erics head

Continuing on from where I left off a few weeks ago, I just finished re-reading the first two volumes of the Scott Pilgrim series tonight. The second read-through really seems to bring the story together, or at least it did for me. Knowing the characters and the plot allowed me to enjoy the drawings and such more this time around. It also helps distinguish between the dream sequences and reality or the parts where the story kinda flips back and forth between two places without any warning (e.g., pages 6-7 will be in one place, then 8-9 will be elsewhere, but 10-11 will be back to the first scene, etc.); again, could just be that I’m not used to the conventions of a graphic novel yet.

There isn’t a lot of deliberate character development, like you’d find at the start of a movie, somehow I seem to have a much better connection to the main characters after this second read. I’m not a fast reader, but the relatively short length of the books makes it easy (and enjoyable) to breeze through them in a night, and like I’ve already said here, there is a good amount of re-read value to be had: video game references to pick-up, visual gags in the artwork, etc. I don’t know what the author’s grand plan was for the slow release schedule (read: one volume every ~12 months) — I can only assume that’s how long it takes to draw a story like this — but both the art and overall quality of the story has improved in the second volume.

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Wow, tomorrow is the last day of March. I don’t know where the month went.

I apologize for the low post count this month, but to be honest I have a few really good looking posts sitting around as drafts right now; I don’t want to rush them to press however. The highlight of these would be the two-, three- or four- part series on the music industry that I’ve been working on. This started as a re-hash of a conversation I had with my fellow carpoolie one night and has since expanded from there. The initial seed for the conversation is simple: why does the music industry continue to release proper albums? Hasn’t the iTMS all but ended the reign of the LP? This simple idea became too big for one post, so I’ve split it into two separate posts: why the album is better and why singles should rule. Related to this, over the past year or so we’ve started to see a lot of remastered and ‘expanded’ albums coming out. How does this play into the album vs. the single argument? Furthermore, if I purchased the original album (on vinyl or otherwise), why should I have to pay (full price) for the reissue? And fourthly(?), the role of the label seems to be changing/in danger these days as some established acts are stepping out on their own to embrace the internet and social networking; what does this mean for the future of music?

I don’t know if any of this is really ground breaking or not, but after many conversations about this stuff and some timely releases and announcements it seems like as good a time as any for me to throw my two cents into the pot.

On a more personal note, April is looking to be a very big month for me with a rather substantial announcement likely to be made towards the end of April or early May; stay tuned for that. In the meantime, I’ll try to get the music posts flowing, updates on Scott Pilgrim (just finished the second book last night; good stuff!) out to everyone, a few choice wallpapers that I’ve used over the years up here for your enjoyment (any screen resolution requests?), and who knows whatever else will come along.

Happy spring everyone.

Okay, perhaps the title is a bit of overkill, but after almost a month of silence here I thought I should return with a little something extra. Then again, like anything with a cult following, I’m sure there are many people who would agree with this post’s title. After a mere five years, perhaps Scott Pilgrim is about to become the “next big thing”. Why? Let me try to explain…

Actually, why don’t I let ScottPilgrim.com explain:

Scott Pilgrim’s life is totally sweet. He’s 23 years old, he’s in a rock band, he’s “between jobs,” and he’s dating a cute high school girl. Nothing could possibly go wrong, unless a seriously mind-blowing, dangerously fashionable, rollerblading delivery girl named Ramona Flowers starts cruising through his dreams and sailing by him at parties. Will Scott’s awesome life get turned upside-down? Will he have to face Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends in battle? The short answer is yes.

Still not convinced? Does it sound like some sort of cliched teenage romance story? Well, not exactly. It’s a ‘graphic novel’ for starters, written by Toronto’s Bryan Lee O’Malley and published through Oni Press. One volume has been released each year since Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life, Volume 1 came out back in July 2004. There will be six volumes in total; volume five came out just last month. I first became interested in this series about a month ago when I heard that Edgar Wright — director and co-writer of both the incredible Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz — was involved in turning these stories into a movie. If these stories are good enough for him, then colour me interested.

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I’m going to try and keep this very short: I haven’t seen any of the movies that were nominated for a major Oscar/Academy Award this year. What’s up with that? Just to be clear, this is a list of movies that I have not (yet) seen:

• Changling
• Curious Case of Benjamin Button
• Doubt
• Frost/Nixon
• Frozen River
• Milk
• Rachel Getting Married
• The Reader
• Slumdog Millionaire
• The Visitor
• The Wrestler

These eleven movies cover all of the movies nominated for: Best Picture, Best Direction, Best Writing (Screenplay), Lead Actor and Lead Actress. If I add just three or four more, you can also cover the Supporting Actor/Actress categories… probably others as well. Doesn’t it seem like there should be more than just eleven movies included in the top five categories? Is this field always this tight?

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I can’t believe that it happened again. Just like it did the first time.

“Just a few days… all for free, of course… you can even play in the snow if you’d like…”, they taunted me. I didn’t take the bait, at least not right away.

A little later on, maybe after the better part of a week had passed, I’d tried in vain to forget about this offer, remembering that this is how it all started so many years ago. I don’t remember what the initial eMail was about, but for whatever reason I’d mentioned in my reply about this new offer I’d heard about, thinking perhaps that my friends, my closest friends, would talk me out of it. Surely they would… right?

Wrong. As soon as one caved, I followed close behind. As if I’d done this every day for years and years, I moved my mouse to the icon that, although I hadn’t used it in more than a year, still occupied a prominent spot on my desktop. Double-click and, just seconds later, the dark portal appeared before me. I had returned to the World of Warcraft.

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After a long wait, last Friday night finally arrived and My Girlfriend and I headed down to Hamilton, Ontario to see Brad Paisley in concert. I’ve been a fan of Brad’s since I first heard his 5th Gear album about a year or so ago. As a (wannabe) guitarist myself, I admire his ability to play; he’s got a really great style and his catalog of tunes is quite impressive. Lyrically, his songs range from heart breaking (Letter to Me) to humourous (On-Line) to just great, fun country songs (Ticks and Mr. Policeman).

Friday night, Brad put on a good show. A really good show. He’s got a great stage set-up, has a lot of light effects and has mastered the art of interactive video on stage: a nice duet with a projected image of Alison Krauss(?) for one song; several cameo appearances by other artists in a “Guitar Zero” music video of sorts. I really enjoyed his performance as it was everything I could have hoped it would have been.

However, I have to say that Dierks Bentley stole the show. He simply wanted it more… and it paid off in spades.

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Just before Christmas arrived I blogged and Tweeted about getting a new phone. More specifically, I was looking for advice on which mobile to get. The market is constantly turning out new models and you have a seemingly unlimited number of options… until you start looking.

Very quickly, you realize that the first decision you have to make is which provider to sign on with. Having been a Telus subscriber for nearly a decade now, I choose to start looking at them first. Surprisingly, cell plans are very similar from provider to provider right now, both in cost and feature set. Things that were standard years ago (voice mail, call display) are now expensive extras; with the advent of text messaging, there is something else you have account for each month. Personally, I talk very little on my phone these days, probably less than 60 minutes per month, however I send about 150-200 txts in the same time period. Reviewing my personal usage habits, I took this information and decided on the Samsung M540 Slyde phone which Telus carries:

The full, slide-out QWERTY keyboard and Samsung name are what sold me. I’ve used a Samsung now for the past four years and found them to be very durable and functional. Having carried around a flip -style phone previously, I didn’t initially realize that I’d need a case for the phone because of the exposed main screen, however, the $15 clear, hard case I’ve since picked up is doing wonderfully. As far as the phone itself goes, the keyboard is very responsive, the menu set-up and general feature set of the phone is efficient and logical and for the short while that I was converting from T9 texting to a full keyboard, I was happy to see that the phone still supported the T9 system and texting from the numeric keypad on the ‘outside’ of the phone (e.g., when the phone is closed). While I haven’t made a lot of phone calls on it, the sound is very good and I haven’t had anyone complain that they couldn’t hear me over the line.

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