Exceptions to this rule have included the J.J. Abrams reimagined Star Trek, for which I did get my hopes up and which blew me away anyway, and Angels and Demons, which I expected to be bad, and was way worse than I could have imagined.

With Iron Man, I guess I was hoping it would be good, but I wasn’t expecting it to be good. I was definitely looking forward to seeing Robert Downey, Jr., who is one of my favorite actors, and whom I’d watch in anything (except maybe an episode of Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye, which is easily the worst television show ever made), but I don’t think I had my hopes up for the film as a whole.

Great. Now I’ve sullied my blog by mentioning that awful T.V. show. Oh, what the hell. I’d even watch Downey in an episode of that. It’d be fun seeing him blow the other “actors” out of the water and spitting out the awful dialogue with his patented cavalier disdain.

No, actually, I take that back. It probably wouldn’t be fun at all. It would be like watching a massacre.

This is getting bad. I’ve just made one of the most heinous digressions in this entire blog, and I don’t even feel like deleting it. I guess I must think it’s funny or something. What would be funny is if I got a hit to this page from a search engine because someone was looking for… um… the aforementioned awful T.V. show whose title I won’t mention again.

Enough. Back to Iron Man. What I was going to say—before I got carried away by trying to think of the worst thing I could imagine watching Downey do—was that when the lights went down in the movie theater, and I saw those first shots of the Humvee streaking across the desert with the opening strains of AC/DC’s “Back in Black” playing in the background, it was absolutely perfect.

It’s almost like heavy metal music and the Iron Man character were made for each other. Beyond the obvious “metal suit” imagery, there’s something about the heavy, thick, distorted sound of an electric guitar (or four) that is completely suited to the kind of superhero Iron Man is. To make things even more perfect, Jon Favreau’s vision of Tony Stark, brought to life by Robert Downey, turns the billionaire into a kind of rock star in his own right. And it looks like the volume’s going to be turned up even louder in Iron Man 2.

And how convenient is it that Black Sabbath released a song called “Iron Man” in 1970? Apparently the lyrics were written about a villain instead of a hero to avoid any legal wranglings with Marvel Comics, but in a real “ironic” twist, the song was used over the end credits of Iron Man in 2008. Full circle. Hakuna Matata.

So, with songs like “Back in Black”, “Iron Man”, and the punk/metal/rap anthem “Institutionalized” by Suicidal Tendencies, along with the thundering score composed by Ramin Djawadi, the first Iron Man film had the rock vibe pretty much locked and loaded. The beat enhanced the action, and the blazing guitars highlighted Iron Man’s trips across the sky. The fusion was seamless, and the film veritably surfed on waves of sound.

And we have more of that sonic sensibility headed our way on Friday. Iron Man 2 will be using more rock, more metal, more AC/DC. The producers have licensed a metric ton of the group’s tunes, and not only will they be used in the film; they also appear on a CD restropective that’s tied in with the film.

I find that the older I get, the more I like the old heavy rock groups. And there’s definitely been a recent resurgence in interest in classic rock in general. With songs from The Who being used as themes for the three CSI T.V. shows, Ozzy Osbourne having had his own reality TV show, and the Australian Pink Floyd group going strong and touring around the world, there’s no doubt in my mind that heavy rock and heavy metal are not only alive and well, but kicking ass and taking names.

I’m ready to be plastered to the back of my seat when I plant my butt down in that theatre seat. I want to feel just that guy in the old Maxell cassette tape ad.

Now, there was a guy who knew how to leave the light on.

Man, these “leave the light on” references are getting lamer and lamer…

(And here’s the video for AC/DC’s “Shoot to Thrill”, which works in footage from Iron Man 2. I finally noticed that the dancing girls on the stage at Stark Industries Expo are wearing red and gold costumes with a glowing blue circle on the chest. Wicked.)

Frank had cystic fibrosis, a condition that affected every aspect of his life. That year, the year we were both thirty-five, Frank died of complications associated with the disease. He was a bit of a record-breaker at the time, as few CF patients lived that long.

That was my first experience with someone my own age, in my immediate circle of family, friends, and colleagues, dying. It shook everyone who knew him, and it left a lasting impression upon my mental landscape.

This Thursday just past, I attended a memorial service for one of my theatre friends, Scott Murphy, who was three years younger than I am. He died suddenly, the Friday before, of a heart attack. It was a shock. We had just seen him and talked to him six days prior to his death. It didn’t seem real.

The cast of —Romance With a Twist—. Scott is the big guy in the middle of back row. (click for larger version)

I met Scott back in 2003, when he auditioned for a show at The Pond Playhouse, which is home to the Theatre Arts Guild, an organization I’d been involved in for less than a year at the time. I’d already acted as producer for one play and had a walk-on part in a second, and now I was going to be co-producer for a musical, called Romance With a Twist.

Scott was one of eight cast members chosen to star in the show, along with my wife Vanessa and six other talented individuals, some of whom I knew from previous shows and some of whom were new to the group. It was a diverse mix of voices, and the show was a lot of fun.

From early on, I could tell that Scott was a kind and generous guy, with a heart easily as big as his voice. He was friendly, pleasant, humble, and also a bit devlish. He was fun to have around, and I always enjoyed his company.

At the end of that production, Scott wrote me one of the nicest “end of show” cards I’ve ever received. It was a heartfelt message of appreciation for the work I’d put in on the show, and I was quite touched by it. I’d been correct from the start: This was a gentle soul in a big, burly body that housed not only a tremendous singing voice but also a sensitive heart.

At Scott’s memorial service, there was a lot of music, much of it recordings of his own songs. During a slideshow of photos from his life, however, two songs from other artists were played: “Oh You Delicate Heart” by Hawksley Workman and “Hands of Time” by Ron Sexsmith. After the slideshow, Scott’s wife Michele spoke from the podium, and one of the things she said—something that will stick with me for a long time to come—was that she had chosen the Hawksley Workman song because she always felt that Scott had a delicate heart himself, and that sometimes, it seemed like perhaps the world was too much for him.

As a highly sensitive person, this spoke volumes to me. I’ve struggled with depression and overwhelm for a long time, and knowing that Scott had a similar temperament deepened my resolve to find that balance point where I can put out what I need to put out and let in only what I need to let in. The world is a noisy, chaotic, and dizzying place, and it’s up to me to sort it out and make the sense of it that I need to make.

I don’t want my delicate heart giving out on me before I’ve done what I need to do.

Scott’s death has had a profound impact on me and my theatre community. When someone that young is taken from the world, it’s a wake up call to the rest of us. As many times as you’ve heard it, it’s true: Life is short.

Scott… You were the real deal, my friend. I wish I’d spent more time in your company, gotten to know you better. We didn’t see each other often, but you were always one of those people that I felt connected to regardless. I think we had a lot in common, and though regrets are often pointless, I do wish I’d taken the initiative and explored that with you.

But know this: In life and in death, you’ve taught me things I needed to know. I thank you for that.

I’ll miss your voice, your talent, your larger-than-life presence, and your gentle good humour. You leave a gap that will never be filled.

I’ll leave a light on for you.

(Here’s a video of “Oh, You Delicate Heart” by Hawksley Workman.)

This is no mean feat for me. It’s forever been a challenge, and I’m one of those people who always seems to have six zillion things bouncing around in my brain and never enough time to focus on any of them.

I’ve often thought there was something wrong with me, because I never seemed to be able to focus on any one thing. My interests are many and varied, and I’ve just never managed to narrow things down to my One True Passion™. Writing has always been there, but so have music, videography, web design/programming, and a whole host of other stuff, mostly creative, partly creative with a technical bent. Again with the “both sides of the brain” thing.

Annoying.

But lately, I’ve been rethinking things. I’ve begun to wonder why on earth I can’t do all the things I want to do. Why can’t I have my cake and eat it too?

It’s just a matter of getting organized.

If I can break projects down into bite-sized chunks, manage my time better, and keep track of what I’m doing, there’s no reason I can’t have half-a-dozen projects on the go at once. It still sounds kind of daunting, and maybe I’ve got a streak of the crazy bouncing around with the creative juices, but if I really stop and think about it, it seems doable.

But back to this “organized” notion. It’s always been a bit of a sticky point for me. I can’t keep track of things in my head, and the software tools I’ve tried have either lacked in some important area or simply imposed too many restrictions.

I need a to-do list, but it has to be more than a to-do list. Sort of a to-do list with a mind-map attached and a bunch of links to documents and websites.

Yeah. I hear you. Where on earth am I going to find something like that?

Well, it’s funny. The tool I’ve been looking for has been right here, right under my nose, for months now.

It’s called Google Wave.

And no, it’s not exactly like what I described above, but it’s pretty damn close. (Actually, now that I think about it, it does have a mind-map extension. Haven’t tried it yet, but it sounds cool.) I already check it every day, just to see if any of the waves I follow have new items in them, and even though my project list is not a collaboration, the structure of a wave is pretty close to what I need.

In case you haven’t tried Google Wave yet, I’ll give you a brief description of how one of these puppies is set up. Inside a wave, you create things called “blips”. A blip is really just a block of text with a green rounded rectangle around it. A top-level blip is called a “wavelet”, and wavelets can have blips added to them, either as replies tacked on the end and indented, or as in-line replies embedded inside them.

Blips can also have links, images, YouTube videos, and all manner of other strange and exotic beasties embedded inside them. And the text inside a blip can be formatted in a myriad of ways. This makes the tool incredibly versatile.

The thing that got me hooked on trying this approach was the fact that, if you add your replies to a blip by embedding them in-line, you get the option of collapsing the in-line replies by clicking on a little minus-sign inside a tiny speech balloon icon. This allows me to use Google Wave as a sort of rudimentary outliner, collapsing the “to-do list” inside each project so that I don’t have to scroll through the entire wave to find what I’m looking for (although there is a search feature, if push comes to shove).

So this is what I’ve been doing the last couple of days. I’ve created a wavelet for each project I want to work on, and then added the “to-do list” for each project as in-line blips inside the wavelets. And because each blip is like a tiny word processing document unto itself, the whole thing lends itself to being really free-form and unstructured, even though there is an underlying structure (a method to my madness, as it were).

This appeals to me enormously. I love writing, and I love expressing myself, so even though I’m the only one who will see this wave (at least for now), I will still let myself be verbose, humorous, clever, or silly, even though I’m only laying out a series of tasks that I intend to perform. Traditional to-do lists are as dry as dust, and I find them deathly dull and boring. They don’t inspire me in the least. I need a bit of elbow room, space to expand and expound, if the mood so strikes me.

Google Wave allows me to play.

And playing is what unleashes my creative mind.

Now that I’ve got the initial structure nearly complete, I’ve started adding some depth to the wave. I’ve put in some links to websites I need to reference for particular projects, I’ve inserted a link to a Google Documents file that contains further notes related to one project in particular, and I’ve even inserted a Google Map (thanks to the maps extension) to plot the locations where I want to shoot footage for that documentary I’ve been saying I’m going make for several years now.

You already knew I loved Google’s stuff. I wrote about it at length in a previous post. Now I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and make some really good use of some of the stuff I’ve just dabbled with so far. If I use Google Docs to store important information related to each project, then I can access my entire project “library” from any computer, anywhere I happen to be.

And that’s just plain cool.

(But I still use WriteMonkey to type the first draft of my blog posts. Because it’s cool, too.)

Organization, here I come!

Don’t forget to leave the light on.

(This clip has nothing to do with getting organized, but it’s one of the best uses of Google Wave I’ve ever seen. Not for the faint of heart, to be sure, but full of the awesome.)

I’m about to wade hip-deep into frothy pond of self-indulgence. It’s something I’m good at, as you’ve no doubt discovered if you’ve read this blog at all, so I’m just giving you fair warning.

You may want to avert your eyes.

I’m not the most careful person in the world when it comes to backing up files. My backups are infrequent and tend to consist of sending myself an email with an important document attached to it. I love GMail for many reasons, this being but one of them.

(Side Note #1: Using GMail in this manner is quite inefficient. I need to graduate to using Google Docs more. The cloud awaits.)

Needless to say, I counted my lucky stars the other day when I suddenly had the urge to find an old file from a few years back. It was actually still there, on a backup DVD set that I burned back in 2004. I don’t know when I deleted it from my system, but it was there on the backup, and I rejoiced. Well, I smiled, anyway.

(Side Note #2: The file in question is a description of a fantasy/gaming world I was developing back then. I’m going to ressurrect it as a world-building project and invite others to join in. But that’s a blog entry for another time.)

"Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2004."

Examining the backup index, I noticed a few other files that I thought I’d restore while I was at it. Being the sentimental type, I always enjoy a good trip down memory lane (see my earlier entry on a similar topic), so this afforded me a tremendous opportunity to suspend my current activity and lapse into a comatose-like state of reverie about the wonderfulness of things and times past.

Ahem. Well. Yes. I mean, no. The time period in question was not really all that stellar, but I did have a pretty nifty web site at the time. And I found said website in its entirety on said backup. So I got to thinkin’…

Okay, I’ll get back to that in a minute. But first, a bit of history. Back in 2003 and 2004, I had an account with a handy little service called NetIdentity. They basically had a whole whack of surnames registered as domain names, and for a quite reasonable price, you could have your little parcel of one of those domain names. For example, they owned “rountree.com”, and I was able to secure “eric.rountree.com”. I also had a corresponding email address, which was the same as my domain name, except with an “@” sign instead of the first dot.

(Side Note #3: Since those days, NetIdentity has been acquired by Tucows, which also now owns ItsYourDomain, DomainDirect, and Hover. The webmail interface has changed numerous times, and service interruptions due to hardware/software migration have been massive and headache-inducing. In my opinion, the service is now utter crap, and I’m glad I no longer have an account.)

At that time, I was using the Macromedia suite of tools for web design—Fireworks, Flash, and Dreamweaver. Again with the acquisitions: Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005 and now publishes all three products, which have been updated numerous times in the intervening years. Since I’m in reminiscence mode, however, I will comment upon how nice those products were to use at the time. They integrated seamlessly, allowing me to create a fairly intricate roll-over side menu without a lot of HTML tweaking, JavaScript coding and Photoshop slicing. It was downright enjoyable.

I’m sure it’s even better now, but Adobe stuff is really pricey.

Anyway, it was nice to revisit the old site, and despite the passing of the years, I still think it looks reasonably cool. But, of course, simply having the files on my computer was not enough for me. No, of course not. I had to go the extra distance, grab the electrodes from the other side of the room, and bring the creature back to life again.

Yes, I’ve uploaded the whole shebang to a subdirectory on this here website. If you’re even remotely curious, you can check it out. It’s basically the same as it was back in the day, but with some obsolete links removed and the media files embedded differently. There’s flash, there’s video, there’s MIDI, there’s rollover menus. Something for everyone. Fun for the whole family.

Like I said, a big ole pool of self-indulgence.

But this little exercise served to remind me that I am fully capable of using both sides of my brain. I’m creative, I’m technical, and I can make stuff.

Makes me want to pursue all manner of creative/technical projects. Hmmm… Maybe I will…

“It’s alive! It’s… alive!!”

Don’t forget to leave the light on.

(Let’s keep the Wayback Machine pointed at 2004 and have a listen to “This Love” by Maroon 5, which reached Number 5 on the Billboard charts on April 24th of that year. Yeah, I know. This is real stretch. The song has absolutely no relation to this blog post except for the year. But it’s a great song. The video is admittedly really cheesy, and the lyrics are so explicit that they really didn’t need the naked bodies on the screen, but hell, the beat is infectious.)

The Runaways opens tonight in most venues, but I had the opportunity to preview it Wednesday night thanks to some free passes that arrived at my workplace. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but hey, it was a free movie. I wasn’t going to say no.

I don’t know if I would have gone to see this film if I hadn’t gotten the freebie. After all, Kristen Stewart is in it, and I have a serious hate-on for her and her one-note performances as Bella Swan in the two cheesy Twilight Saga films. Plus, this was a film about an all-girl rock band from the seventies, not a topic that particularly intrigued me, despite my nearly geek-level interest in things musical.

Well, if I’d given it a pass, I would have missed out on a real eye-popping cinematic experience. This is not in any way a conventional film, and it is, in fact, its almost complete disregard for standard filmmaking conventions that make it so wonderfully compelling.

This is a raw, raucous, loud, in-your-face, unapologetic punch-in-the gut of a film. It is unpretentious, unself-conscious, and utterly absorbing. It held me to my chair for the entire hundred-and-nine minutes.

I can’t adequately describe how raw this film is. The shots and edits, the sounds, the performances, all intertwine in such a lascivious manner that it made me feel like I was a voyeur. It was as if I was standing in the room with these people, watching their souls bleed onto the floor. No, even that’s not an adequate description. It was like someone was taking their steaming, wet genitals and dragging them across my eyes.

There were so many odd camera angles in this film, so many abrupt edits, and so many swirling, layered, sex-and-drug-induced-haze sequences, that I nearly felt dizzy half the time. It was jarring, alarming, disturbing, and all too real.

I like honesty in creative works, and this film was about the most honest thing I’ve seen since District Nine. It didn’t hold back, and it didn’t contrive. It just told the story, warts and all, and let us pick up our own pieces afterwards. I’d call it a gutsy film, but that almost makes it sound like the filmmakers had something to prove. If honesty requires courage, then perhaps it did take guts to put this together. But I rather think the creative forces behind this film simply wanted to tell the tale as well and as fully as possible. Hell, Joan Jett herself was one of the executive producers.

But on to the performances:

Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie and Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett

Dakota Fanning was, in a word, stunning in her portayal of Cherie Currie. Now, this is not some seasoned, twenty-something-year-old actress playing a kid. This is a sixteen-year-old playing a sixteen-year-old. How someone that young can bring such incredible depth, angst, sensuality, and tragedy to a performance is, quite frankly, beyond my ken. I just watch these things and write about them. Suffice it to say that Fanning is an amazing actress, and she put in one powerful performance as the Runaways’ lead singer. There’s already talk of her getting an Oscar nomination for it.

Normally, I wouldn’t use the phrase “over the top” as a positive description of a performance, but Michael Shannon, who portrayed music producer Kim Fowley in the film, brought a whole new personality to those words. He was so over-the-top, so in-your-face, so absolutely exuberant, self-involved, and manic, that I actually believed he was this larger-than-life character. He was completely convincing as a conceited, hedonistic, drugged-out record producer who, despite over-promising on many occasions, actually managed to get things done for the band.

My distaste for Kristen Stewart is well known to my friends, family, coworkers, and Twitter followers. So, needless to say, I was not expecting anything much from her in her portrayal of Joan Jett. Hell, I was even a little miffed to hear that she was going to be taking on the role. Not that I’m some pumped-up Joan Jett fan who thinks their idol is being defiled. I just couldn’t get the image of wimpy Bella Swan out of my head. And believe me, I’d rather listen to Hanson CDs over and over than have a tape loop of Bella and Edward running through my brain.

Well, all I can say is: What a relief!

I was pleasantly surprised. Ms. Stewart did an entirely serviceable job as the ebullient and rough-edged Jett. It was such a complete and utter departure from Sparkly-Vampire-ville that I occasionally forgot I was watching the same actress.

And I do stress the word “occasionally”. I won’t lie. I was absolutely scrutinizing her performance, just waiting for subtle shadings of Bella to emerge. And I did note the odd Bella-head-shake, a trademark movement that is very nearly the totality of Ms. Stewart’s Twilight performances. But, to be fair, I might not have noticed them in her portrayal of Jett if it hadn’t been for my near-microscopic dissection of her every twitch on screen.

Stewart did raw very convincingly. Man, it was good to hear her swear. She was loud, rude, obnoxious, and utterly rock-n-roll. Stewart’s innate poutiness served the role well. She came across as a mad-at-the-world rebel who basically wanted everybody else to fuck the hell off.

I can’t wait for the Twilight series to be over so Stewart can get on with some more real acting and let us all forget about the self-deprecating laugh and the nervous head-shake. This film showed that there’s more to her than goofy emo clumsiness.

I hereby officially lift the Kristen Stewart hate-on. Believe me, no one will be more surprised than I was.

Go see The Runaways. It’s rock-n-roll filmmaking at its best. It will engage your senses. It will punch you and slap you and leave you dizzy. It will make you wonder how these people managed to stay alive.

And it will give you a memorable night out at the movies.

Don’t forget to leave the light on. (Just not in the movie theatre.)

(Here’s a clip from the film featuring the song “Cherry Bomb”. Rock. And. Roll.)

I went into this whole Winter Olympics thing with a distinctly jaded outlook. I’d been hearing about the lack of snow in Whistler and the possibility of the Blackcomb resort filing for bankruptcy protection, and I started thinking that the whole thing was going to be a major train wreck. To make matters worse, I then read this article by Vancouver’s poet laureate Brad Cran stating his reasons for not participating in the Olympic celebrations, and I my blood started to boil a bit. When large corporations start telling people what they can and can’t do, I get angry. Real angry.

But the whole corporate thing is fodder for a post of its own. And believe me, I will return to it.

So I wasn’t really planning to watch much Olympic coverage. I knew I’d end up seeing at least some of it, because CTV was basically suspending all regular programming except for the news and broadcasting non-stop Olympic coverage for the entire seventeen days of the games.

I knew there was no avoiding it.

My lukewarm reaction to the opening ceremonies further clinched my negativity. I sighed, yawned (because it was late), and shook my head. I had no great hopes for Canada’s big shot at the hosting gig.

But even before the opening ceremonies began, something happened that no one could have predicted, no one could have anticipated, and surely no one would have wanted: Nodar Kumaritashvili of Georgia was killed when his luge crashed during a training run at the Whistler Sliding Centre.

This was one of the most sobering, gut-wrenching things I’ve ever seen or heard. It put a damp chill on the games even before they’d begun, and it made many, myself included, wonder how the Olympics could ever manage to proceed normally.

But it did something else as well. As tragic and heartbreaking as it was, Kumaritashvili’s death solidified an already-strong Olympic community spirit. It brought everyone together, and started the games with a note of deep feeling that would resonate throughout the seventeen days and only strengthen as the games went on.

No one wants to see an athelete die. No one. But when you’re faced with tragedy, you either buckle or you shore yourself up. And the Olympic community shored itself up, honored its fallen son, and proceeded to do what it was there to do, weaker for losing one of its own, but stronger for bearing up under the weight of that loss.

I think it was partly that introduction of deep feeling into the games that prompted me to start watching the coverage after the opening ceremonies. These past few months have been all about feelings for me. I’m a cynic, yes; I make no bones about that. But I’m also an emotional person. The cynicism helps me to keep things at arm’s length, but the feelings are there. And they can be quite strong at times.

I’ve gone through quite a tubulent period since the fall. My mental health reached a new low in September, but I managed to write a novel in November. I went through an intensive group therapy programme over the Christmas period and came out of it with new insights and access to deeper feelings than I’d ever experienced before, but I also came to realize that I needed to go through a grieving process that I’d managed to avoid years ago.

They say timing is everyting. Going through my mental and emotional explorations during the Christmas period was challenging in itself, because I love Christmas and have many emotional memories and associations with it. It made my experience that much deeper. And now, here I am, coming out of the process yet still going through it, and along come the Olympics.

Well, let’s just say that I’ve had kleenex near to hand at all times.

I’ve been glued to the television for the last two weeks. When I haven’t been at work, I’ve been home watching the Olympic coverage. I’ve managed to check my e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter regularly, but most of the rest of the time, I’ve been on the couch, watching sporting events I knew very little about, and cheering for Canada.

The cynicism has all but dropped away. I think that shift began when I watched Jennifer Heil go for the gold in the women’s moguls competition on February 13th. Though I shared the disappointment the rest of the country felt that Heil did not break Canada’s gold medal slump (i.e. not winning any gold medals in Olympic games we had hosted), I discovered something: That sport is damned exciting to watch.

And so it began. What started as curiosity soon turned into a near-addiction as I watched event after event, each one as exciting and thrilling as the next. And then Alexandre Bilodeau won Canada’s first gold medal in the men’s moguls, and we all settled in for what was to become one of Canada’s best Olympic games ever.

Joannie Rochette will forever represent the 2010 Winter Olympics for me.

And then there was Joannie Rochette.

I cannot begin to tell you how touched and moved I am by this young woman’s courage and tenacity in the face of personal tragedy. Just two days before her performance in the women’s figure skating short program, her mother died suddenly of a heart attack, mere hours after arriving in Vancouver to see her daughter compete. Joannie decided to proceed with the competition, to honor her mother, and she ended up with the bronze medal.

I was unable to type that last paragraph without pausing.

As I write this, we are in day seventeen, the final day of the games, and Canada will be playing the U.S. in men’s hockey later this afternoon. We’re all hoping for the gold, and Team Canada has come together so strongly over the course of the tournament that it seems likely they’ll take it. Whatever happens, though, we can all stand a little taller knowing that Canada, with thirteen gold medals, now has the record for golds won by a host country in the Winter Olympics and is tied with the former Soviet Union for the most Winter Olympic gold medals overall.

So, I suppose you could say I’m a convert. I still have my cynical moments, but by and large my Olympic experience has left me breathless, emotional, and glad to be Canadian. And say what you will about “I Believe”, the theme song for the CTV Olympic broadcasts; it may be a fairly typical pop song and not particularly Canadian-sounding, but it’s stirring and rousing, and when it’s combined with those video montages of Olympic moments, it never fails to reduce me to a puddle of protoplasm on the floor.

Go Canada. You’ve got me believin’.

Don’t forget to leave the TV on.

(Here’s the video for “I Believe”, featuring footage from the Olympic Torch Relay. Grab your kleenex.)

I was seriously underwhelmed.

I’ll probably end up sounding like some kind of jaded cynic—and, truth be told, I actually feel like one a lot of the time—but I have to be honest here. There was a lot of stunning visual stuff going on, but not a lot of substance.

The projection of images onto the stage floor was a brilliant idea and beautifully executed, and the dancers and aerial performers were awesome, the orchestra was fabulous, the lighting and effects were great, the giant inflatable light-up polar bear was incredible, and the native costumes were beautiful. But something was missing.

Something to hold my attention, maybe? Something to keep me awake at one-bloody-o’clock in the morning when I’m starting to question why I stayed up this late in order to watch squares of wheat projected onto the floor and hear our national anthem turned into a hip-hop diva moment?

Nothing against Nikki Yanovsky. She’s an amazing talent, a sixteen-year-old jazz dynamo, and a future national treasure. But I didn’t particularly like the arrangement of O Canada they gave her or the way she pulled out the pop diva card on some of the notes she belted out. I’m not saying it was disrespectful. It’s great to try out new arrangements of things, even national anthems. But this just didn’t work.

The Parade of Nations was interminable, as always, and, aside from the standing ovation given to the Georgian team in honor of their fallen comrade, Nodar Kumaritashvili—an emotional moment if ever there was one—there was really little of interest except for the opportunity to point and gape at the questionable fashion choices made by many of the participating nations.

Germany, for instance, decided it would be fun to make its athletes look like a package of liquorice allsorts. The Czech Republic outfitted its athletes in camouflage that was obviously designed for combat inside a Toys-R-Us. Finland’s camouflage design, which would have worked well inside an Escher print, looked tame by comparison. With few exceptions, the assault on the fashion and color sense of the world was pretty much unremitting.

But I want to get back to the music, because music is important to me, and because it was sorely mishandled in this ceremony. For example, what was with that song Bryan Adams and Nellie Furtado performed? Was that even a song? I did a quick Google search and found out that Bryan co-wrote it.

Bryan. Dude. You’ve written some great songs over the years. This wasn’t one of them. What happened? I think you’re losing it, man.

On the other hand, we had Sarah McLachlan singing “Ordinary Miracle”. When I heard those opening piano chords, I just about fell out of my seat. It’s one of my favorite songs, and when I first saw the video on YouTube a couple of years ago, it affected me emotionally. I was absolutely flabbergasted—not to mention delighted—that they pulled it out for the ceremonies. Sarah looked lovely and sounded fantastic.

Alas, it was a short-lived high. As great as the orchestra was, we did not need an extended orchestral instrumental break in this song. It was fine just the way it was. The instrumental break was so long, in fact, that Sarah didn’t sing the song’s last two verses. I felt cheated.

I was also scratching my head a bit, as the song was written by a Brit (Dave Stewart, formerly of Eurythmics) for an American movie (Charlotte’s Web). Much as I love it, it’s a puzzling song choice for such a thoroughly Canadian event.

Oh, well. Moving on.

The fiddling and tap dancing sequence was a welcome injection of energy into the proceedings. I liked that they added a bit of a punk vibe with the costumes and hair styles, and I had to chuckle at the very beginning, because the “fiddler” (or should I say, the guy pretending to fiddle) in the suspended canoe made me think of Wolverine from X-Men.

You knew I was a geek, right?

I figured either Natalie MacMaster or Ashley MacIsaac would appear, and I was rather hoping it would be Natalie. Nothing against Ashley; he’s a fine musician and all, but he’s a bit of a whack job, and I personally would have preferred Natalie’s light and upbeat energy to Ashley’s dark moodiness. As it was, however, I was pleasantly surprised to find that he is also a great tap dancer, and the energy he puts into his playing is amazing. It was a good bit.

We now come to the “kid flying over the prairies” portion of our programme, which made good use of the projection stage and included some pretty nifty wire-flying by the young performer involved (I’m still not sure if it was a guy or a girl), but pulled out another questionable music choice. Let me be clear on this: The fact that Joni Mitchell wrote “Both Sides Now” does in no way mean that she should be encouraged to sing it. This was the absolute worst arrangement of this beautiful song I have ever heard, and I can only assume it was a recording, because there were no shots of Joni singing.

k.d. lang’s performance of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, on the other hand, was easily the highlight of the night. She has one of the finest singing voices in show business, and I absolutely loved what she did with that song. Truly stunning.

Only problem with k.d. is that she’s starting to look like the secret love-child of Wayne Newton and Quentin Tarantino. I don’t think that’s the look she was aiming for, frankly.

I know, I know. My cynicism knows no bounds. It’s true. What can I say?

All that aside, however, I have to tell you that when I heard them introduce Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire as one of the flag-bearers, I got all choked up. To even think about the things that man experienced in Rwanda gives me the chills. He’s a true Canadian hero in my books, and I’m sincerely glad, not to mention touched, that he was chosen to help carry the Olympic flag.

The other flag-bearers represent a wide range of Canadian endeavour: Donald Sutherland, Betty Fox, Barbara-Ann Scott, Jacques Villeneuve, Anne Murray, Julie Payette, and Bobby Orr. I was most impressed with the choices and reminded yet again of what tremendous diversity and talent we have in this here country.

I was equally impressed with the choices of torch bearers. Rick Hansen, the Man in Motion, brought the flame into the stadium, and Catriona LeMay Doan, Steve Nash, Nancy Greene, and Wayne Gretzky all lit one another’s torches in turn. Then, after what seemed like endless hours waiting, three of the four ice-sculpture-totem-pole-torch-support-thingies creaked their way out of the floor and rose to a somewhat less-than-majestic stance around the main torch-thingy.

Then Steve, Nancy, and Wayne stepped forward to light their appointed support-thingies, leaving poor Catriona standing there looking like a third wheel on a prom date.

Then Wayne, unsatisfied with the proceedings, bolted from the stadium in a fit of pique, stole a pickup truck, and drove down to the waterfront to light something else on fire.

Charges are pending.

Don’t forget to leave the torch on.

(Here’s the proper version of “Ordinary Miracle”, complete with short (yes, short) instrumental break and clips of cute little girl, cute little pig, and nearly-cute spider. It’s just a lovely song.)

So, let’s see how much I have to say about A Hard Day’s Night, the first album the Beatles recorded on four-track equipment. It’s also the first album to contain exclusively Beatle-penned songs and the only album in the entire catalog to contain nothing but Lennon-McCartney compositions. There are no covers, and no songs written by George or Ringo.

The album is the soundtrack for the movie of the same name, or at least half of it is. When originally released, the first side of the LP contained the seven songs that were included in the movie, and the second side contained songs that Lennon and McCartney had written with the movie in mind, but were never actually included in the film.

Let me just say right off the top that putting in A Hard Day’s Night after listening to Please Please Me and With the Beatles is a bit like watching the middle part of The Wizard of Oz, where it switches from black and white to color. The depth of the mixes here is leaps and bounds above those of the first two albums. I know some people still prefer the mono mixes of all the albums that were released that way, but this stereo mix of A Hard Day’s Night is, to my ears, bloody awesome.

Right from the iconic opening chord of “A Hard Day’s Night” (which I was tickled to read has recently been analyzed by a computer science professor at Dalhousie University here in Halifax), I knew I was entering a different world with this album. The simple fact of having vocals in the middle of the mix and the instruments separated behind them is like putting 3-D glasses on your ears. The sound is much more immediate and present, and you feel like you’re inside the song.

Add the digital remastering to the equation, and you have an album that sounds like it could have been recorded last week. The sound is incredibly clean, all the instruments are fully audible, and distortion and muddiness are scarcely to be found.

I think the thing that really stood out for me on this album were the songs that used acoustic guitar: “If I Fell”, “And I Love Her”, and “I’ll Be Back”. The sound is warm, clear, and rubbery. It’s hard to explain what I mean by “rubbery”, but it’s a good word in this context. You’ll have to listen to tracks to understand what I mean. “And I Love Her”, in particular, just oozes warm acoustic guitar goodness. I want to wrap myself in it.

Also stand-out on this record are the vocal harmonies, particulary in “If I Fell”, in which John and Paul harmonize, and “Things We Said Today”, which features a double-tracked Paul harmonizing with himself. The vocals in general are top notch (except for the falsetto bit in “Tell Me Why”), and when you strap on the headphones and really dig into the mix and listen to the individual instruments, right down to the strum level, you begin to realize… “These guys are good.”

That may seem an odd thing to say, but how many of us really listen to the musicianship in the recordings of the Beatles? We love the songs, and we know they were dynamite songwriters, but when you have access to something as painstakingly produced as these stereo remasters, you gain the ability to really comprehend how talented and versatile the Beatles were as vocalists and musicians. They’d been playing together a long time before they ever started recording, and that tightness is more than evident on the songs presented here. They weren’t just a lucky bunch of lads who happened to be in the right place at the right time. No… They were good.

The next album, Beatles For Sale, bears this out unequivocally. This stereo remaster is just as bright and clear as its precedessor, and the instruments pop out just as distinctly, if not moreso.

Despite the crisp sound and the bang-on performances, however, the album has a bit of a personality disorder. While it’s clear that John and Paul’s songwriting ablilities are evolving beyond the straight-ahead rock’n'roll/R&B roots evidenced in songs like “Please Please Me”, “Love Me Do”, and “I Saw Her Standing There”, Beatles For Sale goes back to the formula of earlier albums by including a whopping six cover songs. Again, the performances are great, and the mix is fabulous, but I’ve never been as fond of the Beatles’ cover tunes as I am of their originals.

There’s also an unmistakeable country-ish flavour to this album, which, while not unpleasant, is a little disorienting. The inclusion of two Carl Perkins tunes (“Honey Don’t” and “Everybody Wants to Be My Baby”) leaves no question about his influence on the group, but the songs are starkly simple, especially when compared with the likes of “No Reply”, “I’m a Loser”, and “Baby’s in Black”, which lead off the album and give a clear indication of the direction John and Paul’s songwriting is taking. “Honey Don’t” is a terrible track, and Ringo sings it really badly. Thankfully, his vocal participation in the group is destined to be limited.

But even “I’m a Loser” and “Baby’s in Black” have a slight country-ish feel to them, especially the guitar solo in the former. It’s possible they were experimenting with styles, just as they were experimenting with recording techniques and overdubs in the studio.

While the album lacks a certain flow, it was certainly nice to revisit great songs like “Eight Days a Week”, which predicts the addition of the sitar in later recordings with it’s unusual jangly guitar fade-in, and “I’ll Follow the Sun”, a pretty, melancholy song that is easily Paul’s sweetest vocal performance up to that point.

The remastering process has brought new life to these albums, and believe me, I’m looking forward to listening to the rest of the collection. And I’m going to subject you to the same microscopic analysis of each one as I experience it. I have a good ear, and I’m enjoying the process of immersing myself in each album and then writing about it. So, brace yourselves.

And don’t forget to leave the light on.

This time around I’m going to start talking about the remastered music itself. The set I have is in stereo, but there’s also a mono box set—called The Beatles in Mono—that includes the ten albums that were released in mono in the UK (Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let it Be were never given a separate mono mix) along with Mono Masters, which includes the mono mixes of the singles and EP tracks that were not included on the albums.

Why all the fuss? What’s the big deal about mono? Isn’t stereo better? Well, you might think so, but remember, back in the early sixties, stereo was a relatively new phenomenon. Mono was still the preferred format, and stereo mixes of LPs were usually only purchased by true hi-fi enthusiasts.

As a matter of fact, I’ve read in several places that the Beatles themselves participated in the mixing sessions, but only for the mono mixes. They apparently didn’t care about the stereo mixes and went home once the mono mixes were done. I’ve also read comments from other reviewers that the mono mixes are better than the stereo versions, even on an album as complex as Sergeant Pepper.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s back up and start with the first two albums, Please Please Me and With the Beatles. Both of these albums were recorded on two-track tape machines at EMI studios in London. The main reason for using two-track machines was to capture the vocals on one track and the instruments on the other to allow for at least some control over the balance between the two.

But this works best on a mono mix. In stereo, you basically get the vocals on the right side and the instruments on the left. Adding some reverb to the mix helps to blend the two together, but the tracks are still essentially separated spatially.

Listening to the stereo remasters bears this out. For example, the first track on Please Please Me, “I Saw Her Standing There”, has the vocals and one of the guitars in the right channel and the drums, bass, and second guitar in the left. The separation is marked, and there’s nothing “in the middle”. I tend to listen with headphones, which makes the division even more dramatic. It’s a good thing they recorded one of the guitars over with the vocals, because if they hadn’t, there’d be nothing on the right during the instrumental break.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The sound is incredibly clear and crisp for something that was recorded forty-seven years ago. You can hear every note, every strum. You can almost hear the boys breathing. Well, almost.

This is good most of the time, but it does offer some interesting anomalies. For example, in “Misery”, the second track on Please Please Me, George Martin overdubbed some piano phrases in between some of the vocal lines in the song’s bridge (or middle eight). With my headphones on, I can actually hear the change in ambience when those piano bits kick in. The piano is primarily in the right channel, but there’s a weird echo of it in the left. The rest of the song is pretty well separated out, though I must say the vocals sound a bit muddier than they do on “I Saw Her Standing There”.

Now, I don’t have the mono box set, so I can’t really do any kind of real comparison, but two of the tracks on the stereo release of Please Please Me are in mono, so that affords at least a glimpse into the other world. The original twin-track tapes of “Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You” (the A and B sides of the Beatles’ first single) were lost, due to the common practice at the time of wiping and reusing master tapes once they had been mixed down to mono, so there was nothing available to the engineers of the remasters that would allow them to create a stereo mix. Hence, the mono mixes of the two songs are included on the remastered stereo CD.

And I’m glad they’re there, because the difference between mono and stereo here is quite dramatic. I found “Love Me Do” and “P.S. I Love You” to be much punchier than the other tracks on the CD. The bass is more audible, and everything’s in the middle, which means the sound is much more balanced.

Sigh. I may at some point have to get a copy of the mono box set.

The rest of the tracks on Please Please Me have pretty much the same acoustic characteristics as “I Saw Her Standing There”, though it’s worth mentioning that “Chains” has a bit of distortion here and there in the left channel, which is oddly charming, really, and “Boys” has the drums on the right channel, which is probably due to the fact that Ringo is singing lead vocal.

The stereo mix of the second album, With the Beatles is very similar to that of Please Please Me, except there are no mono tracks. Interestingly, I actually found the right and left channel separation more irritating on this album than on Please Please Me, which may be due in part to the fact that I listened to the two albums back to back in preparation for this post.

Again, I found the instruments, particularly the guitars, really crisp on this second album. “It Won’t Be Long” has an escpecially clear, and deliciously rubbery, guitar sound, and the acoustic guitar on “Till There Was You” is rich and smooth.

Two of the Beatle’s lesser known songs, “Devil in Her Heart” (a cover) and “Not a Second Time” (by Lennon/McCartney) are two of the best balanced tracks on the whole disk. I’m not sure what was done here, but the left and right separation doesn’t seem as pronounced on these tracks, and the blend is really nice.

Again, little things come to the forefront. There’s a bit of distortion on the bass drum in “All I’ve Got to Do”, which isn’t nearly as charming as the distorion in “Chains” on the previous disk. “All My Loving” is notable for its complete lack of instruments in the right channel. Other tracks have this lack, I’m sure, but here it was obvious. “In your face” obvious.

“Don’t Bother Me”, sung by George, is a bit muddier than most of the other tracks, and the vocal has a bit more reverb than the other tracks. The vocals on “Hold Me Tight” are also a bit muddy and sound a bit far away. In “I Wanna Be Your Man”, sung by Ringo, the instruments, especially the drums, sound a bit thin. Also, the drums are back in the left channel again, unlike the Ringo-sung tune on the previous disk.

And one of the oddest things I found about the album was on “Little Child”. During the instrumental break, the bass sounds like it’s in both channels. Then, suddenly, when the vocals come back in, the bass abruptly leaves the right channel and drops in volume on the left. It’s really quite jarring when you listen to it with headphones.

But really, these are all nitpicks, and likely have nothing to do with the remastering process. Recording techniques were not sophisticated in 1962 and 1963, and we can’t expect albums from that time to live up to our high modern standards. In fact, the sound on these first two remastered CDs is exceptional. Taking a two-track master tape and turning it into a digital stereo CD is no mean feat, and the engineers have given us a product of which they can be proud.

But the best is yet to come. With the next album, A Hard Day’s Night, the Beatles moved from two-track to four-track recording. And that gives a digital remastering engineer one helluva lot more to work with.

That’s up next.

Stay tuned.

The Beatles Stereo Box Set (the big black box) was under my tree on the twenty-fifth, and I couldn’t have been more excited. As any of you who read my previous post on the Beatles will know, I’m a huge fan, and to own the entire album catalog plus the singles in remastered digital format is pretty much the motherlode.

I’m still kvelling.

I’m taking my time with this one. I’ve listened to the first three albums so far, and I’ve been just sitting back and taking them in, not doing anything else at the same time (which is a challenge, as I’ve been listening to them on my computer). I don’t want to gulp it all down at once, and I don’t want them to just act as background music. I want to delve deeply into the experience.

Between listenings, I’ve been doing a different type of delving: scouring the internet for information about the recordings and the remastering process. I’ve owned a lot of books about the Beatles over the years, and the individual remastered CDs themselves have booklets containing original liner notes plus historical notes and recording notes, but I still want more data! When it comes to the Beatles, there’s no such thing as too much information.

But more on that later. First off, the packaging!

My very own Beatles Remastered Box Set. Photo by me.

The box set is absolutely gorgeous. The shiny black box is protected by a shiny black boxboard slipcover. Both bear the Beatles logo above a green apple. A thin white rectangle runs around the outside of the cover, set in about half an inch from the edge. The back of the slipcover bears a description of what’s inside the box, while the back of the box itself is nearly identical to the front cover, except that apple below the logo is now cut in half with its cut side towards us. The box is kept closed by that ingenious “magnet under paper” gizmo that’s become so popular of late.

The inside of the box is divided into two CD-sized compartments separated by a black cardboard divider. The top compartment holds the first eight albums—Please Please Me through Sergeant Pepper—and the bottom compartment holds the remaining albums—Magical Mystery Tour through Let it Be—plus the Past Masters CDs and the DVD of mini-documentaries.

A cloth ribbon is attached to the bottom of each compartment, and when the CDs are all stacked neatly inside, the ribbon runs along underneath them and up and out the righthand side. Pulling the ribbon up lifts the CDs out of the compartment for easy removal. Just remember to keep the end of the ribbon outside the compartment when putting the CDs away.

The CDs themselves all look like miniature versions of the original UK-release albums. The covers are all tri-fold cardboard sleeves with a pocket for the disk itself in the righthand panel and a pocket for the booklet of notes and photos in the lefthand panel. The front cover of each CD is a replica of the original album cover, and the back cover is a faithful redesign of the original album cover’s reverse side. Any liner notes that appeared on the original back cover have been moved into the booklet. The size discrepancy between album and CD covers would make the liner notes unreadable if the back cover had been reproduced exactly.

The exception to this packaging scheme is The Beatles (the White Album), which has a four-panel gatefold sleeve inside a slipcover. The slipcover has the title (The Beatles) embossed, whereas the gatefold sleeve beneath has the title printed in gray lettering. Each panel of the sleeve has a pocket in it, two containing the disks themselves, one (the leftmost) containing the booklet, and the last (the rightmost) containing a mininature replica of the album’s poster, complete with lyrics in a small typeface on the reverse side.

The Past Masters 2-CD set contains all the singles and EP tracks that weren’t released on the UK albums. The packaging is similar to the albums, except that the three-panel gatefold sleeve has a pocket in all three panels, two for the disks and one for the booklet.

Pulling the CDs out of their sleeves reveals yet another nice touch: Replicas of the circular inner labels found on the vinyl LP disks. The labels are larger than the originals and take up the entire top surface of the CD disks, but there’s no doubt what they’re supposed to be. It’s a brilliant addition to an already fantastic packaging design.

One other nice thing about the disks themselves—and this is more about content than packaging—is that each one contains a mini-documentary with pictures, clips, and sound bites related to the making of that album. The disks need to be put into a computer CD drive in order to access these documentaries, but the box set also includes a DVD with all thirteen mini-documentaries on it, so you can watch all the videos at one go if you like. The video quality is better on the DVD too, so that’s another bonus.

So, I’m pretty much in love with the packaging of this set. I think the attention to detail is phenomenal, and with the booklets containing additional historical notes and recording notes, you get a lot of bang for your buck here.

And I haven’t even gotten to the music itself yet.

As I said, I’m taking my time with this collection, savoring it slowly, and I’m going to do the same with blogging about it. Next time around, I’ll talk about the first two albums—Please Please Me and With the Beatles—which were both recorded on two-track equipment and originally mixed for mono. I’ve found a lot of information on the internet about the whole mono vs. stereo issue, and I’ll get into that a little bit too.

Until then, don’t forget to leave the light on.

(Here’s the official promo for the box set, followed by clips from the “Help!”, “Hello, Goodbye”, and “Get Back” videos. The way the first part of the ad is put together is incredibly slick and clever.)