BLACKOUT FILM FEST

QUICK PLUG-SLASH-NOTE

The Blackout Film Fest is sending out a call for short films about last year's blackout to be shown on Saturday, August 14th.

If you were in the Northeastern quarter of North America that day and you have a videocamera, do yourself and them a favor and put something down on tape for them.

I have a dilemma about attending (It's the same day as Lebowskifest NY! What's a fella to do?), but I do believe I have an idea for something I could put together for this. (Details to come. I'll need a little help with people reading stuff on camera. Once I figure it out, I'll let you know.)

HINTERLAND WHO'S WHO

HINTERLAND WHO'S WHO

If you grew up in Canada and are over about 15 years old, you probably have some memory of these short films profiling the vast array of wildlife to be found across the Canadian wilderness. The eerie flute music and subdued narration describing relatively nondescript animals were in such sharp contrast to Marlin Perkins and his occasionally vicious action-packed version of the wilds that it kind of defined in my little-kid mind one of the differences between being Canadian and being American. (Yes, SCTV did a great send-up of these things. How could they not?)

Anyway. The Hinterland Who's Who series is now online for your viewing pleasure. Have something warm and put your feet up and dig some chill wilderness action.

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CANADIAN-AMERICANS IN THE NEWS

TO BOLDLY SPLIT AN INFINITIVE (or CANADIAN-AMERICANS IN THE NEWS)

This spring has taken me by my already-ripped collar and shook me violently, like a neglectful babysitter on a hidden camera, into some kind of whiplash-induced hyperconsciousness from which the earthly issues of my life have somehow cracked loose and crumbled off me. Change, always a constant, has shifted into some new gear these days.

I’ve needed a reordering of the senses. Or rather, I too have needed to get my groove back.

When the news came down yesterday that Ben Folds was putting off work on his new album to finish the latest record by the Great Canadian-American Actor William Shatner (entitled, deliciously, Has Been), something told me the world was about to take a turn for the better.

When I got pulled unceremoniously out of a job I really liked to go back into the belly of a corporate beast I really didn't like (I'm back in the same building I was in for the last two-plus years, a biannus horribilis, and that's the first and last time I'll look up a phrase in Latin to post here but you-all deserve it, you smart and sexy blogreader you, don't think I haven't noticed), I thought, perhaps someone's saying something pertinent to me that I'm not hearing.

Not that I believe in any of that supernatural claptrap. The voices in my head speak only to me. If you want to leave them a message, send me an email. I'll pass it along.

My point is that in the last six weeks or so, my life has turned upside down, and while I'm not doing what I want (certainly this entry isn't going where I want it to go), I'm moving forward. Area 52 is back in full effect again, I'm putting a band together and booking shows, I'm writing again after taking a couple of months off of that, and outside, I've started noticing the streets swimming with happy people hanging out in the all-night heat, listening to salsa or techno or metal or klassik rokk or good ole American guitar pop like what I play, and all the shit that had congealed in the pipes of this town and the inside of my head over the last six months really feels like it's starting to break loose. Finally.

So thanks for continuing to come by here even when I drop out for a minute, even when I don't make much sense, even when I ramble on like a shitty Zeppelin tune you never want to hear again. And thank you for being cool and giving a shit. Unless you don't. Then piss off. We're partying here, and we don't need another pooper.

UPDATE FOR TONY, WHO NEEDS ONE

UPDATE FOR TONY, WHO NEEDS ONE.

You might think I've fallen and I couldn't get up, that maybe I was one nosy postman away from being on the cover of the Daily News in that garish block-letter type I've grown to hate since I moved to New York:

KILLED SOFTLY WITH HIS SONG:
Canuck Hermit's Half-Eaten Corpse Found Naked On Toilet
Neighbor: "He died doing what he loved"

That would be true, but even truer is that I've been actually upped the physical training and focused on the new job (always good).

I never thought I'd be away this long. I'll have rantings of social and political import shortly.

But right now, I'm just celebrating having finished a new song.

Here are the lyrics to the newest song in Area 52, Sincerity Machine.

Now, I'm off to bed. Good morning, Planet Earth, wherever you are.