The Simpson Blog

1995 seems like a long time ago -- and by some measures, it actually was. In 1995 I was finishing up my third and final year at Ryerson's Radio & Television Arts program. One year-long course was the Personal Production. It could have been anything -- a radio drama, producing an EP for a band, short documentary, or even a "web site" in the emerging world of the World Wide Web. (Remember Mosaic?) For my big project, I chose to produce a short movie based on a short story written by my friend Cindy Smith. I had the chops to storyboard, direct, shoot and edit something good, but I've never had a knack for coming up with original stories. Cindy, on the other hand, was a talented writer, and I remembered a very moving short story she'd read me once. With her blessing, I took Posters and Pushpins and turned it into a nicely-shot, if a little slow, short film. It was shot on location at my grandmother's house in Toronto -- the home where I was living i

I haven't mentioned Scientology here in a long time, so here's a throwaway reference for you, as an intro to this Googly article. The "cognition" of Scientology's top level, Operating Thetan level 8 (New OT8) -- that is, what you're supposed to come to realize after finishing it all -- is "Now I know who I am not and I am interested in finding out who I am." There. I just saved you a few hundred thousand dollars, at least. On that note, I've come up with a little exercise to illustrate who I'm not. Thanks to the magic of Google, I can attest with some confidence that I am Scott Simpson ... but not any of the following Scott Simpsons: (UPDATE June 2012: Used to have a lot of links here, but many have expired since the original post.) Scott Simpson the Halifax film director . I know him, though. He's engaged to one my coworkers. That's a little weird, but he's a cool guy. K. Scott Simpson, apparently also from Halifax. He w

Merry Christmas, everybody! I managed to squeeze in two sweat sessions in the gym downstairs amidst all the shopping frenzy and last-minute everything. I'm up to a level where I can actually run for a while. I walk briskly on an incline for a bit... lower the incline on the treadmill... then when an upbeat song comes up on the iPod, I crank it up to something over 6 MPH and run. This week I was impressed that I can keep running steadily for the length of a whole song. (This week's songs: If I Had $1000000 off the BNL Yellow Tape, and Self Esteem by The Offspring.) There's been an abundance of cookies and naughty food around, but somehow things managed to work out in my favour .... Start weight: 220 pounds Last week: 213 This week: 210 Change: -3 Total loss: 10 pounds Yay! Yay! I broke the 10 pound mark, much to my surprise. Hot diggity! Not so optimistic for this week, as we just unwrapped presents and stockings, and now I have Toblerone, Kinder eggs and Lindt choc

I finally got around to spending some Christmas/birthday money a few weeks ago. I went to Future Shop and picked up a monitor to replace my 2000-vintage Syncmaster 750S. The ol' Samsung was still working fine and looked good -- it was just feeling small compared to everything else out there. And, I so rarely treat myself to new toys, so, what the hell? I got the LG L204WT Flatron Wide 20" widescreen LCD. It boasts a 5ms response time and a 2000:1 contrast ratio. Mostly, it's a true Big Ass Monitor, and it's bright. It's served me well on my recent spree of multimedia production, editing video and touching up audio in a variety of programs. The web looks fantastic. Photos look gorgeous. And, it's got me playing video games again. Not a lot of video games. But I had some games that I just hadn't played. I bought Call of Duty for a LAN party a long time ago and only ever played it once. Looks nice on the wide-screen. Someone bought me Half Life 2 as a gi

Half-way through, and I'm not looking forward to this week's entry, because it's measurement time ... and, as I expected, it was a tough week in the food and gym department. Tough not to eat the food. Tough to go to the gym. I worked out once and ate many times. Much bad food. Little good sweating. On the good-news side, I was thrilled to be thin enough to shop at the Gap again! I've had a Gap gift card in my wallet for a long time now. My friends got together and generously bought me some credit there for my 30th birthday in the hopes that I'd tune up my attire to match my age. Unfortunately, I was just too bloody fat to fit the clothes -- everything but the jeans stops at size 38. Well, I went shopping for something nice to wear to the company Seasonal Holiday Festive party, and came away with a kick-ass outfit that ended up costing me a mere portion of the ticket price, thanks to that years-ago birthday gift. As much as I dread shopping, I could envision shoppi

With the holiday season upon us, keeping any steady weight is gonna be tough! So much yummy food around, and so little time to craft healthy stuff. Still, the news is not all bad this week. Start weight: 220 pounds Last week: 215 This week: 213 Change: -2 Total loss: 7 pounds Back down to the low point from a couple of weeks ago. Sweet. Only managed to get my ass to the gym once this week. That'll have to change, or else I'll be back up to 220 again by January 1! ---

Woot! A lot of hits are expected to come shortly here at Big Ass Superstar. One of the most commonly searched-for-and-hit items via Google and others is the phrase "big ass." And based on an article at Canada.com, perhaps federal NDP leader Jack Layton is thinking the same thing: Layton rose in the Commons today to attack the government over subsidies to big oil companies. But he tripped over his tongue and instead asked Prime Minister Stephen Harper if he would finally cancel subsidies to "big oil and big ass." Layton meant to say "big gas." Harper jokingly answered that he would "get to the bottom of it."

The half-way point in the journey is coming up before too long, and I've yet to crack the 210 mark. Yikes. Managed to haul my ass out of bed twice last week to get sweaty at the gym. Can't say I ate like an angel, though, so I'm not expecting miracles on the scale, especially considering the surprise loss of Week Ten. So, let's get it over with ... Start weight: 220 pounds Last week: 213 This week: 215 Change: +2 Total loss: 5 pounds Fine, that's no surprise. Still feeling trimmer. When doing up my belt now, I cinch it up and expect there to be another hole there -- but there's not. So I guess I need a new belt. And some new pants. Holding off on any big clothing spending sprees 'til I crack a good round number, or the fat/muscle distribution absolutely necessitates it.