Month: October 2008

DSCF9079, originally uploaded by palm0014.

Well, Hallowe’en did a 180 degree turn for me as I headed home on Friday night, I stopped in to the pharmacy to pick up some candy.  Reese’s Peanut Butter cups baby!  That’s right, if I was going to have some chocolate around, it’s gotta be those! 

I then picked up some comic books and headed to the house where I flipped the front lightbulb on to indicate I was open for business and settled in with a comic in hand and waiting for the munchkins to show up at the door.  Rob ended up calling me and I headed over there for a bit to give Ryley his birthday gift and see the kids in their outfits.  Jenna is walking around now and she was in a Red Riding Hood outfit which was cute.  I thought it was especially hilarious how she was grabbing the bags of chips and crushing them.  I would love to see the kids face who received that one in their bag of treats!  Ryley also had a cool skeleton costume which had blood going over the chest when you squeezed the ball.  Gruesome!

I hung out there for a bit and headed back home for 6PM.  In the end, I think I received 30+ kids at the door and I had bought 100 candies.  Oh well.  I will have to remember to not buy as much next year.  I thought it was interesting to see the French kids say ‘Trick or Treat’ but then would say ‘Merci’.  What’s ‘Trick or Treat’ in French?  Clearly it’s not common to use!

Afterwards I headed out to Vero’s to wait for her to come back from audition (which I heard didn’t go too well) and then we headed out to Minglewood’s in full costume.  The mummy costume only needed a few touchups of glue to keep in check.  Vero tried calling her cousin and friend to see if they were there yet but there was no answer so we decided to chance it.

While waiting in line to go upstairs at Minglewoods’, Vero’s friend came stumbling out of the bar and didn’t even recognize Vero.  Clearly she was having a good time but unfortunately for us she had to leave at that point because she was beyond the point of return.  We decided to stay there along with Chantelle and Mike showed up later for some fun.  We also found out that Vero’s cousin was still at her party which sucked because I think we would have wished to go there instead but they had indicated that everyone was going to leave the party and go to the bar.  Ah well.  In the end, we had a great time and there were some great costumes out.  I was chatting with some guy who was dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow and he said it cost him 80 dollars to rent it and it didn’t even come with pants!  I had a good chuckle when thinking my costume probably cost under $15.

The pain in the ass about this bar is that there is only one toilet on the upper floor and if you wished to use the washrooms downstairs you would have to wait in line to go back up!  So I was stuck for a good twenty minutes each time I wanted to go use the one toilet upstairs.  I don’t understand why people bother going to these bars and the next time someone suggests going there, I’ll throw out a few other suggestions in the thoughts of saving my bladder.

So in the end of it all, yes, I did not end up with any decorations up, but at least I fulfilled the Hallowe’en duty of handing out candy to the kids and dressing up for the event.  So it wasn’t a total loss! 

I must admit that I’m regretting a few things coming into work for Hallowe’en this year.  I didn’t bother dressing up and I haven’t been in the spirit for the past few weeks.  I think the midterm crunch was my focus which sucks.  Now I realize I don’t even have a pumpkin outside my house!  At the very least, I will be going out tonight in a mummy costume which turned out pretty good.

Last night was fun.  My pop culture midterm went well (thanks to the Prof showing an example of an old midterm.  I definitely would have failed without it!) and I received my animation midterm mark and got 93%.  Clearly, I am a genius.  To celebrate my temporary freedom from midterms, I nabbed a beer when I got home and I had one waiting for Mike when he woke up from his nap.  By the time he ended up waking up a few hours later (that’s quite a nap!) I was good to go and called up Vero to come over and go to The Works.  The Works turned out to be a great time as I ordered the Jamaican Jerk burger and it by far one of the better burgers I’ve tasted there.  It had the right amount of spice!

Last year at Hallowe’en, Vero, Mike and I dropped by Rob’s place and Mike and I were dressed as zombies.

Last night I was chatting with his son Ryley and he says that all the kids that were at the party were asking if he rented the zombies for the party last year!  Ha ha.  I had a good chuckle.  I asked him what he said and he said no, but for one kid he said yes and it cost 80 bucks.  I told him that this is not true and that a zombie only needs pizza and beer to awaken from the dead so he then asked his Dad if they could go to the cemetary to try it out.

Classic.

On Saturday morning, Vero and I headed to Sears for their sale as I needed a few sweaters.  I only found a few good items and will have to seek out sweaters elsewhere.  The trip to the mall was needed and I swear we can see the Christmas rush already.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I saw Annie’s sister at the mall so that makes me wonder if they are in town to do a little Christmas shopping before it gets a little crazy.

It was pouring rain the entire day which put a damper on everything we did.  We managed to pick up everything we needed for the night’s festivities…Duncan’s Hallowe’en Party!  We threw a white sheet into a bucket of tea bags to stain so my mummy costume would look a little old.  It came out decent.  My costume actually took a lot more work than we anticipated.  I started out with long johns and a white shirt and then we ripped the sheet into strips and started to tie them to my body.  Unfortunately, one sheet doesn’t seem to cover my entire body easily so we had to economize.  I must admit it was definitely looking a little lackluster and I had a sad look on my face (like the kid in the pink bunny outfit in The Christmas Story) and Vero took a photo of that.  We then started from scratch and took out the glue gun and started gluing the pieces onto the outfit.  It ended up being a lot better and I was impressed with the work Mike and Vero did to the costume.  Mental note – get another sheet if I am to attempt this in the future!

We then walked over to the bowling lanes where Vero’s friend Chantelle was celebrating her birthday.  Let’s keep in mind that it’s a week before Hallowe’en and I am a mummy, Mike is a doctor and Vero is Pippi Longstockings.  We definitely got some good looks from people and it was quite hilarious to realize that Mike and I were walking around in white outfits inside a bowling lane with black lights!  We definitely stood out.

After hanging out at the bowling lane, we picked up Trish who was dressed as Red Riding Hood who killed the Big Bad Wolf (an excellent wolf head was in her basket!) and headed to Duncan’s.  The party was in full swing by the time we got there.  We popped in the Dawn of the Dead remake that I purchased that afternoon and munched on some good Hallowe’en treats and chatted with everyone.  It was a really great time and I especially like how a good portion of people ended up in the basement chatting it up.  Let it also be noted that Kristen steamrolled me and my beer ended up becoming a victim as well.  Thanks to Duncan and Kristen for putting on a great party!

I was glad to get out of the mummy costume finally but I know that it will come back in a week’s time when I put the costume on one more time for another party.  We’ll see if I can find another sheet in the meantime.

On Friday evening, Vero and I had planned to go out to Gatineau to see Jonathan Painchaud in concert.  Here’s a little background on Jonathan Painchaud…one morning while driving to work (which I rarely do), I had it on the French radio station and heard this really catchy tune and all I knew about the song was that the chorus said “Pousse, pousse” (push, push).  So I found the radio station’s website and looked back in their song history and sure enough, there was this song by a gent name Jonathan Painchaud.

With this song in my head, the next time I went to HMV, I saw that it was his new album so I decided to buy my first French album.  I had no idea what to expect and I cringed at the fact that this could end up being a dud, but I figured I had nothing to lose.  Popping the album into the car stereo, it starts with good acoustic strumming and a nice electric complementing it.

The album is great.  REALLY great.  I really enjoy it.  It may be the sound I’m hunting for.  A sort of acoustic, electric hybrid.

I then found out that this artist was the singer for a band called Okoumé who are supposedly really popular in the Francophone circles.  I have yet to hear any of their stuff.

Anyhow, Eric tipped me off to the fact that he was going to play in Gatineau soon enough so Vero and I decided to go out into the deep woods of Gatineau (har har) and see what it was all about.

Gatineau was a different world indeed.  I rarely head out that way so we had to get directions to this place called Loft 455.  Turns out that this place is a nightclub.  Strange point #1.  We aren’t talking about a concert hall/nightclub.  We are talking about I can tell there will be cougars out soon enough on a Friday night kind of nightclub.  In fact, after we walked in and headed to the bar, this one girl (who was literally as short as Gimli the dwarf) walked towards me and kind of moved her body in such a way that I didn’t really notice what the heck she was doing but I knew she was in my way so I sidestepped her.  Vero also wondered if the girl was trying to sway me over with her womanly charms.  Either way, the call of beer is stronger than any woman’s movement of the body!  Unfortunately, they only had Labatt products so I nabbed a Blue (or a Bleue in this case).

So we stood there waiting in a crowd of less than 50 people for the band to show up on stage.  It was really strange.  The band did come out and he explained things would go a little differently tonight and he would tell stories about some of the songs.  Pretty cool!  He said he was from “Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine
” which is close to Gaspé from what I could tell.  Before each new song he told a grand story about what it was about. Sometime the stories lasted a good five minutes and he was quite interactive with the crowd.  I felt like I was at a showing of VH1 Storytellers!  I thought it was great.  Jonathan was playing his acoustic guitar and he had an amazing electric guitarist (like…Pete Townsend amazing) and the bassist looked a little goofy.  😉  There were quite a few tunes off the new album and not a whole lot from his other albums which was fine by me as I had no idea what they were.  From what I heard, I enjoyed though so I will have to hunt out some old albums.  Actually, I couldn’t even purchase any old albums at the concert!  I thought that would have been the place!

After 45 minutes of playing they said they would take a short break.  Vero and I retired to the bar and chatted for awhile.  It was around this time that I realized how cheap the beer was in Gatineau…it was $3.50 a bottle!  Bonus!  I also made a trek to the washroom which was hilarious as there were no urinals, there was only this stone wall with water flowing down into a trough.  This guy looked and me and made some comment that I didn’t quite catch but I just mumbled “Oui, oui.” catching his drift.

The band came back out 45 minutes later (what the heck?!  Strange point #2) and then played until midnight (they originally started at 10PM).  They did put on a rocking show in the last set and they didn’t take too much time to tell stories in between songs.  They also threw out a great cover of Blister in the Sun and a Pink Floyd tune (can’t remember the name of it right now…off The Wall) which is always good to hear.  Midnight hit and they bid us adieu.

Overall, the concert was amazingly intimate and rocking at the same time.  I then started wondering if this is considered a ‘typical’ Quebec concert.  Typically any other concert I have ever been to usually consists of an opening band, an intermission and then a couple of hours of rocking.  At the very least, I have never seen a band take a 45 minute break unless we are talking about a cover band at the Heart and Crown who perform three sets during the night.  At one point I thought this is what would have happened but no, they gave us two sets.

So I found that different.  I am wondering if this is common for a Francophone artist who probably tours a lot of regular bars along the coast and sometimes heads into Northern Ontario?  Perhaps this is the life of a folk-rock singer from Quebec.  Either way, it wasn’t a bad thing, just different.

After the concert, Vero and I headed home and we stopped by the Schwarma Palace for a bite to eat before heading home.  Thanks to Eric for pointing out that he was in town and thanks to Vero for picking up the tab to see Mr. Painchaud.  I really enjoyed the concert and I’m glad I went.  I would like to say that my French language ability is operating at 95%.  5% is lost to the random swear words he was using.  😉

Ok, honestly, this film is mint.  It will be a film that I never tire of, much like FUBAR.  I have been looking for it on DVD but have been unable to acquire it so I finally downloaded it (which was not an easy feat as it’s fairly obscure).

This film follows the life of Jim Joblowski who morphs into this folk singing superstar back in the early 70s and takes a new persona on: Guy Terrifico.  The film is mockumentary style talking about the life of Terrifico.  The interviews are amazing…they have so many old time country legends in there…Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard, Waylan Jennings…it even has some great Canadian cameos…George Strombo, Blue Rodeo…it’s all great.  They offer their views and praise for the great Guy Terrifico.  It’s hilarious.

So the film follows the rise of Guy Terrifico, some guy who becomes this superstar of a folk singer without even having released an album yet.  He’s just notorious for the rock lifestyle and holding great parties.  But he’s really good at the music and everyone praises him for it.  It follows his rise through stardom and has some hilarious moments like how a midget becomes part of his entourage, or how he is prone to being clumsy.

I have now realized that I can’t even express in words how great this film is.  It’s just one of those films that can constantly be on TV and I will tune in every time to watch.

I had a good laugh at this quote concerning the Decemberists (a band I know nothing about):

And then later, when he was playing that solo on “A Perfect Crime,” which literally consists of 15 notes, he gets down on the floor and starts shredding like he had to replace Marvin Berry at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance.

I received an update to my house insurance the other week and I realized I should look into updating the insurance to take into account some high-end items I own, namely my musical instruments and my comic book collection.

In the end, it turns out that through my insurance, as long as my musical instruments are not being used for professional purposes, then there is no limit.  I found that odd considering I could own a lot of vintage guitars and not play professionally.  But who am I to question the insurance companies?  😉

As for the comic books, that’s a different matter.  They will only cover them up to $3000 unless I get them professionally appraised and then they can talk about increasing premiums to cover them.  This is a tough call on my part.  Last night I was logging some new comics and realized I own 2700+ books.  Now, I can definitely say that the majority of them are from the 90s – onwards which I’m assuming can be found for $1 a piece if I really looked hard enough.  But if I didn’t look hard and simply walked into a comic book store, they would definitely be at least $3 for some of the heavy hitters like Spidey and X-Men for example.  So how does insurance work?  Do I look at it from the angle of what it would generally cost to replace an issue (hence, $3 a pop which would come out to around $8000, or do I go the other route and think that with time, I could probably find some great deals and nab them for $1 a piece?

So now my question about appraisers come into play.  How do they appraise something?  Do they look at price guides and that sort of thing to determine what the general price is at this moment in time?  Or do they think about the real logistics of hunting down a deal?

I guess it comes down to wondering if an appraiser will be worth it considering a) It will cost me money and b) It will most likely increase my premiums.

Thoughts?

Also, here’s a note to all of you…think about any extraordinary items that you want covered on your insurance.  I would hate to see that vintage record collection burn to dust.

Lifehacker pointed me towards an amazing article on swapping out the 80GB hard drive in the Macbook for a super-duper sized 500GB!

This will be very handy for editing videos as the external hard drive chugs along while if it were an internal drive I was working from, there would be no problems.

Here’s the article.

As I grow older, the need to have certain items the day it comes out is waning.  Case in point, Casino Royale.  After seeing this in the film, I knew I had to add it to my James Bond film collection.  However, when it was first released on DVD a few years ago, it definitely didn’t have very many special features and if you follow trends, newer, better versions end up coming out near the release of a sequel.  Hence, I played the waiting game.

The wait paid off.  I picked up the collector’s edition of Casino Royale for $22 last night at Future Shop.  There’s documentaries galore on this set and I’m excited to watch them.  I bought the James Bond collection a few years back and have made it a habit of watching a film and then watching all the documentaries.  They are really well done and I enjoy them thoroughly.

The best part about the purchase is that there is a coupon to see Quantum of Solace in theatres (the new Bond film) up to a maximum of $10.50.  This is a steal of a deal.  So really, I paid for my ticket to see the film and then I spent an additional $11.50 for a copy of Casino Royale.  No complaints from this guy.  I’m sure I may have a little trouble entering the theatre with this coupon so I’ll head straight to the customer service desk when I do end up seeing the film (which should be sometime after Maren returns from Belgium.  Ah, Belgium, home of Andalouse sauce.  Drool.)

I also picked up the new Dears album which is great.  I downloaded a leaked copy a few weeks ago considering it wasn’t on the shelves yet.  I figured it was time to support this band so I went ahead and picked up a copy.  It’s a decent album.  Something tells me that they will never have another album like No Cities Left, but so be it.

After the adventure at Future Shop, I meandered around Chapter’s for awhile looking at this vampire book series that Holly was raving about but then I decided not to pick up the book right away.  Can I just point out that I am quite silly when it comes to money.  I look at the price of the book ($12) and think “Mmm…maybe I can find a used copy.”  Then I walk over to East Side Mario’s to wait for everyone and proceed to have two beer at the bar which cost me $13.  Who’s the fool in this situation?  Clearly I need to relate the purchase of material objects with the amount of beer it’s worth.

I did end up waiting at the bar for quite some time last night.  I showed up there around 6:20 and had some time to kill until 7PM when everyone was supposed to show up.  In the end, Vero was the first to arrive and she strolled in around 7:10.  I thought the plans had chaged on me at one point!  Vero and I sat at the bar and the bartender was super nice and even gave us some free bruschetta while we waited.  He was recipient of the larger than normal tip from this guy.

Melanie showed up around 7:30 and we got a table and Vero and Simon showed up a little while later.  We were meeting to celebrate Melanie’s 24th birthday.  Gifts and laughs were exchanged and I had a good sausage and pepper penne.  I knew our plans were to head to Simon’s hockey game afterward but once I found out it was just a game of pick-up hockey in some arena somewhere, I politely let the girls go ahead without me and I headed home.  I don’t think I would have minded going to a hockey game where they sell peanuts and beer but I felt sitting and watching a bunch of guys play hockey in an empty rink was a little too much for me that night.  Besides, I’m sure the girls had a lot more fun without me there!