BlogTO articles

Below are the links to two articles I have written for BlogTO

http://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2016/02/steer_inn_burgers_closes_after_half_a_century_in_business/

http://www.blogto.com/city/2016/02/21_lame_jokes_about_toronto_street_names/

More to come soon!

"Windowpain" - a short horror story

Ever been sitting at your desk procrastinating on doing work and then looked outside to see one of your neighbors staring at you? Yes? No? Well Lauren Miles has and I wrote this short horror story about her for a writing contest at my University. Hope you enjoy!

“Hey Lauren, are you coming with us tonight?” screeched the high pitched voice of Lauren’s housemate, Mikayla Andres. The epitome of downtown Toronto University partygoers, Mikayla – who prefers to be called “Kayla”, with the ending vowel stretched out longer than Eric Clapton singing “Layla” – lived in the room next to Lauren at the top floor of their University of Toronto apartment house. The house was first built to accommodate a single family in the early twentieth century but after many subsequent renovations, splitting the areas such as the former master bedroom and living room into individual bedrooms, was now rented out to University students. The house sat tight on its street next to other houses that shared origin stories just like it which made the street look like commuters packed together on a crowded bus or subway train, staring straight ahead and not speaking about their common plight. Lauren and Kayla’s apartment house itself was small with the individual rooms being even smaller. However, to a 20-year-old University student, any space at all to foster their own independence and live of their own accord in the big city was worth the landowner gouging them for hundreds of dollars in rental fees every month. Wearing a t-shirt with a rock band on it that she didn’t listen to which matched her baseball cap adorned with a hockey team logo whose team she could not name two players on, “Kayla” informed Lauren that the party she was attending was going to be “very lit” and that “Jeff and his friends” were going to be there. Lauren’s ears perked up and she considered all the fun she could be having partying with Kayla, but she had a ten-page essay due Monday and had only completed an introduction.

On the surface, Lauren Miles was an exceptional student – she graduated high school with honours, had been accepted to the University of Toronto on a partial scholarship and had averaged nearly straight A’s in her freshman year. The latter of these accomplishments is quite the feat when you consider that she was able to keep her grades up while withstanding a rigorous commute from her home in the small rural town of Caledon, Ontario – a two-hour journey consisting of two bus rides and then a subway - which only operates at 6AM. A deeper analysis of Lauren reveals her impetus for wanting to move downtown. The stress of the commute five days a week did indeed wear her out significantly, especially in the winter and created a desire to be closer to her school but this was not the main reason for her choice to move. Lauren’s “exceptionally well written” essays and her test grades that surpassed the averages of her peers were stained with the blood of her procrastination. Lauren was a professional at time mismanagement and always avoided her pressing tasks at hand like the plague. Her average assignment or preparation for a test occurred only after at least a week of thinking, staring at a blank page and stressing over minutia such as the word count and the quality of her bibliographic references - before even opening the book or reading the article. She was easily distracted and knowing that she had work due for completion made anything and everything else she could be doing seem blissfully attractive. A day planned to be spent doing an assignment almost always began with Lauren sitting at her desk ready to tackle her work but ended with Lauren doing something completely different – like leafing through an old family photo album or playing a computer game – a mere two hours later with little to no work done. This would usually all add up to Lauren completing her assignments or finishing her studying the night before and on many occasions, the assignment being finished at the last possible moment - with a laptop and a binder balanced on each knee on the bus ride to school. Ultimately, Lauren’s days upon days of stress, avoidance and distractions never really caught up to her. Whether she finished the assignment at 11 PM the night before its due date or stumbled into class a minute before it ended, interrupting her instructor with her paper in an outstretched hand - Lauren always felt like her procrastination was worth the good grades she received in the end. She had developed a notion that her procrastination was just a normal part of her creative output and that she “works better under pressure”. She felt that her final reward justified her cathartic and unhealthy journey to attain it.

This all changed when Lauren realized, after her freshman year of University, that she would have to develop a portfolio of written work in order to achieve any sort of career out of her degree. As much as Lauren loved reading fiction, debating literature and developing grammatical and creative writing conventions, she knew she did not want to stand in front of a classroom and teach any of it. She did not enjoy public speaking and would rather create than teach. Lauren walked around with a plethora of ideas for stories in her head each day and sought inspiration at every turn. A homeless man outside of a coffee shop became an idea for a beggar turned billionaire, an argument between a couple in her school cafeteria became an idea for either a romance novella or a pulp true crime series involving death at the hands of a poisoned pastrami sandwich or a cleverly concocted framing of a despised captain of the high school football team by his lover. Even beyond this, Lauren – an avid reader of J.R.R. Tolkien and George R. R. Martin – wished to cultivate living and breathing fantasy worlds of her own. Fantasy worlds and drama stories centred on tampered cured meats would never be read - Lauren realized - if she did not put pen to paper and create them. For the first time in her life, Lauren was faced with a goal without a due date and no guaranteed reward for her time squandered. She had the leering feeling that if she did not get any extra-curricular writing completed in her next year of schooling, that her procrastination would consume her. Lauren felt like a new and secluded setting would be beneficial to her focus and the elimination of the tiring and stressful commute would increase her creative spirits. So she started looking for a place downtown and asked her parents for the financial aid necessary, to which they were supportive as long as Lauren kept up her grades. With this, Lauren moved into her new place with high hopes for the following year of school.

“Thanks for the offer Kayla, but I should really get some more work done on my essay for French lit class”, replied Lauren to Kayla’s offer to join her in her weekend festivities. “Weren’t you doing that last night and like, the night before?” asked Kayla. “Well yeah, I did a bit but I got pretty distracted by this new Netflix series about Pablo Escobar and I ended up just watching that” said Lauren, ashamed of not finishing her research sooner. The truth is, for the first month of living downtown, Lauren was indeed sticking to her goals. She used her time wisely to read and research material in the University library, she did her assigned readings quickly and efficiently so she could check out local cafés and thrift stores with some friends from her classes. She even wrote an outline for a drama story set in Victorian England and decided to eventually finish it and submit it to her school’s Fictional Period Piece competition, that had its deadline at the end of the semester. However, she quickly fell back to her old habits of procrastination and traded the excuse of “too many distractions” at her Caledon home for “nobody to keep an eye on me so I don’t get distracted” now that she was living alone. Having to cook her own meals and do her own laundry took further focus away from her tasks. To combat this, she began to not go out at all and to refuse Kayla’s requests to party, meet Jeff and his subsequent friends and to go out during the day with her classmates in order to devote the entirety of her focus to her studies and stories. Yet, there she still sat. Her story ideas banged against the front of her skull to be let out as she stared anxiously at something on her computer screen that was entirely unrelated to any sort of production while the due date for the competition loomed on the horizon.

Following Kayla’s departure, Lauren sat sadly as she heard the distant footsteps and laughter of Kayla and a roommate on a lower floor named Nicole walking down the stairs and she felt like her procrastination was not only ruining her chances at being an author but her social life as well. As she nervously stared off into space realizing the paradox that she was procrastinating about finding a solution to her procrastination, she noticed an old woman staring back at her from the window adjacent to hers. Startled, she wondered how long this woman had been there. The woman had a wrinkled face that looked almost leathery. Her hair was grey and matted around her head. She had cavernous lines above her thin lips that looked like they were each hallowed out with a knife. She looked at Lauren straight on from a room that appeared to be completely dark besides the light of a lamp close to the woman that illuminated her face. After staring back at her for a couple minutes, Lauren noticed that her visual image of the old woman appeared to be fuzzy, as if she was shaking. Blaming this on her own vision, Lauren moved closer to the window to sharpen her focus and was shocked that her eyes did not deceive her. The old woman, watching her from the window at the side of the house next to hers was trembling incessantly, with the knuckles in the middle of her fingers in both hands rubbing against each other under her neck. Lauren decided to open her window and wave to her in an attempt to get her attention, thinking that she might want something from her. The woman greeted Lauren’s act of concern through the same unwavering staring and trembling. Following this, Lauren attempted to go back to her studies and ignore the woman. However, she found herself continuing to catch the woman’s gaze over her shoulder. Lauren recalled the familiar feeling felt after watching a horror movie or walking through a shady part of the city that someone is watching you from behind. The scary part was that in this situation, this feeling was a reality. It made her feel uncomfortable and uneasy. So, she decided to put it out of her mind completely by closing the blinds above her window. After several more hours of writing but only half a paragraph completed due to overwhelming thoughts about the woman, Lauren reopened the shutters out of curiosity to see the woman still sitting there, shaking with knuckles pressed tightly together rubbing back and forth under her neck. Only this time, while Lauren attempted to ignore her again by watching a movie on her laptop, the woman turned her neck rapidly to the left to focus on Lauren’s computer screen. The movement of her neck was sharp and stiff and the motion made her head look like that of a crow’s. Previously sunken eyes now became wide and beady to reflect the illuminated screen off of them. This was enough to make Lauren slam down the blinds and not open them again for the rest of the night.

The next morning, the first thing she did upon awakening was to open the blinds. To her horror, the woman still sat there trembling and affixed in the last pose Lauren saw her in - with her head cocked to the left and her beady eyes focused on a movie screen that was no longer there. For the next two weeks, Lauren’s room was left dark and dreary - as her blinds were kept shut. Lauren grew more and more nervous as her procrastination continued and pushed her Victorian England tale towards the point of coinciding with her midterms, rendering the possibility of its completion by the deadline to be difficult and unlikely. Occasionally, she peered out of the blinds to check on the woman and was always greeted by the same frail and sickly trembling figure – with shaking knuckles pressed against each other under her neck. She felt depressed for having to keep refusing Kayla’s invites and making up excuses to her classmates for not attending café hang outs while spending her days and nights in a room that now appeared dark, dismal and a hideaway from the frightening gaze of the outside world.

The physical state of the Victorian England story by the night before the contest’s deadline was that of several crumpled pieces of paper under a stack of dirty plates and cutlery. Lauren was as usual behind on her midterm studying as a result of overthinking the structure of the exam instead of working towards learning the material to complete it. She made a sad but necessary decision to forego the story for the competition that was written and printed in her mind but forgotten and slightly coated with the dressing of a week old salad in reality. She had done it. She had let her procrastination consume her. Her anxiety peaked at this realization and she felt disgusted at herself for lacking the focus and determination crucial to structure and place her imaginative ideas to paper. She settled for the distant hope that she would enter this story in the next contest while at the same time, she feared that the ideas now raging like a tornado inside her head would soon lay dormant and be forgotten.

As she was slowly working to write out and summarize the symbolism in various Shakespeare plays for her upcoming exam with the roadblock of a YouTube sketch comedy video playing, she heard a tapping noise outside of her window. She paid it no mind at first, thinking it was a squirrel or bird or some other form of acrobatic Toronto wildlife. Then it got louder. And quicker. If it was indeed an animal, it would be akin to that of a woodpecker. With her curiosity peaked, she opened the blinds of her window to try and locate the source of the racket.

To her shock, it was the old woman. She was now leaning forward in her chair and trembling so wildly and ferociously that her face was aggressively banging against the window, generating an accelerated yet even timed sound that rang out at an almost inhuman rate, much like a metronome affixed to a great speed. She was shaking at such an alarming rate that it almost looked like there was an earthquake occurring only in her room. While withstanding such force to her head, the woman still stared directly at Lauren without even a flinch or twist of her face – or even a blink of her sunken eyes. As Lauren stared speechless, a stream of blood began to pour down the woman’s nose. With every forceful press of her nose to the window, a growing red stain began to develop on the glass, obstructing the bottom half of her face. Furthermore, her middle knuckles were being rubbed together so quickly that the skin was cracking and blood started to drip down the tips of her fingers. Lauren began to panic as the white edges of the figure’s hollow eyes faded to black as a thick stream of blood poured down the glass more with every beat of her skull on the window. Blood and skin spurted out of her grating hands and made Lauren think that if her fingers were made of metal or copper that there would be smoke arising from the friction. Lauren grabbed her cell phone and called for an ambulance, thinking the woman was having some sort of vicious seizure. All of a sudden, the woman ceased her incessant banging and sat still. Lauren’s eyes could finally adjust to the point of seeing the woman for the first time without the image appearing shaky and out of focus. With the banging still ringing in Lauren’s ears, the old woman finally separated her tight lips - which had the appearance of being sewn together - to reveal toothless discoloured gums marked by a greenish abscess that strangely looked like the growth of mold. As the blood from her nose trickled into her mouth agape, the old woman started trembling yet again. This time, however, it was a tremble that Lauren had not witnessed prior. The old woman was trembling upward, like she was trying to jump out of her seat. Lauren could even see the woman begin to shift from side to side as this motion was lifting the chair off the ground. Lauren flung open her window, screamed and raised her hands in order to try to get the woman to cease her violent shaking, but the woman still stared back at her and appeared to not even notice the warning in front of her.

          

Then, the unthinkable happened. In a powerful and abrupt motion, the old woman leaned forward and catapulted herself at the window. The glass shattered and Lauren screamed and fell back towards her bed, catching the edge of her desk to keep her balance. The old woman was now balancing her stomach on the window sill. Her head then cocked up and a flash of light ricocheted off her face and into Lauren’s eyes. Slightly blinded, Lauren then realized that the cause of this was the light from the lamp in her room reflecting off of a large shard of glass that was lodged diagonally into the woman’s face. As Lauren pleaded with the woman to shift her body weight backwards in order to not fall out of the window, the old woman shot out a stiff arm and tried to grab Lauren’s hand. Lauren, stricken with fear, noticed that the bones of the middle knuckles of the woman’s hand were protruding through the eroded, abraded skin of her fingers. Unable to think rationally, Lauren leaned out the window and reached out her hand in a futile attempt to grab the hand of the woman and pull her to safety. Just when Lauren caught a faint grasp of her hand, the old woman rocked herself forward and kicked at the top of the window frame with her feet. Her mutilated hand slipped out of Lauren’s and she fell head first down three stories to the concrete pathway which lay between both houses. Lauren screamed in terror and ran down her apartment stairs without even putting her shoes on. She burst through her house’s front door and ran in a frenzy to the entrance of the neighbouring old woman’s residence. She hoped to notify the landlord or owner or anyone else living in the apartment house of what had occurred on the top floor. As she threw herself into the gothic style door adorning the residence, she screamed to be let in as she pounded the door with her fists, completely ignoring the doorbell to the left of the doorframe. She could hear an ambulance’s sirens in the distance.

Lauren was hit with a wave of confusion as the door opened to reveal Kayla, with drunken lit up eyes and an outstretched arm to greet Lauren with a hug. Yelling over the sound of party chatter and the echoing bass of a rap song, Kayla exclaimed “Oh my gosh Lauren, you came! Let me pour you a shot!” while oblivious to the fact that Lauren’s skin, pulsating from hyperventilation, was as pale as a ghost. In between breaths, Lauren muttered, “the old woman…upstairs…beside my room…she shook herself too hard…blood…she shook out of the window”. Kayla, trying to calm Lauren down, placed her hands on her shoulders and said, “Did you fall asleep and have a bad dream or something while studying? This is Jeff’s friend Luke’s place. His Dad owns the house and lets Luke live here rent free for the school year as long as he keeps an eye on the other tenants. How do you not know that! I have no idea how his Dad is still cool with that, some frat boy idiots trashed the house last year during Luke’s Halloween party and..”. Lauren was too overwhelmed by what she had witnessed to listen and broke free of Kayla’s grip, spilling her can of Bud Light as she darted towards the stairs. “Lauren what the hell! Where are you going! I was just about to say, there’s no old lady living here! The only older person who lives here is Robert on the second floor, who’s here from Spain or something to work as a janitor!” Kayla explained as she ran up the stairs after Lauren. Lauren knew exactly what she saw and was ready to prove Kayla wrong. She flung open the door to the room on the top floor across from hers and thought for sure she had selected the wrong door. She saw baseball hats lined up on a shelf, Metallica and Breaking Bad posters on the walls and a flat screen TV with the green glowing light of an Xbox game system beside it.

Lauren struggling for words, stepped out of the room and realized that this was the only top floor room across from her window. “This is Andrew’s room, Luke’s cousin. You’d probably see him from your room if you didn’t have the damn blinds closed all the time, you vampire! What are we doing up here? Let’s go downstairs to the party before Luke notices that people are in his cousin’s room and you can tell me all about this bad dream you had”. “But the woman…the window…I saw it break”. Lauren, losing faith in the reality of her surroundings ran back into Andrew’s room in order to study the window for herself. She placed her hands on it and noticed no cracks or traces of blood. “Lauren please calm down; you’re scaring me now!” Kayla cried. Lauren then looked beyond the windowpane towards her own window and saw herself in her room staring back at her, sitting at her desk chair while trembling and rubbing the middle knuckles of her fingers together under her neck.

METAL IN THE MOVIES: In "The Big Short", Christian Bale rocks out to Mastodon, Metallica and Pantera!

Last night, I saw the movie "The Big Short" with my family. Starring Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt and Chistian Bale - the movie tells the true story of a group of individuals who predicted the 2008 financial crisis in the United States and managed to profit greatly from its downfall. Christian Bale plays American hedge fund manager Michael Burry, an awkward and introverted odd ball who has a knack for reading numbers and predicting outcomes.

I was pleasantly surprised when in one of the first scenes of the film, while reading the mortgage data from a litany of banks, Burry cranks up the song "Blood and Thunder" into his earphones while tapping his desk with a drumstick. As the movie continues, it becomes clear that Burry's method for focusing on crunching numbers is to listen to metal hits such as "Eye of the Beholder" and "Master of Puppets" by Metallica and "District Divided" by Darkest Hour. Further on in the movie, while expressing some frustration on his drums, Burry plays an angry percussion rendition of Pantera's "By Demons Be Driven" - complete with screaming, Vinnie Paul double kicks and inflicting an overall beating on to his kit.

Upon further research, I discovered an interview where Bale claims to have learned to play metal style drums in only two weeks for the role.

EDIT: Skip to 2:45

An impressive feat when you take in that right before the lessons began, Bale tore out his knee while on a trampoline with his kids. When director Adam McKay suggested that he use a double for the double kicks (Tales from the Puns), Bale reportedly told him, “No, no, it’s gonna be all right, let me just do it”. In the end, he accomplished the task with two doctors standing by "waiting for his leg to fall off". Pretty friggin' metal!

Furthermore, in the Screenrant interview above, Bale confirms that this aspect of Michael Burry's character was realistic. After sitting with the real Burry for over 9 hours during character study, Bale is quoted as saying:

This is how Mike Burry unwound. This is actually how he calmed down. He would listen to it all day long in his headphones – and not just that, Mastodon as well – but his brain is on fire so much that death metal calms him. He’s a very different individual to most of us.

Even though many metal fans (including myself) would disagree that Metallica, Pantera and Mastodon are "death metal" (Darkest Hour is debatable), it's cool to know that metal music fueled the minds of those smart enough to notice major fraudulent activity in the American financial system.

Us, disagreeing

It was a delight to see Christian Bale play an investment banker for the first time since American Psycho and trade cheesy 80s hits for some thrash and sludge. 

Just picture him holding up Vulgar Display of Power

I unforutnately could not locate any videos of the metal movie moments (MMMs) but enjoy this Studio 360 interview with director Adam McKay about the drumming scene as well as a sound clip from the scene.



Also, go see The Big Short! I give the film an 7.5/10 with bonus points for a kickass soundtrack. You can listen to the hard rock/metal selections from the soundtrack below:



(I know Run the Jewels aren't metal but the song is still kickass!)

SHOCKING DISCOVERY: All Star by Smash Mouth Syncs Up To Drake's Music Video For "Hotline Bling"

.....To reveal a deep seeded inspiration for the 6ix God himself

Through a complete accident, I believe I have discovered a definitive link between the 1999 pop rock hit All Star by Smash Mouth and the viral music video for Drake's 2015 single, "Hotline Bling". By examining the following evidence, it can be gathered that this is no coincidence. Rather this was an intentional move by the Grammy award winning Canadian rap artist to present the influence that All Star by Smash Mouth has had on his life and music career.

However, in order to understand how I arrived at this conclusion, let me start from the beginning...

This past summer, I studied in London, England for nearly a month as a part of a "Study Abroad" program hosted by my university.

Me being jolly in jolly ol' England

While taking a break from doing a reading on the history of urban settlements beside the Thames river,  I stumbled across a video involving the band Smash Mouth and pieces of bread. In it, lead singer, host of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and one of two clowns in the group "Insane Clown Posse" - Steve Harwell - angrily threatens and berates a Fort Collins, Colorado crowd while the rest of the band awkwardly played the instrumentals to All Star by Smash Mouth, which further resulted in a stiff and nervous sing along from the crowd. 

The comparison has been made before but the resemblance is uncanny

As I witnessed this juxtaposition of a WWE wrestler speech or a spoken word Pantera song to the rhythm that many, including myself, associate with the care free times of childhood, I was absolutely mortified.

The video in question. WARNING: VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

Me after watching this video

I lamented on how in the late 90s/early 2000s, Smash Mouth ruled the airwaves of the free world with songs such as "Walkin' On The Sun", "I'm a Believer" and most predominately, All Star by Smash Mouth. The latter of these songs experienced massive worldwide exposure through being in the now classic films Rat Race and - more importantly - Shrek, to which it became the musical embodiment of the green ogre himself. 

I could not understand how a band that experienced such fame and fortune could be reduced to threatening a crowd with violence and hurling obscene profanities as high as the previously mentioned pieces of whole grain. That night, as I laid in my bed listening to the English wind hitting the open window of my Bloomsbury dorm, I decided to go on Spotify UK and put on All Star by Smash Mouth. With the catchy chorus and poppy guitar chords ringing in my ears, I reflected on my entire life and felt a special oneness not only within myself but also to the earth and all my surroundings. 

I felt positively changed. Inspired. Gratified.

I also realized that right next to "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin and Beethoven's "Symphony No. 5 In C Minor, Op. 67, 'Fate'. Allegro Con Brio", All Star by Smash Mouth is one of the greatest musical compositions of all time.

Flash forward to October 19th, 2015. All Star by Smash Mouth became the song of our London course with acapella versions of the song ringing out in the streets and piano accompanied late night rec room jams filling the midnight hours.

Oh I ain't kidding.

All Star by Smash Mouth has become the song I fall asleep to and the sound of my alarm to awake to. Talks of All Star Wings and Ribs, NHL All Star games and Converse All Star shoes become garbled and distorted as they give way to a surge of volume for the song playing constantly in my head. Between the portion of my brain devoted to playing the song on repeat and the burn of the Astro Lounge album cover into the screen of my iPhone 6, All Star by Smash Mouth has evidently taken over my life.

The color of my entire phone interface

Oh I really ain't kidding

Anyways, back to October 19th. On this particular October evening, "October's Very Own" Aubrey Drake Graham released his music video for his single, "Hotline Bling". The video spread like wildfire on Twitter in the city of Toronto between talks of the Blue Jays beating the Kansas City Royals in game three of the ALCS and striking a northern blow to the notion of baseball as "America's pastime". Also in Twitter highlights were talks of Justin Trudeau lighting up a six paper joint in celebration of a Liberal majority win in the Canadian federal election. Regarding "Hotline Bling", people from all over the city and the world tweeted about who "Director X" could be and Drake's choice of outfits. However, most of the attention was centered on Drake's off rhythm and seemingly cheesy dance moves. 

I clicked on to the link to the video while unbeknownst to me at that moment, I had forgotten to pause my usual Monday night routine of listening to All Star by Smash Mouth full blast on my home stereo on repeat. The video began with what appeared to be an array of phone sex workers wearing the same outfit. Not in the mood for such jargon, I skipped this charade and fast forward to when Drake appears. After watching for less than a minute, I said to myself:

What on God's green earth is this? Why is Drake singing and dancing to All Star by Smash Mouth?

The obvious answer to this hit me quite literally when as a result of the sheer volume of my stereo system shaking my house, a priceless family heirloom fell from the shelf above me and hit me in the head, rendering me unconscious. When I awoke hours later from my All Star by Smash Mouth concussed state and picked up the broken pieces of the jar that had been in my family for generations, I realized that the music video was indeed for the corresponding song of "Hotline Bling", not All Star by Smash Mouth. But then a little voice spoke to me that sounded like Shrek and through a harsh Irish accent, it told me that somehow - in that moment - the two vastly different forms of media synced up to a concrete flow. 

So I decided to mute the video and play All Star by Smash Mouth and I was utterly shocked and astounded to learn that my hypothesis was correct! Dance moves that once seemed to be off rhythm and strange synced up perfectly and made realistic sense when synced to All Star by Smash Mouth. Visual cues and set colour changes by Director X coincided with the lyrics and the tempo of All Star by Smash Mouth that the identity of "Director X" could actually be Smash Mouth singer Steve Harwell himself!

I felt at that moment much like how I believe Charles Savage must have felt when he realised that the 1973 Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon syncs to the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. After viewing the synced version of the "Hotline Bling" music video a number of times, I thought of a deeper meaning in all of this.

Simply put: What if Drake is as inspired by and obsessed with All Star by Smash Mouth as I am?

This might sound crazy, but hear me out...

If in London, England - an epicenter of art, culture and history and an inspiration for artistic greats such as Charles Dickens, The Beatles and William Shakespeare - I could find such solace and appreciation for All Star by Smash Mouth then could it be possible that the hip hop mastermind found it too? If in such an elevated place of inspiration, a run of the mill everyman like myself could reach such enlightenment, could it be possible that this plateau I have reached could be already populated by the 6ix God himself?

By examining the evidence below, you can experience for yourself the synchronization. I have broken down significant moments of the video and have written what I believe they represent. Realize though that I am merely an observer and feel free to come up with your own conclusions about this cohesion of culture (and let me know about it in the comments!!!)

By taking this all into account, this music video can be seen as a subtle homage to one of Drake's influences and a hope that Smash Mouth will overcome the hurdles of wheat projectiles to become the dominant force of pop radio and kids movie soundtracks once again.

00:36: Drake switches up his dancing to correspond with the start of the sync. This is wear the viewer should stop "Hotline Bling" and put on their All Star by Smash Mouth record. The color of the cube holding our Canadian crown jewel changes its color to the greenish hue associated with Shrek and Shrek based products such as Hostess Twinkies With Ogre Green Creamy Filling®

00:40: The stomp of Drake's Timba Land boot corresponds with the splash cymbal to signify Drake marching to the beat of Kevin Coleman's drum (drummer of All Star by Smash Mouth)

00:51: The years (of success) started coming for Drake and without any reasonable doubt, they have not stopped coming evident by the lineup of well-endowed women presented before him. However, Drake is a modest man who does not forget his All Star by Smash Mouth roots so he puts a finger to his lips to keep this info on the down low.

01:01 Drake asks "what's wrong with taking the back streets" while doing a walking motion to represent his tough urban upbringing in the neighborhood of Forest Hill in Toronto, a notorious neighborhood riddled with gangbangers, bootleggers, swashbucklers and other nefarious perpetrators of crime who populate these "back streets". Luckily, due to his success - Drake rose out of the back streets to walk on the main streets of Beverley Hills and Fifth Avenue.

01:07 As Smash Mouth declares "you'll never shine if you don't glow", Drake presents us a Shrek goo green glowing stairway to heaven that represents the enlightenment he obtained from listening to All Star by Smash Mouth. 

01:15: Drake gets his sold out shows worldwide on and "gets paid" in trillions for them.

01:19: All that glitters is gold and the cube turns gold due to Drake's life being filled with gold records, gold bars and gold cubes. All Drake touches turns to gold making him a modern day King Midas with a crown put on his head by All Star by Smash Mouth

01:28: Smash Mouth says the line "It's a cool place and they say it gets colder" as the color of the background turns to icicle blue and Drake becomes bundled in warm sweatpants and a sweater from Roots®. This confirms that Drake has followed All Star by Smash Mouth's advice towards wellness and success.

01:35: During the chorus, Drake makes a cryptic Italian symbol called the "mano cornuto, which today we recognize as the "devil horns" that many heavy metal fans use at Foo Fighters shows. The Italian legend is that this symbol was used to ward off and protect oneself against curses and other harmful energies. 

Could this be Drake protecting himself  against those digging to the root of his success and finding the hidden origins of his influences? I dunno but I would like to say that I am writing this in a zen state of positive chakras so hopefully I do not succumb to any ancient curses.

Please do not do this to me Drake

01:58: "Only shooting stars break the mold is a lyric that has come up in the song once before by now but I thought I would address it at this point. We can understand the meaning of this complex metaphor through the symbol of Michael Jordan. Nicknamed Jumpman by his peers, Jordan physically dunked so many baskets in his NBA career that he physically "broke the mold" of the sport by being the first basketball player to assemble a team of cartoon animals and lead them to greatness.

Drake realizes this and strives to do the same for the rap game. This is evident by him doing a hand motion of dribbling a basketball in this point of the video and also by wearing a Michael Jordan t-

shirt throughout the video under his red jacket.









Only shooting stars break the mold - All Star by Smash Mouth






2:03-2:21: Here Drake actually looks at the viewers in the eye and explains the affect that All Star by Smash Mouth has had on his life. However, he lets the gibberish, turntables and wah-guitar of the All Star by Smash Mouth interlude do the talking for him.






2:24: When the song kicks back in, Drake bows his head in prayer to the blessings that All Star by Smash Mouth has afforded him.






2:38: The song slows down so Drake can explain that when he was poor and begging in the streets of Forrest Hill in the late 90s , he asked a man for change for gas so he could drive to the Salvation Army to get some soup and bread to feed his mother, father and seventeen brothers and sisters. This man ended up being Steve Harwell from Smash Mouth and he not only gave Drake $500,000 dollars in Esso gas station gift cards but also gave him the musical fuel of the song All Star by Smash Mouth to inspire Drake (and the world) to do bigger and better things. This takes the form of a parable.






3.00: Drake "hits the ground running" through the 6ix with his woes! (EDIT: Hey! An easy one!)






3:04: "Your brain gets smart but your head gets dumb" is stated as Drake points to his head. Tbh if I can be real for a second I'm not a linguistics or philosophy professor so I can't even begin to explain this one






3:08: Drake here begs us to take the back streets and to be creative, to not be afraid to do things differently and to enjoy life no matter what people think as he has when he decided to release this music video on Apple Music even though a total of only twelve people watched it before it was uploaded to YouTube.






3:18 - onward: Drake points to all of his fans and followers to tell them they are all "all stars" and are all capable of success and that we too can get shows on and get paid someday if we work for it.






3:48: The video begins where it ended and it is now sucked back into Shrek's swamp evident by the green staircase fade out. This could also be an expression of letting out creative thoughts and inventive ideas rather than burying them in our own personal swamps. Better out than in I always say!