paging doctor doolittle

My pet-sitting gig in Toronto has brought me into contact with all manners of creatures:

Ranger is a mopey dog. He's about 7 years old, starting to show his age as he takes the stairs slowly now. He's half Labrador, half Rotweiller: a good regular and well-behaved dog. I think he misses his owners, because he's been moping about the house like some cheese-eating emo boy, er.. dog. He picks at his food, sleeps all day. I should see if he has some Cure albums hidden about the house. At least he cheers up when it's time for a walk. If I need to do a few extra blocks and that takes us past these nice bakeries and cheese shops in Leslieville, well so be it. That's the sacrifice I'm willing to make for the happiness of a dog.

The cats are a handful. The momma cat and two kittens are playful, with the two kittens taking turns playing follow the leader, which leads into wrestling and more chasing about the house. Last night the games continued into bedtime. As I started to doze off, I heard the faint sound of a little collar bell growing louder, and then ZOOM over the top of my head and then gone again. I forgot how weird cats can be.

And lastly, a word on the raccoons in downtown Toronto. These guys are hardcore. I have 2 different restraints on the garbage bins to keep the little buggers out, so they found a new way to entertain themselves. I woke up to find that the defunct BBQ in the yard had been wiped the hell out. From the quick look this morning, it seems some critter knocked over the BBQ last night (no propane tank) and took the BBQ apart, with the grill, the element and the lid scattered on the patio. I didn't see any footprints, because my other suspicion was that someone had tried to stand on the BBQ in order to climb up to a window, but I saw no footprints and there were other, more stable footholds to be used (regardless, the alarm didn't go off).

raccoons killed the BBQ. That's just mean.

tales of the ill

blech. been home sick for the past few days. I got soaked in the rain last Wednesday and I've been down with a cold ever since. I've been sticking to the South Park cure for SARS: chicken noodle soup, DayQuil and Sprite. I'll write a bit more later. I'm back downtown for the next few months on a housesitting gig, so I hope I'll have more to write about once I'm back in Toronto.

Tales of the Malnourished

Through various reasons on Wednesday, I didn't eat much. I wasn't particularly hungry, just busy at work and distracted by other things, so I didn't pay attention to what I ate. This is what happened:

Breakfast: Cafe Latte and a cheese croissant
Lunch: Cheese and crackers
Snack: Coffee and a pumpkin spice donut
Dinner: Homemade soup
Concert: 4 beers
Aftershow: Fries and sausages

Can anyone tell me how I didn't drop dead from malnutrition? That was one of the most unbalanced days I've had, but the odd part was I felt fine (yes, even after 4 beers at the concert with nothing substantial in my belly). But looking at that menu is a surely a reminder to me to look after myself better. Hence today's meals:

Breakfast: Bagel with peanut butter, cup of tea
Lunch: Half a chicken wrap and a fruit salad

That's more like it. That's how an adult should eat, not like the "university student during exams" menu from yesterday.

This would explain the lack of Scottish Ninjas

What happens if you throw your favourite wrestling stars into a World War 2 German prison camp? Why hijinks a plenty of course. From Robot Chicken, the twisted toy-based show where the acting is as plastic as Melanie Griffith, we present Hogan's Heroes.

UPDATE: Awww damn. YouTube pulled all the Robot Chicken clips due to copyright. Hope it gets sorted out with legal.I became a fan of Robot Chicken because of all the great YouTube clips my friends and I traded through emails and blogs, so I would think it benefits them to keep up the viral marketing.


Hulk: "Roddy, we need your stealth. Go take out that guard."
Roddy: "HEY HEY HEY YA F'N NAZI! HOW ARE YA?"

Yes that really is Rowdy Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan doing their own voice work, no that isn't Iron Sheik or Macho Man Randy Savage doing their own voices, and yes, Macho Man is indeed on Season 6 of The Surreal Life.

"...they soon got used to the unsteadiness of their existence."

Rohinton Mistry
A Fine Balance

Turkey Lurkey

Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Canucks. Seems like the perfect type of fall day for sitting inside, watching football, and eating until I pass out from turkey, pumpkin pie, and the inevitbale box of wine someone dug up. I'm looking just as forward to the leftover and very Atkins-unfriendly Turkey and Stuffing Sandwiches. Gobble gobble.

The 300: Remember The Spartans

The Spartans are the original underdogs. They were not the largest army in all of Ancient Greece, but they were the best trained, bravest, and most feared in all of Greece. Their pivotal last stand came during the Battle of Thermopylae, when 300 legendary Spartans held off the mighty Persian army of about a quarter million in order to buy time for the Greek city-states to mobilize against the invaders. That epic battle is used as a rallying cry whenever a team is faced with insurmountable odds, and now that battle is recreated in The 300. I have the YouTube version of the trailer here, but do yourself a favour and check out the large screen versions for The 300 on the Apple website. It's bloody gorgeous.



The 300 is based on the Frank Miller graphic novel of the same name. Miller is known for such hard boiled works as Sin City and the ground-breaking graphic novel Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. The trailer looks visceral, looking to draw in fans of the battle scenes from The Lord of The Rings and Braveheart. It reminds me of The Battle of Agincourt scenes from the excellent Henry V by Kenneth Branagh, which also saw a smaller army hold off a larger opposition. I'm looking forward to The 300, as it looks like a dirtier, more vivid depiction of war than, say, Troy, which I found made everything a bit too pretty to take seriously as a comment on the brutal nature of war.

Visually this trailer has a dark and brutal beauty, which is understandable as the director is Zach Snyder, who got Hollywood's attention with his 2004 remake of Dawn of The Dead. He's currently linked to the long-gestating production of The Watchmen, based on the revolutionary graphic novel by Alan Moore.

The 300 opens in March 2007.

300 Production Blog

Guess what? Chicken butt.

For the past few Thursdays, I've plopped onto the couch and watched a little TV. Around 9 I start to click between CSI and Grey's Anatomy, not really being a fan of either, but not disliking either of them. I enjoyed Grey's, but can't seem to watch a whole episode without the main character or someone connected to her irritating me enough to flip channels for a scene or two.

The fine folks at A List of Things Thrown Together 5 Minutes Ago pointed me towards the blog kept by the writers of Grey's Anatomy, and I saw this amusing post on just how much thought and planning had to go into a scene where Christina (Sandra Oh, fellow Canuck and pretty darn great actress) cleaves a chicken in half. The post is from one of the "new kids" on the writing staff, Debora Cahn, who wrote some good post-Sorkin West Wing episodes, including Leo's Funeral.

The nervous condition came and went over the first weeks on the job, but I think I officially got over it dealing with Cristina and the chicken. Cristina’s decided she’s going to help Burke get back on the horse after his hand surgery, (so sweet, so generous, so unexpected from Cristina) and she’s going to do it by having him practice operating on dead chickens. So when it came time to shoot the episode, there were long conversations with the fantastic production team about the hacking of the chicken. Was it just a chicken breast? Was it a whole fryer? The folks from sets and props had to design a cutting board that could be built into Burke’s counter top, so it wouldn’t fly off the counter, as there was a lot of concern about Sandra Oh getting hit in the face with either a meat cleaver or a chicken. The conversation continued when we hit the stage to rehearse the move with Sandra. Could she get through the bird in one hack or would it take two? (I thought it should be one. It was important to me. I don’t know why.) We had rehearsal chickens. We had stunt chickens. We discovered that the stunt chickens, which had balloons inside them instead of bones, emitted some sort of evil stinky salmonella gas that threatened to kill Sandra on the spot. It was scary. In the end, she made it through in one incredibly satisfying hack. The whole thing just made me really happy.
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Merry Catmas

It's the first Friday of October, so Happy Catmas to you!

Gnarls Barkley goes buggy

The video for Gnarls Barkley's take on the Violent Femmes classic "Gone Daddy Gone".



The arrangement sounds the same to me, more or less a straight cover of a good tune, but this video looks like Mighty Mites on acid. Possibly conceived after huffing a can of bug spray, but I can't confirm that. Or even back that up.

OK Go on Ice

I know, I know: I can't shut up about how much I like the band OK Go. You seen the terrific videos for A Million Ways and Here It Goes Again (aka the Treadmill routine) here. I'm getting tickets to their show at Mod Club on Monday November 13th. You think that would be enough for me.

And then I see the ice skating bit. Somehow, I missed this evolution of figure skating, as the Canadian bronze medalists Utako Wakamatsu & Jean-Sebastien Fecteau perform their OK Go routine. If any of you figure skating fans (you know who you are) know whether this was the Nationals or which year this was, let me know please. I don't know which is weirder: that someone adapted the choreography of A Million Ways sucessfully to a figure skating routine, or that this has made me watch figure skating for the first time since the days of Elvis Stojko and Josie Chounard.