Bairtow-away or How My Chevy Lost to this Dreaded Season (Winter)

The plow came yesterday. For most streets that wouldn't be out of the ordinary. But for us - sadly - it is. The city seems to have forgotten about our street. Google Maps admits we exist, why won't the city?

We were privy to two of our neighbours figuring that they could power their cars over their plowed in driveways, only to get stuck and floor it and dig their wheels in beyond hope.

We also had both neighbours have to get towed out. One needing a flatbed trailer (as seen below).



Winter - 2, Domestic Gas-Chariots - 0

Zombography or Blank of the Dead

So I have just (mostly) finished watching every zombie movie one could imagine (actually really just those that end in "of the dead".

I'll list them all and give some trivia/ratings.

Night of the Living Dead: A classic movie that breaks racial stereotypes and sets stereotypes for Zombies. The first movie to include flesh hungry self-directing zombies (in the past they'd always just done the bidding of witchdoctors - as coincides with Zombie lore). Trivia: It's a public domain movie - so you could release your own dvd copy. IMDb has 26 different "versions" allegedly.

Dawn of the Dead (1978): Awesome zombie movie about survivors holing up in a mall and living it up while the world outside dies. Great social commentary and character relationship development. Don't go shopping at a mall right after you watch this (as Luke and I did) you feel like everyone is a Zombie. Trivia: It was filmed in a mall at night since they couldn't just shut down a mall to film a small scale movie. So they needed to clean everything up before the muzak would come on (which they couldn't figure out how to turn off). They also needed to take a break from filming when the Christmas decorations went up.

Day of the Dead: I was disappointed by this one. It was boring. It has a cult following and I can't figure out why.

Return of the Living Dead: A satire of the whole Zombie movie craze. A good movie. I wouldn't recommend watching it with with your parents (as if you'd watch a Zombie movie with your parents) because one of the main characters spends the whole movie naked (did I just spoil the movie? At least I didn't tell you they turn into a zombie, oh crap). Trivia: The first Zombie movie to feature fast moving zombies and the whole "Brains" thing.

Dawn of the Dead (2004): Definitely a good re-make of Dawn of the Dead. I think that at this point of being a Zombie-snob I prefer the original. Trivia: Sarah Polley from Road to Avonlea is the main character. If Road to Avonlea didn't have enough of her killing Zombies this movie is for you.

Shaun of the Dead: Great parody on the Zombie horror movie. A good zombie movie in itself. Interesting in that it made people who would never watch a zombie movie or a horror movie watch it. My favourite review of the movie is when people are upset by the gore in it. YOU RENTED A ZOMBIE MOVIE! WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?!?! Well the paper told me it was good. IT'S STILL A ZOMBIE MOVIE!

Land of the Dead: Return to the Romero slow moving zombie. After the Dawn of the Dead / 28 Days Later "Zombie" made it cool to have running zombies.

All this was done to prepare me for Diary of the Dead, which is coming out soon and is another foray of Zimbie-king George A. Romero into the genre he created. I am very excited, but doubt that any of my friends will want to go and see it.

I wonder what the movie would be like if it was Dairy of the Dead? Maybe zombie cows? Zombie farmers? Somesort of new trendy milk commercial that we'll see for the next 5 years like the skateboarding farmers. Hmmmmm. Trivia: Mike Paglia's band from Waterloo did the music for the skating-farmer commercials. Wally lived across the hall from them.



What have I gather from all of my "research"?:
a. I prefer the slow-moving Zombie, they add more to the suspense.
b. I find myself judging the buildings that I am in on how zombie-proof they are.


"They're coming to get your Barbara" 6:10

Retreat! or A Message from Down Below.

This weekend started on a low note. We were all ready to go and see the world's greatest wrestler Reggie Marley in action, but due to the snow, the show got cancelled.

But we'll always have the memories of when we met the man himself.



Friday had to be one of the lamest snow days of all time. We got 5cm of snow and they cancelled school. Back in my day...

Then on Friday night I received and unexpected email:



11:45pm? I was brushing my teeth then. I wasn't even near my computer. But I guess that's what I deserve for having wi-fi, emails anytime, anywhere, from anything?!

Saturday Kristi and I had the treat of getting up at 5:00 to go skiing with the youth. Surprisingly everyone was on time and we left shortly after 6:00. Arriving at Talisman at around 8:15 only to find that Talisman had no electricity!

We then hung around while we tried to figure out what to do, then decided on driving the two vans and a bus full of 65 youth to Blue Mountain, getting there around 10:00.

The day of snowboarding was amazing. One of the youth (Jesse) had only boarded once before but by the end of the day was riding on the blue squares (mid-level difficulty) tracks and riding in the glades (off-track). I also felt a lot better than I had snowboarding before. It felt much more natural this time.

Then we drove to a hotel, ordered 18 pizzas (they got annihilated), spent hours in a pool/hottub and crammed as many guys as we could in a sauna (complete with mystery shorts - thankfully we never met the person in the hotel sans shorts - and emergency exit snow dives).

We also made the mistake of watching "Pros vs. Joes" with Shaykhan. Who promptly decided that we should come up with our own game. This involved having to run from one side of the hotel room to the other past an opponent who wanted to make sure you didn't make it. There was many a rug burn and many a shattered dream (a hit to the garbage also entailed). Today I ache much more from the hotel room challenge than snowboarding.

It was a great retreat!

Tonight is the Superbowl. I am unsure of who I wish to be victorious. I'd like to see the perfect season, but there's also something satisfying about seeing the underdog defeat the undefeated super-team, mostly so that Disney can make a movie about it.

N64!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This brought me much lol-age. I wish that I had the joy that this child is experiencing.


Now watch this classy remix, for all you METAL fans.

Detecting Movement

Ok, so I'm done the Office (until those writer's get their act together and write me some more episodes or I find the British version somewheres around here) and now I can start posting on here again.

I've begun to hang out with a couple of the guys from work - which has been pretty sweet - except that it means that I have suffered great financial loss from an underground gambling ring that we started. You're probably wondering what shady sport we might be gambling on: pit fighting, cock fighting, crab racing... NOPE, none of those. We were betting on Wrestling.

Not Olympic Wrestling. Pre-planned scripted wrestling (don't tell Kerry). FROM 1991! That we'd all read the results from (but couldn't remember - or at least that's what we claimed - I $1 because I remembered that the Mountine beat Tito Santana). With all that said, I'm down $9. It's been a rough week, payday couldn't come soon enough.

Everyone needs to see Hercules The Movie / Goes Bananas / In New York. It's the one and only movie by the Thespian Arnold Strong (later Arnold Schrawhjhgahnegger). It's one of the funniest things that I have ever witnessed. Just ask Coffey. You'll learn a lot about the bible (like the lesser-known crossover adventures of Greek Mythology and Bible Personas).

The Great Wireless Hunt.

So today the wireless at work was acting a fool, so a few people were looking for it. That's right. No one at work knows where the wireless hub is. They spent hours searching for it. They even had one of the IT guys looking around with a laptop to see if he could find it, to no avail, he even found it to be on the move - it must have been swallowed by a rat or sewer gator. It kind of reminded me of some of the tense motion-detector scenes from ALIENS.

Later we received a company-wide email asking if we had any information about the location of the router. I feel like doing a ransom note up for it.

Was it really that great? No.

Sorry

I'd write more but I am addicted to the Office.

"Christmas" report

Lord Kerrance here (that was for you, Annie). You may be wondering why no one has posted in a while. That's probably what you're doing if you're here. Or perhaps you're drunk and were looking for the Barstow blog, and you were really excited since the last time you were there they hadn't updated since 2001. Sorry friend, you've stumbled into the wrong place. But stay! We have party snacks and Twister.

Anyway, us Bairstoaways have been busy. As I sit here I can hear melodiuos strains from Caleb's room as he multitasks doing some freelance work AND installing a Mac OS on a non-Mac laptop (which is akin to stuffing prime steak with stale pretzels, but that's my opinion. The right opinion, if you're wondering). Luke is off in Tha Hamma, meaning we're sure to get 200 cm of snow. I have been feverishly learning two songs on guitar while memorizing a new verse for a hip-hop show I'm performing at tonight. But I need a break, so I thought I'd let you know the results of the 1st Annual Bairstow Celebration of Roughly The 1040th Anniversary of the Completely Arbitrary, Decidedly Fake Birthday Of Jesus Which Was Put In Place To Compete With A Pagan Festival Happening At The Same Time Thereabouts (ABCOTOAOTCADFBOJWWPIPTCWAPFHATSTT for short). Or as the less historically-savvy call it, Christmas Gift Exchange.

First up was a chocolate selection from our landlords, who are awesome. The chocolate almost lasted a week.

Then it was time for The Leb's gifts to me and Mook, both wrapped in suspicious manila packages. We opened it up to find that we had been granted a joint subscription to Modern Drummer magazine (stop laughing, it's a real magazine. For serious). Although I appreciate the gift, I can't help but wonder if this is a sinister plot on Caleb's part to slowly turn Luke and I against each other each months as we fight over who gets to read about random session drummers and drumkits made out of trash cans and old refrigerators first.

Then came my gifts to Caleb and Luke. I got Luke an Iron Maiden mug, which immediately became known as "The Chalice of Metal". Elaborate rituals shall abound on Metal Mondays. I got Caleb and anti-theft device in the form of a $20 iTunes card. I had hoped to derail his Interweb Piracy for a little while, but as of this writing he has already spent the whole thing, mostly on Gary Neuman.




Finally came Mook's gifts to me and the Leb. We both got DVDs: Caleb got a set about space, furthering his dreams to one day be an astronaut. I got the Simpsons Movie, furthering my desire to one day have jaundice.

Yes, the first ABCOTOAOTCADFBOJWWPIPTCWAPFHATSTT was a success. Many happy returns to you and yours.