that ring of confidence

Once in a lifetime

i love the Talking Heads, and one of their best songs is "Once In A Lifetime". The first time I heard the song however was not as sung by David Byrne and group but rather one Kermit the Frog as part of the relaunched Muppet Show. The show didn't really last, but the cover of the song by Kermitt was one of the great moments in Muppets history. I was reminded of this last night when Lydia revealled that she had never seen any of the Muppet movies, and only seemed familiar with The Muppet Babies cartoon.

What the heck? At the very least The Muppet Movie is now on our list of things we've got to watch to get her up to speed. The girl has never even seen Jaws.

Yup, there's a lot of work before the wedding.

Sarah Palin is the best thing to happen to SNL in a decade

i must admit I rarely watch Saturday Night Live these days and have not regularly since the mid-1990s. Most of the time when someone starts talking about a funny sketch they saw on the show I... wait what am I talking about when's the last time that happened? Probably the early 90s'. Well at least until the arrival of Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, and SNL's wonderful Tina Fey acted spoof on her.

Take a look at these two clips, one is Fey and one is Palin. Which is more uncomfortable? I think that Fey as Palin probably would do a better job as Vice-President than Palin as Palin. The thing is I almost want John McCain to win just so we can keep getting regular Tina Fey guest spots as the new Vice-President on SNL.

Almost.

Let us celebrate 1,000 posts

You looking at blog post number 1,000 here at my personal site.  I've been doing this a long time, and not always as actively as I'd have liked but I finally made it to the four digit numbers.  If posts were money I'd be a thousand-aire.

Which is why I had hoped to have something more to post for you than some more footage of my trip to the Sub Pop 20th Birthday bash in Seattle.  However I just finished working a twelve hour shift today, and I just realized that during this swing of shifts I'm working twelve days in a row.  So you're going to have to get what you take.

Or something.

I did see the new Batman movie.  Post about that soon I'm sure.  Until then though enjoy the Flight of the Conchords.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

Awesome.

Joss Whedon.

Awesome.

Twittering for directions and David Cross in China

I went to Matt and Oana's place tonight as they resurrected their (nearly) weekly movie night.  Or if they did not resurrect it, then I've been able to finally make amends for whatever social mistakes I might have made the last time I was at their movie night, and got another invite.  The last time I was there we watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, and this time it was The Vice Guide to Travel which was a compilation of short travel films by Vice Magazine featuring the sort of trips you'd never take to the places that no sane person would ever go.

Getting to their place was a bit of adventure [mbv], but thanks to Twitter I managed to find my way.  You might have seen my Tweets asking for help on my blog here.  I got lost and not having Matt and Oana's phone number, nor Ryan Cousineau's [wc] who was also going to be at the party, I had to Twitter from my phone asking for help.  A few minutes later a stranger called me and using Google Maps we managed to find my way there.

So Mark Hamilton, thanks for the help.

Above is one of the bonus features on the DVD, which shows David Cross (Mr. Show, Arrested Development) exploring China.  My favourite point of the video is when he's trying to buy bootleg DVDs of his shows and his travelling companion claims that Cross was in Scary Movie 3, to which Cross indignantly replied "Scary Movie 2".

Flickr video

As you might have notice I've been playing around with Flickr's new video feature. Some people, such as Matthew Good [fkr], have been using it to do short form videos and screen casts. That's something I might do in the future, but for now with a few exceptions I'm more interested in using it to do video photos.

Limited to 90 seconds I'm finding it better to capture motion and sound on a subject that I'd normally take a photo of. For example Winger above. The Vancouver Whitecaps mascot would make a good photo, but a very short video of him trying to rally the crowd behind the home team captures it a bit better. Similarly the video of the steaming noodles two entries below [jks] makes for a much more interesting video, as the bonito evaporates, than it does a still shot. That's not to say some short videos won't be something that I'll do, it's just that right now I'm digging the video still shot idea.

An hour with Flickr video

I've been playing around with Flickr's new video service today and I quite like it.  It's better than YouTube because it's not ugly, and it's more private than YouTube's garish clusterfuck of a site.  The 90 second limit has yet to be a problem, since I've mainly been playing around with short clips that I've recorded with my Canon TXi as opposed to a dedicated movie camera.

Above is a short video of Nathan, and below is some noodles steaming with bonito on top that I ate at Guu in Richmond.

Tags: video, Flickr, Vancouver, Guu

I win a contest and clean my deck

Trevor says: Have you entered the Miss604 contest yet?
Originally uploaded by miss604.

First up I won a contest on Miss604 [m604], the blog of fellow Metroblogger Rebbecca.  I only entered for the awesome retro Trevor Linden figure, but the rest of the swag is going to be fairly awesome.  So what all did I win?  I'll let Rebbecca describe it, by copying and pasting from her site.

- A limited edition, not sold in stores, collector, uncut sheet of 2007/2008 Vancouver Giants hockey cards

- A Canucks carabiner, keychain thingy

- Two tickets to this Saturday’s Everett Silvertips

- Two tickets to the BC Rockies vs Canucks Alumni hockey fundraiser game on March 22nd

- A McFarlane, in-package, mint, collector, Trevor Linden action figure

- A coveted Miss604 sticker as seen at Northern Voice or…

- You can also chose a limited edition solid-colour Miss604 sticker

You can watch the tension packed drawing of my name at her site [m604].

Meanwhile I woke up early on Tuesday and spent about two hours cleaning off my deck.  I've never really used my deck because when I moved in it was filthy and I always knew it was going to take the sacrifice of a mop to get it clean.  I had bought the kamakazi mop a few months ago, but it had been hiding in my closet wanting to live.

After the cleaning Lydia came over and we went to get some food and then watch Once on my AppleTV.  I've had the soundtrack for Once for a few months now but the movie is a still worth watching.  It's not quite a romantic flick, but it's certainly sweet-hearted and good natured.

The final thing is that I applied for a job I want to get, and now have an interview (almost) lined up.  Which should be good and exciting.  To make it more exciting I'm planning on bringing a car full of fire ants and emptying them down my shirt's neck five minutes before the interview so that for the entire talk I'm trying not to scratch my arm pits or yell out in pain.

Never say that I do things the easy way.

In Kelowna

Nathan and I went to Kelowna. That's about all I've got to say about that.

Nathan showed me this website [clf] and it has videos like this one. That's about all I've got to say about that.

The Drink: a very short video

I bought a new camera, a Canon TX1, which has both a good point and shoot camera mode and a decent video capture mode. So when I got home I made this quick video to test it out to see if I liked it and wanted to keep it. So far so good, though my acting is a little rough.

Nothing but a cat and a monkey and a chicken today

I'll try to make a post later, but as it is I'm running behind for the movie that I want to see. So I'm just going to give you a short video that The Vancouverite [van] directed me to this morning. It's quite the show, and I hope you all enjoy it.

Nine Inch Nails - Live in Vancouver ("Closer")

This is a short clip of the song "Closer" from the Nine Inch Nails show in Vancouver.  You can tell my seats weren't that good.

Team Canada Practice

This is some footage from the team Canada Men's Olypmic Ice Hockey team that I captured on my digital camera. It's a digital still camera with not a great zoom, but the quality is surpringly good.

This is from the practice on August 17th, 2005 held in Kelowna at Prospera Place.

Video Post: The second day in Vancouver

Choppy video of Vancouver, how can you go wrong?

The day before Graham's wedding

This is just me slightly drunk talking about the events the day before Graham's wedding.

Video from the line for the video

Read my previous post for a complete detailing of the experiance of being an extra in U2's "City of Blinding Lights" video.  This is just a short clip showing the line.  It begins on Clay's friend from Jack FM, whose name I think is Scott, and ends on Clay as I do a 180 degree pan.

"The Fly"

I did not go to Weezer because I was just too lazy/tired last night.  However I thought I'd post a few more clips from Monday night's U2 show in Seattle.

U2 Seattle Encore, "Vertigo"

I had tried to edit all the short clips I took with my digital still camera together to create a short montage, but for some reason (because it's lame) Audioblog only takes AVI files and iMovie won't output to AVI.

Anyway this was one of the better clips, though I may post more later. Bono lectures the crowd on the definition of the word "encore". It's from Italian he says, and it means to play the "same fucking song again", then the band kicks into it's second performance of "Vertigo" that evening.

I've never seen a major act play the same song more than once. U2 used to do it before they had a large enough catalouge to fill an entire show, but now the fact that they did it was... well really cool. Especially since "Vertigo" is one of those blow-the-doors-off live numbers that just works so well.

Top down

I drove to Seattle today. U2 tomorrow, but a day of driving in the sun and then dinner with Jeff today. The question of the day is when did US Customs agents start dressing like SWAT agents?

Off to Seattle

Just a quick video post before I head off to Seattle in the morning. Are these my last words before dying in a spectacular car crash, or something far less vital? It's up to you and history to decide.