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.

I’m irrationally excited about the premiere of The Sarah Silverman Program (Thursday on Comedy Central).

Wait, no, it’s not irrational: I think she’s totally hilarious and totally hot. Possibly in that order.

(Incidentally, the clip is from her movie Jesus Is Magic. If you actually laughed and didn’t come up with 102 reasons to be offended, I urge you to seek it out.)

Personal:
- I briefly skipped over the the hometown on the weekend where I met up with a few different people and talked about comics as an industry and a way to make money. There were good conversations had and I feel positive about my career path and those of my friends and acquaintances. I also bought more comics, but that’s gonna happen anytime I set foot in Legends (my favourite comic shop). (Sorry to any friends who didn’t know I was coming to town and didn’t get to hang out with me—I wasn’t over long enough for comprensive chilling out. I’ll try to make it back for some of that soon, though.)

TV:
- Battlestar Galactica has shifted timeslots to Sunday nights now, which means that I get to wake up on Monday mornings, brew myself a cup of piping hot tea, shuffle out to the living room in my pajamas and watch a new episode of one of the best shows on TV. *aaaaaaaaahhhh* Hear that contented sigh? Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays.
- Elsewhere, it looks like the TV Gods are smiling upon me (and the rest of g33kdom, I suppose) since not only is George Clooney producing a six-hour miniseries of Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age for the Sci-Fi Channel (which Stepehsnon is writing the script for!), but HBO will be producing George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire as an on-going series. You may note that Diamond Age is the first Stephenson I ever read (and the book that made me a total convert) and that Song of Ice and Fire is my favourite book series of all time. I could stop drooling, but I don’t want to yet.
- Also, I watched the first few episodes of House, and for those of you who told me it was good, yes, it is.

So my week was mostly TV based. What’s your point?

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.

1) Dr. Girlfriend
2) Dr. Henry Killinger
3) Girl Hitler
4) Colonel Gentleman
5) Triana Orpheus
6) Baron Ünderbheit
7) Jefferson Twilight
8) Groovy
9) Molotov Cocktease
10) H.E.L.P.eR. (all done up in the low-rider paint job)