June 25, 2008
The Dana Fuchs Band
The Dana Fuchs Band
As I have mentioned before, one of my favorite movies from 2007 was "Across the Universe
", a musical exclusively based around Beatles' songs, some of which are sung by an interesting array of professionals, such as Joe Cocker's excellent "Come Together", Bono humorously covering "I Am the Walrus" and Eddie Izzard having an absolute ball with "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite".
However, the core of the songs for "Across the Universe" were covered by the main cast, one member of which really stood out in my mind, which was Dana Fuchs as the Janis Joplin-esque "Sadie". (I was glad that both Janis and Hendrix inspired characters got alternative universe happy endings in "Across the Universe", imagine what the world would have been like if both of these legends had lived on!)
I hadn't really heard of Dana Fuchs or The Dana Fuchs band, so was totally blown away by her deep, powerful, breathy, passionate vocals, especially on "Helter Skelter" and "Why Don't We Do it in the Road?".
If you haven't seen "Across the Universe", get it today! If you have seen "Across the Universe" and enjoyed it as much as I did, you should go out and get the original soundtrack
today!
And, if you liked Dana Fuchs as Sadie in particular, you really should check out both the CD and DVD of The Dana Fuchs Band Live in NYC. I actually prefer the DVD, as it has some bonus acoustic tracks presented in an interview format. (Plus, anyone worth their salt knows how to rip DVD music tracks for their personal MP3 collection!)
Both of these links are to CD Baby, which is actually a pretty darn cool site to get CDs from, unlike the Ebay merchants that I have ranted about recently, CD Baby knows precisely how to ship things to Canada! (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more!)
Beyond Dana's superb blues/rock vocals, the band also sports excellent song writing talents, "Almost Home", "Misery", "Bleed More" and "Strung Out" are all stand out tracks among a sea of excellence!
I haven't been able to listen to The Dana Fuchs Band debut CD: "Lonely for a Lifetime", which currently available only through iTunes, but it's probably a safe bet that it's an outstanding musical experience as well.
I also think it's pretty cool that Dana and I share a common birthday with the likes of Rod Stewart and Pat Benatar! Rock on Dana!
June 19, 2008
The Gore Bay Summer Theatre
I thought I would just take a moment to post information about our upcoming summer theatre season here in Gore Bay, which starts (GULP!) next week!
Norm Foster fans will be happy to know that we're putting on one of his funniest plays: "The Love List" this summer. Kevin, Tara and Dave are back with a top-notch show that will have you literally rolling in the aisles!
Myself and Vincent are performing Mitch Albom's poignant "Tuesdays with Morrie"
, based on his best-selling book. This play is both very touching and very funny and is filled with great wisdom about figuring out just what's important in life!
Walter has also been working with a group of outstanding youngsters from the local public school to produce an excellent production of "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe".
"The Love List" plays June 26th, 27th and July 3rd, 4th, 10th, 11th, 17th, 18th and 24th at the Gore Bay Community Hall. Curtain is at 7:30 pm sharp, tickets are available at the town office or at the box office from 6:30pm on show dates.
"Tuesdays with Morrie" plays June 28th, July 5th, 8th, 12th, 15th, 19th and 22nd at the Gore Bay Community Hall. Curtain is at 7:30 pm sharp, tickets are available at the town office or at the box office from 6:30pm on show dates.
"The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" plays June 28th, July 6th and 13th at the Gore Bay Community Hall. Curtain is a 2:00 pm Saturday matinee, tickets are available at the town office or at the box office from 6:30pm on show dates.
For more ticket information, you can call 282 0538 or 1 800 529 5518
We're also very performing both of our main productions at the Burns Wharf Theatre in Manitowaning this summer! "Tuesdays with Morrie" plays on July 2nd, 9th, 16th and 23rd. 'The Love List" plays on July 25th and 26th. For times & tickets please call (705) 859 3808.
We hope to see you at our shows this summer!
June 14, 2008
Pet Peevisaurus
Pet Peevisaurus
Gads, some things in this world just don't make sense, just ask all the people who've been posting comments about continued issues with EA's "Download Manager"!
Anyhow, I'm introducing a new category specifically for griping about things in the world that simply don't make any sense!
Number One with a bullet is FeeBay, errrrr Ebay. Ok, actually, I have no right to call it "FeeBay", because I don't sell anything there, I still prefer the graceful, if under-visited elegance of Etsy.
However, I still like to use Ebay to fuel one of my favorite hobbies, which is collecting older video games. The way I see it, I'd much rather be playing "previous generation" Xbox and PS2 titles for $10 to $20, as opposed to paying $60 to $80 for new Xbox 360 and PS3 titles that will be $10 to $20 in a few years or whenever "next, next generation" systems make an appearance.
Heck, in a lot of cases, older titles are more fun than newer games, which always seem time need time to mature as a console generation matures.
Anyhow, living in the wilds of Canada, and with the exception of ransacking the same old piles of used titles at Electronics Boutique and Blockbuster in Sudbury, Ebay tends to be one of the better ways to find old and/or esoteric titles for a reasonable price.
However, there are certain issues with Ebay that are common to all Canadians and that's what I really want to gripe about.
First of all, I want to admit that I don't actually do auctions on Ebay, I stick with Buy-it-now sales only. Why? Well, they tend to always have odd end times, and everyone knows that nobody bids on auctions until the last few seconds, so if you want to actually win an auction, you have to be right there at the end.
Plus, most regular auctions don't have even consider shipping to Canada, in face, out of an average search, I'd say that only 1 out of every 6 Buy-it-nows will ship to Canada. Why's that? I don't really know, I guess we have a bad reputation because of customs fees, which for items over a certain price can lead to quite the case of "post office shock"!
However, any shipper worth his salt knows how to fill out that little green customs slip to avoid the gaze of our haphazard customs' naz… errrr… enforcement, just take a look at the label below, which brings me to my final and largest complaint: Massive overcharging for shipping to Canada for things like video games.
Exhibit "A" - This is a scan of an actual envelope that was used to ship me a standard console video game/DVD case. As you can see, it cost the shipper a whopping $2.38 to ship to Canada. Now, as a shipper myself, I can allow a little leeway for shipping costs, to cover time for taking things to the post office and the cost of a bubble mailer. So, I could see reasonably paying $4 to $5 for the shipping of in case game. However, I actually paid $8.50 for the shipping on this particular title, one of the best shipping rates to Canada that I have found to date!
(click for enlargement)
Exhibit "B" - Check out this search on Ebay for a title I was thinking about picking up today "Rogue Galaxy" for the PS2.
Not only do the prices for new copies range from $12 to nearly $37! But the lowest shipping to Canada starts at $9.95 and goes as high as a whopping $20.99!
What gives? At the very least these sellers are multiplying shipping costs by 4 times just for the privilege of sending something to Canada!??! And it's not like they're trying to recover fees, check the above link with the $20.99 shipping to Canada, if you check the USA shipping price, it's just over $5.00.
So anyhow, there you have it, my "Pet Peevisaurus" number one! To all the Ebay sellers out that that like to F-over Canadians, I would just like to say: "Sit on it and rotate, you bunch of pole-smoking jackasses!" Thank you very much and may you have a rotten day with many, many negative feedback comments from irate Canadians, you deserve it, you really do!
September 2008
