First of all, hats off to the good people (ok, I have no idea if they’re good people, let’s be fair, they make their living selling us stuff we really don’t need) of Loot Crate for getting me, a lowly Canadian, my December Loot Crate before the 25th. Yesterday morning I heard a knock on my door so I ran to put some pants on and get the door. The nice postman gave me (as promised) the biggest black box yet. I was pretty excited. For December, Loot Crate was themed for ANNIVERSARY. More than any other Crate I sort of had an idea what sort of stuff was going to be in here. The teaser email stated that this Crate was going to celebrate some of the great stuff that was celebrating an important year in 2014. So that narrowed it down. Ghostbusters, Marvel, Batman, Simpsons, Tetris… yeah, pretty good idea of the theme. So, let’s see what ended up being packed into this great big box. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
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Like many of the kids in my generation, I was partially raised by television. There was always a nice gap of time between when school ended and when my parents came home, and I took full advantage of it, cramming in as much TV as I could handle. Lucky for me, that timeslot was often full of Just For Laughs re-runs, which meant that I got to watch ten years of stand up comedy, over and over and over, whenever school was out.
I’d see the same comics do the same sets month after month, but I somehow never got bored of them, and after a while, a few of them naturally became my favourites. Amongst these was the great strange character of the early 90s known as Bobcat Goldthwait.
If you’re unfamiliar with Bobcat, well, he was a loud guy with a strange voice, who looked disheveled all the time. On the JFL special in question, he has too much eyeliner, and is wearing a white t-shirt with “Kill Seinfeld” written on it with a sharpie – at least, that’s what I remember. I can’t seem to locate that image now. He became well-known as the guy who set Jay Leno’s chair on fire (as pictured above), so that anecdote was in his bit, which I always enjoyed. As a kid, I couldn’t believe that someone would have the balls to do something like that, but as an adult, I understand that that was the point. Bobcat was being a shocky comic, one of those “out there” personas that I seem drawn to. It really worked back then, but that type of thing couldn’t possibly last, right?
Correct! The wild, crazy Bobcat of the 90s is no more. Goldthwait really found his voice in direction, as he went on to direct Jimmy Kimmel Live, as well as a few movies along the way to 2014, most of which he also wrote. Among these is an absolute gem called God Bless America (trailer below) which is well worth throwing into your Netflix cue – it’s a bloody good time.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h21WENDSkyU&w=560&h=315]
However, if you do end up on Netflix, and you think to yourself “Hey, there’s also a special by this Bobcat guy, maybe I should check it out!” then please, for the love of all that is holy, heed this warning: that hour is one of the worst comedy specials I’ve ever had the displeasure of watching. It’s got 20-year-old bits, all of its hits are misplaced, and Goldthwaite just keeps pulling the “I shouldn’t have said that” face, and following it with copious facepalms. I suppose it was a last-ditch effort at doing comedy again, but it was not a successful one. Bobcat Goldthwaith’s place is truly behind the camera, and I’m hoping he stays there.
-Al
Ok, so where were we? Joan Jett was still hot and we were working our way through a mix CD that I made when I was 17. Obviously if you haven’t read last week’s article where I detail the first 11 tracks of this mix, you should go do that. Before we get started, I thought it might be cool to paint a more vivid picture of the world in Spring of 2001. Perhaps clues into what sort of mindset I was in when making this mix (events from History Orb.com):
- Jan 4th – Rapper Vanilla Ice spends night in jail after allegedly ripping out some of his wife’s hair during a row
- Jan 8th – 28th American Music Award: Faith Hill & Kid Rock win
- Jan 9th – Apple announced iTunes at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, for organizing and playing digital music and videos. Now widely used by Windows and Mac users.
- Jan 15th – Wikipedia, a free Wiki content encyclopedia, goes online.
- Feb 21st – 43rd Grammy Awards: Beautiful Day, Shelby Lynne wins
- Feb 28th – 15th Soul Train Music Awards: The Isley Brothers, Destiny’s Child & Jay-Z win
- Mar 24th – 21st Golden Raspberry Awards: Battlefield Earth wins
- Apr 1st – Same-sex marriage becomes legal in the Netherlands – first country in the world.
That would bring us up to around the time I made this mix. What a world! Now, Joan Jett had just led us off with some classic early punk rock, it was time for me to put my punk rock cred on display (only to completely destroy it by the end of the album). ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
A few weeks ago I read an article from Julia Jones, published by Vice. It spoke of a Real Life Super Hero, right here in Montreal. Active for over two years, no less. How the hell had I never heard of this? More so, why did it bother me so much that I never found the guts to go out there and do it myself? Now before you start thinking I fantasize of attaining heroic glory and performing dashing rescues whilst dressed as a plump yet fierce amazonian warrior woman, let me explain why I feel I`ve let myself down.
And no, there will be no photos of myself dressed as described above.
Here is a little fantasy I had while I was in high school. Don`t laugh, please, I was a teenager with hopes and dreams. I had this desire of helping out street youths since I was in high school. I thought if I worked hard enough at educating and establishing myself, I might be able to found some sort of shelter/safe hang out spot. Like some sort of haven from strangers, the weather, harassment, you get the idea. It would have been an alternate to social workers or foster homes, who I thought did a shit job of trying to relate to kids in general. In my idealistic little head, I would have created a sort of drop-in commune. Kids could drop by and learn new things, relax, have someone to talk to if they needed/wanted it. In my perfect world, they felt so safe and positive there, they would want to get involved in my project, and contribute one way or another, gaining new skills and a sense of accomplishment, thus leading them to grow into productive and happy adults! Hell I had even planned what color to paint the walls.
There was so much ugliness out there. I wanted to change it all, and it made sense that kids were the ones to nurture and assist in their time of need. But you know, in a cool way.
But you know. I dropped out of school. Soooo…. I never did get the education required to do anything even slightly near what I had imagined. I got a bit discouraged, which is understandable. Everyone I spoke to about this was like “no you need a diploma/masters/doctorate, you wouldn`t be able to do anything like that until you`re over 30”
In my head, over 30 meant you might as well give up on your dreams or taking on any new projects. That`s what your 20s are for right? Life is over after 29. HAH! 35 year old me could just strangle 16 year old me.
So I was disillusioned, my dream balloon popped, and I turned the anger outward. I shut out the world outside, since it clearly could not be changed by me. Sure, if I stumbled across a situation where I could help someone, I acted. I taught self-defense for women for a while. Helped an old lady who`s house was being broken into. Volunteered in a shelter for abused women. I still help friends out when I can. While it did feel nice to have made a difference for a handful of people, we all know there are so many more people in need of help. And that bothered me.
All this to say that as I grew up, that dream of actively helping people kinda shrunk away. Never far from my thoughts, but you know. I had responsibilities, and no education. I couldn`t afford to mess around with working for free when I had a hard time paying rent.
And you know what all that is?
Excuses.
When I first started hearing about real life super heroes, I was like “That is so cool but these people are nuts. What are they really trying to do, find trouble? Start fights?” Like that Washington dude. And the ones I heard about were all in the U.S anyways… everything that happens over there is so surreal to me anyways. Didn`t feel real. To add to that, Kick-Ass happened, sensationalizing real life supers even more. And the thought it would ever happen in Montreal? Tiny, insignificant Montreal? Nonsense.
So yeah. Fast-forward to about 3 weeks ago, I read about Lightstep, Montreal`s Real Life Super Hero.
Not gonna lie, it blew my fragile little mind. Not only did Lightstep not sound like the tools parading around in fancy cosplay hoping to fight violence with more violence, but it seemed like my high school dream had taken a new form. My eyes were re-opened. Impulsive as I can be, I wrote to him.
“OMG dude I think what you are doing is fantastic! I can make costume bits for you if you want new ones, or like, wanna be featured on my website?”
I may have written something a bit less ridiculous, but that was pretty much it. To my surprise, he wrote back.
“Hi Sophie, thanks for the kind words! I’m kind of shy about asking for things, so I’ll just thank you for the offer. We can do something for your blog if you’d like, but again I’m cautious about making it ‘all about me’, because I am really trying hard to be NOT taking up a lot of space. Maybe you could join one night and document your own experience?”
So yeah, duh I went out with him. We met at 11pm on a Saturday night, planning to patrol until 3am.
Now, according to the Vice article, Lightstep prefers to be referred to as “they”. This isn`t something I actually discussed during our meeting, but I will respect it from here on.
First thing they said to me?
“Admit it, I`m shorter than you imagined huh!”
I tried not to imagine anything about them, actually. I mean, you can`t help it for little details, but I just wanted to take it all in without any sort of expectations, so as to not color my experience with my imagination too much. But here I was, faced with this slim, tiny person, who seemed as perky and lively as I get when I am sleep deprived. Nevermind the all-over black, kevlar, luchadore mask and hood. They were like a cool new fun person you met at a party. Animated and motivated. And chatty. So open about everything!
Right there and then I remembered something one of my martial arts teachers said to me: “A genuine smile can sometimes be your best defense.”
This is something Lightstep proved true several times that night. Whether it was with drunk bro-dudes semi-teasing the costume, or the tall man who aggressively tried to convince me to blow him on the street. Every possibly negative encounter, however brief, was turned into a lyrical anecdote. That, my friends, is not only masterful diffusion, but it is also how we should live our lives each and every day. There would be less negativity all over if we simply tried to make the best out of things. It`s like that whole pay-it-forward deal. No expectations other than making someone else`s day a little better, but this would have a magical exponential effect!
I know I would disappoint many of you if I didn`t recount my adventures while out on patrol with them. The thing is though, other that that semi-aggressive dude, not much happened. It was a super quiet night. We chatted and walked. They posed for photos with a couple of bro-dudes, laughed with people singing the spider-man theme song at us, and gave a hat and scarf to a homeless guy that had asked us for change. We did witness a slightly disturbing event, though we did not get involved.
Across the street from us on Ste-Cat`s this guy was making some unhappy sounding noises. A couple of cops pulled up and intercepted him. His friends were asking him to cooperate, but he was verbally belligerent and threatening. We stopped and watched as the cops semi-restrained him against a parking pay station. We had no idea what the situation was, but it did seem as though the 2 officers had it under control. So why did 4 other police cars pull up to assist? Just seemed a bit much to me, but again, I don`t know the details of what happened. Lightstep looked at me and said we shouldn`t stick around. We moved on.
What made this night special for me was the discussion we shared. What most surprised me was when they told me they don`t always wear the mask and outfit when they go out to patrol, or help people. They explained why.
The mask is worn every now and then, just to establish a presence. It helps just to know someone is out there, keeping a watchful eye out. But the mask also prevents some things. Like, security guards in malls won`t let you go inside with a mask, even if you are bringing in hot meals for the homeless people hiding inside from the cold. Likewise, the organizations providing the meals he hands out would probably be less willing to deal with a faceless anonymous person, instead of cooperating with them. Sometimes the mask is a little intimidating, and inspires mistrust. It can be easier to help out just as a regular person.
This was another eye-opener to me. Not only do they go out on night patrol like this regularly, but they donate their time and efforts in the daytime. Doing regular things. Just helping.
I honestly feel like an idiot. I like to think of myself as somewhat intelligent, so why did I not click on this message earlier? It took something this extreme to make me not only realize the obvious, but accept it as well.
Lightstep is a Real Life Super Hero. They help people out in mundane situations as well as potentially dangerous ones. They help prevent neglectful harm by doing needle clean-ups. They bring food to people who can`t afford or find any. They give directions to lost tourists and get overly drunk people safely into taxis on their way home. They hand out condoms and hygienic tools to sex-workers in kits they assembled at home, same for drug users to prevent infection of used needles or pipes. They talk to people who feel ignored and bring a little kindness to some who feel angry. And you know what? These are all, for the most part, things we can do on a daily basis, as regular joe-shmoes. No need for special educational degrees.
Go donate to a food bank. Give out your old gloves or scarves to homeless people. Keep an eye out for shit that shouldn`t fly, and if you see any, do something about it! Call for help, bring attention to it, anything just don`t walk by and do nothing. This is nothing we haven`t heard before, so why not start acting on it? If we all did in a month half of what Lightstep does in a week, we`d all be Real Life Super Heroes.
We walked to Atwater near 3am, where I would catch a cab home. The night bus was coming up and they were going to try and catch it. We said bye, thanks for the company, and headed off home our separate ways, and it was no different than with any one of my friends. This small, funny and genuine person, doing amazing things gave me much to think about and tons to hope for.
I don`t really know how to end this. I honestly am just hoping I did some small amount of justice to the message they want to share. I`m going to leave links here, to a few charities and organizations, in case I was able to inspire anyone to start helping out as well.
Sometimes I miss the days when the internet was a bit more of a luxury. I don’t miss the fact that we couldn’t be on the phone and online at the same time. I don’t miss Netscape Navigator, or Trumpet Winsock. However, despite the greatness of torrenting, I do find myself missing KaZaA and Limewire and Sharebear and… well, the excitement that went along with those. Every new download felt like a treasure.
It once took me two days to download a cracked copy of GTA 2, and when that thing was ready, I thought my heart would burst from how excited I was to be playing it. I’d download all these random songs by bands I’d never heard of, just to see what was out there, as well as tons of videos, which always took forever, and were often disappointing, but sometimes, revelatory. Enter “Rejected”.
Surely, at the mere mention of Rejected, you know exactly what I’m talking about, but if you don’t, well, click this, and then come back here in 10 minutes.
I’m not sure who told me about Rejected at first, but I know it took me no time at all to decide that everyone in the world should see this marvel. I couldn’t get over the absurdity of it, these simple, strange, ephemeral characters, and the obvious effort that had been put into animating such an odd creation. Don Hertzfeldt was my new hero: I needed to see all of his previous work. I downloaded what I could, and watched it all repeatedly, for a while. But then, time passed, my interests shifted, and I was a teenager, so nothing held my interest for any given period of time. I didn’t forget about Don Hertzfeldt, but I definitely didn’t keep up with his career. He just became one of those dudes I used to be into.
Fast forward to 2014. Hertzfeldt creates the longest couch gag in Simpsons history, and it blows us all away. The man never stopped creating, and his style hasn’t changed, though his work has improved, quite a bit. Last week, sleepless, I found myself watching his full-length feature, “It’s such a beautiful day”, on Netflix, at 4 AM.
The film follows Bill, a simple man contemplating the entirety of his life. He’s undergoing treatment for an unnamed illness, and he examines the possibility of his own death, as well as the deaths of his relatives. He loses his mind, finds it again. He examines the mundane, the not-so-mundane. He dreams. And it’s all absolutely wonderful.
Pieced together from 3 previous short works featuring the same character, this film actually has a seamless, deranged flow to it, in true Hertzfeldt style. It’s chaotic, and alluring. It’s a remarkable piece of work.
Go watch it, or don’t. I’m not the boss of you. But if you don’t, picture this face staring at you in disappointment and anger, and try to sleep:
Checkmate, folks.
-Al
This wasn’t originally going to be a two parter, but then I realized this was getting pretty long and I was only half way through. This thing has 23 tracks, so I’ll do 11 here today and 12 next week.
So we moved the TV room around a little (to make room for a beer fridge!) and it exposed the lower shelf of a bookcase that had a pretty big stack of old CDs on it. I thought it might be fun to see what the ole’ CD collection had in store for me and looked for a CD to bring with us to listen to in the car while we ran some errands.
Then I saw it. I saw an old mix CD. Not just any mix CD. A mix CD that I seemed to care about enough that I made jewel case art. Don’t be fooled by the fact that it says “antisocial,” that’s not what I named the mix. In fact, that was a reference to my extremely old website “antisocialites”. So old that I can’t seem to find it on the internet anymore. No, this mix was called “The Quick Brown Fox Jumped Over the Lazy Dog. Yes, the fact that it’s “jumped” and not “jumps” was intentional (thereby meaning that the sentence doesn’t actually contain all 26 letters of the alphabet and is missing the “s”). I thought I was fucking hilarious. I was right. That is hilarious.
That symbol/face thing? That was something I called “The Squidgy”. Not sure why. I did use to draw and paint it on things though from time to time. I was a real badass.
Most of these songs have the telltale little blips and skips of a badly ripped song. Most of these songs came from LimeWire. Remember LimeWire guys? Only 90s kids will remember LimeWire. LimeWire was what we all turned to when it started to be hard to find the tracks you wanted on Napster. I remember trying to somehow convince my parents that this wasn’t illegal at one point. Something about it being “just like the radio”. Oh parents. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Ok, so it’s December 2nd today and I really wanted to post the contents of my November Loot Crate in the month of November, but I was also extremely excited to write about my first time being a DM. I don’t really feel that guilty though since this is going to be the post that knocks Jon off the homepage which means that once again I’m in charge. I am going to instigate a rule that if someone manages to dominate the homepage the other members of the site need to buy me a pony. Or a kitty. Or at least a beer.
Alright, this was a tough second month to be a Looter. Being a horror fan and having the October theme be FEAR was probably setting the bar a little high for a first month. I’m not saying this month is bad by any means, just not as much of it speaks to me on a personal level. However, if you remember my previous entry about Loot Crate you’ll know that I have every intention of giving away a lot of this stuff at Keithmas, so everybody wins! This month’s theme was BATTLE. As always I attempt to quantify the happiness I felt for each item as I discovered it using a maximum of 5 little hearts. Let’s take a look at what we’ve got: ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
So, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m running my first ever tabletop RPG for a few friends. I chose Gamma World for the system, but tweaked the setting a little for my own designs (I included the general setting email I sent the players at the bottom of the article). The plan is to run a 5 to 6 game story arch that is open ended enough that if people want to keep going I can do it again. I am very inspired by comic-book story structure, where smaller adventures with a beginning, middle and end potentially make up a bigger storyline. I guess we’ll see. I’m trying not to be overly ambitious after only a single session.
Let’s do a quick roundup of the players and their characters for reference (obviously keeping anything secret about their characters out of it since let’s face it, they’ll probably read this):
- Jon (from 9ES): Playing Navison, a robot who has some information on a job for the other characters.
- Sarah: Playing Mr. Gordo, a psychic monkey who makes a living as hired muscle.
- Pat: Playing Mr. Salvatore, a nightmarish swarm of insects who makes a living as a spy and sometimes hit man.
- Eric: Playing Skraw, a wheeled hawkoid who is a sort of eco-freedom fighter, willing to do anything to make money to save the beloved forests of his home world.
- Ève: Playing Lee Ken, a mythic plant who resembles an elf who is also the sworn protector of said forest, looking to do anything she can to save living creatures and make money to keep her operation going.
Both Ève and Sarah have never played a tabletop RPG before, but both have some experience with some more complex board games (Arkham Horror to name the big one). Jon DMs my regular D&D game and Eric and Pat play in it. The other caveat was that Sarah and Ève both only agreed to play one session to give it a shot. If I didn’t win them over I would be inviting two new players to the next session. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I first heard about Loot Crate a while ago, it seemed like a really good deal for Americans and a so-so deal for us Canadians.
If you don’t know what Loot Crate is, here’s the short version: For a fixed rate the people at Loot Crate get promo stuff based on a theme (in October it was “Fear”) and send you stuff each month. Who doesn’t like to get surprise presents once a month? I decided that I would basically give away anything that I didn’t want to keep at Keithmas so some of my holiday shopping would be taken care of. Basically for us Canadians it comes out 29.95$ CAD (as opposed to 19.37$ USD, which would be 21.95$ CAD, there is also an ongoing promo for 10% off, which meant I was paying around 27$ CAD so basically a 5 dollar difference for us Canucks). I signed up for 3 months.
Seeing as I’m about to get the November crate, now is just as good a time as any to tell you what was in the October crate. Ha! I will tell you how happy each item made me. First up:
So yeah, sometimes I will use this blog to talk about music that I like. Can’t stop me bro.
So I was listening to Songza (which we all know has basically replaced the radio for everyone with any sort of actual musical tastes) and a song (I honestly have no idea which one) came on from a band called Yeasayer. I had heard another song of theirs previously (“O.N.E.”) and this song sort of made me think of Simian (the band, not the duo Simian Mobile Disco that was formed by two members of the band after the band broke). Two good songs and a favorable comparison to one of my favorite bands meant it was time to check them out in earnest. They just released a live album a few months ago which had material from all their previous three albums, so I figured it was as good a jumping in point as any.
The album starts out with an airport style robot announcer repeating “Good Evening Washington D.C.” again and again and it honestly sounds like it’s about to be the start of a massive Ibiza club DJ album. Not 100% sure but it also sounds like the voice says “Let’s Make Some Love”. So I was a little weirded out. The first track “Finger Never Bleed” is also a little dancey. Somehow made me think a little about a psychedelic Adele. That might just be me though. I’d imagine that if I was at this show and I didn’t know what Yeasayer was about I would be might disappointed that they didn’t explode out with massive dance jams and instead a trippy little synth band appeared.
“Henrietta” was mellow and fun and then it was followed up with what at the time of writing was my favorite track “2080” which starts with a massive wall of sound and then jumps into a fun synthy 70s groove with laser sounds. Who doesn’t like lasers. Possibly because my girlfriend yelled “Run Runner!” recently at a girl running towards the metro I was immediately thinking of Logan’s Run. If a song can make me think of Logan’s Run it’s basically an automatic A plus. The vocals on the track are a little bit strange as the lead singer continues to be a vocal chameleon, this time sounding quite a bit like Mick Jagger. After listening to the album I found out the band has two singers, but that still doesn’t account for the massive differences of vocal characteristics between the songs. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…