Thursday, March 4th, 2004

Greeting Card Aisle

Just in time for the release of All Of Our Names, Sarah Harmer’s website has undergone a shiny makeover, and it’s about time. As a housewarming gift, they’ve brought the video for the first single, “Almost” in RealMedia format (go to Rounder’s minisite for a Windows Media version). And in other Sarah news, Chart talks to Sarah about her new record and the lineup in her touring band. Tickets for her April 26th and 27th shows at the Winter Garden Theatre go on sale March 26 12. The album may be going on sale either this coming Tuesday or the 23rd, depending on who you ask. I *think* it’s the 9th in Canada, 23rd elsewhere, but I’m not certain. I’ll tell you for sure Tuesday when I go to the store and either leave happy or not happy.

20 underappreciated Canadian albums of the last 10 years. I can’t argue with most of these selections, playing as it does like a best-of list from campus radio over the past decade, but get the Gandharvas OUT of there. Sheesh. From The GPC.

Wonder of wonders – The Family Guy is coming back to television. After being cancelled for over two years, it’s being resurrected. Surely this is unprecedented?

I’m not normally one to indulge in nostalgia, but picking up the Formerly Known As The Justice League trade last night certainly does take me back. You could make a strong argument that a comic book institution like the Justice League deserved far better than the jokey Justice League International franchise in the early 90s, but come on – the team of Giffen/DeMatties/Maguire/Rubenstein came up with some truly funny shit, and Formerly does a good job of recapturing a lot of that spirit. Bwah-ha-ha indeed.

Gary Oldman has been cast as Officer Jim Gordon in Batman Begins. Until now, creepy was not an adjective I’d ever expected to have to use to describe the future Commissioner Gordon. Is it right that he’ll be more intense than Batman?

Best. Headline. Ever. Update: Alas, someone’s taken the article down. But basically, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a story on Rosie O’Donnell’s gay wedding with the headline “Rosie Weds Longtime Girlfriend, Slams Bush”. There’s a screencap of the article here.

I just heard Calexico in an Adidas commercial. I spent most of it looking around, trying to figure out how I left the stereo on.

np – Beulah / Yoko

By : Frank Yang at 10:12 am
Category: Uncategorized
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  1. 3/4/04 10:59 am

     Paul says:

    Re: The Family Guy. Not unprecedented. They keep bringing back the Newlywed Game don’t they?

  2. 3/4/04 3:52 pm

     graig says:

    Hrm. I liked the Gandharvas, most specifically I liked the album mentioned in the list – their first was iffy and their latter was plain, but Kicking In The Water was a catchy psychodelic trip, lyrically simple and rhythmically complex.. a great album for its time. But it started to date itself somewhere around 1999. But I can still enjoy much of it (if I’m in the right headspace).

    Like the guy said, though, you’ll either love it or hate it, no inbetweensies.

    Formerly Known As… made me so giddy I’ve read each issue about a dozen times at this point.

    Like no series before (and with few exceptions since) the Giffen/DeMattis Justice League felt like a television comedy, a damn good one such as Cheers wherein the characters felt like family.

    I’m getting all my old issues bound in hardback volumes because I can’t wait for trades anymore.

  3. 3/4/04 4:04 pm

     Frank says:

    I saw the Gandharvas open for Catherine Wheel back in like 97 in Waterloo, and they were truly awful. Awful awful awful.

    I quit reading JLA/JLE in the middle of the Breakdowns storyline, which I sort of regret since I never did find out how it all ended. I think I just ran out of money in my comics budget and it was a casualty. I don’t think the franchise went on too much longer after that, though.

  4. 3/5/04 9:34 am

     graig says:

    Hmm, ’97 would have been the last year that they were together, touring for their new, commercialized sound.

    I saw them as they toured for Kicking in the Water in ’95 in a small Thunder Bay club and they put on an amazing show, heavily focussed on percussive instruments.

    I enjoy me a beat.

    Breakdowns was the end of it… I think it was 15 issues plus epilogue. The art got a little choppy during that run, but the story was perfect closure for the series.

    Then Dan Jurgens took over, and it was mostly a wash after that as they then attempted to capitalize on the hype of the changeover with series like Extreme Justice (*shudder*) and Justice League Task Force (Jeph Loeb did lots of solid early work here, before him and Tim Sale hooked up… in fact, at the time JLTF was the best of the four (or five) JL books on the stand, which is really sad).

  5. 3/5/04 2:05 pm

     Ryan Waddell says:

    Gord Downey is on that list. For that reason and that reason alone, I shun the list, and all that is on it. Gord Downey is evil.

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