Why do I always get into these situations?

I've been trying to decide whether Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves is an utter load of drivel or is a bold statement on the nature of art and will enhance my life.

This book was my first online purchase experience. I bought it with Chapters gift cards, when I wasn't even old enough for a credit card. I bought it because I was in an Ellis-Ballard-Palahniuk phase and I'd seen favourable reviews of the book on Amazon.com. Sure, I was up for a challenge. It arrived in my mailbox, fresh, I ripped open the box, looked the cover over, then stored the book on my bookshelf until 2009. I was living by myself in 2009 and had nothing better else to do than to read after work (I had no Internet, either). So I started and grudgingly got to page 130 after having read some interesting things. Then I put the book down until now, in 2011. I picked it up again today and with more than 400 pages to go I don't know when or if I will be able to finish it...which now that I'm reading other reviews seems to be the point of the book. Great, Danielewski! You've done your job! You've made your point known! Spare me!

Further Study?

So here I am at my parent's place right now, practically jobless and lounging around the house. Not the best position in the world. A lot of people are asking me when I'll look for a job, or what I'm going to study for my master's degree. I don't want a job until I know I can make a difference doing the stuff and enjoy it, and for my master's I still want to study too many things is the problem. My dream would be to complete a triple Masters degree in audiology-cinema-international development/affairs. The first would be for employability of an in-demand job, the second because I have a burning desire to complete a degree in it and I feel like I could analyze films for so long, and the third because I have a growing interest in the field. I really just can't choose one field! Even my undergrad degree had me studying many different domains. I feel paralyzed.

Interesting idea

eat lots of chocolate and then brush your teeth. instant mint chocolate chip!

The ending of Blowup

I've just finished watching a movie by Antonioni called Blowup and it has one of the most random endings ever. However, here's my interpretation:

The whole movie is a character study of this self-absorbed, talented photographer who is childlike only because he's an Artiste and commanding. He's always in his own world. He's the type who plays around with women for power and who would do anything to get what everybody else wants (like the guitar neck) even if it means nothing to him. When he discovers a murder, he's the type that would never even consider going to the police. Instead he goes to his publisher-person and says, "Look what I've got!" almost bragging but doesn't photograph it. Only after bragging does he go to photograph the body and then it's too late. He would photograph the body because it'd be a nice 'addition' to all the brutality that's already in his anthology.

So he goes to the park prepared to photograph the body but finds that it isn't there. For the first time, he senses a loss, as if the murder had never happened and he had been imagining it. The mimes then show up and fills in that sense of loss with another type of imagination, replacing the negative image of a lost body with a positive image of an imaginary ball and tennis match.

The protagonist is worlds away from the university students and activist types. Although he is an artist, he seems not to care for amateurs (he doesn't give the fans a chance and he only permits the girl to put the NO BOMBS sign in his car because he finds it highly amusing).

He is a photographer, and they are theatre-mimes. Photography highly depends on the visual and the concept of presence - what is there. However, mimery is a performance art that is ethereal and depends on the mind to fill in the blanks of what is not there.

So when they start 'playing' tennis he is amused, but when he is asked to pick up and throw back the imaginary ball for them he crosses a boundary - he becomes part of their world and breaks the bubble of self-absorption. He is forced to participate in the world that is greater than himself, a world dependent on negative visual presence while he is so used to positive visual presence.

This is a good ending because all the events that have happened up until the end - the photography, the murder, the party, the coming back for photographing the body - lead him up to crossing that boundary that is a complete character. By the end of that scene and therefore by the end of that movie he has changed himself, if only for a second.

SKT, H, YT, NA, G

Today I walked 10 kilometers to eat dinner and to sample some fare from the Steve Koven Trio. I'd first heard of the trio on CBC Fresh Air and after having heard some samples on their website I was hooked. But as some jazz pianists are better composers than live performers, I needed to see if SKT was the real deal and when better to do this than a free concert at a café/diner/bar on a cloudy Sunday afternoon? It turned out to be one of the best concert's I've been to in a long time and one of the better jazz concerts. In my opinion, any sort of jazz can be listened to on the radio while you're working or cooking. However, live jazz must include energy or else I'll get bored, distracted and/or sleepy. This concert mustered energy, improv, skill and entertainment. Congrats, trio, you have converted me into a fan!

3 hours prior to that I was on the west side of the Humber River buying more concert tickets. In keeping with my jazz interests I am booked to go see Hiromi at the Markham Theatre this coming Saturday evening. Then, Yann Tiersen one of my long-awaited artists is coming to town on February 22. His last concert in Toronto got mixed reviews, so we'll see how it goes. Next, the singer-songwriter Nicole Atkins will be onstage at The Horseshoe, a venue I have never been to. And finally, a week after I get back from California I will be going to see another long-awaited favourite artist of mine, Guster.

By the way, none of these artists are playing in Ottawa. That is why it's good to be back, if only for a while.

Around the World in Films

I belong to some online reading communities such as GoodReads and Librarything and people post their World Travels through Literature lists there. I was thinking that I do a lot more film watching than book reading, so I should make my own world travel list. In films. Below is a list of the current 195 countries of the world. If the country name has a link to it, the link will direct you to a title of a movie that's produced in that country that I've seen, liked and may be representative of a significant style or period of that country's film industry. Some international co-productions will be inevitable, but I strive to include films that are wholly produced in that country and that are in that country's main language(s). For the remaining countries, please send recommendations!

Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Andorra
Angola
Antigua & Deps
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Cape Verde
Central African Rep
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Comoros
Congo
Congo {Democratic Rep}
Costa Rica
Croatia
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Fiji
Finland
France
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Grenada
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland {Republic}
Israel
Italy
Ivory Coast
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Korea North
Korea South
Kosovo
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Marshall Islands
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico
Micronesia
Moldova
Monaco
Mongolia
Montenegro
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar, {Burma}
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Palau
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Romania
Russian Federation
Rwanda
St Kitts & Nevis
St Lucia
Saint Vincent & the Grenadines
Samoa
San Marino
Sao Tome & Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Suriname
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Tonga
Trinidad & Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Vatican City
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

Parallel Lives

I am living another life in movies, one which I never encounter in my normal (read: boring) day-to-day "real" life. That is the life of all types of criminals, lawyers, police, courtrooms, jails and prostitutes. I feel that there are a disproportionate amount of these types of people and places represented in films compared to my day-to-day life. With each additional film I view on these subjects, I feel more and more weird.

Concerts, Crowds and Serendipity (some band comes to town and i leave town and vice versa)

I was expecting to go to a lot of concerts in February. Back in December I was already writing down lists of which Toronto concerts I would attend. The list grew from one to two then five and then seven artists: The Decemberists, the Radio Dept., Cold War Kids (March), Yann Tiersen, Hey Rosetta!...and now I am going to none of them because I waited too long and the tickets are all but sold out. Other than the cost of the tickets, which are already an impedance since my income is not that great at this time, I'm asking why I hesitated to buy the tickets and that led into a question of what I expect from concerts.

My first concert was Apocalyptica and it was awesomeness! The crowd was easy-going, I had a great view, there were smoke machines, the band came out sitting on thrones, the opening act got booed off the stage, and the venue in general was good. My first concert set a high standard for what I expect from concerts.

Now that there's Youtube, I feel the value of concertgoing has gone downhill. I find that if I go to a concert that has not met my expectations from the get go, I zone out during the show and waste all my money. So what AM I expecting nowadays when I pay for and go to a concert? I think I'm longing for the serendipity that came with walking into venues without the expectations or anticipation. Maybe I'm expecting too much - the most memorable shows are theatrical and include confetti, props and backdrops. Most of the bands I see again and again interact with the crowd instead of just playing their set and going offstage as if the audience were not even there. The problem with Toronto shows, and I regret to say this because if there's one city that artists go to in Canada then it's here, is that the crowd can be a bit pretentious. And that absolutely ruins the spirit of comaraderie that I've come to expect from great concerts.

At best, music festivals offer a diverse array of good bands in a short amount of time and within a small geographic area. At worst they are a distraction and like film festivals, make you want to throw up.