So apparently celebrity death, regardless of the celebrity, is hilarious. I personally enjoyed Heath Ledger as did many people, I'm sure. But that hasn't stopped jokes regarding his recent passing to spread like wildfire across the net. I was even made aware of some fresh ones last night courtesy of the younger sis and future bro-in-law. You know, the kind where you're pursing your lips together trying not to bust because you know laughing proves exactly what you have been trying to hide all these years: that you're inherently evil.

Anyways, I laughed. Damn me to hell, I laughed like a hyena! So, since it's obvious that I am no longer in the running for Compassionate Person of the Year, I thought I'd post a few doozies that I heard last night and that I've found on various web sites. Hate mail can be sent to:

What's the difference between Jack Nicholson's performance as The Joker and Heath Ledger's? Nicholson's has a chance for a sequel.

Accountants around the world today are in a state of panic. It appears that they lost a Ledger.

It has been reported that Heath Ledger took a fall off the Empire State Building and died of a Brokeback.

How can Batman defeat the Joker? With a handful of sleeping pills.

His latest role was “I’m Not There”. Guess that applies to all his future film releases too.

I couldn't sleep last night. Heath Ledger stole all my pills.

Looks like he finally found a way to quit Jack Twist.

For sale: One spare ticket to the Batman premiere.

I would imagine that half of you are crying laughing right now and the other half are in shock over my apparent tastelessness. For that half I would like to remind you of this time a year ago when Steve Erwin died and the cackles you had at those zingers. Oh, you KNOW you did!

Anyways, hopefully some class will make its way back here tomorrow, but I doubt it. ***Update: Just came from trivia at the local university pub and half of the team names there were Heath Ledger death references. What gives?

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I can't take it anymore! This god damned writer's strike has gone on forever! It's left me with nothing but endless nights of re-runs, an empty void in my heart where awards season used to be and....... TONS OF FREE TIME! That's right. I'm blogging again!

Ok, so if you don't know by now, actor Heath Ledger is dead at the tender age of 28. A little sad. Especially since I credit myself with "discovering" Ledger back in 2007 when he played a character on a basically unknown Fox series called Roar, which was canned in its first year in favor of Ally MacBeal. (Mine and Calista Flockheart's relationship hasn't been the same since, but it's mostly because I like cheeseburgers and she, clearly, doesn't.) As soon as I was informed of his death I went online to get some deets from some credible news sources. Not hard to find, natch. So I read through this one piece from what I believe was the New York Times. (I may be wrong. Don't sue.)

The final line of the story went something to the tune of "Mr. Ledger's publicist could not be reached for comment." ......... seriously. They tried to reach his publicist. Um, ok.

In light of this ludacris excuse for journalism, I've decided to come up with a list of possible things Heath Ledger's publicist MIGHT have said, if he had only been reached for comment:

"Um, yup. He sure is dead."

"Can I call you back after I've consulted with Heath for comment......... ohhhh waaaaait."

"I don't have any details to share right now but if you call back in about 30 years I'll have the whole story for you."

"I guess I can throw this invoice out."

"Hold on a second. I have Anna Nicole on the other line and she is PISSED about how her post-mortem media coverage is going."

"No comment............ last laugh Oh!!!!!!!!"

You know, sometimes I just have to get something off my chest and it seems a blog is the only way to do it. If I had been telling this to someone in real life I probably would have lost them by "awards season." At least some of you have stayed to read the last line, but MY publicist is vacationing in the Caymen Islands so instead I'll have to leave you with...

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A lot of people have been asking about my take on Beowulf in IMAX 3D this week. We lucked into a few passes and hauled ass to the theater to see it last Wednesday, but I can see where people might be hesitant about grabbing their own tickets since the IMAX 3D experience is obviously, a lot more expensive. So here it goes.

Visually, this movie was spectacular. The advancements they've made in 3D technology blow my mind harder than finding out Doritos is now putting two flavors in one bag. (I know!) For the first 10 minutes or so (and I'm talking when the Warner Brother's sign is dancing around the screen. Not actual movie action) I felt like I might not be able to handle the 3D. There was a moment when I was certain I would have to leave. However, I was too eager to punish the people who decided to show up precisely at 7:00 when the film started and expected to still get a seat. (You snooze, you lose people.) So I got comfortable with the craziness before my eyes and began to enjoy the movie.

The attention to detail in the animation was meticulous. I had seen Robert Zemeckis's last CGI film, The Polar Express, and while I loathed it with a passion, I could still respect the dedication to the animation. Beowulf is even better. Every pore on their skin you can see, peach fuzz on their faces, even nose hairs! which, granted, were a little over-gratuitous. But the amazing CGs coupled with the 3D technology and the advanced sound system of the IMAX theater made you, literally, feel as though you were in those scenes and could reach out and touch the people, which you kinda want to do when Beowulf strips down to his skivies. Ow ow!

There was a great selection of voice talent. This movie really shows that Anthony Hopkins is good in everything he does, even if it's just talking. For the entire movie I stressed about the voice of Beowulf, certain I had heard it somewhere before. I IMDB'd the hell out of it when I got home and discovered it was Ray Winstone who had played Henry VIII in a fantastic TV movie four years ago that I loved. I honestly can't imagine the movie without him as Beowulf. Probably the best casting job I've ever encountered. Angelina left a little to be desired with her poor attempt at a Nordic accent but after seeing Alexander and Tomb Raider, who was really expecting anything better?

I didn't really want to address this but seeming as there are way too many people out there who are interested, lets get to the Angelina Jolie nude scene. First of all, I would like to point out the obvious that this is not actually Angelina Jolie. It is a digital rendering of Angelina Jolie and not even a great one at that. Her head is clearly too big for her body and she doesn't really have much of a neck. What the directors call "nude" in this movie, I call "Barbie body." You know, the curves are in all the right places, but that's as much as they're giving up. So if you're going to see this hoping to see Angelina in all her glory you may be sorely disappointed. If you're into digital ladies with disproportions who sport high heels in what was supposed to be 500AD Scandinavia, have at it. Personally, I've seen racier stuff on Jerry Springer.

I remember being in the 8th grade, and my English teacher at the time, Ms. Sparks, read us Beowulf aloud during a week of classes. I enjoyed it at the time but didn't really think much of it again until they began showing trailers for this movie and I realized that the story of Beowulf was one of the very few things I retained from a long educational career. It's one of the greatest pieces of literature of our time and Robert Zemeckis brings it to life in such a way that could only be better if they doubled the budget and shot it in live action instead.

Now, I thought I should also include a little disclaimer here. Four years ago I went to see Matrix: Revolutions in IMAX 3D, and actually came out thinking it was a good movie. It wasn't until after the fact that I spoke with others who had seen it in normal theaters that I realized that the special effects and digital imagery had seduced my senses in IMAX 3D, eclipsing the fact that it was, indeed, a horrifically bad film.

But all in all, a fantastic movie-going experience. Even if it wasn't free (which it was) I still would have paid the little extra for the IMAX ticket if I had known it was going to be that good. For regular theater-goers? Not sure how it would translate to the standard theater screen but there's definitely some value there beyond the 3D effects. Three Rings of Power!

Click here for more info on The Snowy Driveway movie rating system.

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Ok, so lets get to it. The Chronicle Herald's Holiday Parade of Lights was this weekend. For those of you out-of-towners, it's technically the Santa Clause parade of Halifax. When I was sent the event on Facebook, I had every intention of going. Mostly because even silly little quasi 'events' like that distract from the reality that my social life is indeed, nonexistent. However, by the time Saturday hit I just wasn't feeling it.

Doing a quick cost/benefit analysis it made more sense to just miss it entirely. Why? Well, I went two years ago with some peeps. From what I remember it was ass-numbing cold, crowded on Barrington Street, and the floats weren't even that great. Most of them reminded me of kids drawings from kindergarten. You know, the kind they bring home that you only want to encourage because hey, at least they're doing it and exercising their creativity, but you're kinda bummed when you have to cover that lotto ticket on your fridge from three weeks ago that still could be a winner with a crude rendition of Bob the Builder that looks more like one of the Dozers from Fraggle Rock after one too many cocktails. But I digress.

So I thought, what can I do to make this more interesting for myself? Well, for anyone who's up to the challenge, I'm willing to throw full financial backing (which isn't much) behind any kind of float idea that sees Bruce Frisko dressed as Hermey the elf from that stop-motion Rudolph movie while the Abominable snowman chases him around with mistletoe. Bonus points if Steve Murphy plays the Abominable snowman. Throw some lights on that mess and you've got yourself a winner! And now...... I sit and wait.

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Ok, so I don't want to be using my blog to promote stuff that has to do with work..... all the time, but I would like to take this opportunity to let everyone know (if for some strange reason you haven't heard yet) that Alexander Keith's birthday celebration is THIS FRIDAY!

If you live in Halifax make sure you get yer butt to Alderney Landing for the FREE CONCERT which starts at 5pm, but the beer garden opens at 4 so you'll def want to get there then. We've got Sloan, The Novaks and Classified this year and lots of good times happening at the bars downtown after the show, most importantly the offish Keith's Birthday Celebration Locations!

Red Stag Tavern
The Lower Deck
Big Leagues
Stayner's Wharf
O'Carrol's
The Dome
The Celtic Corner
The Old Triangle
Fife and Drum Pub

Totally killer. So that's where I'm going to be this Friday. I'll be backstage for the most part but if I get the chance, I'm gonna rush the stage and yell "snowydriveway.net for life baby!!"......... ok, maybe not. That would be sick though :-) Check for pics next week!

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So I've been getting e-mail after e-mail for the past few weeks from Dalhousie University (who gave me two degrees in exchange for about $60,000, my left leg and my first born.) Basically they're telling me my password for my Dal e-mail account is too old, kinda like the administration.

So I go in to try to change it. I like to keep my passwords pretty simple to I change it to something short and memorable. I don't know why I bothered. I don't even use the address anymore except to get notifications from Career Services about upcoming jobs, which are never particularly lucrative and which I'm not even sure I signed up for. Anyways, I get a big error message saying my password is not the REQUIRED 8 character minimum. Ok, back to the drawing board.

I come up with something that's 8 characters long. ANOTHER error message comes up. Apparently it doesn't contain a capital letter. That's right, a CAPITAL LETTER! How many passwords have you had that has had to contain a capital letter?

Moving on, I put a god damned capital letter at the beginning of it. ANOTHER error message comes up. My password did not contain a number........ yes, a number. So I stick a 1 on the end of it. Another error message? You betcha! My password did not contain a SYMBOL!

Let's take a minute to recap here. In order for me to change my Dalhousie e-mail password, my new password had to:
1. Be at least 8 characters long
2. Contain a capital letter
3. Contain a number
4. Contain a symbol

By this time I'm just typing in random number and symbols just trying to make the damn thing shut up and stop sending me notifications to change it. So I end up throwing something random in there which I'm sure contained all of the required elements. It processes! Hooray! Now if only I could remember what I wrote. No fear, I'm sure they sent me an email confirming my NEW password so I can throw it in a Saved Messages folder to come back to and retrieve when I need it. Right? WRONG!

The only thing I get is a message stating "Thank you. Your password has been changed. Please allow a few minutes for the change to take effect." What it should have said was "Thank you. Your password has been changed. Good luck trying to remember it. You like that excruciating process punk? Do ya? Love, Dalhousie University. Making your life difficult since 1999. xoxo."

I would just like to take this time to say I will no longer be using my Dalhousie email account. It only sends me garbage and the only reason I even went through with that stupid process was so that I could still have access to MyDal where they keep my transcripts , which are fantastic by the way.

So there you have it. Kiss my butt Dalhousie. You'll never get another penny from me.

Love,
Disgruntled Alumnus 75,651........ T......@
xoxo

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