Apocalypto aka Tha Passion of the Mayan

First, I'd like to apologize to all my Jewish friends for buying a ticket to this. I really can't stand Gibson as a human being but curiousity got the better of me and so I went.

The movie succeeds very well as rip-off of the brilliant action movie Predator but fails miserably as a history lesson. He does the same thing here he does with Passion; he shows us lots of gore and atrocities committed by people in interesting costumes in a time period other than our own. No explanations, no reference, no history, just violent act upon violent act.

I felt The Passion was the greatest snuff film ever made and Apocalypto is a perfect sequel to that. More non-history dressed up as history.

I find it fascinating that in both movies Mel seems to be attacking communities for their addictions to blood and violence and yet both Apocalypto and Passion revel in gore at evey turn. Every time someone got their heart torn out on screen the frat boy sitting behind me said to his date,"that's awesome!"

EVERY SINGLE FUCKING TIME! "That's awesome!"

I wanted to scream. "No it's not!!! A person just had their heart torn out. It's NOT awesome!" But I suspect the stupid frat boy was responding exactly the way Mel wanted him to respond. Or maybe Mel's so clever that he figures by producing that blood-lust response he's subliminally spreading his message even more. Maybe the stupid frat boy acts as a sort of unknowing narrator on behalf af Mel. Maybe instead of watching the film we're supposed to watch the audience and as they cheer each beheading we're supoosed to look at each other and repeat the quotation at the beginning film:

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within."

Wow, maybe Mel really is a genius!

Deal or no deal, Saddam.

Saddam Video


I was channel-suerfing just now. Landed on Deal or No Deal. I then proceeded to surf the web while watching them open cases on TV and landed upon video of Saddam being executed via the Drudge Report. I paused Deal or No Deal. They put the noose around his neck. The cameraman shook but Saddam was still. Then all of a sudden they begin to chant and, boom, they drop him. Video over. Case closed. Back to TV. Nicole opens the case and the banker offers her 175,000. No deal, says Nicole! No deal said, Saddaam. Hoefully things will turn out better for Nicole.

Nice Haircut!

These sidewalk chalk drawings blow my feeble mind!

Please comment about this chair.

Extinct

The baiji disappears but the Pinto survives?!?! Lord help us! I snapped this pic outside Office Max on my camera phone. I would love to see the driver!

Bye Bye Baiji

If this story doesn't totally depress you then I fear you may not be human:

"From AP via China Environmental News Digest:

A rare, nearly blind white dolphin that survived for millions of years is effectively extinct, an international expedition declared after ending a fruitless six-week search of the mammal's Yangtze River habitat.

The baiji would be the first large aquatic mammal driven to extinction since hunting and overfishing killed off the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s. For the baiji, the culprit was a degraded habitat -- busy ship traffic, which confounds the sonar the dolphin uses to find food, and overfishing and pollution in the Yangtze, the expedition said on Wednesday."

Happy New Year indeed!

"Lay off the egg nog!"

Someone left a comment on my blog telling me to "lay off the eggnog." Better advice was never given! Thank you!

I was in Wal-Mart two weeks ago...I was thirsty...I saw a cold bottle of egg nogg in the fridge section...it looked like about a pint to me...my Dad loves egg nog so everytime I drink it I think of him....so i took it out...drank the whole thing in a few minutes...then I thought to myself..."I wonder how many calories that was"...so I flip it over to read the back...oh shit...210 calories per serving...and how many servings per container?...4...four....FOUR!!!!! THAT'S 840 CALORIES IN 90 seconds... and now, ladies and gentlemen, you know why I'm fat...!

Lay off the egg nog? For sure!

I won't to drink another bottle of til next December.

Another Perfect Christmas

It was another perfect Christmas. I guess I'm just lucky but I've never had a bad Christmas. Every year, no matter what happens, the day just always feel perfect.

A few years ago we were at my parents exchanging tons of presents.

Last year we decided no presents at all...just family being together. We all knew it would be my Moms' last Christmas.

This year, on the 18th, we all got together for dinner on then my dad headed to Seattle to be with my brother. I spent Christmas day hanging out in Oceanside watching movies and photographing the sunset. Here are some pics from my first Christmas-sunset.




The white spec in the corner is the moon.

Merry Christmas

Is this the oddest thing I've seen all week?

The Stefani video made me nostalgic for the Sound of Music so I just added it to the top of my Netflix list. Here's your homework: compare and contrast these two videos.

Recovering

Well, I survived my high school reunion (a total blast) and a head cold (no fun at all). I loved the reunion but I'm excited about getting on with other things. Organizing it was incredibly time-consuming. But now I'm back in Oceanside and so happy to be home.

Down at the docks today, I fed fish to sea lions and pelicans. I love it here. So much to blog about! I wish I felt 100%, though.

I'll tumble, for YOU!

I'll be your baby
I'll be your score
I'll run the gun for you
And so much more

Ill tumble 4 ya...

HEY, YOU GUYS!!!

Ever watch a show called The Electric Company? I watched this over 20 times last night. The song is catchy, the staging is interesting (the way the goofy characters morph into flesh and blood actors) and the casting is very ethnicially diverse. I don't remember much about the show but the opening is great. It revs me up. Enjoy! Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Great writing!

The is the best short script I've seen in a long time. It's a commercial for Liberty Mutual.

A guy is trying to punch in the code to the burglar alarm system of his house. He stares for a while then calls off-screen to his wife:

Husband: What's the code?

Wife: It's our anniversary.

(She says it very matter-of-fact...it's clear she assumes he knows the date. He stares for a long time, afraid to punch in the wrong number. Finally, he punches in a series of numbers and the alarm goes off. The commercial ends.)

With two lines and a simple action we understand volumes about their relationship, their characters, marriage in general and we get a commentary on technology AND it's humorous! The limitations of a 30 second commercial forces writers to be disciplined and get to the point. I can learn much from that commercial.

If He Did It? IF???? LOL

Free speech means Rupert Murdoch has the right NOT to publish a book by OJ, I understand that.

And free speech means OJ can confess with or without permission from Rupert Murdoch.

And OJ Simpson is a horrible, horrible piece of shit.

BUT

I don't like seeing programs and books cancelled because someone might be offended.

Happy Feet

Happy Feet, the number one movie this week, was completely off my radar. I'm tired of animal cartoons where every animal has a different ethnic accent. The lead animals always have white, middle-class voices and the supporting "animals" are...funkier and tend to speak in ebonics. This whole trend strikes me as borderline racist and extremely condescending.

The only reason I saw Happy Feet was because it made alot of money, it beat Casino Royale, it got great reviews and it was directed by George Miller (Babe, a film I loved). I had no interest til 24 hours ago.

Happy Feet is the first cartoon I can think of to tackle gay rights, arts education and enviromental concerns all at the same time. It's such a noble movie and I couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. Late in the film, real humans are introduced and it makes for some interesting cinema on a purely technicial level.

Basically, theres a penguin who's "different" (gay) and loves to dance ( VERY gay), and the adults want him to stop dancing and start singing. He fails his music course and winds up in a zoo (an interesting sequence) where he tap dances for the humans who in turn decide to save the environment and stop over-fishing so all the penguins can live happily ever after and keep on dancing. It would have been amusing as a 20 minute short but as it is now, it feels like 3 hours.

Every time I was about to leave some scary seal or killer whale would try to eat the penguins so I stayed, hoping they'd succeeed, but they never did. Too bad!

March of the Penguins was one of my favorite films from the last few years. I love penguins! Happy Feet, not so much.

Mac Addict

I had a nightmare last night that I dropped my laptop. I woke up in a panic. I kept falling back asleep and kept trying to put it back together but it wouldn't hold. It keeping breaking into two pieces. This was a true nightmare. Finally, after a few hours I woke up and slowly realized the nightmare was taking place in a location other than my Oceanside shack so it must not be reality since I've been in Oceanside for the last month. I got out of bed, went to the laptop and there it was, all in one piece. "Oh thank God."

I can think of nothing else that I own that is as important to my life as my computer. Not my phone. Not my car. It has become my third arm, my second brain, my close friend. I'm trying to get to a place where everything on my computer is web-based and/or backed up on the web but I'm not there yet. I'm very good about backing up so if I lost my laptop I wouldn't lose much data but still, the thought of having to start over in a new relationship with a new machine is somethIng I hope I can put off for at least another year or two.

I love you, Mac, and I hope we will always be together.

Casino Royale

Just got back from Casino Royale. Loved every minute of it. Loved every word of dialogue. Loved every location, costume, actor, camera angle, plot point. I loved this movie. I loved the trailer when it first hit. I watched the trailer like 10 times in a row. If you see it (and why wouldn't you) think of me and know that anything you love about this movie I loved, too. And anything about it you DON'T like, I also LOVED. I truly loved every moment of this movie.

At one point about 2/3rds thru I was completely at a loss. I had no idea where it was going. That so rarely happens to me in the movies. It happened in The Prestige and now again in Casino Royale.

Hopefully, I'll be seeing Royale again this weekend and hopefully this time it will be in focus. The midnight screening was a hair out of focus the entire time. The previews were COMPLETELY out of focus and they kept trying to fix it but they never really did. How hard is it to run a movie theater?

And by the way, Judi Dench is the smartest, sexiest, and most compelling actress currently acting in films. She has no equal. Every time I see ads for Helen Mirren in The Queen, I think to myself, was Judi Dench too busy?

And about the "Bond controversy", I've liked all the Bonds. I never met a Bond I didn't like. I love Daniel Craig but I can love him without denigrating Brosnan. I wish people would stop saying the series was growing stale under Brosnan. The last Bond film grossed 160 mllion domestically. Daniel Craig is a welcome addition to the Bond family but Brosnan should not be dissed.

Thursday, at midnight, I'll be gambling at...

Under the Gunn

While waiting to see the hairdresser who fucked my closeted ex-boyfriend (and by the way, closeted men are hot) I noticed my very un-closeted hero Tim Gunn on the cover of a magazine called Instinct. Is this a real magazine that peole read?

Anyway, the profile on Tim Gunn (Project Runway) was very interesting, he talked about being devastated by the way he was dumped by his last boyfriend and he says he has never gotten over it and that he will NEVER have another boyfriend because it was too painful.

I hate the idea of my hero, Mr. Make-It-Work-Gunn, having pain in his perfect body but the words his ex-lover used were so cutting, so rich, so harsh, so quiet, that I feel the need to repeat them here.

His lover simply said," I don't have the patience for you anymore." And poof it was over.

"I don't have the patience for you anymore."

This is my new favorite line. I hope to start using it often. I think the trick is to say it like a confession not bitchy. Don't say it mad, say it like it's a revelation.

"I don't have the patience for you anymore."

This is actually the reason I've taken a break from working in the theater.

"I don't have the patience for you anymore."

I'd like to see that on Google qoutes:

"I don't have the patience for you anymore" Tim Gunns ex-lover

Fixed Hair and Friends!

I got my hair "fixed" yesterday in LA. Yes, I drove all the way to LA to fix my hair. I'm not vain, just indulgent and I have ALOT of free time. So I got it fixed by my ex-boyfriends female hairdresser. He joined me yesterday to watch me get it fixed. I believe he fucked her at some point. It's all very murky. But she's a great hairdresser. She's in a little strip mall near Vine and Melrose. She charged 10 bucks and i tipped 5 so added to the 17 I spent in Oceanside my total hair bill has now come to 32. 32 bucks for a haircut that looks like it's worth about 6. Oh well. I've never been good with money.

After that the ex and I had dinner at a Peruvian restuarant where they mix french fries in with the meal. Imagine a stir-fry dish and one of the ingredients is french fries. Interesting. Interesting and delicious!

i highly reccomend staying friends with exes whenever possible. I'm actually friends with about 90% of the men I've ever dated. On a side note, I'm friends with only about 2% of the people I ever worked with. And actually one guy I dated I also worked with so I guess that explains why we aren't friends now.

So if you want to be my friend, date me, but don't work with me. And be careful where you cut your hair.

Oceanside: strike 1

Had to go back to LA yesterday for a few appts. and so I took a friend to see Borat (my third time if you're keeping score). Well I was very aware of the LA cheese factor (clothes, hair, blackberries, cute little dogs in rhinestone collars), people in Oceanside and people in LA are quite different on the surface. I much prefer the simple-folk of Oceanside.

HOWEVER. And this is a big HOWEVER.

i was pretty shocked at the higher quality in movie projection performance and sound at the Grove in LA as opposed to the sound at The Regal in Oceanside. The screen in LA was much bigger, brighter, louder, just better all around. So that's a problem. Oceanside can't be perfect! But i really don't want to have to keep returning to LA to see movies. Casino Royale starts tonight and I hate the idea of seeing it on an inferior screen but...oh well...I LOVE OCEANSIDE and I love life here. It's incredibly simple.

I'm thinking of moving here full time for a few years. Am I crazy?

Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd!

13 Oceanside barbers in one tiny shop do 80 Marines a day on Sundays. Sometimes more than 80. They specialize in the quick buzzcut, the High & Tight, the Horseshoe, the Medium Regulation. They DON'T, however, specialize in cutting civilian hair and Ronnie Larsen is a civilian but I wanted the experience of using a local barber. I knew it was a mistake the minute I sat down. He cut so slowly, so carefully, it was painfully obvious he was lost. Confident people tend to move quickly.

I said cheerfully, "when was the last time you cut a civilians hair?"

"It's been a while!"

"Oh shit!", I thought to myself.

60 minutes later my hair was officially fucked up; uneven, choppy, whatever. I paid, left the store and began looking for a real hairdresser, NOT a chop-shop barber! You can't really tell how fucked up it is unless you really look at it but once you look closely you see the signs everywhere, so clearly. My head is the Da Vinci Code.

My neighbor summed it up best.

"Ronnie it's fine, it looks nice, oh wait, oh you're right, it's uneven, oh, I see it now, oh you're right, they really did fuck up your hair, oh that sucks, you can't really tell though, well sort of but not really."