The House of Irony / Uncategorized

So in my random travels around the internet I found this little gem, which are some clips of the Ultimate Warrior and comments from other people in the wrestling industry on what he was attempting to say. Personally I think he’s a Norse god in disguise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laiZgrIpbcA

But this lead me to other videos on the Ultimate Warrior which are pretty awesome to watch. He’s very candid and honest about things and it really struck me. I had heard alot of conflicting stories, anything from he had died from steroid overdose to he was a cocaine junkie or that he was some monk in japan. He’s very intelligent and straight forward. I really enjoyed watching these videos, but it is a 12 video series so it’s a long watch, so here is the first of 12. Just look in the side bar for the next in the series.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNl1dheYI44

The other day I went to my favorite restauraunt for delicious eggs bennedict. I was informed upon my arrival that I would be seated next to the women of the Red Hat Society. to which I replied “Huh?”

As I was seated, I noticed that the prophecy was correct – and I was seated beside a bevy of old broads wearing red hats and purple dresses! I had no idea what they were about, nor what “the deal” was with the red hats. I went on their website and discovered that all they care about is going out and having a good time; whilst wearing the scarlet chapeau.

The only rule of law these ladies abide by is this:
Girls under 50 – purple hat and red dress.
Girls over 50 – purple dress and red hat.

Ladies of the Red Hat I salute you, and in time hope to point to you as an influence in the creation of
The Fabulous Mens Club. (Roma Del Tora 4 life)

I can’t afford to get the laser bag here in Ottawa, and I’m too far from Oakville to get it cheap, so naturally the conversation turns to baby names. J. has allowed me to name any of our future children if they turn out to be boys. The following is a list of a few of the names I came up with. She agreed to only one.

Snake – Contrary to popular belief, this is not in honour of Snakes on a Plane, but rather because of Plissken.
Satanico Pandemonium – One of my top five.
Isaac – The only one she agreed to, but now that I’ve given it some thought, if we’re going to name a kid after a character from Children of the Corn I would rather it were Malachai.
Zeus
Hercules
Theseus
Q-Bert – Another name on my top five. By this point J. had stopped listening to me and was answering automatically. After she said no once, she paused, realized what I had said, then said no again with a great deal of pain and dismay on her face.
Dig-Dug
Dig-Douglas
Galaga
Power Man – J. told me that if I followed this suggestion with Iron Fist she would smack me. I am so proud that she would automatically think of Iron Fist when she hears Power Man. I told her not to worry, as I think Iron Fist is a name that would get the kid beat up and I would never suggest it.
Pregnancy
Rude Boy
Shaft – On the top five. My argument was “That Shaft is one bad mutha…SHUT YO MOUTH! But I’m talking about Shaft Wintle. We can dig it.”
Superfly
Odin – Fuck yeah. Top five.
Thor
Tiberius – My number one choice. I really pushed for this and must have repeated it a dozen times, even suggesting that he can go by Ty for short. J. is convinced I will forget about it eventually, so just in case, I have written myself a note and placed it in an envelope marked “Open in case of pregnancy.”
Chicken
Delissio
Iron Fist
Rex – Almost made the top five.
Hannibal – Same as Rex.
Job – This one was tricky. J. suggested it, but I think she may have been joking. I think the kid would grow up good and tough with this name.
Conan

Future suggestions – Mongoose, Malachai, Elevator Action, Ghiderah

I hold the unpopular opinion that fictional text cannot lie. If something impossible or mistaken happens in a piece of fiction, I feel it isn’t something to be ignored, but should instead be incorporated into the story no matter how ridiculous it may seem. If a Cadillac drives by in the background during the chariot race in Ben Hur, well, it could be proof of Philip K. Dick’s theory that the Roman Empire never really ended. Or if the Tin Woodsman unties the balloon in the Wizard of Oz and pretends that he had nothing to do with it’s premature release, it’s possible that with his brand-new heart he’s fallen in love with Dorothy and doesn’t want her to leave him.

Nowhere is this more inescapable then in mystery fiction. If an author makes a mistake in a mystery, that mistake becomes fact once the story is published. It may be a red herring, it may even be an error or lie told by an unreliable character, but there is no denying that any so-called mistake has a place in the mystery’s tapestry. Anything less would be completely dishonest.

The majority of Stephen King’s The Colorado Kid takes place in the newsroom of a small community flyer on an island in Maine during the present day. There, two seasoned journalists are inducting a summer intern into their ranks by relating the greatest mystery they ever stumbled across in their lengthy careers. In 1980, a man was found dead on the beach with no identification and no apparent motive for being there. Despite being printed under the Hard Case Crime imprint, The Colorado Kid isn’t a hard-bolied story, and isn’t even really a mystery in the usual sense, but is rather a quiet meditation on the allure of mysteries. And it contains what some would consider a small error.

“The Russian coin in his pocket, mixed in with the rest of his change,” Vince said. “It was a chervonetz. A ten-ruble piece. I asked her if he kept it as a lucky piece or something. She didn’t have a clue. Said the closest Jim had ever been to Russia was when they rented a James Bond movie called From Russia With Love at Blockbuster.”

I remember when my family bought our first VCR. The first movie we played on it was Psycho 2. This was around ‘84 or ‘85. Back then there wasn’t a huge amount of selection in the video stores, and what there was available could be pretty erratic. Many movies considered classics weren’t necessarily released right at the beginning of the video revolution. Now, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when From Russia With Love first came to video, but there is a really good possibility that it wasn’t released prior to 1980, which is the latest the alleged victim of the story could have seen it on tape. Aside from that, there is one undiputed fact that doesn’t correlate with the quote above.

Blockbuster was founded in 1985.

Logic would dictate that this was a mistake on King’s part. He whips out so many brand names in his stories that he might be excused a flub or two. In fact, this blog points out yet another anachronistic corporate namedrop besides Blockbuster. Well, fuck logic. In a mystery, as I stated above, this isn’t a mistake but a clue, and that leads to some interesting theories. At first I considered the possibility that it was the wife that was lying. However, her statement was made in 1981 or 1982, and unless she could see into the future it would be impossible for her to claim that her husband had rented From Russia With Love from Blockbuster. The only reasonable remaining explanation I can think of is that the person repeating the conversation, a character named Vince, is in error. Vince is one of the two journalists relating the story to the intern. It’s entirely possible that Vince simply used Blockbuster as a shortcut in describing a video store while repeating Jim’s wife’s claims, much like people use Kleenex in place of tissue, or Xerox instead of photocopy. The problem with this explanation is that during the telling of the story Vince is a stickler for detail, having replayed the facts of the case over and over in his mind for two decades. It’s unlikely that he would make a mistake like this. Unless he did so deliberately.

Which leaves us with motive. Why would Vince distort the wife’s statement, if she even made a statement like this at all? And if he deceived the intern with this false information, what else may he be distorting? Was it simply to put her through her paces? Is the entire case a big hoax? Or, most sinister of all, could Vince have been criminally involved in the case of the Colorado Kid and this is his way of covering his tracks?

Stephen King and me, we go way back. My aunts read practically everything he wrote, and they’d leave their sloppy seconds behind at the cottage for the next vacationer to enjoy. I was a voracious reader back then, a habit that simmered down a few years ago and has only been recently reignited. I’m not nearly as interested in King as I used to be, though that isn’t really his fault. He’s simply entered that category of writers, like Ray Bradbury, whose career I can admire but who just doesn’t capture my interest like he used to. Despite this, King still has the ability to surprise me, if not in content or style then in format.

I was in the checkout line at Chapters when I saw King’s name on a slim paperback with a lurid cover. It was a title I had never heard before, which, despite my current ambivalence to his work, seemed unlikely. How had one of Stephen King’s novels slipped past my notice without the usual hype? The title of the book was The Colorado Kid, a part of the Hard Case Crime imprint.

Hard Case Crime is a wonderful throwback to the days of mid-century pulp fiction; brutal little tales of doomed little men and the beautiful dames that lead them astray. Everything about the presentation of these books is perfect. The two I have before me are each around 200 pages in length with lovely painted covers reminiscent of the great paperback artists of yesteryear. In fact, the legendary Robert McGinnis contributes a cover to Little Girl Lost, a title I plan on picking up for the cover alone. The stories themselves range from new tales by renowned authors of today to reprints of the long-lost crime classics that inspired them. Unlike so many similar undertakings I’ve seen over the years, the folk at Hard Case seem to have all their bases covered. If you like your fiction hard-boiled, I can’t recommend them highly enough.

And while I can’t say that I wouldn’t have come across this series eventually without his help, I’d like to give a tip of the hat to King for helping me along.

“You see, but you do not observe.” – Sherlock Holmes

I’ve been drawing more these days, something which has been reflected in my posting here. For the past year I’ve been working 60+ hour weeks at an animation studio. Surprisingly, that period of my life saw me drawing less then I ever have before.

One of the aspects of drawing that I missed the most was life drawing. I was working evenings and couldn’t attend the only life drawing session here in Ottawa. The studio I work at is looking at options to accomodate the night shift, so hopefully this will result in more drawing time in the future.

There’s something soothing about simply concentrating on capturing what’s right in front of you rather then pulling images out of your head or creating a narrative. Life drawings are disposable, a means to an end. The point isn’t in creating a lasting piece of art, but to refine your own skills, particularly in observation. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from life drawing it’s that most people have created a shorthand to how they see the human body. For example, we’re often so preoccupied with the human face that we forget just how long the whole body is, that our legs take up approximately half our full height, that the back of the human head is more pronounced then we imagine in order to accomodate our big human brains, or that breasts are actually quite a bit lower then the neckline.

I’m not the best judge of what is considered work safe or not, so I posted only those drawings which I was fairly certain were innocuous, and will continue to do so in the future. Here’s one more which didn’t quite make the grade.