Wow, so much stuff to talk about in the last couple of weeks. I started working an extra day at the bookstore, which means I have a little bit of extra pocket money… that will probably go to buying books at the bookstore… and will inevitably sit on a table at my house since I am totally out of room on my bookshelves. I bought about another 10 this week too. Geez, I’ve got a big paper monkey on my back.

Hm, what else?

- Taking advantage of the brief stint of beautiful weather, I went on a picnic in the park with Mrs. C this past week. We ate focaccia sandwiches, olives, dolmades and eccles cakes, drank orange creamsicle sodas and fended off attacks by a very cute bulldog puppy that thought our sandwiches were his.

- When I lived with my friend Dylan back in 2000, we were bachelor types that ate in the living room while watching Star Trek: Voyager and used one condiment. The Condiment, a.k.a. Saigon chilis in oil. I’ve tried other chilis in oil from various manufacturers, but there was something about Saigon that made it extra good. Maybe it was the promise of a new millennium. Anyway, I hadn’t seen it since and presumed that it just disappeared (like all of my turn of the century optimism) until I went to Save-On Foods the other day and there it was, as if waiting for me. The Condiment is back; all hail The Condiment.

- Also at Save-On, we scored a $6 copy of AtmosFear–you know, the DVD update of the old classic VHS boardgame Nightmare, where the “Gatekeeper” verbally mocks you and calls you maggot while you try to win. Excessive awesomeness for cheap. If anyone wants to hang out and be verbally abused by a fictional character, let me know.

- Completely unintentionally, my 1500th scrobbled song on LastFM turned out to be “Dirty White Boy” by Foreigner. It feels like there should be some kind of hidden meaning in there. Maybe there’s some not-so-hidden meaning in there…

- My sweetie bought me the Playmobil “Brokeback Viking” set. Well, seriously, what would you call it? There’s two Norsemen hanging out in a cozy tent with a bearskin rug. *cough* I suppose it’s an appropriate Easter gift though, since the Norse killed lots of Christians and then became them. There’s an analogy in there if you look hard enough.

- Speaking of Playmobil, the Viking line appears to be discontinued but one of the new series for 2007 is the Romans, and come its release in August the trireme is totally gonna be fighting my Norse longship.

- And finally, I am now on Facebook, so poke away:

I’m not sure how I feel about German rap in general, but I can’t stop watching this.

It makes me look forward to June when TemmyTon’s full-length album drops. Because she has mad skillz. I don’t speak German, so I have no idea what she’s saying, but still—definite mad skillz involved.

+ Deja Voodoo has their own Myspace page. This is both unexpected and awesome. More websites for ’80s Canadian punk rockers!
- I know there was a whole House episode about this, but I was so excited about the Thickets shirt I got last weekend that I wore it without washing it and now I’ve got a big rash on my torso. So, yeah. Don’t let this happen to you. The More You Know…

I’m being less communicative lately because I’ve been writing. That’s a good thing. No, in fact, that’s a great thing. It’s really nice not only to have a concrete project to work, but to be doing it with one of my oldest friends. I know I keep teasing you with these extremely vague hints about this thing I’m doing, but you’d better get used to it—it’s still another three weeks and counting ’til launch.

Personal:
- Woke up this morning with Mrs. C back in town for the first time in several days. Took our time getting up and finally got our asses out the door and down the street for some pho and Vietnamese iced coffee. I’m sensing the start of a new winter tradition. Seriously, if you need a weekend pick-me-up on those grey Vancouver Sundays, coffee with condensed milk and a big bowl of steaming hot soup will do you just right.
- After that we went to T&T and bought Asian junk food (green tea chocolates! who knew?!) and Chinese New Year decorations. Now a magnificently gaudy golden fish filled with candy graces our coffee table. I have no idea what we’re going to do with it after the New Year’s rung in. What do you do with a giant plastic gold koi? Oh, we also got little drip coffee filters so we can make our own Vietnamese coffees without having to go up the street. So we can get wired in our own home. Ahhhhh.

Books:
- I usually really like the Culture Shock series. It’s a series of travel guides that’s pretty much only concerned with the culture, customs and etiquette of the various countries in question. And usually they’re pretty unbiased and even-handed—great for research and getting a feel for a place if you’ve never been. I’ve got to say though, the guy who wrote Culture Shock: China not only has his head lodged WAAAAAAAY up the Communist Party’s ass (please, please stop kissing Zhu Rongji’s backside—I understand you think the sun shines out of it, but honestly it’s getting tired) but he has some pretty odd conceptions about Asian history in general. Like the passage about Chinese Buddhism where he states: “From China, it passed over the eastern Seas to barbarous Japan where it civilised the unruly islanders and became known as Zen.” Riiiiiiiiiiight. So Chinese Buddhism is responsible for civilising the barbarous Japanese, huh? I’m glad there’s no bias in there. And I’m sure the Japanese would have nothing to say about your trite assessment of their culture.

Music:
-I had an awesome time the other night when my friend Billy came back to town. We went out for dinner (ohhhhh, minibrew beer) and drinks (ohhhhhh, single-malt scotch) and then wandered over to Pub 340 to watch her play a quasi-impromptu set. Billy and I go back several years—she played my 30th birthday party, which was totally the only way to get old—and I hadn’t seen her since she moved out east from Vancouver, so it was awesome to catch up. In addition, that night I also got to meet Devon (who was quite cool) and see Rio Bent, who are FUCKING AWESOME. Seriously, when you can rock that hard for a crowd of 30 people… wow. Anyway, yeah, Billy is one of the hardest working punks in show business, so be her friend on Myspace and watch her video:

Obituaries:
-Ian Richardson died this week. This will probably mean something to you if you watched a lot of BBC dramas and Shakespearean productions; it certainly means something to me. He is right up there in my esteem with Ian McKellen, maybe even a little higher thanks to his amazing performance as the one of the most Machiavellian bastards ever to hit the small screen—Francis Urquhart—in the House of Cards trilogy for Masterpiece Theatre. His Richard III was nothing to sniff at either. And, yes… *cough* … he was the Grey Poupon man. He will be missed.

It’s been a little more than a week since I last checked in, but here’s some of what’s been up with me.

Personal:
- I woke up at 7am yesterday morning, when the alarm went off. I dutifully got up and started puttering around the house half-asleep, dimly aware in the back of my mind that something was not entirely right, but unable to put my finger on it. After about ten minutes I figured out that it was, in fact, my day off and the alarm was for my wife. I went back to bed and slept restlessly for another couple of hours. That sucks.

Books:
- I’ve ploughed through a whole pile of graphic novels lately and I’ll be posting another installment of the books I’ve read pretty soon to catch up with the backlog.

Music:
- I saw Polysics last Friday and they were everything I’d hoped they’d be and more. Seriously, I haven’t had that much fun at a show in ages. Probably years. I could go off for pages telling you why they’re amazing, but in the interests of saving myself 1000 words, I’m just going to post a picture that my friend Brian did of Hiroyuki, the lead singer:

I Love My Friends, Cont.:
- Lisa surprised me after All-You-Can-Eat-Sushi on Friday night with another late Christmas present–two cases of Squirt brought up from the States. Man, I love Squirt and I love my friends. They are both good to me.

Writing:
- This is what’s been taking up the lion’s share of my time. I’ve been working on something original, neat and fun. It’s the science-fiction project that I hinted at a few entries back and it’s starting to coalesce into something tangible. There should be something concrete to show the world within the next month and I’m chomping at the bit to get it there. Right, back to work on it.

As a final note, though:

Wow, it’s been a hell of a week. Not in a bad way, mind you, just in the way that everything decides it has to happen at once. Here’s the pertinent bits in point form.

Personal:
- Mrs. C has left for two weeks on business and I’m left holding down the fort. This means that I can get more writing done, but it also means that my best friend isn’t around for half a month, and that pretty much sucks. And it also means that I have to get groceries alone in the snow and that the cat is even more crazy because she misses her mom. Foo.
- But as I mentioned before, more time for writing, which is awesome.

Writing:
- And speaking of writing, I’m the new film columnist for This Magazine, so be sure to pick up a copy of the next issue when it hits the newsstands–it’s sure to be a keeper.

Tech:
- Everyone else on the planet has developed an acute case of logorrhea regarding the iPhone, so I won’t bother to go off about it, but I will say that while I don’t usually care for convergent technology (why do you want a 3MP camera in your cell phone? why?), this is pretty p0rny. Yes, I want one.

Cartoons:
- I know that Adventure Time was just produced as a one-off “Random Cartoon”, but can it please become a regular series? PLEASE. Because it’s truly awesomazing and Jake the Dog is my new hero.

Movies:
- Available online for free now: Darkon. If a documentary about weekend warriors (and by that I mean fantasy LARPers who do it mostly on the weekend) is at all intriguing to you, load up your browser with this. Laughs and sympathetic embarrassment abound.
- I just managed to find a copy of the hideously out of print, shot-in-Vancouver-when-not-everyone-and-their-dog-did-it classic film Ladies and Gentlemen… The Fabulous Stains, so I’m blissing out. Punk rock raditude.

Music:
- Dear Friends, you know I love metal, so why didn’t you tell me about Mastodon earlier? Like last year. Or before. Everyone else has been rockin’ and I’ve been missing out on the best metal in ages. You suck. Yours, Chris.
- Ghostface Killah’s last two albums are fucking dope.

Obits:
- Iwao Takamoto: the artist and designer behind such notable Hanna Barbera series as Scooby-Doo, Speed Buggy and Atom Ant.
- Momofuku Ando: the creator of the Cup Noodle (whose story is told in this surprisingly gripping manga).
Between cartoons and Cup Noodles these men forged my adolescence. RIP, gentlemen; you will be missed.

I like The Coup a lot. They’re not only a kick-ass hip hop band, they’re a kick-ass, funky, revolutionary hip hop band and I’ve been enjoying their stuff for years. So it was kind of awesome to find they’ve got a new album out and that it’s one of the best political discs to be released in ages. And then it was totally fucked-up and horrible to discover that a month ago on their tour they had a bus crash and lost most of the stuff they own—instruments, computers, pretty much everything but the clothes on their backs.

So, I just sent them some money through Paypal. Not much—just the cost of a CD, really—but at least I know every penny will go directly to the band in their hour of need.

I’m not trying to sound like a public service announcement or anything, but if you’ve enjoyed or do enjoy their music, it would be a cool gesture to toss a few bucks their way. I don’t know what it’s like to lose practically everything I own in a car accident, but can I imagine that if that happened every five or ten dollars would count for a hell of a lot. Their Paypal address is thecoupbuscrash@gmail.com, or there’s a direct donation button on their Myspace page. Peace.

As a public service announcement, I feel the pressing need to let everyone know that Japan’s amazing, post-DEVO, pop-splosion hyper-band Polysics are making their way to Vancouver at the Plaza (881 Granville) on January 26th. This is the best live music news I’ve heard in the past year. Fucking amazing. Here’s the video that initially introduced me to them and blew my mind:

And in case you ever thought, “Yeah, Polysics are cool, but they really should have covered Styx and had a robot rampage across Japan fighting children,” well, they did that too.

(Tickets at Zulu, Scratch, Noise, Red Cat, Highlife and at the door.)

It may not cost a lot, but Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake have the right idea about seasonal gifts… and it’s mine to you.

I’d be the first to admit that cranking Zep while writing about Vikings is some kind of horrible cliche (you know, “Immigrant Song” and all), but it’s still hard to discount the fact that listening to “Heartbreaker”, “Living Loving Maid”, “Ramble On” and “Moby Dick” in a row cultivates a pretty kickass mood.

Hammer of the gods, indeed.