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Review: Matt’s Mitts

Matt picked up a new pair of leather mitts while in Montreal at Simon’s. This was before he got told he wasn’t supposed to take pictures within the store.

Query: That’s the second time that day that he was told ‘No pictures tabernac!’. What’s up with that? Are they scared of us stealing fashion secrets. Pssst…you have a flyer! We can see your clothing outside your store!

Anyhow, Matt left these mitts in my car and so I thought I would let you all know how they fare in certain scenarios.

Scenario #1: Cold Weather Testing
Well, I put them on and walked outside for awhile. My fingers did not get cold at all. Two thumbs up (literally. They are mitts!). However, to give the ultimate test I went down the street to pick up some liquid nitrogen. I dipped these bad boys in and am happy to say that my fingers survived the ordeal.

Scenario #2: Hot Weather Testing
Chances are, you don’t wear your mitts outside in hot weather. But you never know. So I went ahead and fired up the BBQ to put a steak on and decided to use the mitts to flip the steak. My only beef with the mitts is that licking the BBQ sauce off your fingers doesn’t really taste that great when your fingers are leather. Other than a few grill marks on the mitts, I would say that the gloves protected my hands, but they did become very hot and sweaty. One (mitt) thumb up for that test.

Scenario #3: Cleaning up Dog Poop.
What can I say? I didn’t get any on my fingers. The mitts did their job.

There you have it. Matt’s mitts are excellent and I’m sure he will be happy with them as soon as he picks them up.

Categories
Concert Reviews

Review: Nine Inch Nails in Montreal

  • Pinion
  • Love is not enough
  • You know what you are?
  • Terrible Lie
  • The Line Begins to blur
  • March of the Pigs
  • Something I can never have
  • The Frail
  • The Wretched
  • Closer
  • BURN
  • Gave up
  • Eraser
  • Right where it belongs
  • Beside you in time
  • With Teeth
  • Wish
  • Only
  • Even Deeper
  • Dead Souls
  • Suck
  • Hurt
  • The hand that feeds
  • Head like a hole

Went down to Montreal on Friday with Matt, Trish and Jennie. Shopped around for a bit…very cold that day in Montreal. We were caught inside this frigid wind tunnel. Ended up at Reuben’s for a nice Reuben sandwich which everyone enjoyed. One day I’m going to have to dig into the pound of smoked meat.

Went to the Bell Centre and managed to walk right up to the doors cutting past a 1/2 hour wait in line. Some people are stupid. Just go through the OTHER doors with the security guard waiting there.

Checked out Death From Above 1979 who were decent. May have to check out the rest of their stuff.

Queens of the Stone Age…what can I say about this band? I have SO many friends who are into this band. I can’t say they were a bad act…I enjoyed them. But would I buy an album? Probably not. Just doesn’t hook me in. Highlight of the night was when they finished off with No One Knows and messed up in the second verse, but instead of stopping right there, they cut into a 10 minute long jam session, then bring it back to the song. Brilliant. That’s a good live band for you right there.

NIN showed up on stage around 9:45. They had a semi-transparent curtain in front of them which managed to become the means of some great lighting effects. I’ve been telling people that NIN is one of those bands that give a visual experience as well as an audio experience. They had a great backdrop which played along with the With Teeth artwork nicely. My favourite lighting effect was when they had a line spreading across the backdrop and everytime it hit upon one of the solid blocks, the block became red. Very hard to explain in words, but think of how a virus works. As soon as the virus hits you, it spreads, and then continues onto the next victim.

I also enjoyed when the curtain came back down and they played a series of movies while the band played on. Movie highlights included monkeys attacking each other and George Dubyah ballroom dancing. At one point, the movie changed so it looked like NIN was playing behind a waterfall…then Trent swings his mic stand towards the curtain and the video appears to smash into pieces. Brilliant. I do hope there will be another live DVD for this tour. There HAS to be.

My highlight of the night was hearing Burn…one of my fave tunes and I don’t think it’s ever been played live (until this tour). I was freaking out.

Thanks to Christelle who hooked me up with an audio recording of the show. Awesome. I really enjoy her blog and what she does for her concert reviews. It gives me an idea of what to do with mine.

On a random other note, I’ve started hanging up pictures around the house and I started to frame up concert reviews from newspapers along with the ticket stub. I think it looks sharp and I like it better than hanging out inside my scrap book. I now have to search the world (aka Ontario) for newspaper clippings for the past 10 years. Good luck with that buddy. Hey, if any of you out there actually keep newspapers like the Toronto Star or the Ottawa Citizen let me know!

nowblissfullyenteringmyears: The Frail [Live in Montreal – 2005-11-11] – NIN, thanks to Christelle.

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Us vs. Sony BMG

Sony BMG is going down.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5944643.html

Also, Mel has a blog now. Welcome to cyberscape. Enjoy your stay.

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MisctHOughts

Live 8 DVD: Live 8 4 Disc Set holding virtually all the Philly and London concerts, interspersed with other highlights (like Neil Young!). They also have separate DVDs for the other countries like Canada. Yay! What’s my beef with this? You would think that if they are splurging to have an entire DVD dedicated to Canada, they would include the whole concert. Sam Roberts and Our Lady Peace (amongst others) get cut down to one song out of three that they played. I’m almost willing to just download the TV broadcast off the Internet.

Amazon Wish List: This year, I’m thinking of setting up a Wish List on Amazon.ca for Christmas. I’m thinking that 90% of the things I would want can be found on Amazon, and they offer decent prices. Books, CDs, DVDs, video games…pretty well whatever I want for the holidays. I recommend it to all of you!

Alternative Work Arrangements: I’m going to start working extra hours so that I can get every second Friday off. If any of you are able to do this at your workplace, I suggest it! I may grow tired of working 50 extra minutes a day, but the thought of an entire Friday off will help me get through it!

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Spare some Change


Last night after class I was standing at the bus stop freezing my ass off. I was listening to some tunes and didn’t really catch what was going on when a gentleman was addressing the crowd. I caught the end of his speech of being from Toronto and needing money to stay at the shelter. Heck, it’s only spare change, I’ll give him some…

My only beef with this gentleman is that when he walking across the street to ask some others for change, he thanked those who passed along some cash, but then he said “And thanks to all the others.” in a sarcastic fashion.

He also continued his sarcastic comments on how he appreciated how the people who didn’t give him any money helped him out SO much this night.

<Start Palmer’s Rant right here> No one in the world has the right to demand anything. If you need help, thank those who help you and be thankful. Don’t be spiteful. I wanted to call out to him and ask for my money back because no one deserves to feel bad about a choice they’ve made. Read that again: No one deserves to feel bad about a choice THEY’VE made.<end Palmer’s Rant right here>

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Cadavers Abound!

Robyn spied this on the wall at Kit Kat which was hilarious. Turns out that it is a play found here.

Who would have thought?

It was great seeing Ryan and Robyn in Toronto on Sunday. We met up to to the Ontario Science Museum for the Body Worlds 2 exhibit. The exibit has been on display in Europe for quite some time as the person responsible for the exhibit hails from Germany. Gunther von Hagens plasticizes dead things. There were literally dead people who had their skin removed so that we can see how their bones/muscles/ligaments fit together. They were placed into a variety of positions such as a ballerina, a woman doing yoga, a baseball player. The skateboarder was cool actually. They even sliced up people so you can see how all the parts of the body are put together. VERY COOL exhibit and I would recommend it to anyone who can handle a good dead body. To be honest, I didn’t feel like they were cadavers as they appeared to be mannequins.

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My Favourite Place in Toronto

New York Subway.

Miguel introduced me to the best gourmet burrito in the world. I introduced Vero and even though hers was too spicy, she enjoyed it.

I can still taste the goodness in my mouth.

If you are on Queen Street West, you MUST go try a satay lamb burrito. For those who don’t like the thought of eating baby lambs, try the chicken or the beef!

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Reviews

Review: Medieval Times

What can I say about Medieval Times? It was great!

You eat a chicken dinner with your hands, watch a show of horses running around an arena with knights battling each other. What more can you ask for?

Each section is assigned a knight to cheer for (we cheered for Louis du Rouge – the Red Knight) who didn’t fare too well, but we thought had the greatest potential of becoming the greatest knight there ever was.

They had full out jousting along with knights somersaulting off of their horses and taking their swords to each other’s throats. Excellent!

All in all, I thought $75 would be too much to pay for something like this, but I was not disappointed. Louis even threw Vero a rose! Awww.

Click on the photo above to take a look at the rest of the photostream.

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Who wants to make a movie with me?

“There is no director attached to the project, nor have any cast members been announced. The sequel has already earned over $60 million in two weeks and cost only $4 million to make.” – Dark Horizons regarding Saw III

Holy crap. We need James in here stat to do some calculations as to what % increase that is.

If I were to create something, I would be happy with doubling my money. This is crazy. I don’t usually follow how much movies cost vs. how much they make.

Just goes to show that if you have a good concept that is cheap (Saw…takes place in virtually one room. Maybe a few scenes here and there) it will pay off in spades.

Emphasis on good concept and not some unoriginal piece of junk like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2.

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Reviews

Review: MCR and Matt Mays

Saturday morning, haul my ass out of bed and get going to Toronto for the weekend.

Picked up a few albums on the way there however to tide myself over on a music fix.

My Chemical Romance: Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge – As you know, I downloaded this a few weeks ago as per Mike’s suggestion and felt it was worthy of a purchase. If you know me, you’ll know I’m not into downloading from an artist. Hey, let’s be honest, I’ve done it without purchasing. But I try not to. I like the system of how I can listen to an album and decide if it’s worthy of my cash.

Matt Mays & El Torpedo – What can I say about these guys? Saw them open for Sam Roberts last year and they rocked. Bought his album that night and frankly, it blew. It wasn’t bad persay, but it was more of country-rock like Neil Young and not the rocking show that I saw that night. So when their new album came out, I was hesistant. But then I kept hearing some great singles. Then I realized that his cohorts in crime (El Torpedo) came on board AFTER his first album which he recorded on his own. Great! This must mean that the second album will have some more rock than country. Upon first listen…meh. I’ll have to give it another try as it was more background music to a car trip than a real listen. But…I noted a lack of rock throughout the entire album.

Car ride to Toronto was great. Vero turns out to be a good traveller…you never know if someone might up being super annoying and trying to change the music all the time.

Dropped into the aunt’s place where I had a nice surprise of seeing Rick and Dwayne since it was Rick’s birthday. Unfortunate that I did not know that beforehand or I would have passed on Medieval Times. They are trying to convince me to come down next weekend for a little gettogether (read: party till I bleed) but we’ll see. Two essays are calling my name, but I’m making an honest effort to get them done so that I can go down to Toronto again. I wasn’t originally going to, but the itch is within me after seeing them for a short time.

And off we went to Medieval Times…alas, it’s getting late. I’ll write more tomorrow.