Yeah, this Prison Break thing is starting to get out of hand. Ali woke me up Saturday morning holding a broken light bulb over my left eye. That was about the right time, I reckoned, to let her know that that stuff doesn't happen in my house. Big mistake, but that's all I'm gonna say about that. She put the lightbulb in the trash and told me I had no sense of humour. Somehow, I was in the doghouse when really all I wanted to do was save my eye ball.
The doghouse - a familiar milieu for me. Sunday morning Ali blared into my ear a nice Japanese jingle Ii kata aru zo... Misuta Do-onatsu. I didn't even ask, I just pulled on my jeans and stuff and shlepped around the block looking for a Dunkin Donuts. I came back with two fritters and a coffee (for me, stupidly) and crawled back into bed.
This whole roommate thing has its advantages, its disadvantages, but better still, its humourous moments. I am lucky enough to have a dishwasher in my flat, but Ali insists upon washing the dishes by hand - where she learned that I'll never know - and then using the dishwasher effectively as a drying rack. Sissy used to think I was weird because I would rinse, or soak the tough grime before loading the washer, but this takes the cake. Ali actually washes the dishes before putting them in the washer, but she doesn't turn the washer on. I giggle.
Another fun time was teaching Ali how to use the clothes washer - I have one of those in my flat too with a dryer even. I left for work one morning and asked Ali to do the washing and when I came home I noticed that there was nothing to be washed. Instinctively, I went to the dryer and looked for things to fold. There was nothing. The following conversation ensued:
Me: Did you do the washing?
Ali: Yeah.
Me: Where is it?
Ali: It's out.
Me: Out?
Ali: Yeah!
Me: Out where?
Ali: At the cleaners. I called the service.
Me: Oh. You know, you can do the washing here (gesturing to the washer and drying stack).
Ali: Oh, I thought that was a coat closet... You do laundry?
Me: Yes, famously. Come here - I'll show you how to operate the machines.
Well, I nearly had a heart attack a few days later when I saw her doing a load of "whites" and then she slipped off her pyjama bottoms - her bright red pyjama bottoms - and tossed them in the wash. "Awwww SNAP! What are you DOING?", I asked incredulously. "What's your fucking problem? Maid always washed our pyjamas with the whites". I steadied myself and then took a deep breath, remembering an e-mail that Sissy had sent me a few days earlier:
Washing Clothes Recipe
Never thought of a "washer" in this light before... what a blessing!
'Washing Clothes Recipe' -- imagine having a recipe for this!!!
Years ago an Alabama grandmother gave the new bride the following recipe:
This is an exact copy as written and found in an old scrapbook - with spelling errors and all.
WASHING CLOTHES
Build fire in backyard to heat kettle of rain water. Set tubs so smoke wont blow in eyes if wind is pert. Shave one hole cake of lie soap in boilin water.
Sort things, make 3 piles
1 pile white,
1 pile colored,
1 pile work britches and rags.
To make starch, stir flour in cool water to smooth, then thin down with boiling water.
Take white things, rub dirty spots on board, scrub hard, and boil, then rub colored don't boil just wrench and starch.
Take things out of kettle with broom stick handle, then wrench, and starch.
Hang old rags on fence.
Spread tea towels on grass.
Pore wrench water in flower bed. Scrub porch with hot soapy water. Turn tubs upside down.
Go put on clean dress, smooth hair with hair combs. Brew cup of tea, sit and rock a spell and count your blessings.
================================================
Paste this over your washer and dryer. Next time when you think things are bleak, read it again, kiss that washing machine and dryer, and give thanks. First thing each morning you should run and hug your washer and dryer, also your toilet---those two-holers used to get mighty cold!
For you non-southerners -wrench means rinse. ;)
For the record, I know what wrench water is - not because I'm from the South, which I'm not - but because I spent more than a few Saturdays as a kid at Gran's house (helping) do(ing) the washing in a similar fashion.
After the whole doughnut incident, I decided that I needed to watch a sporting event. I bought a couple tickets to a Jets game. We lost, but Ali enjoyed it - I think. I spent half of the first quarter in the beer queue and spent a bargain $7.50 for a regular size serving. Eeee! When I got back to the seats Ali was checking out the free Jets shirt she got from a vendor. I smiled because it wasn't red - fucking red. Ali said she would have enjoyed it more if she knew the rules, but I couldn't give a damn about the rules. I care about the objective, and the objective couldn't be simpler.
So I haven't seen any movies lately, though I was tempted to rent Layer Cake again but instead spent last Friday evening trying to collect Ali's vitamin supplements in Newark. She hummed Lalo Schifrin's Mission Impossible the whole time. Delighted. That's another thing I love about Ali - she has a real talent for music. She studied the bassoon, but she doesn't call it that. Apparently, in Japanese they use the italian fagotto, but I can't use that word. It's not practical. Imagine me trying to introduce Ali to some friends in a café:
Abe: So, this shiksa - What does she do?
Me: Not much, I guess. A little hostessing, and she's learning English at school.
Moshe: Well, what did she do before?
Me: Finance, I think. I'm not too sure.
Wayne the Goy: Any hobbies?
Me: Uhhh, she used to play the faggoto. I mean --
[cup flies across the café just missing my precious eye]
Michael, the Easily Offended Homosexual with a Knee-jerk Response: WHAT? What did you just call me?
Me: Whoa whoa whoa, dude. I was merely using the Italian for the tenor woodwind, a bassoon. Surely, you're familiar...
Michael: You just, you just shut it. I'm proud of who I am, and I don't need to hear your negativity.
Me: Dude.
[end imaginary conversation]
I wanted to rent the movie because one of my recent converts saw it and had a few questions that I couldn't answer. I needed to watch it again. I will not rest until the entire world sees Layer Cake.
Not seeing any movies, but having a lot of fun planning parties. Get this, two of Ali's friends are taking some ridiculous speed holiday and they have a 2 day stopover which happens to coincide with one's birthday. One of these new roommate things is that you have to be ready to open your home to strangers, partiers and other revelers at any time. I'm getting used to it quite quickly because well, I don't really have a choice. Until now, the only party I've ever hosted was a lukewarm birthday party for Bobby and myself a few years ago. Never again... maybe. Okay, so the party sucked, but the food and alcohol - oy!
I raced home after work to get some nosh started because Ali was too busy showing her friends the sights. When they arrived home, they were too full to enjoy my lobster/crab canapés and weren't too interested in the sake. Ali didn't tell me that her friends don't drink. Oh well, at least they had room later on for the cake. Chocolate mousse over caramelized bananas with crème brulée filling on a financier crust. We bought it, but it was still good. We had a great time afterall, but seeing these two chicks leave only brought home the fact that Ali was leaving two days after. Right now she's having a nice little holiday in Miami, probably enjoying her favourite drink, a tequila dacquiri - sounds disgusting I know, but it's actually quite good - and grooving to those latin rhythms. Eeeee! The next time I see her will be in Newark. Hopefully that won't be a mission impossible.
By the way -- Layer Cake!
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Friday, September 08, 2006
Date sugoi jori jori nandemo
I've done it! I've learned a pivotal word in Japanese, and have finally unlocked the cause~effect relationship. Before, I could only say simple little phrases which even a kid in kindergarten would consider pedestrian, but now I've hooked the word for because, at least one of the words for because because there are probably more than one. Sure, I could have just asked how to say because but I prefer a more organic learning process. Baby steps, people. Just like a first language, only I took some pretty big baby steps with English. Instead of receiving a blank stare from Ali after telling her 'My foot hurts', the next time it happens I will be able to say without fail 'My foot hurts because the taxi has just mashed it into the street' all in one instead of two separate sentences. Baby steps.
I learned the word date, or at least what it meant Monday morning. I was sleeping late, enjoying my long weekend when I felt Ali tugging at my facial hair. Not like a few bits at the same time - she would single out one follicle and tug hard on it. She might as well have been shoving needles in my face. I asked her why she was doing that, and she said Date sugoi jori jori nandemo which meant something along the lines of 'because (your beard) is getting really stubbly'. The jori jori part is meant to be an onomatopoeic referring to the sound the beard makes when stroked. Ali has got a million phrases like that, that's just one of the cool things about her. To hammer the point home, she began polishing her nails against my chin like an Emory board and then used another one of those cool phrases to show how they sparkled kira kira kira.
Another really cool thing about her is this - I arrived home after a tasking day of stocking orders and calling couriers - only to confront a very pleasant aroma wafting through the flat. Ali's gone, but she has left a large plate of chijimi (Korean okonomiaki) and some onigiri on the counter. People say that threesomes are every man's fantasy, but not this everyman. A nice supper waiting for me is my fantasy. Threesomes are overrated - take it from me. This food thing is making it really difficult to diet, but when Ali cooks it means something important.
I've been kept on for another month at Looch's. She reckons the weather is really good and sales have never been better so she can make more profit by staying open until October. Well, me and my big mouth have gotten me in trouble as usual. Looch, Ali and I went for lunch, not Greek afterall, but whatever. As I thought, Looch loved my idea about adjusting the product delivery cycle, and appointed me in charge of making it happen. In my mind, that meant making a few calls to couriers to get information and hiring someone to set up proper documentation at the warehouse. But what Looch heard was that I was applying for a job at the warehouse to get things in order. She tried to make that steak sizzle by telling me that it would help with the inventory audit and all that. I guess I could have told Looch to fuck off, but my sense of agency caught me again and I accepted the change.
Also at the lunch meeting, Ali accepted an offer to begin selling tees. I figured she would say no, but money is money and let's be frank, it's not like we're really working. I was a little pissed though when Looch offered Ali a cool $100 more per week than she offered me for the same position. I laughed to myself because I knew that Ali would never sell as many tees as I did because she didn't like tanning and would avoid the beach like she avoids Walmart. She started hanging out at the public library and made more orders in one week than I made in three, mostly from guys. I never had that idea, and I'm not sure it would work for a dude, but it worked for her.
A small victory for me I guess, I've cut the delivery cycle down to 1 day for some areas, and 2 days for others. It's going to cost Looch up to 50 cents more per order, and I've had to contract with a company that specializes in overnighting but I'm all about the streamlining, and the increased revenue from repeat orders will generate a net increase in profits.
I learned the word date, or at least what it meant Monday morning. I was sleeping late, enjoying my long weekend when I felt Ali tugging at my facial hair. Not like a few bits at the same time - she would single out one follicle and tug hard on it. She might as well have been shoving needles in my face. I asked her why she was doing that, and she said Date sugoi jori jori nandemo which meant something along the lines of 'because (your beard) is getting really stubbly'. The jori jori part is meant to be an onomatopoeic referring to the sound the beard makes when stroked. Ali has got a million phrases like that, that's just one of the cool things about her. To hammer the point home, she began polishing her nails against my chin like an Emory board and then used another one of those cool phrases to show how they sparkled kira kira kira.
Another really cool thing about her is this - I arrived home after a tasking day of stocking orders and calling couriers - only to confront a very pleasant aroma wafting through the flat. Ali's gone, but she has left a large plate of chijimi (Korean okonomiaki) and some onigiri on the counter. People say that threesomes are every man's fantasy, but not this everyman. A nice supper waiting for me is my fantasy. Threesomes are overrated - take it from me. This food thing is making it really difficult to diet, but when Ali cooks it means something important.
I've been kept on for another month at Looch's. She reckons the weather is really good and sales have never been better so she can make more profit by staying open until October. Well, me and my big mouth have gotten me in trouble as usual. Looch, Ali and I went for lunch, not Greek afterall, but whatever. As I thought, Looch loved my idea about adjusting the product delivery cycle, and appointed me in charge of making it happen. In my mind, that meant making a few calls to couriers to get information and hiring someone to set up proper documentation at the warehouse. But what Looch heard was that I was applying for a job at the warehouse to get things in order. She tried to make that steak sizzle by telling me that it would help with the inventory audit and all that. I guess I could have told Looch to fuck off, but my sense of agency caught me again and I accepted the change.
Also at the lunch meeting, Ali accepted an offer to begin selling tees. I figured she would say no, but money is money and let's be frank, it's not like we're really working. I was a little pissed though when Looch offered Ali a cool $100 more per week than she offered me for the same position. I laughed to myself because I knew that Ali would never sell as many tees as I did because she didn't like tanning and would avoid the beach like she avoids Walmart. She started hanging out at the public library and made more orders in one week than I made in three, mostly from guys. I never had that idea, and I'm not sure it would work for a dude, but it worked for her.
A small victory for me I guess, I've cut the delivery cycle down to 1 day for some areas, and 2 days for others. It's going to cost Looch up to 50 cents more per order, and I've had to contract with a company that specializes in overnighting but I'm all about the streamlining, and the increased revenue from repeat orders will generate a net increase in profits.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Saturday Eggs
The medium is McDonald's ketchup on omelette, more specifically omu raisu or rice omelette. For those who don't read Japanese, it reads baka which can be translated many ways, but the sentiment here was "asshole".
Barely 24 hours into the new living situation, and we'd already had a fight - well more of a misunderstanding. In the wise words of Trey, my wax guy, the key to a successful relationship is communication. Sounds easy enough, right? I came home Friday night, moments after being given choice advice from Trey, with my knuckles looking like this, only with a lot more blood leaving a nice little trail through the lobby and into the lift.
No sweat - Danny, a bottle blond 50-something and his partner Piet, a 6-foot 5 Dutch dude of similar age offered to clean up the blood. They were in the lift, and noticed the blood in the first place. I was trying to hide it from Ali, but not after the fuss Danny made. As you can see, I'm a Southpaw. Looks fine now, but the camera doesn't show the internal bruising.
I'm not exactly sure why, maybe it was because of something I said when I was trying to fix a plaster, but Ali started sobbing. I knew her rules - no fighting in front of her, no raising my voice, etc. which is why I tried to hide the blood in the first place - but she had never seen me throw the punch and I spoke calmly the entire time after we left the lift, so as far as I was concerned, she really had nothing to worry about. Well, I spent the rest of the night apologizing and trying to get her to say SOMETHING. The next morning, I was reminded of the other, very new rule. Only normal violence, idiot! Whatever that means. I guess what she was trying to say was that I can only fight if someone hits me first or if I'm trying to remove her from imminent danger, or if we happen to be at a WTO protest and somebody lobs in some CS gas because they think it might make things more fun. Effectively, she was telling (by not telling me, but otherwise communicating to) me that no violence would be tolerated because the chances of our being in the proximity of any civil unrest are negligible.
I guess we're back to normal now because she woke me up with a bit of pressure on my left hand and a very loud, clearly enunciated "Nutella! I want Nutella for breakfast, Snowflake - no crusts!"
Friday, September 01, 2006
Crank - 70% Pure
It's been a busy couple of weeks, fraught with late night panic-driven phone calls from Tokyo, and threatening e-mails from some guy named Genya, but more on that in a bit.
I won free movie passes to Jason Statham's new film called Crank. A few months back, some friends from the ad agency came back from lunch all giddy because Statham came into the restaurant where they had eaten. He was filming in my city and I reckoned Crank was the one he was doing here, but imdb says that Crank was filmed entirely in L.A. Anyway, I wanted the passes because of the local connection, but I had to fork them over to Ali because I had to study for a brutal final exam the next day. It was rough, and I'll probably have to retake the course - at least it's not statistics. I see that Statham is reprising his role of Handsome Rob in a sequel to the remake of The Italian Job, called The Brazilian Job. That might sound like a film about a really fun salon, but it's more likely about a bank heist.
So Ali and her friend Mariko went to the cinema and got to enjoy a film I'll probably never see. Her review is as follows:
Me: So, how was it?
Ali: I nearly barfed, man...
Me: It was that bad, huh?
Ali: No, I just felt sick the whole time, and Mariko was ill too.
Me: Did you sit in the front row again?
Ali: No.
Me: Okay, gimme the qualitative analysis.
Ali: Uhhh, it was so-so. It had a fair bit of action, and the car chases you'd like.
Me: Any romance?
Ali: More comedy.
Me: Like 2LDK?
Ali: Different.
Me: Out of 5 stars?
Ali: Three point half.
So that's it - Statham gets 70% for Crank, which is what I could only hope for on my final. Who knows? Let the nail biting begin. All that studying and it might end up being for nothing.
One of Ali's classmates told her about this "really cute actor" named Wentworth Miller. Ever since, Miss "I don't like violence" Ali has been itching to watch Prison Break. I took a break from studying and hooked up the aerial so she could watch the premiere of Season 2. Of course, I've been watching since Episode 1, but I could tell she wasn't enjoying it. She said that she needed to get the background of the story, so last Saturday I got her Season 1 on DVD. All of a sudden, the telly is more interesting than I. For the past week, she's been calling me Snowflake or Fish and even splashed a bucket of cold water in my face as I slept Tuesday morning. That stopped as soon as she realized that the bed doesn't dry right away. Now, she just wakes me up by yelling "You're late Snowflake!" in my ear.
And so that brings me to Genya. For a while now, Ali has been looking for a place to live, and it would seem obvious that she should move in with me, but we both like a lot of space. I wasn't sure she'd go for it, but it's official. Ali has moved in as of last night. In the last couple days of August, Ali had to deal with annoying calls from her mother -- annoying in the sense that the calls came at about 3:00 a.m. All of a sudden, I was a thing from erstwhile planet Pluto with tentacles growing out of its back or something and no longer the guy who only weeks before had Ali's mother laughing her ass off and wiping away the tears because me so funny. It's quite an accomplishment to use the only two words one knows of a foreign language and mispronounce them at the very exact time that the two completely different words could be their most hilarious -- by accident. But I did it, and I'll probably never do it again. Now, her mum was freaking about all the things that could happen when a decent Japanese girl moves in with a hakujin. Ali got the calls, and I got the e-mails. The title line of the first one was 'We are friends of Ayako' I nearly deleted them until I remembered that I did in fact know someone named Ayako. Ayako is Ali's real name, so I opened the e-mail which came from someone calling himself Genya. I asked Ali about this guy, and it turns out this guy is real. She seemed concerned that Genya should e-mail me personally. She said it was serious for him to do that because he's really supposed to work for Ali's dad as like a driver/caddy/bodyguard/general bad ass and that if he e-mailed me, it's because her dad told him to. The mails weren't too specific, but I do recall that Genya offered to break my arms in such a way that "If they are reset, it will be very painful that you can hope that the doctors to slice them down". I asked Ali to clarify the message, but I basically already understood it to mean that my arms would be broken so that they will never heal properly and the pain would be so great that I would regret that the surgeon just didn't amputate my limbs. Ali got on the phone and called her mum and said that this was going too far. There were more, better written e-mails after that, but they were relatively pleasant.
I may be late to the party on this one, and there's no big Youtube critique about it, but as a tribute to Fuckstress, a former blogger whose writing I really enjoyed reading, and to Fireangel who, if I'm right, started the whole thing in the first place - Here's a snap of me enjoying a very large Hoegaarden (billed at 22 ounces, but more like 20 ounces with 2 ounces of foam in a fuck-off size glass). There would have been more photos, but Ali doesn't want people to see her drinking, and really who needs more than one photo to get the idea? As you can see, I've been hanging out at the beach trying to get a great tan, but nobody told my melanocytes and I've ended up getting a gentle burn.
I won free movie passes to Jason Statham's new film called Crank. A few months back, some friends from the ad agency came back from lunch all giddy because Statham came into the restaurant where they had eaten. He was filming in my city and I reckoned Crank was the one he was doing here, but imdb says that Crank was filmed entirely in L.A. Anyway, I wanted the passes because of the local connection, but I had to fork them over to Ali because I had to study for a brutal final exam the next day. It was rough, and I'll probably have to retake the course - at least it's not statistics. I see that Statham is reprising his role of Handsome Rob in a sequel to the remake of The Italian Job, called The Brazilian Job. That might sound like a film about a really fun salon, but it's more likely about a bank heist.
So Ali and her friend Mariko went to the cinema and got to enjoy a film I'll probably never see. Her review is as follows:
Me: So, how was it?
Ali: I nearly barfed, man...
Me: It was that bad, huh?
Ali: No, I just felt sick the whole time, and Mariko was ill too.
Me: Did you sit in the front row again?
Ali: No.
Me: Okay, gimme the qualitative analysis.
Ali: Uhhh, it was so-so. It had a fair bit of action, and the car chases you'd like.
Me: Any romance?
Ali: More comedy.
Me: Like 2LDK?
Ali: Different.
Me: Out of 5 stars?
Ali: Three point half.
So that's it - Statham gets 70% for Crank, which is what I could only hope for on my final. Who knows? Let the nail biting begin. All that studying and it might end up being for nothing.
One of Ali's classmates told her about this "really cute actor" named Wentworth Miller. Ever since, Miss "I don't like violence" Ali has been itching to watch Prison Break. I took a break from studying and hooked up the aerial so she could watch the premiere of Season 2. Of course, I've been watching since Episode 1, but I could tell she wasn't enjoying it. She said that she needed to get the background of the story, so last Saturday I got her Season 1 on DVD. All of a sudden, the telly is more interesting than I. For the past week, she's been calling me Snowflake or Fish and even splashed a bucket of cold water in my face as I slept Tuesday morning. That stopped as soon as she realized that the bed doesn't dry right away. Now, she just wakes me up by yelling "You're late Snowflake!" in my ear.
And so that brings me to Genya. For a while now, Ali has been looking for a place to live, and it would seem obvious that she should move in with me, but we both like a lot of space. I wasn't sure she'd go for it, but it's official. Ali has moved in as of last night. In the last couple days of August, Ali had to deal with annoying calls from her mother -- annoying in the sense that the calls came at about 3:00 a.m. All of a sudden, I was a thing from erstwhile planet Pluto with tentacles growing out of its back or something and no longer the guy who only weeks before had Ali's mother laughing her ass off and wiping away the tears because me so funny. It's quite an accomplishment to use the only two words one knows of a foreign language and mispronounce them at the very exact time that the two completely different words could be their most hilarious -- by accident. But I did it, and I'll probably never do it again. Now, her mum was freaking about all the things that could happen when a decent Japanese girl moves in with a hakujin. Ali got the calls, and I got the e-mails. The title line of the first one was 'We are friends of Ayako' I nearly deleted them until I remembered that I did in fact know someone named Ayako. Ayako is Ali's real name, so I opened the e-mail which came from someone calling himself Genya. I asked Ali about this guy, and it turns out this guy is real. She seemed concerned that Genya should e-mail me personally. She said it was serious for him to do that because he's really supposed to work for Ali's dad as like a driver/caddy/bodyguard/general bad ass and that if he e-mailed me, it's because her dad told him to. The mails weren't too specific, but I do recall that Genya offered to break my arms in such a way that "If they are reset, it will be very painful that you can hope that the doctors to slice them down". I asked Ali to clarify the message, but I basically already understood it to mean that my arms would be broken so that they will never heal properly and the pain would be so great that I would regret that the surgeon just didn't amputate my limbs. Ali got on the phone and called her mum and said that this was going too far. There were more, better written e-mails after that, but they were relatively pleasant.
I may be late to the party on this one, and there's no big Youtube critique about it, but as a tribute to Fuckstress, a former blogger whose writing I really enjoyed reading, and to Fireangel who, if I'm right, started the whole thing in the first place - Here's a snap of me enjoying a very large Hoegaarden (billed at 22 ounces, but more like 20 ounces with 2 ounces of foam in a fuck-off size glass). There would have been more photos, but Ali doesn't want people to see her drinking, and really who needs more than one photo to get the idea? As you can see, I've been hanging out at the beach trying to get a great tan, but nobody told my melanocytes and I've ended up getting a gentle burn.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Be Careful of Whom You Invite for Dinner
Yes, that's right. Be careful about whom you invite to dinner. And for those of you who have the patience to read the entire entry, I have a cocktail recipe you can serve your next dinner guests. You could, I suppose, just scroll down to the recipe but that's the easy way, isn't it? Please also mind that the special recipe is for adults only. Dax Watches Movies in no way condones the delinquency of minors (though I am thankful to those adults who contributed to my delinquency as a minor), and any minors reading this entry would kindly stop reading at the point indicated and do some chores or something. I don't know why it is, perhaps I'm really trying to avoid studying which is weird because I really want to pass this exam once and for all, but I watched two movies on Saturday.
Ali and I watched the first one because I really want to encourage her to watch more English language films without having to read subtitles, and because we didn't really have anything on that day. It was gorgeous on Saturday, so my first thought was to sit in a dark vault for 2 hours watching what I expected to be predictable comedy. We had to do it before 17:00 so that we could take advantage of the matinée price. To my surprise, Ali was up for it.
I would like to be clear about this up front - I am not a NASCAR fan, but I will refrain from making jokes about NASCAR and its fans, because I know some very genuine kind-hearted people who are fans of NASCAR. I am, however a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen whom, I first believed a complete fool, but thanks to youtube.com I have grown to appreciate his craft. Will Ferrell, meh. A talented man surely, but he always relies on comedic crutches - at least in (not m)any film(s) I've seen him in.
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby was the vehicle, and a supporting role by John C. Reilly, famously of Boogie Nights helped bring home the underlying message of the film - friends and family are important. Various other underlying messages such as 'same-sex marriage may not be so popular but its here to stay', or 'it really is possible to brand every frame of a film', or 'maybe Highlander wasn't such a great movie' are repeated throughout this movie. Let's face it, people either love or hate Will Ferrell. If you hate him, take the time to consider his upcoming movie alongside Dustin Hoffman and Queen Latifah called Stranger than Fiction. The trailer makes it look like a semi-dramatic role, and maybe worth the dosh.
Ferrell plays a race driver who gains instant success in NASCAR because he's spent his entire childhood and youth living, eating and breathing the stuff. Reilly plays his best friend who earns a spot as Ricky Bobby's co-driver, always the bridesmaid. Ricky Bobby becomes the Michael Schumacher of NASCAR and wins, at any cost, pretty much every race until his boss' son hires a former F1 driver to win for the team with less carnage. Cohen plays a gay Frenchman with a ridiculous accent who, upon meeting Bobby, breaks his arm because he won't say he likes crèpes. Driving with a broken arm in the next race, Bobby causes a large accident and basically ruins any credibility he has left. His Felipe Massa, excuse me, his co-driver becomes bitter because Bobby never gifted him a win and with Bobby gone, becomes the star driver. Three drivers now work for this team, Bobby has been replaced by a new driver and takes to delivering pizza after losing his wife and home to his best friend. Bobby goes through a transformation to win back the respect of his deadbeat father played by Gary Cole and a sweet black and gold Chevelle. He reassembles his team and enters the Daytona 500. Due to his reckless driving, Bobby manages to decimate the field on the final lap, and ends up in a roll down the finish straight with the Perrier car of Cohen's character Jean Girard. The commentator calls it the worst accident he's ever seen, which makes him a liar because in real life he would surely remember Ricky Rudd's accident from about 20 years ago. That was the worst NASCAR accident I'd seen up to that point and one of the few I still remember. Ricky got his car up in the air at 90 degrees, nose down, and the car did two or three pirouettes before putting a massive divot into the infield. In any event, the cinematic collision was nothing like the wrecks these guys wind up in nowadays. Maybe it's got something to do with 33 big cars and even bigger egos all trying to be #1. Bobby and Girard climb out of their wrecks and begin sprinting toward the finish line. I leaned over to Ali and said, "This doesn't count" as explained by the on screen announcer about 45 seconds later. The win goes to Cal Naughton, Jr., Bobby's erstwhile teammate and former best friend. Finally defeated and free to be himself, Girard slinks off into the sunset and Bobby and Naughton talk things over. Bobby explains that he cannot be best friends with Naughton anymore, but they are still civil to one another. Bobby and his two kids, his girlfriend, his mum and his deadbeat dad all pile into the black and gold Chevelle and drive off to Applebee's for a fine dinner. Bonus points to the creative department for managing to wedge a song by Monster Magnet into a NASCAR film.
The second film we watched was recommended by a guy at the video shop. One that I'd seen on the shelf, but never bothered to watch because it was an award winner at some festival somewhere and because I wasn't interested in Takashi Miike at the time. Truthfully, Ali watched only the first half before falling asleep. The Miike stuff really doesn't really start until the second half anyway, so I don't blame her. All the guy at the shop could tell me about Bizita Q or Visitor Q was, "It's really fucked up dude" and that might be the best, most succinct way to describe this movie. The movie is a little like Pulp Fiction in that it doesn't have a central story line. Instead, it takes various chapters of a family's daily life and combines them. After watching the first few scenes, which would have been enough for most people to walk out of the theatre, I was trying to imagine the pitch that got this movie sold, and then I was trying to imagine what kind of fucked up producer would spend the money to make the film. Perhaps I was being too judgmental at that point. I dropped Ali at home and for some unknown reason decided to watch the rest of the film. It just got more messed up from there.
The film is about a television reporter and his messed up family, and a strange visitor who sees an opportunity to change the family, in his way, for the better. The first scene opens and there is no secret - the audience is told that it's a father and daughter. The daughter is a prostitute and gets the father to pay her for sex. The second scene sees the visitor pick up a rock and crack the skull of the father, now sitting in a train station. The third scene sees the son beating his mother with a switch. The mother goes off and shoots heroin as the father and the visitor come home for dinner.
The son is bullied at school and the father decides to turn it into a series. He pitches it to his ex-girlfriend whom he wants to report on the issue. He's a loose cannon and has already lost too much credibility in the industry and she tries to walk away from the whole idea. The father attacks her and ends up killing her in a bout of sex-filled rage - all on film. Most directors would leave it there, and the story would follow some sort of murder suspect as he flees/goes on trial, but not Miike. Instead, Miike takes the story a little further. The reporter and the visitor who doesn't really exist - I'm sure there's some really long word in German for this type of imaginary personification, but part of the reason I flunked out of third year med school was because I never took psychology - take the body home and attempt to cut it up. Still on film, the father explains to the camera that when he sees his son being beaten, he wants to have sex (or something like that), and starts to fuck the corpse of his ex-girlfriend in the greenhouse. Okay, now Miike is doing his thing - totally unbelievable stuff set in a totally possible situation. So the father is determined to make this one last and ends up getting his junk stuck inside the corpse which seems to have begun to rigor. If that isn't fucked up enough for you, here is the most fucked up part of the film, for me at least. The husband asks the wife to help him get his dick out of the corpse. After trying in vain, the wife, who has a new lease on life due to some breast feeding deal that I don't even want to try and understand, gets the idea to shoot her husband with heroin. Tada! He relaxes and his body separates from the corpse. The husband and wife take the girlfriend back to the greenhouse and commence cutting. This must have made them hungry because they decide that this is the time to eat dinner. As a trio of bullies beset the house with fireworks on film, the father grows a pair and goes apeshit on the three kids. A swift spanner to the head dispatches the first, and a portable hacksaw meets the second between the eyes. The audience is treated to the father playing Lumberjack on the kid's skull. The third kid is standing amid the action, but by the time he finally tries to run, the wife has cut him off at the gate and throws a knife at him.
So now the family has four corpses to contend with, and they couldn't be more tightly knit. The son has decided to stop hitting his mum and make a decent go at studying and thanks the visitor for destroying his family. The wife seems to finally be getting respect from the husband and the husband has finally become the father he's always wanted to be. But what about the daughter? We haven't seen her since the opening scene. Well, the visitor is next seen strolling down the sidewalk and gets propositioned by the daughter. She offers him a discount because he's good looking or something, at which point she gets nailed in the head by a big rock. Injured, the daughter returns home only to find her mum naked in the greenhouse under a blue tarp breastfeeding the husband. Apparently, the daughter misses bonding because she goes out to the garden to join them. Pan out - roll credits - cue Real Time. My new favourite Japanese band, five years too late.
I watched the film a second time to see if the shock was any less but it wasn't. I knew what was coming up, but it didn't really change the way I felt about the characters and the film in general - except for one point. When the father is playing Lumberjack I now found it humourous I guess because it was so ridiculous.
Okay, now that the minors reading this blog have read several cuss words and various descriptions of illegal sex acts, violence and drugs, I would ask them to stop reading now. Go! Shoo!
*********************************
Dax' Amazing Drinky-poo Recipe
Okay, I admit it. I stole this recipe from a Japanese fusion restaurant and it breaks pretty much every rule I have about cocktails. But love makes one do strange things. I promised Ali that I would learn to make this drink, and attempts 4, 5 and 6 were all pretty close. I stopped measuring empirically after #5, but you can play around with it as you like:
The Umetini
What? The you-me-tini? No, Silly. Just read along.
Rule #1: Cocktails must contain gin. Broken.
Rule #2: Cocktails must contain a maximum of three ingredients. Not including garnish which cannot be more than one ingredient. Broken.
Rule #3: Blah-blah-fuckin-tinis must contain vermouth, either sweet or dry. Broken.
Rule #4: No cranberry - None. Broken.
Ingredients:
1 and 1/2 oz. ume (plum) wine
1 oz. vodka
1/8 oz. mandarin vodka
Splash of lime cordial (NOT lime juice, Silly!)
Stir.
Top with cranberry juice to maintain the deep ruddy colour of ume wine.
Garnish with small pickled ume.
Serve in a chilled cocktail glass if you wanna be like Ali, OR if you wanna be like me - on the rocks in a highball.
There you go - 5 ingredients not including garnish, no gin, no vermouth and topped with cranberry. Play around with it. Make sure that the lime is no more than a splash.
Ali and I watched the first one because I really want to encourage her to watch more English language films without having to read subtitles, and because we didn't really have anything on that day. It was gorgeous on Saturday, so my first thought was to sit in a dark vault for 2 hours watching what I expected to be predictable comedy. We had to do it before 17:00 so that we could take advantage of the matinée price. To my surprise, Ali was up for it.
I would like to be clear about this up front - I am not a NASCAR fan, but I will refrain from making jokes about NASCAR and its fans, because I know some very genuine kind-hearted people who are fans of NASCAR. I am, however a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen whom, I first believed a complete fool, but thanks to youtube.com I have grown to appreciate his craft. Will Ferrell, meh. A talented man surely, but he always relies on comedic crutches - at least in (not m)any film(s) I've seen him in.
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby was the vehicle, and a supporting role by John C. Reilly, famously of Boogie Nights helped bring home the underlying message of the film - friends and family are important. Various other underlying messages such as 'same-sex marriage may not be so popular but its here to stay', or 'it really is possible to brand every frame of a film', or 'maybe Highlander wasn't such a great movie' are repeated throughout this movie. Let's face it, people either love or hate Will Ferrell. If you hate him, take the time to consider his upcoming movie alongside Dustin Hoffman and Queen Latifah called Stranger than Fiction. The trailer makes it look like a semi-dramatic role, and maybe worth the dosh.
Ferrell plays a race driver who gains instant success in NASCAR because he's spent his entire childhood and youth living, eating and breathing the stuff. Reilly plays his best friend who earns a spot as Ricky Bobby's co-driver, always the bridesmaid. Ricky Bobby becomes the Michael Schumacher of NASCAR and wins, at any cost, pretty much every race until his boss' son hires a former F1 driver to win for the team with less carnage. Cohen plays a gay Frenchman with a ridiculous accent who, upon meeting Bobby, breaks his arm because he won't say he likes crèpes. Driving with a broken arm in the next race, Bobby causes a large accident and basically ruins any credibility he has left. His Felipe Massa, excuse me, his co-driver becomes bitter because Bobby never gifted him a win and with Bobby gone, becomes the star driver. Three drivers now work for this team, Bobby has been replaced by a new driver and takes to delivering pizza after losing his wife and home to his best friend. Bobby goes through a transformation to win back the respect of his deadbeat father played by Gary Cole and a sweet black and gold Chevelle. He reassembles his team and enters the Daytona 500. Due to his reckless driving, Bobby manages to decimate the field on the final lap, and ends up in a roll down the finish straight with the Perrier car of Cohen's character Jean Girard. The commentator calls it the worst accident he's ever seen, which makes him a liar because in real life he would surely remember Ricky Rudd's accident from about 20 years ago. That was the worst NASCAR accident I'd seen up to that point and one of the few I still remember. Ricky got his car up in the air at 90 degrees, nose down, and the car did two or three pirouettes before putting a massive divot into the infield. In any event, the cinematic collision was nothing like the wrecks these guys wind up in nowadays. Maybe it's got something to do with 33 big cars and even bigger egos all trying to be #1. Bobby and Girard climb out of their wrecks and begin sprinting toward the finish line. I leaned over to Ali and said, "This doesn't count" as explained by the on screen announcer about 45 seconds later. The win goes to Cal Naughton, Jr., Bobby's erstwhile teammate and former best friend. Finally defeated and free to be himself, Girard slinks off into the sunset and Bobby and Naughton talk things over. Bobby explains that he cannot be best friends with Naughton anymore, but they are still civil to one another. Bobby and his two kids, his girlfriend, his mum and his deadbeat dad all pile into the black and gold Chevelle and drive off to Applebee's for a fine dinner. Bonus points to the creative department for managing to wedge a song by Monster Magnet into a NASCAR film.
The second film we watched was recommended by a guy at the video shop. One that I'd seen on the shelf, but never bothered to watch because it was an award winner at some festival somewhere and because I wasn't interested in Takashi Miike at the time. Truthfully, Ali watched only the first half before falling asleep. The Miike stuff really doesn't really start until the second half anyway, so I don't blame her. All the guy at the shop could tell me about Bizita Q or Visitor Q was, "It's really fucked up dude" and that might be the best, most succinct way to describe this movie. The movie is a little like Pulp Fiction in that it doesn't have a central story line. Instead, it takes various chapters of a family's daily life and combines them. After watching the first few scenes, which would have been enough for most people to walk out of the theatre, I was trying to imagine the pitch that got this movie sold, and then I was trying to imagine what kind of fucked up producer would spend the money to make the film. Perhaps I was being too judgmental at that point. I dropped Ali at home and for some unknown reason decided to watch the rest of the film. It just got more messed up from there.
The film is about a television reporter and his messed up family, and a strange visitor who sees an opportunity to change the family, in his way, for the better. The first scene opens and there is no secret - the audience is told that it's a father and daughter. The daughter is a prostitute and gets the father to pay her for sex. The second scene sees the visitor pick up a rock and crack the skull of the father, now sitting in a train station. The third scene sees the son beating his mother with a switch. The mother goes off and shoots heroin as the father and the visitor come home for dinner.
The son is bullied at school and the father decides to turn it into a series. He pitches it to his ex-girlfriend whom he wants to report on the issue. He's a loose cannon and has already lost too much credibility in the industry and she tries to walk away from the whole idea. The father attacks her and ends up killing her in a bout of sex-filled rage - all on film. Most directors would leave it there, and the story would follow some sort of murder suspect as he flees/goes on trial, but not Miike. Instead, Miike takes the story a little further. The reporter and the visitor who doesn't really exist - I'm sure there's some really long word in German for this type of imaginary personification, but part of the reason I flunked out of third year med school was because I never took psychology - take the body home and attempt to cut it up. Still on film, the father explains to the camera that when he sees his son being beaten, he wants to have sex (or something like that), and starts to fuck the corpse of his ex-girlfriend in the greenhouse. Okay, now Miike is doing his thing - totally unbelievable stuff set in a totally possible situation. So the father is determined to make this one last and ends up getting his junk stuck inside the corpse which seems to have begun to rigor. If that isn't fucked up enough for you, here is the most fucked up part of the film, for me at least. The husband asks the wife to help him get his dick out of the corpse. After trying in vain, the wife, who has a new lease on life due to some breast feeding deal that I don't even want to try and understand, gets the idea to shoot her husband with heroin. Tada! He relaxes and his body separates from the corpse. The husband and wife take the girlfriend back to the greenhouse and commence cutting. This must have made them hungry because they decide that this is the time to eat dinner. As a trio of bullies beset the house with fireworks on film, the father grows a pair and goes apeshit on the three kids. A swift spanner to the head dispatches the first, and a portable hacksaw meets the second between the eyes. The audience is treated to the father playing Lumberjack on the kid's skull. The third kid is standing amid the action, but by the time he finally tries to run, the wife has cut him off at the gate and throws a knife at him.
So now the family has four corpses to contend with, and they couldn't be more tightly knit. The son has decided to stop hitting his mum and make a decent go at studying and thanks the visitor for destroying his family. The wife seems to finally be getting respect from the husband and the husband has finally become the father he's always wanted to be. But what about the daughter? We haven't seen her since the opening scene. Well, the visitor is next seen strolling down the sidewalk and gets propositioned by the daughter. She offers him a discount because he's good looking or something, at which point she gets nailed in the head by a big rock. Injured, the daughter returns home only to find her mum naked in the greenhouse under a blue tarp breastfeeding the husband. Apparently, the daughter misses bonding because she goes out to the garden to join them. Pan out - roll credits - cue Real Time. My new favourite Japanese band, five years too late.
I watched the film a second time to see if the shock was any less but it wasn't. I knew what was coming up, but it didn't really change the way I felt about the characters and the film in general - except for one point. When the father is playing Lumberjack I now found it humourous I guess because it was so ridiculous.
Okay, now that the minors reading this blog have read several cuss words and various descriptions of illegal sex acts, violence and drugs, I would ask them to stop reading now. Go! Shoo!
*********************************
Dax' Amazing Drinky-poo Recipe
Okay, I admit it. I stole this recipe from a Japanese fusion restaurant and it breaks pretty much every rule I have about cocktails. But love makes one do strange things. I promised Ali that I would learn to make this drink, and attempts 4, 5 and 6 were all pretty close. I stopped measuring empirically after #5, but you can play around with it as you like:
The Umetini
What? The you-me-tini? No, Silly. Just read along.
Rule #1: Cocktails must contain gin. Broken.
Rule #2: Cocktails must contain a maximum of three ingredients. Not including garnish which cannot be more than one ingredient. Broken.
Rule #3: Blah-blah-fuckin-tinis must contain vermouth, either sweet or dry. Broken.
Rule #4: No cranberry - None. Broken.
Ingredients:
1 and 1/2 oz. ume (plum) wine
1 oz. vodka
1/8 oz. mandarin vodka
Splash of lime cordial (NOT lime juice, Silly!)
Stir.
Top with cranberry juice to maintain the deep ruddy colour of ume wine.
Garnish with small pickled ume.
Serve in a chilled cocktail glass if you wanna be like Ali, OR if you wanna be like me - on the rocks in a highball.
There you go - 5 ingredients not including garnish, no gin, no vermouth and topped with cranberry. Play around with it. Make sure that the lime is no more than a splash.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Peach Sunset
It seems that Nathan and I have made an impact on Looch's business. Her sales have tripled over the same period last year, and considering that Americans aren't spending as much as they used to, at least that's what the experts tell me, that's quite something for Looch. Maybe it's the weather.
Looch came to the shack bearing gifts yesterday. I didn't see what she gave Nate but she tossed a bunch of Hello Kitty tchotchkes at me, smiling with "Because I know your girlfriend is Chinese or whatevah".
"Ummm, wow. We should have lunch sometime. We'll have Greek...", I said hoping that I could return the slight but then I remembered that she might not be so highbrow.
"Sure! And bring your girlfriend. I've seen her in a bikini, she could sell t-shirts like hotcakes!"
Whatever that means. Ali probably could make a whole lot of sales, but the fact is she doesn't have to work. And the fact remains that instead of getting Hello Kitty thingies, I'd rather be paid. Looch has new rims on her H2 and I know they weren't cheap, but Nate and I haven't been paid since I started. It turns out that 600 clams a week was a best case scenario and that it's not really tax free. Looch told me to wait until August 15, payday is once a month. I guess being paid once in close to five weeks is kinda like once a month so I'll just be quiet for now.
I'm a little worried about money right now because on Monday afternoon I ended up in the emergency ward in the most pain I've ever been in. The ward staff just poo-pooed it as a silly little kidney stone, but I won't know for sure for the next week or so. Of course, if I have to have an operation I'm screwed because I don't have health insurance. Sissy told me that kidney stones run in the family. Who knew? Not I. Anyway, the difference was like night and day. The nurses gave me 2 IVs, a little morphine, and all the while Ali stayed by my side even though the triage nurse yelled at her for shit she didn't even do.
You're such a bitch, seriously. Your job is to ask questions and take information to assess patient risk. Your job is also to give information when patients ask for it. She just asked 1 question, bitch and she only asked it because I couldn't walk over to your bullet-proof kiosk and ask you myself, and you had to go off on her. The only time you have to get off your ass is when you have to take temperatures and blood pressure, oh and when you want a coffee break or meal break or you have to pee or something. How hard is that? It might be worth considering that you're not meant for this hospital, known to be one of the toughest in New York City, if you can't handle easy questions about wait times. Bitch.
The next day I was feeling fine but didn't go to work because I reckoned I had an appointment with the x-ray department. I was wrong. They couldn't get me in until the next day after that. They told me I needed a CT scan because the analysis found traces of blood and high protein which were indicators of kidney stones. I attempted to explain the presence of protein to the nurse, what with my being a healthy, young male but one sideways glance from Ali and I shut up. I was a little skeptical about the blood, but after finally having a CT scan, I went to the washroom and noticed the colour was a little pinkish - a shade described as Peach Sunset.
I went back to work on Wednesday and noticed a few things that Looch needs to work on. Sure people love the product, but they want it NOW and don't care that we don't have a storefront. They're fine with the warehouse concept, but they, especially the Paris Hiltony-types don't like to wait 5 business days for a bicycle courier to go uptown. I've taken a little sounding, and it seems that our target market is willing to wait 2 days - 3 max - for a local delivery. Out-of-towners (Jersey and other places) are willing to wait up to 5 days. This is totally doable, so I've got to sit down with Looch - maybe at that Greek lunch - and work out the details.
Last weekend was my niece's birthday. She's actually my second cousin, but explaining the complex family relationship to a 5 year old is a little pointless so we just go with the uncle-niece thing. She's happy with that. There's 2 reasons I go to Vermont, the other is Ben and Jerry's ice cream. The thing I worry about most when going to Vermont is ticks. You always hear about deer ticks and lyme disease and stuff, but that is just something I don't need. I told Ali about the shika but before I got to the part about ticks she had a big smile on her face I suppose because she thought she was going on a trip to see Bambi. It's true, we like deer, Ali maybe a little more than most people, but it usually involves roast potatoes or a stew of some sort. We loaded up the Wrangler with gifts and drove up to Vermont for a backyard pool party. Eeeee! My skin was crawling. The last time I had a run in with ticks was right before I got stuck in Quincy, technically in Nevada but I associate everything horrible about that trip with a little California town. Sissy - what a trooper - she checked me out to make sure there weren't more. I assured Ali that although swimsuits were requested, the pool itself was just a kiddie pool. It never occurred to me that my niece had acquired a new, much larger pool. We arrived earlier than expected, but we were welcomed all the same. The first words out of Ali's mouth after seeing the gargantuan pool were "You are a liar!" Oh, it's a good thing we actually brought swimsuits afterall. It was a beautiful day and would have been a great party, except that I kept looking for ticks every ten minutes. Everybody thought Ali was being cute when she sat in a kiddie rocking chair, but she was more matter-of-fact about it. "It's comfortable!" More hilarity ensued as it became obvious that the very petite Ali could very possibly wear the outfits that my niece got for her birthday. Honestly, the outfit looked a little big for my niece, but it made people laugh. So yeah, the party was pretty much over after all the presents were opened and the cake was served. We stayed at my cousin's place - after I completely checked the bed for ticks - and went back to New York in the morning. Everything was really fun until that afternoon. Then, the pain.
Looch came to the shack bearing gifts yesterday. I didn't see what she gave Nate but she tossed a bunch of Hello Kitty tchotchkes at me, smiling with "Because I know your girlfriend is Chinese or whatevah".
"Ummm, wow. We should have lunch sometime. We'll have Greek...", I said hoping that I could return the slight but then I remembered that she might not be so highbrow.
"Sure! And bring your girlfriend. I've seen her in a bikini, she could sell t-shirts like hotcakes!"
Whatever that means. Ali probably could make a whole lot of sales, but the fact is she doesn't have to work. And the fact remains that instead of getting Hello Kitty thingies, I'd rather be paid. Looch has new rims on her H2 and I know they weren't cheap, but Nate and I haven't been paid since I started. It turns out that 600 clams a week was a best case scenario and that it's not really tax free. Looch told me to wait until August 15, payday is once a month. I guess being paid once in close to five weeks is kinda like once a month so I'll just be quiet for now.
I'm a little worried about money right now because on Monday afternoon I ended up in the emergency ward in the most pain I've ever been in. The ward staff just poo-pooed it as a silly little kidney stone, but I won't know for sure for the next week or so. Of course, if I have to have an operation I'm screwed because I don't have health insurance. Sissy told me that kidney stones run in the family. Who knew? Not I. Anyway, the difference was like night and day. The nurses gave me 2 IVs, a little morphine, and all the while Ali stayed by my side even though the triage nurse yelled at her for shit she didn't even do.
You're such a bitch, seriously. Your job is to ask questions and take information to assess patient risk. Your job is also to give information when patients ask for it. She just asked 1 question, bitch and she only asked it because I couldn't walk over to your bullet-proof kiosk and ask you myself, and you had to go off on her. The only time you have to get off your ass is when you have to take temperatures and blood pressure, oh and when you want a coffee break or meal break or you have to pee or something. How hard is that? It might be worth considering that you're not meant for this hospital, known to be one of the toughest in New York City, if you can't handle easy questions about wait times. Bitch.
The next day I was feeling fine but didn't go to work because I reckoned I had an appointment with the x-ray department. I was wrong. They couldn't get me in until the next day after that. They told me I needed a CT scan because the analysis found traces of blood and high protein which were indicators of kidney stones. I attempted to explain the presence of protein to the nurse, what with my being a healthy, young male but one sideways glance from Ali and I shut up. I was a little skeptical about the blood, but after finally having a CT scan, I went to the washroom and noticed the colour was a little pinkish - a shade described as Peach Sunset.
I went back to work on Wednesday and noticed a few things that Looch needs to work on. Sure people love the product, but they want it NOW and don't care that we don't have a storefront. They're fine with the warehouse concept, but they, especially the Paris Hiltony-types don't like to wait 5 business days for a bicycle courier to go uptown. I've taken a little sounding, and it seems that our target market is willing to wait 2 days - 3 max - for a local delivery. Out-of-towners (Jersey and other places) are willing to wait up to 5 days. This is totally doable, so I've got to sit down with Looch - maybe at that Greek lunch - and work out the details.
Last weekend was my niece's birthday. She's actually my second cousin, but explaining the complex family relationship to a 5 year old is a little pointless so we just go with the uncle-niece thing. She's happy with that. There's 2 reasons I go to Vermont, the other is Ben and Jerry's ice cream. The thing I worry about most when going to Vermont is ticks. You always hear about deer ticks and lyme disease and stuff, but that is just something I don't need. I told Ali about the shika but before I got to the part about ticks she had a big smile on her face I suppose because she thought she was going on a trip to see Bambi. It's true, we like deer, Ali maybe a little more than most people, but it usually involves roast potatoes or a stew of some sort. We loaded up the Wrangler with gifts and drove up to Vermont for a backyard pool party. Eeeee! My skin was crawling. The last time I had a run in with ticks was right before I got stuck in Quincy, technically in Nevada but I associate everything horrible about that trip with a little California town. Sissy - what a trooper - she checked me out to make sure there weren't more. I assured Ali that although swimsuits were requested, the pool itself was just a kiddie pool. It never occurred to me that my niece had acquired a new, much larger pool. We arrived earlier than expected, but we were welcomed all the same. The first words out of Ali's mouth after seeing the gargantuan pool were "You are a liar!" Oh, it's a good thing we actually brought swimsuits afterall. It was a beautiful day and would have been a great party, except that I kept looking for ticks every ten minutes. Everybody thought Ali was being cute when she sat in a kiddie rocking chair, but she was more matter-of-fact about it. "It's comfortable!" More hilarity ensued as it became obvious that the very petite Ali could very possibly wear the outfits that my niece got for her birthday. Honestly, the outfit looked a little big for my niece, but it made people laugh. So yeah, the party was pretty much over after all the presents were opened and the cake was served. We stayed at my cousin's place - after I completely checked the bed for ticks - and went back to New York in the morning. Everything was really fun until that afternoon. Then, the pain.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Just Movies This Time
Okay, I said I would talk about Female Prisoner 701: Scorpion and The Bourne Supremacy, but it's been so long that it might not make a difference. Here it goes: I really liked Female Prisoner - even though I was misinformed about it's origins - in a movie geek kind of way. The movie was directed by Shunya Ito and starred a stunningly beautiful Meiko Kaji as the title character. I was informed that this movie was made in the 1960s so I was a little shocked by the amount of not so tasteless, albeit gratuitous nudity. It turns out that the film was made in 1972, and is a tale of revenge with a little softcore porn thrown in. It follows the travails of a young woman who was set up by her cop boyfriend to take the fall on a drug deal. She attempts a few times to escape from prison and develops the reputation of a strong-willed outsider. She eventually escapes the prison after the inmates stage a riot. After killing a series of people who wronged her, including a prison guard and a yakuza boss, she finds her cop boyfriend at Tokyo police headquarters, and as a fugitive, conveniently manages to slip into an elevator with no one else in it except her ex-boyfriend. She's one good assassin, at least one has to believe so, if she can do all that without being detected. She goes to the rooftop with her ex, and cuts him good.
The reasons I liked this film are varied - the first being of course, the absolutely beautiful Meiko Kaji. The second being the first flashback scene in which Kaji's character Nami gives herself to the boyfriend. It was done on a stage with moving scenery and was refreshingly creative. Unfortunately, that creativity did not carry through the entire film. The third reason is the hair and makeup, at times ridiculous and at others, very well done for the period. The wardrobe deserves a special mention. I hate the fact that one cannot get a suit in the style and quality equal to the wardrobe of the boyfriend. Also, the coat, boots and hat worn by Nami during the final sequence were awesome. I can't say they were original, but many films have copied the combination since. I liked the hat so much, Ali went out and bought one. I also liked this film because of the low-budget stunts and makeup used in the violent scenes. Apparently, this film has ties to Quentin Tarantino in a really roundabout way. It has been said that the idea for Kill Bill was based on this film. I can't say yes or no since I haven't seen Kill Bill, but the twist is that a song sung by Kaji in the second of the Scorpion movies is used in the films by Tarantino. Strangely in that movie, although Kaji portrays the main character, she plays a different Scorpion, one named Matsu.The tangential stuff really gets me. I was also interested to learn that Shunya Ito directed the first three movies, but was not asked back to direct the fourth. This led to, or so it has been claimed, Kaji's departure from the production company. This is one of those films you might rent because you might never see it otherwise, or because you might want to see an example of early 1970s not-so-mainstream Japanese cinema but as for parts 2 through 4, I have to weigh the cost of renting against the benefit of watching more vacant plot, laughably-violent, nudity-salted prison movies. It's difficult to decide.
I watched The Bourne Supremacy because I'd seen the Bourne Identity, not the one with Richard Chamberlain, a few years ago and that's the only reason. The film opened with promise, but quickly sank into a festival of driving stunts with predictable intrigue (is it intrigue if it's predictable?). I'm not a huge fan of Matt Damon, but after seeing the Bourne Identity perhaps I was expecting more in the second film. I see on imdb that there will be a third film in 2007. In spite of myself, I look forward to it. The film had some really good filming locations in the Western Europe segments, but the Eastern Europe locations were a little clichés, and if you're really wondering whether you should watch this one - you're probably not, but just in case - I'd suggest that you leave this one on the shelf and maybe rent one of the Michael Caine (post) Cold War spy movies in which he portrays the unfortunately-named character Harry Palmer. These films include The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, Billion Dollar Brain and the final two episodes Bullet to Beijing and Midnight in Saint Petersburg. Why they bothered with the last two, I may never know.
I've seen quite a few movies since these two, including Gumball 3000: 6 Days in May, Naniwa yuukyôden, Family Guy Presents: Stewie Griffin - The Untold Story, Boca a boca, 2LDK or at least I tried, and a bunch of others I can't remember at this time. Of this list, only Gumball and Boca a boca are worth watching. Ali and I tried to watch 2LDK, which she characterized as a comedy but would often say that it had a lot of violence in it, but the copy we rented was not up to par so we returned it and got Stewie Griffin instead. I wish I hadn't. I'm not Seth MacFarlane's biggest fan, but Stewie was the reason I started watching his stuff. The movie itself is mostly unoriginal material edited together in Family Guy style to explain the existence of Stewie Griffin. Since I'd already seen an estimated 60% of this movie from the Fox cartoon aired weekly, I felt it was a waste of time to see this film.
Gumball is a movie for car fans who like the documentary style film. I use the word documentary lightly, it's not a documentary in the sense that a documentary should be hard-hitting and thought-provoking. It's put together well for the material they had to work with I presume, and it kinda makes me want to rally again but since Sissy is as big as a house and due in just a few months, I don't really have the option for a co-driver.
Naniwa or Osaka Tough Guys is not what I think most people would expect from Takashi Miike, but he explains why quite well in the interview feature. Many of Miike's films use a combination of extreme violence and juvenile comedy as a balance because these films are taken from comic books that Miike read in his youth. I'd have to say that the comedy in this film heavily outweighs the violence. For that reason, and never having been a fan of comic books myself, the film is not ratable. Miike explained that he wanted to remain as faithful to the original Dorkman comic as possible, and I have to assume he did. For that, I applaud his talent. I mention it here, only because he was a supporting actor in Tampopo, but Rikiya Yasuoka plays a supporting role as a yakuza enforcer.
I caught Boca a boca reeeeally late one night on the Cantonese channel and decided to watch it because it was a Spanish film, starred Javier Bardem - whom I thought was somebody completely different but had apparently seen years earlier in the raunchy romance Jamón jamón - was a Spanish film, and because I didn't have a job to go to the next day. It's about a struggling actor in Madrid who is reduced to working at a sex line to make money. He gets wrapped up in a fake affair, a pretense for a murder. Typical, light humour accompanies a series of events which dismantle the façade, and the murder plot is foiled. The actor lands a film in Hollywood, and schmaltzy to the end, the actor flies to Hollywood with his agent, his new girlfriend, and his new best friend: his homosexual, plastic surgeon, fake lover who was the target of the original murder. The only painful parts of this film were watching a French actress choke through her lines as though an unspecified regional American accent was the most distasteful thing to enunciate on the face of the earth, and a Scottish actor doing a really bad impression of an American director who sounded like he learned his so-called perfect Spanish in Sicily. The usual gags and the talent of Kity Manver make the rest of this film easy and fun to watch.
The reasons I liked this film are varied - the first being of course, the absolutely beautiful Meiko Kaji. The second being the first flashback scene in which Kaji's character Nami gives herself to the boyfriend. It was done on a stage with moving scenery and was refreshingly creative. Unfortunately, that creativity did not carry through the entire film. The third reason is the hair and makeup, at times ridiculous and at others, very well done for the period. The wardrobe deserves a special mention. I hate the fact that one cannot get a suit in the style and quality equal to the wardrobe of the boyfriend. Also, the coat, boots and hat worn by Nami during the final sequence were awesome. I can't say they were original, but many films have copied the combination since. I liked the hat so much, Ali went out and bought one. I also liked this film because of the low-budget stunts and makeup used in the violent scenes. Apparently, this film has ties to Quentin Tarantino in a really roundabout way. It has been said that the idea for Kill Bill was based on this film. I can't say yes or no since I haven't seen Kill Bill, but the twist is that a song sung by Kaji in the second of the Scorpion movies is used in the films by Tarantino. Strangely in that movie, although Kaji portrays the main character, she plays a different Scorpion, one named Matsu.The tangential stuff really gets me. I was also interested to learn that Shunya Ito directed the first three movies, but was not asked back to direct the fourth. This led to, or so it has been claimed, Kaji's departure from the production company. This is one of those films you might rent because you might never see it otherwise, or because you might want to see an example of early 1970s not-so-mainstream Japanese cinema but as for parts 2 through 4, I have to weigh the cost of renting against the benefit of watching more vacant plot, laughably-violent, nudity-salted prison movies. It's difficult to decide.
I watched The Bourne Supremacy because I'd seen the Bourne Identity, not the one with Richard Chamberlain, a few years ago and that's the only reason. The film opened with promise, but quickly sank into a festival of driving stunts with predictable intrigue (is it intrigue if it's predictable?). I'm not a huge fan of Matt Damon, but after seeing the Bourne Identity perhaps I was expecting more in the second film. I see on imdb that there will be a third film in 2007. In spite of myself, I look forward to it. The film had some really good filming locations in the Western Europe segments, but the Eastern Europe locations were a little clichés, and if you're really wondering whether you should watch this one - you're probably not, but just in case - I'd suggest that you leave this one on the shelf and maybe rent one of the Michael Caine (post) Cold War spy movies in which he portrays the unfortunately-named character Harry Palmer. These films include The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, Billion Dollar Brain and the final two episodes Bullet to Beijing and Midnight in Saint Petersburg. Why they bothered with the last two, I may never know.
I've seen quite a few movies since these two, including Gumball 3000: 6 Days in May, Naniwa yuukyôden, Family Guy Presents: Stewie Griffin - The Untold Story, Boca a boca, 2LDK or at least I tried, and a bunch of others I can't remember at this time. Of this list, only Gumball and Boca a boca are worth watching. Ali and I tried to watch 2LDK, which she characterized as a comedy but would often say that it had a lot of violence in it, but the copy we rented was not up to par so we returned it and got Stewie Griffin instead. I wish I hadn't. I'm not Seth MacFarlane's biggest fan, but Stewie was the reason I started watching his stuff. The movie itself is mostly unoriginal material edited together in Family Guy style to explain the existence of Stewie Griffin. Since I'd already seen an estimated 60% of this movie from the Fox cartoon aired weekly, I felt it was a waste of time to see this film.
Gumball is a movie for car fans who like the documentary style film. I use the word documentary lightly, it's not a documentary in the sense that a documentary should be hard-hitting and thought-provoking. It's put together well for the material they had to work with I presume, and it kinda makes me want to rally again but since Sissy is as big as a house and due in just a few months, I don't really have the option for a co-driver.
Naniwa or Osaka Tough Guys is not what I think most people would expect from Takashi Miike, but he explains why quite well in the interview feature. Many of Miike's films use a combination of extreme violence and juvenile comedy as a balance because these films are taken from comic books that Miike read in his youth. I'd have to say that the comedy in this film heavily outweighs the violence. For that reason, and never having been a fan of comic books myself, the film is not ratable. Miike explained that he wanted to remain as faithful to the original Dorkman comic as possible, and I have to assume he did. For that, I applaud his talent. I mention it here, only because he was a supporting actor in Tampopo, but Rikiya Yasuoka plays a supporting role as a yakuza enforcer.
I caught Boca a boca reeeeally late one night on the Cantonese channel and decided to watch it because it was a Spanish film, starred Javier Bardem - whom I thought was somebody completely different but had apparently seen years earlier in the raunchy romance Jamón jamón - was a Spanish film, and because I didn't have a job to go to the next day. It's about a struggling actor in Madrid who is reduced to working at a sex line to make money. He gets wrapped up in a fake affair, a pretense for a murder. Typical, light humour accompanies a series of events which dismantle the façade, and the murder plot is foiled. The actor lands a film in Hollywood, and schmaltzy to the end, the actor flies to Hollywood with his agent, his new girlfriend, and his new best friend: his homosexual, plastic surgeon, fake lover who was the target of the original murder. The only painful parts of this film were watching a French actress choke through her lines as though an unspecified regional American accent was the most distasteful thing to enunciate on the face of the earth, and a Scottish actor doing a really bad impression of an American director who sounded like he learned his so-called perfect Spanish in Sicily. The usual gags and the talent of Kity Manver make the rest of this film easy and fun to watch.
Friday, July 21, 2006
You Never Know Unless You Ask
Eventually this will be a blog about movies again - but for now I'd just like to pass on a tale of astounding kindness and generosity. No, I'm not talking about myself. I'm talking about one of my co-workers: Nathan.
Lately I've been throwing good money after bad trying to keep my Jeep looking newish. Last weekend I drove Sissy's Wrangler - I've been through hell and back in that Jeep. Actually, to Quincy California and back but that's close enough - and I happened to notice that the clutch was a little short, so short in fact that it actually kicked back. According to Sissy, there was nothing wrong with it, which isn't exactly what I was saying but Sissy doesn't always exactly listen. According to Bobby, who actually fitted the clutch, that's what a good clutch does. My clutch has never done that, and it was fine until this morning (I think). After a hot and sweaty day at the beach - it was 104 degrees - there I was in my lemon capris, flip-flops, and a skimpy tee shirt with a cutting slogan about the President when I found myself out of eye drops and without a clutch.
I paid the horrendous parking chit and walked back to the Jeep. I unlocked the Jeep and noticed the faint smell of airbag. They smell of gunpowder or latex powder or some other dust, at least that's the first thing I smell after an accident. I didn't think anything of it after quickly noting that a great balloon had not deflated over my steering wheel and put it down to the immense heat inside the Wrangler possibly warming the vinyl accents a little too much. I put the key in the ignition and pushed in the clutch. Immediately I noted to myself that the clutch felt a bit long - a little too long. There was no pressure on the pedal. I had a flashback to Quincy and got out to check if there was a fluid leak. Nope. The answer to the mystery was a little plastic housing that had fallen on the floor of the Jeep as I pushed in the clutch the second time. This little piece of plastic was meant to prevent the clutch cable from separating from the clutch pedal. One would think that the geniuses at Daimler could at least design a decent, cost-effective clasp like those folks at Toyota - but one would be wrong.
I ran around like a chicken with its head cut off for a few minutes, calling the dealership and being told that they wouldn't be able to even look at it until Monday. FTS. I called for a tow, which I later cancelled because of my new best friend Nathan.
[Cue Nathan] I showed up for my first day of work on Monday and spoke to a hunky Indian dude about parking availability. I would later know this dude as Nathan. Note: If I were a chick, I'd give him my number - after today only.
I went outside of Looch's hovel to wait for the tow, which I hadn't cancelled yet and noticed Nathan getting into his Toyota Forerunner. Hmmm, should I? Shouldn't I? What the hell, he drives a 4x4.
Had I not asked Nathan about clutches, I'd be sitting here drinking my Red Stripe, what tastes a bit like Welch's, Jeepless and worried out of my skull. But I did ask. "Oy! Know anyfing about clutches?"
To his credit, he could have been normal and told me to fuck off, but instead he said "Ummm, a little bit". One look under the bonnet and he said that my clutch cable had come loose. Okay, he and I work a slacker's dream job, so I figured we'd leave it at that, smoke a joint and I'd pass the information on to the tow truck driver. No triggers of Wolf Creek here, thankfully.
Instead, he officially introduced himself and rummaged around in the footwell of the Wrangler and re-attached the cable to the pedal, blindly. He told me to poke around a bit which was a mistake because I promptly knocked the cable loose again.
"No problem! We've got zip strips". He shoved his way back into the hovel and came out with some plastic thingies and proceeded to spend the next hour fixing my clutch pedal. Nobody came to check the parking meters so I was happy about that. The best assistance I could muster was to push the interior light sensor closed - which was really hard - so that Nate wasn't staring at a white light bulb the whole time. I cancelled the tow and Nathan got the cable secured to the pedal. Wonderful! He kept apologizing about his sweating, which I figured was a little perspiration and forgivable on account of the temperature - but he wasn't kidding. By the time he was done, he was positively drenched and I felt like a real asshole. I had nothing to give this guy and all he wanted was to make sure that the pedal worked. He told me to take a lap and see how it managed. I've got to take the Jeep into the dealership at the beginning of August and I'll have it looked at properlike at that time, but for now it works perfectly.
When I came back he gave me his hand phone - just in case there was an emergency on the way home - and then went to pick up his dog. I felt like a real piece of shit now. A near-stranger had fixed my clutch, given me his hand phone for the weekend and I've done nothing but keep him from his puppy.
I've got to say it - I was humbled yet again. This beach gig ends at the end of August, and I hate it when people like Nathan disappear into the woodwork. These are the kind of people that should be recognized and retained by employers on a long term basis.
Thank you Nathan.
Lately I've been throwing good money after bad trying to keep my Jeep looking newish. Last weekend I drove Sissy's Wrangler - I've been through hell and back in that Jeep. Actually, to Quincy California and back but that's close enough - and I happened to notice that the clutch was a little short, so short in fact that it actually kicked back. According to Sissy, there was nothing wrong with it, which isn't exactly what I was saying but Sissy doesn't always exactly listen. According to Bobby, who actually fitted the clutch, that's what a good clutch does. My clutch has never done that, and it was fine until this morning (I think). After a hot and sweaty day at the beach - it was 104 degrees - there I was in my lemon capris, flip-flops, and a skimpy tee shirt with a cutting slogan about the President when I found myself out of eye drops and without a clutch.
I paid the horrendous parking chit and walked back to the Jeep. I unlocked the Jeep and noticed the faint smell of airbag. They smell of gunpowder or latex powder or some other dust, at least that's the first thing I smell after an accident. I didn't think anything of it after quickly noting that a great balloon had not deflated over my steering wheel and put it down to the immense heat inside the Wrangler possibly warming the vinyl accents a little too much. I put the key in the ignition and pushed in the clutch. Immediately I noted to myself that the clutch felt a bit long - a little too long. There was no pressure on the pedal. I had a flashback to Quincy and got out to check if there was a fluid leak. Nope. The answer to the mystery was a little plastic housing that had fallen on the floor of the Jeep as I pushed in the clutch the second time. This little piece of plastic was meant to prevent the clutch cable from separating from the clutch pedal. One would think that the geniuses at Daimler could at least design a decent, cost-effective clasp like those folks at Toyota - but one would be wrong.
I ran around like a chicken with its head cut off for a few minutes, calling the dealership and being told that they wouldn't be able to even look at it until Monday. FTS. I called for a tow, which I later cancelled because of my new best friend Nathan.
[Cue Nathan] I showed up for my first day of work on Monday and spoke to a hunky Indian dude about parking availability. I would later know this dude as Nathan. Note: If I were a chick, I'd give him my number - after today only.
I went outside of Looch's hovel to wait for the tow, which I hadn't cancelled yet and noticed Nathan getting into his Toyota Forerunner. Hmmm, should I? Shouldn't I? What the hell, he drives a 4x4.
Had I not asked Nathan about clutches, I'd be sitting here drinking my Red Stripe, what tastes a bit like Welch's, Jeepless and worried out of my skull. But I did ask. "Oy! Know anyfing about clutches?"
To his credit, he could have been normal and told me to fuck off, but instead he said "Ummm, a little bit". One look under the bonnet and he said that my clutch cable had come loose. Okay, he and I work a slacker's dream job, so I figured we'd leave it at that, smoke a joint and I'd pass the information on to the tow truck driver. No triggers of Wolf Creek here, thankfully.
Instead, he officially introduced himself and rummaged around in the footwell of the Wrangler and re-attached the cable to the pedal, blindly. He told me to poke around a bit which was a mistake because I promptly knocked the cable loose again.
"No problem! We've got zip strips". He shoved his way back into the hovel and came out with some plastic thingies and proceeded to spend the next hour fixing my clutch pedal. Nobody came to check the parking meters so I was happy about that. The best assistance I could muster was to push the interior light sensor closed - which was really hard - so that Nate wasn't staring at a white light bulb the whole time. I cancelled the tow and Nathan got the cable secured to the pedal. Wonderful! He kept apologizing about his sweating, which I figured was a little perspiration and forgivable on account of the temperature - but he wasn't kidding. By the time he was done, he was positively drenched and I felt like a real asshole. I had nothing to give this guy and all he wanted was to make sure that the pedal worked. He told me to take a lap and see how it managed. I've got to take the Jeep into the dealership at the beginning of August and I'll have it looked at properlike at that time, but for now it works perfectly.
When I came back he gave me his hand phone - just in case there was an emergency on the way home - and then went to pick up his dog. I felt like a real piece of shit now. A near-stranger had fixed my clutch, given me his hand phone for the weekend and I've done nothing but keep him from his puppy.
I've got to say it - I was humbled yet again. This beach gig ends at the end of August, and I hate it when people like Nathan disappear into the woodwork. These are the kind of people that should be recognized and retained by employers on a long term basis.
Thank you Nathan.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
The New Job and Good Byes
My new boss is this Italian chick whose name is Lucia, but she prefers to be called Looch. It suits shouting back and forth better. Last Wednesday after a day "working" at the beach, I shlepped into her shack/hovel/office and she said, "Okay Dax. You gotta do something about the trippa".
This is where speaking a hodgepodge of seventeen different languages comes in useful. Sure, I go to Hebrew school for six years but never have I had to use more Hebrew than any goy already could. Street Italian, you can't go to school for that but this I know. Without missing a beat, I pinched my obliques and asked, "This? What's not to like?"
"I'm just sayin', you're promoting a product man, and you're starting to look a little Pillsbury".
Message understood, so I hit the weights and started doing more crunches in the morning. I used that old boxers' trick and toyed with the idea of doing that thing that Chisato does after every meal. I even joined a running group. Pretty informal. Saturday morning meet at the community centre, stretch out and go for a run. Jogging on shabbat? Yes dad, it's not against the Torah per se. Well, I got about three miles into the run, and my right side hip flexors decided to remind me why I stopped running in the first place. I sucked it up and finished the run ahead of everyone else of course. Later that afternoon, my left knee decided to give. Better late than never. So today my legs are a little sore which I can understand. But my elbow? How the hell did that happen? Must have been on Thursday when Ali and I met her mum and sister at Grand Central and then Ali volunteered me to shlep her mother's bags to the hotel. "Oh, and don't forget Chisato's luggage either!"
I don't think I'll be able to make the running group next week - let alone the dancing lessons. Damn you Richard Gere. So last night, barely able to move, I met up with Ali and her family for a farewell dinner. Just like that, they're gone. It was quite a quick visit. Of course, it sucked in the beginning because Alison introduced me to her mum as "my jobless boyfriend", which technically was true because I hadn't told Ali about the t-shirt job yet. They said they wanted Italian for dinner so we went to Zefferelli's and I tried to be on my best behaviour. Like I said, I don't speak Japanese, so I said something half English, half Japanese which, because of Ali's mum's name sounded like I was calling her a fish. I don't know what the fuss was about, I mean she did order sparkling with dinner. Her mum was startled and I saw her hand quickly raise up toward my face at which point Ali sorta jumped between us and said something. Before I knew what was going on, all three ladies were laughing so hard they had to wipe the tears away. I couldn't have planned that icebreaker better if I tried.
Only weeks before, Chisato blew my mind with a bit of an ice breaker of her own. She was thumbing through a sport fishing magazine and said something about fishing lures. I pointed to a picture of trident fish hooks and said, "I like (these) fish hooks". She asked, "Where?" and then laughed her ass off. Eventually, I got it but I haven't been able to look at her the same way since.
I made myself scarce during this visit - partly because I'm a little afraid of Chisato and partly because I want to give Ali maximum time with her mum - only joining for two dinners and carrying luggage from the train station. Last night I showed up at the jewelry shop and Ali looked at me with a look of horror on her face. "You didn't shave!"
"Actually, I did *wink*!"
"Kitanai! Eeeee!" We shlepped around looking for a restaurant only because Chisato had taken her time buying jewelry and the Singaporean restaurant was closing. We decided on Indian. Aware of, but seemingly indifferent to my pain Ali told me to walk faster, "Suck it up, beach boy!" We ended up settling on Persian food only because the place billed itself as "Better than Greek" and it was closer than the Indian place. Well, Chisato was not happy with her food and I don't blame her. I kinda expected as much when Ali's mum said, "Only Japanese rice is any good." Turns out she speaks pretty decent English. We decided to cut our losses and skip dessert. We crossed the street and had gelato instead. We said our good byes, and amid vague promises of seeing them again in December, I limped off into the darkness cursing every step and praying for an Advil at the same time. So if this job doesn't kill me first, I'll be back at the beach tomorrow slightly trimmer, slightly buffer and slightly darker.
This is where speaking a hodgepodge of seventeen different languages comes in useful. Sure, I go to Hebrew school for six years but never have I had to use more Hebrew than any goy already could. Street Italian, you can't go to school for that but this I know. Without missing a beat, I pinched my obliques and asked, "This? What's not to like?"
"I'm just sayin', you're promoting a product man, and you're starting to look a little Pillsbury".
Message understood, so I hit the weights and started doing more crunches in the morning. I used that old boxers' trick and toyed with the idea of doing that thing that Chisato does after every meal. I even joined a running group. Pretty informal. Saturday morning meet at the community centre, stretch out and go for a run. Jogging on shabbat? Yes dad, it's not against the Torah per se. Well, I got about three miles into the run, and my right side hip flexors decided to remind me why I stopped running in the first place. I sucked it up and finished the run ahead of everyone else of course. Later that afternoon, my left knee decided to give. Better late than never. So today my legs are a little sore which I can understand. But my elbow? How the hell did that happen? Must have been on Thursday when Ali and I met her mum and sister at Grand Central and then Ali volunteered me to shlep her mother's bags to the hotel. "Oh, and don't forget Chisato's luggage either!"
I don't think I'll be able to make the running group next week - let alone the dancing lessons. Damn you Richard Gere. So last night, barely able to move, I met up with Ali and her family for a farewell dinner. Just like that, they're gone. It was quite a quick visit. Of course, it sucked in the beginning because Alison introduced me to her mum as "my jobless boyfriend", which technically was true because I hadn't told Ali about the t-shirt job yet. They said they wanted Italian for dinner so we went to Zefferelli's and I tried to be on my best behaviour. Like I said, I don't speak Japanese, so I said something half English, half Japanese which, because of Ali's mum's name sounded like I was calling her a fish. I don't know what the fuss was about, I mean she did order sparkling with dinner. Her mum was startled and I saw her hand quickly raise up toward my face at which point Ali sorta jumped between us and said something. Before I knew what was going on, all three ladies were laughing so hard they had to wipe the tears away. I couldn't have planned that icebreaker better if I tried.
Only weeks before, Chisato blew my mind with a bit of an ice breaker of her own. She was thumbing through a sport fishing magazine and said something about fishing lures. I pointed to a picture of trident fish hooks and said, "I like (these) fish hooks". She asked, "Where?" and then laughed her ass off. Eventually, I got it but I haven't been able to look at her the same way since.
I made myself scarce during this visit - partly because I'm a little afraid of Chisato and partly because I want to give Ali maximum time with her mum - only joining for two dinners and carrying luggage from the train station. Last night I showed up at the jewelry shop and Ali looked at me with a look of horror on her face. "You didn't shave!"
"Actually, I did *wink*!"
"Kitanai! Eeeee!" We shlepped around looking for a restaurant only because Chisato had taken her time buying jewelry and the Singaporean restaurant was closing. We decided on Indian. Aware of, but seemingly indifferent to my pain Ali told me to walk faster, "Suck it up, beach boy!" We ended up settling on Persian food only because the place billed itself as "Better than Greek" and it was closer than the Indian place. Well, Chisato was not happy with her food and I don't blame her. I kinda expected as much when Ali's mum said, "Only Japanese rice is any good." Turns out she speaks pretty decent English. We decided to cut our losses and skip dessert. We crossed the street and had gelato instead. We said our good byes, and amid vague promises of seeing them again in December, I limped off into the darkness cursing every step and praying for an Advil at the same time. So if this job doesn't kill me first, I'll be back at the beach tomorrow slightly trimmer, slightly buffer and slightly darker.
Saturday, July 08, 2006
About Those First Impressions
I can only assume that I was hired at my new job six weeks ago based on a whopping first impression. I can be good at those, remember? I intended for this post to be about the awesome day I had driving a smooth Jeep Commander to and from work, but it didn't turn out that way. Let's just say that the Commander was the best part of the whole Jeep-in-the-shop experience. And it was probably the only thing I had to look forward to after work today because I was sacked.
Sacked sacked sacked.
Apparently, I was not meeting a totally different set of expectations than the ones I was hired to meet. Of course the termination was a bit of a one-sided affair, and the dude didn't care what I had to say about the situation. That's fine - they were scrambling when they hired me and they're scrambling even harder now that I and some long-time staff have left. Good luck Frenchies.
Karma. That's all they need to focus on. It's all good because I've got a job lined up for the rest of the summer street-teaming as a t-shirt model/conveyance. Not a bad gig if you can get it. $600 a week (tax-free) to lounge around high-visibility areas - like the beach - looking good and wearing ill-fitting t-shirts that have stupidly funny slogans on them. It's supposed to make other people want to buy the t-shirt you are wearing, or some such thing and then that way the t-shirt vendor makes stonking piles of money by paying me $600 a week, and I get to work on my tan. Win-win.
Sacked sacked sacked.
Apparently, I was not meeting a totally different set of expectations than the ones I was hired to meet. Of course the termination was a bit of a one-sided affair, and the dude didn't care what I had to say about the situation. That's fine - they were scrambling when they hired me and they're scrambling even harder now that I and some long-time staff have left. Good luck Frenchies.
Karma. That's all they need to focus on. It's all good because I've got a job lined up for the rest of the summer street-teaming as a t-shirt model/conveyance. Not a bad gig if you can get it. $600 a week (tax-free) to lounge around high-visibility areas - like the beach - looking good and wearing ill-fitting t-shirts that have stupidly funny slogans on them. It's supposed to make other people want to buy the t-shirt you are wearing, or some such thing and then that way the t-shirt vendor makes stonking piles of money by paying me $600 a week, and I get to work on my tan. Win-win.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
First Impressions
I'm good at them. I occasionally depend on them. But sometimes they come back to bite me in the ass.
I woke to the musical stylings of The Kooks at full volume in my ears yesterday morning. I shot up as my eyes screamed open only to see Ali giggling at the corner of the bed, holding my iPod.
"Moshi moshi Fatty! Make my breakfast. Vanilla Earl Grey please, and only one piece of toast with jam as usual -- don't forget to cut off the crust", she said with a smile on her face.
"Ummm... yeah", I said vacantly.
"Before your shower!" she reminded me.
"For crying out loud. Juwant milk?"
"No. I have good news! Chisato is coming back to visit and this time Mummy's coming too!"
"Nande? Chisato just left. How can your family...? Oh, yeah... right".
"Chisato told my mum all about you and she gave such a high opinion that mum wants to meet you herself. And since you think Chisato is a princess, that makes my mum the Queen".
My first instinct was to explain the rules of Succession and say, "Not necessarily Dear -- just ask Princess Beatrice", because you can be a princess and still not be the daughter of the Queen. But I let it go because I was more interested in finding my tooth brush.
"Oh, and since Mummy doesn't speak English, I expect you to speak Japanese, okay? Is the kettle on?"
"Hhhhhhhhhhkuso", I mumbled and stumbled my way into the kitchen.
This all would have been fine except that yesterday afternoon the dealership called begging me to bring the Jeep in on Friday rather than Saturday. One problem - I have to work that day and I don't take the bus any more like Enzo doesn't eat pineapple - it would kill me. The service guy was between a rock and a hard place (presumably a place with a telephone) but quickly came up with an answer. Five star service I must say - he offered me his manager's Jeep Commander for the day. Ungrateful little sod that I can be, I asked for something smaller on account of I just had an accident a few weeks ago. We hammered out a deal so that I could take the Commander for the day and nobody's manager would be the wiser. Pretty lucky, ungrateful sod, me. That clears up the weekend for a trip to Oyster Bay to finally use that gift certificate and clears up next week to spend with Chisato and her mum - so it's all good. I actually get along pretty well with most of my girlfriends' mums so I'm not worried except that, well, this is probably different. And I can't speak Japanese - yet.
I woke to the musical stylings of The Kooks at full volume in my ears yesterday morning. I shot up as my eyes screamed open only to see Ali giggling at the corner of the bed, holding my iPod.
"Moshi moshi Fatty! Make my breakfast. Vanilla Earl Grey please, and only one piece of toast with jam as usual -- don't forget to cut off the crust", she said with a smile on her face.
"Ummm... yeah", I said vacantly.
"Before your shower!" she reminded me.
"For crying out loud. Juwant milk?"
"No. I have good news! Chisato is coming back to visit and this time Mummy's coming too!"
"Nande? Chisato just left. How can your family...? Oh, yeah... right".
"Chisato told my mum all about you and she gave such a high opinion that mum wants to meet you herself. And since you think Chisato is a princess, that makes my mum the Queen".
My first instinct was to explain the rules of Succession and say, "Not necessarily Dear -- just ask Princess Beatrice", because you can be a princess and still not be the daughter of the Queen. But I let it go because I was more interested in finding my tooth brush.
"Oh, and since Mummy doesn't speak English, I expect you to speak Japanese, okay? Is the kettle on?"
"Hhhhhhhhhhkuso", I mumbled and stumbled my way into the kitchen.
This all would have been fine except that yesterday afternoon the dealership called begging me to bring the Jeep in on Friday rather than Saturday. One problem - I have to work that day and I don't take the bus any more like Enzo doesn't eat pineapple - it would kill me. The service guy was between a rock and a hard place (presumably a place with a telephone) but quickly came up with an answer. Five star service I must say - he offered me his manager's Jeep Commander for the day. Ungrateful little sod that I can be, I asked for something smaller on account of I just had an accident a few weeks ago. We hammered out a deal so that I could take the Commander for the day and nobody's manager would be the wiser. Pretty lucky, ungrateful sod, me. That clears up the weekend for a trip to Oyster Bay to finally use that gift certificate and clears up next week to spend with Chisato and her mum - so it's all good. I actually get along pretty well with most of my girlfriends' mums so I'm not worried except that, well, this is probably different. And I can't speak Japanese - yet.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
England's Out
I'm feeling better this weekend, now that Baby's back as good as ever. I was woken up this morning with a hard nudge to the ribs. "Pssst. Fatty Fatty Fuckface. I wanna watch Beckham!"
"Huh? Oh, hime. It's you." Seeing as how my bedroom is currently 600 degrees Celsius between the hours of 05:00 and 21:00, I sleep very lightly and Ali can wake me up any time.
"Yes, I'm a hime and I want to see the match. It starts in one hour". I racked my brain trying to think of a place we could watch the match and avoid the Portuguese crowds. The only place I could think of was Ali's old shop, so we drove into Durban and took brunch while we watched the game -- no sound on the telly.
There were a few Portuguese fans in the shop, but they stayed on one side of the room. A few cops came in during the first half, and whaddya know? One of them was the very same cop who jumped in front of my vehicle and ticketed me for going 83km. in a 50km. zone. He stepped in front of my car basically because I was the slowest vehicle in the pack. $138.00 later and I was back on the road. Due to the price of petrol, I decided to take public transit to work for June. Big mistake. 22 working days and I was late 3 times. It didn't take me long to decide to pay for the extra insurance and drive to work. Now that Baby's better, I'll be driving to work from now on. I get bitchy when I have to ride the loser cruiser, and I'm no fun at work for the rest of the day.
The body shop guys "found some stuff" that the estimator missed, so Baby ended up costing more than $6000.00 to repair, but they did some extra stuff for me. They had to replace the left front panel -- so that took care of the numerous dings that my neighbour's rear door left behind, and then as they replaced the right front panel, they blended out the scratch that my other neighbour left in the right door. I think they even tried to touch up the gouge that I left on the rear when I tried to take the hard top off. 2 minutes after I picked Baby up from the shop, I nearly had another accident because some fool turning towards me decided to cut the angle sharp and almost hit me. Bastard.
The football match went to a shootout and as you all know by now Portugal won 3-1. If they hadn't cheated so badly in the match against the Netherlands, I might have cheered for them, but they're dirty this year and don't deserve the Cup. d
A few days ago I had to take a business trip, or more of a fact-finding mission. Best known as the town with the landfill which takes in the excess garbage from the country's third-largest regional district -- I, and five others, drove five painful hours to visit one of the company's sites. I expected the town to stink like garbage, but it was actually odourless. Fucking hot, but no smell. I stayed in JLo's hotel, actually the hotel where the crew and co-stars stayed while filming one of her films. She stayed in a larger town about an hour and a half's drive away.
I learned a lot actually. 5th form chemistry really helped, and its now a pet project of mine to figure out how to better utilize the waste rock, which is too small to process further. Imagine - we're fucking it away. Anyone can come by the quarry and load up their trucks with the stuff. If they need a loader, we charge $25.00 but if they just need a few buckets it's free. I don't care about the price, but I think we could be more efficient.
The town itself, about 30km. from the site is a place I used to go when I was a kid. My mum's boyfriend would sometimes take us to his hometown and this place was halfway along the journey so we'd stop for a meal. I would order French Toast, because hotcakes suck hard. I like it there, and might move there when I get old.
I'm glad to be home, and I'm all kitted out for the 4th of July weekend, only now Ali says she doesn't want to get a tan so I guess I'll be going to the beach alone.
No fun. The only thing left to look forward to this summer is that gift certificate I won, and maybe a couple of baseball games or a show at Cirque du Soleil. The blue and yellow tents are setting up in front of my apartment building. The gift certificate restaurant is way the fuck out on Long Island and is gonna cost me more to use than the value of the prize itself. Merde! Oh well, can't be ahead all the time. C'est la vie.
"Huh? Oh, hime. It's you." Seeing as how my bedroom is currently 600 degrees Celsius between the hours of 05:00 and 21:00, I sleep very lightly and Ali can wake me up any time.
"Yes, I'm a hime and I want to see the match. It starts in one hour". I racked my brain trying to think of a place we could watch the match and avoid the Portuguese crowds. The only place I could think of was Ali's old shop, so we drove into Durban and took brunch while we watched the game -- no sound on the telly.
There were a few Portuguese fans in the shop, but they stayed on one side of the room. A few cops came in during the first half, and whaddya know? One of them was the very same cop who jumped in front of my vehicle and ticketed me for going 83km. in a 50km. zone. He stepped in front of my car basically because I was the slowest vehicle in the pack. $138.00 later and I was back on the road. Due to the price of petrol, I decided to take public transit to work for June. Big mistake. 22 working days and I was late 3 times. It didn't take me long to decide to pay for the extra insurance and drive to work. Now that Baby's better, I'll be driving to work from now on. I get bitchy when I have to ride the loser cruiser, and I'm no fun at work for the rest of the day.
The body shop guys "found some stuff" that the estimator missed, so Baby ended up costing more than $6000.00 to repair, but they did some extra stuff for me. They had to replace the left front panel -- so that took care of the numerous dings that my neighbour's rear door left behind, and then as they replaced the right front panel, they blended out the scratch that my other neighbour left in the right door. I think they even tried to touch up the gouge that I left on the rear when I tried to take the hard top off. 2 minutes after I picked Baby up from the shop, I nearly had another accident because some fool turning towards me decided to cut the angle sharp and almost hit me. Bastard.
The football match went to a shootout and as you all know by now Portugal won 3-1. If they hadn't cheated so badly in the match against the Netherlands, I might have cheered for them, but they're dirty this year and don't deserve the Cup. d
A few days ago I had to take a business trip, or more of a fact-finding mission. Best known as the town with the landfill which takes in the excess garbage from the country's third-largest regional district -- I, and five others, drove five painful hours to visit one of the company's sites. I expected the town to stink like garbage, but it was actually odourless. Fucking hot, but no smell. I stayed in JLo's hotel, actually the hotel where the crew and co-stars stayed while filming one of her films. She stayed in a larger town about an hour and a half's drive away.
I learned a lot actually. 5th form chemistry really helped, and its now a pet project of mine to figure out how to better utilize the waste rock, which is too small to process further. Imagine - we're fucking it away. Anyone can come by the quarry and load up their trucks with the stuff. If they need a loader, we charge $25.00 but if they just need a few buckets it's free. I don't care about the price, but I think we could be more efficient.
The town itself, about 30km. from the site is a place I used to go when I was a kid. My mum's boyfriend would sometimes take us to his hometown and this place was halfway along the journey so we'd stop for a meal. I would order French Toast, because hotcakes suck hard. I like it there, and might move there when I get old.
I'm glad to be home, and I'm all kitted out for the 4th of July weekend, only now Ali says she doesn't want to get a tan so I guess I'll be going to the beach alone.
No fun. The only thing left to look forward to this summer is that gift certificate I won, and maybe a couple of baseball games or a show at Cirque du Soleil. The blue and yellow tents are setting up in front of my apartment building. The gift certificate restaurant is way the fuck out on Long Island and is gonna cost me more to use than the value of the prize itself. Merde! Oh well, can't be ahead all the time. C'est la vie.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Separation Anxiety
I miss Baby. Nothing against Toyotas or anything, it's just that I'm worried that the bodyshop guys are harvesting Baby for fresh parts and then replacing them with substandard ones. The first car I drove -- legally -- was a Toyota Corolla. I'd get it up to 80km on the highway and it would shimmy. This one's a little different, but there's something unsettling about driving an automatic. It's like piloting a glider, I feel like I'm sailing. The engine doesn't compress nearly as quickly or as strongly as a manual, and well I've grown accustomed to compression braking.
Yesterday I was fitted for contacts (again) and after some nagging I went for a wax. One problem -- Trey went to Miami for the weekend so I was forced to get my bits done by someone new. I went to a place about a block away from the gay bar where I saw Rabbi Weinstein, and met a delightful little Iranian woman who hemmed and hawed when I asked her for a Brazilian. She said that she could do a bikini wax for 50 bucks. I said okay, and that was probably a mistake. She was a little nervous and later admitted that she didn't have many male customers. She told me that she was going to leave strip because a bikini wax only takes care of what the bathing suit doesn't. Well, she left a strip the size of Tulsa Runway #1 and if you've ever been to Tulsa - you'll know what I mean.
On the way downtown, Ali nearly shit her pants because, while walking on the concourse of the football stadium we came across a five car show n' shine. You might laugh, but it was for a niche market and Ali recognized it right away. I thought it was just five dudes trying to get free parking until Ali said, "Look closer, you big dork. They're all Skylines -- and they're all right-side drive. Eeeeeee!"
My head would have snapped around, but for the excruciating whiplash from last week's shunt. I spun on my heel and quickly scanned for the charcoal Skyline that frequents Ali's shop. Absent. How about the white one that was traded in for the charcoal one? Absent. Too bad, but the good side to that is that there are more and more Skylines popping up around town. The Skyline is (one of) Hank's dream car(s). Allegedly, Nissan made them so fast that they could outrun Japanese police cars, and were thus banned in Japan unless they were modified to limit horsepower. I'm not so sure about that story, but they have nice grunt.
I told Ali to ask the guys if she could try one on, but then I remembered that she is a two-footer. Left foot for brake and right foot for gas. That passes in racing, and in certain off-roading situations, but my mum always taught me that two-footing is dangerous on the street and I'd have to agree. I had to pull her away from the cars before she developed an unhealthy attraction, much like the one she has for Haley Joel Osment.
Another weekend and another one of Ali's friends returns to Japan. This friend knew more about me than I thought, because Ali told her everything when they went to Mexico together. When we finally met, she said I looked like Waldo from the Where's Waldo series, on account of my new summer do. She's gone now, and Bobby's back. The boat looks good in the harbour, but I have yet to take a closer look at it. No eagles yet, but in a few days there should be one or two. Ali's sister also went back to Japan a few weeks ago. I'm so glad she left before the shunt, because I'd never hear the end of it if I had to drive her around in a Corolla. In the end, her sister was not so much of a princess afterall. We got to know each other better and accept one another for who we are. She really relaxed after that. Maybe Ali said something. This summer has started with a little bit of a speed bump, but as long as I get my Jeep back before the 4th of July, I'll be happy.
Yesterday I was fitted for contacts (again) and after some nagging I went for a wax. One problem -- Trey went to Miami for the weekend so I was forced to get my bits done by someone new. I went to a place about a block away from the gay bar where I saw Rabbi Weinstein, and met a delightful little Iranian woman who hemmed and hawed when I asked her for a Brazilian. She said that she could do a bikini wax for 50 bucks. I said okay, and that was probably a mistake. She was a little nervous and later admitted that she didn't have many male customers. She told me that she was going to leave strip because a bikini wax only takes care of what the bathing suit doesn't. Well, she left a strip the size of Tulsa Runway #1 and if you've ever been to Tulsa - you'll know what I mean.
On the way downtown, Ali nearly shit her pants because, while walking on the concourse of the football stadium we came across a five car show n' shine. You might laugh, but it was for a niche market and Ali recognized it right away. I thought it was just five dudes trying to get free parking until Ali said, "Look closer, you big dork. They're all Skylines -- and they're all right-side drive. Eeeeeee!"
My head would have snapped around, but for the excruciating whiplash from last week's shunt. I spun on my heel and quickly scanned for the charcoal Skyline that frequents Ali's shop. Absent. How about the white one that was traded in for the charcoal one? Absent. Too bad, but the good side to that is that there are more and more Skylines popping up around town. The Skyline is (one of) Hank's dream car(s). Allegedly, Nissan made them so fast that they could outrun Japanese police cars, and were thus banned in Japan unless they were modified to limit horsepower. I'm not so sure about that story, but they have nice grunt.
I told Ali to ask the guys if she could try one on, but then I remembered that she is a two-footer. Left foot for brake and right foot for gas. That passes in racing, and in certain off-roading situations, but my mum always taught me that two-footing is dangerous on the street and I'd have to agree. I had to pull her away from the cars before she developed an unhealthy attraction, much like the one she has for Haley Joel Osment.
Another weekend and another one of Ali's friends returns to Japan. This friend knew more about me than I thought, because Ali told her everything when they went to Mexico together. When we finally met, she said I looked like Waldo from the Where's Waldo series, on account of my new summer do. She's gone now, and Bobby's back. The boat looks good in the harbour, but I have yet to take a closer look at it. No eagles yet, but in a few days there should be one or two. Ali's sister also went back to Japan a few weeks ago. I'm so glad she left before the shunt, because I'd never hear the end of it if I had to drive her around in a Corolla. In the end, her sister was not so much of a princess afterall. We got to know each other better and accept one another for who we are. She really relaxed after that. Maybe Ali said something. This summer has started with a little bit of a speed bump, but as long as I get my Jeep back before the 4th of July, I'll be happy.
Monday, June 19, 2006
A Banner Weekend
I watched a few movies since my last abbreviated post, including Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion which I figured would be a good one, and a Japanese copy of The Bourne Identity. Maybe I'll discuss these movies in a later post, but this is more a post about my killer weekend.
Ali's best friend from highschool had planned to visit from Osaka on a 4-day vacation and so I cheerfully volunteered to collect Julie from from the airport and that's when everything went Pete Tong. The main artery between the downtown core and the airport is notoriously congested due to the excessive number of stoplights, or is it the lack of turn lanes? Either way, traffic in this street is always an adventure.
Julie's not even in the country for an hour before she gets a faceful of GMC Sierra - sans airbag. Three cars in front of me decided to inexplicably stop short in the centre lane. I was checking my mirrors and missed the GMC's brake lights. Julie started shrieking something in Japanese which was my cue to slam on the brakes. Well, I didn't have enough room to stop, and shunted the GMC up front into the second car in the queue, which then shunted the first car in the queue. Julie and Ali were okay, I was okay, the driver in front of me was okay so we pulled over to exchange information. This was my first accident, and I wasn't exactly sure what I was supposed to do. Thankfully, the driver in front of me walked me through everything. The other two drivers were fine as well, but my nerves were shot - especially since Julie's vacation, and Baby's front were now ruined.
I was able to continue the journey in the Jeep which was a good sign, leaving bits of headlight and halogen lamp all along the route. Apparently this is acceptable, which I'm glad for. Ali made me a nice cup of tea to help me relax, and Julie regaled me with gifts which, since I had already lost so much face, I accepted. The rest of the day was kinda weird. I felt really bad about being able to walk around town after what had happened. That was Saturday morning - Saturday afternoon I was accused of being a purse snatcher, but before all that escalated, Ali sorted it. I went to sleep Saturday night dreading that I might wake up with a stiff back from the accident, but surprisingly neither I, nor Ali nor Julie had any problems. Sunday was karma I guess because a bird shit on me, but thanks to my bucket hat, there was minimal collateral damage. Julie and Ali were able to have their vacation together which was important, and I was left to deal with the insurance company.
I took the day off work today to take the Jeep into the inspection garage, and they told me it would cost about $5000.00 to fix, and that the damage was purely cosmetic. I'm glad about that, and I'm also very happy that none of the other drivers have filed injury claims. I'm most worried about the driver in front of me due to his age and his size but he said he was okay. The whole insurance claim process has been quite painless so far, I watched Spain score a penalty kick against Tunisia as I sipped a coffee and an information officer told me what to expect next. It was all quite reassuring.
The insurance company told me that the work should take 7 working days, but the body shop told me that Baby wouldn't be better until the end of next week. So until then, I have an automatic transmission Toyota Corolla at my disposal in case I have to run errands. Either way, it could be worse and I'm glad its not.
Ali's best friend from highschool had planned to visit from Osaka on a 4-day vacation and so I cheerfully volunteered to collect Julie from from the airport and that's when everything went Pete Tong. The main artery between the downtown core and the airport is notoriously congested due to the excessive number of stoplights, or is it the lack of turn lanes? Either way, traffic in this street is always an adventure.
Julie's not even in the country for an hour before she gets a faceful of GMC Sierra - sans airbag. Three cars in front of me decided to inexplicably stop short in the centre lane. I was checking my mirrors and missed the GMC's brake lights. Julie started shrieking something in Japanese which was my cue to slam on the brakes. Well, I didn't have enough room to stop, and shunted the GMC up front into the second car in the queue, which then shunted the first car in the queue. Julie and Ali were okay, I was okay, the driver in front of me was okay so we pulled over to exchange information. This was my first accident, and I wasn't exactly sure what I was supposed to do. Thankfully, the driver in front of me walked me through everything. The other two drivers were fine as well, but my nerves were shot - especially since Julie's vacation, and Baby's front were now ruined.
I was able to continue the journey in the Jeep which was a good sign, leaving bits of headlight and halogen lamp all along the route. Apparently this is acceptable, which I'm glad for. Ali made me a nice cup of tea to help me relax, and Julie regaled me with gifts which, since I had already lost so much face, I accepted. The rest of the day was kinda weird. I felt really bad about being able to walk around town after what had happened. That was Saturday morning - Saturday afternoon I was accused of being a purse snatcher, but before all that escalated, Ali sorted it. I went to sleep Saturday night dreading that I might wake up with a stiff back from the accident, but surprisingly neither I, nor Ali nor Julie had any problems. Sunday was karma I guess because a bird shit on me, but thanks to my bucket hat, there was minimal collateral damage. Julie and Ali were able to have their vacation together which was important, and I was left to deal with the insurance company.
I took the day off work today to take the Jeep into the inspection garage, and they told me it would cost about $5000.00 to fix, and that the damage was purely cosmetic. I'm glad about that, and I'm also very happy that none of the other drivers have filed injury claims. I'm most worried about the driver in front of me due to his age and his size but he said he was okay. The whole insurance claim process has been quite painless so far, I watched Spain score a penalty kick against Tunisia as I sipped a coffee and an information officer told me what to expect next. It was all quite reassuring.
The insurance company told me that the work should take 7 working days, but the body shop told me that Baby wouldn't be better until the end of next week. So until then, I have an automatic transmission Toyota Corolla at my disposal in case I have to run errands. Either way, it could be worse and I'm glad its not.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Blog This
Blogger eats poo. It's been quite a while since I updated my blog, so last night I started an entry and got almost to the end of it when a pop up from Blogger notified me that my entry may be lost when I try to save it. Sure enough, it disapeared when I tried to spell check it. It wasn't a huge entry and I could probably re-write if I wanted to, but there's no point. The past is the past. But the present is the present, and presently Blogger eats poo.
Cocksuckers.
Cocksuckers.
Monday, May 22, 2006
Topless for Mrs. Henderson, and for Summer Maybe
Three films in one! What more could you ask for? Well, a lot but my brain can only do so much.
A few weeks ago, Ali and I watched Mrs. Henderson Presents... starring Dame Judy Dench, Bob Hoskins and Christopher Guest, one of those dudes from Take That, Will Young I think, oh and that Mavis from Coronation Street a.k.a. Thelma Barlow. The story follows as such, Mrs. Henderson (Dench) loses her husband and can't decide what to do with all the money her husband left her. After some advice from a friend (Barlow), Mrs. Henderson decided to re-open a derelict theatre in London in the early 1930s. She can't run it herself, so she hires Vivian van Damm (Hoskins) to run it for her. van Damm says that he has to have 100% creative control which I think is a pretty good idea.
So the house opens with a fairly talented cast, as chosen by van Damm and Bertie (Young). I guess the cast wasn't that talented because the show flops, and van Damm scrambles to make sure that Henderson doesn't lose her investment. van Damm decides that the shows are going to run continuously, like nothing ever seen in London. Henderson, or it could have been the dancers, decides that the girls will perform topless. Afterall, that's the way they do it in Paris, and for some people like Mrs. Henderson, Paris is only a short flight away. There's a bit of a problem with Lord Cromer (Guest), who's in charge of deciding for all of England what is decent and what is not. He happens to be a friend of Henderson, so she sees nothing wrong with going straight to Cromer and getting him to approve the wardrobe change. So it unfolds, the cast members are rescreened and are judged on looks only, not acting or dancing talent. The ones judged to be more attractive are pulled out of the show and are instructed to pose nude as tableaus in the show. They can't move, or say anything but apparently there's a loophole in the decency laws which allows a person to pose nude as a living statue.
Mrs. Henderson and van Damm make really bad first impressions on one another, but it might be because Henderson is attracted to van Damm. Apparently he led her on (I can't see how) or made her appear foolish, because when van Damm's wife shows up to a cocktail party, Henderson storms out vowing never to return to the theatre. An aside - it was so obviously a cocktail party, but Henderson wouldn't call it that because as she put it, cocktail parties are so passé.
Henderson can't help herself. She cares about the dancers and can't bear to be away from her girls. She disguises herself rather badly and sneaks into the show to see what van Damm has been doing. Of course, she sticks out like a sore thumb and Vivian makes a fool out of her. She comes back dressed as a dancing bear, and completely fools van Damm. Things are sorted out and Henderson comes back to the house. Eventually, the public safety officials try to shut the theatre on account of the air raids, but theatre patrons are outraged and protest in the streets. Henderson convinces the Home Guard that the safest place for these people would probably be inside the theatre. And so the show went on.
At some point, Henderson explains why she chose to have nude dancers. Her own son, killed in the First World War, had apparently never seen a real, live, naked woman before, and she wanted to make sure that other soldiers didn't die without seeing one. How considerate of her. I'm not sure that explanation was needed for the film, but as it is based on real events, maybe it has some relevance. The theatre never closed during the war which is cool I guess. Henderson died a few years after and left the house to van Damm. Watching this film, I wondered how much of a role it played on the London theatre scene at the time. My gran was in London, and was the same age as the dancers, and probably could have worked in the theatres if she wanted to, but she didn't and more importantly, she never mentioned this plucky little theatre that didn't quit. My gran has her fair share of secrets, so maybe she did have jobs more interesting than the ones she claims - working on the buses and in the bomb factories. Maybe, just maybe...
This is an excellent film, and I regret not seeing it in the cinema when I could have. It might have been the Rolls Royce that Henderson drove everywhere, but it was probably more than that. The entire period - 1930s to early 40s is one of my favourites thanks to David Suchet and his Hercule Poirot portrayals. It's not easy to pull off a period piece because you know there's always going to be someone looking for mistakes. I can't say there weren't any mistakes in this film because I'm not one of the people who goes around looking for mistakes. The fact that film crews are up to the challenge of recreating sets and stuff is what I like most about these films.
The next film is Wolf Creek starring nobody with a household name, at least in my household, save one. John Jarratt previously of the best miniseries ever, because it plays in the 1930s and 40s, Tanamera - Lion of Singapore. Eeeeeee! Jarratt plays Mick Taylor, the bad guy. I thought I'd seen Jarratt before, but I'll admit I didn't know he was in Tanamera until I searched his name on imdb, but it you ever get a chance to see that series, do so. The film also starred Nathan Phillips as Ben, the Australian partygoer who hooks up with two unsuspecting English girls, played by Cassandra Magrath and Kestie Morassi as Liz and Kristy respectively.
Two of my former co-workers had just seen Hostel, and couldn't stop talking about how scary it was. One of my other former co-workers from New Zealand invited them to watch Wolf Creek. She said that when she watched it, she couldn't sleep for two days. The first two rented it and came back to work and had all kinds of questions about the real Wolfe Creek, and said the movie was so scary that they had a hard time sleeping. I was still under the impression that Wolf Creek took place in a hostel because its about the disappearance of some backpackers like in Hostel (I guess, I've never seen that one). Phooey. Yup.
I grabbed this one on Friday night because I needed a reason not to do my homework, and I promised Ali that I would stop the movie if it ever got scary. It starts out with Ben buying a used car which can only be described as a heap, and his mission is to travel from Broome to Wolf Creek by sundown the next night with 2 friends. Nursing big hangovers, the friends are kicking themselves because they are running late, but Ben is jazzed that he got a car for so cheap. They set out on a very realistic road trip. No slamming shooters in the back seat, no smoking of the marijuana, no eating of the White Castle hamburgers, just sleeping and general boredom. The triggers came back. Seeing Liz with her head propped up against the window with a pillow brought back memories of Quincy, California. Living my own nightmare as I watched these three drive unknowingly towards Quincy, umm I mean Wolf Creek, the scariness factors relies heavily on tension. Just stretches of highway and bluesy music on the soundtrack, but I was already on the edge of my seat waiting for their transmission to give out and sit helplessly as slack-jawed locals looked on as though they'd never seen a car before. Oh wait, that was California. In the movie, the trio drives to Emu Creek and fills the petrol tank. The only slightly scary part is when the three dudes inside the cafe try to pick a fight with Ben. So far not scary.
The beater makes its way to the Wolf Creek crater, where the three hapless youngsters go on a hike. With Kristy as accomplice, Ben makes a play for Liz. Oh, to be young (and stupid) again. You don't realize how much you've changed until you see other people doing what you did when you were a kid. It reminds you that you're not a kid anymore and you just end up wondering 'When the fuck did that happen?' So far, not scary. The superfriends make it back to the car only to find that the car won't start. Ooo, ooo. A little scary. No wait, I mean a little funny. Stupid Ben asks if the car is in gear. Stupid Ben. The car is clearly an automatic transmission as evidenced by the copious amounts of interior shots while driving down the highway. Stupid Ben. And it wasn't scary also because I knew that was going to happen. My co-workers mentioned it.
Okay, I don't know how it works in the Outback, but in California and Mexico the rule is - Unless you called for the tow truck, don't accept a tow from a truck that just shows up. Mick Taylor, not the Rolling Stones' guitarist, but the evil Outback monster drives up and offers to tow the kids to his camp. The tow scene was a little unrealistic. Take it from an offroader - in reality when the towing vehicle turns a corner, the winch doesn't turn with it, but rather maintains a straight line equal to the shortest distance between the two vehicles, assuming no slack. Clearly in the movie, Mick is turning corners and continuing on without waiting for the towed vehicle to coast up and also make the turn. Conceivably, this action would force the towed vehicle to cut corners, hitting ditches, boulders and roos. In reality, the towing vehicle should make the turn slightly, and wait for the towed vehicle to catch up. Then the winch should be restrung and the whole process should begin again.
Eventually, the two vehicles reach the camp, and everyone gets to know a little bit about Mick around the campfire. Then the three travelers drink rain water off the top. Stupids! Rule #2 of accepting tows from freaky tow truck drivers. Don't drink the rainwater. Drink whatever the freak drinks, but only if you have to. Next scene opens with Liz zip strapped in a toolshed. She rather easily gets out and hears Kristy being tortured by Mick in the workshop. She then sees that the beater has been stripped of its engine and that Ben is nowhere. She sneaks inside the workshop and again rather easily wrangles a gun. She shoots Taylor in the next, and snags the keys to his truck. Stupidly, she doesn't cut the guy's throat instead bizarrely choosing to give him love taps with the rifle butt. Okay, Rule #3 - Sisters before Misters. Liz + Kristy = 2/3 which is a pass in most books, so they should have just got the hell out of there. Nooooo! As the girls are trying to get Mick's truck out of the compound, he comes out with a shotgun, obviously invigorated by Liz' love taps. He takes two shots, you see two shells eject from the gun. Thanks to Enzo, even Ali knows that that particular shotgun can carry three shots. For some reason, possibly to make the movie last longer, Mick doesn't take the third shot. The girls get the hell out of there, but immediately realize they don't know where to go. They are chased by Mick to the edge of a cliff, and the girls wreck the truck to make it look like they drove over the edge.
Stupidly, the girls go back to the camp to look for Ben. As per rule #3, the tension now moves to anger. I just wanna punch Liz because she makes Kristy wait in the bushes while she loots Mick's cache and watches home movies. She goes back to the garage to fetch a car. She chooses, perhaps because its the only choice, the car nearest the exit. Of course, Mick is waiting in the back seat and stabs her through the back. In the special features, you see how they really do the shot. They actually dress a hog's torso in a shirt and film in close the knife coming through. So many tricks. He then gives Liz a home remedy spinal tap, which is maybe the sickest part of the whole movie, but still really not sick at all. Kristy reckons Liz isn't coming back so she takes off. Using the sun, she figures out which way is north and hightails it down the road. Stupidly, she runs on the black. Silly girl, run on the white. It's cooler. She manages to find a car coming toward her, and just when you think its Mick and Kristy won't know until its too late, you breathe easy because its just a friendly stupid old man. Rule #1 of picking up bloodied, bare-footed young ladies on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere: Let her in, but keep driving. Don't stop to open the boot to get her a cup of tea and a blanket, stupid. The girl is obviously in distress, and needs to get to a hospital. The old man doesn't even have time to close the boot before he gets one straight through the eye. Mick had been watching, and races down the highway in a right-side drive Monza (I think). Kristy jumps in the front seat of the old man's car and drives off, seemingly forgetting to remove the parking brake. Taylor easily catches up to her, but goof that he is, Kristy barges him into a ditch. I started to think maybe she had some wheelman potential, but it was too late. Mick pulls out his rifle and scope, and takes one shot at the tyres. Kristy goes careening off the verge. Mick shoots her close range not once, but twice. Something that Liz should have done back at the workshop. Now Mick has a dilemma. Three bodies, two cars. The best, pedestrian solution would be to make it look like a fiery collision. He might have done it with a single vehicle, I don't remember.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Ben comes to and realizes, like the dude before him, his goodies are about to become a dog's supper. Maybe this is the gross part that my ex co-workers were talking about, but I don't get it. Maybe its because I've seen worse things that actually happened, but the fact that Ben gazes upon the mutilated torso of a shop DUMMY fails to scare me. Ali of course, is under the covers trying not to watch. Ben summons the strength to easily pull himself out of a crucifix position, and escape. He trundles across the desert until the sun is eclipsed. He waits for morning and is eventually rescued by some very smart Swedish tourists who bundle him into the back of their Volkswagen van and take him to hospital.
The epilogue leaves the viewer to wonder if Mick Taylor ever existed. While the movie is based on true events, its written by someone who heard about the story from the point of view of the only surviving backpacker, Ben. Liz and Kristy were never found, and investigators found it hard to believe Ben's story. Taylor walks off into the sunset and fades out. So is Ben really a victim? I guess only the real Ben will ever know.
The third movie I saw started right after I finished watching the special features on Wolf Creek. I might have mentioned this film before, but Teddy Chan's Wan 9 Zhao 5 is a gem. I can't find this film on disc or video, and get laughed out of the local video store every time I ask for movies by Jordan, so I just wait for it to play on the local multilingual station. The film also stars Moses Chan, Farini Cheung, Nelson Cheung, Valerie Chow, Kar Sin Pak and Chow Yu Yau. Apart from a brief appearance in Chungking Express, I haven't seen Valerie Chow in other films, but I'm glad she got more screen time in this movie. She ain't hard to look at.
This film has to be one of the first ones I watched since I discovered that I can watch Cantonese movies without paying for cable. It's been played at least twice more since then and is the sixth film by United Filmmakers' Organization which came to its demise in 2002. I had never wanted to visit Hong Kong until I saw this film. Others I saw shortly after reinforced my plan to visit HK one day, perhaps too late now. Any film I had seen prior to that featuring HK always showed the icky parts and the seedy side of life. Wan 9 Zhao 5 or Twenty Something in English showed neither the seedy side, nor the extravagant side of HK, but rather a fair middle ground.
The film centers around a not-so-tightly knit group of friends that spend their days doing their various jobs and their nights hanging out in a club called Berlin. Several couples are formed in the group. Some of the friends leave town, ending the relationship, or somebody's girlfriend comes back from overseas or whatever, but the pairings in the group move so fast that at one point I lost track. One of the guys hooks up with a girl who is apparently part of the group, but she's never seen in the film again after they leave the club. Some friends are jealous and try to break up other couples, all the while some couples are trying to establish a future together. It's all quite dizzying, but I think that after all is said and done, only one couple ends up marrying, even though they had enough trouble of their own. I guess the point of the story is that the past is the past and there's no point in worrying about it. One of the friends dies accidentally during a hookup and everyone else realizes that its not fun anymore. Everyone kinda goes their separate ways as we do in life, but reunites a few months later at the wedding of the only surviving couple. No hard feelings. So good to see you. What have you been up to lately? Love your dress. Nice day for a wedding. They've all grown up and see that after all that has happened, they're all still friends.
I guess what I like so much about this film is that it reminds me a lot about many of my friends who hung out in clubs when we were younger. As for my friends who were too busy working or hanging out in libraries, well... We're all friends and we respect each other for who we are. Some of us chose to hang out in clubs, some of us chose not to. Most of us are still here, and that's fine. We don't get together as often as we'd like, but when we do its all good.
This weekend was a holiday and after much encouragement from Ali, I decided against my own instincts to take Baby's top off. Km. 5401, I found out the hard way that removing the hard top from a Jeep TJ is a two man job, something the owner's manual doesn't exactly want you to know. Kuso! I have to say that I'm very disappointed with some of the service I've had from Chrysler this weekend, reminiscent of events in Quincy, California. Everybody at Chrysler get so dumb so quick. I'm never going to take the hard top off again. The feelings of sickening dread are feelings I don't need. The realization that Baby may never be 100% again is also something I care not to think about. I bought Ali some flowers because my day had been so shitty and took her for a drive along the beach. I seemed okay, but after I dropped Ali at her apartment I began to worry again. I couldn't sleep, so I got up and quickly formulated a plan to get the top back on the Jeep. Luckily for me, the next day it worked. One of my neighbours, an old queen who is ever so helpful with car care, and a true friend, showed me how to cut and polish out most of the scratches resulting from the botched roof removal. Fastening it on however was a nightmare. One fuck up after another. By the end, I had purchased a new Torx driver, and hunted all over town for a specialty nut. No luck, but I guess 5 out of 6 ain't bad. Can't do anything more about it until Wednesday anyway, and by then I'll be too busy with my new job. I might be able to work something out, but that would require unusually quick traffic. Who knows? I have done it before.
Ali called her mum and told her about me. Her mum was mum, silent to be precise. This was interpreted as shock, but that is not always the case. I've had it where the silence is not shock, but rather a loss of words. In this case, however I think her mother is shocked. Which is good news because now I've got to like the younger sister and work extra hard to impress upon her that there's no reason for her mother to be shocked.
A few weeks ago, Ali and I watched Mrs. Henderson Presents... starring Dame Judy Dench, Bob Hoskins and Christopher Guest, one of those dudes from Take That, Will Young I think, oh and that Mavis from Coronation Street a.k.a. Thelma Barlow. The story follows as such, Mrs. Henderson (Dench) loses her husband and can't decide what to do with all the money her husband left her. After some advice from a friend (Barlow), Mrs. Henderson decided to re-open a derelict theatre in London in the early 1930s. She can't run it herself, so she hires Vivian van Damm (Hoskins) to run it for her. van Damm says that he has to have 100% creative control which I think is a pretty good idea.
So the house opens with a fairly talented cast, as chosen by van Damm and Bertie (Young). I guess the cast wasn't that talented because the show flops, and van Damm scrambles to make sure that Henderson doesn't lose her investment. van Damm decides that the shows are going to run continuously, like nothing ever seen in London. Henderson, or it could have been the dancers, decides that the girls will perform topless. Afterall, that's the way they do it in Paris, and for some people like Mrs. Henderson, Paris is only a short flight away. There's a bit of a problem with Lord Cromer (Guest), who's in charge of deciding for all of England what is decent and what is not. He happens to be a friend of Henderson, so she sees nothing wrong with going straight to Cromer and getting him to approve the wardrobe change. So it unfolds, the cast members are rescreened and are judged on looks only, not acting or dancing talent. The ones judged to be more attractive are pulled out of the show and are instructed to pose nude as tableaus in the show. They can't move, or say anything but apparently there's a loophole in the decency laws which allows a person to pose nude as a living statue.
Mrs. Henderson and van Damm make really bad first impressions on one another, but it might be because Henderson is attracted to van Damm. Apparently he led her on (I can't see how) or made her appear foolish, because when van Damm's wife shows up to a cocktail party, Henderson storms out vowing never to return to the theatre. An aside - it was so obviously a cocktail party, but Henderson wouldn't call it that because as she put it, cocktail parties are so passé.
Henderson can't help herself. She cares about the dancers and can't bear to be away from her girls. She disguises herself rather badly and sneaks into the show to see what van Damm has been doing. Of course, she sticks out like a sore thumb and Vivian makes a fool out of her. She comes back dressed as a dancing bear, and completely fools van Damm. Things are sorted out and Henderson comes back to the house. Eventually, the public safety officials try to shut the theatre on account of the air raids, but theatre patrons are outraged and protest in the streets. Henderson convinces the Home Guard that the safest place for these people would probably be inside the theatre. And so the show went on.
At some point, Henderson explains why she chose to have nude dancers. Her own son, killed in the First World War, had apparently never seen a real, live, naked woman before, and she wanted to make sure that other soldiers didn't die without seeing one. How considerate of her. I'm not sure that explanation was needed for the film, but as it is based on real events, maybe it has some relevance. The theatre never closed during the war which is cool I guess. Henderson died a few years after and left the house to van Damm. Watching this film, I wondered how much of a role it played on the London theatre scene at the time. My gran was in London, and was the same age as the dancers, and probably could have worked in the theatres if she wanted to, but she didn't and more importantly, she never mentioned this plucky little theatre that didn't quit. My gran has her fair share of secrets, so maybe she did have jobs more interesting than the ones she claims - working on the buses and in the bomb factories. Maybe, just maybe...
This is an excellent film, and I regret not seeing it in the cinema when I could have. It might have been the Rolls Royce that Henderson drove everywhere, but it was probably more than that. The entire period - 1930s to early 40s is one of my favourites thanks to David Suchet and his Hercule Poirot portrayals. It's not easy to pull off a period piece because you know there's always going to be someone looking for mistakes. I can't say there weren't any mistakes in this film because I'm not one of the people who goes around looking for mistakes. The fact that film crews are up to the challenge of recreating sets and stuff is what I like most about these films.
The next film is Wolf Creek starring nobody with a household name, at least in my household, save one. John Jarratt previously of the best miniseries ever, because it plays in the 1930s and 40s, Tanamera - Lion of Singapore. Eeeeeee! Jarratt plays Mick Taylor, the bad guy. I thought I'd seen Jarratt before, but I'll admit I didn't know he was in Tanamera until I searched his name on imdb, but it you ever get a chance to see that series, do so. The film also starred Nathan Phillips as Ben, the Australian partygoer who hooks up with two unsuspecting English girls, played by Cassandra Magrath and Kestie Morassi as Liz and Kristy respectively.
Two of my former co-workers had just seen Hostel, and couldn't stop talking about how scary it was. One of my other former co-workers from New Zealand invited them to watch Wolf Creek. She said that when she watched it, she couldn't sleep for two days. The first two rented it and came back to work and had all kinds of questions about the real Wolfe Creek, and said the movie was so scary that they had a hard time sleeping. I was still under the impression that Wolf Creek took place in a hostel because its about the disappearance of some backpackers like in Hostel (I guess, I've never seen that one). Phooey. Yup.
I grabbed this one on Friday night because I needed a reason not to do my homework, and I promised Ali that I would stop the movie if it ever got scary. It starts out with Ben buying a used car which can only be described as a heap, and his mission is to travel from Broome to Wolf Creek by sundown the next night with 2 friends. Nursing big hangovers, the friends are kicking themselves because they are running late, but Ben is jazzed that he got a car for so cheap. They set out on a very realistic road trip. No slamming shooters in the back seat, no smoking of the marijuana, no eating of the White Castle hamburgers, just sleeping and general boredom. The triggers came back. Seeing Liz with her head propped up against the window with a pillow brought back memories of Quincy, California. Living my own nightmare as I watched these three drive unknowingly towards Quincy, umm I mean Wolf Creek, the scariness factors relies heavily on tension. Just stretches of highway and bluesy music on the soundtrack, but I was already on the edge of my seat waiting for their transmission to give out and sit helplessly as slack-jawed locals looked on as though they'd never seen a car before. Oh wait, that was California. In the movie, the trio drives to Emu Creek and fills the petrol tank. The only slightly scary part is when the three dudes inside the cafe try to pick a fight with Ben. So far not scary.
The beater makes its way to the Wolf Creek crater, where the three hapless youngsters go on a hike. With Kristy as accomplice, Ben makes a play for Liz. Oh, to be young (and stupid) again. You don't realize how much you've changed until you see other people doing what you did when you were a kid. It reminds you that you're not a kid anymore and you just end up wondering 'When the fuck did that happen?' So far, not scary. The superfriends make it back to the car only to find that the car won't start. Ooo, ooo. A little scary. No wait, I mean a little funny. Stupid Ben asks if the car is in gear. Stupid Ben. The car is clearly an automatic transmission as evidenced by the copious amounts of interior shots while driving down the highway. Stupid Ben. And it wasn't scary also because I knew that was going to happen. My co-workers mentioned it.
Okay, I don't know how it works in the Outback, but in California and Mexico the rule is - Unless you called for the tow truck, don't accept a tow from a truck that just shows up. Mick Taylor, not the Rolling Stones' guitarist, but the evil Outback monster drives up and offers to tow the kids to his camp. The tow scene was a little unrealistic. Take it from an offroader - in reality when the towing vehicle turns a corner, the winch doesn't turn with it, but rather maintains a straight line equal to the shortest distance between the two vehicles, assuming no slack. Clearly in the movie, Mick is turning corners and continuing on without waiting for the towed vehicle to coast up and also make the turn. Conceivably, this action would force the towed vehicle to cut corners, hitting ditches, boulders and roos. In reality, the towing vehicle should make the turn slightly, and wait for the towed vehicle to catch up. Then the winch should be restrung and the whole process should begin again.
Eventually, the two vehicles reach the camp, and everyone gets to know a little bit about Mick around the campfire. Then the three travelers drink rain water off the top. Stupids! Rule #2 of accepting tows from freaky tow truck drivers. Don't drink the rainwater. Drink whatever the freak drinks, but only if you have to. Next scene opens with Liz zip strapped in a toolshed. She rather easily gets out and hears Kristy being tortured by Mick in the workshop. She then sees that the beater has been stripped of its engine and that Ben is nowhere. She sneaks inside the workshop and again rather easily wrangles a gun. She shoots Taylor in the next, and snags the keys to his truck. Stupidly, she doesn't cut the guy's throat instead bizarrely choosing to give him love taps with the rifle butt. Okay, Rule #3 - Sisters before Misters. Liz + Kristy = 2/3 which is a pass in most books, so they should have just got the hell out of there. Nooooo! As the girls are trying to get Mick's truck out of the compound, he comes out with a shotgun, obviously invigorated by Liz' love taps. He takes two shots, you see two shells eject from the gun. Thanks to Enzo, even Ali knows that that particular shotgun can carry three shots. For some reason, possibly to make the movie last longer, Mick doesn't take the third shot. The girls get the hell out of there, but immediately realize they don't know where to go. They are chased by Mick to the edge of a cliff, and the girls wreck the truck to make it look like they drove over the edge.
Stupidly, the girls go back to the camp to look for Ben. As per rule #3, the tension now moves to anger. I just wanna punch Liz because she makes Kristy wait in the bushes while she loots Mick's cache and watches home movies. She goes back to the garage to fetch a car. She chooses, perhaps because its the only choice, the car nearest the exit. Of course, Mick is waiting in the back seat and stabs her through the back. In the special features, you see how they really do the shot. They actually dress a hog's torso in a shirt and film in close the knife coming through. So many tricks. He then gives Liz a home remedy spinal tap, which is maybe the sickest part of the whole movie, but still really not sick at all. Kristy reckons Liz isn't coming back so she takes off. Using the sun, she figures out which way is north and hightails it down the road. Stupidly, she runs on the black. Silly girl, run on the white. It's cooler. She manages to find a car coming toward her, and just when you think its Mick and Kristy won't know until its too late, you breathe easy because its just a friendly stupid old man. Rule #1 of picking up bloodied, bare-footed young ladies on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere: Let her in, but keep driving. Don't stop to open the boot to get her a cup of tea and a blanket, stupid. The girl is obviously in distress, and needs to get to a hospital. The old man doesn't even have time to close the boot before he gets one straight through the eye. Mick had been watching, and races down the highway in a right-side drive Monza (I think). Kristy jumps in the front seat of the old man's car and drives off, seemingly forgetting to remove the parking brake. Taylor easily catches up to her, but goof that he is, Kristy barges him into a ditch. I started to think maybe she had some wheelman potential, but it was too late. Mick pulls out his rifle and scope, and takes one shot at the tyres. Kristy goes careening off the verge. Mick shoots her close range not once, but twice. Something that Liz should have done back at the workshop. Now Mick has a dilemma. Three bodies, two cars. The best, pedestrian solution would be to make it look like a fiery collision. He might have done it with a single vehicle, I don't remember.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Ben comes to and realizes, like the dude before him, his goodies are about to become a dog's supper. Maybe this is the gross part that my ex co-workers were talking about, but I don't get it. Maybe its because I've seen worse things that actually happened, but the fact that Ben gazes upon the mutilated torso of a shop DUMMY fails to scare me. Ali of course, is under the covers trying not to watch. Ben summons the strength to easily pull himself out of a crucifix position, and escape. He trundles across the desert until the sun is eclipsed. He waits for morning and is eventually rescued by some very smart Swedish tourists who bundle him into the back of their Volkswagen van and take him to hospital.
The epilogue leaves the viewer to wonder if Mick Taylor ever existed. While the movie is based on true events, its written by someone who heard about the story from the point of view of the only surviving backpacker, Ben. Liz and Kristy were never found, and investigators found it hard to believe Ben's story. Taylor walks off into the sunset and fades out. So is Ben really a victim? I guess only the real Ben will ever know.
The third movie I saw started right after I finished watching the special features on Wolf Creek. I might have mentioned this film before, but Teddy Chan's Wan 9 Zhao 5 is a gem. I can't find this film on disc or video, and get laughed out of the local video store every time I ask for movies by Jordan, so I just wait for it to play on the local multilingual station. The film also stars Moses Chan, Farini Cheung, Nelson Cheung, Valerie Chow, Kar Sin Pak and Chow Yu Yau. Apart from a brief appearance in Chungking Express, I haven't seen Valerie Chow in other films, but I'm glad she got more screen time in this movie. She ain't hard to look at.
This film has to be one of the first ones I watched since I discovered that I can watch Cantonese movies without paying for cable. It's been played at least twice more since then and is the sixth film by United Filmmakers' Organization which came to its demise in 2002. I had never wanted to visit Hong Kong until I saw this film. Others I saw shortly after reinforced my plan to visit HK one day, perhaps too late now. Any film I had seen prior to that featuring HK always showed the icky parts and the seedy side of life. Wan 9 Zhao 5 or Twenty Something in English showed neither the seedy side, nor the extravagant side of HK, but rather a fair middle ground.
The film centers around a not-so-tightly knit group of friends that spend their days doing their various jobs and their nights hanging out in a club called Berlin. Several couples are formed in the group. Some of the friends leave town, ending the relationship, or somebody's girlfriend comes back from overseas or whatever, but the pairings in the group move so fast that at one point I lost track. One of the guys hooks up with a girl who is apparently part of the group, but she's never seen in the film again after they leave the club. Some friends are jealous and try to break up other couples, all the while some couples are trying to establish a future together. It's all quite dizzying, but I think that after all is said and done, only one couple ends up marrying, even though they had enough trouble of their own. I guess the point of the story is that the past is the past and there's no point in worrying about it. One of the friends dies accidentally during a hookup and everyone else realizes that its not fun anymore. Everyone kinda goes their separate ways as we do in life, but reunites a few months later at the wedding of the only surviving couple. No hard feelings. So good to see you. What have you been up to lately? Love your dress. Nice day for a wedding. They've all grown up and see that after all that has happened, they're all still friends.
I guess what I like so much about this film is that it reminds me a lot about many of my friends who hung out in clubs when we were younger. As for my friends who were too busy working or hanging out in libraries, well... We're all friends and we respect each other for who we are. Some of us chose to hang out in clubs, some of us chose not to. Most of us are still here, and that's fine. We don't get together as often as we'd like, but when we do its all good.
This weekend was a holiday and after much encouragement from Ali, I decided against my own instincts to take Baby's top off. Km. 5401, I found out the hard way that removing the hard top from a Jeep TJ is a two man job, something the owner's manual doesn't exactly want you to know. Kuso! I have to say that I'm very disappointed with some of the service I've had from Chrysler this weekend, reminiscent of events in Quincy, California. Everybody at Chrysler get so dumb so quick. I'm never going to take the hard top off again. The feelings of sickening dread are feelings I don't need. The realization that Baby may never be 100% again is also something I care not to think about. I bought Ali some flowers because my day had been so shitty and took her for a drive along the beach. I seemed okay, but after I dropped Ali at her apartment I began to worry again. I couldn't sleep, so I got up and quickly formulated a plan to get the top back on the Jeep. Luckily for me, the next day it worked. One of my neighbours, an old queen who is ever so helpful with car care, and a true friend, showed me how to cut and polish out most of the scratches resulting from the botched roof removal. Fastening it on however was a nightmare. One fuck up after another. By the end, I had purchased a new Torx driver, and hunted all over town for a specialty nut. No luck, but I guess 5 out of 6 ain't bad. Can't do anything more about it until Wednesday anyway, and by then I'll be too busy with my new job. I might be able to work something out, but that would require unusually quick traffic. Who knows? I have done it before.
Ali called her mum and told her about me. Her mum was mum, silent to be precise. This was interpreted as shock, but that is not always the case. I've had it where the silence is not shock, but rather a loss of words. In this case, however I think her mother is shocked. Which is good news because now I've got to like the younger sister and work extra hard to impress upon her that there's no reason for her mother to be shocked.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Like Rats on a Sinking Ship
I saw a really good movie at the weekend, Mrs. Henderson Presents..., but I'm not going to write about that today. Other developments have presented themselves which deserve attention.
I handed in my notice on Tuesday. I would have done so on Monday, but my boss, the coolest boss on the planet because he lets me drink beer at my desk was not in that day. There was no anger, in fact when I told him that I had to speak with him he asked me if I was pregnant. Ha ha ha. There was no panic, unlike the last place I worked. I came into work one morning and saw moving men carrying away the setees and desks and computers. Automatically, and not so prematurely I dropped my lunch bag and started ripping as much copper wire out of the walls as I could carry. My boss was too busy shouting on his handphone at creditors that he didn't have time to marshall me.
This little adventure started precisely 4 months ago, and despite my glowing appraisal here, the honeymoon ended quickly. It wouldn't be so bad I guess if I knew that I had a job in two months time. But every week, another designer leaves the studio. The revolving door is a little demoralizing, and I knew I was in trouble when the boss came to me and we had the following conversation:
[Boss puts hand on my shoulder] Dax, my man. Errr, you speak Chinese right?
Me: Ummm, yeah.
Him: Okay, good. You're now in charge of the studio and Asian. I think there's capacity, and you can fill in now until we get someone new.
[end scene]
I kinda wanted to be cheeky and ask for a pay rise, but I had signed a contract to be compensated a certain amount so I didn't bother pushing the issue. And I also felt bad about it because the reason there was a vacancy in Finance is due to the personal tragedy of a former coworker. The kid from the Midwest I invited to see Los tres entierros de Melquiades Estrada had some business back home that he needed to sort out and that meant that he was quitting.
Well, its been awhile and the boss said that he was going to bring in a new fish to look after media, but there's been no sign of a new hire and I asked him about it. He said that no one has taken the job yet. Okay, the kid from the Midwest and his coworker were already overworked before he quit and in the interim, his coworker is being tasked with more. Personally, I don't think she's nearly as busy as she claims, but I'm not going to challenge it.
I can roll up my sleeves and buckle down just like anyone else, but my boss has made no mention of extending my contract, and not only do I have to think about what's good for me these days, I have to think about what's best for Ali too. So, with that in mind, my recruiter (his assistant actually) brought me to an opportunity in the resource industry like my last steady job. I'll have to take *gulp* public transit to get there, but it'll be a step up and better dosh. The truth is, I haven't exactly been happy with my own performance at the current place, and the constant turnover in the studio, aka the cool people, doesn't really lend itself to being comfortable. Sissy warned me that I was going to have to deal with a lot of prima donnas (and she would know), but I'm okay with that as long as the prima donna bitches know what the fuck they are doing. That's unfortunately too much to ask given that each one of them has their own agenda, so these individuals are getting on my nerves.
Ali is going back to Japan soon, and her sister is going with her. Her sister came for a visit a few days ago, and the two of them will go back so Ali can get her visa renewed. Her sister is a real princess, and unfortunately for me, she hasn't quite figured out that I'm not the chauffeur. I've always felt that Ali is quite a down to earth young woman, and so I was shocked to see how different her sister was. Ali explained that her little sister had a different set of rules growing up. Nothing was too expensive, nothing was too much to ask and so she grew accustomed to having a (daddy's) chauffeur available at all times. Now, I am a fairly accomplished wheel man, and I enjoy a good drive as much as the next guy but I'm no chauffeur. Bitch has two hands, she can open her own damn door. She doesn't have to challenge the routes I take - I'm not a taxi driver trying to make an extra dollar AND she's never been here before so how can she really tell? She's just naggy. You said you wanted to go to the Vuitton boutique, I'm taking you there. That's where we're going now shutthefuckup. No, you're right. This isn't Shinjuku, so why are you trying to give me directions? Ali, can you tell your sister to calm down? She's making me nervous.
The thing about the chauffeur, and the fact that Ali is a pedophile have really caused me to wonder what else she hasn't been telling me. It was a nice, slightly breezy day on Sunday so I decided that it was time to take Ali to the nude beach and let her see what all the fuss was about. We spent about twenty minutes there, and when it got too cold for Ali (19 degrees Celsius), we went back to the car. She was pretty quiet on the way home, so I asked her why she was so thoughtful. She proclaimed that she didn't want to go to the nude beach anymore, and that when her sister would arrive the next day, I was to deny all knowledge of such a place. I was confused. Ali had spent weeks talking about going to the beach and now that she had seen it she wasn't ever going back.
"Why don't you want to go back?"
"I don't want to see shabong, I want to see shikeen."
"Fair enough, we'll come back another day when there are more people."
"Where can I see young shikeen?"
"Huh? There were some fairly young guys there. What do you mean?"
"I wanna see young shikeen, maybe 17 year old guys."
"17?? Ummm. Honey, strictly speaking that's against the law and you can go to prison. Why do you want to see 17 year olds?"
"They are more kawaii."
"You mean their faces?"
"Yeah, yeah..."
"So why do we have to go to a nude beach?"
"I wanna see shikeen. Today there was only shabong. Not kawaii. I'm not going to jail. It's okay, I'm a woman. Anyway, you're the perv."
And that's how I discovered that I might be dating a pedophile.
It's been pretty busy lately. I was up until 3 a.m. this morning doing homework and I've got finals in a few weeks. That, and a new job starting soon and a house guest that must be driven everywhere. At four dollars a gallon, I think I might have to say something soon. Now if you'll excuse me I have a party to go to.
I handed in my notice on Tuesday. I would have done so on Monday, but my boss, the coolest boss on the planet because he lets me drink beer at my desk was not in that day. There was no anger, in fact when I told him that I had to speak with him he asked me if I was pregnant. Ha ha ha. There was no panic, unlike the last place I worked. I came into work one morning and saw moving men carrying away the setees and desks and computers. Automatically, and not so prematurely I dropped my lunch bag and started ripping as much copper wire out of the walls as I could carry. My boss was too busy shouting on his handphone at creditors that he didn't have time to marshall me.
This little adventure started precisely 4 months ago, and despite my glowing appraisal here, the honeymoon ended quickly. It wouldn't be so bad I guess if I knew that I had a job in two months time. But every week, another designer leaves the studio. The revolving door is a little demoralizing, and I knew I was in trouble when the boss came to me and we had the following conversation:
[Boss puts hand on my shoulder] Dax, my man. Errr, you speak Chinese right?
Me: Ummm, yeah.
Him: Okay, good. You're now in charge of the studio and Asian. I think there's capacity, and you can fill in now until we get someone new.
[end scene]
I kinda wanted to be cheeky and ask for a pay rise, but I had signed a contract to be compensated a certain amount so I didn't bother pushing the issue. And I also felt bad about it because the reason there was a vacancy in Finance is due to the personal tragedy of a former coworker. The kid from the Midwest I invited to see Los tres entierros de Melquiades Estrada had some business back home that he needed to sort out and that meant that he was quitting.
Well, its been awhile and the boss said that he was going to bring in a new fish to look after media, but there's been no sign of a new hire and I asked him about it. He said that no one has taken the job yet. Okay, the kid from the Midwest and his coworker were already overworked before he quit and in the interim, his coworker is being tasked with more. Personally, I don't think she's nearly as busy as she claims, but I'm not going to challenge it.
I can roll up my sleeves and buckle down just like anyone else, but my boss has made no mention of extending my contract, and not only do I have to think about what's good for me these days, I have to think about what's best for Ali too. So, with that in mind, my recruiter (his assistant actually) brought me to an opportunity in the resource industry like my last steady job. I'll have to take *gulp* public transit to get there, but it'll be a step up and better dosh. The truth is, I haven't exactly been happy with my own performance at the current place, and the constant turnover in the studio, aka the cool people, doesn't really lend itself to being comfortable. Sissy warned me that I was going to have to deal with a lot of prima donnas (and she would know), but I'm okay with that as long as the prima donna bitches know what the fuck they are doing. That's unfortunately too much to ask given that each one of them has their own agenda, so these individuals are getting on my nerves.
Ali is going back to Japan soon, and her sister is going with her. Her sister came for a visit a few days ago, and the two of them will go back so Ali can get her visa renewed. Her sister is a real princess, and unfortunately for me, she hasn't quite figured out that I'm not the chauffeur. I've always felt that Ali is quite a down to earth young woman, and so I was shocked to see how different her sister was. Ali explained that her little sister had a different set of rules growing up. Nothing was too expensive, nothing was too much to ask and so she grew accustomed to having a (daddy's) chauffeur available at all times. Now, I am a fairly accomplished wheel man, and I enjoy a good drive as much as the next guy but I'm no chauffeur. Bitch has two hands, she can open her own damn door. She doesn't have to challenge the routes I take - I'm not a taxi driver trying to make an extra dollar AND she's never been here before so how can she really tell? She's just naggy. You said you wanted to go to the Vuitton boutique, I'm taking you there. That's where we're going now shutthefuckup. No, you're right. This isn't Shinjuku, so why are you trying to give me directions? Ali, can you tell your sister to calm down? She's making me nervous.
The thing about the chauffeur, and the fact that Ali is a pedophile have really caused me to wonder what else she hasn't been telling me. It was a nice, slightly breezy day on Sunday so I decided that it was time to take Ali to the nude beach and let her see what all the fuss was about. We spent about twenty minutes there, and when it got too cold for Ali (19 degrees Celsius), we went back to the car. She was pretty quiet on the way home, so I asked her why she was so thoughtful. She proclaimed that she didn't want to go to the nude beach anymore, and that when her sister would arrive the next day, I was to deny all knowledge of such a place. I was confused. Ali had spent weeks talking about going to the beach and now that she had seen it she wasn't ever going back.
"Why don't you want to go back?"
"I don't want to see shabong, I want to see shikeen."
"Fair enough, we'll come back another day when there are more people."
"Where can I see young shikeen?"
"Huh? There were some fairly young guys there. What do you mean?"
"I wanna see young shikeen, maybe 17 year old guys."
"17?? Ummm. Honey, strictly speaking that's against the law and you can go to prison. Why do you want to see 17 year olds?"
"They are more kawaii."
"You mean their faces?"
"Yeah, yeah..."
"So why do we have to go to a nude beach?"
"I wanna see shikeen. Today there was only shabong. Not kawaii. I'm not going to jail. It's okay, I'm a woman. Anyway, you're the perv."
And that's how I discovered that I might be dating a pedophile.
It's been pretty busy lately. I was up until 3 a.m. this morning doing homework and I've got finals in a few weeks. That, and a new job starting soon and a house guest that must be driven everywhere. At four dollars a gallon, I think I might have to say something soon. Now if you'll excuse me I have a party to go to.
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