Pop quiz hot shot. Three beautiful women walk up to you and ask you to star in a music video. What do you do? I found myself in that situation about 6 weeks ago. Actually, it all started much more innocently than that. I was in the computer lab just minding my own business. These three TV students from across the hall came in, saddled up beside me and asked one simple question. “You’re not shy in front of a camera, are you Mark?” Well, most everyone who knows me knows I shamelessly mug for a camera so I said, “I’m more comfortable than you think.” That’s when they sprung it on me. “We’ve got to make a music video for our production class and we want you to star.”

Continue reading Showtime! →

The administration doesn’t listen to us! I’ll lower student fees! It’s time for a change!

Oh. Hello. You caught me writing my presidential campaign speech for next year. I know, I know. You’re thinking, “But…that sounds like the speeches that we just heard. How can it be next year’s?” That’s the one thing I’m finding really funny. I’ve been through university already and bore witness to four presidential campaigns. Now, it’s five years later and at a different school. I’m quite literally in a different time and place. And the speeches and promises were exactly the same.

Continue reading The Loser’s Point of View →

I was once told that the joke behind the classic comic book Stone Henge was the creator wanted to create a superhero whose entire origin was told on the cover of the first issue. The joke behind this column is the entire summary is the title.

Continue reading A Collection of Unrelated Paragraphs Thrown Together at the Last Minute Because I Realized I Didn’t Have a Column to Publish this Week →

So, I finally bought the fifth Pokémon movie on DVD: Pokémon Heroes. I was threatening that I’d do this someday, so I think that today is the day. I’m going to sit here and review all five Pokémon movie DVDs! Actually, it’s thanks to the Pokémon movies that I cemented my reputation as a movie news god. We were in line to see Episode I, and the latest issue of ToyFare was being passed around. They were talking to the folks at Hasbro about Pokémon toys, and one of the questions asked was, “Will there be toys based on the upcoming movie?” One of my friends – a real anime snob – said, “Wha? There’s a movie?” And I said, “Well, like several other anime television programs, Pokémon has proven popular enough to spawn several feature films. The first one, entitled Mewtwo Strikes Back, is currently being dubbed for a straight-to-video release. But, if the Pokémon fad continues to grow, it’ll probably get released to theatres.” At this, my friend groaned, and six months later, I was in line to watch Pokémon: the First Movie. So, let’s get on with the reviews!

Continue reading Today’s Obsession: The Pokémon Movies →

My first (and so far only) published work had to do with the Olympics. It was February 1994. The winter Olympics in Lillehammer had just begun, and several news stories were on TV about how, 10 years earlier, the Winter Olympics were in Sarajevo. The media was finding it delightfully ironic how this former Olympic host city was now in the middle of a heated war zone. After watching a few of these reports, I felt inspired. I dug out my notepad, and wrote an essay about how much war sucks and wouldn’t it be cool if one day the only battles were the friendly ones for Olympic gold. In November of 1994, my English teacher gave the assignment to write something for the Remembrance Day ceremonies. The winner would get to read it at the ceremonies. Rather than write a lame poem like most of my classmates, I just went and dug out my essay. But I added the clarifying line, “I wrote this a few months back.” I presented it to the class, my English teacher loved it, and I read it at the ceremonies. Then, my English teacher faxed it to the Edmonton Journal, and it ran in the Journal’s Remembrance Day insert.

Continue reading Every Four Years →