johnrobe

So sad.

I knew it was coming for a while, years actually, but today they announced that Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street is closing on June 30th.

The one thing that makes me sort of mad about it is that the Star (and most other news releases about it) is implying that they are closing due to the internet.

I guess to be fair, they're saying due to sales on the internet, and not piracy — but still, this rankles me. Is it maybe more because there are TWO giant record super stores within a hundred feet of Sam's? I'm sure the internet was a factor, but I'm sure the other stores were as well.

I don't buy a ton of music these days, but I always went to Sam's when I did out of loyalty. When I first moved to Toronto, I went to Sam's at least once a week, and bought CDs from their Indie wall. Sometimes, I would have never have heard of the group, but I just had a hunch, and the world of music opened to me was special and amazing. That's how I learned of The Waltons, The Rheostatics, Brass Bikini and the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band.

To be honest, the way I discover music now is better and cheaper, but I miss that old way, and I will miss Sam's even more.

Independence Day is a bad movie. It uses so many cliches that it actually creates meta cliches. Not content to just have the pretty girlfriend of the hotshot pilot outrun a fireball, they have her actually stop, turn around, and save her dog who then joins her in outrunning the fireball.

I could go on and on and on about all the silliness… but nobody does a better job than the Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics site and their review of the movie.

Seriously, this movie is so bad, yet I watch it every time it's on TV. Is it purely for the stuff blowing up? The pretty colours? Is it because, gosh darn it, we've got all that destruction coming to us?

Come on, I know I'm not the only one out there who watches it.

Still laid out on the couch, and Arrested Development made a reference to "diving into second base", and although I was familiar with what it meant, I wondered, "Does Wikipedia have an entry for it?" and they do!

In other news, I can't believe Fox canceled this show. It was the smartest, funniest show ever.

Whales at Risk, WWF Warns, was the headline.

It's not a funny topic. It's saying that whales in the arctic are at risk due to global warming and their native waters getting too warm.

Of course, what my BRAIN read was something else entirely.

See, to me, even though the World Wrestling Federation lost their lawsuit to the World Wildlife Fund over the use of the acronym WWF, I still read World Wrestling Federation whenever I see WWF.

I have a confession to make to people. I used to be a wrestling fan. I knew it was fake, I knew it was stupid, yet I still looked forward to it every week. It didn't matter that the acting was horrible, the moves were ridiculous and the muscles were steroid enhanced, there was something about the primitive drama of it all that was appealing to me. When I read the article in the Globe, the entire thing was being read by Randy "Macho Man" Savage's voice. If you know the voice, try it out, it makes the article much more amusing.

Did you know that Randy Savage was a minor league ballplayer? He was a catcher who blew out his shoulder and learned to throw with his other arm in an attempt to salvage his career. Imagine that for a moment. I feel like a spaz if I try to use a mouse with my left hand, I can't imagine throwing a ball in a professional league with my left hand.

Did you know that Randy Savage and Leapin' Lanny Poffo (the Poet Laureate of the WWF) were brothers?

Just a couple samples of the many useless wrestling related facts sitting useless in my brain. Let me know if you want any more!

Roger Ebert is the greatest film critic in the world. It's not even a close contest now that Pauline Kael has passed away. He is also, by far, my favourite.

Originally, like most people I would think, I read his movie reviews because I wanted to know what he thought of the movie. Over the years, however, I realized that there was something very special with Mister Ebert. I started reading all his reviews, including the movies that I would never see in a million years. In fact, I started enjoying the reviews of those movies much more than the reviews of the movies I would see. I don’t like being spoiled by a review, and even though Roger is not a movie spoiler, even knowing a little bit of the plot tends to taint the movie to some extent.

I don't always agree with Roger's opinion on movies, but I always love the way he reviews movies. So many movie reviews are just a recap of the movie with a few opinions to justify the score. Roger's long history with and love of movies shine through whether it's a review in his Great Movies series or a one star review of a horrible teen romantic comedy. I honestly laugh or learn something from every Ebert review, usually both.

Although it isn’t my favourite Ebert review, probably the most famous of his recent reviews was his review of Deuce Bigalow:European Gigalo. For those of you who have not read it, and I will assume that is most of you, some setup is required.

Deuce Bigalow II was apparently a terrible movie. I haven’t seen it (I missed the first one, and I’m sure I would have been lost on the continuity points).

Another reviewer named Patrick Goldstein panned the movie, and Rob Schneider, the star of the movie, took out a full page ad panning Mister Goldstein, asking what he had ever done to qualify him to comment so negatively on Rob’s movie. It was a hanging curveball over the center of the plate for Ebert, who does not usually name or award drop. In his own review, Ebert stated it about as well and as humourously as anyone could, when after listing several ways in which Mister Goldstein was indeed qualified he said:

But Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain that Columbia financed “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo” while passing on the opportunity to participate in “Million Dollar Baby,” “Ray,” “The Aviator,” “Sideways” and “Finding Neverland.” As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.

The review got a fair bit of press and a lot of laughs. Roger’s next book was titled “Your Movie Sucks.”

Roger has had a hard time the last couple of years, fighting poor health and complications from surgery. I admit, I have missed his reviews very much. There are many ways to get useful information on what movies to see, but there wasn’t anyone that I had found that I enjoyed reading on the topic of movies to fill the void as Roger recuperated. I admit, during this time, I thought little of Rob Schneider.

And then I read this story about how Rob sent Roger flowers wishing him a speedy recovery, signed, “Your least favourite movie star.” Rob didn’t announce this publicly, Roger did, and so there’s little doubt that it was a heartfelt gesture. I honestly like to think that I would do the same thing, but I don’t know if I could. Instead, I will just tip my cap to you Rob Schneider. I can’t promise that if you make Deuce Bigalow III that I’ll go see it, but I do promise that I’ll give something else you’re in an honest try.

Timmi is a dream wife, pretty much all the time, which makes the odd time that “Evil Timmi” comes out all the more shocking.

Tonight, she made dinner (which was awesome), handed me my plate, and we walked out of the kitchen together.

Just as I left the kitchen, I realized I didn't have any utensils, so I asked her, "Oh, hrm. I don't have any utensils, could you get us some please?"

She smiled, held up a fork and said, "I don't need any!"

I said, "Oh, okay, but could you get me some?"

She smiled, shook her head, wiggled the fork in her hand and said, "I-I-I-I-I don't need one! You dooooooo!"

I admit, at this point, I was sort of speechless. Where did this taunting come from? What had I done to deserve this unmitigated sass?? Okay, I know, I know Timmi, I can get my own fork!

Then she sort of started dancing a little… waving that fork at me, saying, "I don't need a fork, I don't need a fork!"

Here's the point where I ask you to think about what's going on and see if you are thinking what I was thinking at this point —

— Or if you figured out what I hadn't, which is that Timmi was saying, "I don't need a fork, so this one is yours."

It all really just goes to show … taunting is in the mind of the taunted. I feel like such an English pigdog.

People think I make this stuff up, but I honestly just can\'t.

Sunday was a beautiful day, and so despite a bit of an achey back, I was out back doing some yard work. Needing some mulch, I walked over to the nearby garden centre and bought a big bag of cedar mulch.

Making my way back, I cut through the Loblaws gas station, my big bag of mulch on my shoulders, my Big Ass Fans hat on my head, and a general smile on my face, when a woman came up to me and asked if I could help her.

I put a picture of Zsa Zsa Gabor on this post because although the woman in question had red hair, otherwise, it could have been her. She was an older lady in expensive clothes and jewelery with what sounded like, well, a Zsa Zsa or Eva Gabor accent.

She looked to be in some distress, so I followed her as she walked over to the last pumping area at the gas station, pointed at the pump in a frustrated but humble way and said, “I can’t work this thing. Can you put some gas in my car please my dahling?”

I admit, I was a little surprised that there were people in Canada who didn’t know how to operate a pump at a gas station, but okay. I walked her through the steps of using her credit card to activate the pump, then asked her what sort of gasoline she wanted. You might think I asked her whether she was a proponent of boundary or cubic string field theory by the look on her face after I asked her.

I explained that there were three types, regular, plus and ultra (or something like that, I don’t remember now actually). She asked me what the difference was. I admit, I know a little bit about string theory, but I don’t actually know the practical difference between types of gasoline other than the expensive stuff has more octane and is, in theory, better, so I said, “The expensive stuff is better, but the regular stuff should run your car just fine.” She took out a gold card and said she wanted the expensive kind.

Now, I should describe her car, because you might be thinking that someone who wears expensive clothes and jewelery and doesn’t know how to pump her own gas would be driving a Mercedes or a BMW or something along those lines. Well, you would be wrong. She was driving a beat up, rusty Buick Roadmaster.

The strangeness of this all was very puzzling. So puzzling that I pumped pretty much the entire Buick’s tank of gas while still holding a giant bag of mulch on my shoulder. It wasn’t until she pointed out that it was amazing how I could do something so complicated (as pumping gas) while holding such a heavy bag (it was heavy) at the same time that I realized I should probably put the bag down.

Throughout it all, she kept calling me “her angel” and asking how much she owed me. She didn’t need to pay me a thing, the weirdness of the experience was more than payment enough.

Seriously, any theories of why a woman who obviously had lots of money and no idea how to pump gasoline would be driving a car like that? I think it’s going to bug me for a long time.

While leafing through Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2007, I began reading his well-written review of Passion of the Christ, easily the highest grossing movie I have never seen, and discovered that sometimes when pages stick together, you can get some pretty funny movie reviews.

Can you spot where the page break malfunction occurred?

Anyone raised Catholic will be familiar with the stops along the way; the Texaco Station that looks so old-fashioned that it could be the Fatal Gas Station in a horror movie: you know, where the sinister old scarecrow in overalls tells the kids to turn left and go down the old dirt road into the swamp.

That is definitely one wild Jesus movie.