Wax Mannequin

Last week, The Grad Club put on a great show featuring Spiral Beach and Wax Mannequin. Spiral Beach was the headliner, but I was mostly there to see Wax Mannequin, and he did not disappoint.

Wax Mannequin is actually just one dude (real name: Chris Adeney) from Hamilton, Ontario. He's been through Kingston a few times, but I'd never heard his music until I caught one song on CFRC a few weeks ago, at which point I became very interested in seeing this guy live.

His music is pretty unique and very creative, but sort of hard to describe... some of the best efforts at describing his style use phrases like "Tom Waits fronting a viking metal band" or "a rock opera exploding inside your brain". Those are both pretty good descriptors. If "over-the-top" were a genre, this would be it. Judging from the super-intense rock drumming, prog guitar riffs, and gruff high-drama vocals, I think this is probably love-it-or-hate-it music, but since my musical tastes lean pretty heavily towards eclectic craziness, I love it.

Also, the Wax Mannequin MySpace bio is the best rock band biography I've ever read. Here it is, along with the picture referenced therein.

Do you know the painting that you see on some greeting cards where all of the animals are sitting together, stoic and proud in the forest, and there in the background, rising in the sky, it's the earth? You have to ask “why aren't the animals trying to fight and eat each other? They are fucking enemies!” and “why is the earth rising into the sky? If the earth is in the sky, then where the fuck are we?” That shit is Wax Mannequin. Kind of lame... but so important and gripping.

Worst Movie Scenes of All Time

These are pretty great, it's the top six worst movie scenes of all time, featuring such categories as "Worst Stunt" and "Worst Acting Ever". The stunt is my favourite, that dude is one excellent horse rider.


http://view.break.com/295152 - Watch more free videos

A useful tool

Is it Christmas?

(link courtesy of Laura A.)

In Event of Moon Disaster

I've spent the better part of the last week watching The West Wing, Season 1, to which I've become hopelessly addicted. As a result, I've also been much more interested in all things presidential lately.

With that in mind, I found this speech very interesting, in a morbid, what-could-have-been kind of way. It's titled "In Event of Moon Disaster", and it was written by presidential speechwriter Bill Safire on July 18, 1969. The speech was intended to be read by Richard Nixon in the event that Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin made it safely to the surface of the moon, but found themselves unable to leave.

Aside from being a fascinating snapshot of the White House's inner workings during one of the United States' most ambitious ventures, it makes me wonder... how many other worst-case-scenarios does the US have speeches ready and waiting for?

The Most Serene Republic

This Wednesday, The Most Serene Republic is playing the Ale House, along with Dragonette, for $12. Based on the MySpace clips of their new album (one-word review: awesome), and how much I enjoyed them the last time they were in Kingston (playing with local legends and media darlings Fat Robot), this could be one of the best sub-$15 shows of the year. Broken Social Scene + Prog Rock + Jazz = The Most Serene Republic.

If you're in Kingston and want to go, let me know. We'll rock out.

A Monument to Ridiculousness

I can't remember who pointed me to this, but the Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea is one of my favourite buildings in the world. Not because of engineering achievement, or architectural beauty... as a matter of fact, it's one of the ugliest buildings I've ever seen, and was horribly engineered. Nope, the Ryugyong makes my favourite buildings list for its unrivaled combination of audacity and ineptitude.

The story goes something like this: In the late 1980's, North Korea was starting to get jealous of South Korea's increasing prosperity and shiny skyscrapers, so the government decided it was going to outdo them, and commissioned the construction of a Super-Hotel. The Hotel To End All Hotels! 105 stories of communist glory, with five... no, six! No, SEVEN revolving restaurants! Seriously, seven revolving restaurants. When finished, it would have been the tallest hotel in the world, with three THOUSAND rooms. Three thousand rooms in one building, for a country that only lets in about 130,000 visitors a year, nationwide.

Alas, no one ever got to spend their luxurious North Korean vacation in the Ryugyong, because it was never finished. For starters, the building was so massive, concrete shortages plagued the construction from day one. Secondly, it was such a huge building that its construction actually contributed to electricity shortages in Pyongyang. I'm guessing it is hard to build a 105 story hotel without power tools. Finally, the concrete that they DID get was so poor that once the whole concrete frame was poured, the building began to sag under its own weight. All this for the low, low price of SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS. This, in a country with a food shortage. As a result of the sagging, the building needed $300 million in repairs, which the government didn't happen to have lying around. And thus, the world's biggest almost-hotel was born. Here's what the building looks like as of today, which is basically how it looked when it was abandoned in the 80's, with one lonely crane forgotten on the roof.


Fig. 1: Ridiculous.

Seriously, THAT was your design for a world-class hotel, North Korea? It looks like a giant cartoon supervillain lair.

One of the best parts of the whole story is the fact that the government was so embarassed by its failure that it essentially forbid people from talking about the tower. It gets airbrushed out of official photos of Pyongyang. It's not on any maps. There have been reports of people asking tour guides questions about it. Questions like "What's with that giant concrete pyramid over there?" typically receive responses like "What giant concrete pyramid?". In their defence, it is kind of hard to spot.


Fig. 2: I don't see it.

With some perspective, Vegemite is not so bad

I was discussing Vegemite earlier today, and was directed to this article detailing how it is supposedly banned in the US because of FDA laws that only allow folic acid in bread. It turns out, however, that no such ban is in place, and the Kraft spokesperson cited in the article was wrong. Well, according to the Wikipedia article on Vegemite, anyways.

I started to do a little digging around to see if I could get to the bottom of what Vegemite is, exactly (sure, it's a "brewer's yeast extract", but what exactly does that mean?). What I came across next was so shocking it made me completely forget about my Vegemite-based curiosity.

Behold, the edible monstrosity that is... Bovril.



This little culinary gem is described as a "thick, salty beef extract". And if that doesn't instantly get your mouth watering, you might be interested to know it was originally marketed under the name "Johnston's Fluid Beef".

Mmm, fluid beef.

Apparently it's quite popular in Britain as a sort of meat-based tea, especially at soccer games. Yum. Apparently many, many British people enjoy their meat-tea... check out this interesting tidbit, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Bovril was based in Argentina, and at the height of the Bovril empire, the company owned ranches in Argentina that were equivalent in size to half of England and sustaining over 1.5 million livestock.

Equivalent to half of England! Oh, also, Bovril ads are some of the craziest things I've ever seen. Check out these marvels of persuasive advertising:



Nothing gets my appetite going like thinking about exactly how the cow in my meat-tea was killed. Or, for those of you who prefer to consider your meat on a more personal level:



And finally, perhaps the most ridiculous ad I have ever seen:



That's right, the only two infallible powers in the world are the divinely appointed representative of God on Earth, and meat-tea.