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Hell, I know I'm not in the best shape of my life right now... but I don't look THAT bad.
The Hamilton Spectator (Hamilton's Newspaper) just ran an article about me in today's paper. It's a great article... but MAN that picture of me is HORRIBLE. I can't decide if I should frame the picture or burn it. Anyway, if you want to see the article you can go to the Spectator website here.
Just ignore the picture... good grief!
Ok, it's almost 3am and I just got the word.... The Audio Edition (the audio show of The Movie Blog that we do 3x a week) has just made the final nomination list of the 2006 Bloggies (The Weblog Awards). This is basically the Oscars for Blogs.
I'm so freaking excited I can hardly contain myself. It's really nothing... but The Audio Edition is something I take a lot of pride in and have an awful lot of fun with. It's nice to see the judges thought so too!
The Movie Blog was also nominated for Site of the Year, Best Entertainment Blog and Best Canadian Blog... but saddly never made it to the final nomination list in those categories. Still... I'll take Podcast of the Year any day!!!
So head over to the 2006 Weblog Awards website and vote! (hint hint... make sure you select "The Movie Blog" under the Podcast of the Year category and hit submit at the end)
Without question the biggest rival of the Toronto Maple Leafs is the Ottawa Senators. The two teams have forged a fantastic rivalry. But you can only be a rival if you at LEAST put up a fight.
In the last 3 games (including last night) my beloved Maple Leafs have lost to the Senators by scores of 8-0, 8-2 and last night 7-0.
I know what you're thinking... surely John, those must be low scoring FOOTBALL games you're talking about. No team gives up 23 goals in just 3 games. Well... I guess they do. How humiliating.
I'm now just waiting for Sharon, Mike and Curt to write and gloat (the Oilers are going pretty damn well this year... if they only had a real goalie they could be considered one of the best teams in the league.)
I came across this great 100 things to do list of how to be a successful Evil Overlord. You can see the whole list here... but here are some of my favorites:
#2 - My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.#3 - My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell in my dungeon.
#4 - Shooting is not too good for my enemies.
#6 - I will not gloat over my enemies predicament before killing them.
#7 - When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought, I'll shoot him and then say "No."
#11 - I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.
#26 - No matter how attractive certain members of the rebellion are, there is probably someone just as attractive which is not desperate to kill me. Therefore, I will think twice before ordering a prisoner sent to my bed chamber.
#40 - I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable super-weapon, I will use it early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.
#41 - Once my power is secure, I will destroy all of those pesky time travel devices.
#43 - I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism when I capture the beautiful rebel and she claims she is attracted to my power and good looks and will gladly betray her companions if I just let her in on my plans.
#46 - If an advisor says to me "My liege, he is but one man. What can one man possibly do?", I will reply "This." and kill the advisor.
#50 - My main computers will have their own special operating system that will be completely incompatible with standard IBM and Macintosh powerbooks.
#53 - If the beautiful princess that I capture says "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!", I will say "Oh well" and kill her.
#74 - When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk "Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my desk.
Those are just a few of my favorites. Let the planning begin.
Holy Cow!!!! The domain name Sex.Com has just sold for... are you ready for this... $14 MILLION Dollars!!! (Said in my best Dr. Evil voice). Holy smokes.. I wonder what judymoodymovie.com would be worth... just the domain name I mean.
I think they must be reporting droping tempuratures in hell... because I'm actaully considering getting a Mac computer! Now, for those of you that know me, you know I've pretty much destested Macs for years. I had to work with one in a multimedia company and I found them slow slow slow, unreliable and constantly crashing.
But they've improved quite a bit over the last couple of years... and now they've finally made the switch to intel processors. The new MacBook Pro laptop looks just amazing! It's got a dual core processor in it (2 processors) and they claim it goes 3-5x faster than the previous Mac laptops. New software devlopments and the fact that I've always loved the Mac video editing program Final Cut Pro has me thinking the unthinkable... that I may actually get a Mac!
My current laptop is over 4 years old now (it was over a year old when I got it) and it's starting to act buggy. Could it be that a Mac laptop is in my future? I'm not sure... but it is possible. Need more time to think about it.
Yesterday (Tuesday) was not exactly one of my favorite days. It started off with me getting lots of grief from people over a post I wrote for The Movie Blog... which included 2 US newspapers contacting me trying to get me to say something that I never implied or intended with my article... THEN I go into the law office and have a big falling out with my lawyer (who I actually really like). Having a blow up with people you actually like never feels good.
Yeah, yesterday was a rotten one. Here's hoping today is at least mildly better.
Ok this story just made me howl. Over at CNN they got a story about a woman who was cheating on her man. How did the man find out about it? Their bird is a talking bird and was mimicing her talking to her lover, squawking "I love you, Gary".
Ziggy even mimicked Collins's voice each time she answered her telephone, calling out "Hiya Gary," according to newspaper reports.Hehe... that's why my next pet will be another Chinchilla.
Last night on the Audio Edition an odd side topic came up (it usually does) about how as kids we (Doug, Darren and myself) would always find dirty porn mags in the woods or fields right by our houses.
We continued the conversation after the show and realized that this experience is one that basically every North America boy has had. Doug referred to this phenomenon as "MYSTIC PORN DRUIDS OF THE FOREST" who would benelovently leave porn scattered throughout the woods for young boys to enjoy. An interesting mythology.
But then Darren mentioned a friend of his who recently was getting rid of a bunch of old dirty mags. When Darren asked him what he was going to do with them, the guy said that he would probably dump them in some field so some kids could enjoy them.
It's almost like a sacred tradition... a symbolic passing of the torch from one generation to another. As yes... the circle of life continues.
Paul Dewar is the NDP candidate for Ottawa Centre (for my American friends, Canada is having a national election on Monday). Paul and I used to be related by marriage... and even though he's running for the NDP party (I'm not a big NDP fan), he himself is a solid character guy who really loves his community (his mom was actually the mayor of Ottawa for some time).
So yeah... even though I'm voting Liberal this year, if you live in the Ottawa area, and want someone in parliment who cares about the community and has a great work ethic... then you really should consider voting for Paul Dewar. A solid man with lots-o-smarts.
You can see Paul's election website here.
Ok, I've hit a brand new low. Today I was suposed to go to see 2 films today to review for the website. But as the time got closer for me to leave I decided I was too tired to go and decided instead to stay home... watch some NFL playoff football and go see the movies tomorrow afternoon.
The question is... how lazy do you have to be to say "I'm too tired to go to the movies". Yeah, I'm a real go getter.
I love doing The Movie Blog. I really do. It's been the one constant thing I've had over the last couple of years that always gives me something to look forward to every day. But it has it's drawbacks to.
You see, I've never been the type of person who shy's away from giving my opinion... popular or not. The thing about The Movie Blog is that I'm always giving opinions... that's the nature of the site. But when you have your own site, and throw your opinions out there for others to read and comment on... well let's just say it can bring a lot of jerks out of the woodwork.
You see... it's easy to criticize someone who puts their opinions out there. You can slam their ideas or character with relative anonymous ease. The people who do that never stop to think about how they would themselves like to be treated if they put their thoughts out there for other to talk about.
People call me every name in the book. According to some people, I'm too pro Gay, and yet hate gay people at the same time. I'm a left wing liberal, and yet racist. I'm too pro America... and yet anti-American at the same time. I secretly suport an extremist feminist agenda... and yet I'm against the rights of women.
In the course of doing The Movie Blog, I've been called all of those things. One day some people are calling me left... then right. And one of them could agree with me 100% about 499 of the movies that were released in 2005... but if I disagree with them about just 1... then they proclaim that I know nothing about film
Yeah... it's hard sometimes doing a site like mine. Richard and Doug both get some of this sometimes too.
The whole point of my site to create conversation about our favorite topic... MOVIES. Disagreements are great for conversation starters. I just wish sometimes more people knew how to have a conversation... because yeah... sometimes it hurts.
It's no fun being called a racist, or a chauvinist, or gay hater, or wacky liberal or whatever else you can think of. I guess some people just find it easy to take personal shots at a person they've never actually met.
Oh good grief. I never thought I'd see the day. Doug Nagy has joined my gym and now goes with me after every Audio Edition. He's in a lot of pain right now... but he's a naturally big guy so I'm sure his body will respond really well. He has a little to learn about fitness though.... just before heading to our first workout session together he asked if we could grab dinner at Macdonalds where he proceeded to consume 2 big macs and an order of fries. Yeah... like I eat any better.
Now here's a keyboard upgrade I think we can all agree we'd like to see.
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Hey there folks. Over the last couple of days a number of you have written to me to let me know you've nominated us for various awards (all for which I am VERY grateful to you all). In that vein, the 2006 Bloggie Awards are upon us. A few of you have nominated us already, and I thought I'd take Richard's advice and make sure the rest of you knew about it.
If you'd like to nominate The Movie Blog's Audio Edition for "Best Podcast", or in any of the other categories such as "Best Entertainment Blog", "Best Canadian Blog" or good heavens "Weblog of the Year", you can head on over and nominate us HERE.
So once again, you can head over to the official website for the 2006 Bloggie Awards to nominate The Movie Blog or any other great blog you'd like. Thanks! (end of shameless self promotion and sniveling begging)
The other day a friend of mine and I went to IKEA (something I've do too much of since moving into my new place). As it turns out we were there early enough to take advantage of their $1 breakfasts.
I've seen them advertised everytime I've gone into IKEA, but always thought it would suck. I'm mean come on... what can you really get for $1. Well, it was actaully really really good. I was impressed. I can now add IKEA to my list of "Good Cheap Dates". "Yeah baby... let me treat you to breakfast. It's on me".
Ok, I know this goes under the category of "Too Much Information", but this morning I realized I was the ultimate multi-tasker. I was sitting on the toilet, while reading the instruction manual of my new cell phone AND shaving at the same time. It's amazing more women don't find me attractive isn't it?