Phil’s Eyebrow Returns

Thanks to Patrick for reminding me that The Amazing Race starts tonight. It’s been gone almost a whole year. There was something on in the fall that involved families that was sort of like the Amazing Race, except really lame, so I don’t think it counts. I prefer to think that, in the language of comic book fan boys and Trekkies, it happened “out of continuity.”

Looking at the roster of teams, it appears the producers have taken the unusual step of casting real people and not model/actors (or “Mactors“). This bodes well for a good season already.

I’m awful at predicting the winner but there are a few teams worth noting:

Team Nerd – David and Lori. My pre-race favourites. They’re into indie rock. Claim to speak “Sesame Street-level Spanish.” God I hope they can drive a stick shift.

Team Groovy – BJ and Tyler. They wear Hawaiian shirts. They wear red pants. They make goofy faces. They’re WACKY. And yet, they’re well travelled. Could good far. Could also grate with their wackiness.

Team Closet – John and Scott. They’re “lifelong friends” who share happy memories of trips together to Provincetown. Riiight.

And don’t forget Team Tee-Hee, Team Smoov, Team Jock, And, of course, the requisite Team Asshole Who Yells At His Wife.

Cock that eyebrow at will, Mr. Koeghan.

Les Lachinois

So May 1st, we’re moving to an upper duplex 5 1/2 in Lachine. A brief drive through Lachine’s scenic industrial park will place me at the office and the apartment is handy to a convenient Metro bus for her. And we have two balconies. And we’re allowed a barbeque. We also have to buy four new appliances (fridge/stove/washer/dryer) and hire some goons to move our stuff.

My only question is: what do we call ourselves now? Lachine got its name from René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, who, like many explorers of that era, was trying to find a route to China. As he owned the settlement in 1669, it was named from the french La Chine, as a kind of joke.

On Nun’s Island, we’re upper class twits Nun’s Islanders. So, are people who live in Lachine called Lachiners? Lachinians? Lachinese? In french are they les Lachinois?

Oh, I guess we are.

The Rotters’ Club

I’ve been reading Jonathan Coe’s The Rotters’ Club. It’s a novel set in 1970′s Birmingham, England. It takes a coming of age story and weaves through it such themes as unionism, the National Front, the coming Thatcher years, progressive rock, punk rock, and the IRA. At one point, a link is made between the death of socialism and the death of prog-rock:

He giggled like a little maniac, and stared at me for a second or two before running off, and in that time I saw exactly the same thing I’d seen in Stubb’s eyes the day before. The same triumphalism, the same excitement, not because something new was being created, but because something was being destroyed. I thought about Philip and his stupid rock symphony and I swear that my eyes pricked with tears. This ludicrous attempt to squeeze the history of countless millennia into half an hour’s worth of crappy riffs and chord changes suddenly seemed no more Quixotic than all the things my dad and his colleagues had been working towards for so long. A national health service, free to everyone who needed it. Redistribution of wealth through taxation. Equality of opportunity. Beautiful ideas, Dad, noble aspirations, just as there was the kernel of something beautiful in Philip’s musical hodge-podge. But it was never going to happen. If there had ever been a time when it might have happened, that time was slipping away. The moment had passed. Goodbye to all that.

It jumped right out at me as a piece of great writing, even though I hate prog-rock. I recommend it. And it’s on sale at Chapters.

And looky! They made it into a movie.

Keepin’ it Gangsta

Today, K discovered that our apartment building’s laundry room will accept a twopence where the slot demands a loonie. A British twopence is worth roughly four cents Canadian.

You’ll never take us alive, coppers.

Video Sunday

Eddie Izzard on Jesus, Mohammed, Baseball, and Guns:

Punk fashion, courtesy of City-TV’s 1970′s ‘Boogie’ programme:

And, via the Hackenblog, Hulk Sell Cars: