The holiday issue of ION Magazine is now on the streets. This slick looking issues features a year in music roundup, an article on Canadian graffiti artist Other (he refused to be interviewed and submitted a short story instead), an article on Tittsworth and an interview with Jason Jones from the Daily Show about his new movie Coopers’ Camera.

Grab a copy from the following locations or download it from here.

On the left, the brand new album by Wintermitts which is entitled Heirloom. On the right, the packet that comes with the album which contains seeds for heirloom tomatoes. There are also detailed instructions on how to grow and care for your tomatoes. It is rumoured that every tenth album comes with Marijuana seeds (kidding).

Wintermitts are fronted by Lise Monique and they play cutesy bilingual folk-pop. They’re about to embark on a cross-Canada tour. On Thursday they will be having a CD release party at the Railway Club at 9pm and it’s only $7. Stefana Fratila and LaLa will also be there to help send them off. Make it down if you can. It’ll be folktastic.

www.wintermitts.com
www.myspace.com/lisem

“amanda farrell” canada math
hire a dwarf vancouver
dwarfs for hire vancouver party
robert dayton department stores
scarification extreme porno galleries
ebbomega girlfriend (this is a surprisingly popular one)
how to find heroin in vancouver
artist shits in vancouver art gallery
sneeze +10th of orgasam [sic]

This Friday evening is ION Magazine’s third annual We Love FashION party. The party will run between 9 and 2 and will take place at Moe’s Furniture Warehouse which is located on 1729 Glen Drive (across for Home Depot). The music will be supplied by DJ Trevor Risk, the refreshments will be supplied by Bacardi, Okanagan Spring and Belvedere, the beautiful people will be supplied by you and your friends.

Tickets are available at the ION Magazine office located on the Third Floor of 300 Water Street. Or at Clubzone.

An extremely ambitious, interesting and slick new site called Lushpad launched in Vancouver over the weekend. Lushpad aims to be an online home for collectors of modern and vintage furniture as well as fine art. Or “part gallery, part auction house and part design magazine,” as Lushpad owner Melanie Carlson puts it. For way way cheaper than eBay, with no hidden charges, you can list your rarities for sale. Wanted ads or ads Items under $250 are free, items ranging between $250 to $800 will cost you $8 to list, anything over $800 only cost $12 to list. Lushpad will also be publishing monthly features on designers and artists for as well as articles for collectors, both new and old. It’s free to sign up and when you do so, if you tick the little box to receive the Lushpad newsletter, you’ll be entered to win a licensed original Eames molded plywood chair worth over $750. So check it out.

www.lushpad.com

What are you doing on August 16? Celebrating Stockwell Day or Rumer Willis’ birthday? Eating Halloumi, a delicious cheese that’s made from goat and sheep milk, to commemorate Cyprus gaining independence from the UK? That all sounds just fine but a way better idea would be to dress up like a zombie and lurch around the streets of Vancouver then attend a wicked awesome party at The Fall afterwards.

The Fall opened almost a year ago on 644 Seymour and it’s a pretty a slick tattoo and piercing parlour slash clothing store slash art gallery slash place to get artistically slashed (the correct term is ’scarification’ if you were wondering). On Saturday August 16, the knives and needles will play second fiddle to a daylong Zombie extravaganza. Between 9am and 4pm, makeup artists will be on hand to sufficiently zombify you for the Vancouver Zombie Walk. After you’re done freaking out tourists and old people, you can come back to The Fall for The Flesheaters’ Ball, an a all night zombie celebration with zombie themed art installations, live painting, a zombie fashion show and a whole lot of liquor. People without costume will be attacked and probably have something sharp shoved through their nose or eyebrow. If you cant make it out, the art show runs from August 14-17. Oh, and in case anyone asks you what your favourite zombie movie of all time is, the correct answers are George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead or Lucio Fulci’s Zombi 2.

www.thefalltattooing.com

Stacked is one of the only consistently busy weekday clubnights in Vancouver. Popular for its high class DJs, Betti Forde and Trevor Risk (well, maybe just Trevor) and its super cheap highballs, Stacked has been a gay ol time every Tuesday at Celebrities for the past four years. An insane accomplishment considering the average lifespan of a Vancouver clubnight is about four months. For a complicated reason that we can’t be bothered to explain, Stacked (aka Full Tilt) is now going down at Republic on Granville Street on the same night. Forde and Risk have taken the drink specials with them and left their DJ bios behind on Davie Street. How Celebrities will fill the gap between DJ Darryl O and DJ Timeline on their DJs Corner Page is still to be determined.

Link to a mix by DJ Betti Forde after the jump.

Mix by DJ Betti Forde
Tracklisting:
Feedback (Darkchild Extended Mix) - Janet Jackson
Piece of Me (MT Refix) - Britney Spears
Pump Your Hands Up for the Volume – Fedde le Grand vs MARRS
Pump Up the Jam - Technotronic
Calabria (Hoff Edit) - Enur & Natasja
Your Body (Mike B Rough Edit) - The Knish Hit Squad
Rock the Party - Bob Sinclar
XR2 (Diplo Remix) - MIA
Move Shake Drop (DJ Laz Remix) - Pitbull
Like this Like That (Club Remix) - Se:Sa feat. Sharon Philips
I want Your Soul (TV Rock Remix)– Armand Van Helden
Back in Your Head (Tyler Fedchuck 1/2 Alive Disco Remix) - Teagan & Sara
Fire (B. Rich Straight Fire Remix) - 50 Cent ft. Young Buck & Nicole Scherzinger
Sunshowers (Diplo Remix) - MIA
I love Rock n roll – Beat Machine vs Joan Jett
Pinch tha Box – StinkMitt
The Way You Move – Outkast
Sweet Dreams (Angello & Ingrosso Vocal) - Eurythmics
Gossip Around the World Again – The Gossip vs Dangerous Dan & Nicky Van She
Please Don’t Stop the Music - Rihanna
Wanna Be Starting Something – Michael Jackson
I Don’t Feel Like Dancing (Linus Loves Remix) - Scissor Sisters
4 Minutes (Bob Sinclar Space Funk Remix) - Madonna vs Justin Timberlake
A Simple Edge – Rockaton vs Stevie Nicks

This just showed up in the inbox. Adbusting might not be en vogue anymore but Tibet certainly still is so check it out as it’s quite good. Here’s what Samantha Simmonds and Jessica Fraser, the duo responsible, have to say.

We are two Canadian filmmakers who had the privilege of witnessing the March uprising in Dharamsala, India (where the Dalai Lama and Tibetan government in exile reside). For three weeks we documented the courage and perseverance of the Tibetan people and have created a two-minute un-commercial to support their efforts.

Our hope is that in the final month leading up to the Olympics – and after – we will inspire citizens around the world to ask their governments to intervene on behalf of the Tibetan people. We encourage President Hu Jintao to meet with the Dalai Lama and establish Tibetan cultural and religious autonomy while keeping Tibet as a part of China.

If you feel inspired after watching it you can go to takeuptherace.com for more information.

Being sleep deprived at 3 am with a high-speed internet connection and a Paypal account can get you into trouble. My friends will never let me live down that authentic alien corpse I paid $800 for. Sometimes though, impaired judgement and twoclick payment can be a good thing.

I was reading a news site and a member informed everyone that a highly sought after art print was just released. It was a nifty work by a famous artist (It was a portrait of some guy named Barack Obama in case you were curious). The kicker is it went on sale while the entire continent of people who would want it were asleep. If you have any experience purchasing sought after art prints, you’ll know scoring one typically involves 24 hours of sitting in front of your computer hitting the refresh button every five minutes. When they eventually go on sale they’re sold out in under five seconds—no joke, this actually happens.

I’m saying all this in hindsight though. My thought process at the time was “Looks cool. Wouldn’t hang it on the wall but it’s only $45. Sure, why not?” Then I pulled the trigger and promptly passed out. The next morning when I checked out the news site there were a bunch of babies crying foul that they missed the sale of this print.

A quick hop over to ebay, where all the world’s greatest artists go to sell their wares, and you could see the demand for this print was crazy. The first one went for $400. The next one went for $600. Then over the next few days $800, $1000, $1800, $2800. My heart was palpitating. I still hadn’t received the print in the mail but I’ve listened to “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers at least twice and knew it was time cash in my chips, so I listed the print on ebay.

I’ve now entered the morally dubious world of the art flipper (a euphemism the art world uses to refer to flippers is the secondary market). People who flip art are loved by people who own the work and loathed by people who don’t. Loved by the haves since they drive up the prices. Loathed by the have-nots since they’re getting charged outrageous amounts of cash for something they want. What do the artists think of art flippers? It is my understanding that artists love it when you buy their work for cheap then turn around and sell it at an inflated price. Who wouldn’t?

It turns out I was mistaken. The glee of watchingthe bidding escalate on my ebay auction was cut short when I received an email from the assistant of the artist who made the prints. He informed me that I had been busted flipping his work, they were canceling my order and the print would be given to someone who plans to hang it on their wall. After I finished reading the email, as if on cue, I received another email from Paypal informing me I had just been refunded my $45.

I responded to the assistant with about a million questions. Do I not have the right to sell something I own? How much time needs to pass before you’re allowed to sell a piece of art you own? Isn’t this all a little Orwellian? But I got no response. I’ll just blame the whole sad affair on a finicky and pretentious artist. So there’s nothing I can do except constantly refresh the artist’s page and wait for the next big print to drop. However, next time, I’ll wait till I have the piece in hand before I make the big sale.

Recognizing we were in the presence of a man who was about to have a severely wounded ego, we naturally started making fun of him. “Hey guys, I got her number,” he said walking back to the table.

“Oh yeah, what number did you get? A four? Only six more digits and you’ll be able to call her. Keep working on her.”

Unfazed he replied, “No, I got the whole thing,” and produced a receipt with her number on it. Impressed, I asked him how he pulled off this miraculous feat.

“Well,” he said, as he edged closer to me, “let me tell you my secret.”

This guy’s name is Ryan and he works in, surprise, sales. Only a job where you’re used to having a door slammed in your face by 99 percent of the people you talk to gives you this completely unwavering self-confidence. Ryan, I learned, takes the same approach when trying to pick up the opposite sex. Namely, he’s cool with getting slapped in the face by 99 women so long as the 100th gives in to his charms. Ryan often tells insane lies to the “one percenters.” Like that he’s just visiting from Toronto and that the apartment they’re in is actually his brother’s. Or that he normally doesn’t take the bus, it’s just that his Prius is in the shop getting tuned up.

“So here’s what you do,” he explained. “The key to picking up women is to feign low self-esteem and make it seem like asking this girl out is the most difficult thing you’ve ever done in your life.”

“Why is that?”

“It’ll endear you to her too if she sees that you’re nervous. Do stuff like rub your palms together and avoid extended eye contact. The key is to keep this up and, here’s the kicker, ask her out exactly like this—‘I was wondering if sometime…if you aren’t too busy… you’d maybe like to go and get a cupcake with me.’”

“And that’s what you just told the waitress?”

“Yes” Ryan replied, wide-eyed and nodding wisely.

The next day I placed a follow up call to a friend who works at the nightclub. It turns out that the waitress gave Ryan a fake name and the number to her favourite Chinese food restaurant. The moral of the story for girls is to beware of the guys with low self-esteem. They may actually be the biggest losers you’ll ever go out with in your life. And guys, it’s probably best to stay away from nightclub waitresses and focus your efforts on that cute barista you flirt really well with. Not the one at the Starbucks by your work though. You need to get coffee there everyday and if you get shot down it’ll make things weird.

Bruce McDonald is a true rock ‘n’ roll cowboy if there ever was one. The man is, of course, responsible for Hardcore Logo, one of the greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll movies of all time. Add director’s credits for Dance Me Outside, Roadkill, Highway 61 and Degrassi: The Next Generation to the mix and you’ve got a legend of Canadian entertainment.

He looks like he could drink me under the table and he’s one of three people in Canada that can pull off a cowboy hat. He’s a solid man who doesn’t really give a fuck about shaving and has me wondering why I bothered putting on a white dress shirt for him. He’s all rock ‘n’ roll and it’s actually shocking that he hasn’t been in this magazine before. More shocking than that though is that I’m interviewing him to promote an art film he just directed.

The Tracey Fragments is a low budget indie dramedy about 15 year old Tracey Berkowitz, played by Ellen Page of Hard Candy fame who seems destined to become one of the biggest actresses this country has ever produced. Flat-chested and fucked up, Tracey navigates her way through the perils of high school, her dysfunctional family and the dregs of society to find her missing brother who thinks he’s a dog. What gives this film more bite than the source material is it has the most insane editing you’ve ever seen. The Tracey Fragments looks like it was edited by someone who ate an entire Mondrian painting dipped in LSD.

I went into The Tracey Fragments, like I try to go into all movies, with a blank slate. Bruce McDonald film starring Ellen Page, that’s all I knew going in. To be honest it totally caught me off guard. It’s not what I was expecting at all.
Well, yeah, it’s great. It seems fresh to people. For the most part the good response has been ‘Wow, I’ve never seen anything like this before and it sort of worked for me. Like I didn’t think in the first little bit… and then I found myself sort of decoding it and it becomes a fun thing.’ And other people were like ‘This is too much for me. It’s just not my thing’ and alright whatever. But they still end up thinking ‘Wow that girl, she was terrific. That Ellen Page, boy.’ They are very curious about her and what she’s up to.

When you read the script for the first time and visualized the movie in your head, how different did the end product end up being?
It’s completely different. People are always like ‘oh yeah the director, you must have the whole movie in your head,’ but I’ve never had a movie in my head, ever. You have big misty visions but it’s always genuine surprise like ‘wow I never really thought it would look like this.’ It’s kinda cool.

Was there like a method at all to the editing madness or were you guys just winging it?
Kinda, well there’s a few reference points but it’s really organic. People think that we story boarded it. We bought time because I knew it would take a long, long time. It took about seven months and we had three guys doing it and they just listened to it like DJs.

Just playing devil’s advocate here. How would you respond to someone who said ‘I find this editing style obnoxious and it’s unwatchable. Bruce, give me back my 80 minutes.’
I’d say, “well you’re just too old.”

Why did you decide to go with that approach in editing? Because that was probably the big decision with this film.
It’s something that we’ve been playing with in other films. It was a language that I always just loved. I’m just a sucker for ‘That’s neat! That’s really cool!’… The mission was ‘What’s it like to be 15 and all fucked up?’ so this evolved into stylistic things that I could think of, this seemed to really fit that. ‘ I’m all fucked up, I’m trying to put it together.’ She’s not trying to put together the mystery but it’s a portrait of what it’s like to be that age. And it’s a fractured portrait and it’s in a crisis and I thought this could be great, to show that intensity of being 15.

Well, you’re obviously not 15 or a girl, maybe you’re a little fucked up, I don’t know, so did working on Degrassi help you capture that?
That’s interesting you bring up Degrassi, because when you work with a bunch of kids it was a really fun show to make and ironically the producer was somebody I met at Degrassi. She was a secretary. This was her first film that she produced so, in a way, it’s a kind of homage, or not an homage, it’s the anti- Degrassi somehow, you know? As much as I love the show and it’s really fun to work on, it’s a very schoolteacher show. Like ‘Okay kids, if you do drugs, you’re gonna jump off a bridge.’ It’s very much like let them misbehave, and then punish them. And Linda Schuyler who’s the producer, she’s great, but she’s a school teacher and so you know, my nature is to just like go the other way, which you can’t do on Degrassi or you know, you won’t be invited back.

How did it come about that Ellen Page did this? Did you shoot before Hard Candy came out?
Yup… it would have been like a year before it came out I think.

So there was a lot of hype swirling around her, even at that time?
I’d heard about her before through a friend who’s a writer and a filmmaker. He said ‘You gotta meet this girl, she’s too good to be true.’ So we met and my producer Sarah was very ‘Gotta get Ellen Page, gotta get Ellen Page.’ And so you know, I still said let’s see everybody, but it just turned out to be a really great call on Sarah’s part… It was just one of those instant ‘I like you, I think you’re smart, you got great references’. And now it’s great because she’s in this big movie coming up called Juno, which will probably make a bazillion dollars and be on the covers of magazines and we’ll be like ‘Hey, remember us?’ and it will be great.

Whenever I’m around people that are younger than me and talented I get angry.
Yeah yeah yeah. It’s like fuck, kill now.

I can’t handle that they’re to bigger places than I am. I don’t want to be in the same room as them.
It’s funny, you know. I mean, it’s a perfect relationship to be in, the actress/director thing. Once in a while you kind of cringe a bit. In Toronto you’re doing all this press and it’s my turn to go in to the room to do the press and the guy’s sitting there waiting for me and I walk in and the guy looks up and goes ‘where’s Ellen Page? I thought I was getting Ellen Page?’ It was hilarious and I’m kind of like feeling like ‘oh okay, I’m the total fucking second hand here.’

It’s Bruce McDonald, remember me?
Yeah totally, but it’s all good.

Do you ever find it difficult working under the humungous shadow cast by Hard Core Logo?
Sometimes… I know what you mean. I’m really proud of it. I want to make another movie that people really dig, that becomes a touchstone. I was in Calgary the other day and there was a guy who had found this old Hard Core Logo shirt and was wearing it and was like flying the colours and I was like ‘fuck, people love that movie.’ I think that’s great and I’m thinking ‘God, that was like 10 years ago or more.’ I’ve done other things but nothing that has resonated as well as that has, and lasted. And 12 year old girls now come up to me and they go, ‘yeah you fucking did Hard Core Logo that was awesome!’ It’s a double-edged sword because you’re proud of it, but you’re also like ‘Okay enough, let’s try to do something else.’ But if you’re lucky you get two or three of those things in your career.

Occult Supplies and 24 hour Computer Repair read the sign in the window. I entered and there were various items like shrunken heads, eyes of newts and severed hands in jars of formaldehyde all over the place. The shelves there were filled various evil texts like The Necronomicon and The Catcher in the Rye. Behind the counter is one of the weird kids that I went to high school with who dressed in black and hung out by the tennis courts.

“Sure, we’ll take look at it and get right back to you,” he said. “We’ll even give you a loaner laptop so you can work on the editor’s letter in the meantime. There’s just one thing that’s kind of weird about it… no matter how hungry you are and no matter how much your stomach growls, don’t eat around it after midnight.”

“Sure thing,” I replied, stuffing the rather clunkylooking machine in my knapsack. “See ya tomorrow…” I said, as I ran out the door.

The loaner was slower than evolution. I couldn’t type a complete sentence without getting that spinning color wheel. I decided I couldn’t work on the cursed machine anymore. Frustrated, I did what I always do when I’m working and hit an impasse; I make nachos then go to sleep. I noticed it was well after midnight but I figured what the hell. I’ve never been very good at following rules so why should I start now?

I awoke with an artery-blocking mixture of sour cream and six kinds of cheese on my shirt and the feeling that I was not alone in the room. In the corner there stood a solitary figure in a purple robe.

“Guy, you really picked the wrong place to break into. I own nothing except a large stack of promo CDs that don’t even have the album art. If you leave right now, I won’t call the cops.”

It was then he drew a giant metal hook and came at me. I reached for the nearest object, the laptop, and used it to defend a blow that surely would have given me an unnecessary new orifice. With the hook now firmly stuck in the laptop, I was able to wrestle it away from the figure in purple. I pulled the hook out of the laptop’s casing and just starting wailing on my attacker. I hit him. Then again. And again. Then everything just went kind of black. I open my eyes and it’s morning.

“Oh thank God, ” I thought. “It was only a horrible dream! This is what happens when you eat spicy food before you go to bed”

I returned to the store the next day and the clerk smugly said, “Sorry, but we were unable to fix your computer. You lost everything and it’ll cost more to fix it than it would be to buy a new one.

That’ll be $200 for diagnosing the problem“

“Nooooooooo, ” I screamed to the heavens as I handed over the loaner. He immediately flipped it over and there was a giant gash on it that could have only been made by a giant metal hook.

“Sorry,” he said again “but there’s no way I can give you your damage deposit back.”

“Noooooooooo!”

For ten efficient days in September, the film industry moves into Toronto - you hear a lot of locals commenting on how much more attractive the city gets during this time. Even though the whole city goes into a Brad Pitt induced hype frenzy, there actually is a lot of substance to the festival. TIFF truly boasts a stellar fucking line-up of movies. Sure, you can waste your time and see movies like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Eastern Promises that are debuting a week before their release. But where this festival really excels is the selection of edgy and weird movies that have zero chance of scoring a big-time distribution deal. Those are the kind of films you wanna see at a festival because if you miss them there you’ll never see them. You can take chances on films at TIFF and you’re not likely to get burned and that, my friend, is a beautiful thing. So in the year that Dubai built a structure that’s taller than the CN Tower, people from Toronto can console themselves with the knowledge that TIFF surpassed Sundance as the premier film festival in North America. Here’s a selection of some of the more interesting films I caught while out there.

Dainipponjin
Dir: Hitoshi Matsumoto
This was one of my favourites of the festival even though people look at me like I’m crack when I try and explain the premise. Here goes anyways, Dainipponjin is a hilarious mockumentary about an unpopular Japanese super hero, think Ultraman. The film jumps back and forth between documentary style interviews with our hero and CG battles with the monsters (or “baddies” as he refers to them). When Japan needs rescuing, he runs off to a power plant, has clamps attached to his nipples and is electrocuted. This causes him to grow so he’s able to battle the giant baddies. The problem is, all the baddies he fights are really mediocre and phallic looking and the general public could care less about him. Amazing pay-off at the end, though.

The Devil’s Chair
Dir: Adam Mason
A guy and his girlfriend go do LSD in an abandoned insane asylum; never a good idea. The girlfriend sits in an evil chair that burrows into her skin and then sends her to some nether region where a demon kills her. They guy gets blamed for the woman’s disappearance and many years later he returns to the haunted asylum with a group of skeptical psychologists (once again, never a good idea). Guess what happens? Not as dumb as it sounds and a strong second outing from Adam Mason who’s first film, Broken is an entertaining piece of low-budget British torture porn.

Eastern Promises
Dir: David Cronenberg
You remember in the introduction when I said it was no fun to go see movies that are having a theatrical the week after the festival? Well I’m full of shit and I apologize. But seriously, we’re talking about Cronenberg here. It’s got Viggo, my favourite french actor Vincent Cassel and a script by the guy who wrote Dirty Pretty Things. Personally, I think this is the best film of the year and I’ll be surprised if anything comes out that makes me recant that. But you already know this because it’s been out for weeks now.

Ex-Drummer
Dir: Koen Mortier
Some good ol’ fashion NC-17 fun from Belgium. Four handicapped people form a band called the Feminists to perform one momentous show. Funny, because we have a band called the Feminists in Vancouver that consists of four retards as well, too bad they didn’t stop playing after one show (just kidding Ferdy!). This movie is totally filthy with its XXX sex, a guy with a 50cm long penis (limp) and a scene where two of the characters take a trip inside a woman’s blown out hoo-hoo - they refer to this as an exploded rat which I thought was especially brilliant.

Frontière(s)
Dir: Xavier Gens
With Calvaire, High Tension, Sheitan, A L’Iinterieur and now Frontière(s), France is quickly establishing itself as the home for stylish extreme horror. Any movie where the bad guys are Nazi Cannibals gets a thumbs up from me. This is a fucking extreme movie and rookie director Xavier Gens now holds the crown for making the most violent commercial horror film of the year. Half the audience walked out… this is a good thing.

George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead
Dir: I forget
Fear not, it’s good and it got picked up for a theatrical release. It’s a little gimmicky but Romero can get away with it because he’s Romero. This Blair Witch-style reboot of Night of the Living Dead follows a group of students on the night the dead rise from the earth and begin feasting on the living. Finally a zombie movie for the Web 2.0 crowd! A Zack Snyder remake is slated for a summer ‘08 release.

Heavy Metal in Baghdad
Dir: Suroosh Alvi & Eddy Moretti
If Visa sponsored an award for the most self-indulgent home movie at the festival, this one would have won. Oh the guys from Vice went to Baghdad and they brought a video camera, isn’t that edgy? No one’s ever gone there. Oh and they went there to shoot a heavy metal band, awesome guys. It’s a shame the most entertaining part of this film was seeing over half the audience walk out before it was over. It wasn’t even one those flattering mass exodus’ brought on by people not understanding the movie. They left because the movie is just plain bad. The only way you could possibly enjoy this movie is if you really get a kick out of watching a whole lot of Suroosh Alvi reaction shots and the most unremarkable footage of Baghdad you’ve ever seen. And if that’s the case, you’re probably reading the wrong magazine.

I’m Not There
Dir: Todd Haynes
Even if you don’t like Bob Dylan, there’s no denying this film is an impressive accomplishment. While taking it in you can’t help but think “My God, a lot of time and thought went into this movie.” It features six different actors all playing Dylan at various stages in his life, real or imagined. Try to suppress a grin whenever Christian Bale (as early Dylan) or Cate Blanchett (as Electric Dylan) are on the screen. I’m Not There will probably win a bunch of Oscars, but not best director because Todd Haynes is gay and the academy can’t let one of those guys on the mic on live television.

The Last Mistress
Dir: Catherine Breillat
Catherine Breillat is the only female filmmaker I like. Women like her because they think her films are empowering. I like her because her films have fearless female performances (translation: full frontal nudity). The fearless female actress in this one, a period piece, is none other than Asia Argento. She plays one of those crazy bitches who’s awesome in the sack but won’t let you dump her, no matter how hard you try. I noticed a whole lotta journalists with their notebooks on their laps throughout this one. I guess they were busy taking notes or something.

The Mother of Tears
Dir: Dario Argento
The much-anticipated follow-up to Suspiria and Inferno. A third witch has awoken in Rome and the city is caught in a frenzy of cannibalism, suicide, infanticide and priesticide. Starring Asia Argento (fear not pervs, she gets her tits out), The Mother of Tears is full of campy dialogue, out of control violence, cheap cg and a sinister monkey. This is Argento’s best in a decade, granted that’s not saying much.

Son of Rambow
Dir: Garth Jennings
One of the buzz films at Sundance this year. A young imaginative kid from a luddite religion accidentally watches Rambo and, with the help of a friend, begins shooting a sequel a la Lot’s of fun feel-good comedy from the Brit who made Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This could be this year’s Pan’s Labyrinth. Or next year’s when they’ll likely get around to releasing it in North America.

Sukiyaki Western Django
Dir: Takashi Miike
Takashi Miike’s movies are always a gamble. I’m happy to report with his first English language film is his best since Ichi The Killer. This tribute to spaghetti westerns (or macaroni westerns as they’re called in Japan) could only have been made by him. I should clarify about the english part though, it’s actually a weird phonetic english where you suspect the Japanese cast is reading english cue cards with no prior coaching. There’s a definite Tarantino-esque quality to this and not just because he’s also in it. Totally over-thetop samurai-swords-hitting-bullets-out-of-the-air fun. Watch the original Django before you see this movie. You’ll enjoy it more.

People who are unintentionally ironic are a different story though. I do care about this one guy who wears a handmade hemp net over his clothes. If you saw this guy on the street and you might mistake him for a homeless person but he’s not—I’m pretty sure he isn’t even a hippy. He’s just likes wearing a net and has been doing so for years. He carries himself well and for that I salute him. He might have the best style in the country.

You might be spot a bunch of frat boys and catch yourself saying “Why haven’t the fashion police sniper squad taken these losers out with headshots already?” The reason is frat boys have great style if you look at it as an ironic statement. With their “Canada Kicks Ass” shirts, sandals and tribal arm band tattoos. Take these people out of the Tragically Hip concert and put them in a different setting and they’re the coolest dressed people in the room. If they only knew how wonderfully ironic their outfits were.

Irony can be your friend too if you’re mindful not to look like a try-hard. How about dressing as a Medieval bar wench chic? Roman eunuch? A bride on her wedding day? Goth, hippie, Shriner, or carnie? If you don’t fit into any of those groups, merely getting a tattoo on your face would work nicely as well. There are a thousand great new looks out there if you just put your mind to it. Just be careful not to take it too far or you’re asking for trouble. Allow me to cite Prince Harry and that time he dressed up like a Nazi for a laugh. A bit closer to home, I know a guy who picked a fight with another guy in a wheelchair because he thought it was some lame attempt at irony (the guy needed the wheelchair but that’s beside the point).

The next time fashion police come a knock knocking, answer the door wearing pants for a shirt, a shirt for pants and accessorize with shoes on your hands. Ironic fashion is the way to go, you just need to be clever. Some say sarcasm is the lowest form of humour. I say people who say that are boring to hang out with. That’s the only style lesson I can impart on you. That and Uggs are hella comfortable and you only make fun of them ‘cause you’re jealous. Jealous!

What’s worse about the middle seat is, while you’ve got the two people beside jockeying for position on your armrests, the insensitive twit in front of you will recline his chair further reducing your personal space. Sure, you can kick the back of his chair but that only get you dirty looks. If you’re in the middle seat, your entire flight is pretty much a passive-aggressive battle for non-existent real estate.

So there you sit for hours on end with the walls literally closing in on you as the stewards try to pacify you with a few drinks, 1.5 meals and a horrible in-flight movie like Wild Hogs, starring Tim Allen and John Travolta, or 300, starring a bunch of sweaty dudes. Oh, and if you watch the news and have a lot of anxiety about flying, rest assured you are safe. If you’re lucky there will be a plainclothes Air Marshall onboard who is carrying a gun and will shoot anyone that tries to harm you.

You can’t even tune out everything by listening to music, as there’s no electronic devices allowed during take-off and decent. That rule makes a lot of sense. Because I know a lot of the time I get so enraptured by the music, I wouldn’t even notice if the plane was going down. “Oh wait, the plane crashed? I’m sorry, I didn’t even notice because this new White Stripes album is so darn good.”

No, all you can do in the middle seat is fester for hours on end and write the editor’s letter. Write the editor’s letter and pray to all that you hold dear that the person beside isn’t reading over your shoulder. If they’re doing that their eyes will be drawn to “pharmaceuticals,” “carrying a gun” and “plane crashed.” That’d just be trouble so maybe it’s best to just sit there watching Wild Hogs and make plans to get to the airport earlier for your return flight.

These days it’s easy for aspiring musicians to record professional sounding demos in their bathrooms with a five-year-old laptop. A band can make a CD for a few hundred dollars that is better than anything a big label puts out. Unknown local bands get signed to labels in Japan and get bookings in Europe with little more than a MySpace page. “This is complete bullshit,” I said to my friend. “You’d think the same if you were around back in the day.”

Back in the day tends to be glamourized by people who were around back in the day. I will let you in on a little secret, back in the day was awesome and I’m sorry you weren’t there. Computers were slower, iPods were non-existent, you had to pay for music and the internet was so new, people still capitalized the “I” in it. If you wanted to hear a song, you had to wait for it to come on the radio. If you wanted to hear that song again, you better have recorded it on your tape player. Oh, the joy of listening to a tape that has inane radio DJ chatter on it.

I explained to my friend that I dream of traveling back in time to when the first caveman made a beat by banging a rock with a wild boar’s bone. Sure it doesn’t sound that great but that’s not the point. The point is that I am there among cavemen and cavewomen, standing against the cave walls stroking their chins. Ironically, these cavefolk have less hair on their chins than most people you see at avant-garde shows of similar ilk today.

After I finished my speech, my friend promptly punched me in the face. I had it coming. So if some clown launches on a similar tirade to you, I encourage you to do the same. But feeling the sting of his fist was worth it, as he knew I was better than him. People punched harder back in the day anyway.

Noon.
Excellent. So sorry… the information that I didn’t give you?

Oh, I’m just wondering about the job and your company.
That’s the sole purpose for me inviting you out to the office tomorrow: To give you the information.

I’m a little puzzled here. Why is it a group interview if you’re looking for people with management skills?
Right now we find it’s much more effective to get information into people’s hands. We want to give them a really clear perspective. It’s more of a filtration process. If it sparks an interest with people then we can proceed to a one on one afterwards.

Are you guys gonna try and sell me anything at this group interview?
I’m sorry, what do you mean by that?

Are you going to try and sell me something? Like an information package or a training kit.
No.

Okay, well I know there are a lot of places that randomly call people for job interviews but they’re actually trying to sell you something.
Well no no no… if you are able to come out, just ask for me at the front desk….

I was reading online and a lot of people have written that you’re a pyramid scheme. Are you a pyramid scheme?
I’m not quite sure what you mean.

Well it’s where you bring people in and try to sell them on something vague and they in turn try to sell other people on something vague.
Pyramid? You work right now?

Yep.
You have someone you work for?

Yep.
Don’t all corporations start at the top and…?

IWell I’m really not getting a whole lot of information out of you and I’m a little worried I’m going to come out there and not want this job you’re offering me. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time.
We’re the marketing and distribution arm for Citigroup. We’re looking for people who might be interested in being in business for themselves. And earn anywhere in between 15 and six figures by their second year.

Oh okay, so it’s sales?
We help people get their finances in order in terms of getting out of debt and preparing for retirement.

So what exactly are these jobs that you’re hiring for?
Well you might as well not even come on down, seeing as we’re doing an interview over the phone.

Can you tell me what the jobs are?
There are a lot of people I need to call right now. Obviously you’re very happy where you’re at.

Yeah.
So that’s no problem. But I do appreciate you getting back to me to let me know that you won’t be able to make it down. I wish you all the best.

Thank you Chris.