TBT #50: The Fiftieth

Oh, number 50. Do you realize what that means? It means I have written something every week for 50 weeks! Well, it sort of means that. It doesn’t entirely mean that. I’m not really sure how it happens but the TBT schedule has been majorly screwed up and it was only made worse with the stupid update monsoon in June stuff that I pulled but, you know, I realized something: nobody really cares but me. That’s not to say I don’t think you care about this writing — I am convinced that you do; you love me! — but rather that I am perhaps the only person in the world who worries about the graphicmatt update schedule.

Because, really, I should probably be worrying about the content.

You might assume that the 50th installment of The Best Things would offer something substantial. Something fantastic. Something spectacular, even. After all, it would be appropriate to celebrate the halfway-point of this 100-column series with a memorable column, wouldn’t it? Perhaps featuring cutting edge writing and artwork and maybe even special guests! Wouldn’t that be a treat for the eyes, on this humid July night? It sure would be. Everyone would love it.

Unfortunately, I have none of that. But I still call what I do have The Best Things for July 16, 2005.

Papa Was a Rodeo

I signed up recently with Zip.ca which, for the uniformed, is the Canadian equivalent of Netflix. Like most Canadian equivalents it’s not QUITE as awesome and costs quite a bit more, but as I am a soon-to-be-university-graduate, I am not really concerned with trivial things like credit card bills and massive debt. I may not have a “high-paying job” or “marketable skills” but I’ll be damned if I won’t have a piece of paper with my god damned name on it. And it will have a seal on it! Not the animal kind of seal. That would be ridiculous. Please be aware that the word ’seal’ has multiple meanings.

So, anyway, I signed up with Zip.ca because there are a lot of DVDs I want to see (TV shows, mostly). That I recently purchased a DVD burner capable of making rapid back-ups of these rental DVDs is entirely coincidental. I would never contact That would be against the law and I haven’t broken a law since that one time when I was seven-years-old and I broke Newton’s Laws. It wasn’t my fault — I was approaching the speed of light. So I signed up for this thing despite reading some mixed reviews. Mixed reviews don’t bother me because, one again, I am figuring my degree is my all-access pass to a cash bonanza. They also offer a two-week trial period which helped to ease my concerns. Nothing relaxes me like the word ‘trial’.

Now, zip.ca differs from the American Netflix — a company that keeps promising to move into Canada but still hasn’t possibly because of Canada’s strong dollar or the War in Iraq or whatever — in that you don’t actually get to choose which DVDs you want. That’s not to say they just pick random DVDs for you the same way the hosts picked prizes for the kids on Video & Arcade - Top 10, but rather that you make a “ziplist” of 20 titles that you’re interested in seeing, and they send you four of them that are available.

The DVDs are sent by Canada XPressPost which, admittedly, is pretty fast, though probably not fast enough to warrant dropping the “e”. In the package is the disc (in a sleeve) and a return envelope with the postage pre-paid. When you’re done watching (and not copying) the DVD, you slip it back in the envelope, locate a mailbox and discard that bitch like you would bad cards in an Uno game. When they receive them, they send you four more.

It’s been pretty good to me so far. I average 1 or 2 shipments a week, depending on how fast I am at making the returns. I’d estimate I could get, at most, 5 or maybe — if the mailman is doing cocaine or something — 6 shipments a month, which would equal out to — here comes math — 20 or 24 DVDs a month. For the fairly reasonable price of $25/month, I am thinking this is a pretty good deal.

I think my experiences are skewed by my location though. Being in Oakville, I am relatively close to zip.ca headquarters, located in Ottawa, ON. Who knows how long it would take to get my DVDs if I was in Halifax currently. Or, god forbid, somewhere out west. I am not sure how worth it it would be then. And I likely won’t find out as I am probably going to cancel in Late August. Not because I am unsatisfied but rather because there’s no way I can afford to keep paying for this during my final year of university. Even if everyone else is going to be holed up in thier rooms writing their theses all day, I’m going to be out spending money on beer and burgers. And god damned if I’m not looking forward to it.

So yeah, zip.ca — recommended, but with the caveat that I don’t know how good it is if you’re not Ontarian. So far I have received Sopranos: Season 5, Deadwood, Entourage and Rescue Me Season One.

Mama Was A Rock & Roll Band

Speaking of spending money, I’ve actually been going clothes shopping recently. I don’t want to give anyone the impression that I actally like shopping because, really, there’s no way I’m secure enough in my sexuality to ever admit to something like that. But, honestly, it’s not that bad. I thought it would be worse. But it’s not. It’s okay. And I kind of can’t stop.

I have a theory about this. I’m a collector. I’ve collected things all my life. Every kid goes through a coin & stamp phase and I had those as well, but I kept going afterwards, with comic books and stupid action figures — though I haven’t bought one in a while, which is weird because I could be getting the parts to a GIANT GALACTUS — and, last year, DVDs. I still have DVDs in shrink wrap. I bought them because they were $6.99, not because I like them or want to watch them a lot or even watch them ever. They’re sort of display items in a way. Like how your grandmother would put our Precious Moments figurines or whatever, I display my DVDs.

But I’m sort of over that this summer, likely because of my increased pirate tendancies. So I was left in a bind going into the summer; I needed something else to collect. And that something was, weirdly, clothes.

There are still a lot of things I completely despise about clothes shopping. Like, say, the stores. And most of the clothes. And the people in the store trying to sell you the clothes. And dressing rooms that for some reason have better security than the fucking airport. There is nothing more awesome than going up to a dressing room, having the lady count the number of items in your hand, and then being handed a giant plastic FOUR. Seriously. It’s a giant four. And there’s always a moment when you get into the change room where you look at the four, you look at the clothes, and you sort of wonder what exactly you’re supposed to do with the four. The one I got the other day was really beat up. Someone had snapped off part of the top of it. And I kept thinking, Jesus, how pissed off could you possibly get at the Four.

And it’s depressing, you know, being 21. Because your choices are either the trendier stores with the sales people that try to convince you to get the pants with the built-in belt and to embrace that polo-under-button-down look where it seems like you have seventeen collars on OR the older-type stores where a disturbing majority of the pants are pleated and half the store is the “Golf” section.

But whatever, you know. I need clothes. And I don’t particulary want to be trendy, but more important than that is that I kind of think I need to stop looking so much like an awkward teenager. Because while in many respects I am STILL an awkward teenager — hell, I might be more awkward than ever! — I sort of have a job and responsibilities and such. For the first time in my life I regularly get to use the term “I have a meeting to get to!” and “How is that project coming along”. Hell, I could even start using words like ’synergy’ and ‘paradigm’ and phrases like “Touch Base!” and they wouldn’t be out of place.

So it sort of dawns on me, in the midst of all of that: I’m going to be an adult soon. Or even more concerning, maybe I already AM an adult and I have not realized it yet. Maybe I’ve been an adult for years! And I don’t know. Maybe you haven’t hit that wall yet. But I have, I think. And it’s scary.

So I’ve been buying stuff. Becuase I figure if I buy nicer clothes I will be better able to fool people. “You look very nice today, Mr. Elliott!” they’ll say, and all the while I’ll be thinking “After work I am going to buy that Giant Galactus!”

I could play guitar and rope a steer before I could even stand

That’s a weird feeling, isn’t it? I used to think it was unique to myself, but I’ve talked to a number of people so I think it’s safe to say it’s nearly universal. You find yourself thinking that you’re just fooling people. And that one day they’ll find out you’re not as talented or smart or as hard-working as they THINK you are. And it’ll just be like a moment where they walk into your office and say “HEY! Your work is SUBSTANDARD!” and you won’t be disappointed or anything. You’ll be kind of relieved. You’ll just think “Uh oh, you got me!” And they’ll laugh and you’ll laugh and maybe balloons will fall from the ceiling.

But who knows, really. I’m less worried about that now that I have shirts with lots of buttons. Some of them even have a little pocket on the chest. Sometimes I’ll keep a pen in there. I think that’s a great way to make it look like you fit in. If anyone needs a pen, you can be right there. “Here’s a pen,” you can say. In this way you will make yourself seem useful.

Coming Soon to graphicmatt

I’ve been a bit light on updates lately. This will probably continue for the rest of the summer because, as you can tell, I am very busy what with my freewheeling shirt-buying- and DVD-pirating-filled lifestyle. I’ve also purhsed a book that lists a bunch of Canadian publishers and writing contests so I am in more of a content-editing mode than a content-producing mode. It’s all part of my ongoing quest to be the Canadian Dave Eggers. That’s right: one day it’ll be MY face on Rory Gilmore’s wall.

It would actually help me out if you’d take a minute to hit the “fiction” button up at the top there and scan through the entries. If there are any stories on this site that have struck you as particularly good or worthy of a wider audience, let me know. I will take all comments right to heart!

All that said, there is still reason to keep visiting this site. In the next 50 editions of The Best Things, you’ll see such things as:

• Stories! Both kinds! There will be the ones that people like and — as a bonus — the ones that people don’t! I can go from writing a crowd-pleasing weeper that lovingly paints a picture of loneliness and loss to a weird poorly-paced lyrical mishmash about wandering through a non-descript locale thinking about imagery that never really comes together in any satisfying way. There will be a story called “Attacked” posted in a couple of weeks, I think. It is about a town that has been attacked by a giant monster. Maybe a Giant Galactus.
• Rambling blog-style updates! Like this one! Except my random blog-style updates are UNIQUE in that they all carry thematical elements that tie everything together. This week’s thematic element is a Giant Galactus!
• That sort of faux-enthusiastic humour peppered with bizzare references to early-90s Canadian popular culture that don’t inspire laughs as much as they inspire that “Hey, I remember that! That was lame” reaction that I love so much.
• Some guest columns! I liked having a guest writer for TBT #31 when I was in Cuba, so I will likely recruit someone else to do another guest column. Maybe if something terrible happens to me! Like if my legs are sucked into a wheat thresher. Or if I go on vacation again.
• Artwork! I would like to get people to draw something for me. People like pictures better than words. There will be a drawn TBT one week and it will be neat.
• The Top 10 Best Degrassi characters! Haha. Or Not. That was a ridiculous idea!
• Dancing until the night is done.

And that’s the week. Would you believe I went into this column having no idea what I was going to write about? I think I covered about a million words! And if you’ve read it all I have to tell you that you are one of my best friends in the whole world.

Never stuck around long enough for a One Night Stand,
Matt