I'd have no problem pimp-slapping the shiznit out of Andy Warhol.
First, a long overdue order of business. Halloween.
Dexter and victim/full shot so you can see my booties
Only about two people knew who we were, and that included after we explained it to people who didn't. Plenty of people have heard of Dexter. Hardly no one watches it, evidently. Madness.
~*~
Pfeffernuesse. N. A small, firm round biscuit, sometimes containing nuts. Based on what I bought (mistaking them for similar-appearing almond cookies), it is German for "pepper nasty" (these contained anise, i.e. black licorice, which was not mentioned anywhere on the packaging) and I took one bite and threw it back in the bag. Before you think me too harsh, it is the only food item that has survived longer than three weeks in the hospital breakroom, and that's really saying something. I previously thought these people would eat anything, but a line in the sand has finally been drawn with this abominable confection.
~*~
My new basketball career is going well, now that I've worked out the best times to sneak in court time. There was a kind of unpleasant run-in on Monday when I got sucked into 30 Days of Night (haha, pun intended) (and I realized it's the perfect wintertime horror movie, next to The Thing) and went to the gym later than planned. I had the place to myself for about 30 blissful minutes. Then others started showing up.
My gym is kind of ghetto -- no running track, so the perimeter of the court has to serve that function. Which I don't mind as much as people doing suicide sprints straight down the middle of it. The good thing about running is all you need is a pair of sneakers. The bad thing about basketball is you need a ball and a net. My point is, you can do that just about anywhere. I cannot. Get off the damn court.
Guys put together pickup games like cockroaches--one shows up and does innocent-looking stretches on the sideline. He doesn't even have a ball so I pay him no mind. Then a guy shows up with a ball, joined eventually by a friend. Then suddenly the stretching guy joins them and you realize they're in cahoots. Sneaky, like cockroaches.
So on this particular day, despite being there way first (and presumably having dibs), as I struggled to share the court with multiple little pickup games that developed around me (a gesture that no one else made the slightest effort to reciprocate), I slowly got edged out until I just left in disgust.
I've decided one of the worst things in the world is being the only considerate person in the room. It's simply not in my nature to bully others (even with passive aggression). I guess next Monday I'll avoid the TV trap and get there earlier. It annoys me that ten bad minutes at the end can undo all the enjoyment I spent thirty minutes building up.
Thursday morning I was in there alone again. Then three guys showed up with weights, to do lunges and crap up and down the court. Fine, whatever. But in between reps, they all leaned along the wall like construction workers, staring at me. I couldn't hear what they were saying (I wear earphones), except that it was followed by raucous, ugly-sounding laughter. I hated the fact that laughter sounded mildly threatening to me, wondered if they would care if they knew it did. It probably had nothing to do with me, but I can't help feeling that a woman on the basketball court is viewed as an intrusion by most men. I base this only on past experience.
I've become confident enough in this hobby to treat myself to my own ball, a Baden all-black synthetic leather jobby (which certainly sounds fancy, but in truth was cheaper than most Spalding/Wilson rubber balls); though not before catching a bad cold, Tery thinks from handling the gym's balls. Men spit on their hands for traction, she told me after the sore throat hit. If this is true, then let me say gentlemen, that is NASTY. Spit on your own damn balls. And keep your germy, spit-encrusted paws away from my black beauty (provisionally named Black Mamba II).
~*~
Some movie reviews? I thought you'd never ask.
I saw Life of Pi in 3D on Ryan's dime. Before I get to the spoilery part, a word about the previews: We were in a 3D theater, had the glasses and everything, so it was mystifying why the trailer for the re-release of Jurassic Park in 3D was in 2D.
Conversely, Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away was in 3D, and looks amazing. But there's also a new Stephenie Meyer creation coming (The Host), which not only looks as insipid as Twilight, but the trailer has the nerve to use my new favorite song, "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons. First Muse, now this. STOP TRYING TO RUIN ALL THE BEST MUSIC, STEPHENIE. Also, what's with the contact lens fetish?
Ahem. Life of Pi:
I knew nothing about this going in, not even what everyone else knows--that it's about a boy on a lifeboat with a tiger.
That it is, but that's also an oversimplification. Pi (short for "Piscine," named after a famous swimming pool, but unfortunately rhymes with "pissing," a fact not lost on his schoolmates) is interested in all religions, Hindu, Catholicism, even Islam. But his faith is sorely tested when his ship to Canada is wrecked while transporting his father's zoo.
He ends up in a lifeboat with a wounded zebra and a hyena (who starts eating the zebra alive, which thankfully happens off-screen). Half the boat is covered by a tarp, so it isn't until the second day when the tiger, Richard Parker (best tiger name ever) emerges, to everyone's surprise. He finishes off the zebra and the hyena, as well as an orangutan they had found drifting on a raft made of banana bunches.
Pi is left to share the boat with Richard Parker for a very long time, which is made possible by him devising a skiff from oars and driftwood, leaving the lion's share (haha) of the boat to the tiger. They survive mostly on fish (which seems hard to imagine for the tiger's part; especially when Pi tells us how many tons of raw meat he ate daily in the zoo).
At one point they're hit with a big storm and the tiger is thrown into the water, left clinging to the side, unable to climb back in under his own power. You think, great, problem solved, except Pi helps him back in, followed by training him to respect Pi's space so they can both survive. He explains that he needs Richard Parker to keep him alert and preoccupied, so he doesn't just languish alone and slowly lose his mind; I love animals, but I can't help thinking his situation could only be improved with no 450-pound cat trying to kill him every minute.
SPOILERS FROM HERE ON: They finally wash up on a strange floating island populated with thousands of meerkats, fresh water pools and lots of yummy foliage for Pi to eat. They can't stay, however, because at night the island becomes carnivorous--the water turns to acid and dissolves anything caught in it. Older Pi, who is telling his story to a writer, said that this island doesn't appear in any biology books or maps, and can't be charted, and this is the first clue I had that made me start to doubt his tale.
He and Richard Parker return to their boat. Eventually they wash up in Mexico and Pi is rescued--but not before Richard Parker heads into the jungle without even a backward glance. Pi's heart is broken, as was mine. We both desperately wanted him to turn around just once.
While he recovers in the hospital, the Japanese government (who owned the ship) sends agents to get his account. They don't believe his story (based primarily on the protest that banana bunches don't float), so he offers an alternate one: he was in the lifeboat with a sailor with a broken leg, his mother, and the cook (a sweaty, obese and increasingly unappealing Gerard Depardieu). The cook knew the sailor didn't stand a chance, so killed him outright. After a few days, he betrayed Pi and killed his mother. So Pi killed him.
The writer and I both instantly drew the same parallel: the sailor was the zebra, the cook the hyena, the orangutan his mother, and Pi of course was the tiger-- which had such a beautiful, Jungle Books quality to it. Older Pi says, "Perhaps. But which story would you rather believe?"
I'm not sure what the film is saying about spiritualism. I do know that the tiger effects were absolutely fantastic, because I still can't believe they were never actually in the boat together. As soon as it ended, I questioned whether 3D was necessary, but it was used sparingly and to make some truly gorgeous, jaw-dropping scenery, so I would say yes, worth your while. I'm still on the fence about whether or not I want to buy it...it is ultimately a very long way around to get to the one cool part at the end. But the pretty scenes were very, very pretty, and the kid delivered an Oscar-worthy performance (now that I know the tiger was totally CGI).
Next, The Amazing Spiderman. This barely needs a cut, but here goes: A re-reboot, pretending the Tobey Maguire trilogy doesn't even exist, and not an improvement in my view.
This will be short, because I waited too long and forgot most of it. Andrew Garfield < Tobey Maguire. Emma Stone < Kirsten Dunst. Rhys Ifans not half bad as hot geek Dr. Curt Connors, but most of his performance gets swallowed by his badly done CGI alter ego The Lizard.
In point of fact, nothing about this movie was memorable to me apart from a touching moment when the construction crews of the city unite to create an expressway out of cranes for an exhausted Spidey to get to the big battle, and that's hardly enough to inspire a purchase.
I'm either really getting old, movies are really getting crappy, or I've subconsciously tightened my criteria in the interest of saving money.
Or so I thought. Then I saw Men in Black 3, which changed everything.
I don't know how long after #2 this is supposed to take place. Tommy Lee looks significantly older, and I wasn't really paying attention to dialogue cues. So it's for the best that K gets erased by an escaped convict he put away, Boris the Animal (played deliciously by Jemaine Clement), forcing J to go back in time to restore him.
He meets Young K (played utterly fabulously by Josh Brolin. He is worth the purchase price all by himself), and they have to walk through a timeline that hasn't happened yet to recreate history to make K survive his confrontation with Boris (the Animal).
The majority of the movie is your typical MIB romp, until a moment at the end when (OMG ENORMOUS SPOILER) J accidentally sees his younger self, whose father was just killed by Boris, asking K where his father is. K neuralyzes him and makes up a story (earlier in the movie J had commented bitterly on his father's absence in his life, and of course we assume he's a deadbeat). I don't know why but this completely blindsided me, and the second I realized it was young J I began openly weeping (Tery wasn't home, obvs). It just seemed so perfect and beautiful, or maybe I was just overjoyed that I hadn't become sour on all new movies.
(END SPOILER)
Special mention has to go to Emma Thompson as Agent O (particularly one great scene when she speaks fluent freaky alien), as well as the character Griffin, who can see every possible future and is constantly fretting that they might be in the bad timeline this time.
This went straight onto my Amazon wishlist, unhesitatingly. Almost as good as #1, a pleasant surprise in a #3.
As an amusing footnote, of all the films I've seen recently (these plus a mixed bag of Netflix Watch Instantly), I've noticed the Wilhelm scream in about 70% of them.
Dexter and victim/full shot so you can see my booties
Only about two people knew who we were, and that included after we explained it to people who didn't. Plenty of people have heard of Dexter. Hardly no one watches it, evidently. Madness.
~*~
Pfeffernuesse. N. A small, firm round biscuit, sometimes containing nuts. Based on what I bought (mistaking them for similar-appearing almond cookies), it is German for "pepper nasty" (these contained anise, i.e. black licorice, which was not mentioned anywhere on the packaging) and I took one bite and threw it back in the bag. Before you think me too harsh, it is the only food item that has survived longer than three weeks in the hospital breakroom, and that's really saying something. I previously thought these people would eat anything, but a line in the sand has finally been drawn with this abominable confection.
~*~
My new basketball career is going well, now that I've worked out the best times to sneak in court time. There was a kind of unpleasant run-in on Monday when I got sucked into 30 Days of Night (haha, pun intended) (and I realized it's the perfect wintertime horror movie, next to The Thing) and went to the gym later than planned. I had the place to myself for about 30 blissful minutes. Then others started showing up.
My gym is kind of ghetto -- no running track, so the perimeter of the court has to serve that function. Which I don't mind as much as people doing suicide sprints straight down the middle of it. The good thing about running is all you need is a pair of sneakers. The bad thing about basketball is you need a ball and a net. My point is, you can do that just about anywhere. I cannot. Get off the damn court.
Guys put together pickup games like cockroaches--one shows up and does innocent-looking stretches on the sideline. He doesn't even have a ball so I pay him no mind. Then a guy shows up with a ball, joined eventually by a friend. Then suddenly the stretching guy joins them and you realize they're in cahoots. Sneaky, like cockroaches.
So on this particular day, despite being there way first (and presumably having dibs), as I struggled to share the court with multiple little pickup games that developed around me (a gesture that no one else made the slightest effort to reciprocate), I slowly got edged out until I just left in disgust.
I've decided one of the worst things in the world is being the only considerate person in the room. It's simply not in my nature to bully others (even with passive aggression). I guess next Monday I'll avoid the TV trap and get there earlier. It annoys me that ten bad minutes at the end can undo all the enjoyment I spent thirty minutes building up.
Thursday morning I was in there alone again. Then three guys showed up with weights, to do lunges and crap up and down the court. Fine, whatever. But in between reps, they all leaned along the wall like construction workers, staring at me. I couldn't hear what they were saying (I wear earphones), except that it was followed by raucous, ugly-sounding laughter. I hated the fact that laughter sounded mildly threatening to me, wondered if they would care if they knew it did. It probably had nothing to do with me, but I can't help feeling that a woman on the basketball court is viewed as an intrusion by most men. I base this only on past experience.
I've become confident enough in this hobby to treat myself to my own ball, a Baden all-black synthetic leather jobby (which certainly sounds fancy, but in truth was cheaper than most Spalding/Wilson rubber balls); though not before catching a bad cold, Tery thinks from handling the gym's balls. Men spit on their hands for traction, she told me after the sore throat hit. If this is true, then let me say gentlemen, that is NASTY. Spit on your own damn balls. And keep your germy, spit-encrusted paws away from my black beauty (provisionally named Black Mamba II).
~*~
Some movie reviews? I thought you'd never ask.
I saw Life of Pi in 3D on Ryan's dime. Before I get to the spoilery part, a word about the previews: We were in a 3D theater, had the glasses and everything, so it was mystifying why the trailer for the re-release of Jurassic Park in 3D was in 2D.
Conversely, Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away was in 3D, and looks amazing. But there's also a new Stephenie Meyer creation coming (The Host), which not only looks as insipid as Twilight, but the trailer has the nerve to use my new favorite song, "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons. First Muse, now this. STOP TRYING TO RUIN ALL THE BEST MUSIC, STEPHENIE. Also, what's with the contact lens fetish?
Click to viewAhem. Life of Pi:
I knew nothing about this going in, not even what everyone else knows--that it's about a boy on a lifeboat with a tiger.
That it is, but that's also an oversimplification. Pi (short for "Piscine," named after a famous swimming pool, but unfortunately rhymes with "pissing," a fact not lost on his schoolmates) is interested in all religions, Hindu, Catholicism, even Islam. But his faith is sorely tested when his ship to Canada is wrecked while transporting his father's zoo.
He ends up in a lifeboat with a wounded zebra and a hyena (who starts eating the zebra alive, which thankfully happens off-screen). Half the boat is covered by a tarp, so it isn't until the second day when the tiger, Richard Parker (best tiger name ever) emerges, to everyone's surprise. He finishes off the zebra and the hyena, as well as an orangutan they had found drifting on a raft made of banana bunches.
Pi is left to share the boat with Richard Parker for a very long time, which is made possible by him devising a skiff from oars and driftwood, leaving the lion's share (haha) of the boat to the tiger. They survive mostly on fish (which seems hard to imagine for the tiger's part; especially when Pi tells us how many tons of raw meat he ate daily in the zoo).
At one point they're hit with a big storm and the tiger is thrown into the water, left clinging to the side, unable to climb back in under his own power. You think, great, problem solved, except Pi helps him back in, followed by training him to respect Pi's space so they can both survive. He explains that he needs Richard Parker to keep him alert and preoccupied, so he doesn't just languish alone and slowly lose his mind; I love animals, but I can't help thinking his situation could only be improved with no 450-pound cat trying to kill him every minute.
SPOILERS FROM HERE ON: They finally wash up on a strange floating island populated with thousands of meerkats, fresh water pools and lots of yummy foliage for Pi to eat. They can't stay, however, because at night the island becomes carnivorous--the water turns to acid and dissolves anything caught in it. Older Pi, who is telling his story to a writer, said that this island doesn't appear in any biology books or maps, and can't be charted, and this is the first clue I had that made me start to doubt his tale.
He and Richard Parker return to their boat. Eventually they wash up in Mexico and Pi is rescued--but not before Richard Parker heads into the jungle without even a backward glance. Pi's heart is broken, as was mine. We both desperately wanted him to turn around just once.
While he recovers in the hospital, the Japanese government (who owned the ship) sends agents to get his account. They don't believe his story (based primarily on the protest that banana bunches don't float), so he offers an alternate one: he was in the lifeboat with a sailor with a broken leg, his mother, and the cook (a sweaty, obese and increasingly unappealing Gerard Depardieu). The cook knew the sailor didn't stand a chance, so killed him outright. After a few days, he betrayed Pi and killed his mother. So Pi killed him.
The writer and I both instantly drew the same parallel: the sailor was the zebra, the cook the hyena, the orangutan his mother, and Pi of course was the tiger-- which had such a beautiful, Jungle Books quality to it. Older Pi says, "Perhaps. But which story would you rather believe?"
I'm not sure what the film is saying about spiritualism. I do know that the tiger effects were absolutely fantastic, because I still can't believe they were never actually in the boat together. As soon as it ended, I questioned whether 3D was necessary, but it was used sparingly and to make some truly gorgeous, jaw-dropping scenery, so I would say yes, worth your while. I'm still on the fence about whether or not I want to buy it...it is ultimately a very long way around to get to the one cool part at the end. But the pretty scenes were very, very pretty, and the kid delivered an Oscar-worthy performance (now that I know the tiger was totally CGI).
Next, The Amazing Spiderman. This barely needs a cut, but here goes: A re-reboot, pretending the Tobey Maguire trilogy doesn't even exist, and not an improvement in my view.
This will be short, because I waited too long and forgot most of it. Andrew Garfield < Tobey Maguire. Emma Stone < Kirsten Dunst. Rhys Ifans not half bad as hot geek Dr. Curt Connors, but most of his performance gets swallowed by his badly done CGI alter ego The Lizard.
In point of fact, nothing about this movie was memorable to me apart from a touching moment when the construction crews of the city unite to create an expressway out of cranes for an exhausted Spidey to get to the big battle, and that's hardly enough to inspire a purchase.
I'm either really getting old, movies are really getting crappy, or I've subconsciously tightened my criteria in the interest of saving money.
Or so I thought. Then I saw Men in Black 3, which changed everything.
I don't know how long after #2 this is supposed to take place. Tommy Lee looks significantly older, and I wasn't really paying attention to dialogue cues. So it's for the best that K gets erased by an escaped convict he put away, Boris the Animal (played deliciously by Jemaine Clement), forcing J to go back in time to restore him.
He meets Young K (played utterly fabulously by Josh Brolin. He is worth the purchase price all by himself), and they have to walk through a timeline that hasn't happened yet to recreate history to make K survive his confrontation with Boris (the Animal).
The majority of the movie is your typical MIB romp, until a moment at the end when (OMG ENORMOUS SPOILER) J accidentally sees his younger self, whose father was just killed by Boris, asking K where his father is. K neuralyzes him and makes up a story (earlier in the movie J had commented bitterly on his father's absence in his life, and of course we assume he's a deadbeat). I don't know why but this completely blindsided me, and the second I realized it was young J I began openly weeping (Tery wasn't home, obvs). It just seemed so perfect and beautiful, or maybe I was just overjoyed that I hadn't become sour on all new movies.
(END SPOILER)
Special mention has to go to Emma Thompson as Agent O (particularly one great scene when she speaks fluent freaky alien), as well as the character Griffin, who can see every possible future and is constantly fretting that they might be in the bad timeline this time.
This went straight onto my Amazon wishlist, unhesitatingly. Almost as good as #1, a pleasant surprise in a #3.
As an amusing footnote, of all the films I've seen recently (these plus a mixed bag of Netflix Watch Instantly), I've noticed the Wilhelm scream in about 70% of them.