TWISTING&SHOUTING.

I have a not-so-secret confession that is fairly uncommon amongst my generation: I love zombies. I love zombie movies. Zombie TV shows. Books about zombies. You name it and I’m pretty much game, particularly if it involves a zombie apocalypse. While I’m sure the real thing would be way less fun, since I don’t really have a burning desire to take an ax to my best friend’s face, it’s super fun to speculate about various zombie apocalypse survival strategies and weapons. Zombie fever hit a peak this week, when several people speculated that the crazy homeless guy who ate that other homeless guy’s face was the beginning of a zombie uprising. Since that happened in Miami, I’m now forced to reevaluate my survival strategy of sailing down the coast and taking over an island in the Florida Keys. However, in the meantime, I figured it would be fun to share my fantasy weapons for a zombie apocalypse. While these things don’t actually exist and I’d be forced to probably settle for a baseball bat, a nerd can dream. Below, (and mostly stolen from pop culture) is the arsenal I would maintain to keep me from becoming zombait.

 
1. Captain America Shield
Cappie’s shield is the most badass. While everyone thinks of things they would need for some slice’n’dice, one has to protect yourself as well, be it from zombie hordes or accidentally blowing up a gas station. Not only is Cappie’s shield unbreakable, but its edges do some pretty killer damage as well. Oh, and did I mention that it’s like a giant boomerang?!? Why not throw it at a horde and take out ten brain eaters at once, only to have it come right back to you!! Bonus points for putting a holster on the back for extra weapons. As Captain Picard always said on Star Trek, “SHIELDS!!” Except this time it won’t take one blow and already be at 12% strength.

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Hey everyone!!! Remember when I didn’t write on Twisting&Shouting for an entire week? What was that about? Was I on vacay or something? Sadly no, although a vacay would have been nice. Instead, I was busy addressing the fact that the Internet had taken over my life. Last week, I created a tumblr site, one of those oh-so-trendy ones right now that are all about GIFs, and called it Toronto Strife. Inspired by What Should We Call Me? And others, I decided that for shits and giggles, Toronto had a lot of content to rib on. And so, I created it, unleashed it upon tumblr and Twitter, and sat back, not knowing what might happen.
 
What happened, was that at least in Canada, I blew up the internet. For one day, I went “viral”, if you will. Suddenly, that little ol’ Tumblr got the internets all crazy and was being posted on Facebook, Twitter, and all them other social medias like it was news about the Zombie Apocalypse. Toronto Life, the Torontoist, and BlogTO got all nutters about it too, among others. It was kinda neat. And also slightly terrifying. While my work has had mild brushes with internet fame before, it was alarming that it came so close to home. Unlike other times, the people talking about something I did were not 15 year-old Twihards calling for my head in backwoods Nebraska, but right in my own backyard. As my first brush with being famous, I’m kinda glad it only lasted for one day. But in that one day, I learned a whole bunch of things about what happens when you get internet famous. A list of those such things that happened, are below.

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Oh Glee, it’s hard to believe that it’s been three years since you graced us with a rendition of a forgotten Journey hit and captured the attention of the nation. At first, you started out with a diverse cast and a razor-sharp satirical wit that seemed more suitable for Showtime than on the same network that cancelled Arrested Development. Of course, then record and FOX executives got their paws all over you, and turned you into a glossy, castrated marketing machine of tours, sleeping bags, and lunchboxes. Congratulations, you became the TV equivalent of the Backstreet Boys. In its wake, you’ve put us through insane plotlines involving imagined pregnancies, teachers stuffing pot in lockers of students, and that time when Quinn got into a monster car accident, only to gloss it over in the following episode by being all “oh yeah, that happened. Let’s sing!!” Which is what I’m pretty sure what you do with your entire plot structure of Problem of the Week Big Message Episodes.

Not to get all high and mighty, but I knew this would happen. FOX has a habit of taking hold of a success and turning it into a juggernaut that it shoves down our throats until we develop TV bulimia. Ryan Murphy has never has an idea that stayed good for more than 20 minutes (see: Every season of Nip/Tuck after season 2; Running with Scissors; Eat Pray Love). And one time Murphy alluded to his story plan for Glee, saying it was “like Rocky” in the sense that it was going to take a long time to become national champions. I figured three seasons, and they’d win the championship, just in time to graduate. And now here we are. The Glee kids won nationals, and now a bunch of them are about to graduate and stay BFFs in Forever Magic TV Land where friendships and eternal high school love never dies. I always said that I’d stick it out until the kids graduate and win nationals. Now that time has come, and I’m ready to sign off.

My roommate said it perfectly while watching a touching moment in the Nationals episode last week. “Aw, that’s sweet. Man, this show is shit.” Even when the show peaks with a great song, it falls backwards on its awkward plot points and beleaguered storytelling. Stories I’m sick of, mostly because they make no sense. Like the time when all the kids got addicted to Vitamin D. Or how that Sugar Motta girl has been around for a whole season but never talks. She’s just, there. Or like how Will Schuester asked Finn to be the Best Man at his wedding, because apparently no adults on this show have real friends of talk to one another. Or like the time when Finn got inspiration from a grilled cheese sandwich that looked like Jesus. JESUS. THERE WAS A WHOLE EPISODE DEVOTED TO A GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH IN THE VISAGE OF JESUS. JESUS CHRIST. AS IN CHRISTIANITY’S VERSION OF THE SAVIOR OF MANKIND. THIS WAS A REAL EPISODE OF TV THAT PEOPLE WATCHED AND IT HAD SONGS. SONGS!!! ABOUT A GRILLED JESUS!!! Somebody kill me.

But this post isn’t supposed to be all bad. Glee had a lot worth celebrating, from Sue’s touching relationship with her sister with Downs Syndrome, to their fearless tackling of homophobia and bullying. While a whole lot went wrong, there were certainly some things that went right. So to celebrate, below I have included my 10 favourite songs from the past three seasons of Glee. While nothing short of the 4th season creative resurgence of Lost will bring me back, it’s nice to remember the fun memories the show gave us (Also, apparently part of your “creative renaissance” is to team up with Horse Woman and Penny Lane, two people who haven’t done anything decent in nearly a decade. This does not bode well). So until they start using flashforwards and kill off Rachel Berry in a plane crash, I tip my graduation cap to those Glee kids and bid adieu.

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Yesterday was like, a totally bonkers day in the history of the United States. President Barack Obama set the internet all batshit cray, by confirming the he personally supports same-sex marriages in the United States. This of course sent off a tidal wave of support from the ‘mos, as well as from all people with hearts and brains. As the first president to do so, it was a brave move that had me yelling “GObama!!!” all effing day. Meanwhile, as Obama declared “I love the gays!!”, Mitt Romney wasted no time in standing up and declaring “just so y’alls are clear, I still love bigotry!!! Penis and vagina marriages for life!!!” Mitt and the conservatives got right down to being all crazy and declaring how gay marriage will be the end of society as we know it.
The scary part is, those crazy kissing cousins are right. It’s totes the end of civilization. As a lifelong resident of Canada, where we’ve had gay marriage for almost six years now, I can safely say that things have gone totally crazy here!!! Like real, fire and brimstone kinda stuff. We even had to watch Canada’s Got Talent. Below, a list of things that have happened to Canada since that fateful day in 2006, which serve as a warning to all you bumsex-loving marriage cravers in the good ol’ USA.
 
-National security began to slip and we let Ryan Gosling leave the country, go south of the border and become an uber star.
 
-A giant volcano sprouted up in the middle of downtown Montreal, and rotates spewing hot lava and Astroglide.
 
-All the freshwater lakes began to boil, and killed all of our fish. While this briefly turned into a boon for the fish and chip industry, we all totally miss eating trout.
 
-All of our igloos melted, leaving the entire country homeless.

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Having a crush on someone older is something that we all do. When you think about it, it’s practically bred into the genes of our pop-culture obsessed society, and has done so since our parents were kids, and our moms got all tingly at the sight of the Beatles, while our Dads were holed up with copies of their own father’s back issues of Playboy. Fast forward a bit, and I can recall that in my tender adolescence, I recall taking an early trip to bonerville at the sight of Ricky Martin, even though he was 12 years older than me. It just happens. We’re always attracted to people who are older. At least until they hit retirement age, or in the case of Lindsay Lohan, 24.
 
While we all have a love for older people, I’ll admit that my own tastes occasionally go to the unconventional. There are a few older dudes out there who are still smokin’ hot, but am normally shamed into talking about them. People will get all “Peter Krause? The guy from Six Feet Under? But Nate Fisher was such a douchebag! Like, for reals?” However, I have decided that, in the grand tradition of Twisting and Shouting overshares, I might as well get on with it. This is not a list for the Brads, the Georges, and the Johnnys. If you have reproductive organs and you’re alive right now, then yes, we’re all aware that you want to have sex with them, and probably all at the same time. No, this is list for the unspoken hot men, who entertain me whenever they grace my screen.
 
Dennis Quaid
Dennis is the oldest hot man on this list, and at the ripe age of 57, some may scoff that he’s too old to be sexy. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you this. And this. And this. And then I laugh in your face for not believing me. Oh wow. The world knows that Dennis Quaid is beautiful, and therefore it’s a great injustice to do him wrong. That’s why, when Meg Ryan cheated on him with The Pillsbury Dough Boy Russell Crowe back in 2000, the universe then balanced itself out by never giving her a successful career ever again. Not even Tom Hanks can save her now, and that’s because she cheated on Dennis Quaid. I specifically watched Far From Heaven not for Julianne Moore’s Oscar nominated performance, but because Dennis did the dirty with a dude. Dennis has flown under the radar for years, never quite reaching the successes of his counterparts from the 80’s, like Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis. However, Dennis will ALWAYS be able to counter them by being tall, still having all of his hair, and still being the sexiest 57 year old that ever walked the face of the planet.

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May the 4^th be with you, Star Wars fans!! Indeed, that special day that has become unofficial Star Wars Day for lisping nerds everywhere, has arrived. Today is your day, so you go out and celebrate it in true style, and that style is by watching a six-film series where only the first two are actually good. Aside from Indiana Jones (which I solely credit to The Spiels) George Lucas has spent every waking moment since the release of Star Wars 35 years ago, never coming up with a new idea ever again tweaking his genius initial trilogy, constantly making small changes to a film that, by many standards, should have been left just as it awesomely was when it was released in 1977. But now, George Lucas is like, super old and stuff, and eventually he is going to shrink down to the size of an Ewok and lose all his hair like Yoda and lose all streed cred because Jedi mind tricks aren’t real. And then he will eventually die because being frozen in carbonite hasn’t been invented yet because carbonite also, is not real. But what will happen after George passes? Who will continue on George’s legacy of continually plundering a brilliant film and messing with a good thing? The answer is the person who we all know is George’s successor in blowing up big things and having bad scripts, Michael Bay. Below, the Star Wars of the future, as seen through the eyes of Michael Bay.

The movie opens with that signature score, except this time, as the title card comes up reading “STAR WARS”, it’s in a more CGI-generated font and isn’t shaded in 1970’s Smoke-Stained Walls of a Bowling Alley Yellow, but a fiery orange, and with more explosions. The iconic score stays in place, as it should, but instead of being played by a John Williams-led orchestra, it is being played by Aerosmith. The story of a “galaxy far, far away” is actually being read to you as a song, by Steven Tyler, who coincidentally also performs it on American Idol the night before the movie’s premiere.

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We all have those days. Those days where you’re sitting there, at your 9-to-5, and looking at the clock and thinking to yourself “Oh God, it’s only 4pm. I’m never going to last another hour.” You just NEED the day to end, and you need it to happen now. Your day has been absolute garbage, and all you can think about is how it would be real swell if you could have a cold one. Just a drink or two to take the edge off of your heinous day. And then you realize that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and that light is called happy hour. However, sometimes said hour gets a little too happy, and leaves you in worse shape the next day than the one you’re currently still working on. This is how it happens.
 
Email your coworkers and/or friends. Appeal to your closest set of drunkards, those tried-and-true borderline alcoholics whom you know won’t let you down and agree to go for a drink. The emails are only subject lines. “Drinks?” “Let’s go to the Local?” “Happy hour?” “ “I need alcohol like Lohan on her fourth day of detox”. Your fellow alcoholics agree to converge at your local haunt close to work. However, everyone has “stuff to do” so you agree to meet for one drink only. Perhaps two. Just something to “take the edge off.”

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One of my very favourite parts of going to the movies, is the trailers at the beginning. A poor selection of trailers will cause me to silently curse the movie theatre for having poor taste and showing me another preview of John Carter. Welcome to Trailer Trashed, where we shall dissect the trailers currently playing in movie theatres everywhere, and superficially summarize and judge their worthiness of my $12.75.
 
 
Dark Shadows
Johnny Depp kicks things off by discussing how more than woman is in love with him, which I’m pretty sure is also called his daily life. However, Vesper Lynd is mad about it and curses him to become a vampire with really defined cheekbones, bleeding eyes, and pale hands. For some reason, I think the ladies are going to stop calling. So Johnny takes a nap for 200 years and wakes up in the 70’s, where there are no horses, and Michelle Pfeiffer is wearing hideous clothes and Helene Bonham Carter is dressed as the most heinous Day Walker I’ve ever fucking seen. It’s hard to tell what makes Johnny’s character so special, since he’s just a vampire version of Jack Sparrow/Willy Wonka/The Mad Hatter. Either way, Vesper Lynd is SO into it, and is going to fight him to the death if she can’t be with him. Johnny vows to defend his family. For some reason Michelle Pfeiffer is unwilling to do it herself, even though she’s the best Catwoman that ever existed. Angry sex with vesper Lynd ensues, and I’ve never had less of a boner in my entire life. Was I supposed to laugh? Was this a horror film? Somebody please tell Johnny Depp to go back to being cool.

 
 
Trailer Rating: 3/10
 
Chances of Getting My $12.75: I love Tim Burton, aside from the fact that none of his films have had a cohesive plot since Ed Wood. That being said, this doesn’t look funny, or scary, or even that visually appealing. Why would I see this again?

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Mining the inertia of daily life on Facebook can be both a joyous event and a frustrating one. One minute, 14 people will Like your super-witty status and inflate your ego. The next, someone will post something on Facebook that, in everyone’s narcissistic quest to broadcast on the Internet that they have The Best Life Ever, will make you cry battery acid. A potential example of this is one I faced the other day when, while perusing the ol’ FB with my morning coffee, I discovered that my ex got engaged over the weekend. Seeing as this is one of those occasions that can cause you to see something on Facebook and instantly make you feel behind in life, I realized that when Zuckerberg’s baby forces us to encounter these feelings, we are all left with options of how to react. Said reactions can be the good, the bad, and the cast of the New Jersey Real Housewives. Lo and behold, they’re below.
 
Option #1: Bemoan About Being Behind in Life
Message your friend and tell them about the news you discovered on FB. Make it clear that your soul is dying and the Internet is to blame. Make your own Facebook status about how if The Game of Life were a popularity contest, you’d currently be the racist love child of Adolf Hitler and that douchebag who stole your grandma’s car. Bemoan about how Bridget Jones looks like a stable, desirable singleton compared to you. Cry about how the only house you’ll ever own is possibly the cardboard box from your Maytag fridge. Sob to everyone you know about how you will die and your reproductive organs will be as barren and useless as one of those sad homeless women you see pushing their pet homeless dog in a shopping cart full of dog shit, beer cans, old Persian rugs and broken dreams. Tell these things to everyone you know. Ponder why you’re single.

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I recently had my two year anniversary as a Torontonian. For a blog written by an urbanite, I don’t write a lot about Toronto. Well, that’s wrong. I guess I’m good at writing about a lot of things that happen to me in the city (especially on the TTC), but I sadly haven’t written oodles about the city itself. Yet after two years here, I figure now is as good a time as any to take stock of that glorious city I call home, and the relationship I have with it that causes me, and 3 million other people, to feel so much undying love and blind, seething rage. Below, the loves and hates I have with developed from being a Hogtown homo.
 

-The High Park Zoo is awesome. I just love being able to stroll into a park and be able to see a bunch of yaks if I feel like it. So keep putting money in those donation boxes.
 
-The beach is awesome. I love how weird our beach culture is because we all hang out on the sand and barely anyone ever goes swimming because having a third arm grow out of your torso makes wearing a bikini super weird.
 
-I love how City Council’s reaction to Rob Ford’s existence has essentially turned into the real life equivalent of Janeane Garofalo telling Toby to fuck off in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.
 
-I don’t like how Rob Ford won’t go to Pride. While I don’t think it’s necessarily homophobic to not march in the parade itself, I think it’s super homophobic to make sure you attend Caribana, the Santa Claus Parade, Taste of the Danforth, The Good Friday procession in Little Italy, even the goddamn St. Patrick’s Day Parade, and plenty other events, but seem to make sure that you’re “too busy” to attend ANY Pride related events during all ten days of the celebration. That can’t be an uber busy time at the office, since a whole whack of other mayors seem to have made time to attend a whole bunch of things during Pride all week. Just saying.

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