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Last year’s article comparing the rather universal similarities between the 2004 Summer movie season and the one that preceeded it by two years is still one of my favourites. Leading into the peak of the Summer Movie Season (July long weekend), I noticed another trend this year, and thought I’d cover it here.

Let’s categorize the movies for the summer, shall we?

Legend:
(R) = Remake
(S) = Sequel
(A) = Adaptation of a book, comic book, television series, radio drama, or a combination of those.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (A)
Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (S)
Batman Begins (this qualifies for all three, but for the count I’ll say ‘A’)
Bewitched (A)
Land of the Dead (S)
Herbie: Fully Loaded (S)
War of the Worlds (A)
The Honeymooners (A)
Lords of Dogtown (R of the documentary “Dogtown and the Z-Boys”, now with teen-attainable ‘plot’)
The Longest Yard (R)
Fantastic Four (A)
Dark Water (R)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (A)
Bad News Bears (R)
The Pink Panther (R)
Dukes of Hazzard (A)
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (S) - Safe money that this won’t be the sleeper hit of the Summer

That makes four sequels, five remakes, and eight adaptations. Allowing one movie to qualify for more than one label brings the totals to five sequels, nine remakes, and eight adaptations.

The list of big movies that don’t fall into one or more of these three categories is limited to six: Madagascar, Cinderella Man, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Island, The Brothers Grimm, and The Cave.

Not every year has such a glut of sequels, remakes and adaptations… but about two years ago, we had:
X-Men 2
Matrix Reloaded
2 Fast 2 Furious
Rugrats Go Wild
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle
Legally Blonde 2
Bad Boys II
The Italian Job, and
S.W.A.T.

Again, some of those films quality for as many as two of the categories. Does that mean that the summer movies have a two-year cycle?

The 2001 Summer Movie season brought us:
Mummy Returns
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Tomb Raider
Jurassic Park III
Planet of the Apes
Scary Movie II
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Rush Hour 2
Apocalypse Now Redux, and
Jason X

There were still a lot of one-offs, like A.I., Evolution, The Score, Moulin Rouge, Atlantis, Pearl Harbor, not to mention the lead-ins to sequels, Fast and the Furious and Legally Blonde 1.

There seems to be some support for my theory. But first, we have to ensure that this doesn’t happen every year. First, I’ll look at 2004:

Van Helsing
Shrek 2
Harry Potter 3
Chronicles of Riddick
Spider-man 2
I, Robot
Garfield
The Bourne Supremacy
Alien vs. Predator
The Manchurian Candidate
Catwoman
Exorcist: The Beginning, and
Anacondas

Again, there were the collections of films that were not sequels nor adaptations, but the list seems to support the idea that Hollywood simply likes sequels, adaptations and remakes for every year of summer months. While this isn’t likely to change soon, without new stories to extend to the Blockbuster season following the rampant success of Reality TV, perhaps we’re already seeing an end to society’s brief renaissance initiated by the technological advancements of the 20th century.

…or maybe THAT could be a movie!
 

Not entirely sure what I want to say here, I figured it was important to at least document that my parents have sold the house.

One of my very earliest memories was driving down Belcourt Ave. for the first time in 1979 and seeing the Mayflower moving truck outside the house. Well, it was a green truck, anyway. At three-and-a-half years old, I couldn’t read that well, I had to be told later in life that it was a Reimer truck.

I’ve grown up in that house, and had all of my “Wonder Years” moments while living there. I could walk through it in a black-out without feeling for the walls. I’ve seen the Family Room move from the basement, to the upstairs, to the new addition. We’ve had one dog, four hamsters, and several cats over the last 26 years. We’ve had a Ford Fairmont station wagon, a Ford Pinto, a Honda Civic, two Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera’s and a Cutlass Supreme, a Plymouth Reliant, Dodge Shadow, Chevy Lumina, Ford Taurus… and I think one or two more that I’m forgetting. I’ve hidden secret stashes of Jos Louis, chocolate cookies and other goodies everywhere from under my bed to the “Old Clothes” boxes in the basement storage.

I learned that I play hockey left-handed, and I’m a “goofy-footed” skateboarder on Belcourt, even though I’m right-handed.

I probably still haven’t seen more movies in any one theatre as I’ve seen at Stinson theatres in downtown Barrie, where the floors are eternally sticky, audio technology was late to arrive (like Dolby Digital, or even stereo), and if you’re over 5′5″, it’s more comfortable to dangle your legs over the seat in front of you than try to cram your legs in behind the row of chairs.

We had Ultra-Pong, a 2600 and 8-bit NES. We had a Vic20, Commodore 64, 386/16 MHz and a Pentium 133.

Barrie had a population of 43,000, and is now in excess of 125,000 (on paper but more likely closer to 150,000).

All of this in only one house.

Even though I’ve lived away from Barrie for just about ten years now, and my “permanent address” is in Richmond Hill, I still feel “at home” when I go back to Barrie, and especially, back to Belcourt.

I rip on Barrie all the time, for being a small town that has no idea how to grow, how the residents are mostly rednecks, and the civil engineers who designed everything from the pink, “Lego” buildings to the parking lots without enough entrances to the general city layout. Hell, the last post in my Blog was how Barrie is not big enough to be considered an “International City”, even though it’s listed alongside London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Philidelphia, Tokyo and Johannesberg on the Live 8 web site. But it’s also the town where I grew up and is the backdrop for many of my fondest memories.

The announcement that my parents were planning to sell the house was a long time in coming. My mom, in particular, was quite sick and tired of all the snow that Barrie gets (I, on the other hand, often miss it!). So, I’ve had some time to adjust to the news before the ultimate sale. That still doesn’t mean that it’s sunk in yet.

There’s a lot of things that I want to do one more time before saying good-bye to Barrie, like walking down to Johnston Beach, having dinner at “The Original Mom’s” where both of my brothers and I have worked, riding my bike on trails that have long been paved over, and play street hockey.

I’m sure it won’t be as difficult to leave Barrie behind as I’m predicting. The fact remains that I’ve never ‘lived’ anywhere else, even if I haven’t been living in Barrie since 1995. So, I don’t really know how easy or difficult it will be.
 

Not sure why, yet, but I got Live 8 Tickets.

I used the strategic process of reload-reload-reload-reload-reload-reload on the Ticketmaster web site leading up to 10:00 AM EST. Clever, eh? Once the page changed to allow ticket “purchases” (they were free), then I snatched two. Another guy at work logged on no more than two minutes after 10 o’clock, and got stuck in a 15+ queue… and the tickets sold out long before that. So I figure, that anyone who got into queue after 30-60 seconds didn’t get tickets.

I’m not sure why I decided to try. At first I wasn’t terribly interested in “making the voyage” to Barrie, my hometown. But the more I thought through the logic with Simone, I realized that this would be a “Remember When…” moment in 2025. And I have the chance to be there.

My support behind the purpose of Live 8 is nothing radical. My ideals here are very much the “sounds like a good idea, Bono” and to remain ignorant of the unlabelled effect on my tax dollars. As a citizen of a rich nation, that I believe that we have the ability to give other, less fortunate nations a fighting chance. Whether or not you agree that we have the obligation is irrelivant.

That’s not why I’m going (again, IF I go).

One reason I was turned off the idea was, as anyone who knows me can tell you, I hate humans. A very nice personality, but I don’t like spending oodles of time around a few hundred-thousand perfect strangers. That’s why (amongst other reasons) I avoided other mega-events like Edgefest and SARSstock. Turns out there’s only 30-40 thousand tickets for this event… and I’ve been to Jays games with more people than that. Once I learned of that fact, then sharing Molson Park Park Place seemed a lot more bearable.

So now I’ve got two tickets. I think I’m starting to get a little excited even!

I’m probably pissing off anyone reading this who wanted to go more than me. Sorry.

Interesting editorial in the Toronto Star yesterday (reprinted from the Barrie Examiner). It goes over how Barrie can use this to its advantage and put itself on the International map. When will people learn that Barrie is not a “Destination”. I’ve said time and time again, no one goes TO Barrie, people go THROUGH Barrie. Even when the city was started a few hundred years ago, it was a hub where hunters and traders docked to make a long portage on their way up to Georgian Bay. Even then, no one thought of Barrie as a “Destination”.

The most entertaining paragraph, I’m reprinting here with my own clever, sarcastic remarks.

There are all sorts of positive spinoffs. Live 8 will bring people from all across the country to Barrie. They will want to stay at the city’s motels (I like the use of the word ‘motels’… Barrie only has one ‘hotel’ in the South end, The Holiday Inn), eat at its restaurants (Pizza Hut or Wendy’s… take your pick), shop at its malls (three of ‘em… and all on the other side of Barrie ). They can experience the waterfront (every other year, raw sewage gets dumped in and swimming is prohibited for the season), Barrie’s parks and other amenities. And, they can decide to come back another time, or tell their friends to visit (let’s be honest, Park Place is on the extreme, south end of Barrie. No one’s going futher into Barrie unless there’s a good reason).

I grew up in Barrie and I like it. In fact, living for over five years in Toronto, there are times I miss it. But anyone who thinks Barrie is capable of catering to an “International Audience” is either oblivious of the facts, or simply aware that we’re a short drive to Toronto… which DOES have material interesting to International audiences, like properly funded art galleries.

But in the end, I’ve got Live 8 tickets. Still not 100% positive that I’m going, but it would seem even more difficult to watch that “Remember When…” show in 2025 and recall that I went so far as to get tickets, but not go.

Final note: Linwood Barclay column on why Toronto should have gotten the event “because we’re Toronto!”.
 

Quote from The Toronto Star (reprinted without permission, but they never keep the bloody article online for more than a week anyway… grrrr)

A 25-year-old man has been charged with interfering with traffic when he refused to allow his car to be towed after his Volkswagen Corrado broke down yesterday morning on the busiest part of Highway 401.

The motorist said he didn’t trust the tow truck operators who stopped to help and preferred to call the Canadian Automobile Association.

But his flat tire caused an hour-long delay, backing up traffic from Highway 400 to Warden Ave. in the westbound lanes of the 401.

<snip>

The interference charge under the Ontario Highway Traffic Act carries a maximum fine of $110.

No idea how ugly his modded car is, but I’m totally on his side.

The Stupidest Comment (excluding the ones from The Star reader’s page) was by the cop: “The economic fallout of having 40,000 to 50,000 people late for work by an hour is huge,” said OPP Sgt. Rob Kobayashi. “It far outweighs the cost (to) this motorist.”

Yeah, Toronto couldn’t handle the “economic fallout” of a traffic jam, because those happen so rarely, especially on the 401.

Next issue, bring it up with the government. Why are there three lanes with no shoulders? It may be, as the article says, ‘due to construction’. There are countless places on the 401 that have no shoulders because they’ve been doing construction on the same 500 feet of road since the start of the millenium. *cough* *cough* *Yonge* *cough*

The guy should have had the bolt needed to remove his tire with him, but that was hardly the issue here.

If his mods are legal, there’s no reason the OPP officer should have forced him to risk damaging it, but again, that’s not the issue, as he took the CAA regular tow truck afterwards.

The CAA tow is not free. It’s paid in advance. I had my car towed up to the Ford dealership last month, but I don’t consider it free. I have paid for it over the last three years (since my last tow). The cost of three years of membership nearly matched the cost of that one tow.

Most of the other comments are how inconsiderate this guy is to the people who are trying to get to work.

I always find it a depressing human characteristic to only see your own strife. Inconvenienced by a traffic jam caused by a serious accident, or just a blown tire, all we can think about is, “just my luck. Why does this have to happen when I’m already late?”. None of us ever considering that our luck is certainly better than the poor slob who’s day, week, or month has just been ruined.
 

Driving down High Tech Rd this morning… a path I normally take, because I come out on Bayview right at the Sunoco… and Bayview is usually jammed back to 16th Ave… well, actually, most of the way to Elgin Mills.

A cop comes out and nails me for speeding… “76 in a 60 zone”

1) I was not even doing 70 at the time. This I am sure of.
2) 76 is the minimum he can give me a ticket for. 16 km/h over. He was bullshitting.
3) So, so, so fucking tempted to ask how the search was going for my stereo.

He let me off with a warning “because of the three convictions i had less than five years ago” (which were all paperwork, not dangerous driving) were about to expire as liability against me for my insurance company. How fucking generous.

Kicker was that he asked me if I worked at the Blockbuster, just around the corner. “You look like someone from there”. Umm… so he was camping, looking for this guy, saw what was probably a similar car, pulled it over and made up the charge of minimum value. Somehow, if I wasn’t “let go on a warning”, I’d be seriously pissed off. As it is right now, the guy’s doing his job. I just can’t think of many green ZX2s that are causing a problem in my neighbourhood… so I haven’t quite figured out the Blockbuster comment yet.