Back To Normal

And now things settle down once more.

The In Laws came over one last time in the morning to say goodbye before hopping in the car and driving back to Maine. It’s been a pretty interesting last few days. I get the distinct impression that they are a little homesick for urban life in a city with more than a million people. Then again, being only the second of two Asian families in an American town with a population of 3000 (and falling) will do that to ya’.

The Wife and I have also had the opportunity to not just revisit our favorite haunts but see some new ones. For example on Saturday, at the request of our friend Sonny Liew in Singapore, we tracked down a book he’d been looking for that he located in a Toronto bookshop dealing in rare books. If it hadn’t been for his request, we never would have tracked down this neat little place (with its ultra friendly black cat) on our own, and it’s now definitely the kind of shop that bears repeat visits. On the way (because we walked there from Eaton Centre) we also found an army surplus store that sold everything from current standard issue forest and winter gear for the Canadian army to pressurized pilot helmets worn by MiG pilots of the former U.S.S.R. complete with neat-o breathing masks. The Wife ended up getting a cap for herself with a red star on it and now looks like the People’s Artist. The evening was spent with the Wife’s aunt for a bit of a family reunion, since the Aunt hadn’t met up with the In Laws in something like 25 years, so there was merry making and wine and conversation all around. Mostly I stood around and talked and occasionally smoked while everyone else did that family thing. The food was prepared Singapore style, meaning that I didn’t eat most of it (too spicy) and had a glass of milk on hand for the inevitable accidental consumption of something too hot for me to handle. Which brings us to today.

Today’s Big News

Today, after the In Laws left was our excuse to take the street car down to a part of the city we hadn’t yet seen, Exhibition Place. I’d viewed parts of it from a distance, namely the classical statues and the big turbine, which I didn’t know were part of the grounds. I hadn’t realized however, that this was actually the site of the biggest exhibition floor in the country, or that a lot of major national tradeshows and other events happened here.

The reason we came down was because there was yet another comic book convention running. I had no idea when we arrived that Toronto was such a comic town, but it seems like we’ve inadvertently picked ou the perfect city in Canada for us to hang out in with our particular interests. Although we missed the start of the Paradise Comic-Con, which was yesterday, we made the effort to stop by today. Sunday, however had a special going, in that anyone that showed up in costume would be allowed free admission. So the total body count–at least as from what I could see–was:

1 Next Generation era Starfleet Officer, engineering and operations division.
1 Darth Vader, Episode IV era
1 Snowtrooper
1 Scout Trooper
1 Imperial Crimson Guard (the guys that stood by the elevators guarding the Emperor in Return of the Jedi)
1 Batman
1 Superman
1 Spiderman (child)
1 Robin (child)
1 Baroness (the female villain from G.I. Joe)
1 Power Girl
1 Ms. Marvel (
2 Hogwarts Students, 1 Slytherin, 1 Gryffindor

That aside, the real reason we came down was because the Con was having a special section devoted to Women Of Comics. A lot of female artists were on hand, many of whom I recognized (at least in name), and though we missed her, big names like Gail Simone were also on hand. Of particular interest to the Wife was the fact that DC had some editors sent down. One of them was Shelley Bond, the editor for a new line of books aimed at female readers called MINX. Our friend Sonny Liew is one of the artist that is helping to launch this line with his book, written by Mike Carey, called The Regifters.

Anyway, the editor was in Toronto mostly to talk about and promote the MINX launch, and partly to scout out talent. She was dispensing advice to artist who lined up at her table and showed off samples of their work. This was one of those things the Wife initially thought was a gigantic waste of time because a) she sucks, b) people never get a break this way and c) she sucks hard. I more or less whined and kicked up a fuss saying that this was something she should do anyway, under the pretext that it would be a good experience for her and that she could at least say she’d done it. Miraculously, she went along with this, and so we showed up and took our place in line, which turned out to be very small, with only three people ahead of us.

We were the only “pair” there as the rest were either hopeful amateurs, or slightly more established artists who had web comics and a space in “the artist’s alley” (the area behind all the sales tables where individual artist can sell their work or take original commissions) and were angling for more work. Unsurprisingly, most of the people who were in line were male. Surprisingly, a lot of the work seemed to be the usual superhero stuff. That gave me pause for thought, since Shelley Bond was clearly the editor for a female readership line that was more focused on emotion and characterization than dynamic battle poses in tights, but hey, there ya’ go…

When the Wife’s turn came, they refused to let me stand and insisted on pulling out a chair from their table and letting me sit down. The Editor introduced herself, did all the usual handshaking and the Wife showed off her stuff. Obviously she had a few things going for her a) she’s talented, regardless of her constant denial, b) she’s a professional illustrator who’s already had work appear in Maxim and FHM, which she was able to show, and c) she even had a portfolio book on her which she uses as a promotional piece for
Art Directors in advertising agencies. In other words, she was already established as a professional with a polished body of work. There was that irrational surge of spousal pride that came from seeing the Editor praise her work for avoiding things she’d already gently criticized in others, such as a nice variety of panel numbers and sizes, good use of angles or interesting choice of two-shots. The Wife explained a little about herself and what she was working on, and, in the interests of adding in a little extra insurance, I named dropped.

Since Sonny Liew was one of the artists who had contributed to MINX’s launch, I not-so-discreetly mentioned that not only did we know him, we lived across the street from him for a few years and were contributing to his anthology. It turns out that not only was the Editor totally gushing with praise for Sonny, she was aware of the Liquid City anthology was pretty enthusiastic about its development. The Wife then went on to mention an aborted attempt to work with Serena Valentino (who does Gloom Cookie for Slave Labor Graphics) and these little associations seemed to helpfully cement her credibility with Shelley Bond.

At the end of the talk (which lasted far longer than the others and we actually put an end to it ourselves out of guilt) the Wife got the e-mail and snail mail address of the Editor with a request to see more work, any ideas for stories, as well as a question of whether she’d be willing to work with any writers besides me. Her response was, yes, she was willing, but her preference was still to work with me if at all possible.

This, of course, is insanely cool.

So now it turns out that an idea that we’ve been talking about for the last couple of weeks is incredibly well timed. The subject matter seems perfect for MINX and so I guess the next step is to write it out in proper submission format and then send it off to the DC offices in New York to see how it goes from there.

I have no idea why 2007 is turning out to be the Year Of The Comic for us, but man, I am SO not complaining.

After that we spent a leisurely afternoon wandering around on the Harbourfront, which is the downtown section of Toronto that overlooks Lake Ontario. I cannot believe how different it is from the closest Singapore equivalent, Boat Quay. Boat Quay is a riverside boulevard of sorts filled with restaurants and bars designed to cater to the flood of executives that come in from the nearby Central Business District. Harbourfront, on the other hand, seems more geared towards families and couples and people genuinely interested in having fun, rather than drinking to forget their loathsome occupation, or hungry, pretty young things looking for that potential golden ticket that means citizenship to another country. Where Boat Quay is claustrophobic and full of ambition, Harbourfront is spacious and relaxed. Where Boat Quay is about elitism and arrogance, Harbourfront is about being yourself and just having a good time.

Have I mentioned recently how incredibly happy I am to be back home? Well I am.

Exploring Spadina

The march towards sleeping at a reasonable hour in time for the In-Laws’ arrival continues. We actually were up around midnight messed around at home for a while and then early in the morning, we headed down south to check out The Other big market in Toronto, Kensington Market. This was kind of weird for me since I actually remember seeing portions of this place on TV as a kid when the Canadian sit-com “The King of Kensington” was being broadcast. If St. Lawrence Market is a collection of two buildings that represents the historical capitalist aspect of Toronto, then Kensington is the sub/cultural side of things. It’s a few streets (one of them being Kensington, obviously) that have rows and rows of stores and cafes. The same could be said for our usual haunt of Bloor but it has a distinctively different vibe; where Bloor feels very much like a hip, student hang-out, Kensington has traditionally played host to first immigrants and now the various subcultures of Toronto. A walk down its streets reveals full-on punks, hippies, Rastafarians, Goths and various other groups who come down to enjoy the broader “cultural climate” of the place, compared to Yorkville, which is a Yuppie conclave, or Queen Street West which is where the cutting edge trendsetter/fashionista types go to see and be seen.

The more laid back, “Hey, man, we’re all brothers and sisters aren’t we,” Haight-Ashbury feel for the place is only reinforced by the fact that you can visit, shop and, yes, smoke, in cannabis cafes like the Roach O’ Rama, which has a BYOP policy, but sells pretty much everything else, including seeds. You’ve even got folks like Bob Snider, a Canadian folk-singer, who comes out on Saturdays and just drops his case on the the street, whips out the guitar and starts singing away. Or you can just click on that picture of him there and see his take on the place. We also wandered down Spadina Avenue proper, which is really just the formal way of saying “Chinatown” since that’s what takes up the majority of the street until you travel south far enough to hit the previously mentioned Queen Street West area.

Chinatown made the Wife extremely happy. If you want to see some of it yourself, just click here or on the picture.

It was really bizarre just how much the vibe changed in one split second, crossing over from Kensington to Chinatown. The change was made more dramatic by the fact that it feels intensely familiar if you’ve lived in Aisa before. Suddenly, going into stores, people don’t make eye contact, salespeople don’t come up to you ask how you are and if they can help you with anything, and buying stuff results in a kind of quiet, annoyed grumbling that gives you the distinct impression these people wished you were dead for interrupting whatever it was they were doing, and just want you to hand over the money and go away. In short, I felt like I was back in Singapore.

But aside from that general familiar feeling in the air, the other part, the part that made the Wife nearly faint with the joy, was the sudden influx of familiar logos and brandnames I had just spent the last decade seeing in Singapore stores. Khong Guan cookie tins, Ayam curry, Skyflake Crackers and Hainanese Chicken Rice stock lined the shelves. I was amazed at how much of this stuff I recognized and even more surprised to actually find these Asian brands both familiar AND comforting. I may not have been born in Singapore, but for over ten years, it was home, and there was a weird twinge of nostalgia looking at some of this stuff and thinking, “Oh my God, white rabbit candy! I remember this stuff, it’s CRAP!” Previous to this, the Wife had been getting her fix of Asian goods by shopping at a grocery store in Koreatown, which is what Bloor turns into if you walk down the street westwards. However, I think that grocery store has now been completely discplaced in the Wife’s head by the grocery store we found in Chinatown. She had the same glazed look in her eye and trembling hands that is normally reserved for me in a videogame store. It goes without saying that we made off with a bunch of stuff that has put the Wife in a very good mood since she now has a few of the familiar products of home, and Kensington and Chinatown are now officially added to our list of Neat Places To Visit For Shopping.

The food, however, is not quite up to snuff. That’s probably not fair, since we only sampled one restaurant, but Singapore, in an attempt to make up for its almost total lack of substance, has an almost homicidal obsession with food. As a result, especially for Asian fare, it’s pretty hard not to find a Really Good Restaurant anywhere within cat-swinging distance. We found a dumpling restaurant, called the Dumpling House, and, having memories of the quaint little restaurant we’d walk down to on East Coast road, run by a former Chinese National Team basketball player, we went in. The dumplings and beef noodles there were amazing. This dumpling restaurant didn’t match up, but that’s not to say the food was bad. I was caught off guard by how large the servings were and had to remind myself “Oh yeah, right, this is Canada,” and the flavors were reasonably good, but it wasn’t quite that same experience of popping one a’ them little Northern Chinese pan fried dumplings in your mouth and suddenly saying “DAMN, THAT’S TASTY!” the way I was used to.

We were both surprised when, as we were finishing our meal, we noticed that there was a huge line up to get into the place. The quality of food, while not bad at all, hardly seemed to justify the piles of people that were trying to get in. I think though that this is another one of those few aspects where I have to give it to Singapore; if you’re a lover of Asian food, the place is one of the best pieces of real estate on the planet to live. Those folks getting in the line may have thought the dumplings were tasty, but then they’d probably never had the Real Deal out in Asi
a itself.

Time Is Funny

When your anchor to it has been cut off. Woke up before midnight today after going to bed some time in the middle of the afternoon. There is a weird–though not actually unpleasant–feeling of drifting through the day in a disconnected sort of way. It’s kind of like that feeling you get just after waking up, or after you’ve been a up a really, really long time, though without the feelings of drowsiness, just that sense of things happening at a remove from you.

The morning was one of those rare times where we were not only conscious, but actually did something. We went down to Front Street with the neighbor to do some shopping at St. Lawrence Market, which, I am amazed to realize, has been kicking around in that same spot since 1803. It’s a big ol‘ place, divided into two buildings. The more recent, northern building is the Farmer’s Market where some of the most colorful vegetables I’ve ever seen in my life are sold by farm girls that are as buxom as they overly made up. This is strictly a weekend market, opening way early in the morning and closing in the early afternoon. The south market, which is St. Lawrence proper, has coffee, fish, meat and all kinds of other things in a big, bustling building that has played both jail house and city hall over the course of its life. Many fixin’s were purchased during this run.

However, after that, we did something very uncharacteristic for us. Since the neighbor mentioned that an affluent neighborhood just to the north of our home was having a massive, coordinated yard sale, we took her up on her invitation to wander it. Taking place in the Austin Crescent area. Going there was kind of like walking into the middle of every Hollywood movie that ever featured a “typical, suburban neighborhood” in that the houses–though not mansions–were gorgeous, the inhabitants were affluent, and even the dogs smelled like perfume. It kind of reminded me of what I’d always imagined the rest of Ferris Bueller’s neighborhood would look like.

I did, however, make a couple of surprising finds. It would seem that one of the guys living in the neighborhood is a gamer who has more or less fixated on the Real Time Strategy game Command & Conquer and was saying goodbye to other games he no longer played. I went nuts and immediately picked up these two when I saw them:

Homeworld: Game of the Year Edition

Man, was I ever amazed when I saw this. I first saw this game in Singapore and thought it would make a good gift for a friend of mine over there, so I picked it up and gave it to him for his birthday. We sat, hunkered in his little closet/computer room, smoking cigarettes and thinking, “Hm, not bad graphics,” until the full enormity of the game’s brilliance suddenly hit us with the force of a hammer.

Homeworld is an important game in many ways. It was the first truly beautiful looking Real Time Strategy game ever released, but beyond the graphics, it innovated the genre in many ways, embracing science fiction, taking things to space and actually allowing Z-Axis movement (as in players could send ships north, south, east, west, UP and DOWN), and doing the one thing that Sci-Fi nerds had been clamoring for for years; giving the ability to participate in massive space battles using mixed units of big, hulking capital ships, nimble squads of one man fighters, and throwing in the mix of mid-sized units like frigates and light cruisers. It also did something incredibly brilliant in terms of story-telling; it made you give a damn without ever showing a single face. The plot is pretty interesting; on a small, deserted, hostile world, the inhabitants, coming into technology similar to our own, find something on their satellites buried in their world’s great desert. Going there reveals a vast starship and technology beyond their wildest imaginings, except that it’s all in an ancient language that is the root of their own. They finally realize that they are not native to this world, and use the technology to advance their culture and build a ship capable of traversing star systems and finding their true home. Unfortunately, doing this violates certain conditions of surrender established millennia ago and as payback, their entire planet is purged, leaving only their new mothership, a some thousands of people in cryogenic suspension and boundless rage. The game plays out entirely through the communication exchange between the fleet, and somehow, those faceless characters convey more determination, loss and fear than you’ll normally see in 90% of the games released today. It’s particularly cool that your fleet from mission to mission continues to grow from your existing resources, meaning that if you had one particular cruiser you built at the beginning, that same cruiser–at least if you’re careful–will fight for and with you right to the bitter end. Amazing stuff. A real landmark in the genre.

This particular addition includes a strategy guide and, the happiest of bonuses for me, the soundtrack on CD. And the cost? Five bucks. MAN…

And then there’s this:

When you talk to fans of the Adventure Game genre, there is an argument, akin to Sci-Fi film/TV fans, that will ensue as soon as you try to talk about the best of the best. In SF, this is usually the tired old Star Wars versus Star Trek argument (though anyone remotely sane will tell you this battle has already thoroughly won by Battlestar Galactica) and in Adventure Games, it’s The Longest Journey or Grim Fandango.

This one of those games
I’ve been meaning to play for YEARS. Not only is one of the very best the genre has to offer, it is, with no room for debate, flat out the funniest. Tim Schafer was the man who created this game, though console gamers will probably know him better as the guy that made Psychonauts. This, however, is Schafer at his prime. You play Manny Calavera, one of many “reapers” who’s duty is to visit the newly dead and sell them “travel packages” that can speed their way to their final after-life reward depending on how good they’ve been in life. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long 4 year hike, and the more really killer packages Manny sells (the best being a bullet train that reduces the trip to 9 minutes) the faster he can work of a massive karmic debt he has accrued that prevents him from beginning his own journey.

This is Schafer at his prime. The writing is so smart, so funny and so constant you’d never understand why more wasn’t done with this property. The only downside to finding this game is the fact that it was hell to get up and running because it was designed to run on Windows 95 and Windows XP… did not like it so much. The Wife had to play tech support for a couple of hours tweaking things in Safe Mode and MS-DOS windows to finally get the thing to even install and run properly. But it is a great, GREAT game, and a must own for anybody that thinks games can’t be well written. And the price? Again, five bucks. CAN’T. GO. WRONG.

Middle Of The Week Pleasantness

It’s not like anything particularly good happened today, it just played as most days have since we arrived in Toronto; quiet, relaxed and generally enjoyable. Living in Toronto–especially now, with the tree lined streets actually being lined with green, leafy trees–feels almost like a permanent vacation in some respects. The culture also has something to do with that, I suspect, since walking out into the Annex on any given day shows people sitting at benches in parks, reading books, neighbors sitting on the porch talking to each other, and cafes lined with students and other non-rich people, animatedly having conversations and laughing and smiling a lot. It’s quite a contrast from Singapore were neighbors do not interact, parks are hothouses thanks to the equatorial heat, and cafes are where people go to preen and laugh amongst each other in a cruel, arrogant manner as they wonder what the poor people are doing, and hate or pity anyone that doesn’t have at least a six figure income.

Or it could simply be that the Wife and I spend far too much time at home writing and drawing, or wandering the Annex, which is a haven for student/scholarly life anyway.

I am also, at some point going to owe a huge debt of thanks to Suspect Video for finally allowing me to do the one thing I couldn’t do in Singapore; reasonably keep up with the anime scene. When I first discovered anime, it was the same way most kids did who were born in the 70′s and grew up in the 80′s. I saw a few Japanese animated shows which had been redubbed for English consumption. It started in fits and starts with things like Battle of the Planets and then finally really took off with Robotech, and by then I was hooked, but I wanted REAL anime, not the watered down stuff we were getting as dubbed episodes. In that pre-internet era, that really meant only one thing; watching VHS bootlegs of Japanese anime that were horrible in image quality because they were usually 8th or 9th generation copies with no subtitling.

It was in this way that I first got a taste of “pure anime” in the form of titles like Gunbuster, Fight! Iczer One!, Megazone 23 and, of course, giants like Akira. Eventually, these titles would start being released on VHS, and it was just as I left Canada that I was starting to see North America begin to embrace in the mainstream what I had been forced to hunt down and watch–usually without understanding the plot at all–back in the 80′s.

Now, I’m back home, and what a change has been wrought in the geek landscape. Manga on sale in bookstores, anime freely available in every comic store, video store and available for rent even in places like Blockbuster.

All of which is to say that when I make my weekly pilgrimage down to Bloor & Bathurst to bathe in the geek sunshine that is Suspect Video and The Beguiling next door to each other, I’m a happy, happy little boy. Suspect may look like an obsessive/compulsive’s bedroom, with DVDs stored in the front and their box-art stuck in filecases that you must rifle through–comic book hunting style, yo…–but this merely reinforces the idea that you are in a place where they understand what a sick, deprived schmuck you are and reinforce these unhealthy tendencies.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Now that I have regular access to anime, I am now raving with unabashed love, about these two shows:

Excel Saga

Pure, unadulterated, nonlinear, random, utterly hilarious insanity. ESPECIALLY if you’re familiar with the tropes and conventions of anime, manga and Japanese culture.

The simplest, shortest way to describe this 26 episode television series is, “This is what would have happened if the Monty Python crew had grown up in Japan and been given an animation studio.”

The plot–such as it is–centers on a super-secret conspiracy group named ACROSS, run by a stereotypical tall, dark, mysterious, deep voiced, effeminate anime pretty boy by the name of Ilpalazzo. He spends most of his time in a subterranean lair giving orders and playing girlfriend/dating video games. ACROSS is bent on world domination, but is deciding to start with the one city the underground HQ occupies first. The principle executor of Ilpalazzo’s orders is the girl Excel Saga. Cheerful to psychotic levels and dumb as a sack of hammers, her adoration for Ilpalazzo sends her off on missions which are half designed to bring the world to its knees and half designed to kill her since her chief actually finds her supremely annoying. Her subordinate is a beautiful, anemic girl by the name of Hyatt who has a tendency to fall over dead as a result of the tuberculosis that makes her so pale, ethereal and delicate. They are frequently aided in their hopeless endeavors by the Great Will of the Macrocosm, which presents itself as a collection of spinning galaxies in the Great Void, and has women’s arms attached to this. The Great Will frequently resets the universe to more convenient points, such as just before Excel blows herself up, gets hit by a truck, or brings an entire building tumbling down on herself an Hyatt.

There are so many moments of random insanity in the series that you’re bound to keel over laughing at something. What’s really great about the series is how each episode seeks to subvert certain conventions or cliches, such as the 80′s Jungle Action picture, or the Japanese Dating Simulation genre of games. Not since the lunacy of Project A-Ko in 1986 has an anime production made my stomach hurt so badly from the laughter.

And on a completely different tack, I bring you:

Paranoia Agent

I knew I was in for a weird trip as soon as I heard the name Satoshi Kon, and his involvement with this series. The man is probably one of the single most interesting, exciting and “critically” accessible storytellers in the animation industry of Japan, and not in that warm, friendly Hayao Miyazaki way either. If Miyazaki is the Walt Disney of Japan, Kon is its Frederico Fellini. His films are beautiful to look at, wonderfully composed, full of characterization and frequently swerves into layers of dream and surreality without so much as a wink at the audience. His first feature, Perfect Blue, was an exercise in almost Hitchcock style psychological torture of its main character, but with a dose of Dali thrown in at the most unexpected moments. His next feature, Millennium Actress was a bittersweet reminiscence of love, growing older, and the march of both culture and film. After that came Tokyo Godfathers about a trio of Japanese homeless who find a baby and attempt to raise it. In each case, Satoshi has shown an enormous amount of care in building his characters, a fairly scathing amount of social commentary on the ills of Japanese society, and that dreamlike quality of playing with time, space, reality and imagination.

It was only because of Suspect Video that I finally realized he’d done a 13 episode series, I HAD to watch it.

And so far, I am not disappointed. Kon opens this series with a story about seemingly random attacks on diverse people in Tokyo, sweeping through streets with his inline skates and his bent aluminum baseball bat. But what starts as a case of trying to track down a violent delinquent quickly becomes far more mysterious as the show looks at the social ills of urban life; everything from jealousy at the office to a precocious (and unhealthy) drive to succeed and be popular in elementary school, seemingly cured through an good, swift, whack with a baseball bat to the head.

This is one of the few times where I’ve watched something, regardless of it being a live action or animated work, and simply did not know what was going to happen next. It’s a show that’s almost impossible to predict, and I’m enjoying the ride to no end. This is making me even more excited about the fact that Kon’s next film, Paprika, is actually going to be screening here next month.

It is good to have anime back in my life on a regular basis. Especially since the subtitling is of high caliber and is grammatically correct, as opposed to the bizarrely random choices made by Singapore translation houses, who would regularly substitute what should have been an obvious “God DAMN you!” moment with… “THIS FELLOW!”

Yeah, I know. I don’t get that either…

Oh, and more Guitar Hero news, new info has been released about Guitar Hero III, which will be going on sale in “Fall of 2007″ for all the usual systems. One of the things that raised my eyebrow is that the new developers, Neversoft, will be including Boss Battles. I have no idea how this will work in practice, and my gut tells me that this may simply be a way of making change just to say “We’re in charge, so screw you, Harmonix, we own this franchise now and we’ll piss on it somehow to mark it as our territory.” However, to their credit, the newly released playlist is definitely more mainstream friendly than the increasingly more technical selections of GHII and the upcoming Rocks The 80′s, so I can see a lot of happy Guitar Heroes getting a big smile on their face from these more “radio” selections:

• Paint It Black (by The Rolling Stones)
• Cherub Rock (by Smashing Pumpkins)
• Sabotage (by Beastie Boys)
• The Metal (by Tenacious D)
• My Name is Jonas (by Weezer)
• Knights of Cydonia (by Muse)
• Rock And Roll All Nite (as made famous by Kiss)
• School’s Out (as made famous by Alice Cooper)
• Slow Ride (as made famous by Fog Hat)
• Cult of Personality (by Living Colour)
• Barracuda (as made famous by Heart)

I gotta’ admit… Tenacious D? LIVING COLOR?! FREAKIN’ PAINT IT BLACK?!? YOWZA!

Sunday In The Suburbs

Work took a break today as we went out into the wilds of Mississauga. The Wife’s buddies in her illustration group were having a barbecue at their home, and so we got picked up by another Sketch Motel-er that lives in the Annex and motored on down. The Wife had never seen a typical North American suburb before and her first thought was, “It looks like a Tim Burton movie.”

We also met a few other new folks, some of whom now insist we come down for a visit to their studios, or, conversely, they come up and show us more of the Annex.

But on the whole, it was nice to just sit around outside, munch on burgers, and then, in true geek fashion, descend into the basement where I finally had a decent sit down with a Nintendo Wii and acquitted myself all right. Two strikes in bowling, a birdy in golf, though I apparently can’t play baseball to save my life.

I have to admit though, after actually sitting down and playing with a Wii, my enthusiasm for the console is somewhat diminished. I’m clearly NOT the target market for this thing. It’s fun, and I enjoy it, but I would get bored fast with only simple sports/party games to play, and by my particular tastes, there’s only one game worth owning, and that’s Zelda. All the other stuff is novel, but ultimately not very rewarding for me. I know the casual or non-gamers will go nuts for this stuff, but the Wii needs more games like Zelda before I’ll seriously want it.

Getting Tired Of Boring Posts Yet?

Well too bad. A Saturday afternoon on Bloor was followed by me doing some research. Yup, spine tingling stuff…

The Usual Saturday

A supply run to Queen Street West with a return to Bloor and then home to do some work. Or try to do some work if I could just stop reading the freakin’ Secret World forums for a minute…

Yet Another Quiet Friday

In which a walk to Bloor for a short trip to pick up parcels turned into a full blown Usual Bloor Visit with cheese and coffee purchases, and an invite to dinner from the neighbors turned up. That quickly turned into a lovely dinner out in the backyard as the sunset with wine, lasagna, cigarettes, a lot of good ol’ conversation, and then a double feature of eXistenZ and Marie Antoinnette. Then some playing of Fatal Frame 2, a game so frightening that even after having owned it for nearly two years, I’ve been too scared to finish it.

Also, some preliminary efforts on The Work I Cannot Name may be starting up soon and that is looking DAMN FUN. Can’t wait to get started in earnest.

Again With The Comics

First, there is this:

As with most artwork here, you can click on it to enlarge it, but that’s a sample of character designs for the story the Wife and I are working on for Sonny Liew’s comic anthology. I really like how long the lines are, and how it just screams elegant. I’m really happy with this.

Also, there may be still more scripting to be done. As I mentioned yesterday the visit to the Royal Ontario Museum got a lot of ideas flying around in my head, so I sent an e-mail to one of the other artists participating in the anthology and asked him if he’d be interested in collaborating on the idea I have. He seems receptive, so I’m just going to wait and see whether or not he actually wants to go ahead with this, and if he does, then I’ll have two stories in this anthology. Admittedly, it will be weird if he goes for it and I don’t see my stories being crafted under the hands of the Wife. I doubt this is something I could do with any regularity as it just feels off kilter thinking she won’t be drawing it.

Aside from that, it was a quiet Saturday run down to Bloor where movies were returned, more were rented, art supplies were purchased and, on the way home, we finally had our first run with a Crazy Lady. It’s not that she seemed particularly wild eyed, or smelled of the streets from Europe during the plague years, but the fact that she stopped to talk to us while we were looking at bug spray, then told us not to buy it, then talked about the dangers of synthesized materials, then jumped over to the NAFTA agreement and how Bush has a plan to take over Canada and that all of this is a big secret, and the fact that she calmly did all this while we put the bug spray away, said “We gotta’ be going now,” walked to another part of the store where she followed us, then walked out of the store, where she kept right on following us, then half-way down the street before finally giving up was the indicator that perhaps she wasn’t merely trying to make polite conversation in the aisles.

I TOTALLY have to use her in a story some time, but I don’t know when.

Day At The Museum

Today was “let’s use one thing as an excuse for another” day. When we met up with the Tactician a while back (lo, back in those days when the ground was white, the air was cold and the trees were dead) his girlfriend ended up getting her purse stolen and it wound up–sans money of course–in the hands of the Toronto Transport Commission, or TTC as they call it here. She sent the official form to us and we decided to walk down to the Bay Subway Station, which is where the Lost n’ Found office is located, to pick it up for her. We ventured past our usual boundaries and into the green and plasticky ambiance that is Yorkville where the suit quotient jumped up considerably (it’s basically the playground for the rich) and the breeze carries with it the constant whispering refrain of “shishy” in your ear. For whatever reason, Club Monaco has a big building here with classical architecture that proclaims that this building once functioned as the Department For Household Science back when the University of Toronto offered a degree in such things, which as a recently as 1975, by the way. After that, we had a classic Big City moment where we bought a hotdog from a stand, and sat down on the steps of a church, watching the people go by as the pigeons trotted around, hoping for crumbs.

Then, since we were in the neighborhood and it was Friday–meaning admission dropped from $18 to $5–we also used this as the rationale to finally getting around to visiting the Royal Ontario Museum.

As you can see from this concept art, the ROM (pronounced similarly to Read Only Memory, or the Spaceknight of the same name) is a lovely old building with some truly impressive classical architecture that has a new addition being built onto/into it to reflect a more 21st century sensibility. I have to admit, I’m not a fan, and the first time I saw it (it’s nearly done and will be completed, in theory, by June) I wanted to know which Kryptonian had crashed his ship into the building and why we didn’t see him using the CN Tower to impale giant monsters attacking the city.

However, bizarre aesthetic choices aside, we actually spent the better part of the late afternoon and early evening wandering around the three floors of the museum that are currently accessible. I suppose I should have seen it coming, but when we checked out the first floor exhibits of artifacts from Korea, China and Japan, the collection far exceeded–in both quantity and quality–the exhibits on display at the Singapore Asian Civilizations Museum. It struck me as stupidly ironic that to see a really good display of Asian culture, I had to get back to Canada to do it.

The second floor is currently exhibiting natural sciences, which range from the usual fossils of dinosaurs (after watching all those Walking with Dinosaurs DVDs, I’d forgotten how damn big these things are when you’re standing in front of one) to stuffed animals of every kind. The Wife has now finally seen a moose, albeit a dead one, as well as a buffalo, or at least the head of one. She’s also contemplating starting up a horn collection after seeing the wide variety of skulls on display with the most bizarre, twisty, spirally kinds of horn you ever did see. There were also big drawers you could pull out which contained, amongst other things, beetles, bats and fish.

The third floor was where they were currently featuring an exhibit on an ancient Peruvian Sican civilization, as well as their fixed Egyptian, Greek and European (from the medieval period onwards to art deco) artifacts. We literally spent hours just wandering around taking in the different displays and I was quite surprised to realize that it was 9:30 in the evening by the time we left, the hours just flew by.

It gave me a lot of neat ideas for stories too, but I’ll have to ruminate over that a little bit more, as well as find an excuse to use them somewhere…