The summer has wrecked my schedule a number of ways thanks to a hectic work schedule amongst other obligations. No more so have things been delayed or halted than my attempts to keep a blog going on a regular basis. By slipping one in under the wire on the last day of August, I at least keep my streak alive of monthly updates, and will again promise to try to be more diligent with writings in the future.

Last weekend three friends and I took a lil' road trip to Toronto to attend Fan Expo 2011. I had a few missions set out for myself while there, succeeded in most of them. Got to meet Jeff Smith, and he not only drew me a quick Bone sketch, he also autographed and sketched in a book that I gave to one of my fake nieces for her birthday. Gaining me super big awesome fake uncle points for now and forever.

Watched the world premiere of an episode of Star Wars: Clone Wars season 4. It was advertised as the season premiere, but then the producer via pre-recorded message said "an episode" of the upcoming season. It had Ackbar in it and was very cool. And the eternal weirdness and joy of comic book conventions is the normalcy of watching a cartoon, mixed with the insanity of watching a cartoon in a room with dozens of folks dressed like Stormtroopers and Sith Lords and Slave Leia's. Many of them brandishing large firearms and / or laxer swords.






Went to a couple panels on the rebooting of the DC Comics Universe. They were actually quite interesting...well, to me anyhow...to a normal non-geek person, likely not so much. I have to admit that I've gone through the stages of grief on this subject and have come out the other side. I was in denial that they were going to do it. I was angry that they were doing it. I bargained the idea about in my head, trying to figure out if it could be stopped. I was depressed at the loss of my favorite universe. I accepted, and now I'm stressed about it, hoping it's good. And I have to say that listening to the editors and creative staff talk about it, seeing how much of a love of the game they have for the DCU, seeing how enthused they are at the challenge that lays ahead of 'em, they've really won me over. I'm still not sure if I believe the statement that this was 100% the decision of DC Comics and the powers that be at Warner Bros had nothing to do with it. But whatever the reason for zapping everything back to #1, I think they're giving it their all, I think they really want these to be great books, I think that they are super invested and want to make this the best DCU they can. I've gone from jaded to wanting to read everything they publish.

After hours one night we went to a club and watched a geek themed rapper by the name of Word Burglar. He was great. And not in a laughing at him, looking down at him, this is insane kinda great, but as in actually really talented and just happened to be rapping about GI Joe vehicles and Doctor Who. And he had an audience that when prompted all knew that TIE Fighter stands for 'Twin Ion Engine', and that they're not called that 'cause they look like bow-ties.

Spent the last day checking out a couple Q&A's. Katie Sackoff, for whom I didn't get to tell the story of how my friend and I set in motion a chain of events to get a baby named after her Battlestar character. Then, was blessed to be in the presence of William Shatner. That man knows how to keep the attention of a room. Whether it be with his stories of horse racing, working as an actor at a theatre in Ottawa in his youth, or Twilight Zone behind the scenes tales.



The bizarre highlight of the weekend happened when i was guarding my friends table in artists alley, I looked over the shoulder of some other friends I was talking to, and spotted someone I recognized. I excused my self, bolted around, headed out to the convention floor. I got out there, and lost sight of my target. I a panic, I looked left and right, then saw him. Big guy, glasses, beard, holding two giant bags of comics and swag. I approached and said "Excuse me Mr del Toro?". He turned around with a jubilant "Yes my friend!". Nicest professional geek in all the land, we proceeded to have a nice chat about various things, including the Mayfair. I can confirm nor deny that he gave me his e-mail and that he offered to record an intro for us if we show his films.

So, there are a handful of other stories, but those were some of the highlights from Fan Expo 2011. Oh, and for $5 I got the action figure of Lando wearing Han's clothes from the end of Empire. I love those obscure on-screen for 5 seconds Star Wars toys.

A few years before Ghostbusters made them true geek movie legends, director Ivan Reitman, writer (and future Egon) Harold Ramis, and star Bill Murray made a true Canadian classic in the summer camp movie Meatballs. Catch it this weekend (July 9th and 10th at 2:25 both days) as a rare afternoon Lost Marbles Geek Night at the Mayfair.

I don't know what the hell's going on in this comic book panel, but I would buy that comic book and the merchandising. This is the kinda' thing you stumble on when looking around the interwebs for a comic book image to accompany ones 'Happy Canada Day!' blog posting. Specifically I was looking for a Deadpool / Canada image, which you would think woulda' been easier to find considering he's Marvel Comics second greatest Canadian icon.

This year is the first in an age that I don't have a work obligation on Canada Day. The last few years I've done follow-spot stuff for Canada Day shows, and failing that I've fought the crowds to get downtown to tear down the stage post fireworks. I think there were cutbacks all over the place this year, so good news / bad news, I actually get the day off like most the rest of the country. Even the Mayfair is closed for the day, so I can't even go hang out there and watch movies! So far my Canadian content celebrations have mainly been the listening of Metric music.

I have no intention of braving the downtown crowds and wandering around with the masses. Especially since this year there's a prince and princess hanging out down there, meaning security, media, and maybe protesters will be at a much higher quotient. I think that there will be Canadian themed cupcakes from Thimble Cakes in my future, maybe some BBQ, and I am currently wearing a patriotic colour appropriate red t-shirt and matching Converse (ok, they're Maroon, but it's close enough).

I said I'd try and do more than just write about roller derby and Mayfair related stuff here, but then kewl stuff keeps happening with roller derby and the Mayfair. So please put up with me while I once again make mention of something else incredible and Mayfair related. The latest bit of awesome, is a Mayfair poster being published in the legendary cinematic horror magazine, Fangoria. Within an article about the legacy of Planet of the Apes, there appears a poster from our recent Go Apes! fest. First BBC Radio, then Fangoria Magazine, then I'm pretty sure that it's straight to world domination.

OverKill! from Jeremy Kennedy on Vimeo.

Friday night marked the premiere of the latest one-night-mini-fest at the Mayfair. Fake Trailers Reel Fest was a very entertaining night indeed, the audience in attendance (quite a good turn-out) were very receptive and all seemed to have a good time. It always does my heart good when folks come out to see the local indie filmmaking offerings which we manage to show occasionally on the big screen at the Mayfair.

My cinematographer, editor, and all around cinematic partner in crime for this short project just sent me a e-mail asking if he could post the proect online. The answer was of course yes. Especially since it's not using a bunch of copyrighted music like happened with my last short project. I've had real problems keeping on top of doing stuff like that with my work, nice to see that someone is doing it for me in this case. So if you didn't get a chance to see it at the Mayfair, I hope you enjoy watching it via web means here. Sit back, relax, and enjoy a couple minutes of fake trailer exploitative awesomeness (if I do say so myself).

What's that? You hate awesome things? Hmmm...yes, likely for the best that you stay away from the double bill RVRG derby night on Saturday June the 25th.

First of all...I've never seen previews spelled like that before. Weird. More importantly, Friday night marks the premiere of the Mayfair Theatres latest one-night mini-film festival screening extravaganza. On the heels of the romance and sex of Painted Lips & Lolly Licks and the horror that is Killer63, we now present to you Fake Trailers Reel Festival.

The evening will include an hour of new (or almost new) fake trailers from local Ottawa filmmakers, along with works from folks from Toronto, Montreal, the States and believe it or not we've even got an offering from the far off land of Australia. Our phony trailer-ness program include super-hero, mystery, horror, exploitation, puppets, derby girls, nurses, political commentary and spoof, amongst other topics and genres. Our original fake material will be accompanied by a collection of rare real classic movie trailers (along with a few surprises) from cinemas Drive-In and Grindhouse past.

Catch another great night of bizarre entertainment at everyone's favorite repertory theatre, Friday June 24th at 9:30pm at the Mayfair.

Dunny's fall under the category of what some call useless dust collectors. I've heard directly from people who just don't get it. There are some who look at stuff like this and shake their head in confusion and wonder why an otherwise rationale human being would waste their money on this junk.

There are others who have an opposite point of view and instead call these lil' bunny lookin' things amazing pieces of artistry in the medium that is vinyl toy. I heard one rather poetic rationalizing of the mind of a collector in a documentary I once saw on the subject. I believe the interviewee was a toy designer, and my paraphrasing of what was said is that this world we live in is not perfect. The world outside our door is filled with things we don't like, packed with stuff we don't want to see or think about or have run across our consciousness. So, when we stumble on something that we think is awesome (even something as illogical as limited edition artistically decorated toy bunnies sold in blind-boxes so you don't even know which one you're getting) we want to surround ourselves with it. We make our own perfectly decorated little worlds in our living rooms and bedrooms. And my geeky ideal perfect world currently has fourteen Dunny's in it...it will soon have more.

Though when I go to Lost Marbles to buy some at the release party tomorrow, I can do without that snail-y looking one pictured above. Reminds me too much of some terrifyingly creepy manga I recently read titled 'Uzumaki'. Other than that, if I had the money to spare, I would try my best to get 'em all. And they would collect dust on my shelves while looking neat.

A friend of mine once told me that she didn't watch hockey, not because she was opposed to it, but upon getting invested in watching a team it just became too stressful. It was time consuming and more often than not, ended in heartbreak 'cause a team doesn't bring home a championship every single year. I thought of that today as I watched my Rideau Valley Roller Girls take a defeat against the Forest City Derby Girls (of London, Ontario), in a well deserved victory for them.

It was a fun weekend to be sure, but during that last bout as I did my best to pay attention to my duties at helping out with score-keeping (or score-catching to be specific in the job titles monicker), I was definitely not happy in watching my girls have further unlikely a chance at winning the day as the point spread got further apart. There was stress and anger and frustration and quite a bit of harsh feelings put towards the referees accompanied by under my breath swearing.

As I have pointed out before to friends when they're feeling down about not succeeding at something, there is no shame in failure. There is shame in not trying, but no shame in failing. Wayne Gretzky played hockey for twenty or so years in the NHL. In those years he won four Stanley Cups. The greatest player of the game of hockey ever to skate on this earth only won four championships out of two decades of play!? Does that make Wayne Gretzky a failure? No more so than Martin Scorsese being a failure for taking so long to win an Oscar. Or Luke Skywalker being a failure for not saving his dad's life.

So, I must admit that I was slightly down today after the loss. I am proud of their silver medal though, and looking forward to them playing again next weekend. In a rematch of today's game no less!

Day one of the Blood Spill on the Hill tournament went down today (though the blood was spilling in Navan...nowhere actually neat the Hill). I helped score-keep on roughly 75 - 80 games (that might be a slight exaggeration, but it all becomes a bit of a blur after the tenth straight hour of derby viewing). My Rideau Valley Roller Girls (playing under their newly branded, raccoon mascot logo showcasing team The Vermin) soundly thumped the team from Moncton 325 - 19. A good time was had by all, and although the Moncton team lost, they should be happy in the fact that they are hands down the coolest and most awesome thing there is about the city of Moncton.

Don't tell anyone, but I find it completely impossible to hit deadlines for my own projects. If I make a deadline of June 3rd for a fest that takes place three weeks later, I can almost guarantee you that not a frame will be shot until sometime after that deadline passes.

Above is a picture from the latest deadline failing project of my friend and frequent collaborator on indie movie stuff here in Ottawa, Ray Besharah. He was nice enough to interrupt his rehearsal for a play that he's in the midst of prepping for to come to my place and shoot a quick scene for a fake trailer for the upcoming Mayfair Theatre event, Fake Trailers Reel Festival. It was a funny quick chain of events in terms of behind the scenes madness. I wrote up the one page scene of dialog around 8pm, he and my camera guy came over around 9:30, we were finished soon after. Then we ran over to the Mayfair to shoot some random cut-away shots of a couple burlesque girls. I love the from the hip guerrilla indie chaos involved in making weird little projects like trailers. Especially that you don't need a linear script or for stuff to make sense really. You just need something entertaining and attention grabbing that will fill two or three minutes of time and be awesome.

Our fake trailer can be seen premiering on Friday June 24th at the Mayfair along with a bunch of other original fake endeavors from near and far (local guys, American, even one from Australia) and a batch of rare classic 35mm trailers. Another weird movie night that could only happen in a city like Ottawa at a place like the Mayfair

This weekend, my Rideau Valley Roller Girl friends host the Canadian Women's Roller Derby Association east championship tournament. A batch of teams from across Ontario and from as far off as the mysterious land of New Brunswick will touch down on the unsuspecting city of Navan for a mighty batch of gladiatorial roller-skate styled sports combat. Partaking in a regular old run of the mill two teams playing off against each other derby bout is something pretty action packed. Having no less than eight full roster teams hit your city for an event, well...that's something else entirely. Attend the tournament for all the derby excitement, and stick around to see if Navan is still left intact by the time things wrap up by Sunday night.

The ultimate experience in grueling terror returns!

Stephen King declared that The Evil Dead was "the most ferociously original movie of 1982" (the movie is actually from '81, but I think most people saw it the following year). Considering that around that time horror films the likes of Basket Case, The Thing, Poltergeist and King's own Creepshow were released, he must have been quite a bit impressed. Amongst praise from other sources the likes of Fangoria Magazine, The Evil Dead became an indie horror phenomenon. And although it didn't quite make Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert and Bruce Campbell household names, it did get their foot into Hollywood's door.

The Evil Dead is amazing in it's no-budget accomplishment. Although I like Evil Dead 2 better, and Army of Darkness the best, seeing the first chapter of the not quite fitting together trilogy big screen style is a real (and rare) cinematic scary good time. And of course, Ash isn't quite Ash yet either. He's not the selfish jerk of an anti-hero, he has no chainsaw arm and doesn't spout endless catchy quips and exude sexual innuendo. What the film has though is Bruce Campbell's big screen debut, hence is one of the most important films in all of history. For where would we be without Bruce Campbell?

Lost Marbles Geek Night presents The Evil Dead - Friday June 17th at 11pm, with an encore presentation on Sunday June 19th at 8pm (for those horror geeks who have earlier bedtimes).

I don't think that there is anyone who would be terribly shocked that the director of such cinematic classics as Blackenstein and The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington did not achieve film-making perfection with his late seventies effort, Skatetown U.S.A.

Though, as with many a movie of this kind, the levels of awfulness it achieves does not detract from the level of enjoyment that an audience can take away from it. So bad it's good classifies a roller skating disco epic starring a Happy Days era Scott Baio and featuring the acting debut of Patrick Swayze, years before he partook in any form of Dirty Dancing.

If getting a chance to see the rock & roller disco movie of the year wasn't incentive enough to hit the Mayfair on Wednesday night instead of watching the final game of the Stanley Cup playoffs, the show is also presented by the Rideau Valley Roller Girls. And they will be on-hand to partake in the experience of roller-skating movie action, and sell you tickets to the next RVRG bout. Which you will want to buy, because attending a roller derby bout in person is high on the list of the most of enjoyable ways that you can spend a night.

Skatetown U.S.A. - Wednesday June 15th at 9:15pm - for one night only at the Mayfair Theatre. A much more fun night than jumping on a band-wagon and cheering for a hockey team that you hated or were at least disinterested in the rest of the year. Promise.

A few days ago DC Comics made the spoiler laced announcement that they will be re-booting their Universe again this September on the heels of their current Flashpoint event. The first time that they did this was the universe merging and retooling that was Crisis on Infinite Earths. Crisis was a story with a purpose, it took 45 years of jumbled continuity, multiple worlds and various versions and styles of iconic characters and smashed them all together into one singular planet and timeline. From then on in there were two kinds of DC super-hero stories, pre-Crisis and post-Crisis. There have been a few more instances of partial historical creative messing with DC history with story-lines the likes of Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis and Final Crisis. None of these follow-ups completely big banged things back to a whole new square one though.

My initial queasiness over this new universe announcement is the feeling that it isn't done for any kind of creative reasoning, but as an idea from the on high corporate bosses at Warner Bros that they want these characters simplified for the movie going masses. I am not so naive to not understand that comic books as any other creative endeavor of this type need to still pay its creators and be profitable. I continually don't understand why comic book companies think that it's a good idea to appeal to the movie going public who aren't buying comic books vs appeasing the true comic book reader. Marvel deleted Peter and Mary Jane's wedded bliss due to it being different from what happens in Spidey movies. They're making sure that Steve Rogers is back in the Captain America costume for when the movie comes out July 22nd. And they're notorious for in recent years confusingly putting titles back to number 1, then changing their mind to put the title back to it's original run, then maybe just randomly releasing a Wolverine # 1000. Very confusing stuff. I thought DC was better than that.

DC will not only reboot. They will also restart 52 titles (52 is an important number in DC lore of late). Meaning that insanely long runs on books like Detective and Action will interrupt for the first time since the late 1930's. I do not like this. It seems even more out of place considering that there's been giant mythologies built up not only in the past twenty-five year, but very much in the last few years that will all be derailed. Grant Morrison (my favorite writer in any medium) has done some phenomenal things with the Batman books in the past few years. The biggest things maybe being the original Robin graduating up to donning the Batman cape and cowl, and Bruce Wayne's crazy son becoming a snarky boy wonder with delusions of grandeur. I also grew up in a world where my Green Lantern was a jerk named Guy Gardner, not Hal Jordan, and my Flash was Kid Flash graduate Wally West, not Barry Allen.

I'm not sure I want to read a shared universe where those characters don't exist. Do we really need to read about Superman meeting Lois again, or Batman meeting a circus performer kid sidekick, or all the rest of the bazillion histories of these characters? Seems kind of boring to me. Comics of late, much like movies and TV, seem very guilty of looking back instead of ahead. Especially Geoff Johns, one of DC's big creative inputs, seems to really not like the new. In his reign, he's brought back Hal Jordan Green Lantern and Barry Allen Flash. Which were two of the great DC death plot-lines and amazing pieces of comic book writings. He zapped things back to the norm that the masses would remember (or at least his generation of the masses, since both characters were in themselves re-toolings of older DC characters), negating the work of other creators. The past is important, icons are important, mythology is important...but how about let's evolve to some new stuff here?

Though, that fear change rant aside, this is not only a comic story, it's DC comics story. And I'm not convinced that this isn't really an erasing of 25 years of continuity, but just a JJ Abrams Star Trek style alternate universe. Plus, this does open up one very important possibility for me. This could mean that one of my favorite characters could now be magically back to life. If Blue Beetle is back, that just might be the bribe that I need to look the other way on all of this.

This weekend the RVRG (Rideau Valley Roller Girls) kicked off their home season with what they dubbed a 'Coaches Pick' bout. Essentially an all-star game style event with girls from the league split up onto different teams. It is late and I'm tired and even though I worked as a score catcher at the event, at the moment I totally forget the score. I do know that team white came from behind and racked up a whole bunch a points to take the victory. I wasn't really cheering for either team (since they were all from my favorite Ottawa teams), but none the less enjoyed watching a great bout. You would think that the ladies might tone it down a notch since it was a inter-league team-mate vs team-mate event. They did not. They played as if it were the championship finals. I flinched a number of times while witnessing a hard knock down or wipe out. Looking forward to the next game in June. I wish there were more. And why isn't derby on tv? The sports channel plays poker, but not derby!? Madness.

I love it when you tell someone about a movie and it is so out there that the person doesn't even believe that you're telling the truth and thinks the thing is made up. Hobo with a Shotgun has been one of those movies for me the past lil' while. I've told a number of folks about it who all basically said in return, "That's not a movie!". Clearly these people aren't keeping on top of their geek studies. This film is not only a new Canadian cinematic classic, it also holds the honour of being the project that graduated from being a fake trailer contest winner for the Rodriguez / Tarantino mega Grindhouse double bill.

You can witness the madness that is Rutger Hauer playing a shotgun wielding homeless person fighting evil in the streets of Halifax on Monday May 30th & Tuesday the 31st at 9:15pm at the Mayfair as part of Lost Marbles Geek Nights.

On the heels of my Night of the Living Dead related travelings, an article from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the States came to my attention. Believe it or not, the topic of the piece was Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse. Who could ever have guessed that the CDCP was so awesome!? I hope that some people stumbled on this article, read it, and actually thought that the end was upon them, War of the Worlds radio-play style misunderstanding in full effect.

Also, I just noticed that the gravestone that I was so excited to see is actually for not one but two infants. Makes it seem even more inappropriate and morbid to take pictures and be in awe of such a thing as a movie prop. I hope that the lil' 1800's Kramer ghost babies understand that I mean no disrespect and do not haunt me.

Another Vixens road-trip equals another thumping of the opposition. This bout ended up being the rather lop-sided final score of Vixens 212 - Pittsburgh 71, further proof that the Rideau Valley Roller Girls are producing some of the finest derby girls in all the lands.

If participating in another out-of-town RVRG bout wasn't enough fun, also found time to visit one of the filming locations of one of my favorite movies of all time. A trio of referees and I headed to the neighbouring town of Evans City, a lovely little place that still had some nice small town charm, real old fashioned architecture and an actual movie theatre. Why did we go to this seemingly random Pennsylvania location you ask? Well, to visit their fine cemetery of course, which just happened to be one of the filming locations for only one of my favorite movies of all time. The birthplace of the modern and most well known type of zombie happened there in the late sixties under the direction of George Romero, the movie was of course Night of the Living Dead.

Found the gravestone I was looking for incredibly easily. The driver parked the car, I stepped out, looked pretty much right ahead of me, and there it was. It's a strange thought at how gleefully excited I was at visiting this place filled with dead people, an actual working graveyard for which it's usual visitors aren't so happy. Was actually a slightly overwhelming feeling, I didn't break down into tears or anything (I'll save that for if I ever get to visit a Star Wars location), but it is a simple thing that I was able to do that I will definitely hold up on a pedestal as one of the highlight moments of my life. And something done that will make many a movie geek that I know very very jealous.

What better way to spend the day that the rapture will befall our planet than partaking in some Roller Derby watching in Pittsburgh? Today I will venture road-trip style to Pennsylvania with my Rideau Valley Roller Girl posse (specifically the Vixens) as they psyche themselves up to do battle against the Steel City Derby Demons on Saturday. Besides for helping out at score-keeping in some manner, I hope to also eat some delicious American delicacies and maybe just maybe visit one of the shooting location of one of my favorite movies of all time. Will update the events of the trip if, y'know, the world as we know it still exists and we're all still around after the weekend.