Author: Toren

New Cartoons

It’s September, and that means new cartoons! I just watched the season premiere of Justice League, the series premiere of Teen Titans, and the series premiere of the new Spider-Man cartoon. Also, new Samurai Jack and Powerpuff Girls episodes are among us.

Justice League second season is supposed to be better than the first. The first one was not bad, they had a lot of good stories. The stuff that bugged me was the writers kept changing the heroes’ power limitations to suit the stories. That’s bad writing.

The new Teen Titans cartoon, based on the first and only episode I’ve seen, has potential. The style is kind of neat, though they are borrowing too much from anime for my tastes. The story was pretty basic, it was 20 minutes of fighting.

The new Spider-Man cartoon, which is computer animated right here in Vancouver by Mainframe (they brought us Reboot and Shadow Raiders) is going to take some getting used to. It’s one of those shows that are CGI but made to look like traditional flat animation. If you watch Futurama, you know what I mean – they computer animate a lot of the tech stuff like the Planet Express ship flying around. I don’t mind this kind of animation but I have the same problem with Spidey that I had with earlier episodes of Reboot – everything seems disconnected from everything else – there are no shadows. It’s hard to describe, it just looks kind of weird. Anyway, apart from the animation, the story really kind of…well, sucked. The series is supposed to take up from where the first movie left off, except Peter Parker and MJ are still kissing (despite the resolution that PP makes at the ending of the film) and everyone is in university. In this particular episode students are protesting the condemnation of an apartment building, and they are going way overboard. One tenant of this supposedly lower class area had built a super-rocket suit that makes him fly really fast and can levitate huge amounts of weight, goes on a crime spree and the protesters make him out to be a hero while at the same time sleighting Spidey. It’s dumb. I am optimistic that future episodes will be better though – I hope they do good things with some of my favourite Spidey villains like Mysterio, Sandman and The Scorpion. I wonder if they’ll include Dr. Octopus, seeing as he is in the upcoming movie sequel (and played by one of my favourite actors, Alfred Molina).

Come One Come All
What’s the project name? Don’t know yet. C:> (also known as “c prompt”) is a heavy contender right now. I already know what the shirts are going to look like. Who’s in the project? Chris Slater (who suggested C:>) says he can play guitar and mandolin. Norm is in, for trombone and drums I assume. I hope we can find someone for keyboards – I asked Stephane but he told me to begone from his sight, as did my roommate when I asked him if he wanted to get in on some electronica/DJing action. Ang Hold and Kate are potential singers. Updates as they come.

In related news, CD prices may be going down. Universal will institute a $14.98 maximum suggested list price on virtually all of its top line CDs and a $9.99 price tag for developing new artists, and will also start offering music downloads in Canada in October from 99 cents a song and $9.99 per album.

The REO 3000 Overdrive Experience, Jr

I want to start up a musical side project – one that involves people who live in the same town as me, or at least have the wherewithal to come in to write, practice and record once a week or so. The music would be less aggressive than The Thickets (am I getting old? “Maturing?”). There should be guitar, drums, piano/keyboards, trombone, bagpipes, violins, anything and everything – especially a dose of that newfangled electronica shit. Is there an instrument you can buy for that? HOW DO THEY DO IT? I wouldn’t even have to sing on all the songs. I would like it to be a collective effort, although everyone should have veto power I think. Especially me. If you’re familiar with Desert Sessions you will know what I’m talking about.

What would the project name be? I always thought that Slave Tusk would be a good band name, but it would be too heavily metally sounding for what I have in mind. Genghis Tron would be a good except everyone would think we’re electronica. Recently I thought Aurumvorax, which is a monster from the Monster Manual II, would work, even though the monster itself is unbelievably lame.

Warren joked that if The Thickets ever broke up, we could reform as The Second Level Wizards. My favourite of Josh’s is Oignons de Geurre.

Here are some real band names to get the creative juices flowing:
Beats the Hell Out of Me
The Bendy Monsters
Boba Fett Youth
Buddy Wasisname and the Other Fellas
Cancer Bunny
Crocheted Doughnut Ring
The Dancing French Liberals of 1848
Demon Barf
Don Knotts Overdrive
Dreaded Apparatus
Five Fat Guys Who Rock
Frogs Don’t Cry
Hell Camino
Heywood Trout Festival
Hornets Attack Victor Mature
JFKFC
Joan of Arkansas
Lawnsmell
Mao Tse Helen
Mate/Spawn/Kill
The Negro Problem (not something I’d name my band)
New Squids on the Dock
Not Drowning, Waving
Out Vile Jelly
Pee Shy
Question Mark & the Mysterians
Sandy Duncan’s Eye
Science Diet
Shot Down In Ecuador, Jr.
*.fat [pronounced STAR DOT FAT]
Thank God We’re Immortal
Thinking Fellers Union Local 282
Waffles Against AIDS [Vafler mot AIDS]
Weird Skull Control (not sure why I like this, but I do)

One thing I’ve thought about creating a band name, is going about it the same way that they go about making up car names (like Acura, Ciera, etc). The advantage of making up an entirely new word for your band is that when you plug it into google, you can always find what you’re looking for right away. So, if I was starting a band, and I wanted to call it Cake, that would be bad because all these recipes would come up (if there weren’t already a popular band called Cake, that is). I would lean towards a word with a lot of X’s, G’s, and K’s.

Xygologyx?

Now you suggest a band name!

I did it – I figured out how to post pics. It’s all in the “img src”. Now that I have figured it out – scroll down to see more orbevator pics.

OK I hesitate to even post this on my blog because it’s such a masturbatoren review, but it’s the only review of Graveyard that I know of. http://www.unfilmable.com/Graveyard_review.html

Now let’s see if I can post a pic here….

Stewey took this fun-tastic pic of me while we were shooting reference photos for some D&D drawings. Pretty fuckin’ funny.

Meanwhile…I’m thinking of having my birthday auction on Friday the 26th. What do you think?

The Summer of 2003.

Yesterday afternoon I went downtown to do some voice recording for Rockstar Vancouver. Then I came back and when I did, I got a call from Yvonne. We decided to go and see American Splendor, which, my friends, is fantastic. After that we had dinner at the Sugar Refinery where there was a fellow sleeping and the waiter seemed unusually furtive, but in a laid-back kind of way. To Yvonne’s new amazing house we went, where I helped her arrange her humongous room and tried rather unsuccessfully to be helpful while she and her roommates organized the kitchen. We ended up having a sleepover since I pretty much missed the last bus, but – and I’m going to blame the hot chocolate for this – I had the worst case of insomnia I’ve had in a long time. When I did sleep I had annoying dreams. So we spent the first half of today tooling around, wasting time, eating this, drinking that, poking around Zulu’s, second hand clothing stores and stationary stores. By the end of it, having spent an astonishing 21.5 hours together, we finally reluctantly decided to go our separate ways, Yvonne having a project for her school program to work on, and I having to prepare for tonight’s game of D&D.

It occurred to me, today, that summer will soon be over. Never before in my adult life have I so taken advantage of the good weather that BC offers than this summer. I wonder, given this precedent, what autumn will be like. What, indeed, the rest of my life will be like. Was it just a phase? I have a feeling that for the rest of my life I am going to look back on this summer with very fond memories.

On Friday night I went to see Eddie Izzard at the Vogue Theater and it was great. He started out with some Fantastic Four jokes and they resurfaced throughout the night. Elvis Costello was there, and though I wouldn’t know her to see her, Diana Krall was apparently there too. Eddie, for those of you who don’t know, is a British transvestite stand-up comic. A good chunk of his material is historical jokes (“we stole countries with the cunning use of flags”) and on Friday he was even wearing fake boobs, which he puts over his ears on airplanes to block out crying babies.

After the show, Chris, Darcey and I went to some sushi place on Granville, and then we went back to Chris’ work where participated in the hot new activity that is going to replace rollerblading (I can only hope) – the orbevator!!! Fun for the whole family – except for Uncle Steve.

IN THE NEWS: The Bush Administration issued a new environmental rule that will allow more than 17,000 power plants, refineries, mills, and chemical factories to upgrade their facilities without installing up-to-date antipollution technology, even in cases where the renovation will result in additional pollution. Jerk.

We played our rock show at the Railway. Unfortunately there was a mix up as to what time we were starting – we had to start an hour early than I had been telling people – otherwise it was very good. We played some songs we haven’t played in a long time (Big Robot Dinosaur, Jimmy the Squid). The kids loved us. Somebody came up from Colorado to see us. There was moshing. We were asked to sign autographs. I sold several CDs. Yeah…it was a good show. Apart from the usual costuming shenanigans I wore 3-D glasses and a purple clown wig. We gave out Pez brand candy flavoured popcorn (grape, lemon, orange flavours) to people who answered trivia questions. Fun fun stuff. The stage was too small for 6 people. Several times we waded into the crowd with instruments and microphones. We may play again on Hallowe’en. I am very tired now. I go to sleep. Pray for me. Goodnight.

Shawna thought I was 26.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!
She is moving back to Victoria in 3 weeks.
One less woman (and excellent company) in our D&D group. We had bubble tea. Lychee for her and mango for me.

Today we had band practice. It went well. I didn’t have to drive out to Chilliwack for a change (and in fact, I couldn’t – Stephane’s car is in…I don’t even know. “The East.”) We practiced at Vancouver Rock Space, which Jordan wished we could live in. We got a discount because I signed up to some music site called…okay that’s too boring to even finish the sentence. Anyway we practiced Big Robot Dinosaur and Jimmy the Squid so look out for those two hot numbers on Sunday.

I’m quite excited about seeing Eddie Izzard tomorrow (well today I guess now. It’s 2:33. Time for sleep with Kodos.)

Eat shit and die,
I mean, I love you….

“Mighty Rabbit Orbs!” comes the cry!

Having…trouble…keeping…eyes…open….
Tomorrow…band…practice…

and then…
AND THEN…
A N D T H E N . . .
On Friday I see Eddie Izzard!

Now stop reading and go look at Mars.

I love you.