txvoodoo linked me to this post about how AMC theatres are now no longer allowing oustide food, which generally turned into a free-for-all complaining about the high price of concessions (except for this comment). This entry isn't really about the debate on the cost of going to the movies and buying snacks but I wanted to do a poll anyway.

( cut for poll )

Today in Canada it is the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women which commemorates the Montreal Masscare that happened December 6, 1989 at the École Polytechnique:

Twenty-five-year-old Marc Lépine, armed with a legally obtained semi-automatic rifle and a hunting knife, shot twenty-eight people before killing himself. He began his attack by entering a classroom at the university, where he separated the male and female students. After claiming that he was "fighting feminism", he shot all nine women in the room, killing six. He then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targeting women to shoot. He killed fourteen women and injured ten other women and four men in just under twenty minutes before turning the gun on himself.

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the massacre and I think that while everyone will probably have the appropriate shocked, horrified, and dismayed responses to reading about this incident, what I really wish is that when people encountered violence against women around them today that they'd do more than passively accept it.

And I'm not just talking about real life. I'm talking about areas of culture that influence and shape people's attitudes. You may have noticed, but Glee pissed me off last week (and New Moon, before that). A lot, to the point where I'm unlikely to keep watching it. But I'm not going to call it "just" a TV show because some of the responses I have seen to that episode demonstrate quite starkly how violence against women is culturally embedded into people's subconsciousnesses and how easy it is for people to accept that violence. "It wasn't that harsh, he didn't hold on to her arm for that long, I probably would have reacted way more violently, my female friends didn't think it was domestic abuse so it wasn't." No. When violent messages are displayed on screen and people accept that the violent party is the one we're supposed to be feeling sorry for, then it's not "just" a TV show. It's a reflection of our cultural dysfunction towards women and a powerful tool to re-emphasize to people that this kind of behaviour is okay because, hey, our hero isn't a bad guy! No. This is unacceptable.

[ETA: I don't think I linked this in a post yet but it is relevant to this one: a great post on why Will's behaviour last week on Glee was so incredibly problematic and how the lack of consequences for his behaviour is completely appalling.]

This year, a couple of people on my flist have decided to make group "gifts" to their flists in lieu of sending holiday cards by using the money they would have spent on postage to do some good in the world. I've spent my postage funds on a donation to The Redwood, a Toronto shelter for women and children fleeing domestic violence in their homes; "over 80% of the women leaving The Redwood do not return to their abusive partners" and I think that's great.

On a happier note, thank you to everyone who sent me one of those v-gift cookies! I'm 95% sure I've actually decorated cookies to look like that which is fun. Also fun: there's a Festivus Pole v-gift. :D

1) The worst place for a zit on your face is anywhere that you can see out of the corner of your eye. It seems impossible that you would be able to see portions of your own face without looking in the mirror, but these areas become readily visible when a zit pops up. I am experiencing this right now.

2) I got New Super Mario Bros. for Wii earlier this week and it is good fun. I'm spectacularly bad at jumping and utterly fail in any level involving sand, but I'm good on ice. You can play with up to four people, so I'm having some friends over tonight for a Wii party. There will likely be Beatles Rock Band-ing as well, as I downloaded Sgt. Pepper a couple of weeks ago.

3) Speaking of which, I bitched previously that "Her Majesty" had had its missing note added back on at the end. They've made up for this by forcing you to play the incredibly long piano chord at the end of "A Day In The Life" in its entirety. I'm serious. Any other song on the game that normally fades out is reworked to just end abruptly, but this one they let go for the full 40 seconds or however long it lasts.

4) You know all those single-serving sites that are off shoots of FML (Fuck My Life)? Yesterday I discovered MLIT: My Life Is Twilight. FML is still a more accurate title for that site. Speaking of fucked up popular culture that helps to unapologetically perpetuate dysfunctional relationships and domestic abuse without consequence, here's a good article on why Will's behaviour on the latest episode of Glee is so fucked up (via whisperwords).

5) Normally I don't find "Canadian hoser" humour terribly amusing, but How I Met Your Mother and "The Twelve Days of Christmas" by Bob and Doug McKenzie (download!) are exceptions to that rule.

6) Linking to your own stuff is lame, but since I just put up a festive layout, I link to my archive of shared Christmas, Hanukkah, and wintery layouts. OMG CHRISTMAS.

OMG. Torontonians!

HAPPY 65TH KEITH RICHARDS

When: Fri Dec 18 9:45pm – Fri Dec 18 11:15pm
Where: Bloor Cinema

Unbelievable! Keith turns 65 on Friday December 18, and to celebrate we're screening this amazing collection of KEEF footage from the 60s and 70s. See Keith (and the boys) in rare jams, rehearsals, interviews and live concerts. What better Holiday gift than seeing Keith rip through a blistering version (on guitar and VOCALS!) of the Chuck Berry Xmas chestnut "Run Run Rudolph". (Bonus: rare 8mm short film of Keith's Oshawa Benefit Concert of 1979!) 90 minutes. Colour/b+w. $10. Dec. 18

I took December 11 and December 18 off of work so that I could go to the movies during the day (so many new releases coming out, so little time to see them unless I do this!) and now I can add this to my list. OMG. I totally, totally have to see this.

KEEF, I LOVE YOU. ETA I would also like to note that he's actually turning 66, but if thinking he is turning 65 is what spawned this evening of film, I'm fine with that.

I saw Up In The Air tonight. [If this were Wheel of Fortune, that last sentence could be a Before-and-After featuring Phil Collins.] ( cut for spoilers )

1) Yesterday's Glee. ( cut for spoilers )

2) For the last three days I've noticed tons of Advent related crap popping up all over Facebook and obviously this has tickled my ongoing ire about Advent. I started doing some research (mostly to prove myself right) and came across the concept of "24 days of Advent" (as opposed to "24 days in December before Christmas") and thought perhaps that maybe they count the number of days in Advent minus Sundays, the same way Sundays are skipped when counting down the days between Easter and Pentecost, so that what they're counting is not 24 days in December but 24 non-Sunday days in Advent. But that can't be right either, since the total number of days in Advent changes year to year depending on what day of the week Christmas falls on. So I'm back to square one and being irritated that Advent started on November 29 and yet my chocolate calendar has decided to gyp me of two chocolates by starting on December 1. I want a true Advent calendar, damnit! (And I want a December countdown calendar in years where Advent starts after December 1. Trying to maximize on the chocolate, see.)

Okay, here's a good article that actually gave me some idea as to what Google Wave can actually do (I didn't read the whole thing because I'm lazy, but the first part was moderately illuminating). Via lothlorienbaby, there's also Pulp Fiction and Good Will Hunting recreated as Wave interactions. I actually watched that first before reading the description so I didn't really get it, but it's still kind of funny anyway.


Also, this guy made a Christmas tree out of Mountain Dew cans and it looks surprisingly beautiful when all the lights are on.

ETA I was perusing movie listings to see if there was anything to see tomorrow night and between my two usual theatres combined, I've already seen nine of the eleven movies they're showing. WTF. (The two I have not seen, for the record, are The September Issue and New York, I Love You, both of which I don't have much interest in.) It needs to be Friday, now.

Son of ETA: There's a TWILIGHT CONVENTION COMING TO TORONTO from June 24-27, 2010!! You too can attend for the low low price of $186 (regular) / $349 (platinum). Oh man. I kind of want to go but clearly I'm not crazy nor a masochist. ETA Again! There's actually another one happening July 30 - August 1, 2010. Twihards will descend upon the city, prepare accordingly!

Guys, I love The Phantom of the Opera ♥♥♥

Today I watched the ALW musical (not the movie) and I was afraid of what I'd think after having seen so many other theatrical productions now. I mean, last time I did watch a lot more musicals but I didn't really watch any plays? And of course TSD has changed a lot of my views.

I remember rewatching Lord of the Rings after a damn long time, and while I'll always be fond of the series, a lot of the dialogue made me lol. Somewhat unrelatedly, some day in the hopefully not-too-distant future I want to have an all-out geek movie marathon where we watch LotR and Star Wars and whatever other geeky thing you can think of :) I don't really know if anybody will want to do it with me though. But now I digress! Basically I haven't been dorking over Phantom as much as I used to, so I was wondering if anything would've changed.

Short answer: No ♥

( the rather longer, incoherent flail that nobody will be interested in reading )

-

Nobody really cares about my Phantom tl;dr so just some things before I shut up for real.

1. I am so out of the loop on news about Musicals I Like, sigh. But there is an international tour of Les Miserables starting soon, because of the 25th anniversary and all! Right now it's just going around the UK but Singapore 2011 please? It only says 2009/2010 at the moment, but hey, international means you have to leave your country sometime, right?

But actually this is not about Les Mis coming back to Singapore, I don't mind if it doesn't (and it probably won't). I just really, really want to watch it with the opening cast. It might change if the tour does leave the UK? And it has John Owen-Jones (aka God) as Valjean and Earl Carpenter (aka my favourite Phantom ever) as Javert OMG!!! CAN I PLEASE GO TO THE UK SOON AND WATCH IT THE WAY IT IS :( :( :(

2. In line with all I've been doing, I reread The Phantom of 213 and I doubt anyone really remembers it, save myself, but I actually found it funny! Oh, those good ol' days ~

3. I am going to Japan with some of the Humanz kids from the 3rd to the 8th! If you want anything, you can tell me and I'll see if I can get it for you. So I'll be away that week, try not to miss me too much or contact me because I won't be able to do anything about it :D

Here you go: some signs that you may be in an abusive relationship and how they disturbingly pertain to Twilight (not much new info if you've read my own reviews, but good content nonetheless). Bonus points for the disturbing misogyny in some of the dissenting comments arguing that how Bella gets treated is entirely Bella's fault. Awesome.

Some thoughts on Glee up to 1x10 because I am behind. ( cut for stuff )

I know today is almost over but I didn't see this in my RSS feeds until now: Exile On Main Street, the classic 1972 double album by the Rolling Stones, is Amazon's deal of the day and is on sale for only $2.99!

If you are a lover of classic rock and love blues-leaning music that sounds like it was recorded in a sweltering basement in the south of France*, then this will be right up your alley. It features arguably Keith Richards' best vocal performance with the Stones, "Happy", as well as other great stuff like "Tumbling Dice", "Sweet Virginia", "Let It Loose" and "Shine A Light".

OWN IT NOW! If you're already ordering stuff, why not get this too?

* Guess where it was recorded.

I saw The Road this afternoon. ( cut for spoilers )

Six things, to varying degrees of coherence because it is... Late.

1. Now that the madness of the past week is over and done with (for the most part, anyway), I am beginning to stay up till unearthly hours again. It's really stupid because I stay up doing nothing and then I have to make myself wake up early because I never did finish everything I was supposed to.

Then of course I do it again the next day because I am brilliant that way.

2. I have begun eating a lot again! Today I ate a sick amount of food, it's crazy. Leon called me fat for the millionth time on Thursday, and with good reason!! Not that I've actually gained any weight (yet) but damn, I eat so much crap. Somebody please remind me of The Importance of Being Healthy.

3. I've had a lot of Chorale and TSD/theatre-related ~angst~ lately but strangely it now feels like everything just... is. Haha I don't know how to say; I guess while they're all things I'm concerned about, right now it's not that I'm avoiding things which I don't want to admit to myself (something I do all too often), it's that I genuinely don't know the answers to my questions. So - a break is in order! I plan to be uninteresting and superficial for the next few days. :D

4. It doesn't feel like the December break at all. Last year I welcomed the end-year holidays with gleeful gaiety and spent all my time enjoying life with various friends. This year I would like to forget everything for a day and just roll around unproductively at home by myself and fangirl over musicals.

Well, not everything is different though - for example, I'm going to Japan, again! (But no Elisabeth this time, how tragic.) I hope it will be exciting still :D

5. I reread my new year resolutions and regrettably, thus far I haven't done a good job of keeping them. (To think the reason I made them in the first place was because I actually managed to keep most of 2008's. Fail.) I'd say I have one more month but seriously, what can happen in a month that couldn't in the previous eleven? [/cynical]

6. I FAIL AT SCRIPTWRITING FOR LIFE I know what it is I want to say but I can never make it come out right. But - another day. Now, it is bedtime! :D :D :D

A bear playing hockey (possibly upsetting, depending on your threshold for watching humans make animals do stupid shit). I'm kind of really grossed out at the circusy, animal-cruelty implications here and yet at the same time amazed that a bear is skating. Someone please tell me this is fake and that's actually a dude in a bear suit. There's a related video of a bunch of them playing hockey. What's the thought process here? "You know what would be awesome? BEARS PLAYING HOCKEY." When people say stupid things like that, you're not supposed to actually DO IT.

The only good thing is one of the comments: "that bear litterly does have a better shot than most of the maple leafs." HA!

I saw Fantastic Mr. Fox with amazingaudrey. ( cut for spoilers )

PEOPLE.

THE MUPPETS ARE ON YOUTUBE (AND TWITTER).

EVERYTHING IS AMAZING. NOTABLY, "BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY", "ODE TO JOY", AND "HABANERA". OMG BEEKER.

Hilarity upon hilarity: my Twilight review has been read 1200 times in less than 48 hours, and that's only counting hits on my website (not on LJ). By contrast, the next most read review (Revolutionary Road, on account of people Googling amazing things like "1950s home abortion") has just slightly less than half that over almost a 12 month period.

Anyone have a good potato and leek soup recipe? I'm craving the version a friend of mine makes but she is indisposed at the moment and wouldn't be able to send me the recipe. I've watched her make it dozens of times but of course not closely enough to actually make it myself. (In my mind, her version only has leeks, potatoes, and cream. This is probably not factually true.) I like it with chunks of potatoes rather than pureed (especially since I don't have a blender).