Hot Docs Day 1
I went to a couple of films tonight: Dear Pyongyang and The Railroad All Stars. All Stars turned out to be a contrivance on the part of the director (how else do you come up with filming an all-prostitute soccer team on tour in Guatemala?), but it was still quite enjoyable. Both films proved that technical merits are much less important that a good story, and good clear sound is more important to the experience than a clear image.

Here's our picks for the rest of the fest (their ColdFusion links don't work in the version of Firefox I'm running - have to use Internet Exploder)

Sat 6:30pm - Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner & La Soufriere (Werner Herzog) - Innis Town Hall
Sun 11:30am - Walking to Werner - ROM
Sun 2:00pm - My Grandmother's House - ROM
Sun 7:00pm - Wordplay - Isabel Bader
Wed 7:15pm - A Maison & Oscar Thiffault - ROM
Wed 9:30pm - In The Pit - Isabel Bader
Thu 9:45pm - Wide Awake - Bloor

  posted by John : 10:25 PM

 
Life is good



This past weekend our "go-live" went so well, the project manager decided to stay home today. So they said we shouldn't bother coming in to the office. Rather than stay at the hotel, my choice was to head to Maryland where my friend Tim and I are now sitting outside at a waterfront bar, hooked into the city-wide wifi signal on a gorgeous spring day, doing a few hrs work to a reggae rhythm.

Sharon flew back home this morning, wanting to rescue Victor from the kennel where he spent the weekend. Last night we went to see our fave performer Greg Brown at the Birchmere do an excellent show, if a bit short. So tonight Tim and I are going to see him here at the Ram's Head Tavern. Like the two shows we saw a couple of years ago, he'll likely play a completely different set of songs. Sweet.

Back after the concert...

Great show. A perfect bookended two nighter. Only songs Greg played both nights were his "I Want My Country Back", a cool new song called "Kokomo" and an abstract cover of "Folsom Prison Blues" - which was tonight's closer. Got to say hi and thanks to him out back of the club after the show. He talked a bit about how he could never play to a setlist -- "I tried once, but it felt like doing homework". He just feels his way through the set. He did a nice cover of that Louisiana song by Randy Newman. And he did a Mose Allison song after playing "Mose Allison Played Here", but unlike last night where he played a few John Prine songs that was it for the cover tunes. He did several favourite bluesy songs tonight, "Rex Roth's Daughter", "Billy From the Hills", "Enough", "Think about You". After the show we took a long walk back to the car through a perfect cool seaside air, on the dead quiet streets of downtown Annapolis. A wonderful evening.

  posted by John : 12:42 PM

 
Spies like us

I'm working in Virginia this weekend, so Sharon has joined me and we're staying in downtown D.C. For less than the price of where I usually stay out in the boondocks, I picked a hotel weekend rate with valet parking, breakfasts and tickets to the Spy Museum all included. We spent four hours touring this museum yesterday and really liked it. The tickets we had got us in right away rather than waiting hours since all the slots were sold out. Its interesting to see how the 'show' of a new Museum is designed these days. This one smartly makes the most of the fact that you have to wait in line, by creating a mood for the mysterious subject of the life of spies. Then you move through a couple of chambers where you assume a secret identity (basically memorize a name and a brief bio and itinerary) and watch a training film. At times throughout the exhibits of teeny cameras and stories of code cracking and cold war espionage, you are quizzed about your fake identity on computer touchscreens. It thought it was an effective way of making people involved in a tour where they have to move thousands of people through each day.



In this area of Washington D.C., only a few blocks from the White House, its obvious that new development has been plunked down in the last ten years or less to obliterate a seedy part of town.





  posted by John : 7:09 AM

 
Hot Docs 2006
Each year I go to the Firefox unfriendly hotdocs.ca site and pluck all the data into an Excel spreadsheet, so we can make our picks. Here it is: hotdocs2006.xls.

  posted by John : 7:02 AM

 
I love this show

Towelie’s Memoirs are chosen for Oprah’s Book Club in an all-new episode of South Park premiering Wednesday, April 19 at 10:00 P.M. on Comedy Central

Towelie’s book is the next big pick in Oprah’s Book Club in an all-new episode of “South Park” titled “A Million Little Fibers” premiering Wednesday, April 19 at 10 p.m. on Comedy Central.

Towelie gets over his drug addiction and writes a moving book about his experiences. Thanks to Oprah’s support, the book becomes a best seller and his story inspires millions to turn their lives around. However, when he’s caught in a lie by the grand dame of daytime television, Towelie’s old habits start to look mighty appealing.

  posted by John : 5:48 AM

 
Platial
Carol tipped me off to an interesting new Google-map based site called Platial, and NPR's story about the site. The first time I used a Google map I wanted to be able to save pins on it. This site lets you do that, but it goes much further and adds sharing of descriptions of your pins with everyone else.

  posted by John : 1:41 PM

 
There's nothing fast about it
I don't like to waste anything useful. Especially food. So I eat whatever is put, or what I put, in front of me. The result, I've hit 170lbs. And the suit I need to wear a couple of times next month will be disgustingly tight if I don't do something to get thinner. So I'm feeling motivated by the goal-oriented challenge of not moving up a belt size, as happens from time to time. I accepted the size 32 to 34 move awhile back, but I'm not going to 36 willingly. So, with this thinking a bit further forward in my conciousness than it usuallly is, I decided to skip dinner Thursday night. I wasn't hungry and I'd had a pretty late lunch anyway. What a concept. In the morning, I didn't feel hungry either. Actually I felt kind of stuffed. So I decided to go on a fast for a while. Since then I've been drinking lemon-water with a couple of dashes of cayenne-pepper and a small drop of maple syrup. Its been quite interesting. I guess I'm hungry, but I'm able to contemplate the hunger thoughts instead of satisfying them right away. And they pass. To me that's the main benefit of doing this - to deal with the psychological factors of eating. Last night I had a dream that I was still doing the fast, but I caved in and went to some cookout and had a grilled hot dog wrapped in swiss cheese and turkey, with a stack of grilled tomato slices on the side. I know from doing this in the past that the first couple of days are the hardest. And I only plan on doing it for a couple of days, then easing back into eating small portions. Hopefully the result will be that I'm better at eating to live, and able to control the subconcious part of me that likes the whole enchilada.

Along the same lines, Sharon and I have been walking more this week. Instead of the usual once-around the Loop, a distance of about 1-1/2 miles, we've started venturing out to the main road and up into the front entrance of the subdivision that's being developed just north of us. We can walk through on their sidewalks and then over the undeveloped sections of grassland to a gate at the back of our property. Takes about 1-1/2 hrs, so I guess its around 4 miles. It a beautiful time of year here, so long as we start early enough so that there's still some shade from the trees. There's so much variety in the terrain and we can see the changes taking place, as well as alot of nature. We saw several wild turkeys the other day. This morning Victor's presence drew the young cows and bulls from the neighbors ranch over to the fence, along with the donkey who is there to protect them and backs up toward the fence ready to kick if you get close. They also have a beautiful Llama who usually stays a good distance away



  posted by John : 9:05 AM

 
The final segment of the interview with Josh (aka JM Logan) is online. What a learning experience he's been through. And the movie is a good one too, even though like all directors he's ready to move on to the next project.

  posted by John : 10:01 AM

 
Weekend in D.C.




































  posted by John : 4:04 PM