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Sunday, October 31, 2004

Halloween round-up RT...

Saturday might have been one of the more surreal days I've ever experienced in Kits. Since the population of the neighborhood consists mostly of people in the 18 - 35 demographic, everyone was collectively going nuts... there was a serious buzz in the air. I mean, everywhere was Christmas-eve style busy... line ups just to stand in line ups. A trip to the liquor store went from being a 5 minute task to a 50 minute task. The best thing about the day was that EVERYONE EVERYWHERE was dressed up in some sort of over the top costume ~~(read: every other girl dressed as a dirty nurse, or a naughty cat, or in some other form of socially acceptable sluty type outfit, oh - and all the boys dressed in flight suits)~~. Actually, every single costume I saw was hilarious, and made me miss the fact that I left every single drunken costume I own back home. I actually found myself laughing at people at as I drove around, honking and high fiveing people. I'm awkward like that.

Saturday evening was a faculty-wide school party which took place in - literally - a mansion. Kinda crazy - since a large portion of the faculty is from other countries (France, Russia, Latin America, China) many in attendance experienced thier first halloween - meaning people went bananas. Everyone guzzled my Pimms, I cranked Modest Mouse on the stereo, and me and Tk waited until everyone passed out and took ridiculous pictures of each other posing with dead animals.

As I get them, Halloween pictures will float up on buzznet. Team Calgary, send me your pics, and I'll post them in a gallery. I need to know more about "Purse Head". Werd.

elsewhere

wendy would care about this | napoleon dynamite soundboard

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Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Since we're already giving shout-outs to the kids of vanmega who are doing cool/unique/insane things this week, I might as well keep going...

SPF, of Team Vancouver fame, has quietly started a wonderful little online media play, similar to flavorpill and the like. vanmega highly recommends that you sign up for Vitamin V, SFP's to-legit-to-quit daily email blast (erm... short, succinct newsletter) which - in a wonderfully spam free way - brings you up to speed on the latest and greatest in westcoast dining, drinking, fashion, and all things hipster. Her product completely caters to the young, upwardly mobile princess' and metrosexual men demographic... which, from what I can tell, is 97% of the readership of vanmega...

Stop dilly-dallying - get down on the good foot, and go sign up for Vitamin V.

elsewhere

jon stewart's ('84) commencement address | some nice mash-up mp3's

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Monday, October 25, 2004

Best. News. Ever. (Updated)

I woke up today to a pile of emails and voicemails all pertaining to one thing - LeftNutt. Apparently, they performed in Edmonton at the annual "battle of the bands" AND WON!!! I could type and type and gush and gush and tell you all the details, but instead I'll post an email I received from lead LeftNutt, Little J...

So, We had the Craziest F'n weekend ever! The cowboy's battle of the bands was insane! All the other bands did their usual boring shit. we came out and the place went f'n crazy. I couldn't open my eyes from being soaked in booze the whole time. An intense mosh pit broke out....and then we won the $3000 battle of the bands prize to Avenue Guitars. And the other part of the prize which we are negotiating for is to open for Vince Neil of Motley Crue on Nov, 10.!!!!!!!!!!!! The other bands we all PISSED OFF... EVERYTHING was soaked! lol. We also sold $400 in T-shirts (at $15 a pop)! Then we had a fun little show last night down town with Dudley Dawson and Indian police. Anyways, that was the Leftnutt weekend! Later!

I highly encourage you to beat the soon-to-be-realized bandwagon - go to the LeftNutt website right now and download their white album for free. Savor the comedic filth-pop.

Update: gig pictures can be found here.

elsewhere

"I, Robot" in a nutshell | Queen vs hip hop

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Thursday, October 21, 2004

Jumping the gun…

November’s mixtape was going to be entirely composed of cover songs… which initially I thought would be cool, but then realized I couldn’t put Pirate and Grayson’s favourite new bands (Arcade Fire, Interpol) in the mix. Plus, now that I think about it, a mixtape full of covers might be kinda cheesy. I think. Maybe.

Either way, I’m releasing the next mixtape about 10 days early. Lots of sonic goody-goodness. As per usual it’s all over the map… twangy indie stuff like The Futureheads and The Shins… weirdo dancy stuff like William Shatner (Yes, William Shatner) and the Scissor Sisters… oh and some covers for good measure.

Rock, rock on - click here to access the mixtape, yo.

Update: link fixed. Oh joy!

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Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Everything old is quasi-new again…

Re: Marketing: 2 Drink Minimum (Oct 5)

I finally saw The Girl Next door. Worst movie EVER! Even more worse than 13 going on 30 (I assume). Whoever was behind that “DVD viewing kit” promo campaign clearly had their head up an ass. Kinda sent mixed messages, in the film there was no T nor A, nor a plot line, nor any form of relatable humour (keep in mind, I am the lowest common denominator). Not that it’s humanly possible, but The Girl Next Door takes coming of age / teen-sex-romp movies to an all time low.

I did, however, watch Mean Girls shortly after GND, and it was shockingly entertaining. I’m willing to bet half my student loan that the quality of this film is directly related to the fact Tina Fey wrote the damned thing. Rent it.

Re: American idiot (Aug 31)

Go buy the new Green Day CD. I assure you that you’ll heart it. Yes, something is up when I’m endorsing a pop-punk band. I don’t know what in the hell inspired Green Day to get their act together and put out an ambitious rock-opera concept album… but damn skippy, it works. Not only is the disk critical of the state of North America today it’s also really well put together. For some reason, the disk reminds me of a modern day musical type Grease Soundtrack thinggy… assuming that Grease wasn’t the BIGGEST PILE OF POOP ever released by humans. But for reals, the drumming is so well recorded. And when the hell did Billie Joe learn to sing?

Re: Except bicycles (Aug 23)

My rage for self-righteous bicyclist grows exponentially by the day. I now slow down and scream at them as I drive by. Class act.

Re: A few decent days and nights… (Sept 28)

An iPod has finally been brought into my life. No, I don’t own one, but Tk does, and she’s given me full… uh… creative control of the content on her iPod. Y’all(s), the iPod is beyond brilliant, to quote Ferris Buller, “If you have the funds, I highly suggest picking up one up.” This is the first time I’ve ever been self-actualized by a tech-gadget. I’ve finally found a something that can touch my inner music geek and my inner systems analyst. I now spend the 3 minutes of free time I have every week uploading all bands deemed essential, and then meticulously manage and further populate the meta tags for each mp3 on the iPod (keep in mind there’s room for about 10,000 of them, and I’ll have the thing filled before halloween). I don’t even have a huge desire to use the iPod, I just find the idea of an entire CD collection at my fingertips pack into something the size of a cigarette box beyond pleasing. The stone-cold-coolest feature is the “shuffle all” function - it seems to have this psychic ability to pick out and play all the obscure songs that have been stuck in my head for weeks (read: Mr. Brownstone by Guns N Roses). Boom shake-shake-shake the room, and so on.

elsewhere

ninja game | vancouver concert listings

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Saturday, October 16, 2004

Only loosers take the bus / blog on weekends...

I'm not one for posting political content on this website... we all know I'd much rather post a bunch of blurry pictures of our drunken escapades than, say, debate the finer points of why America is going to hell in a handbasket.

However, I demand that you all click on this very hyperlink which will lead you to a streaming video of Jon Stewart's recent interview on CNN's Crossfire. It's fucking brilliant, instead of promoting his new book, Jon spends 7 minutes tearing a strip off the show's hosts, CNN, and the media in general about their constant sensationalism of the political process and blatant lack of journalism ethics. The hosts go scrambling, trying to find a comeback, but can't. Even when they go for low-blow stuff trying to one up Jon, he continuously puts them in their place. Best of all Jon does it with surprizing level-headedness... Oh, and isn't afraid to call the show's hosts both "hacks" and "dicks".

Fuckin'-A. So funny!

elsewhere

the daily show | transcript of jon's interview

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Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Optionless and turkey-free?!

For those who don’t keep stats… like it or not, Mushgiving really is a milestone event every year. The best thing is that every Mushgiving is nothing like the last. This year, we took off to Victoria to meet up with Adio. We screamed and yelled and carried on, on her behalf, as she finished the Royal Victoria Half Marathon. This is (was) how she does (did) it… a la Montel Jordon. Shortly after, we hit the Blue Fox, ate it up, and then fell apart in a food-based coma, only to wake up the next day to return home for the 5th annual Mushgiving. It was a Nick’s place, Adio and TK cooked it up, and 21 people ate it up. The entire time we made asinine toasts to the little things like mis-matched sets of wine glasses, and the fact that the city doesn’t ever hit the freezing mark. Don’t front… We’re on to something here kids.

Also - I've come to the realization that I front-load my eating to the begining of the week, and find myself forgeting to eat meals towards the end of the week. This clearly is not the healthy thing to do. What am I... a high school girl?

Anyhoo... pics from Mushgiving 2004 will float up on buzznet over the week.

elsewhere

Mushgiving 1 | Mushgiving 2 | Mushgiving 3 | Mushgiving 4

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Wednesday, October 06, 2004

The Cord Media Empire continues to grow, like whoa...

Hey, hipster vancouverites... you've got plans for tomorrow night. Cord Magazine (in conjunction with CFOX) is presenting a killer show tomorrow night. I can say without hyperbole that if you don't attend this show, your quality of life will drop by 37%. Come out and support. I'll see you there... I'll be wearing a suit. I'm awkward like that.

Details, yo:

CordMag is super-proud to present Vancouver's own Retrograde at the shiny new Buffalo Club (1161 Granville Street) on Thursday, October 7 (doors at 7:30pm). Come on down and help them celebrate the release of their Headphones EP - and pick one up while you're at it. $6 gets you the show and the CD. That's insane. Don't forget, you can listen to the band on The CordMag Audio Player.

Seriously, we're super excited about this. Come out and support. Great band, good times. Be there!

elsewhere

pics from the last cord event | master andy

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Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Marketing - 2 drink minimum:

One of the few non-mountain-of-homework related perks about going back to school is the random free stuff you get. There's this court yard kinda thing in the centre of campus, and based on the design, you have to cross this court yard if you plan on going anywhere. Ergo, the court yard is a marketer's dream... a totally captive audience of 18 - 30 year olds, open to suggestion, and so desperately trying to clear their minds of the crap they just learned in a random liberal arts class. I don't know if it's planned or not, but every Wednesday a plethora of companies who target the student market hand out all kinda of free promo items. Hell, one time in a period of 5 minutes, I was handed a can of chunky soup, a free long distance card, 2 bottles of water, and a couple of magazines. Needless to say, I took the can of soup to safeway, returned it, and used the cash for beer money.

I received perhaps the strangest promo item last week.

As I bolted through the court yard, late for class, I was handed a small bag by some 20 year old, part-time jobbing, marketer girl. In passing she called out "Don't forget to watch 'The Girl Next Door' on DVD", referring to that poor excuse of a teen-sex-romp movie, staring my ex-girlfriend, Elisha Cuthbert.

Only when I got home did I actually inspect the contents of the "The Girl Next Door" bag. Playing on the low-brow theme of the movie, the bag contained a small tube of lube, a pack of Kleenex, a picture of Cuthbert, and a note reminding the reader to "Don't forget to clean up your mess!". I can't decide if that's the most brilliant... or most offensive... marketing tool I've ever seen.

Either way, I now have plans for Friday night. ZING-NATION!!!

elsewhere

Masters of Lebowski | stream the new Cake album here

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Sunday, October 03, 2004

Penner's back, y'all. And she's doing fabulous, thank you very much.

On Saturday Penner arrived in van direct from Korea. Wend flew in to meet her, and Mully just so happened to be in town on business... needless to say things got insane in about 7.42 seconds. I was going to write a post detailing all the details, but this instant message transcript between Carpet and Wend pretty much sums things up.

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Princess Wend says:
Hi. It's Wendy. I broke Penner. She's been throwing up for about 7 hours. Might send her back to Korea until she's better. We were ROCKSTARS last night. So wasted. At the strippers for hours. Knocking on people's windows and asking them for rides to places...and then taking them. Seriously... we should dead on Hastings.

Carpet says:
nice work... that's ballzy. 7 hours of throwing up is hot.

Princess Wend says:
By ballzy do you mean retarded?

Carpet says:
correct.

Princess Wend says:
We do what we can.

Carpet says:
good for you.

Carpet says:
how is the trip?

Princess Wend says:
other than broken Penner, great! Weather is beautiful. Sat at Bridges in Granville for a while yesterday. Beautimus

Carpet says:

good stuff... are you downloading pr0n on soy's computer??

Princess Wend says:
No pr0n downloads. Could have created our own last night with late night baths and the whatnot.

Carpet says:
late night baths?? at tk's....?

Princess Wend says:
Yep.

Carpet says:
nice work.

Princess Wend says:
It's all part of being a rockstar, baby!

Carpet says:
i guess that makes sense...

Carpet says:
it's tough being a rock star, hey?

Princess Wend says:
Some days. But last night it just came naturally. Threw on the sunglasses, had Jaegar for breakfast at 2 and then the day went from there. I'll try to take care of Penner. Happy Studying! Love you! XOXO

Carpet says:
bye for now, lovely face...

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Photos from the weekend trickling up on buzznet.

elsewhere

blogs and marketing? | doofyfuel | 3 Myths About the Recording Industry Debunked

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