(In French, In theaters, May 2004) While it’s not true to speak of Monique “Machine Gun Molly” Sparvieri as a folk heroine, she does have a place in the small pantheon of French-Canadian criminals. Coming from the slums on post-war Montreal, her life in crime proved more acceptable than most other options, and if the film does one thing relatively well, it’s to depict the hard life she led. It helps that Céline Bonnier does such a good job portraying the title character, with all of her flaws and complicated relationships. (As usual with French-Canadian cinema, almost all supporting roles are filled with familiar faces) Unfortunately, the film isn’t as rigorous when comes the time to present a coherent story on top of its anecdotal scenes: The passage of time feels muddled, some events make sense only in retrospect and -to make things worse- a number of frustrating shortcuts are taken (such as having everyone meet repeatedly over the same stretch of The Main). The final impression is fragmented, leaving the impression of having seen a two-hour promo for Georges-Hébert Germain’s biography. While one gets that Machine-Gun Molly was a formidable woman, the film doesn’t care to spell out which kind of formidable.
High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, Rusel DeMaria & Johnny L. Wilson
McGraw Hill Osborne, 2002, 328 pages, C$24.99 tpb, ISBN 0-07-222428-2
Faithful readers of these reviews may recall my teenage fascination for video games, but they may not suspect the depth of it. Simply put, from 1983 to 1993, I knew just about everything about the subject. Blessed with ample free time and a network of like-minded friends, armed with a trusty Commodore 64 (followed by the latter succession of PCs), I devoured the magazines of the time, played games obsessively, wrote about them in the high school newspaper and basically lived a decade under the influence.
Then I discovered the Internet, went to university and, well, something had to give.
But thanks to Rusel DeMaria and Johnny L. Wilson, I now own a time capsule of the era: High Score! packs nothing less than three decades of video games in 328 gorgeously illustrated pages. Everything from Pong to the X-Box, complete with quotes from the industry’s historical figures, descriptions of games and companies and enough screenshots to make you feel as if you’re back in front of vintage games.
Roughly divided in three chronological sections (the 70s, 80s and 90s), High Score! is crammed with material, both textual and visual. The scope of the book is, admittedly, bigger than my own experience with the subject matter: It delves deep into the prehistory of electronic games (namely; arcades and pre-Atari 2600 consoles), and then goes on to do a very good job balancing computer games with the series of consoles that developed concurrently. (Not being a console fan, I could only nod in recognition at memories of my friend’s video games from Nintendos to Playstations)
The first part, “the 70s”, is the most linear of the three: Given the historical perspective and relatively uncluttered gaming landscape of the time, it’s easy for the authors to present a flowing narrative. One event clearly leads to another, copycats turn into innovators and there are so few games that they can be highlighted on a yearly basis. It’s a heroic age where personalities and individual talents are crucial.
Some of that individual heroism carries through in “The 80s”, even as the field starts to mature and define itself as an industry. Small organizations start taking on the personalities formerly held by individuals. Mentions of Epyx, Electronic Arts, Activision, SSI and others all evoke warm happy memories of seeing those logos on my plucky Commodore 64. (“Accolade Presents”… Ooh, mommy!)
Alas, the “narrative” of High Score! also starts to break down as the industry explodes in random directions. Whereas the book’s first third is linear and absorbing, it then switches to a more free-flowing approach as it tries to cover all facets of the field. Unfortunately, this leads to uncomfortable breaks; when covering a company like Sierra, for instance, there are clear differences between the King’s Quest Sierra and the Half-Life Sierra. Shovelling the entire history of the company between pages 134-143, in “The 80s”, is a jarring choice. Among many others.
Given my declining interest in computer games during the nineties, it’s somewhat ironic to read how, in the introduction to the third part of the book, the authors had a harder time pulling together the final threads. Electronic gaming has since gone mainstream, taking over pop culture as yet another entertainment option. Oh well. Unfortunately (and this will only grow worse as we move away from 2002), High Score! ends at a curious junction, barely mentioning the Playstation 2 / X-Box / Nintendo 64 platforms, as well as Grand Theft Auto and other newer landmarks of electronic gaming which, after all, always marches on.
But don’t think it’s enough to diminish my admiration for the book. High Score! and myself deserved each other. Especially noteworthy is the fantastic graphic design used to lay out the book. Every page is a thing of beauty, laid out clearly to highlight the interesting material. Screen-shots are crisp, quotes are appropriate and the material is well-written. I especially loved the profiles of specific games… especially when they matched my own favourites!
No doubt about it: For an old-school computer game geek such as myself, reading the book was like surfing from one pleasant memory to another. You can keep your high-school photo album: This is the true record of how I spend my teenage years!
Invasions Barbares, Les [The Barbarian Invasions] (2003)
(In French, In theaters, May 2004) To be truthful, I wasn’t expecting much of this film: I’m not one for tearjerkers, gabfests, “populist” films (this film made a bundle at the Quebec box-office) nor melodramatic sequels. But there is something for everyone in the film, and if I could easily gloss over the melodrama of the dying protagonist, it was harder not to enjoy the witty intellectual dialogue between the band of literate, hedonistic friends at the centre of the film. Les Invasions Barbares is seldom as enjoyable as when they trade back salacious puns and philosophical references. (Sadly, the otherwise-decent subtitles completely give up during one such exchange… though at least we were spared the indignities of a dubbed film!) Otherwise, well, there is plenty of philosophical content to keep anyone busy, from a flash-analysis of 9/11 to a devastating scene literally showing the relics of Quebec’s Catholic church. (What this film isn’t is “focused”: the sprawling script touches upon anything and seeming everything.) In the end, I found myself cheering for the film, regardless of origin; it’s so rare to see liberal intellectualism so warmly portrayed than it is here, it’s just a shock to realize that it actually came from, in some sense, my own culture. Go figure.
Feardotcom (2002)
(On DVD, May 2004) There’s a good reason why critics savaged this film when it first came out: It’s just not very good. Whatever visual polish the film may possess is bludgeoned into impotence through endless dark and damp cinematography. No point for variety here; the whole film quickly becomes annoying. While Feardotcom wants to explore the dark side of the Internet, it ends up feeling silly and forced; as the bizarre deaths pile up, one gets the impression that nothing will be explained. As it turns out, this is the correct impression: the conclusion devolves into silly serial murderer stuff, complete with a throwaway line about how the ghostly energy of mumbo-jumbo can leak (or leap, or squeak) from the Internet into the real world. Don’t gag me; I’m already doing that. Stephen Dorff and Natascha McElhone do their best with the material, but it’s a hopeless situation: McElhone is miscast (she’s better in more aloof roles) and Dorff is ineffective at giving life to the lame dialogue. The film descends so firmly into dull disinterest that I switched midway through my first viewing to the director’s audio commentary. Director William Malone seems well-intentioned, but Feardotcom can’t be salvaged with good intentions.
Day After Tomorrow, The (2004)
(In theaters, May 2004) It’s either growing mellowness or creeping senility, but I seem to be liking Roland’s Emmerich’s catastrophe films more and more. Hated Independence Day, was okay with Godzilla and now The Day After Tomorrow actually manages to be even a little bit good. Sure, it’s crammed with silly dialogue, familiar plotting and dumb Action Movie Moments (including characters out-running a tidal wave). But on the other hand, the destruction sequences are among the finest ever filmed. Hollywood’s destruction by mega-twisters is worth the price of the ticket by itself: Add to that the spectacle of New York getting flooded, then freezing in place and you have enough eye-candy to satisfy anyone. (For more, er, conventional eye-candy, check out the luscious Tamlyn Tomita. Wrrrw!) I wasn’t so amused by the lack of cold-sense exhibited by the characters (In sub-zero temperatures, you close doors behind you) nor the silly way the action scenes got amped-up through magically appearing axes or CGI wolves. Still, there is an undeniable power to The Day After Tomorrow, even if it’s in contemplating a chillingly plausible disaster. It’s a catastrophe film that aspires to a conscience and a brain: Considerable death and destruction isn’t fought and stopped at the last moment; science is seen as a provider of answers and safety and people find safety at a public library, be still my nerdish heart! (Plus, who survives? The gifted teens and the librarians! Wooo!) Sure, the science is intentionally unrealistic. But once you see New York under dozens of meters of snow, hardly any of that matter: The Day After Tomorrow delivers the goods. Consider the DVD pre-ordered.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
Random House, 2000, 639 pages, C$22.00 tpb, ISBN 0-312-28299-0
Now that is one amazing book.
Deftly mixing such disparate elements as World War II, New York City, Antarctica, homosexuality, the Empire State Building, the Holocaust, movies, Picasso and -above all- comic books, it’s a novel unlike any other, straddling history, alternate reality and a little bit of traditional fantasy. More than simply a snapshot of America between 1939 and 1954, more than a rags-to-riches story of successful artists, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay also stands as one of the few works compelling to both genre and mainstream audiences.
It was inevitable, I suppose; after years of increasing literary sophistication in the comic book field, it was about time that someone on the other side of the fence took an interest in the world comic books. Michael Chabon isn’t merely just any mainstream author, though; without even looking at his biography, his love of comics shines through the book like a lighthouse. But as he sets out to tell the astounding story of Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, it’s also obvious that he’s doing a lot more than pay homage to the wonderful Golden Age of Comics.
1939: After many misadventures (soon described in the book’s first section), Josef Kavalier arrives in New York, seeking sanctuary as the situation in his hometown of Prague gets worse and worse for all Jews. Scarcely a few days after arrival, Joe and his cousin Samuel Klayman are able, through a fortuitous set of circumstances, to create a brand-new comic book for an ambitious publisher looking for another Superman. Soon enough, “The Escapist” is born and a new age in comic books is underway. Meanwhile, all the way over there in Europe, a war begins.
As Chabon describes the war through the viewpoint of two comic book artists working in New York, sublimating their anger through art and doing their best to get ahead in the comics industry, it quickly becomes obvious that this is a big, big, big novel. Romantic entanglements, family tragedies, period detail and comic book scenarios all intermingle to form a single narrative. It attains a climax of sort on December 7th, 1941, but the story is far from being over; indeed, the next section titled “Radioman” may just be the best part of the book. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is an epic story about two guys and the whole world. The depth of detail that Chabon gives to the story is just astonishing; even for casual fans of the era, he manages to seamlessly insert Kavalier, Clay and their Escapist in 1940s New York, all the way to the (hiss!) Wertram era.
But scope and verisimilitude aren’t the only virtues of this novel; more than anything, this is a book that succeeds on great characterizations and superb writing. Chabon is a playful stylist, and so the narrative is told from a modern perspective that recalls the work of an enthusiastic biographer, albeit one with the omniscience required to peek at unread letters and buried feelings. Comic book scripts are dramatized and inserted in the narrative. Some historical cameos will make comic book fans coo with glee. A touch of matter-of-fact fantasy is inserted in the best magical realism tradition. Flashbacks, flash-forwards and dastardly twists are strewn through the whole book. Packed with delicious prose from the first to the last page, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is hard to stop reading after even the first chapter.
But as the title of the novel suggests, it’s Kavalier and Clay themselves, along with the rest of the supporting characters, who make the book such a unique reading experience. The partnership and contrast between tall, quiet, tortured Kavalier and stocky, hustling, equally-tortured Clay is credible even as outlandish events unfold in their lives. Great stuff, enhanced by sympathetic portraits of them both.
All in all, a heck of a book. It has deservedly won a Pulizer prize, but more important, it’s a hugely enjoyable novel with wide appeal in and out the mainstream literary crowd. It’s the sort of thing to make genre fans fall in love with the straight-up fiction category and general audiences pay attention to comic books. Everyone gets ahead!
[May 2004: As I finish my review, I see that a derivative comic book called “The Escapist” is out there, giving tangible form to the comics described in the novel. Neat!]
Web Site Report – April 2004
Here are the monthly highlights for christian-sauve.com:
1. Mmm. Numbers…
My prickly "Urchin" web stats engine tells me that…
Report for: christian-sauve.com, April 2004 Total Visitors: 6,284 Total Pageviews: 12,864 (Corrected Pageviews: 7,666) Average Pageviews Per Day: 428.8 (Corrected average: 255) Total Hits: 17,950 Total Bytes Transferred: 399.2MB Average Visitors Per Day: 209.46 Average Hits Per Day: 598.33
The "corrected" numbers take out the CSS, robots.txt, PDFs, mis-filed graphic files (ICO, GIF, JPG) and other non-public files mistakenly considered "pages" by the statistics pre-digestion engine. Most results are slightly lower than last month.
In any case, our top ten most popular pages are
christian-sauve.com/index.html 336christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2002.htm 270christian-sauve.com/texts/solaris-explanation.htm 225christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1999.htm 207christian-sauve.com/new-york/day_2.html 190christian-sauve.com/reviews.html 186christian-sauve.com/texts/free-movie-tickets.htm 185christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-2000.htm 152christian-sauve.com/search.html 116christian-sauve.com/reviews/movies-1998.htm 115
Same old, same old, almost: The Search page cracks the top-10 for the first time.
If you care about such things, (who would not?), here’s a look at browser statistics for the month (by visitors, last month’s results in parentheses):
Explorer|6 3415 (3249)Netscape|5 903 (876)Explorer|5 553 (627)Googlebot|2 546 (231)Netscape|4 354 (763)
Sweet: Not only is Netscape 5 getting better results, but Netscape 4 continues its well-deserved slide downward.
2. Where do these people come from?
Our top five sources of referrals (in visitors) were
google.com/search 940 (794)yahoo.com/search 429 (486)www.google.ca/search 250 (258)msn.com/results.aspx 247 (237)google.com/imgres 106 (new)
Thank you Google.
Two "new" links this month:
A LiveJournal user noticed my article on Losing Weight and linked to it from livejournal.com/users/mordrith/ He also left a message and asked a question (see below) but forgot to leave an address or a URL. Fortunately, someone somewhere clicked on the link and allowed me to figure out what happened. (You can follow the link to see my answer, or keep reading)
This is pretty darn cool: I noticed a link from http://grographics.com/webactivism/ 2004_04_01_archive.php, followed and found the following blog entry:
Friday, April 16, 2004: A french guy who is almost on track
dear sir,
drop the old-school self effacement and useless meta information (i.e: this is the theory behind how I code this) and stick to what sets you apart .
Thank you,
Christopher Robbins
Given that Mr. Robbins had the guts to go on and make comments about uber-designer Jeffrey Zeldman’s web site in his next blog entry, I figured I should at least pay attention to the comments. And the truth is that my home page did indeed have a touch too much meta-information and self-effacement at the expense of the site’s content. Bad design, bad! So, until my next redesign, I shuffled a few things, wrote new copy and slightly altered the main page.
And so I replied to Mr. Robbins with…
Dear sir,
While I obviously do not share your lack of enthusiasm about old-school self effacement and useless meta information, your comments are well worth pondering, have already affected the web site (slightly) and will continue to resonate through my next redesign initiative. It is an honour and a privilege to have taken some of your time and attention.
While the above reply was stuck in cyberspace (due to strange problems, my first attempt bounced after five days), I noticed that someone reached my index page by typing "old school official website" even though the world "old school" are nowhere to be found on the page. It then dawned on me that thanks to the blog entry, my site was now googlebombed for "old school self-effacement" in much the same way that www.microsoft.com is the first Google result for "Internet Explorer" thanks to all the links for "Internet Explorer" going to Microsoft. In this case, "old school self-effacement" is such a rare expression that it only takes one link to do the trick.
I was quite amused about that, and so was Mr. Robbins. You can read his answer to my email on his blog mentioned above. Damn fine reviews indeed… Thanks!
I also got linked from discussion boards at democraticunderground.com/ and thedvdforums.com/forums/, but couldn’t figure out the reference (and their search engines didn’t help). I can’t say I’m particularly intrigued by the thedvdforum link (it’s probably a link to my "Solaris Explained" page, but the democraticunderground link has me troubled.
3. Ohh! Visitor comments!
April was a very busy month for the christian-sauve.com mailbox. Let’s see the damage:
1. Some have to deal with a girl from Ipanema; I had to deal with two girls from Alberta.
Some context: Last month, I saw that a teacher over at the Clearview School Board had selected my "Being Canadian" essay as a reference on the impact of Bilingualism on Canada. Great!
Great, except when a bunch of high-school kids, bored out of their minds with bilingualism assignments, start sending messages like…
who are you really?
why do people ask about you?
why do you have thistlis as your fav food?
what do you have to do with canadas history?
eggs says hi!
Okay.
Next, I received (from another schoolgirl):
Hey! WHta do you think about bunnys eeating lettuse? Shul they eat carrots? tELL ME WHAT YOU THINK.
I couldn’t resist and promptly replied…
If the lettuce is eating the bunnies, then I think that’s interesting. Especially if the bunny fights back. In a robot suit.
If the lettuce starts eating the carrots, then that becomes even more interesting. Don’t forget that carrots are irremediably evil: Have you looked at carrots? They’re shaped like submarines, torpedoes, nuclear missiles even. Very evil. No, I don’t think that the lettuce should start eating carrots.
Now, I usually know better than to expect subtle grammar flames to have any impact whatsoever on high-school students with such difficulties with the English language. And so came back the inevitable reply…
Hey Again! You wrote me back fast last time I wrote! Do you have a life? You probabaly don’t. Pathetic. Well i was wondering what you think about Taylor Shell. I know you don’t know him but from the name what do you think?
Once again, I couldn’t resist taking a shot at a silly answer:
At first I thought it would be a really great pulp fiction / action movie hero
name. You know: "Taylor Shell! Ladies’ man, man’s man, man about town! Punches Nazis in the face! Laughs at Satan’s minions and then bitch-slaps Beelzebub himself! Babe magnet, friend of small furry creatures, protector of the poor and oppressed! Dispatches evil with taglines such as ‘You’ve been shelled!’ or ‘You’re nothing spe-shell!’But then I found out that it’s a girl name on Google.
Oops.
The level of discussion degenerated from there. To quote their next message…
why would you like to eat Thistles?
and the otherday my friend emailed you and you wort back really fast so i wanted to ask… are you really lonly or somethin.
…and then again from the other schoolgirl…
Hi! It’s me again! Expect an email everyday cuz I feel annoying you. Um…whats withtn the name Chritian? Where did you get it from?
By that time, I had my fill with bored sub-literate schoolgirls, and so concluded my answer ("You’ll have to ask my parents") with…
By the way, how is that WebQuest bilingualism assignment going? Three cheers for the people of Stettler, Alberta!
The panicked answer was almost immediate:
how do you know where i am? and the web Quest? how do you know this?
and from her friend:
How did you know we live in Stettler? That was a little freaky.
Indeed. I explained (after referring to one of them as "a spice girl"):
Easy. My web referral logs have shown a steady amount of visits coming from [URL] which, obviously, is the WebQuest page. Which would explain how a surprising number of Clearview students have found my page lately and emailed me about it.
Then, from your email address and occasional grammatical slip-ups, it’s easy to guess that you’re a student at the Clearview school division, and the fine web site at http://www.clearview.ab.ca/ contains enough information to complete the picture.
Further confirmation is given by your IP address (and that of your friends also emailing me), which resolve to school computers in the clearview.ab.ca domain. I suppose I could compare the IP addresses and map out the individual computers but, hey, I’ve got other things to do.
and received….
Oh I see. I guess it makes sence.
and that was pretty much the end of this whole sorry odyssey. Well, aside from the inevitable parting shot from one of them:
you know you shouldn’t call my friend a spice gril cuz she doesnt even look like one.tsk tsk tsk plus its not very nice to swear at peaple on e-mail…are you bald and fat? i beleive so.
After that stinging rebuke, how could I even bear to write them back? It all ended with…
why havent you like wrot back in like …a month? it’s verey rude!
and that was that.
2. A dissatisfied (but hopefully not too disgruntled) reader writes to complain…
Please place in your reviews a notice that you might give away plot points. I just learned, before i read the damned book, that the chinese nuke someone in the bear and the dragon. damn. nice site otherwise, though
Yikes. Plot spoilers. I know those can be hugely annoying to unsuspecting readers. I don’t feel particularly guilty in this case, however, given that…
- The review referred to is my trashing of Tom Clancy’s The Teeth of the Tiger, the twelfth book of Clancy’s "Ryanverse" series of which The Bear and the Dragon is the tenth. When I review a book in a series (and believe me, I took great pains to say that it was such a review), I tend to assume that all previous volumes are fair game (see my increasingly bitter reviews of David Weber’s Honor Harrington series, for instance)
- My offending phrase reads like this: "Curiously, little is said of the plane crash on the Capitol (Debt of Honor) or the Chinese nuclear strike (The Bear and the Dragon), presumably because those didn’t fit." Yup, I was spoiling non-events that didn’t even affect the book. But then again, I’m merely "spoiling" a Chinese nuclear strike, which is somewhat obvious not even halfway through the book. But who is nuked during that attack? Aaah, that’s the real spoiler…
- Trivia: About that "plane crash on the Capitol": Tom Clancy holds the unfortunate distinction of having had that particular spoiler printed on the first page of USA Today when, scant weeks after Debt of Honor was published, a small Cessna did crash on the lawn of the White House.
In any case, I felt sufficiently rattled to add a note about spoilers to my "Reviews FAQ".
3. The half-anonymous Matthew from Toronto wrote back (after an initial comment) to say…
I see that I was published on your December web site and feeling proud and valued decided to write again. Your dieting page made me feel it was worth trying to lose the pounds (I’m about 30lbs overweight) but what really got me going was the guy in the Bay where I was trying to buy some pants who suggested that I was going through denial as he produced his tape measure and proved himself correct.
I have re-joined the gym and been doing light cardio 4-5 times per week for the last 6 weeks (minus one excessive eating/drinking week away). I’ve lost 4-5 pounds which is depressing but I’ve lost 1.5" from my waist. Ha, not in denial anymore.
So thanks again for the diet starter and do you know what the five stages of xxx are (and what is ‘xxx’s’ real title)? I believe it is 1. Anger, 2. Denial, 3. ???, 4. ???, 5. Acceptance. (…)
…and not having an email address I could send an answer to, I’m stuck replying in a semi-public web page…
- It’s no use denying when fashion service salespersons are involved; given how they’re specially trained to make us feel good about ourselves (and hence more willing to spend), any criticism from their part is, er, harsh. And likely to be true.
- Don’t lose the faith. Losing weight takes weeks before producing any real results. It’s my understanding that during that period, you’re trading off fat for muscles with no difference in weight; but then watch out once the muscles are in place and the fat starts to burn off.
- From memory, fact-checked with Google: The five stages of grief outlined by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross are, in order, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. There is a really good Frasier episode (6.01: Good Grief) structured around the process if ever you want to memorize the sequence.
4. Only one formmail attack this month, this time for an account named angelrrsmr at AOL.
5. The lovely Elizabeth from New York wrote in to point out that…
I was just looking at your pictures from your trip to New York- glad you had a good time in my city. It’s a great place.
So, this is totally nitpicky- but you’ve misidentified the "phallic tower of Columbia University." That’s not Columbia University- that’s the Riverside Church, which is near Columbia, but isn’t part of the University at all.
Looks like the trip was a while ago, since you visited the WTC, so, you probably don’t even care- but there you go.
Elizabeth is absolutely right, except for one tiny thing: We (the entire staff of christian-sauve.com) care. We care a lot. In f
act, we care so much that the page was updated with our contrite excuses not even five minutes after receiving the corrections. Boy, are we embarrassed. The appropriate imaginary members of our staff have been fired.
7. The mysterious Mordrith wrote to say…
I just read your weight loss article, pretty impressive. (…) Recently I thought about joining a walking group instead of just taking my dog for a run. I was wondering if you ever walk with a group or if you have kept mostly to yourself ?
and I tracked down his LiveJournal (oops! First wrote "LiverJournal") to reply…
I walk alone. For one thing, I walk quickly : five to six kilometres per hour when I hit my stride, and few people can actually keep up. (And fewer still actually want to walk for three or four continuous hours.) For another, it’s easier to pause, improvise, hop on random buses and just see where any given street goes when alone. While I’m not averse to the thought of walking with a group (great for hiking!), it seems inconsistent with my power-walking style.
9. A stranger with impeccable taste wrote to say
You are funny-Thanks!
My pleasure. Unfortunately, I’m not sure for what or for whom I’m funny. So I’ll just take it personally.
10. You won’t believe this, but I got an email from another Christian Sauvé in Rockland, Ontario:
We share the same name, and I believe you also use to live or still do, in Rockland.
Born in Ottawa, raised in Plantagenet, Lived in Ottawa the past couple of years and moved to Rockland a year ago. I also am a web designer.
That’s it!
To many web designers share my name…
When I’m not consumed by a full-blown identity crisis, I’m strangely comforted to think that Rockland Ontario, my hometown, is also the world-wide capital of Christian Sauvé web designers. With two of them for a total population of 8000 people, it’s highly unlikely that any other place on earth will ever beat this one-for-4000 ratio.
All kidding aside, if every you need a pro web designer, head over to www.sumoxl.com and hire my namesake: Not only is he making a living out of this stuff, but he’s also a much better graphic designer than I’ll ever be.
11. Finally, to cap off this emotion-packed month, my favourite email of the month:
I WANT 2 C U NUDE AND SEND THE P{ICS TO ME AT (deleted)
Wow! Some people work years to climb to the top of their profession, become a megastar, appear on magazine covers and then have tabloids hunt down nude pictures of them. I, on the other hand, merely put my reviews on-line and look at that! Fame at last!!
(The Traceroute of the IP stopped being useful at an Australian node, leading one to suspect that this wasn’t, in fact, one of the Albertan schoolgirls being cute.)
4. Search Queries Oddities
(This being the section in which we take a look at the search engine queries used by various visitors to find christian-sauve.com)
4.1 – Top ten queries
>solaris explanation x39 >solaris movie explanation x26 >solaris explained x22 >solaris movie explained x15 >free movie screenings x10 >being canadian x8 >sauve x8 >christian statistics x7 >nude scenes featuring marisa miller x5 >solaris interpretation x5
Who’s Marisa Miller, you ask? A swimsuit model, apparently…
4.2 – Strange, disturbing and wondrous…
>memento seems like a gay movie
Really?! Don’t you say!?
>how did meteors from mars arrive to earth >how do movie reviewers get free tickets >how does the movie hoop dreams relate to art >how to get free movie tickets >how to get movie preview tickets >how to get old movies >how to lose weight from midriff >what does the name sauve mean >what is silicon valley >what movies went to theaters in 1998 >what percent of the worlds population is christian >what was the rising action in the movie holes >where to rent the movie godzilla 1998 >which chapter cryptonomicon captain crunch >who invented the chainsaw biography
They ask questions. We don’t answer. Well, except for this one:
>what is good about being canadian
Pretty much everything!
Until next time, my name is Christian Sauvé and I remain… obsessed by web statistics.