just About Gotten Himself Killed (current to March 2008)

1. Evading police

2. Evading father

3. Evading mother

4. Evading my mother

5. Evading brothers

6. Calling sister 'fatass'

7. Car accident #1

8. Experiment with bourbon

9. Repeated experiments with large amounts of Coors Lite

10. Car accident #2

11. Fixing own brakes

12. Explosion on job resulting in full-thickness burns to 35% of body

13. Poking wasps' nest with cane

14. Massive poison-ivy exposure while looking in bush for new plants for mum's garden

15. Tornado which turned out to be closer than weather reports would have led one to believe

16. Chemical pneumonia from liberal use of ant spray

17. Septic shock (self-diagnosis: "pus brains from lack of sex")

18. Experiment involving brother-in-law's lawn mower and tank of gas (and that's why they call it an ignition)

19. Incident involving tree and ascent of same on snowmobile

20. Rottweiler attack to leg of snowmobile pants

21. Deliberately flushing toilet while my mother was in shower

Things you really should see

There are two shows up right now in Toronto that you need to see. One of them is Canadian Stage's production of Misery, directed by David Storch and starring Nicola Cavendish and Tom McCamus. Our friend Simon Fon did the violence for it, and Simon's violence is high-quality stuff. Oh, and the acting is very good too.

The other show is David Copelin's Belladonna up at the Tarragon. The violence is by none other than Mr. Geek, and the whole enchilada is directed by Sue Miner who Mr. Geek has worked with for years. The show, which was a huge Toronto Fringe hit a couple of years back, stars Francoise Balthazar, Stephen Sparks, Daniel Chapman-Smith, Lindsay McMahon and Mimi Mekler. Mimi and Stephen (aka 'Sparky') have been friends of Mr. Geek's for some time, and we can attest to their status not only as excellent actors but superlative human beings.