Editors Kate Osias and Nikki Alfar sent an e-mail apologizing for the delay, but the book should be out soon. I think the cover is amazing. Stay tuned.
Year: 2011
health and wellness fair at the office
Findings:
1. Bone Scan by Calciumade – 0.4 bone density, still normal
2. Body Age Testing by Sustagen Premium – Body age is 24.4 years, almost the same as my actual age (I’ll be 25 in seven months); weight should be 116 to 143 pounds, I’m just a pound overweight! That came as a surprise, but of course I’d like to lower my weight by more than just a pound.
3. Massage by Salonpas and White Flower – Three-minute back massage, loved it.
Glad to hear I’m relatively healthy.
I smell like White Flower right now.
3 of 3!
Now I can buy more books!
good, good, good. good.
1. Book 2 of 3 from The Book Depository has arrived!
I need to read faster.
2. Got my investment papers (ooh so serious, so grown-up) from the bank, and finally figured out that particular bank’s online banking system. Dyusko, enrolling took me ages.
3. We’ll be watching Live AIDS for the first time this week!
4. Weighed myself a while ago.
That’s a loss of almost six pounds since February! I still have nearly twenty pounds to lose (ugh) but I’ll take it!
I don’t run anymore. What I do now is I go to the (small) (free) gym at the condo at least twice a week and use the stationary bike and do seated rows and lift weights. I eat rice when I feel like it, but no more than once a day. Badminton on Fridays. Saturdays, since Jaykie’s classes are over, we plan to either run or play Frisbee.
I feel better about myself. I mean, I still try to watch what I eat, but at least now I can eat pizza without freaking out.
movies during the weekend
Green Hornet
I never was interested in the Green Hornet. The show or the persona. I saw re-runs when I was a child and I thought it was horribly boring. Even after I learned that Kato was Bruce Lee. Or, especially after I learned that Kato was Bruce Lee. Who is this Green Hornet guy anyway, and how come he gets all the press?
I have to admit though that I only get to see tail-end scenes (Kato driving, the Green Hornet going on and on and on about something or other) of the show. I only put up with Green Hornet because Batman & Robin came after. I used to have this major crush on Robin. Anyway, I thought, if I’m going to sit on my ass watching a masked vigilante fight criminals I’ll just watch Batman. At least he doesn’t make Robin drive.
When I first heard that Seth Rogen is going to be the Green Hornet I…didn’t get it. Seth Rogen? How could this possibly work? At the moment I was thinking the producers were going to do it dark and moody, like what Nolan did with the Batman franchise, but lo! they just wanted a summer flick. In that case, it works. (It just went a little crazy with the car chases.) I appreciated the fact that they didn’t turn Cameron Diaz’s character into a bimbo. Not enough Christoph Waltz though. I’d like to hear more from a villain who’s going through a mid-life crisis.
Basically, the reboot serves as a vehicle for Kato, poor Kato, to say what the TV series couldn’t say: that the Green Hornet is a bit of a jerk, and Kato doesn’t get enough credit. Good for you, Kato.
127 Hours
Do you know this show? “I Survived”, every Sunday morning on the Bio channel? Jaykie and I used to watch that every week, and I’ve just had it up to here with people getting stuck someplace and drinking their own urine and chopping off their own limbs. That doesn’t make it any less horrifying, or their survival any less awe-inspiring (frankly, if I were in their position, I wouldn’t have lasted half a day, I’d probably just lose my mind and wear pigtails and fight zombie Nazis with a sword – wait that’s another movie); it’s just that, why would I want to sit for two hours in the cinema waiting for a man to cut off his own arm?
I don’t even like James Franco’s character. I know this is based on a true story, and I don’t know the guy personally, but to quote one of the girls, “He’s batshit”.
And he does go batshit, waking up one morning hungry and dehydrated and sorry, make-believing that he is the host, guest and caller in a live television show. That is the strongest scene in this film. It made him real for me, it made him human; that’s what made the film worth my time.
Inside Job
This documentary, which studies the financial crash of 2008, won at the Academy Awards. Watch it. It presents what happened in a clear, understandable manner. Watch the financial assholes squirm (or lash out in anger – “This is not a deposition, sir!”) during the interviews.
sucker punch
What it is:
– Zack Snyder’s wet dream
– A thirteen-year-old boy’s screenplay
– A videogame that thinks it’s a movie that thinks it’s a videogame
– A pastiche
– Shutter Island on crack colored with Watchmen
– A hot mess
What the hell:
– Ah, mental illness. You can do crazy things with it. (Pun intended.)
– Structure’s simple enough, and actually becomes predictable after a few scenes. I liked the silent movie sequence in the beginning. After that, protagonist is taken to a mental hospital. More slow-mo, silent movie shite. Then lobotomy scene! Then bam! Fantasy world! It’s like Pan’s Labyrinth really, the fantasy world as escape from the Awful Real World, except that they wear leather.
– Funny thing, though, inside the fantasy world, whenever she begins to dance, bam! Another layer of fantasy world! Like Inception!
– So A) Real World, B) Fantasy World, where they’re maids/dancers/courtesans, C) Secondary Fantasy World, where they go on several missions to retrieve a map, a lighter, a knife, and a key.
– It would have worked if the movie lingered longer in A, and showed us the actual interactions of the girls with each other. Then we could have a map (lol our own map) we could use to wade through B and the craziness and the shrill over-the-topness of C.
– Pan’s Labyrinth and Shutter Island (and even The Cell!) had the same themes, and they contained references to the real world of the tortured protagonists. Baby’s sister and mother is absent in all of the mindscapes. How can that be? And how come the stepfather only appears as a priest, for God’s sake. And why the dragons and the orcs and the blown-up city? Why the “mission” structure? Why a dance? Without the references, everything is just random, gratuitous shit.
– Yeah, yeah I know lighter, dragon, Rocket getting stabbed in B and getting blown up in C, but that’s about it.
– Character development, nil. So many women, and Blue is the only true character! Remember when he says, “I don’t like guns”? I laughed.
– Was the VO script written by Nicholas Sparks?
– Do I hate it? No. I’ve seen worse. It’s entertaining, in its own way. It’s just a shame that the filmmakers would spend so much time/money on something like this (it IS eye candy, you know) and didn’t even stop to consider THE FUCKING STORY.
The end.
I like the soundtrack.
Lovely title, even lovelier story.
“Until We Are Naked Again Beneath the Mute Witness of Stars” by Berrien C. Henderson
Which one? There were plenty. The old road map was slippery like those fireflies. He banked, then soared into the outer dark, one star being just as good as another. They flickered and winked for eons and parsecs and light years. They were all of them bedamned and complicit in their silence (and he supposed he had it coming) like so many absent friend and echoes of conversations fading down the avenues of the mind.
*
On my reading list: Tana French’s Faithful Place.
On my mind: Asset management. And the fact that I increased my deposits to the company coop, so beginning April it’s going to feel like I’m not earning anything. ACK! Yep, growing older by the day. Haha. But at least I’m doing so responsibly.
Eliza Victoria 