I have a meeting with Gisele Baxter on Friday at the UBC campus, which means I'll be heading to the hostel after I get off the plane and getting right back on a bus. Last night I read an article Baxter wrote a little over a year ago for UBC Reports, in which she talks about modern communication and privacy. If you're anything like me, you read the word "privacy" and switch off because, hey, you're not doing anything wrong, right? And the powers that be probably don't notice you. You blend in nice and inconspicuously, to the point where you don't worry about what people find out about you. Check this out:

E-mail has become so common that I wonder what the collected correspondence of notables will resemble by the end of this century. Social networking systems such as LiveJournal or MySpace enable easy development of interactive multimedia sites to be shared with existing friends and promoted to attract new ones. A cellphone now allows you to chat while text-messaging while checking email while taking a picture while listening to downloaded music. Especially but not only among young people this is changing the nature, even the syntax of communication, and challenging notions of privacy.

We may actually have come to fear privacy as too much like loneliness. YouTube is full of webcam-recorded confessions that before would have been consigned to a diary kept safely hidden. Do we dare to say something without at least the chance of an audience? With all the instantaneous communication at our disposal, have we come to dread not having a lengthy "friend list?” And what does this contact amount to: conversation in the traditional sense, or snippets of information and links to homemade videos and reports of celebrity transgressions?

Now, I bolded that one line because I've never looked at privacy that way before, and it makes perfect sense to me to think of it as a kind of loneliness. Everyday we experience unknown people becoming known in exchange for their privacy. A person creates a confessional video blog one day and it's viewed by thousands of people the next because of some meme within it that the general population identifies with. That person becomes known to the world. Meanwhile, others witness this and due to the frequency with which it happens grow to expect that it will happen to them. "Privacy," therefore, becomes indicative of being unrecognizable to the world, and loneliness sets in. Most people are still generally just another face in a sea of faces, of course, but the way the Internet works makes us think otherwise.

I found out another interesting piece of information yesterday. If you want to book Kevin Smith for a Q&A appearance, you'd best be prepared to have in excess of $60,000 to pay for it.

I spent a few hours in Pratt library yesterday hitting my quota of pages for next week's biography presentation. It's coming along rather nicely. I'll get another four pages done today and that should about finish it up.

When I got home I watched the James Cameron commentary track for Titanic. I don't know why I'm getting such a huge kick out of that movie lately. It has been one of my favorites for years. It makes me want to work in the movie-making industry, and that's all I need - another path to choose from.

I've started taking Cold-FX for this cough, based on a recommendation from Kevin Smith in a diary entry he wrote in My Boring-Ass Life. Apparently it's the cold medicine Canadian swear by. It's a three-day process (9 pills the first day, 6 on the second and 3 on the third), so it's just a matter of popping them and waiting.

Bibliography went down in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library today, an intimidating, dimly-lit, closely-monitored tower that forms the head of the Robarts peacock, where we were given a look at incredibly old books and scrolls. I don't find any of it THAT interesting, but it's unequivocally neat to see anything that's been around for such a long time. I found out that the guys in my group for the annotation exercise both play bass, and one of them plays in the band Malfunktion (it seems as though everyone I've met at U of T is in a band). They were talking equipment and I couldn't even remember what make of bass I own (it's a vintage 'M' series Stagg). Honestly, I've never been interested in that side of playing an instrument. I'm much more concerned with the theatrics of any kind of performance than the specificity of the technical side. Guess that doesn't make me much of a musician. I never claimed to be.

After class I went by Media Commons to find out if I could transfer my VHS copy of Touch of Evil to DVD, and they referred me to the media centre after much hmming and hawing and not agreeing with the principle of what I want to do. Right. I'll figure out a way. I've got a torrent downloading very slowly that may provide me with the footage I need. My goal for my final project is to make comparison clips of the previous cut and the re-edit done by Murch to show exactly what changes were made and how dramatic they are. Could be great if I can pull it off.

When I got home I watched The Truman Show and lounged around being unproductive. I listened to a very good SModcast about Bryan Johnson's chemical imbalance and anxiety - a lot of the stuff he said rang true both of the way I act and the way people I've known have acted. It's beyond interesting to me to hear three intelligent guys sit around talking about that sort of subject matter, especially when one of the guys is Kevin Smith. I know I've mentioned the show before. If you're interested in checking it out, go here.

A date has been set for the new X-Files movie: July 25th of next year. I'm going to line up on Monday.

I started reading "Notes from the Hyena's Belly: An Ethiopian Boyhood" by Nega Mezlekia and I'm about 50 pages in, so I suppose today wasn't completely unproductive. I've made a schedule for myself that stretches into next week and lines up what I want/need to accomplish, starting tomorrow. Here's to hoping I can keep up.

It's been awhile since I've stayed up late for the sole purpose of listening to music. The blood rushes in a slightly different way at this time of day.

Of course, this happened because I had a hankering to watch a couple episodes of Undergrads, which brought me back to my life five years ago. A few songs filled in the blanks of old narratives. If I really wanted to get deep into it, I'd read some old journal entries. But I don't. I just want skim the surface of memory and apply it to the present in positive and useful ways. Seems rather unlike the person I was five years ago.

I read a lot about Marlene Dietrich today, and watched her in The Devil is a Woman. She bent the minds of so many men in half, but she seemed rather lonely and affected. I started designing a website that I'm going to use for my presentation that will talk about her films with von Sternberg, her USO tours, the Dietrich persona and her role in Touch of Evil. I miss creating websites. Putting jigsaw pieces into place.

I need to hit Value Village and pick up some new duds. I'll try and do that tomorrow if I can wake up early enough.

Lately I've been reading Kevin Smith's My Boring Ass Life before I hit the sack. It makes for great bedtime reading. I listened to SModcast today and he spent the hour talking about how his post-high school/pre-film career years were the best of his life. I wonder what I'll consider the best years of my life to be when I'm pushing 40. I don't think I've had them yet, and they seem to keep getting better.

The Hives were exactly what I thought they'd be like - loud, energetic and full of themselves. A really entertaining show at a great price. It was nice to sit down with Matt and have a beer, too. We ate at an Italian place with a pretty extensive beer menu called Caffe Volo. Across the street was a top-floor dance studio and I could periodically see the heads and shoulders of dancers moving back and forth in front of the window.

Matt thinks he's getting old because his hearing is bad and he can't mosh anymore. I guess there does come a time when you have to content yourself with some applause, a few woos and a little head-bobbing. I didn't throw myself around a lot tonight, but I could have. Perhaps I should test my mosh pit endurance every three years or so just to make sure I'm still able.

Quite the contrast to the opera, but still a lot of fun.

Here's something funny:



I'm in this clip from about 5:40-5:25, standing to the right of the guy asking Kevin Smith what type of music he likes. I guess you can take that 15 seconds off my fifteen minutes.

Today was tiring, but it was a perfect example that every day has the potential to be something you least expect.

After finally rolling out of bed at around 10:30, I showered and got my shit together, determined to start tackling this passport business. I went downtown and found the office building. I went to the little camera shop on the ground floor and had my picture taken. I had to put baby powder on my forehead because there was too much of a glare (I'm that white). After positioning me like a Whose Line Is It Anyway? actor the photographer plucked at my hair - I had gelled it, and since my curls are a "defining feature" he had to accentuate them for the shot. The photographer may have simply been acting coy underneath that Russian accent and gruff exterior.

The prints were ready in half an hour. I look like a Sears catalogue model; one of my shoulders is hunched and turned slightly towards the camera as if to say "I was about to leave the room, but I was too captivated by your beauty, gorgeous creature whom I've just met." There's one errant curl sticking straight up off my head. I'm worried they'll be rejected because of the angle of my one shoulder. I've heard the passport office is extremely finicky about the photos.

I didn't find out for sure. I went to the office and told them I didn't have a lieu of guarantor form. They sent me to an employee who told me that starting Monday, anyone with a passport who's known me for two years is qualified to be my guarantor. If I wait until Monday, I can get Jay to fill in his info on the application and not have to pay a lawyer for it.

I headed over to the Eaton's Center, where I picked up a camera case, blank CDs, some envelopes, and the new Foo Fighters record. I passed by Indigo and noticed that Kevin Smith was doing a signing for his new book "My Boring-ass Life" at 7.

Usually when I become privy to such information, I try my best to disregard it. It doesn't matter what it is. I'm not a very spontaneous guy because I think about things too much. When I wake up in the morning (or early afternoon) I have or create a general idea of how my day is going to go. I'll usually make decisions later on in the day, but they're either very small or decisions I see coming on the basis of what I know I'll be up to. If I'm forced into doing something that I have little control over, or if my plans drastically change, I worry that I'll be very uncomfortable with the results. It's easier to stay at home and hide and eat and watch TV, and that way I know exactly what I'm in for. When I lived in the west end of Ottawa, I'd rarely go downtown to hang out because the bus ride was too long, or I would worry that I wouldn't have anyone to talk to, or that no one would pay me any attention, or that a show would suck and I'd have a miserable night and still end up having to get on yet another bus for a half-hour return trip home. When I lived downtown things were a bit different because I could make it home on foot from pretty much anywhere I hung out. I also felt more secure having people around me, being able to provide them with a place to gather. I'm a born facilitator; I don't respond well to being told what to do in social situations.

I'm a huge fan of Kevin Smith. Massive. And when I see an advertisement for an appearance he's making, a part of me thinks I'm expected to see him, as if it's natural. Now, if I were given a few days notice, I'd probably be all over it, and start making plans to attend. But having it thrown in my lap like that, I constrict. My immediate thought is "I'm not going to go. It won't be what I expect. I'll never be able to make an impression on him." As if that's really the point behind meeting someone you admire.

I had more time than I originally wagered I'd have, so I went to get my health card renewed. After waiting for about a half an hour I handed over my forms and received a bit of a lecture from the employee about my tardiness in obtaining a new card. I told him it wouldn't happen again, no sir. From now on I'll be punctual Pete.

After I took care of the health card business, I finally decided, fuck it. I'll go see Kevin Smith. I've seen him speak in person, but I've never met the dude. If I don't do it, I'll regret it. That's the feeling I wish I could carry around with me at all times - if I don't do it, I'll regret it. I have to loosen that spring inside me more often. So I marched back to Indigo (after putting a muffin and chocolate milk in my belly; one can't change their day's fate on an empty stomach). It was around 3:30 by this point, and there didn't seem to be a lineup, so I browsed for about half an hour. By then a line had started winding its way through the cooking and craft sections, so I bought a copy of the book and joined the queue. I spent three and a half hours in that line, reading Kevin's book, thinking about what I should say to him, shifting my weight from foot to foot, beating sensation back into my legs. Finally, at around 7:15, Kevin came out and delivered a short Q&A session. He was tired and had been up since 6 AM doing press work, and really wanted to try and get to as many people as possible by 9 PM. The line started moving.

By this point I had already decided what I was going to say. I was thinking of the biggest Kevin Smith fans out of everyone I know, and it hit me: my brother. His birthday is next week. It would be cool to get him a signed book, but I couldn't leave the line. So I called home to see if he was there. He was at a friend's, so I told my dad to have him call me back if he arrived home within the hour. He returned my call, and I told him to keep by his phone. When there were about three people in line ahead of me, I dialed him up. I climbed onto the stage, gave Kevin a "Hello Sir!", and handed him the book. I asked him if he'd mind wishing my brother a happy birthday. He said sure and took my phone. He said hello, told him happy birthday and that he'd talk to him longer if he could. In my excitement I said, "Say you're Kevin Smith!" and he said, "I think he knows." He returned my phone and I thanked him, patted him on the shoulder and walked away.

I still had my brother on the line. I asked, "Did you know who that was?" He said that he didn't. I told him it was Kevin Smith and he freaked. He laughed in a way I've never heard him laugh before. He told me that if he could do anything for me, to ask away. I don't get to do many cool things for my brother. We're not as close as we could be. But I knew he'd get a righteous kick out of that.

I came home, absolutely exhausted after waiting all that time, and crashed on the couch to watch some X-Files and listen to some SModcast. Sam emailed me, telling me I'd have his reference letter tomorrow.

Not entirely a bad day, simply because it was so unexpected. I can't be afraid of the things I can't foresee. I have to remember how positive the out-of-the-blue can feel.