Blog

If you are going to bring your girlfriend for a birthday dinner and she says she wants to go to Milestone’s, make sure when you mention there is a Milestone’s in Gloucester that it is not actually Moxie’s.

In the end, we went to East Side Mario’s. Woops?

Happy Birthday to a lovely woman who’s gift is the fact that she gets to move to Orleans very soon.

Also, a happy birthday to my musical brother in arms…Troy. Heck, it’s only ten days late. But he’s probably emerging from a hibernation hangover right now.

Melissa opened up her own Running Room type thing where we essentially get together and…run! Seeing that time is on my side these days, what better way to spend time with friends?

I met up with the Valenti clan and met Anthony and Gabby (although I must wonder if I did meet them years ago? I must have.) and then we found Melissa and Mike along with Lola and Gigi. Rounding out the pack was marathon runner James who ran the circuit and drove home by the time we were finished? I was thinking he had done a second run but no, he was back home! James has always struck me as quite the athlete ever since I’ve met him. I shall try and keep up with him the next round.

I am not sure what it was…the beautiful scenery of the Canal, the eight year old kid next to me to keep me company, or maybe the fact that I haven’t been out jogging in awhile…but it seemed like so much less of a chore than it does while jogging around the suburbs of Orleans. I can’t put my finger on it. I find it grueling to jog around Orleans. I just go by house upon house and it’s quite lackluster. Perhaps I need to find a more scenic route to jog along. Or perhaps it’s the conversation that passed the time more? I shall do a scientific study.

Hey, what do you know…I feel like blogging again. It’s been awhile old friend. Hopefully I’ll be back for awhile now with my thoughts.

If you feel like going for a jog every Thursday with us, come join us! It doesn’t cost anything like all those other organized sports in town.

To Troy or to anyone who cares…

If you’re looking at getting just one boxset from the Beatles Remasters series, I will have to vote for the Mono Set after perusing both sets this evening.

A little background from a technical viewpoint…in the early 60s, stereo mixes of albums were made to cater to the elite…there were only fanatics who owned stereo systems. Hence, mono mixes were made first, stereo secondly.

Then over time, stereo gained the upper hand to the point that the final two Beatles albums, Let it Be and Abbey Road were mixed solely in stereo.

Somewhere during the middle of the Beatles tenure, there were both mixes available. You simply picked out the mix that worked with your stereo (although I’m assuming that both mixes would work on a stereo system).

Another important fact to note is that around the time Sgt. Pepper came out, the Beatles became quite interested in the mixing aspect of albums and actually took time to help with the mono mix of the album whereas they didn’t bother sticking around for the stereo mix. Therefore there are differences between the albums…some minor (little sound effects added/subtracted) and some major (entire songs sped up or slowed down which changed the pitch of the song).

So with that knowledge, I would like to think that if there was a definitive mix to listen to, it would be the Mono mixes.

Now, onto the actual box sets.

The mono set is beautiful. Bee-aauuuu-tiiii-fullll. They recreate the albums in the vinyl format they were released in years ago. They come in a plastic dust jacket. You pull the album out and it’s a recreation of the vinyl record…even the back is an exact recreation with the funny little stories about the UK’s biggest band at the moment…The Beatles! If the vinyl was a gatefold, then it opens as such. All inserts to the album are in there…the cut-out badges for the Sgt. Pepper album…the fold out poster for The White Album (although this seems to also be part of the Stereo version as well…). When you pull out the actual CDs, they are in another dust jacket, but right next to them are the actual paper sleeves that they would come in, recreated to the minor details…such as the psychedelic prints on the Sgt. Pepper paper sleeve.

Quite the attention to detail and I can’t rave enough about it. The set also comes with a 44 page booklet full of essays concerning mono mixes as well as photographs.

All in all, I LOVE the Mono Set. A lot of thought was put into it. Granted, the set does not come with Abbey Road or Let It Be (as they were not mono), but you can pick them up separately. The Mono Masters also is different from the Past Masters (in that the Past Masters is the stereo version with a slightly different track listing).

The stereo set is larger in size to accommodate the larger size of each individual CD package. The packages tend to be a triple gatefold design with a large booklet with extended liner notes, historical recording notes and never-before-seen photographs. The other side contains the CD. Did I mention that the labels on the CDs are recreations of what were on the original vinyls labels? Neat!

All in all, the booklets in the stereo versions are better considering they give a lot more information on the historical significance of a particular album, whereas the Mono album has whatever came with the album originally.

The box itself is nothing special…it simply holds the albums in two stacks. If you were ambitious, I would suggest foregoing the stereo box set, but buying them individually and picking up the collectible ‘Box of Vision’ holder for your CDs and it comes with a book with album cover photos in it. The guy at HMV was trying to sell it to me and I said “Ah, $90 seems a little steep for something that simply holds my CDs.” where he commented “Spoken to the man who just spent $500 on Beatles albums.” Nice.

The only bonus that the stereo box set would have over buying the album individually would be that it may be a little cheaper if you plan on buying all the albums and it also comes with a DVD with all the mini-documentaries. The mini-documentaries are on each stereo album, but you have to watch them individually on your computer whereas this is on a DVD. Meh, not a big deal. Did you know ‘meh’ is now an actual word in the dictionary?

So to end off my thoughts, buy the Mono set. You won’t be disappointed. Pick up Abbey Road and Let it Be separately to fill the set.

In a play from left field, Disney has purchased Marvel Entertainment for 4 beeelion dollars. That’s a good chunk of change and I’m wondering how it’s going to affect the beloved Marvel empire (both the comics and film areas).

All in all, on the comics side, I think it will be better. I don’t think that Disney is going to force toned down comic books to its wide audience of above thirty year olds. I think Marvel Comics know what their fans want and that’s to experience larger, more in-depth storyline. What I can see happening is a resurgence of kids themed books, much like the Marvel Adventures line of comics which are geared for the tots.

I also think that being part of a large empire like Disney will allow Marvel to not be as worried when the comic book business ebbs and flows. This isn’t the early 90s anymore (although one may wonder with the resurgence of 90s characters all of a sudden on the Marvel landscape!), and they have just increased their price on a lot of books to $3.99 for a single book. I would hope that they would lower the price in the future but I know there’s a fat chance of that.

As for the film side, Marvel does films best when they are left to their own devices. All the Punisher films? Meh. But they were created by outside studios. Iron Man, Hulk, etc.? They are great (except for the pile of bantha dung which is the first Hulk film) and it’s nice to see little cameos of characters within each film. This can only be accomplished by having all the films reside under the Marvel imprint.

I don’t think there will be much harm in the merger…you won’t see Spider-Man sporting some Mickey Mouse ears anytime soon like all the newspapers are showing this morning. I think it will allow the Marvel empire to grow in terms of merchandising and that can’t be a bad thing to a fan like me.

I’m reading Peter Mayle’s ‘a good year’ upon a suggestion from Vero’s sister Anne-Marie and it deals with wine and vineyards. An amusing aspect of the book is how wine connoisseurs try their best to describe the taste of a certain wine in ludicrous talk such as comparing it to music or a favourite action scene of a movie.

I am also reading a LOT of reviews of the new Beatles remasters which are coming out in a few weeks. I am reading how Paul’s bass sounded full and daring or how Harrison’s guitar work squealed with delight.

Is it worth trying to describe music in words?

I have hit a wall when trying to describe how I feel about albums or concerts I’ve been to. It’s virtually impossible to put an emotion into words. Perhaps that’s what makes a good writer a great writer. Their ability to describe emotions.

However, I cringe at every article about the Beatles remasters in which the author is writing about the emotion that Ringo’s bass drum evokes. I can understand if you want to tell us that the songs sound more cleaner and the instruments are more defined…but I feel bad for the poor souls tasked with writing how the remasters SOUND. I hope someone just puts up a couple of examples and simply writes “Hear for yourself.”

So with that, I shall try my darnedest to put the most adjectives I can when describing the soaring guitar solo I heard Mike McCready play last week, or the machine gun fire of Billy Corgan’s guitar attack in his song ‘United States’. But I’ll laugh at myself every time after I write stuff like that. I can’t take myself seriously!

Perhaps that is why I simply stick to classic Palmer adjective…BEST (insert whatever I am talking about) EVER.

Yesterday evening I stumbled on an excellent deal at Best Buy which managed to save me $35 off of the Beatles box sets that are coming out in a few weeks! These boxsets are not cheap in any way so I will take any savings I can find! Essentially, they have a ‘late summer night’ sale on right now (until 10AM Wednesday morning I believe) where you can get $10 off of an order up to $250 (which would be the Stereo Box Set) and $25 off of anything over $250 (which would be the Mono box set). Beatles fans (or those wanting a large item!), get in there now!

After work yesterday I headed over to Alex’s place to help him move. Luckily my body has been through a warm up session the night before by helping Michael move a few items. It was quite a hot day and I think I started to feel perspiration on the forehead as soon as we lifted the empty cardboard TV box! Alex and Holly managed to get a lot of work done in the past month and all that was left were large items that we filled into the truck. James and Matt showed up later on, as well as Mike G who showed up just as we loaded the last box (but was instrumental in the move at the new place). Alex and I were having a laugh at some of the situations we ended up in while moving large items which required tricky maneuvering. Unfortunately the four of us had no real idea how he got the table saw in his basement without taking it apart so Matt took it apart and we managed to finally get it out of the house.

One U-Haul truckload later (yay! Didn’t see that happening), we headed to their new house. Mike and I took a wrong turn at one point and ended up in some swank area of town. We then realized this couldn’t be the place so we continued on and found the real spot. They live in a great little neighbourhood south of Ottawa which reminds me of home. It reminds me so much of home that I am officially looking for a house like theirs. I loved the fact that they had a double garage with an additional work area in the back with a fire stove. That’s a real man’s area if I’ve ever seen one! Heck, the place even has a chicken coop!

The move went quite quickly after that and we ended the night with some great pizza and beer (is this a Canadian moving tradition or is this felt around the world?). The house is in renovation mode with all the walls torn out in the basement as well as the lack of a shower, but it shall come along. It’s a great house and I’m sure will see a lot of fun times in it in the future!

After work I headed over to Mike’s new pad on Bay Street…right in the heart of Ottawa. I was amazed at how close it was to my work and immediately became jealous. Imagine the concept of being able to walk to work, let alone bike it.

I thoroughly enjoyed the tour of his place…I love the brick walls in the house as well as some vintage looking items within it. Well chosen Michael, well chosen.

We headed home where we proceeded to have an impromptu nap and then I watched a bit of Mad Men Season 2 before Mike asked for my help downstairs. We were going to make a load to bring to the apartment. Unfortunately, he started me off with the heaviest item in the world. I was hoping to work my way into it! In hindsight, I’m glad I helped him move a few things as I am helping Holly and Alex move some large items on Tuesday.

After loading up the vehicles, we headed to his apartment around 8PM where we encountered some construction on the Queensway. After that hurdle, it was quite fast to unload our vehicles and his apartment is now starting to take shape. He has a nice lower level of the place which will most likely end up being his own pad. He also bought these amazing lamps from Ikea that put off a lot more light than I would have thought they would!

All in all, the move is happening quite quickly and it is with sadness to see him leave but am also happy that he upgraded in a sense. He is excited to start biking to work and experience the downtown living to its fullest.

I just got off the phone with Mom and realized that I never wished them a happy anniversary. 34 years is a long time to put up with Dad. Give this woman a medal.