My Stupid Nose

My nose is big, crooked, lumpy and itchy, and has given me no shortage of troubles over the course of my life. Some of those troubles stem from allergies; others happened after I used it to punch a couple of guys right in the fist.

Something weird happened today, though. After having half my face frozen for dental work yesterday, I woke up this morning to find the other half frozen, and a dull ache under my right eye. Google told me this might be parasthesis, nerve damage caused by the dentist’s needles, which were yesterday inserted repeatedly into the roof of my mouth. Parasthesis can last hours, days, weeks or forever.

In other words, I was facing a Stalloney future.

This bothered me all morning at work and seemed to be getting worse … until, in the middle of a phone call, I felt a “pop” under my eye, and my nose made a sound like a deflating bicycle tire as air rushed out of whatever pocket of nonsense it was trapped in. It felt like my head was leaking. The pressure was immediately dissipated, and within minutes, all the feeling was back in my face. It was just my stupid sinuses, again, playing tricks on me.

Sometimes I want to punch my sinuses in the nose, but that would be kind of stupid.

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

This is a diving suit prototype from 1888. It’s the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while, and I intend to just stare at it. You can, too, if you want. In fact, you can see it full-size here.

The suit was built by the Carmagnolle brothers of Marseilles, France. But it wasn’t the first; an Englishman built an early diving suit in 1715. The history of aquatic exploration is often overlooked in favour of the space race, but if you take the time to look into it, you’ll find all kinds of daring adventure and risk. From the first bathyscaphs to the sinking of the Confederate submarine Hunley during the Civil War, man has been seeking out new life (and new civilizations, we kind of hope) below the Earth’s oceans for a lot longer than we’ve been trying to get beyond the moon.

In fiction, we’ve seen movies like The Abyss and Leviathan and Deep Rising, one of which is really good and one of which stars Greg Evigan, and TV’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Seaquest DSV, one of which was a classic and one of which had not one, but two, Deluise brothers. And we can’t forget the glory days of early science fiction, like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Arthur C. Clarke’s Dolphin Island, and Roy Meyers’ Dolphin Boy series (I have read only the second one, Daughters of the Dolphin) and Aquaman and Namor and Finding Nemo …

The fact is, there are many great stories to be told about the world under the water. And to understand that, you just have to look at that diving suit and consider the work, and risk, it took to build it — and to test it.

Setting Up A New Studio

As listeners know, I have been experimenting with a new home studio lately. The Vista PC is gone, the iMac is now the primary machine, and the Compaq laptop and netbook round things out. There have been problems, though. Audio quality on Books You Should Read is noticeably problematic, and the Admiral tells me he can detect a low feedbacky hum from my Starbase recordings. I solved these problems by (a) scrapping a faulty microphone cord (b) keeping the loud-ass-fan iMac off while recording and using the Compaqs and (c) moving the studio slightly to adjust ambient background sound.

I think it’s going to work. You can find out here.

Anyway, here it is: My new studio, Weather Station Omega.

Lauren Holly Was Here

We’ve just visited the set of The Town Christmas Forgot, a Hallmark made-for-TV family film due out this winter. For the production, crews turned the steamy streets of Millbrook, Ontario, into wintry Nowhere, U.S.A. Clouds of potato flakes blew threw the air as the actors negotiated wire-frame “snowbanks” covered in white fluff. “I need an icepack,” Holly shouted during one break, because it’s 32C here today, and not as Canadian as Americans seem to think.

I liked Lauren Holly on Picket Fences, a weird show that has strangely been forgotten. She played a cop with a unique sense of humour; one scene in particular, a wonderfully sneaky beat-the-censors entendre-soaked phone conversation with co-star Costas Mandylor, has always stuck in my memory. And, of course, my kids have just discovered Dumb and Dumber, so they know her from that film. But I remember her playing one particular icon of my childhood: Betty.

You may not remember this. To Riverdale and Back Again, also called Return To Riverdale, was a 1990 TV movie about the Archie characters, all grown up. It was meant as a pilot for a new series, but didn’t work, largely because it was not very good and had grown-up Jughead rapping. Rapping.

Christopher Rich was Archie, Sam Whipple was Juggie, Gary Kroeger (a mad comic genius, largely underrated) was Reggie, some other actress was Veronica and Lauren Holly played Betty – and did it exactly right. And as the kind of kid who always, always believed Archie belonged with Betty, she was the high point of the film.

I don’t know if i’ll be able to see The Town Christmas Forgot. But now I know I want to see that Archie movie again. (Watch for Moose and Midge.)

The Ex-Masturbators

Lil’ Biscuit and Smoov L’ocean are hitting the road, touring in support of their new CD, Nobody Touch It Like Me Except You. The hip-hop duo, with a sound that has been compared to the Black-Eyed Peas mixed with the White Stripes, along with an added dose of Seals and Kroft, will perform in shopping malls across the U.S. midwest, and also Manitoba.

“We’re all about spreading a positive message,” said Lil’ Biscuit. “We want young people to embrace the lifestyle we have chosen.”

Smoov L’ocean said the name of the duo occurred to him suddenly one night. “I was porkin’ the Biscuit, and it just came to me,” he said. “It just made sense, you know, in a logic way.”

Their music has been banned from iTunes but is still available on MySpace.

I Love The Drive-In

You know, there are still two old-style drive-in movie theatres within 20 minutes of here, and yet we never go. This is not one of them.