Afternoon Kino - The Wild Bunch, Sam Peckinpah, 1969

Today's Playlist - Frank Sinatra

In times of increasing subtext and subterfuge, Sinatra plays it refreshingly straight.

Really Good Albums I Missed The First Time Around

One of the surprisingly nice things about taking a holiday over the Christmas/New Year break was the ability to load up on some really top-notch albums that I was too busy to listen to in 2009 proper. It's a good time of year - all my friends have compiled their Best Of lists and it's a three week period with no new music coming out, so here's a quick list of what I grabbed to help fill some of those quite hotel/airplane/bus hours:

Mos Def, The Ecstatic - This is the album I regret not hearing until the end of the year the most. You should all probably stop what you're doing and listen to it now.

Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus - I initially downplayed this was as "contemporary alternative music for forty-year olds." I guess I just got old.

Girls, Album - The single is catchy as all get out and the album reminds me of the excitement that people used to have about Elvis Costello.

The Antlers - Hospice

Am I Parking My Car, Or Storming the Beaches?

Dear City of Calgary,

I know I said some mean things about your street cleaning policy that left the city side streets full of snow. At the time I was angry, because in my neighbourhood, this meant that two buses got stranded in the snow side-by-side for almost a week, cutting off traffic flow in one of our major exit routes, in addition to the other roads that were impassable due to accumulated snow, or the snow the plows had pushed forward at interactions.

Now however, as the warmer weather hits, I see a new stunning logic to your plan. Those mounds of snow piled up in the middle of interactions have transformed from snowdrifts into hard icy barricades, and the four feet of slush, snow, and ice on either side of the road have turned the parking lanes into a veritable No Man's Land. I often find myself wondering, am I parking my car? Or storming the beaches of Normandy? It really is thrilling to launch my car at a two foot ice ramp in the right hand turning lane, hoping my forward momentum will carry me out of the curious mix of gravel, sand, snow and ice awaiting me on the other side. It used to be finding a parking space was difficult - now there are places aplenty and every time I get back into my car I get the vicarious pleasure of worrying whether this will be time my car gets stuck. The little twinge of excitement and fear as I skid out into the street - truly one of life's little delights.

So thank-you City of Calgary, for making all this possible with your inefficient (if cost-saving) snow removal strategy.

Elvis 75

I picked up a digital copy of Elvis 75, and truth be told, "Viva Las Vegas" had never sounded better to me than in the dying hours of CES on Sunday morning. However it wasn't until I got back into town and looked at the physical album cover, proudly proclaiming Elvis Presley to be "The Once and Future King" that I had cause to shake my head. Really? England gets the mythical Arthur, who will come in their darkest hour to lead the English nation back into the fabled golden era of moral and political unity of Camelot - the Americans get Elvis, to lead them back into the golden glittered hedonism of Vegas?

Quick thoughts from the Consumer Electronic Show

Oddly, this has nothing to do with technology, but rather a book I finished reading while in Disneyworld, you know, that Las Vegas for children. Somewhere in his reflection on the 20th Century, On The Edge of a New Century, historian Eric Hobsbawm casually states that the benefits of extreme wealth are no longer apparent. This isn't to say that it doesn't pay to be wealthy, but rather that a hundred years ago the wealthy and everyone else inhabited the same public sphere. Everyone knew what the wealthy could access and nowadays, many of those luxuries can be enjoyed by members of the middle-class (albeit to varying degrees of frequency). Hobsbawm contends that today's super-rich have absconded from this public sphere, holidaying in secret.

Even as I wandered around CES, I thought about Hobsbawm and the genesis of Las Vegas as the playground of the West Coast's wealthy elite. Where do the wealthy go now? The only place I could think of that might rival Las Vegas for sheer over-the-top-ness is Dubai.

BTW, real CES-related reflections will be posted over at Exploding Beakers since I officially went on Education Business.

Yeah, I'm an addict.

Lust.