January 2005 Archives

so fucked up...yet inspirational.

> man pees way out of avalanche (via bo-ra)

[ audio selection | superior - polaroid millenium ]

wargh...the lack of posts is screwing up my index again! grr...i should set aside some time to maybe lock down some tables for that shiz. the css doesnt seem to be cooperating, so ill have to go old school with this one.

as mentioned prior, its cold outside. so most of the weekend was spent indoors. friday was drinky drinks with the co-workers, then chilling at home. saturday likewise. sunday i headed out to hunt down gifts, then a pitstop at annas, jasmart, then din with fishy who was in the city. we had our first chess matchup of 2005, and woo it was good. snuck up his kings side and destroyed his entire flank...then chased his king around til i got a checkmate. ah...good start, good start. on the agenda for this week...do my fucking laundry. damnit i need more socks.

its always fun to wake up late for work...especially when you were sure that you'd set the alarm. that sneaky little fucking alarm, ill beat you. so as you see, posts are not as frequent as theyve been. aside from the frequent "dude, stop playing games" line, this is nonetheless compounded by winter hibernation, piss cold weather, and honestly...a lack of anything (interesting) to write about. the only pressure i have at the moment to write more frequently is the fact that the index coding is so dodgy that if there arent enough posts on the front page, the side gets all fucked. thats super...ill get to tightening the code eventually. its been so long that the code just looks like indecipherable shit to me now. bleh. on the bright side...tomorrows thursday. lasagna day!

i havent really been following the development of the movie adaption of the da vinci code (nor have i read the book, as 90% of the north american population seems to have), but i thought this news was worth noting. there are currently two stars attached to the ron howard movie at this point...tom hanks as robert langdon and jean reno as bezu fache. but cinescape reports today that audrey tatou (amelie) has just been cast for the role of sophie neveu. coo news indeed, amelie's all grown up now and chasing after the knights templar...woo.

> audrey tatou cast for the da vinci code (via cinescape)

ah...more blog slacking. cant really help it. the winter makes me lethargic, theres not all that much going on, and my knuckles are usually frozen. take this weekend for instance. plenty of things on the agenda...but they all got shat on by about a foot of snow. snow is nice and all...dont get me wrong. but its very conducive to slacking. you peer outside and its just a blanket of white. and salt everywhere.

so onto what i did do. last night was the restarting of monday wings, with a full crew of 10+. lotsa people drinking and noshing...ah nice. the secret phrase for the night was "crocheted dick warmers." never dull. on the agenda for the near future: go shopping for a gift, call people i hadnt seen since 2004. 2005 still hasnt really sunk in yet...

there seems to be an excess of stupidity going around these days. why is that? must be coincidence.

boy, biological provider of bad dna, sue school to end summer homework. quote said no-future twit..."It didn't completely ruin my summer, but it did give me a lot of undue stress both at home and at work," the high school junior said Thursday. "I just didn't have the energy or the time for it."

translation: "im a lazy fuck and id rather be downloading porn."

school and work cause stress? get outta town. i thought "work" was a synonym for day-spas and grapes fed to you by a harem of virgins. you have no future little boy.

and the dover area schools of pennsylvania have begun teaching "intelligent design"...the first schools in the nation. the universe is so complex...there just has to be a higher power that coincidentally fits perfectly our singular notion of a judeo-christian god. there just has to be. in other news, an entire district of schools in pennsylvania have collectively shafted an entire generation of students.

> lazy shit sues to end summer homework (via cnn)
> pennsylvania teaches intelligent design (via cnn)

first quickie for today...cast members for the english dub of steamboy have been announced. and while im no fan of dubbing, it nonetheless looks like an interesting group so far. anna paquin will be the voice of ray steam, alfred molina as eddie steam, and patrick stewart will voice lord steam...nice. both princess mononoke and spirited away showed that japanese dubs could retain their quality with the right voice casting, so heres to hoping.

> steamboy english voice casting (via aicn)

news article on stupidity for the day. right-wing bible thumpers claim spongebob squarepants promotes homosexuality, proceeds to lodge pole further up their collective ass. pro-stupidity group focus on the family claims that a new video being sent to schools around the nation that promotes diversity and tolerance is pro-gay because spongebob holds hands with patrick. yea, hello. on the eve of president bush, lord of dumb's inauguration, it seems any and all right-wing extremists feel empowered to bring up topics of dumbness. and in other news, we're screwed.

choice quote: WAFF spokesman Mark Barondeso told the newspaper that anyone who thought the video promoted homosexuality "needs to visit their doctor and get their medication increased".

> spongebob squarepants promotes homosexuality

[ audio selection | billy idol - rebel yell ]

i think this is pretty hot news. kung-fu cult cinema reports today that both sandra bullock and keanu reeves have signed on to do il mare, a remake of the korean movie siworae, also known as il mare. helmed by alejandro agresti with a script by david auburn, il mare is about two people who are able to exchange letters even tho theyre separated by 2 years. think frequency meets you've got mail, except alot more subtle and smooth. the korean il mare was definitely an excellent movie (with korean cutie ji-hyun jun)...and while im a bit skeptical about both bullock and reeves (nothing against them, but i just had differing casting choices in my mind), im still curious to see how the movie turns out. now where the hell is my sassy girl?

egad...remember that old post about keira knightley's heinous boy-cut? im happy and relieved to discover that it was indeed for a movie role. specifically tony scott's domino...with a script by richard kelly (donnie darko) and starring mickey rourke, lucy liu, christopher walken, and a big list of others. knightley plays domino harvey, a model-turned-bounty hunter (yea you heard right...and its based on a real person too) and therefore the boy-cut was necessitated by said role. *whew*. coincidentally, ign visited the set of domino, so go check it out.

> domino set visit (via ign)

new batman begins images surfaced yesterday. aicn has 2 links, one to a couple of new images of batman, the batmobile, and batmann glowering at everybody and their grandmother. christian bale looks pretty badass as batman, and the new batman outfit seems to be more textured...less joel schumacher chiseled and more sculpted. very coo. the other link is to a promo(?) image that may or may not feature the new scarecrow. its a pretty dodgy image...but it does match the descriptions so far of the scarecrow. so we'll see.

oh, and the new fantastic four trailers out too. its um...kinda less-than-fantastic. not terrible...but not terribly exciting either.

> new batman begins images and maybe the scarecrow (via aicn)
> new not-so-fantastic four trailer

ill get to posting tomorrow or something. my addiction takes hold.

SIDENOTE
theres this elderly man who rides a motorized chair that catches the bus in the morning around the same time i do. so its piss cold this morning...and as im walking towards ave.b to catch the bus, i watch as the bus rolls by. so i dash for the bus in hopes of the guy being there (it takes a while for the chair-lift). as i get there, the bus is just pulling away from the curb and the guy in the chair is there, trying to flag down the bus. he gets to the side door and waves at the bus driver...who proceeds to wave him away and drive off. what a fucker! not a very coo thing to do...

via ign, the new hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy one-sheet.

[ audio selection | radiohead - everything in its right place ]

ah back to the daily rhetoric. the uk was a nice break and a segue into the new year. the trip was admittedly 1/3 local romping and 2/3 touristy, but thats ok...all the walking and foot cramps and blistering at least got me familiar with a few neighborhoods. now its back to worky, gymy-gym, gaming. word.

HUSTLER
ooh, first movie posts for 2005. and yea theyre a few days old...but theyre still full of kung-fu goodness. the international and japanese trailers for stephen chows newest movie kung-fu hustle are oot and aboot and kicking ass with a ciggie in their mouths. kung-fu hustle follows the story of a wannabe gangster who tries to take over the neighborhood "pig sty". except everybody who happens to live in that neighborhood is a kung-fu masta...so he gets his ass kicked alot. craziness ensues. the trailers are definitely rockin' and stephen chows got some warped humor. all hail stephen chow.

APPLESEED
and second up is an older post, but still coo. a new north american trailer and exclusive clip for the forthcoming appleseed is up on ign...and theyre rockin'. wait, what language is that theyre speaking? oh shit...english. motherfuckers dubbed it! damnit, whyd they go and do that? grr...

> kung-fu hustle international trailer (via aicn)
> kung-fu hustle japanese trailer (via aicn)
> appleseed north american trailer and clip (via ign)

ah...day 06, our last full day in london. time flies, and we still had a list of things we hadnt even hit yet. we wanted to get schooled, so we headed out to the trio of museums of the victoria and albert, the natural history, and the science museum...all next to each other. they were packed, but we still got edumacated...and even made a lunch pitstop at one last english pub, the hoop and toy(??). we wandered around later at nite, grabbed french foodage in soho, then headed back to our hotel to pack up. we caught our flight the next day, and got to sit two rows behind the alleged uk tween girl band girls aloud. what the fuck were they doing in coach?

day 05...our daytrip out to the countryside. we joined a bus tour to get out of london for a day and see a bit of the english countryside. the main stop was oxford, but with side trips to warwick castle and stratford-upon-avon beforehand. warwick was very touristy...in the sense that it was run by the same people as madame tussauds. kinda hokey, sometimes cheesy, but still fun. we then hit the small town of stratford-upon-avon, the birthplace of william shakespeare. again, touristy, but the town was pretty coo. we didnt stay in the town long, but still managed to trek over to the trinity church, where shakespeare is buried. after that was oxford, where we did a walking tour of the grounds. it was definitely nice to get out of the city for a day, see the rolling english countryside. definitely still have to see a real english castle one day tho. warwick didnt really do it for me. we caught din afterwards at this small okonomiyaki place called abeno-too...which served up osaka-style okonomiyakis. yum yum...

day 03...new years eve. woot! well we didnt exactly have any plans for midnight celebrations, but we headed out anyhoo to get our tourist on. new years eve was as good a day as any to check out the tower of london. the yeoman/beefeater guide gave us a nice detailed tour of the various sites and their bloody history. beheadings here, drawn and quarters there...fun shit. the armoury was pretty rockin', as were the crown jewels (bling bling yo), but sadly no pics of the jewels. we roamed around afterwards, heading over to st. katharines dock. that particular area, holy shit nice. i personally dont know much about that neighborhood, but if i could, id live there. we continued wandering around afterwards, trying to figure out what to do at the stroke of midnight. we did figure out some party plans at the last sec, but the party turned out to be rsvp when we got there (it wasnt supposed to be), so we partied at a pub near our hotel...the prince alfred. drink, party, happy new year! 2005...word.

oh, and one pic from new years day. fish caught a soccer game, and i just wandered around london aimlessly. we met up later for yum shanghai on gerrard st.

day 02 was started early at the crack of dawn. which in london was apparently sometime around 10am. weird. the second day was interspersed with some site-seeing, shopping, and good foodage at wagamama's. amongst the points of interest hit up were westminster abbey, churchills war room, the imperial war museum, oxford st, carnaby, the camden locks and camden market, covent market, and piccadilly circus...whew.

london rock the house! new years and then-some was spent roaming thru the streets of london, uk. roaming and roaming and roaming...argh my feet. there were actually alot of americans there over the holidays, as well as plenty of (in descending order), italians, french, and russians(?). before the pretty pictorials, some m3ntal notes about london and the uk.

01. a $2 for every £1 exchange rate really, really sucks.
02. whats up with the 2 pence?
03. the various pub names. rat and parrot, eagle and child, lamb and flag...?
04. there are alot of starbucks in london.
05. there are as many, if not more pret a mangers.
06. asian-italian girls...hawt!

onto the pics! day.01 (we landed in the morning, so essentially the same day we arrived) included: chinatown roaming, westminster/parliament, the tate modern, st. pauls, and the somerset house.

ADDENDUM
oh right, and tien...about that slide in front of the tate. maybe i skimmed the read and didnt catch the details, but that shits not ice! not only was it a pretty paltry slide (oooh....10 ft), but it was made of some kind of plastic bubble/astroturf/whatever material. no ice...blah! balls to that...