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Icky Thump

OK, so I'm finally ready to share my thoughts on the new White Stripes album. In brief, it's fucking amazing. There are not many bands or groups out there that can get me excited for the release of new material like the Stripes. I'm not even a rock fan, but I hang on every word that Jack has to say through his work. The thing that comes through each time out is that Jack is a capital-A Artist who understands the responsibility that a creative person has to his work. No one is writing lyrics that affect me the way Jack White's do.

But the songs themselves; these little gems of composition, arrangement, and production. There were several moments on this album when I thought I was in for a rude awakening, that Jack & Meg had gone off in some direction I didn't care to follow. But each time, they bring it right back to where I first fell in love with them. An example: You Don't Know What Love Is. It starts out with some guitar that makes me think it's gonna be like a country kind of thing, but then the organs come in and the guitar fucks off for Jack to start singing and the song is right where I want it to be.

Even when the record gets it's weirdest on the Irish drinking song-sounding Prickly Thorn But Sweetly Worn or on Conquest, two numbers that clearly tell us that the Stripes are going off in directions we would never have imagined, it works within the context of a singular whole. Jack seems to be aware of the dramatic continuity of his albums more than most other artists out there today. It reminds me of the rap records of the early- and mid-90s, but without the skits.

And will all of this praise for Jack, I have to mention Meg. People give her shit for her drumming style, but it's jut that: her own style. And it's an integral part of the Stripes sound, which is why I didn't get into the Raconteurs when that was happening. There's something about the magic that these two people create together that's greater than the sum of the parts.

So there is it. Icky Thump: brilliant. A great time. Perfectly harmonious flow from Elephant, through Get Behind Me Satan, and into this. Jack will easily make whatever 'greatest artists of the century' lists that get compiled in 2099.

EDIT: I do have to admit that I was disappointed at the absence of a song where Meg sings lead. After the ones on Elephant and Get Behind Me Satan, I was really looking forward to it!

ODB represent

This morning I was interviewing Aaron Brophy, 'the boss' at Chart Magazine. He's cool. I knew we were homeys when, apropos of nothing, he quoted Ol' Dirty Bastard in one of his answers. After the interview, I told him how my two biggest musical influences are The Beatles and O.D.B., and then we daydreamed together about how great it would be if Ol' Dirty would have lived longer, and if he and Paul McCartney teamed up on a remake of Say Say Say!

Off to Peterborough for the first out of town performance for Sean Ward & the Realness!!

Nothing much, really. Just some home decorating and computer talk.

I got the new White Stripes album yesterday, the day it came out. I went to the store early, I might have even been the first to get it that day! Anyway, I am not ready to share my thoughts on it yet, and I am still up in the sky just taking it in. I'll come with that soon enough.

My bed is finally the crayon box that I wanted!! I bought new pillows, new pillowcases, and a bunch of cushions. All of it is bright crayon colors, and the little Spider-Man cushion sets the whole thing off!!

Here is the most exciting news of the day: I think I am ready to kick my PC to the curb! Thanks to a new friend whose acquaintance I only recently made who has packed my Macbook with all of the programs I need to get work done, I don't think I need my PC tower for anything any more, and I am looking forward to packing it away and being a full-time Mac enthusiast!! It did not take long for me to turn into a big Mac nerd. I am looking forward to Leopard coming out like it's a big movie that I want to see real bad!!

Taxicab Driver

So last night, after spending the evening laughing and bullshitting with Human Kebab and Ebony and Chris B. Chicken, I caught a cab home. The guy's driving was crazy, I felt like I was in the backseat of a racing car. I loved it, it was great fun. By the time he dropped me off, the meter was at $17 and change. I complimented him on his driving skills and handed him two twenties, and said I needed $15 back (I'm a big tipper, it's just something I enjoy). He handed me back $25, my $15 with an extra ten. I noticed it, said to myself "score!", and shoved the bills in my pocket. But after he handed me the receipt, I pulled the bills back out and brought attention to his error. He was very thankful as I gave him back that extra ten bucks. The old me would have kept that ten, but that's not what I'm on about these days. The feeling of good karma going out was worth way more than ten dollars.

Changes... and Monterey Pop

Today is the 40th anniversary of the first day of the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. This was the pre-cursor to Woodstock, beating it out of the gate by two years. It was the very first rock festival, the first event of it's kind, the first such event to draw an attendance in the hundreds of thousands. The diversity of the acts on the bill is nothing like the rock festivals we see nowadays. You've got The Who and Jimi Hendrix, but you've also got The Mamas & the Papas, and even Ravi Shankar.

I'm listening to highlights of the festival in my earphones as I type. I'm spending the day doing absolutely nothing, as my plans got cancelled on me. Which isn't so bad, I've got a huge backlog of viewing material that's now overdue at the video shop (thank God for no late fees!). It's a weird time right now, everything is so in flux. My relationship ended earlier this week with one company with which I was engaged in a big project. The big merger between two super-empires is going to impact another of the projects I'm involved in whichever way it goes. Between last weekend's Comicon, recording the album, and all of the content I have to create for all of my jobs, it's been pretty breakneck for a while. I'm quite happy to take today to just lounge and do fuck all.

What's your connection to the mysterious forces like? Do you ever know that you're getting a message but you can't quite crack what it is?

And now to lighten this entry up, here's my performance of Brooklyn Zoo from Hip Hop Karaoke Toronto on June 14th:

new songs in process

I just got the rough mixes of the work from the last sessions. Dan Branco is a genius, we are the best there is!!

Disturbing trends

I'm not much of a complainer, but here are a few of this season's trends that I take issue with:

1. Crocs. Not to be worn outside. They are the least flattering footwear ever. Well, almost. The worst is...

2. Flip-Flops. I am on the subway, I see a super=hot babe, and when I check her out she's wearing flip-flops. And if they're not the dollar-store kind, they're those really ugly ones that have like the leather piece that sits on top of the foot. No good.

3. No make up. Ladies, if your thing is that you don't wear make-up then that's fine, but either women are giving up make-up en masse, or I'm just noticing it a lot more when women don't have any on. Women who are always on the ball with this sort of thing are starting to show up to stuff, or put pictures on their Facebook, with no make-up. Come on, maybe just a little eye-shadow or something?

4. Earth Tones. Don't it figure that the year I can finally afford to dress myself and buy clothes is the year that everything is in colors that I don't want to wear? Everything is greens and browns all over the town!! At least there's a few nice mint green item around, but often I'm totally ready to part with my money except everything is in colors I don't want!

Sadie Not So Sexy

Don't it figure? It's always when you're really carried away with your work and you're really getting into it that the program reminds you that you haven't saved in a while by crashing and taking away your work. In this case, I was working in a music sequencing program, working on the music for a cover song that's going to be on my album, when the program crashed and took three hours of work with it. That's the chorus, the whole second verse, and a whole bunch of tweaking that went into it. The rare times stuff like this happens, I take it as a sign that I was going down the wrong road but still, this is particularly annoying. In face, I'm just gonna leave it alone for now and go watch a movie.

For those that missed it, here's the first of many videos captured the night of April 27, a historic occasion indeed.



Now, I would like to say a few words about my new computer. I have one week ago, I treated myself to a shiny new MacBook. Now I'm not one to be all product-placement in my blog posts, but this thing really is the bee's knees. Your whole life changes when you can check your e-mail from bed. Everything runs fast, I find the Mac environment to be much more intuitive, and all the good ideas Windows implements are things that Mac has had for ages. Like stuff that I would never have even been able to conceive of that now I can't understand how I ever lived without: Dashboard, Expose, the thing that lets you see all of your open applications. This is stuff that you could never have even explained to me when I was a PC guy.

I even went out and bought the wireless Mighty Mouse mostly because I hate the trackpad on the computer itself. But I was delighted to find out all of the crazy things you can do with it that you can't do with a regular mouse. It becomes part of your experience of the computer more than just a way to get around the screen.

I also highly recommend the One to One membership. For $99 you can you to the Apple Store for one-hour personal training sessions. You get up to 52 of them (the idea is that you go once a week) and I've already been twice. $99 for 52 hours of personal training is a pretty good deal.

The best thing about all this is the way my work is more mobile now. It's only been a week and already my relationship to my work has changed. If I get a whole bunch of ideas in my head as I drift off to sleep that I want to bring up with one of the producers, I just reach out for my computer and punch them in right there instead of getting up to go do it at the computer.

But most exciting for me is the doors that open up in terms of my live performance. Before, it has always been a big chore of arranging to get the files to the DJ, or the headache of making sure there's a working CD player at the venue or some other such nonsense. Now I've got little Maccie who shall go with me to every show and plug into the system for problem- and complication-free backing track action.

I'm just rambling here, but the gist of it is that I am very excited to be on the Mac side of things now, and the suggestion from the commercials really is a good one: if you're upgrading to Vista, just get a Mac.

it all comes to tomorrow

Two days on the set, I am ready to have a really deep sleep. Wednesday was the street portion of the taping. Being back out on Queen Street with the Today was all of the studio stuff, a twelve hour day. Followed by a rehearsal for tomorrow night's show. Thank God that tomorrow's green screen session is a 12:30 call, I can sleep in a little bit. But the main event, tomorrow night's performance, that's what is keeping me going right now, keeping my energy level high when I get to rehearsal and I'm greeted with "you actually showed up! I totally thought you were gonna just go home and crash!" Did you think I was kidding when I said I Just Wanna Dance??

It's Getting Serious Now!

Today is Friday. This has been a busy week. And this is going to end up being an even busier month.

Wednesday I was in a casting session for ten hours. Casting for a main villain, a downstairs neighbor, a group of snipy girls, and a female customer. We saw everyone from great people who had their shit together, all the way down to people who had no business acting at all. They were to come deliver a prepared bit of dialogue, then they got surprised by having to play some improv with me. That was fun. And it is just more and more stunning all the time to see the machinery running, all of these talented and experienced people working their butt off to make my vision come to fruition. Today I went back to talk about props and wardrobe. I'm being taken shopping next Saturday!!

This weekend is going to be a lot of fun because it's another weekend of taping Ed's Night Party episodes. I always get a kick out of it when a joke I came up with makes it into the show, or when I see props I made get used. Every so often I get a jolt when it pops back into my head that this is what I'm doing, writing and producing for TV with my own show in development, when not even a year ago I was still near to having a break-down over paying the rent.

The performance on the 27th is going to be just off the hook. Between shooting it for the TV project, Human Kebab returning to Ontario, and the release of the Wizard of Rock's CD, there is just no way that there is anything more fun going on anywhere in this city.

The Easter Bunny

According to your recollection of things from when you were a child, is the Easter Bunny a regular looking rabbit that hops along leaving eggs? Or is he a big man-sized rabbit? I always pictured the Easter Bunny being six feet tall, plus the ears. He walked up on two legs, hopping when travelling great distances or when speed was required, and wearing a vest with a tie. What did the Easter Bunny look like in your mind?

Lyrics Fulfilled

So it turns out that I wasn't just talking smack when I wrote the lyrics for The Pop That I Rock, specifically the last line of the first verse: "...and it be Sean Ward on your MTV."

I was flipping the channels the other night and as I passed MTV, it was E2 that was on and what do I see? The picture of me that Caitlin Cronenberg took, the one with the beach balls, blazing across my screen.

Word! Keep it coming, MTV!

Out To Lunch

My movie won't move!

My new favorite thing is making little video blog movies instead of posting a bunch of photos. At the Toronto Comic Book Fan SuperShow (a whole bunch of fun, by the way) I took a whole bunch of video on my new camera. Then I spent most of last night and a few hours today editing a cool little two-minute movie of the thing in Windows Movie Maker. Good Lord, that program sucks. And now it's even worse as it just won't render the video, like the operation is too complicated for my piece of shit computer to handle. I hope this is a little glitch that will sort itself out like when my browser kept crashing every time I tried to attach a file to an email last week but even still, I can't wait for my new Macbook Pro. I've got a rather sizable chunk of the cost saved up already, I need it!! I am a creative professional and for the five years of my operation I have been handicapped by the poor quality of my tools. But I'm coming out of the woods!! I should have that new computer by the summer!

In the plus column, you can now check out a gallery of photos from my last recording session in my Facebook photos! They were taken by the beautiful and talented Miss Genevieve Blais.

I eat out too much maybe

A friend gave up booze for Lent. She and I got talking about what I would give up for Lent, and I couldn't think of anything. I'm kind of a workaholic, but I can't really give up working for Lent. I waste more time than I would like, but if i'm lazy then I'm too lazy to give up being lazy for Lent. But today I realized what my vice is. I don't drink really, I only smoke a few times a month, but I eat out a lot. I eat out probably once a day on average, whether that's going out for dinner or just getting a coffee and bagel at Tim Horton's. It's the convenience of it, you see. I'm always on the move, if I'm home I'm typically working. So I eat when I'm on my way across town and realize it's four and I haven't eaten anything yet.

Today was that first glorious life-affirming day of the year. I walked home from being out all day and noticed that there was no snow on the ground any more (I later saw some in the top corner of a driveway in a spot where no sun gets to). On my way downtown, I called Shaun Downey and asked him to come out with me after my meeting. He could not, but when I got out of the meeting I called Kelly Grace and offered to take her out as a reward for her stellar success at the Art Expo. I was thinking something casual and light, that I'd spend 20 - 30 bucks for the two of us. We instead went to a sushi place and blew $70 without even trying. But it was fun!

And now some photos for no reason:

Sessions - the movie

Yesterday was great fun. I woke up way too late (about one in the afternoon) and booted it across town to go sign a contract that renews my deal with JV Productions. Took the cheque I picked up from that contract signing, put it in the bank, and went downtown. Finally, at long last, replaced the camera that was stolen last summer with a gorgeous new Canon Powershot A550. Raced home with it, checked my email, and then motored over to the recording studio where we were finally getting Tye's parts laid down on the new songs.

Here is a little documentary of the visit to the recording studio!



That movie, and the many more like it that I am going to make, was one of the main reasons why I've been feeling more and more that I needed to hurry up and get a new camera. Next project: new computer!!

Red Boots

Whoa, check out John Waters going on The Daily Show with red boots! I am a trend-setter like a motherfucker!!

I am looking forward to relaxing tonight. I just spent days fixing up the website and making it smoother and slimmer, it's ready to go into the ring against the heavyweight champ. And bringing my blog back home to live on my own website, it feels like a great big comfortable couch! I hope it doesn't take too long to attract an audience again, it's been so long that my website has been chaotic and shitty, and plus people staying in touch through MySpace and Facebook and whatnot.

So who's out there? Is anyone reading this? What topics should we engage in dialog in?

Celebrity Look-Alikes

I did one of these like a year ago, but now that it's sweeping the nation, I'll do another one!!