So for the first time, I’ll be participating in ye age ol’ tradition of growing hideous (glorious) facial hair in an attempt to raise money for Prostate Cancer Canada.

My goal is to raise $1000 this month for Movember Canada. I figure I have at least 100 friends who are capable of parting with ten of their hard earned dollars to help me reach that. 

I have joined the Molicious team with a few friends who helped raise nearly $6000 last year. I plan to help them surpass that in 2011. I will also be resurrecting my oft neglected blog to keep people informed of my progress, and also my general rejection from society due to my temporary lip warmer. 

You can go here to make a donation to myself. 

Movember Canada contributed 22.3 million dollars to cancer research last year, and the expectation is even higher this year. They are a not for profit registered charity, and 86% of funds go directly to Prostate Cancer Canada programs, and another 10% goes directly to additional fundraising efforts. 2% goes to educational efforts for men’s health, while the last 2% is used for administrative costs. 98% of the money raised is used directly on prostate cancer research and educational awareness. 

So please take five minutes, and help me give purpose to the astoundingly ugly facade I’ll be forced to face the world with for the coming 30 days. 

Again, here to donate.

This is me clean shaven for the first time in years.

How I imagine I’ll look on the 30th

What I probably will actually look like

TL;DR: Dale will be disguising himself as a prepubescent teenager for the next month to get some much needed down time from the hoards of paparazzi obsessed with his blog stalking him for nip slips. 

Donate here. Or here… whichever is easier. You know what… just click here.

By the way, gentleman, click here for additional nude photos of Scarlett Johansson, Blake Lively, and Natalie Portman having a pillow fight. 

Ladies, this will bring you to George Clooney jumping a jet ski through a ring of fire while butt naked to Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar On Me.

Are you fucking kidding me? That’s exactly what went through my head two minutes into the final episode. It is so tough to even begin this blog because the amount of ridiculous shit that went down in the Entourage series finale was nearly incomprehensible. To say it seemed to have been written by a three year old would be an insult to our culture’s youth… a group I feel is already retarded anyway. The degradation of quality that this show took is actually incredible to me. 

The first four seasons were quality television. The next two took a dive. The last two never surfaced from that dive and have shown signs of incurable brain trauma as a result. It is baffling to me that a show centered around the exploits of a rising Hollywood star, his entourage of hometown friends and family, and his high powered eccentric agent could in the end wind up essentially not having anything to do with the entertainment industry. Do you remember the first four seasons? Queen’s Boulevard, Aquaman, and Medellin. You got to see the heart of the show. The whole series is based off the success of Vincent Chase’s career. All of the toys, the money, the jobs, the women, the connections, and the parties are based off this very essential aspect of the story. Even Ari Gold, the furthest removed beneficiary from Vince’s success, admits that Vince was his greatest discovery. Do you see where I’m going with this? By the end of the series, and especially in the last two seasons, Vince’s career isn’t even relevant. Well, let me rephrase that. It’s extremely relevant, but it’s largely ignored. 

This is where the series became one of the laziest things written for television. Instead of showing the audience anything, they decided to just take it for granted that everyone would believe them. Instead of showing us Vince’s work, they just started telling us his career was going fantastic. By the end of the series I didn’t even believe them. The last things I saw Vincent Chase do in the show were Medellin, which was apparently worse than being a diabetic child on Hallowe’en, Smoke Jumpers, which if I recall correctly he got fired from, and fifteen pounds of blow while publicly fucking a porn star. Then mysteriously, in season eight, Vince emerges from rehab, and, so I’m told, his career is sparkling…

Wait, what the fuck just happened? There appears to be a gaping hole in the story here. Could they really have done a more slap dash final season? I suppose it’s a little fitting that the final episode works like a bucket list of resolutions the writers felt needed closure, because that’s how the season eight story’s entire arc appears to any remotely critical viewer. The final two episodes were half funny, in a B-rated sense, and half insulting to our collective intelligence. This is how I picture the story skeleton must have looked for the writing team.

Character - Problem - Solution

Turtle - Not Enough Money - Vince Secretly Has His Money

Eric - Ex Girlfriend Pregers - Get’s Over It, Flies Around World Romantically

Johnny - Show Cancelling - Show Doesn’t Cancel

Vince - Womanizer - Married (Within 24 Hours)

Ari - Divorce - Not Divorce

BOOM! Closure.

It doesn’t matter if the solutions make sense. Just because that girl didn’t want to date Vince, had the first impression that he was a misogynistic douche bag, and was apparently extremely educated and successful herself, doesn’t mean she’s not a fucking moron that could decide to get married 24 hours after her first date. Right? RIGHT!?

It doesn’t matter that Eric revenge fucked Sloans ex-step mother. She’d get over it a week later. Right? RIGHT!?

It doesn’t matter that Johnny’s Bananas didn’t actually look funny or remotely good. The network would still cave to his demands for more money before the show has even aired. Right? RIGHT!?

No. Nearly every solution and piece of closure offered by the show follows the same ridiculous modus operandi employed by the final seasons. Tell the audience what to believe, don’t actually make them believe it. It’s funny to consider The Sopranos ending. The infamy of their cut to black. The amount of outcry it received from fans is ridiculous. That is the single greatest series finale ever made. Fans weren’t spoon fed their ending. They weren’t told outright in a formulaic method how the story ends. They weren’t pandered to.

Oh, the movie never ends 
It goes on and on and on and on

That’s realism. There’s no way to end a story because no matter what, the viewer will always question what happens next. That’s life in general and it goes on with or without you. The end is never really the end. So trying to tie every loose end up is just a hilarious waste of time.  Where is the artistry in that? Has the opportunity to finish this Hollywood story with the irony of a totally non-Hollywood ending been wasted? I think so.

TL;DR: The band Journey knows more about the principles of quality story telling than the writers of Entourage.

I’m With You is one of the best additions to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ body of work. This is about the last thing I would have foreseen writing when I had heard that they were again going to be releasing a Fruscianteless album. To be plainly honest, I think John Frusciante is one of the greatest guitarists of our generation, and is probably my favourite. For me it was hard to anticipate the new album without him with anything but foreboding. Perhaps it’s because of this that I’m so utterly satisfied with what they’ve released, but I think it’s gone beyond that. This isn’t just a case of minimalist expectations being exceeded. This is a legitimately superb Chili Peppers album by any standards. I never expected to say this, but I would place this album as the best thing they’ve written since Californication. Stadium Arcadium is good… but I have my issues with it. In all seriousness, very few bands can pull off a double album, and honestly they don’t really have to. I don’t need thirty songs. I would be happier with the top fifteen. The Peppers have a bit of range to their music, but not enough for me to want to listen to them for two hours. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is probably one of the only double albums I can think of that was actually necessary. The Pumpkins were a different band than the Peppers though. They had a range to their sound that bordered on ridiculous. The same band wrote 1979, Fuck You (An Ode to No One), and Tonight Tonight… and put them on the same album. Without that musical diversity though, an album can become tired if it’s too long. The Peppers have two sounds… fast and slow. It’s not a bad thing. It’s normal. 

I had originally expected to be disappointed with the album unless the Peppers had managed to replace John with someone equally as talented and unique, but I’m surprised to say that I think it’s because they didn’t that this album is such a success. Their new guitarist Josh Klinghoffer is messy. Frusciante was one of the tightest, most precise, and cleanest sounding musicians out there. Just listen to Under the Bridge, or Snow, or Scar Tissue (or essentially anything else the band released before I’m With You) and you can hear that there’s never a note that isn’t perfectly timed. Everything is clean. There’s never an accidental string hit, a vibration left too long, or a dead string anywhere there shouldn’t be. Frusciante was comparable to a photo realist painter with his guitar. Klinghoffer would be an Impressionist. This isn’t an insult by the way. It’s a stylistic difference. Klinghoffer probably doesn’t aim to play with the same pristine precision. That’s not his sound, and it’s not because of a lack of skill. The greatest guitarist of all time was a sloppy guitarist… I’ll let you figure that one out on your own. What makes it surprising that he fits so well, however, is that the Chili Peppers as a band has always been a very clean band. Chad Smith is a surprisingly well regarded drummer in drum circles (bad pun is bad), Kiedis is known for his fast rap like singing style that is choppy but enunciated, and Flea is fucking Flea. 

Speaking of Flea, this is why this album is so good. If I had to guess, I would say that the absence of Frusciante on the album has left it open for every song to be built around his talents as opposed to him normally playing behind the guitar riffs. It almost seems that I’m With You is Flea’s baby. About seventy five percent or more of the album is lead by him and Klinghoffer clearly writing a lot of his music to fit with what Flea is doing. Everyone has always known that despite being in the background usually, Flea was probably the most technically talented member of the band, and it’s mostly because of his ability to shine despite being in the shadows musically. If you want an example of what I’m talking about, go to the 3:30 mark of Love Rollercoaster and listen to the faint (funky as fuck) solo Flea busts out that probably about half of you never even noticed was there, but will probably become the reason you listen to the song from now on. 

So let me get to the actual album of I’m With You. The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie is probably among my least favourite of the new songs, despite it being the single, and despite it being an alright Chili Peppers song regardless. This is generally the mark of a good CD. The single is the song that they expect everyone to like. Anything that you will truly love generally won’t be something that has a mass appeal associated with it. Think about your favourite song by your favourite band. Is it one of their singles? I doubt it. (After typing this, I started thinking of the Chili Peppers and realized that everything off of Blood Sex Sugar Magik, and Californication single wise is incredible… but I swear it works for pretty much any other band) But I digress, as usual. 

The first song you’ll hear will be Monarchy of Roses. It sets the tone perfectly. Jamming drums and bass, sloppy guitar, and then kicks in with a classic Chili Peppers chorus with Flea taking the lead. 

Factory of Faith is next. This feels like old Peppers. Kiedis is right on top of his classic vocal style, and Flea’s bass line is nice and funksational. I’m going to need to describe Flea a lot I’ve realized, and have decided I’m going to need to think of different variations of funky to keep myself from sounding repetitive. The bridge of this song is awesome. The transition back into the chorus feels good. In fact the transitions are generally done in very interesting ways throughout the album. They also give Klinghoffer his opportunity to break out a little at the end and he has a really nice and terrifunk (that’s terrific, not terrible) solo. 

Next is probably my favourite song currently. Brendan’s Death Song. They slow it down, and Kiedis actually sounds fairly un-Kiedis-ish on this one, and it’s not a bad thing. His melody is just awesome. This would be a perfect song to finish off a concert with, and I fully intend on seeing them for their tour, and I fully expect them to do so.

Ethiopia is pretty standard. After that is Annie Wants a Baby which is slowed down Peppers once again. I love the ending… but I can’t put my finger on why. It just works nicely. 

Look around comes after and it’s a solid high energy song. You have a few good, not great, by no mean bad, songs next (I should note that Goodbye Hooray is funking good - awesome pun is awesome) until you get to Happiness Loves Company. It’s not often you hear a piano in a Peppers song, but you will here, a few times actually throughout the end of the CD.

I think this is where I started to notice how much the band has matured. Their sounds has clearly mellowed, but it’s aged nicely. They don’t sound like a bunch of old men trying to be twenty year old rock stars. They know what they do well, and they execute it, but aren’t stuck in a repetitive cookie cutter sound. This isn’t just an album aimed to please fans by playing it safe and sticking to basics. They’ve adjusted parts of their sound in places like any band should do, but also have retained that very distinct Chili Peppers sound that so many people want to hear from them. I don’t think there will be many fans disappointed with what they get when they listen to it today. It’s not Blood Sex, and it’s not Californication, but it’s unfair to judge a band based on that standard. Both of those albums were generally agreed to be among the best of their generation. If you can listen to I’m With You without comparing it to the band’s greatest success, I’m sure you’re going to be pleasantly surprised by what you receive. Enjoy.  

Rock on boys.

Chapter IV - Nerds Don’t Steal

So there I was. Sitting in that small room. Waiting for Constable Fenton to make his appearance. Waiting to explain to Conso Fento that I am no hardened criminal, just a gigantic nerd. I picture us laughing about it, and then me going on my way, acing my exam back in London later that afternoon, then accepting my medal for awesomeness from Hazel McCallion in apology for ever suspecting me of any nefarious activity. 

In steps Fen to the Ton. My day dream subsides. He lays down a picture of me on that fateful night at Blockbuster, stupid hat and lost expression fully intact. He explains to me that the evidence against me is rather substantial, but they’re not after me. They want who I’m working with. They can see I’m only the ‘spotter’ for the larger group of Blockbuster Burglars prowling southern Ontario. (Could I really make this up?) The security footage is apparently convincing, but I’m not allowed to see it. This may wind up being my one regret. I’m sure I looked twice as stupid as I remember feeling walking around that store for half an hour, and I would have liked to witness it. All I’m left with are the still images. 

Image one: It’s me, staring at a certain group of movies, adjusting my hat.

Image two: It’s me, staring at a different group of movies, adjusting my hat.

Image three: It’s me, talking to the manager. 

What I don’t get to see is the in between stills from the footage. It goes something like this according to The Fent.

Image one: It’s me, staring at a certain group of movies, signalling my allies by ever so slightly tilting my hat with our covert “come steal this shit” signal.

Guy 1 comes along and grabs a couple movies from the section I just left and puts them under his shirt. 

Image two: It’s me, staring at a different group of movies, signalling my allies by ever so slightly adjusting my hat with our covert “hey look! shit to steal! right here” signal.

Guy 2 comes along and grabs a couple movies from the section I just left and puts them under his shirt. 

Image three: It’s me, strategically distracting the manager as the rest of my crime syndicate is casually fleeing the scene of our crime. 

Both Guy 1 and 2 sneak the movies out. Our mission is a success… or so we thought.

I nervously laugh. I explain to the Ton of Fen that this is all a bemusing misunderstanding. I explain the story. I explain how I’m a nerd who likes Harry Potter. I explain how it’s all coincidence that I’m in those specific locations of the store at that seemingly perfect timing. I explain to him that nerds don’t steal. I wait for our friendly chuckle and prepare my medal acceptance speech. No laugh comes. 

Just something akin to this. Half: does this dipshit really expect me to believe that? Half: Aren’t you a little old for Harry Potter?

After this, they let me go. I don’t know if they ever believed my ridiculous tale. I don’t really care… because they didn’t have any hard evidence against me. Since then we’ve been much more careful. I wear prosthetics that drastically alter my appearance. We never hit the same store more than once a month. And finally, our goal has been achieved. We finally put Blockbuster out of business by way of stealing from their vast collection of classic cinema, and in turn bankrupting them. Viva La Revolution.  

TL;DR: I became infatuated with the tale of Harry Potter, went to rent it from Blockbuster, couldn’t find it until I saw it in the children’s section like twenty minutes later because I was too embarrassed to ask, got called by the police months later, and was accused of spotting for a group of individuals robbing Blockbusters all over Ontario all because of a fucking hat.

Chapter III - Searching the Shelves of Blockbuster

My initial foray into the world of Harry Potter was not as unabashed as it has become. The first run ins with the publicity of my fandom were taken tentatively. I wasn’t sure if I was a weird and creepy adult male who would stand out, or if I was part of a rather large group of people that really enjoyed the books despite petty factors such as age. The question has been answered rather obviously as you begin to realize that almost half of the population of the Western world has read through the series with near universal appeal. I’m no longer ashamed. I worried I was a man in a child’s world, but fuck it. The books are awesome. Deal with it.

However, this is now, and the story takes place then. I moseyed my way into the local Blockbuster one weekend I was home from school with the intention to take a night off and finally partake in the viewing of my first Harry Potter movie. Almost immediately, I was faced with a problem. If you remember Blockbuster (LOL, learn to adapt to market conditions) you’ll remember they had ‘New Releases’ and then a few other divisions for their older movies. Comedy, Drama, and Action. As you can probably guess, Harry Potter would be difficult to place into any of these categories. Where to start, I asked myself. So for the next twenty minutes I creepily perused the aisles with no luck whatsoever. I was, as I’ve stated, still embarrassed to be looking for Harry Potter at the time and wasn’t about to ask the manager about locating it for me. Now this might seem like a weird aside, but I was wearing a hat. It seems like a pointless detail, but this may have been the defining factor in my tall tale.

Finally, after searching and searching, I eventually noticed another section. Unfortunately, this section was labeled Children. Fucking awesome. I’m already feeling totally emasculated renting Harry Potter, and now these assholes need to throw salt in the wound and make me stand in the children’s section. Fuck you Blockbuster. This is why you drove your business into the ground. All those bashful Potter fans just couldn’t face renting out of the children’s section and you lost the billions of dollars in revenue it would have produced. If they were smart, they would have created a new section titled AWESOME and put Harry Potter there. Other titles would include: Hard to Kill, Under Siege, Commando, Total Recall, Predator, Running Man, the original Star Wars trilogy (non-remastered), The Mighty Ducks trilogy, Space Jam, anything Quentin Tarantino has ever looked at, and Pumping Iron. 

Anyway, I realize now, while retelling the story, how absolutely moronically stupid I was. I should have walked straight up to the manager and just said, “Bitch, get me some Harry Potter up in this heezy, and I’ll be on my way.” Instead, I ran this half an hour long marathon of locating my Pandora’s Box. Did I mention I didn’t look in the children’s section? I just made swift passes trying to glimpse my target multiple times until I finally spotted it. And the kicker is that after I finally found it, I went up the manager anyway seeing if they had a previously viewed copy! The stupidity I exhibited on this day still shocks me, and I no doubt have lost nearly everyone’s respect by now. 

Tomorrow, the final Chapter. Find out how this seemingly innocent (but admittedly stupid) event led to my near arrest.