Desert Island Discs

I was thinking this weekend about the concept of my Desert Island Discs. You know, assuming you had a Discman with a case of batteries or something, which CDs would you take with you to a desert island? And I’m not talking about which discs you “should” take, what other people think are classic records, but which ones you listen to a lot and couldn’t live without. Limit yourself to 10, and no Greatest Hits collections allowed. Here are mine. In no particular order:

  • Pixies-Doolittle
  • Pixies-Surfer Rosa
  • The The-Soul Mining
  • Bowie-Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
  • Rheostatics-Whale Music
  • Spoon-Telephono
  • The Wedding Present-George Best
  • The Waterboys-This is the Sea
  • Stevie Wonder-Songs in the Key of Life (I guess this counts as two because it’s two discs)

What are yours?

Ex-Men

My idea for a summer blockbuster film (or a comic book). The Ex-Men. A bunch of post-operative transsexuals who are too busy sitting around discussing shoes to fight crime. Well, anyway, you see why I’m not living large in Hollywood.

35: Too Old?

So is 35 too old to be in the web design business? I’ve been doing it part-time for the past 3 years, and fulltime only since March. I’m a junior designer/programmer at a tiny but mighty company, and my girlfriend (34 and just graduated from journalism school) wants us to move to England in two years and work there. Do you think at 37 and 36 we’ll be completely unemployable? This scares me sometimes. My only hope is to move quickly out of design and production altogether and become boring “Web Producer” or “Project Manager” man, simply because of my age. What if I don’t want to become that person? Opinions?

Music and Movies

Jish was kind enough to add me to his list of Toronto Blogs. So hurray for Jish, and please go and visit his site now.

In its previous incarnation, this page was where I would list the latest CDs I bought, or the last film I saw, or book I read, whatever. I don’t want to lose that, because it gives people an opportunity to respond, and it just helps me formulize some sort of capsule review (sometimes!), so:

Music:

  • Modest Mouse-The Moon and Antarctica
  • Modest Mouse-This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About
  • Travis-The Man Who

Films

  • Chicken Run
  • The Perfect Storm

Also, check out my review of Rushmore on Epinions

Whither Withnail?

I’ve been getting into DVDs lately, in anticipation for when I buy my Playstation 2 in (hopefully) October. I’ve even bought a couple of disks (“Rushmore-Criterion Edition” and “The Matrix”) and ordered some more that will ship in late August (“Magnolia” and “Boogie Nights” special editions). But it vexes me how some classic films are not yet out on DVD and nobody has any idea when they’ll be released, by whom, or what, if any, special features they will have. The one that bums me the most is “Withnail and I.” This is probably one of my top 5 films ever, and it would be perfect for DVD. The sound could really use some cleaning up, so that all the wonderful dialogue can be heard, and I could dream up tons of supplementary material for it, especially commentary tracks from director Bruce Robinson and actors Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann. There was a tenth anniversary VHS released in 1997 and I think it was even rereleased in the theatres, but no DVD yet. If anyone knows anything at all, please let me know. Until then, I’ll just have to keep mumbling the dialogue to myself and laughing, drawing all manner of funny stares.