I'm back from Canada, bitches! (Don't all get up at once to welcome me back.) Good time, great food, great weather... it got up to a balmy 85 degrees at one point! But it's nice to go to America Jr. every once in a while, if only to underline the differences between American and Canadian cultures. Parallel populations, developing in only-somewhat-parallel manners. More on the trip at a later date (read: once I've forgotten about it).
Of the many differences I encountered last week, here's one I didn't come across. Apparently it's against the law in Canada to award contest prizes to someone who has won said contest without having performed some kind of "skill." Deadspin brought up a story of free golf clubs from Sports Illustrated not being distributed due to the requirement of a "skill testing question." Will assumed it was a gag, but it's not... it's the law. It has something to do with casinos and gambling, where you cannot win a prize without having The formality of a skill testing question is required on any sweepstakes or contest in which Canadian citizens participate.
What kills me is that the Canadian courts actually determined what constitutes sufficiently-tested "skill." Typically the question is a simple math problem, so the courts decided that the math problem has to have, at minimum, three operations in order to justify a prize. I guess figuring out "1263527653 mod 237647" or the square root of 12374612347861293874628374 isn't skillful, but "2 + (2 x 2) - 2" is.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Slow News Month For Minutiae
I've been real busy, and I'm going to be even busier over the next month or so. You're probably not going to hear much from me until late July, on account of a series of small vacations. I'll do my best. Anyway, here's what I think about movies and music of late
NachOOOOOOOOOOOO
What a weird movie. You can tell it comes from the Napoleon Dynamite people; Jared Hess has an unmistakable style, love it or hate it. In this case, I knew what I was in for (unlike ND, which took some getting used to) and ate it up right away. They had me from the moment Jack Black snarfed his beans. What's weirdest about it is that there's absolutely no story, and no real development of said non-story... yet the conclusion moved me. You're gonna see the movie and be like "are you fucking kidding? You got emotional while watching THAT?!?" But I was. Hey, I'm as stumped as you are. I ate some dirt... I ate some grass... I used some leaves... to wipe my tears...
X-Men III
Passable, but devoid of heart and charm. Everyone's going through the motions. Definitely the least essential of the series, despite having so much potential with Angel, Beast, Juggernaut and company. When the "surprise" twists are the highlight of the movie, you have problems. Not much more to say than that.
Spoon - Kill the Moonlight
Excellent stuff. I'm glad I get to go back through their older albums, slowly but surely, and appreciate their attention to detail even more. Makes me all the more disappointing that they're not famous, because they're so good at what they do. It's not even that challenging, really... no more than, say, Cracker. And Cracker was famous.
Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
I like it, but like any "collection" (as opposed to "album") it suffers from a lack of flow and inconsistency, and hasn't got anything to offer people who haven't chugged the Sufjan Kool-Aid yet. It's a lot more hit-and-miss than Sufjan's proper albums; I'm glad the majority of this stuff wasn't released on Come On Feel The Illinoise. But even Bad Sufjan is worth a listen at this point. It's stunning to think that he can have such depth of composition on the toss-aside crap he never releases.
Snow Patrol - Eyes Open (redux)
OK, fine. I still believe it's not an essential album, not in the same universe as Final Straw (obviously), and not complex or deep by any stretch of the imagination. I still maintain that any number of bands could have made this exact same album and it would have been just fine. But it's not as bad as I made it out to be. I'm kind of partial to the next-to-last track, as it builds momentum and finally lets it loose. I like it. It's fine. It just doesn't have that special thing that makes it important in and of itself... you still have to reach back and be like "well I liked Final Straw and I like the band, so I'll like this." No thanks. If I lay here... if I just lay here... will you lay with me and... listen to Final Straw instead?
NachOOOOOOOOOOOO
What a weird movie. You can tell it comes from the Napoleon Dynamite people; Jared Hess has an unmistakable style, love it or hate it. In this case, I knew what I was in for (unlike ND, which took some getting used to) and ate it up right away. They had me from the moment Jack Black snarfed his beans. What's weirdest about it is that there's absolutely no story, and no real development of said non-story... yet the conclusion moved me. You're gonna see the movie and be like "are you fucking kidding? You got emotional while watching THAT?!?" But I was. Hey, I'm as stumped as you are. I ate some dirt... I ate some grass... I used some leaves... to wipe my tears...
X-Men III
Passable, but devoid of heart and charm. Everyone's going through the motions. Definitely the least essential of the series, despite having so much potential with Angel, Beast, Juggernaut and company. When the "surprise" twists are the highlight of the movie, you have problems. Not much more to say than that.
Spoon - Kill the Moonlight
Excellent stuff. I'm glad I get to go back through their older albums, slowly but surely, and appreciate their attention to detail even more. Makes me all the more disappointing that they're not famous, because they're so good at what they do. It's not even that challenging, really... no more than, say, Cracker. And Cracker was famous.
Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
I like it, but like any "collection" (as opposed to "album") it suffers from a lack of flow and inconsistency, and hasn't got anything to offer people who haven't chugged the Sufjan Kool-Aid yet. It's a lot more hit-and-miss than Sufjan's proper albums; I'm glad the majority of this stuff wasn't released on Come On Feel The Illinoise. But even Bad Sufjan is worth a listen at this point. It's stunning to think that he can have such depth of composition on the toss-aside crap he never releases.
Snow Patrol - Eyes Open (redux)
OK, fine. I still believe it's not an essential album, not in the same universe as Final Straw (obviously), and not complex or deep by any stretch of the imagination. I still maintain that any number of bands could have made this exact same album and it would have been just fine. But it's not as bad as I made it out to be. I'm kind of partial to the next-to-last track, as it builds momentum and finally lets it loose. I like it. It's fine. It just doesn't have that special thing that makes it important in and of itself... you still have to reach back and be like "well I liked Final Straw and I like the band, so I'll like this." No thanks. If I lay here... if I just lay here... will you lay with me and... listen to Final Straw instead?
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