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  • Review: Rene Levesque Mini-Series

    Last night I caught most of the Rene Levesque mini-series on CBC. I’m going to assume it’s a rerun as it’s the middle of the summer, but who knows?

    I feel that I’ve become more interested in Canadian history in my later years and I enjoy it when a good mini-series comes out on the CBC to pique my curiosity – like Trudeau, or the documentary on the October Crisis.

    Anyhow, the Rene Levesque mini-series started off well and I’m interested in seeing the other two parts. It shows how Mr. Levesque wins the election in his riding against L’Union Nationaliste and all the dirty tricks the other side tried to pull along the way. In the end, he not only won in his riding, but the Quebec Liberal Party wins the right to govern the province and Rene finds himself as a Minister. Great day eh?

    I enjoy the actors although…I must admit I find it strange watching what we all know should be a French show, but they have the actors speaking in English with a French accent. Now, I haven’t done any research so maybe they are all actually French actors to begin with, hence the French accent. But I think I would have rather have it as a French mini-series with subtitles to be true to the situation.

    However, I guess that doesn’t make for a good film either. Imagine all the the movies you’ve seen which should have been in German but are mysteriously in English. 😉

    Anyhow, I recommend watching this if you are remotely interested in Rene Levesque’s rise to power, or Canadian history in general.

  • Bachelor Party Woes


    I’m heading to Jason’s bachelor party this weekend which seems like it will be a good time. I guess I can’t go into details right now as he may actually be reading this and doesn’t know what’s going on.

    Thinking about bachelor parties, it reminded me of this excellent bachelor party story that I think Rob told me. Or someone near Paisley, Ontario.

    So the story goes that a bunch of guys get onto a bus from Paisley (or around there) and have a good time while heading down to London Ontario for the night.

    After a night of debauchery and fun, everyone is in fine form when they load back onto the bus and head home continuing the party.

    When they arrive at the destination point (some parking lot of sorts), the wife-to-be is there to greet her drunken fiancée after the bachelor party.

    Unfortunately, everyone is so drunk that they never realized that the guy never made it onto the bus!

    Turns out that the cops threw him in the slammer for the night (at this point, my memory evades me and I don’t know for what reasons) and the next day he has to get a cab from London to Paisley which would be a good 200 kms at least.

    I always laugh when I hear that story. I am now wondering if that actually happened or if it’s an urban legend.

    Oh, here’s another great story I heard from Mike…actually, if you have a good bachelor party story, share it in the comments section!

    So, this guy’s bachelor party occurs fairly close to his wedding day…maybe even the night before. As all good bachelor parties work, the groom is beyond comprehension of reality. While in this drunken state, his buddy’s get a cast put over his entire leg.

    When he awakes the next morning, his buddies tell him that he fell and broke his leg and had to get a cast on his entire leg. This, of course, sucks as he has to get in a tuxedo and go to his own wedding with a broken leg.

    Now, I am a fan of the practical joke (what makes it practical anyhow?) and these guys went all out. They let the guy go through his wedding with the thing on AND they let him go on his honeymoon with it on! In fact, according to Mike, I don’t think the guy even knows that it was never broken TO THIS DAY.

    Incroyable.

    This post is dedicated to Jason, the bachelor for one week longer. Who knows what will happen to him this weekend? (evil laugh)

  • Stepping Onto a Floor Creates Electricity?

    http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/crowdfarm-0725.html

    MIT Rules. This article is an interesting read about how two students developed a model to capture energy expended from people walking, or sitting on a stool.

    The concept is that in large public spaces where there are hundreds of people walking through it (like a shopping mall), the floor would depress with each step which would somehow generate electricity to power the building. Fascinating.

    They also go into other uses, like how it could measure the amount of energy of the crowd at a rock concert, depending on how much shuffling around there is on the floor. I can just imagine it being the equivalent to the audio meter you see where people yell as loud as they can and the meter rises. Do those things even work? Or is there just someone who brings up it slowly and on the final yell he cranks it?

    Give it a read. Very interesting.

    iplaying: Make this Go on Forever – Snow Patrol (Eyes Open)

  • Robert Plant Meets Chuck Berry

    I had a random dream last night…

    So I’m in Montreal for some reason and in a pawn shop. Upon walking out, I look to my left and there is Robert Plant (circa 70s Robert Plant) signing autographs! So I scour the pawn shop for an old Zeppelin album for him to sign but cannot find one. Then I realize that the pawn shop has just given random items for him to sign in case we don’t have something for him to sign. So I stand there and he looks at me, then looks behind me where there is a guy dressed like Chuck Berry. Robert Plant yells at Chuck Berry to get out of the store, which he does. Plant then goes onto sign a pair of shoes for me and I say thanks. He signed it “I heart Johnny B. Goode.” and also “I heart Palmer.”

    RANDOM.

  • In Case of Zombie Attack…

    …I’m going to re-read this guy’s article!

    http://www.yourmomsbasement.com/archives/2007/07/post_2.html

  • Stork Shall Arrive Between the Hours of 10 – 2

    One of my friends is scheduled to have her baby delivered next Monday.

    I find this an odd concept – scheduling a baby’s birth. Sure, I know that it can be done, but it just sounds funny (different?) to me.

    “Bob, I need the day off on Monday. Wazat? Oh, well my daughter is arriving around 2PM.”

    Ha ha. Anyhow, just another instance of how our world is changing. Perhaps all children shall arrive in this fashion?

  • Photo of Vero Bungee Jumping


    This is an incredible photo of Vero taking the plunge! Thanks to Matt for the amazing shot!

  • Review: Transformers

    As soon as I heard there was a Transformers movie coming out my first reaction was “Uh oh.” I had fear that somehow Hollywood would really mess up the story that we all love and try and make it more of a human story instead of a kickass robots fighting robots story.

    Even when the trailers came out, I didn’t really care to see them. I had no anticipation whatsoever for this film. Sure, I love a good Michael Bay film because he throws over the top action at you, but I still had this fear.

    The fear is that he wouldn’t get the spirit of Transformers into the film. The fear was that he hadn’t even watched a Transformers cartoon before signing up to do the film (What the heck?)

    But then the reviews started trickling in. We’re not talking proper reviews. We’re talking about the reviews that really mean something. We’re talking about your friends coming up to you and saying “Palmer, you NEED to see this film.” It really hit home when Krista’s roommate (who I didn’t peg as a Transformers fan) said it was the greatest movie ever (paraphrase).

    On Friday night, amidst the chaos which was the Silvercity full of wizards and Muggles (everyone was there watching the Harry Potter film), the lies were burned off of my soul.

    It was incredible.

    I think there was a single tear that came down my face at the end of the movie…not because I was choked up from an emotional scene…moreso because it hit me with this onslaught for 2 1/2 hours and never let up and once it did my body couldn’t take it.

    I don’t even know where to begin…Michael Bay NAILED the Transformers. Everything that they are as a cartoon was there. Robots fighting robots, the Autobots out there not wanting to hurt humans, OPTIMUS FREAKING PRIME!!!! Oh my God Optimus was amazing. Megatron didn’t turn into a lame handgun! Starscream gets berated by Megatron!

    What else can I say? Go see it now. I don’t care if you are in the middle of class reading this because you are bored. Get up, go out and watch this film.

    Five billion thumbs up.

  • Simpsonize Me!


    http://www.simpsonizeme.com/

    Hee hee.

  • Interesting Marketing Concept by Prince


    http://www.nme.com/news/prince/29759

    Of note:

    Prince is also set to give the album away to fans attending one of his 21 concerts at London‘s O2 Arena next month.


    I like how bands are trying different ways to distribute their music. While I can see someone like Prince making tons of cash from a tour ANYHOW, I don’t know if this model of distribution would work for a band just starting out.

    However, I love the concept of the album being given away at the concert. I would definitely be enticed to go to a concert of one of my fave artists, spend ‘x’ amount of dollars, if I knew it was the only place to get the album.

    But that’s just me because I’m scared one day our hard drives will crash and we’ll need backups of all the MP3s on our computers. 😉