Neel Parikh

…. is hopefully the final nail in the coffin. Yep, that’s right folks, there’s no a straight to DVD Prison Break Movie.  When Prison Break first went on the air (a few agonizing years ago), I was a fan. I looked forward to Monday nights to see what kind of clever trickery Michael Scofield was up to. But with contingency plan after contingency plan, and being convinced that a run of the mill engineer was a combination electronics specialist, plumbing specialist, structure specialist, network specialist, weapons specialist, and bulletproof master of disguise (that’s right, if you’re on the top 10 most wanted, all you need to do is wear a hat and nobody will be the wiser*), I decided to throw in the towel. What a horrible horrible show. And what kills me is that even after I decided to throw in the towel, I still kept watching. I was pot committed, I couldn’t accept the sunken cost of the countless hours I spent watching a show that was in a downward spiral after the first 5 episodes. So that, I finished the series.

Now if you haven’t already watched the finale that aired a few months ago, don’t. Consider yourself lucky, and go on with your life knowing you’ll have an extra hour to enjoy your life. Go for a jog, climb some rocks, hug a tree, do whatever it is that makes you happy, and keep reading so I can “spoil” the ending for you. So yah, they wrap everything up neatly, but had 15 minutes of airtime left… so what do they do? they kill off the main character off screen and have a shot of everyone visiting his grave 4 years later. Horray. Fan-frikin-tastic. I figured THAT was the nail in the coffin of the show. With Michael dead, they couldn’t POSSIBLY revive the franchise. (Could they?) We will never have to (albeit voluntarily) suffer through another episode of Prison Break ever again. I was ecstatic. Until about 4 hours ago when I was driving home, listening to the radio, and heard that there’s now a Prison Break movie intended to fill the gap in the 4 years between when everything got wrapped up into a neat little package and when Michael dies of some sort of brain tumour. Hopefully its something more than their monkeys on typewriters spit out for the last 5 seasons…

“Michael, we have to get you to a hospital”…. “everything will be alright Sarah, I promise” … repeat as necessary, create cover page titled “Prison Break Script”, hit print, sell to Fox. Speaking which apparently the character with the least dialogue in Family Guy now has his own spinoff show. I present to you, the Cleveland Show.

* If you typically wear a hat all the time anyway, not wearing a hat would probably work better. And I’ve always said, if dying your hair black** and stealing the identity of a guy named Desmondo Jose Ruiz*** worked for Harrison Ford, it can work for you.

** If your hair is already black, try a different colour.

*** If by some unfortunate circumstance, your name actually is Desm…. nevermind, you get the idea.

Ah wine gums, I forgot how good you are.

That is all.

So both of you guys who read this blog have probably noticed that I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been sick in bed for the past few days, long story short, it’s most likely strep, and man does it suck to not be able to enjoy food without excruciating pain.  On the plus side it’s given me the opportunity to assemble some “Swedish” modular furniture (made in China, no doubt). I’ve had a love an hate relationship with Ikea since I moved in to my condo. I love the fact that I can get stuff that looks decent and is cheap. I hate the fact that it’s cheap. Okay, let me elaborate on that – it’s cheaply made. It looks fantastic, until you get close and realize that it’s just laminated MDF (if you’re lucky), but more likely particle board.  For some reason, laminate is all the rage, the bee’s knees, the successor to sliced bread, and I can’t understand why… in most casts it’s a picture of real wood printed onto a friggin sticker, then stuck to the scraps of wood that are left behind on the factory floor. hooo-ray. At least I know that it’s only temporary, and that when I can afford the kinda stuff I really want, I can always sell my LACK Coffee table to some 1st year arts student so s/he’ll have more money to buy baked beans and ramen.  If you manage to not destroy your Asian-made Swedish furniture by sliding dishes across it too many times (read: three), it’s always got good resale value. On the other hand, buy a good piece of furniture, and it’ll last you forever… but you’ll never get your money back if you get sick of it.

Check out Environment Furniture – they’ve got some super-sweet stuff, and I was stoked on their Santos Coffee Table until I found out that they had more than 100% markup in Canada. I was told by the snooty saleslady that it could be mine for a paltry $1700 + taxes. yah.. right. eat me. twice. seriously. It’s nice, perhaps even 21 times nicer than the LACK. But unless they’re willing to share some of the crack that they’re smoking, I think I’ll put my drink back down on my laminated particle board and get back to watching Burn Notice.

Not much to say today except, check it out: Spirit Sentient Evolved Clothing – sweet designs, wicked material, and created by Mr. Fonceca himself.

… another tick that is, for Will Stanhope – this time it’s the 5th Ascent of the Cobra Crack. I was up there last week and got to catch the man in action taking a couple runs at it, some valiant attempts, but to no avail. Well Sonnie Trotter posted a couple days ago that Will finally sent it – so congrats to you Will! Even with fingers torn to shreds, he can still send like the best of them. It’s like watching an artist paint. ..ahem.. an artist with bloody flappers packed full of chalk.

I don’t think I’ll ever climb the world’s hardest 5.14 trad lines, or even be the
world’s fastest table boulderer, but it’s just awesome and incredibly inspiring to watch these guys do what they do best – if anything, I’ll give me that extra push to put in another session on the hangboard, and to stop worrying about falling 10 feet on some bolts… after watching a 30 foot whipper on a sketchy umbrellaed cam placement. yikes.

A couple days ago a message appeared in my Facebook inbox.  Climbers Micah Dash and Johnny Copp had gone missing from Mt. Edgar, China along with Sender Film’s Wade Johnson who was filming a new piece. Donations were being accepted to help in the Search and Rescue, and immediate there was a huge outpour of support from the community.

From Adventurefilm.org’s blog:

• At midnight last night, a notoriously impoverished local climber – and good friend of the team – showed up at search headquarters, threw his passport on the table and said that for the first time in his life he has two thousand dollars to his name, and he wants to spend it on a flight to Chengdu to be one of the first Americans on the ground to help out with the search.
• This morning at 9 AM, a guiding client of Micah’s wired $25,000 to search headquarters to make sure the search did not slow down due to a financial bog-down.
• Companies who compete with the sponsors of these athletes are paying for their own athletes with Chinese visas to get to get to China as quickly as possible.
• People have offered up the 65,000 frequent flyer miles needed on United to get to China.
• Senators have pressured the Chinese embassy to expedite visas for American search volunteers.

It’s so incredible to see a community get together under times of stress, but it saddens me to hear that the bodies of both Johnny Copp, and Wade Johnson have been found, burried by an avalanche. Blizzard conditions are hampering the search efforts, but here’s hoping for the safe return of Micah. I have never met any of them personally, but this event has resonated across the climbing community. As my own personal tribute, I’ll be throwing my copy of The Sharp End and having a drink in their honour. Rest in Peace.

The Ontario Access Coalition has recently released Interim Guidelines for Bouldering at the Glen.

I had heard about the potential access issues last year, but my first visit to Niagara Glen wasn’t until a couple weekends ago. I was absolutely blown away at the number of awesome problems and the fantastic view of the river (along with mentally kicking myself in the head for never having made the trip there before). I’m not much of a boulderer, but there’s something there for everyone – so I’m positive that The Glen will provide years of problems to work on. It looks like it’s going to be my new “goto” place for a day-trip, and I sincerely hope that others respect the new guidelines, which in my opinion are pretty much common sense.

As consumers, we’re constantly bombarded with options, and we filter those options based on criteria which were typically limited to price, quality, style, and brand. With an increased focus on social awareness, environmental practices, ethical sourcing, and a myriad of other “trendy concerns”, the criteria by which many of us make our judgments have changed. I’m all for social responsibility, but not everything is black and white.

Yah, there’s things that in my opinion are no-brainers: for example going to a store and buying a bag of chips – why would I want to then put that bag of chips in a plastic bag? It just seems, I don’t know… ignorant. Making a bit of a generalization, i’d say that i see this kind of behaviour in Americans far more often than Canadians. I’ve been to houses where people routinely eat from paper and plastic plates, drink individually bottled water, and drive Land Cruisers that will never leave paved surfaces. But I digress, the point of this post wasn’t a rant on environmentalism… I’m sure I’ll come back to that topic another time.

I few months ago, I bought an Arc’teryx jacket. I’ve always loved Arc’Teryx products, but it’s always been hard to justify the price. My own justification has always been that their products are designed and made in Canada, and have impeccable quality.  So as I’m just about ready to check out, I look at the tag, and to my amazement, it was made in China. Wtf? I ended up buying it anyway, because a) it was 50% off, b) the quality still seemed to be pretty damn good, and most importantly… c) i’m not THAT anal.  I was just somewhat shocked that a company that has always been a Canadian symbol started outsourcing their production overseas.  I eventually came across this article which somewhat explained the situation, along with a lot of customer comments. I few days later, i picked up a pretty sweet Arc’teryx chalk bucket from MEC… the tag… “Made in Philippines“. I had come to a conclusion of my own – If i could get something of similar quality for a similar (or cheaper) price, that was made in Canada, I would. But the fact is that it’s incredibly difficult to find locally made products that can rival their quality/price ratio.

For those of you who really are concerned about where their products come from, check out what MEC is doing (in addition to putting the country of origin next to every product in their catalog).  Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles is another good read.

In the mean time I’ll be enjoying my awesometastic Caco chalk bucket!