superflea

IMPORTANT UPDATE: For anybody interested in checking out the Cure's Toronto gig, tickets go on sale at 10am today (Wednesday, June 9th) on Ticketmaster.ca as part of an Edge.ca promotion. It's a free registration to become part of that deal. Ticket sales open to the public on Saturday. Be there, or be elsewhere!!!

I gotta preface this by saying I have no idea what's going on with the justification of this entry. I assure you it's shorter than it looks, and there will not be a quiz afterwards.

Although, if it looks anything on your computer like it does on mine, dear reader, then it kinda looks like one of Dogslife's poems. And that's both cool and funny. So enjoy - the journal commenceth.


AAAAAAAARGH!!!

SO ANGRY!!!

So it's 9:55 this morning, and I'm waiting in the parking lot of the Best Buy in eager anticipation of the store opening so that I can purchase one of the albums I've been looking forward to most for months now - the debut release from Velvet Revolver.

10:02 or so comes around and the doors open. I rush in, b-line to the music section, and see the album in the very first display slot. I grab it in my eager hands, and am momentarily fixed to the spot. Can this really be it? Do I finally have the album? Is it really almost mine?

I rip myself from my stupor and head towards the cashier. I plunk my treasure down and whip out my bank card. We make small talk. (Side note - she was totally mackin' on yours truly a few weeks back when I was in buyin Slipknot, and the next day when I was in buying various odds n' ends. Today, nothin'. My theory - when last I was in, my head was freshly and completely shaved. Today, a bit of stubble. Ladies? Votes?) I complete the transaction. I return to my car, fighting the urge to rip it open and listen to the first single on the short drive to work.

I arrive at my office. I head to the upper floor to give our Director of Operations the tape of Sunday's Sopranos finale that one of our artists was gracious enough to lend me. I head back to my office. I tear off the CD's wrapping like I would the clothes of a lover. I thrust the CD into my drive and crank the speakers, ready for the eargasm.

And then... some software stuff pops up on the screen. Cut to a wide shot of birds taking flight as I holler a hearty "what thefuck?". Okay - I guess it's some stupid proprietary player or CD Extra nonsense. Whatever. I click okay. And then said proprietary player application starts. Or tries to start. The CD starts playing - LOUDLY - but no control window comes up. I don't know which track is playing. I have no transport controls. There is no volume control.

Nuts to you, jerksauce, I say! And I fire up the nefarious Windows Media Player.

skipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskip

Dagnabit.

Fine, fine. Let's see what iTunes has to say about it.

skipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskip

Now, I'm getting a little bothered.

So I try to play it in one of my heavy-duty pro audio applications.

skipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskipskip

Now I'm furious.

They have put some insane copy protection bullshit on it that I suppose precludes it being played on a computer except via the included proprietary player, which, as I've mentioned, doesn't fucking work.

I can understand where they're coming from... after all, I'm in militant opposition to music piracy and illegal file-swappin'. But I also listen to music mainly on my iPod these days. So I sort of NEED to be able to have this album THAT I WAITED IN A PARKING LOT TO BUY ON LAUNCH DAY behave in a computer drive.

No.

Fucking.

Dice.

I'm totally in favour of copy protection, except for the small fact that it will almost certainly inconvenience mainly legitmate users. And the stupid thing is that it's soooooooooooo easy to get around.

Students of science, let's review:

1. Put CD in normal CD player.
2. Connect output of CD player to input of computer soundcard.
3. Connect ankle-bone to shin-bone.
4. I'm just fucking with you. There is no step 4. (I'll never find that joke not funny.)
5. Record songs to new digital forms without intrusive copy protection.
6. Enjoy responsibly.
7. Seven. For n-n-no tomorrow.
8. Eight. I forget what eight was for.

You see where I'm going with this.

I don't want to upload these songs and share them. I just want to have them on my iPod so I can listen to them in the office, in the car, at the gym, or wherever.

I finally had to resort to playing it in the Playstation 2 I've got in my office. And the album is pretty good. But I'd be enjoying it a lot more if I basically just didn't get the shaft by a record company and band I was trying to support.

Dear RCA Records: if you want to whine about what's really hurting record sales - and I'm not about to stand up on the behalf of the little jackasses who think that Santa died at Little Bighorn to protect their right to steal music - you might consider for a moment that after this, I'm going to have to think long and hard before I ever buy another RCA CD again. And I'm one of the good guys. You don't want to piss me off.

And that all sucks.

And now I'm mad.

I promised a few of you my thoughts on the new Harry Potter movie. I was going to turn it into something longer, but after that rant, I think I'm going to keep it short.

Let me start by saying that I think it was a wonderful movie, and a worthy contribution to the Potter world. I also think, as I've stated before, that I think it's the weakest of the three films, based on two primary concerns - pacing and direction.

By the time you're at the third book in the Potter series, they're starting to have some real meat on the bones. There is a lot of exposition, and a lot of little touches that really flesh out the world and the story. This film paused for none of that nonsense, thank you very much. It was like being tied to a car and dragged at a breakneck pace through the story. It was succinct and efficient to a fault, and to the detriment of the narrative and the world in which it is set.

Secondly, where critics may have considered earlier films too faithful to the original texts, and commended the new director on his injecting more of his vision into the story, I say fuck you! We're basically dealing with the Lord of the Rings of our generation (from a literary standpoint). Rowling got it just right. Stick to the recipe, dumbass. And for the love of God, we know you're using time as a big theme. (Which is kind of funny, given how I didn't like the pacing.) Can we have one fucking shot that doesn't truck through a clock somehow? Jesus.

And I gotta admit - that scene where Harry and Ron go off on an adventure of sexual awakening with that older woman just didn't make any goddamn sense at all.

To re-emphasize, though, I did think the film was still very good. The casting, as usual, is flawless (my sole complaint being that I'd always thought Gary Oldman would have made a brilliant Voldemort, so it's a little dissatisfying to see him cast as Sirius, no matter how perfectly he plays the part) and the grounds of Hogwarts continue to look exactly as a magical academy nestled in the english countryside should. Buckbeak in particular is a CG triumph and better win somebody an oscar.

My single biggest complaint was the theatre full of people who couldn't shut up for two minutes to save their lives. Giggling at nothing, questioning and explaining loudly - and erroneously - what was going on... I was out for blood. I can understand that kids are going to have a problem fixing their attention on a feature length picture, but (at the risk of sounding very old) these were high school kids. The real killer came when I saw the peanut gallery in question in the lobby afterwards. These were geeks. These were my people.

And yet they too must be dispatched to that special level of hell reserved for pedophiles and people who talk in theatres.

Godspeed, Chatty Cathy.

Oh, and in case you all, like me, have the maturity level of a three-year old, here's a bit of Harry Potter fun.

Other important update: Sorcha's awesome. Just wanted to make sure everybody was clear on that.