One exam down. Oddly enough, it was sweet, sweet candy. Looks like my lucubration paid off.
The last week has been pretty damn fantastic: lots and lots of high culture and shenanigans. I went to the newly-renovated AGO on Wednesday to marvel at all the awesome art (highlights: pre-Raphaelites, a really cool Magritte, and the mind-bendingly intricate wood and ivory carvings on the ground floor), and then to the ROM, where I promptly completely and utterly geeked out over the dinosaurs. No matter how old I get, it's impossible to look at the gigantic Allosaurus and not giggle maniacally. Plus, I was in good company; long-lost Guelphites were in town for both tours, with the usual hilarity ensuing.
Next step: face my pending mortality and turn 23 on Friday. Dammit.
This weather is stunning. I'm almost ashamed that I took a brief break from my errands day to check my Internets and update things.
Firstly: apparently Vox is being a pooface about transferring my posts over to LJ, so those of you who read me from over there should go back and catch this massive end-of-semester roundup.
Also: the sheer amount of awesome concerts over the next little while is making my bank accounts sad this month. Opeth, Decemberists, and Porcupine Tree (on Sept. 30?! Who the balls puts tickets up five months early, particularly for a seated venue?) are all coming up, and Rotate This! (seriously, fuck Ticketmaster. Go to RT instead. The staff are kind of dicks, but it beats "service fees" the size of fat children) pretty much owns my soul now. Prog Nation (Dream Theater! Pain of Salvation! Zappa! Beardfish! Oh my!) hasn't even been announced yet. It's going to be a loud, loud summer.
Thirdly: I haven't blathered about the awesomeness of a new album for a while, so here's a loud recommendation: Mastodon's Crack The Skye. It's dorkily high-concept in the extreme (astral projection! Rasputin! Assassinations! Bears in ill-fitting hats!), but I'm really enjoying their new sound. There's much less random barking in the vocals, and it turns out that the screamer-in-chief has a lovely, resonant, nasal rumble of a voice when he feels like it. I think I might still be too conservative a metalhead to dig their earlier albums (Leviathan is pretty fuckin' badass, but a bit too chaotic for me), but I definitely love this new direction.
Good heavens, blog, it's been a while.
- Apparently I am now a star of the stage! One of my coworkers is a theatre tech student down at Ryerson, and I got drafted to be her male lead after the original male lead bailed on her. I had to play the ghost of an assholish businessman, contemplating his life's errors in Purgatory while an offstage "stage manager" taunted him. The crowd loved all of the cutesy theatre in-jokes in the script, which was good, as it drew attention away from me being by far the least-schooled actor present that night. Still, I think we did alright, and I hope my colleague gets a good mark for our efforts.
- David Mitchell, David Mitchell, David Mitchell! After all that sounding-off about Cloud Atlas, I've now polished off Ghostwritten and most of number9dream, and I think I'm in love. I'm blown away by how he tangles plot threads and changes styles so effortlessly. He's also got a rare gift for writing thriller-style plots without getting all twitchy and breathless, and I love how he takes background characters from his earlier novels and fleshes them out again later (for example, a character in Ghostwritten mentions his troublesome brother in an aside, said brother then becoming the protagonist of one of the Cloud Atlas novellas).
- If the rumoured film adaptation of Cloud Atlas happens, I will burn everything. EVERYTHING.
- Sushi On Bloor is closed! Goddamn. However (a challenger has arrived!), New Generation, a mere block away, is a worthy successor to the cheap-sushi-in-the-Annex throne. I'm a little scared by some of the specialty maki I saw on the menu; the "Canadian" one with smoked salmon and asparagus is cute, but the unagi-and-cheddar roll is either heresy or an orgasm wrapped in rice. Maybe both.
- Things that trip up gaijin like me: apparently "kewpie," when seen on a sushi menu, means Japanese "QP"-brand mayonnaise (combine it with Thai sriracha hot sauce and you get Dynamite Sauce, apparently. Huh). Me, I think of these and cry a little.
- I've spent a long time corrupting my friend Rebecca with my musical tastes. This time, she turned the tables and dragged me out to an Ian Thornley concert. We somehow wound up in the very front row at the Phoenix, leaning comfortably on the security barrier. After an opening act so bad that even Mr. Thornley made fun of them (imagine the Clash without talent or chutzpah. Or don't), we were treated to a hell of a show. I mostly just knew the material from his Big Wreck days (Murphy's Law of Brad at a Concert: my favourite BW track, "Ladylike," didn't get played, but at least we got "That Song"), but I wound up enjoying the whole set. Thornley's a talented dude, and he brought a monster of a backing band. Now, if only I could figure out where I've seen his bassist before, I'd be a happy man.
- My goodness, the Indigo people sure know how to party. I was invited to "The Ranch" (looks like my old Guelph friends aren't the only ones with a penchant for naming rental homes) for a party on the weekend, and the usual chaos ensued. I love my coworkers even more with their vests off. I fear, however, the house brew. They devised this bastard concoction called "Sip'n'Go," which is a blend of rye, cheap beer, and frozen pink lemonade. Tastes delicious, hits like Holyfield.
- Wanna see a gorgeous, clever, dangerously addictive computer game? Go play World of Goo. Any game that can make a grown man cheer because he built a tower out of balls has to be doing something right.
