Dave Kellam

It was a long long weekend. I made it to the Warped Tour, but didn’t end up getting in until after three… so we missed a couple of bands like The Used and Thrice. There was also a downpour, so it turned everything into a nice big wet muddy mess. The sky cleared up later in the afternoon, but everything was till soaked. Some of the bands I got to see were: Poison the Well, Mad Caddies, Bigwig, Pennywise, Dropkick Murphy’s and Rancid.

My runaway favourite for the show was Letter Kills; they played on a tiny stage hidden within the merch booths. The band put on a great live performance and the lead singer has an amazing stage presence, he was swinging off the bars of the tent and came into the crowd, singing into people faces, crawling along and diving onto the crowd, singing the entire time. He sold the band’s cd after the show and personally thanked everyone for buying it and showing up. It was pretty wild. Their website is pretty cool looking too, props on design.

Alanah and I stuck around in downtown Toronto for a bit before catching a mid-afternoon train back to Kingston. I picked up a couple used albums (Pixies, Slaves on Dope, Harvey Danger) and t-shirts to go along with the samplers and stickers that I picked up from the booths (I didn’t spend much time in the pits, it felt like I had elves inside me punching me stomach). We had some lunch and vowed not to drop any more cash with the devil piece of plastic.

There were massive quantities of water pouring out of the sky last night, so I opted not to venture into the outside world. Watched a few movies and some episodes of Invader Zim, a cartoon that’s hit or miss. It has the whole alien invaders thing going on, so it’s targeted at the geeks and dorks among us. The show isn’t limited to that, when it’s on, it’s on. The best character is a really stupid but incredibly funny little robot called GIR. The first episode is a must, he has some choice lines and bits.

I didn’t feel much like updating this week; it’s been a lot of camp and chilling. I’m gonna head to the Vans Warped Tour in Toronto tomorrow, it should be a good time. I’m not as into the punk scene as i used to be, but i recognize some of the bands. Wheeee, long weekend!

A recently conducted survey has found that a majority of Americans believe Eminem is more truthful than President Bush.

Questions relating to trust were posed to 1,016 Americans, and 53 per cent of those found the rapper’s rhymes more credible and believable than Bush’s speeches.

Somehow it doesn’t surprise me. His lyrics are socially concious and on the mark, and his tracks have some pretty good beats. I find his voice to be annoying though and have trouble listening to his work for any extended length of time. The first hiphop album that I bought was Enter the 36 Chambers, so to me, hiphop will always sound like a bunch of angry black guys. That album is raw and classic, Eminem just doesn’t do it for me.

I would like to put forth a proposal that would see the site of the upcoming SARS relief concert incorporated as a city, making it one of the largest urban centres in Canada. By relatively current size estimates, the city that SARS built will probably end up somewhere around 10th in the country.

I found this crazy explanation of the activity I did with the kids this afternoon. Basically, we made bouncy balls with sodium silicate and ethanol; didnt go into that much background. That article has some choice instructions though:

Step 10: Wearing plastic gloves, place the polymer between the palms of your hands and gently rotate until a spherical ball that no longer crumbles is formed. BE PATIENT – discover a technique. Moisten the ball occasionally by holding it in a small stream of water from the faucet.

Step 11: Bounce your ball (squeeze it, stretch it, step on it – find out about it!). Observe and compare the properties of your ball to the properties of ethyl alcohol and sodium silicate.

Step 12: Compare your ball with those of the other members of the class. How many properties can you compare? (size, height of bounce, etc)

I’m either too immature to me teaching or spending a lot of time with high school kids has affected me. Forget that, somebody had to have had a sense of humour when they wrote that thing. I spent two or three hours making those bloody balls.