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An Antique set of Gold Weights
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
- Hits: 608
Found this in a junk shop in New Denver, couldn't pass it up, $10, from the day when they were still getting appreciable quantities of gold from the creeks:
Nick Cave - New Westminster
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Music
- Hits: 711
Finally, the wrap up to a long season in the Kootenays, trip to the island, then Nick Cave in New Westminster.
I'm a fan, you know.
It wasn't a concert - although he played about a dozen songs, scattered throughout the show - starting with "The Ship Song", which has to be one of his most requested, although I was pleased he played "Breathless" as well - apparently, from the number of requests, a favorite of a few people.
This tour, though, wasn't so much about his playing his music as it was him simply answering questions to his fans. And boy, did they have some questions. In the beginning they were fairly straightforward - but as the evening evolved they got ever more entangled. One girl, reading aloud an essay she had written - he cuts her off "This isn't going to be a poem, is it...?" - he can sense trouble, he's been doing it a while, she turns over the sheet of legal paper she's brought with her as her cue card, breathlessly continuing on the back, it's not so much a question, he's as perplexed as the audience, it's not so much a question as it is an introduction to herself, the purity of her thought, and he graciously answers the question he could decipher and moves on...
There are a lot of these, fans, tongue-tied in front of the microphone, oversharing their own life stories, and I'm a little perplexed - why, it's supposed to be a Q & A, why has the train derailed, but it only takes a little figuring and I have it.
The thing with him - with probably any writer - is that he's touched so many people, so many people have imagined a connection, or an understanding of him via his work - that they have no questions for him, rather they take the opportunity to introduce themselves - they want him to feel the connection with them, to know them, as they feel they know him.
He's ever gracious, kind, compassionate, but a lot of this, it becomes like watching a lion being taken down by jackals, this opportunity to maybe ask real questions and arrive at a real understanding, well, it's turned into a sideshow of introductions and gushing adulation by fans suddenly awestruck that he's speaking to them...
It was good, always good, I rate Nick Cave very highly, his audience, well, less so, although it speaks well of him that Elvis Costello and Diana Krall were in attendance, he is, in a way, a legend on a par with Leonard Cohen.
The Bird Stuffer - Crazy Cat
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 683
For some reason this came to me, a trailer I saw at the movie theaters as a child, it terrified me, in the vein of a bad acid trip, and yet searching for it I can find scant evidence it ever existed. A lot of searching and finally I came up with the title - "The Bird Stuffer" starring Krazy Kat.
Weird, you would imagine by now that everything would somehow, somewhere, would be online, only this isn't, and it took a long while just to track it down.
It doesn't matter, I don't need to relive that particular childhood memory...
Ad Astra
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 713
Saw the trailer, read the early advance press, went to this movie. There's a lot of movies I want to see, only - small town, a limited selection, this was the one that was playing.
Been a long time since I saw a movie in the theaters, no surprise, given the quality of this film it might be a long time before I see a movie again.
It was supposed to be about - well, from the trailer, a broodingly atmospheric space movie, in the lines of "Solaris" or "2001: A Space Odyssey". But it wasn't.
It was long, though, that's for sure. At the beginning our hero survives a fall off a hundreds-of-kilometers-high space antennae. Whew. It would have been a short movie if he hadn't, and so - initially - you're glad, but then he goes to the Moon and battles Somalian Space Pirates on Lunar buggies, goes swimming on Mars, battles the attack of the killer space monkeys, all in the quest to find his pa, and by this point you're regretting that he survived the fall off the space antennae. If you knew how things were going to go you would have been grateful for his premature demise, but nothing can kill this guy, which, really, is a load of complete and utter bullshit.
And yes, I get that it was supposed to be in the language of metaphor - sort of a "El Topo" in space, but - no, no it wasn't. It was bullshit.
I'll save you 2 hours of your life and recommend you listen to "Mother Fudpucker" instead on youtube - which is also about a man trying to find his father, only - hate to say it - it's about as sincere and at a little under 4 minutes infinitely more entertaining. Not so entertaining that I'd link to it, but you gotta draw the line someplace.
Ad Astra. Ad Nauseum.
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