Back from the holidays! On the last day before my trip back, I took my 12-year-old nephew out to a film. Last year we saw Bolt, his first 3D movie. This year the selection was pretty limited, so we went to the Bloor Cinema to watch the 2009 Cannes Lions, a selection of award-winning ads from 2009. All in all, we saw something like two hours of commercials. Unlike the last time I went to see the Cannes Lions with oshawa, I was very happy that they weren't all about soccer this time. (Must have been a World Cup year.)

( So here are links to more videos than you probably have time for )

Current Mood: amused

So today was a busy day!
( And I'm going into work on Sunday )

To brighten your day, here's a snippet from a 1957 BBC radio mystery with a horrible fake accent. Found here.

After days of cleaning my house, being short on sleep, hosting a large group potluck dinner, and more cleaning, I was exhausted. So I went to the movie theater last night and watched District 9, took a short break, and then watched 9. If I'd been able to watch $9.99 too, that would've been perfect, considering $9.99 was also the price of admission.

In Toronto there are a pair of clowns that I really like. Now before you start rolling your eyes saying Ugh, clowns! - these aren't your typical clowns, and they don't work for a circus. I can understand an antipathy or annoyance towards circus-type clowns. Like any costumed public performer, it takes practice to (1) actually be funny and entertaining, and (2) have an intuitive sense to tell when your audience is uncomfortable with you. Some of the best clowns I ever saw were with Cirque du Soleil. And then of course there's also the notion of "clown" as practiced by certain Native American tribes where it's more of a jester/social-and-political-satirist job.

...I seem to have wandered. My favourite clowns from Toronto are Mump and Smoot. They are friggin' artists at what they do. (Pardon my language.) I've seen two full shows of theirs, as well as a presentation of their students. Great stuff. cjthomas can back me up here; he came to one of the shows with me, entitled, "Flux". Most of their show titles are rather silly and are better when prefaced with the phrase, "Mump & Smoot in ...", for example, "Ferno", "Something", and "Something Else (with Zug)".

How to describe their work? They speak largely in gobbledegook, and yet you can still understand a lot of what they're saying. Their body language speaks volumes, cartoonishly. They can improvise seamlessly when something interrupts them in the theatre. They occasionally descend into violence or the macabre. They make you feel for them, joy, sorrow... They are simply amazing actors.

At this point I would love to talk about skits from their shows, but... nah, that would take too long. Thankfully, finally, some videos of them have showed up on YouTube. Not from the zenith of their career nor the best cinematography, but now you can see who I'm talking about: The Doctor, Part 1 and Part 2. Not suitable for young children.

(wolever, they're working on a new show, and there's a strong chance they'd come your way. A must-see if they do!)

Six seems to be the most popular. Yes, I'm bored.

Here are the general hit results:
2 - 2,420,000
3 - 908,000
4 - 106,000
5 - 62,700
6 - 8,130,000
7 - 32,000
After which it settles out around 7200, except for an odd blip at 24.

If there is one person or more on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

Current Mood: glad

What happens if you're some animators who take inspiration from Moebius, Heavy Metal, bad 80s cartoons, Nausicaa and prog rock album covers? You get The Parachute Ending, and it is good.

And then, if you'd like to play a browser-based flash puzzle game that's dead easy and has excellent visual design, try Little Wheel.

Finally, I was going through older blog posts by ToplessRobot who runs geek contests from time to time, and discovered a great collection of Robot Haiku (nsfw).

I don't always remember these, but Happy Birthday, thewerewolf!

Now that the daytime weather is turning warm and it's still light out by 7 pm, this afternoon I started cleaning up outside the house. All the leaves I was too lazy to rake up last fall before the first snow, are now raked and bagged. Even so, the backyard still looks a mess, due to wood chips everywhere from when I had a tree removed last month. It was healthy, but cast so much shade my garden didn't grow very well. Mind you, my garden also didn't grow well because of the gumbo soil and my heavy antipathy towards weeding.

I also finished destroying a horrible old cupboard inside the garage that took up space. After several hours with a hammer and a borrowed crowbar, I had two dozen pieces of wood and twice that many nails. The crappy wood has been stored in the garage's rafters using the "out of sight, out of mind" philosophy. Then I went around removing any prominent nails inside the garage that posed a potential hazard. End result: safer, slightly more spacious crappy garage, for the few times a friend visits and doesn't want to park their car on the street.

Objects accidentally destroyed: A pair of light winter gloves, and some young raspberry shoots.

Objects found: A spare key to my house in the garage (badly hidden); a muddy, weathered pair of drumsticks; a tiny useless handsaw; a bent fireplace poker.

Current Mood: tired