As for the movie, what can I say other than – it’s about damn time; finally a new X-Men film that didn’t shit the bed! This is not only one of the best films in the X-Men franchise but probably one of the best in the superhero genre. It had an intelligent plot, well developed characters, great pacing and nowhere during the film did I want to smash my head against the wall like during the last two films. It was a solid combination of action, sci-fi, drama and a hint of Bond. And to get it out of the way now, there is no reason to wait until after the credits like most marvel films, no extras sadly.

The film is a prequel to the previous X-Men movies and is set with the backdrop of the 1960’s during the Cold War although, its central focus is on the relationship between the young Charles Xavier/Professor X and Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto. James McAvoy as Professor X and Michael Fassbender as Magneto did an amazing job of bringing these two characters to life with some great on screen chemistry. Fassbender’s portrayal of Magneto was seriously bad ass; he was the anti-hero all the way and oddly (in a good way) the most relatable. I also have to mention Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw, more films need Kevin Bacon to play villains – he was great.

The story for the film was written by Bryan Singer, one of my favorite directors and the director of the first two X-Men films. The film also had 4 screenwriters who wrote some amazing dialogue, although I would say there were a couple moments during the film when the writing almost went a little “campy” – of course now I’m just nit-picking – but I guess I should also mention there was one moment when I felt like JJ Abrams got behind the camera to add some excessive lens flare, and it wouldn’t have hurt if they spent a little more money on the CG, but again, small complaints.

Overall this was an incredible film, my favorite of the year so far. I really hope this re-invigorates the X-Men franchise and we start to see more great flicks in this universe. X-Men graphic novels are one of the only series that I collect (Ultimate X-Men that is) and I really love the story lines that writers are able to tell within the context of the X-Men characters trials and tribulations. Also I guess I’ll always have a soft spot for the X-Men as I used to watch the good ol’ Fox cartoon back in the 90’s. And with that here’s…

Today’s Pro Tip: Go to the closest movie theatre and see X-Men: First Class. If you like good movies, you’ll like this film, you don’t need to be a comic book nerd or have even seen the previous films to like this. Good film is good.

Shane Lamotte
www.LivingIllusion.com

PS I forgot to mention the best quote from the movie – “Go Fuck Yourself” – doesn’t work nearly as well without context – or at all – you’ll just have to watch it yourself to understand it’s sheer awesomeness.

It was really nice to run a smaller event this time around with only 100 delegates. The last few events of around 500 attendees we’re much more demanding on my time and this one was stress free and felt like a breeze. Event logistics are so much easier when you only have one speaker and it’s just one day as well. At the last event we had 20 plus speakers and it was 3 days with evening events as well, by the end I just wanted to sleep for a week.

I really enjoy event planning and organizing, from the design and marketing side right down to the event logistics. I’ve become quite good at it over the years and have been able to take a certain level of pride in my work as well. I know I can always improve but I feel like I’m really starting to get into the flow of it all and able to do a great job when it comes to research, planning and execution. And hey, I just found out I’ve been nominated for an event planning award so that always nice too.

I think maybe this summer I’m going to start to focus on putting on an event that speaks more to me as a person. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still be doing the good ol’ day job but I really think it’s time I did an event on what I’m personally interested in. An event that’s one part Music, Gaming, TED Talks and Nerd Culture. First I’ll need to do the research to see if we even have demand for an event like that in Edmonton… maybe I could convince BioWare to sponsor. Mwhahaha.

I think maybe I’ll just start small by throwing a gaming convention together this winter, who knows, I just want to start applying my skills to areas and industries that I’m personally inspired by and interested in. I do help organize a Vipassana Meditation Retreat every fall, but I want to do something bigger. ComicCon North in Edmonton!

Well that’s all for now I need to get some sleep before my journey into downtown Toronto tomorrow.

Today’s Pro Tip: E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo that Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo make all there massive new announcements at every year is going to be live streamed over at Gametrailers.com from June 6th – 10th, 2011 for the general public to watch. You can only attend the event in person if you work within the industry, but at least the rest of us can watch it live from home.

Shane Lamotte
www.LivingIllusion.com

PS Now I just need to pick a hot date to go to this Meeting Planner International Award Ceremony with me…

When I landed it was about plus 28 Celsius here, a fair bit warmer than Edmonton and way more humid. It’s night time now and it kind of feels like evenings in Mexico or Hawaii in January, it’s actually really nice. Part of me just wants to go lay in some grass and chill. It’s warm, there’s no bugs and I’m far enough from downtown Toronto to see stars.

I’m staying at the Holiday Inn and it has been pretty nice thus far. The water is affordable there’s great staff, a decent lounge/restaurant and it has a pool, hot tub, steam room and gym. Will probably go check them out at some point before I head back on Saturday. The event I’m running is only a one day event so I gave myself some extra time here to go hang out downtown Toronto.

I still find it a little weird when ever I fly out to places to put on these events by myself. I’ve done enough on my own at this point for it to be a breeze but I guess part of me still feels like a kid. Running events for teachers and other professionals when most of them are at least 10 years my senior or more. At least I enjoy a good challenge, and if it’s changing older peoples perception of what young adults can do, then even better.

I know this post isn’t really band related even though I’m posting it to the Living Illusion website, but I don’t really care. I wanted to write and this is my outlet so deal with it More of these posts chronicling my journeys and daily thoughts will be coming down the wire as well.

Feel free to post a comment or give suggestions as to what I should do on Friday when I go downtown Toronto for the daytime adventures and nightlife partying.

Today’s Pro Tip: Cable Television Sucks – Cancel your TV packages and get faster Internet, you won’t regret it.

Shane Lamotte
www.LivingIllusion.com

Living Illusion Suffering Album Budget
Studio/Producer: $7,500
Mixing: $2,700
Mastering: $2,400
CD Duplication: $2,200
Remixes: $700
Drummer: $600
Pre-Pro Jam Space: $600
Album Cover Art: $400
Hard Drives: $350
Album Layout Design: $300
Drum Skins: $200
Cello Player: $150
Barcode: $50

Subtotal: $18,150

Additional Expenses:
Marketing Videos (EPK, Suffering): $900
T-Shirt Artwork: $390
CD Release Party Live Drummer: $300
T-Shirts & Hoodies Printing: $1,500

Subtotal: $3,090

Total: $21,240

So there it is. That is the money that was actually spent on the album. Yah, there were some other costs in there that weren’t directly related to the album itself ie. T-Shirts, but that being said you get the gist of it. You roughly need 15 – 20k to do an album with high end production values.

Now I just need to find a way to pay it all off.

MUSIC IS FREE.

FML

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

In all honesty though, I think that this is a lot closer to being a reality than most people realize. Cadillac and Chrysler have already started selling cellular wireless routers as an add on to some of their automobiles. Full access to high speed unlimited bandwidth Internet while in the car at all times is going to change things in big ways… especially for the AM/FM Radio industry. This is going to kill it.

Radio just doesn’t stand a chance. Having access to all media forms via the Internet while in the car basically means that every one is going to be custom building their own content choices and experiencing completely personalized programming. Each person will tailor make their content before they even leave the drive way. Radio, in a nutshell is fucked.

Don’t get me wrong I like radio. I enjoy the ways that it helps to weed out music with high quality production vs low quality production (I’m referring to sound, not song writing, because there is some terrible music on the radio), and it’s nice to have a medium where when I’m in my car I can hear new bands I’ve never heard before. But even with that being said, radio is still becoming archaic. It’s going the way of print magazines and news papers. It’s value is decreasing more and more every year.

In the past bands and musicians direly needed the radio to get their music out to the world, and it still today has a huge influence of the majority of the population. The only problem is that this too is changing rapidly. The masses finally have the ability to hear what they want, when they want, via the Internet. They don’t need the radio to hear new music and this has finally given the masses the power of choice. The power to decide what they feel is good music and not what the radio station tells them. (More on this in a future post).

The biggest down fall of radio is going to be money, or lack there of. As car owners become just as easily connected to personalized content from the Internet as they are to radio stations, radio listeners are going to drop off… and as the listeners drop off, so do the advertisers. Advertisers are going to move to the online multimedia medium instead of radio, and it’s already happening. People won’t even need to tune into the radio to get traffic updates, or time and temperature reports any more, it will all be available through the Internet in your car.

In a perfect world this is what radio will become: I foresee a service where you personally will choose any songs (or genres) out of the DMDS database (that’s the digital database all radio stations pull their music from) and add them to your own play-list for your drive. The service will be free and there will be ads and the occasional updates from the “fake” DJ’s along with having to listen to their “morning shows” in between your own chosen programming.

Any one have a couple million to invest in my idea?

Didn’t think so.

So what does this mean for the music industry and the reach that record labels have over the mainstream population? Well when it comes to radio, we’re all fucked. But that rant is to come in another post. I’ve gone on long enough about this one.

I think we may have picked the wrong faucet of the entertainment industry to get into.

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

Although, saying a band got back together these days can be kind of misleading. What it should say is, the lead singer decided to use the old band name again and got permission to run the band with out the old members. That wasn’t quite the case with the “NEW” Flaw until the other original member aside from the lead singer got his Law degree and called it quits, man being in a band these days is difficult to keep the members together…

Anyway, I went to the Flaw show in Atlanta and it was fucking awesome! The performance itself was wicked, Chris Volz voice is amazing and he can still sing and scream so perfect, he’s a vocal machine. After their set was over, I got to hang out with the band and even had the opportunity to chat with Chris. I asked him about his experience working with Producer David Bottrill (He produced one of the Flaw albums… David’s claim to fame in my opinion would have to be that he Produced Aenima and Lateralus by Tool).

By the end of the night I was known as the crazy Canadian and we all got pretty drunk on Jager bombs. I have a picture of me with Chris Volz and also got one of there new T shirts signed by the whole band. I’m going to frame it and throw it up on my wall… I’m a music nerd what can I say. As a sidenote, the venue was a creepy as shit place… it was definitely my type of rock bar!

In closing, if you ever get the chance to see Flaw play live you should definitely freaking do it, they rock… and when their new album comes out BUY IT! Support good music. (Wikipedia update: On April 29th, 2009 [the day before my birthday] the band posted a blog on ‘their’ myspace stating that Chris Volz had been kicked out the band for extensive drinking, being drunk while performing, and for domestic violence. They are currently looking for a new vocalist.)

Well, so much for my last comment, ha. I guess it’s good I saw them when I did.

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

Well, basically the Fox studio who produced the film is already projecting how much money they have lost because of the fact that the movie was leaked onto the internet before it’s release date. It was released almost a month before it’s release date, which is quite a while in advance. I’m pretty interested to see how well it does and if they actually have a foot to stand on, because honestly, even though the 10,000 days album by Tool was leaked on the internet before hand that didn’t stop me and millions of others from buying it.

I question as to whether the people who download these movies (especially ones that are work prints and not finished) would even have paid to go at all. Cause that’s the thing, if it wasn’t for the fact that you can easily download these movies illegally for free these people would probably just not watch them and choose more wisely what they we’re going to watch and spend their money on. Who knows maybe people and kids would go outside more and enjoy the outdoors.

With all that being said about the movie, I have heard great things about the new Wolverine game that is coming out. It is being made by the same studio as the X-Men Legends and Ultimate Alliance games. It’s not the same style, it’s a third person, more god of war styled game, and it looks sweeeet. I heard you actually get to dismember people using wolverines claws, it’s about time!

Which brings me to my last point. I haven’t seen the leaked Wolverine film, and don’t want to. I will go see the new wolverine movie even though it won’t be the Rated R bloodfest I was hoping for. It’ll most likely still be better than half the shitty movies hollywood puts out these days. If I don’t enjoy the film, it won’t be because of anything to do with the work print that got leaked, it’ll be because it’s PG 13 and a steaming pile of shit.

God I hope Hollywood doesn’t bastardize another Marvel character…

Sincerely,

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

I guess the beauty of it is the truth in it. Aside from the fact that the Tattoo looks fucking stellar, it’s truly something that resonates with humanity on a broad scale and on an individual level as well. Looking into freedom and what defines it, and how we as humans perceive it, you can quickly deduce the fact that yes, we are in fact not only addicted to it, we have become slaves to it. We all carry this “slavery” with us whether we realize it or not.

We as human beings strive to have more of it with all of our actions. We work because we need money to survive and have “freedoms” to do what we want. In this society Freedom and Money have truly become synonymous. The more money we have the more freedom we have. That is a very western thing I think, but even if you look at other societies and other places in the world you can see that the idea of working for freedom is also there.

I guess you have to take this to the next level of thought if you were to transcend the “slaves of freedom” idiom. You have to look at freedom simply as the idea that it is. Freedom is an idea, a concept, and if you dig far enough you can see that this concept too is an illusion. We rarely sit down and think about it because it is so ingrained in us. We are all free, we have always been and always will be. It’s the rules, regulations, boundaries, systems, processes that we have created as human beings that “take it away”.

Props to you Ryan for doing something so epic and contemplative that you have chosen to share with the world. Maybe when people ask you about your tattoo they too will stop and think about it, find a deeper meaning and take something away from it.

Now let’s go get drunk and smash things.

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com/

P.S. Everything in moderation, even mental masturbation.

As it turns out, it was only one neighbor that complained not both neighbors as previously thought. So we are very happy to find that out as we had already dealt with the people who were initially complaining and put out that fire. They were the ones who  had actually called the bylaw officers on behalf of the other neighbors whom haven’t complained at all… Who does that? Who essentially calls the cops on you for making noise “on behalf” of somebody else two doors down? At least the confusion has ended and we can rehearse again with out being worried.

So last week I was sick as shit. Actually the sickest I have ever been in my life. I had the Flu and Bronchitis at the same time. I haven’t gone to the doctors for an illness in a good 10 years, but I was in dire need of some drugs and antibiotics, and yes they were good. So now I’m feeling better than ever and excited for rehearsal tomorrow. We are planning on kicking rehearsals up a notch too. Jay got a new job that has better hours so were looking to get together 3 – 4 times a week for the month of February.

Tomorrow at rehearsal we’re going to do a little more soundproofing and making use of the white board I took down there last week. The white board is going to be used for charting out songs and working on compositions, a very good idea if I do say so myself. There’s nothing else new really to report, other than the fact that I’m going to be possibly moving the Living Illusion site to a new location and using some beta software called Viviti to be the new core of the homepage and blog. Ohhh, and I got our new logo design pretty much finished and it looks fucking stellar, can’t wait to launch the new look and sound!

Well… that’s pretty much all I have to say.

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

Things in 2009 have definitely been going really good, not great but really good. I think I have become addicted to work and have been constantly asking myself the question, “How does this serve me”. I’ve been asking myself that question repeatedly through out every day. This has been a great tool to keep me on track, to ensure that what ever it is I am doing is an experience which is furthering me in some way shape or form.

There is a down side to this though. That is the fact that being addicted to “progress” doesn’t really give you an opportunity to stop and smell the flowers if you know what I mean. I haven’t really been able to properly “wind down”. Every time I finish something I have something else waiting around the corner, I have no down time. Burning out comes to mind when I think of the stress I have put on my mind.

So to avoid the possibility of burning out I’ve been trying to do a couple more things to work on myself, hit the gym, practicing meditation again. Also I’m trying to get into Yoga, haven’t gone yet, but I have the Yoga mat purchased already, ha. I’ve also been contemplating whether I should get a life coach to help plan and take some of the stress off. I know a lot of coaches personally that would give me a hand with organizing my life, but I think I want some one whom is not a connected to me. An outside observer if you will.

That’s pretty much where I’m at in life right now. It’s so funny when I talk to people and they ask me “Hey, how’s it going? What’s new?” part of me just wants to send them to my blog and say “Read this, then get back to me” LOL, it is what it is.

Hope your New Year has started out well and your accomplishing all your dreams and aspirations.

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com