Out last night at Century Room for Industry night, we stumbled upon the after-party for Justin Timberlake, who played the ACC last night. Though the man himself did not appear to be in attendance, we were treated to a rare live PA set from Timbaland, his genius producer, who dropped a bunch of his hits and generally got the crowd whipped into a frenzy. It was pretty packed in there, and the energy was wild. A lot of fun. On a more laid back groove, I’ll be hitting the Dominion to see my good friend K Obsidian mix some classic jazz tonight, which better suits the tempo of a Wednesday evening.
Workwise, we are in the midst of a fairly significant overhaul of the ordering system, so that we can bring our data closer in line with the requirements of the national level carriers we now deal with. This requires a modification of our current package type selector to compel the user to enter the dimensions and weight of each individual package. It is resulting in a fair bit of extra coding, mostly to facilitate passing the variables through the system from one end to the next, and it’s fairly exacting work, as everything needs to be totally accurate. Anyway, between that and project managing our outsourced work, I’ve been keeping busy.
Currently reading: nothing in particular
Currently hearing: Anything – Martina Topley Bird
Currently watching: Ricky Gervais interviews Christopher Guest
Time you will never recover
There are certain headlines I come across every so often which instantly scream, ‘DO NOT CLICK!’ They warn of facile self-promotion disguising itself as comment. A recent example must be that annoying English guy from American Idol stating that Bob Dylan would never win American Idol. Now, needless to say I didn’t read the article for a number of reasons – most having to do with the limited number of hours in the day and the fact that the opinions of someone who thinks teenage singers should aspire to become the new Michael Bolton really don’t interest me – but I can get the gist of it just from the headline. The man who inflicted S-Club 7 on the world has the temerity to question the musical abilities of someone who has added immeasurably to the canon of popular music and is considered by many to be among the greatest American poets of the postwar era. Let’s just let history be the judge in that particular instance.
Speaking of annoying English guys, I made the mistake of clicking on Chris Hitchens’ recent absurd article about ‘why women aren’t funny’. I’m not going to provide a link to it here, out of humanitarian considerations, but suffice to say it’s patently ridiculous and full of asides like ‘you know what I mean’ and ‘am I wrong?’, prompting the appropriate responses – ‘No I don’t’ and ‘Yes’. I have two words for Mr. Hitchens – Sara Silverman. I might also remind him of the legions of men out there who are simply unfunny or the many more who seem to be missing the humour gene completely. Working in the tech sector, I meet them all the time. In any case, I thought that a preeminent literary critic would have better things to do with his time than a poorly considered ‘Men are from/Women are from’ schtick.
On a more interesting note, Malcolm Gladwell – sometime Toronto resident and lately of New York and the New Yorker – has penned a couple of insightful articles lately, one on Enron and another, which is actually a series of blog postings touching on recent celebrity racist outbursts, both of which are worth a look.
Finally, and totally unrelated, I must give a mention to emusic.com, which is like iTunes’ cheaper, cooler kid brother. They don’t have everything, but they have plenty of the good stuff, including today’s selection, and the subscription rates and lack of annoying DRM systems makes them preferable in my eyes. On another musical note, Onsulade’s DJ set at Therapy on Saturday night was a thing of beauty – mind blowing.
Currently reading: Taking a breather after finally finishing ‘A Short History of Everything’ by Bill Bryson
Currently hearing: In White Rooms – Booka Shade
Currently watching: The Killer – dir. John Woo