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Movie: Clerks 2

My deepest apologies to Kevin Smith.

I have no choice but to download a cam recording of Clerks 2 via BitTorrent. There's no freaking way that any of his movie will hit the local theatres. So, I'm not really denying him of any revenue anyways.

But he shouldn't be worried. The low budget flick easily recovered production and marketing cost in its opening weekend's take of 11 million dollars.

Clerks began Kevin's film making career more than 10yrs ago, and this time, he returned to his original characters: Dante Hicks and Randal Graves, the infamous clerks.

Randal has burnt down the beloved QuickStop. The two now works at a burger joint, finding new ways to torment customers, and fans of Lord of the Rings.

"Those f*cking hobbit movies were boring as hell. All it was was a bunch of people walking. Three movies of people walking to a f*cking volcano ...The f*cking trees walked in those movies."

Dante finally finds love, and is about to move to Florida with his fiance. Randal arranges a 'stag' party for Dante's last day, with live interspecies erotica.


There are plenty of interesting actors in the flick. Kevin is in as Silent Bob. Jason Mewes finally kicked his drug habit, and is back as Jay (we get to see some frontal nudity). Kevin's wife is in (she flashed the camera). Ben Affleck (Shannon in Mallrats, Holden in Chasing Amy, Bartleby in Dogma). Jason Lee (Brodie in Mallrats, Banky in Chasing Amy). Rosario Dawson (who is Gail in Sin City).

Not as funny as the original Clerks. But it's fun to see the crew back together.

Movie: Dead Man's Chest

A must watch movie if you're a young boy who loves the fantasy of swashbuckling pirates.

Orlando Bloom makes an excellent Guybrush Threepwood... no wait... Will Turner. Well, same difference. Young blonde man becomes a mighty pirate and marries the beautiful governor's daughter... Tell me there is no resemblance to Guybrush!

And there's more than a haunting resemblance between Davy Jones and the zombie pirate LeChuck and his voodoo beard.

Then there's the voodoo queen who sends Guybrush on his quests? And the adorable cannibals.

It's obviously derivative of LucasArt's most successful Monkey Island series of games! Adored those games in my younger days! I'm just kinda surprised that no one shouted, "You fight like a milkmaid!" during the swordplay sequences.


Back to the movie... if you love pirates, you'll enjoy the ride.

If you don't, then it's like flying coach, and squeezed between two fat ladies with BO. You just can't wait for it to end.

Liked Jack Sparrow. Liked the comedic stunts, especially the pole-vault, and the hamster-wheel sequences.

The plot is dumb. But you're watching a pirate movie, what were you expecting?!

Also learnt how to play Liar's Dice.

"Oh yeah, you fight like a cow!"

Old Classmates

Had lunch with some classmates from those distant days of Brunei.

These were people I never even bothered to talk to when we were primary classmates in Chung Hwa, BSB.

And after moving on to another school in secondary, I had no contact with these ex-classmates... Except the one time I went back to Chung Hwa in sec 3, representing St. Andrew's for the National Science Quiz, and went to trounce my old school. Very very soundly, I'm afraid.

Then a couple of years ago, via Friendster and MSN... somehow I got back in touch with a couple of old friends. And this trip to Singapore, I made it part of my agenda to catch hold of those few who have moved to Singapore in these long intervening years.

Caught up with Jessica Siong (a girl I remembered sitting next to in pri 5, I think), Chee Min (a face I remember from the yearbook, but I don't even remember ever having spoken to her in class), JeeYung (name is familiar, but no remarkable memory), and FuXiang (unknown to me, but was from ChungHwa too).

Some of these faces, I've not seen in 18years...

Spent hours talking while eating at New York New York, a new place at City Link. Food was so so.


Right after lunch, I then had to head to my tea appointment with Karen and young Daniel at Borders.

After tea, it was off to Kallang, where Peggy was having a crab party for a number of friends. Was a good dinner of excellent crabs with excellent company.

Swimming at Suntec City

Breakfast with Ben. After which, he has a minor emergency at his workplace to attend.

Which allowed me to make a brunch appointment, as Peggy was so kind to pencil me in for a 1-2hrs audience amidst her busy weekend schedule. She was meeting some gym friends for a swim later.

And as it happened... I had my trunks and goggles with me... Me and my Camelbak, we're always prepared. (Maybe I'll introduce my RimRunner one of these days.)

There's a quiet swimming pool secreted away in one corner of Suntec City, available to Planet Fitness members. I managed to sneak in with them, and had a good 15 laps around the pool. Used to swim daily a few years ago when I was staying at an apartment with pool facilities. Miss the swimming a lot.

Then, a heavy tea, before Peggy has a seminar to be at.

I had a bit of time to kill before meeting up with Ben, SimLoong and Ravinder for dinner. So popped over to Paradigm Infinitum at Midpoint Orchard. Picked up some Trenchers miniatures that a friend asked me to get. Also found a good pin-vice and some Tamiya epoxy putty. Nice!

It's the last days of the Great Singapore Sale, and I glimpsed a newspaper ad that Borders was doing a 20% off store-wide discount. Couldn't resist. Although I'm able to get nearly everything I want to read off the net already, there's still a few things I've not been able to find. Tried to look for Story by Robert McKee, but I was out of luck... It'll cost RM140 at the Borders back in KL...

Dinner at Plaza Singapura. With almost all the Hanoi group. And appropriately, we had Vietnamese cuisine. We got the Buy 2 Get 1 Free set meal courtesy of HSBC creditcard. Very cool. But the pig trotters... Bah, can never compare to Sibu.

After dinner entertainment, we adjourned to SimLoong's new pad, moved in just this month. Pretty sweet digs. Very nice pool. Very nice big screen LCD TV.

Quite forgot to check out his SGD$1500 vacuum cleaner. That's like, half the price of my car! On a vacuum cleaner!

Weekend Trip to Singapore

Had a free weekend...

...and several long procrastinated promises to visit Singapore...

Some primary school mates want to meet up.
And a bloke wants to show me his new pad.

Being the obliging person that I am....

Took a bus down to Singapore, and bunked with Ben.

THIS IS A GOOD DAY!!

So I didn't get much sleep today.

Will be heading down to Singapore, and imposing myself on the hospitality of friends. Only fitting that I prepare some manner of gift or another. If I have a guava orchard, I'll gladly bring some citrus to share. But since I don't, I share other fruits of my labours...

Such as the Clerks DVD that I hunted down years ago. Spent a couple of hours to rip the video from the DVD and converted it into an Divx avi file. Such a task requires a collection of tools to accomplish, and the best of breed Swiss knife for the task is Gordian Knot. You can get lovely results from this.

Popped it into my portable harddisk.
...still plenty of space left over...
...let's give some Asterix comics...
...maybe Ben can appreciate Kingdom Come too...
...some Coupling episodes... even the final Jeff-free season...
...and padded the rest with Family Guy...

1am...

A few hours of sleep...

Around 4am, Julian and his two Mrs Lee's came down.

They've got an early morning flight to Cambodia. Tried my best to accomodate them with what guest mattresses I have. It'll only be a few hours nap before...

...7am, awake and drive everyone down to KLIA LCCT.

Tried to investigate alternative routes on the way back, and saved almost rm10 in toll.

Moved Julian's beatiful Nissan Sentra into a condo carpark, safe from villianous eyes.


Then, after lunch, divine love just didn't stop giving!

I received my first order from Privateer Press!!

For all the 'work' I had been doing teaching players how to play WarMachine, and for organsing tournaments etc... I've finally been rewarded!

Got my first PressGanger T-Shirt.

A box of these:














And one each of these:

























As if this wasn't enough...

I got another FedEx package less than an hour later...

A brand new 120GB harddisk!! I had just sent the dead disk a few days ago. And here the replacement had already arrived!!

Lucky I had bought Western Digital, the only HD that was giving 3 yr warranties at the time. The warranty expires NEXT MONTH. Kinda lucky that it died when it did. Not so lucky for my collection of shows on that harddisk. Although, there's nothing irreplaceable. Lucky.

News: Can the world suck any more?

Here's a video of a bunch of school girls fighting. That's not exactly right, it's just a case of schoolyard bullying. A few girls wailing away at a defenceless victim. While some joker was walking around filming the whole incidence. And other girls posing around, and smiling at the camera.

I thought girls were of a habit of demonstrating their viciousness through more 'subtle' means via emotional attacks and social sieges. Seems that physical abuse and humiliation are not beneath them anymore either.

What's disturbing is that this is happening close to home.

But the upside is... our schools are also producing budding war journalists. This bloke had demonstrated fine potential. Such a fine effort s/he had made to capture the event from many dynamic angles.

Idea Murdering Retard

First, you can check out this youTube, of Kevin Smith relating his experience working with Jon Peters.

Jon Peters was a hair stylist for Barbara Streisand once.

Now he lives in Wayne Manor!

He has a shocking list of movie to his credit. There's Rain Man, Caddy Shack and even the first Batman movie.

But at the same time, there's also Wild Wild West.

He is single-handedly responsible for creating the POS that's Superman Returns. He insisted on a Superman that doesn't wear his costume, doesn't fly, and fights a giant spider at the end. Tim Burton and Nick Cage eventually got wise and dropped out after a few years of planning.

And if rumour has it right, also the reason why there won't be a movie version of The Sandman.

The disastrous thing is that, Warner Bros. has the DC franchise. Until this guy DIES, this hair stylist will continue to piss on good talents.

MP3 Player

Never been much of a music-on-the-go person.

I'm a greater fan of the ebook-on-the-go.

But mp3 players are getting so dirt cheap. Not counting the mega-Gb iPods, of course.

Just got this tiny 512MB player for RM131, with next day delivery.

Just perfect for the the 3eb collection, and guess what, SPAMALOT!

Music: Third Eye Blind

3eb just released another album 2 days ago. But there's nothing new, it's just "A Collection" of the music they've done since their career took off.

This is only their 4th album since their success in 1997, with a song about crystal meth. They have no desperate need to cash in on their success while they're famous, and took their time writing their music. Their last album, Out of the Vein, was 3 years ago, and a true 4th album isn't due until next year maybe.

For some unfathomable reason, I've had a liking for their melody though I don't pay much attention to the lyrics. It's my 'thinking music'. This stuff works better than Mozart for me.

You can sample a few songs at their mySpace.

Movie: Derailed

Take a few actors who have not been type-casted by Hollywood yet. Toss them all into a movie with a reasonable plot. Don't read the synopsis for the movie.

Just watch, and enjoy the twists.

Actually not too disgusted by this cautionary tale against adultery. It's not Fatal Attraction, but it's still chilling.

Cultural References

This is a recent strip of Turn Signals on a Land Raider. A pretty cute web-comic.

Am just wondering how many amongst my peers are able to catch the punchlines and references. I have long been accused of being strange or weird. By people who know me well, and people who know me not so well.


Anyhoo...
The bananas and pointed stick references a Monty Python skit. You should recognise a young-ish looking John Cleese in the photo.

This is the Self Defence Against Fresh Fruit skit. One of the classics.






And in the next photo, the arab with Bugs Bunny? That's Hassan Chop. You can buy this beautiful hand-drawn animation cel here, for US$2950.

TV: 倚天屠龙记 2003

It's such a dry season for TV and movies, that I've stooped to downloading this.

Only got 3 episodes of it, and have lost interest.

Biggest complaint being the casting choice for 杨逍. They guy is too old, too fat, and too ugly! He's supposed to be the good-bad guy. The dashing rogue. Maybe akin to Capt Jack Sparrow.

And they casted an old, fat guy who is incapable of acting the part.

There's a China made version of the story from a few years before this that was far superior in quality.

Silent Bob Speaks

Building towards the anticipation of the release of Clerks II, I had been reading Kevin Smith's blog.

Today's entry is a sentiment all movie goers can relate to.

But don't forget classics like his anal fissure here too.

Or the moving story of how he helped 'Jay' deal with his heroin habit. Which is a really addictive read.

Book: Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

The book boasts 11 million copies in print, so it probably doesn't need any introductions. As a bestseller, it even edges out Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, which stood at 9 million. (Although Hawking's book is more of an unread bestseller.)

To summarise, an old professor got Lou Gehrig's disease (same as Hawking); a student goes back to see him every Tuesday in the last few months of the professor's life; they talk about life.

Yet the book is more about death. About a man who had accepted death, chosen how he would face his death, and used his death to teach people how to live.

The book is a godsend, in the sense that the advance from publishers helped paid for an old man's medical expenses and made his final days comfortable. It is also incredible, in the sense that it even made me envy his death, in spite of the many indignities and pains of his prolonged and debilitating demise.

Morrie led an unremarkable life. No empires, no fortune, no fame to his name. He's a professor of a subject with no scientific, economic nor theological consequence. He made friends when he lived, and little more. But his death did not go unremarked.

The courage he demonstrated, and his views of life from a dying man's perspective, lent inspiration to many. In the book, he talked about the world, self pity, regrets, death, family, emotions, aging, money, love, marriage, culture, and forgiveness.

It's very Chicken-Soup stuff. Almost essential reading for those touchy-feely people out there.

But somehow, I felt underwhelmed by the book. Maybe it's because I felt as if most of the issues are already covered in the bible. So who are the 11 million plus plus readers who are lapping up this stuff up, and writing to Morrie calling him a prophet?

To draw an analogy... The book tasted like high fructose corn syrup. It's a cheaper form of sugar. Tastes sweeter. But it doesn't stimulate insulin production and suppresses leptin so you still feel hungry after eating it. It also metabolizes into triglycerides easier.

Am just a little worried that many in this day and age are turning to chicken soup as a source of spiritual food. I'm not a Jesus freak, and at times I'm ashamed of my luke-warm Christianity. But I have a fear of false prophets. I have an aversion to 'spirituality' that is too easy to attain.

It's just my thinking, that the Devil has more to gain in convincing the world that Heaven is so easily attainable.

Morrie is agnostic.

Camel. Eye of a needle. That's what Jesus said.


I did enjoy Tuesdays with Morrie. I am in awe of his courage in the face of a slow and undignified death. I agree with his rejection of the complexities of life, and his advocacy of love. And I aspire to die as he did, bravely, and with friends and family.

But my life has long been changed before the book came along. So I remind myself that the book is corn syrup, and not to neglect healthier nourishment.

Yet, a little bit of Pepsi every once in a while can be very satisfying.

"As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on-in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here."

Google is getting a little too creepy

For those of you who are using GMail, you'll have noticed the Google Ad-Sense links along the side of your emails.

That's where Google takes certain words or phrases in your email, and try to conjecture what you might be interested in, and target you with the relevant paid ads. It's contextual advertising.

One thing I really adore about GMail, is how easy it is to access from anywhere. I frequently use it to back up files that I might need to access both from home and from the office, and save the 'mail' as a draft.

I also use the draft as a notebook for random ideas... Occassionally, I get ideas for writing a story or some such, and will type out some thoughts. Of course, I've never gotten around to developing any of these ideas into a story yet. But I just want to be sure that nothing escapes my subconscious that might one day be of some good.


So, I've got this draft, with a few funny quotes from Djinn Rummy, and then some random words like suicide hotline, religion, kervokian, split personality, FightClub hallucination,
mysticism???, detective, blind date, historical gaming etc...

Some really random and disjointed words really....

And suddenly, Google Ad-Sense started throwing me links to, www.firstwriter.com, www.writerscafe.co.uk, storymind.com, www.blogit.com etc....


WTF!?

How did the Google algorithms make that intuitive leap?
Granted that I had one line saying, "writing a creeping out story"...
But buried in between all those other random thoughts and concepts... It managed to single out that one single line, and started pointing me to links for writers!!


This is creepy.... Surely it would have made more sense if I at least got a link to purchase morphine without a perscription, or a blueprint for a euthanasia machine....

Musical: The Producers

Just watched The Producers at the office...

Yeah.... That's quality of life isn't it?

Caught Nathan Lane on Letterman years ago when the musical was still doing its rounds on Broadway with a star cast. That's how I came to hear about it.

Grabbed the songs. Not particularly impressed, but it has its merits: you don't see something like Springtime For Hitler very often.

Glad that they got Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick and Uma Thurman for the movie. The show would be less without any of them. Especially without Uma.

"Ula dance again!"

(That's probably the most enjoyable part of the show.)


For me, musicals began with Cats.

One and a half dozen years ago, I heard Mr Mistoffelees on the radio. Took a few moments for the magic to take hold of me before I slapped the record button. Only caught a fragment of the song, but I played it back over and over. Broadway musicals not being a popular radio dedication song, it was months before I heard it on radio again in its entirety.

Came University days, and came Napster. During that window period when Napster was still legal, I grabbed tracks of a few dozen musicals. Cats, Les Miserables, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Miss Saigon, Phantom of the Opera, Starlight Express, Man of La Mancha, etc... Those collections even helped me recover the cost of my CD burner.

I have a treasured DVD of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which I asked my sister to hunt down for me in Melbourne.

Then four years ago, a South African troupe revived Cats for one last world tour, that happened to hit KL!! Managed to catch the event at Istana Budaya with some of my best friends.

After that day, I was pretty much done with musicals. I've already experienced the best of plays with the best of company.

For me, musicals ended with Cats.


Nathan Lane is an incredible performer. Uma Thurman was great to watch. Nazi pigeons are all too hilarious.

But as a musical, The Producer doesn't have the magic that I felt in Cats. And a musical without magic, is little different from a Mentos commercial.


Thinking again... My fascination for musicals might date even earlier than Mr. Mistoffelees...

There was one episode of Quantum Leap, where Sam Beckett leapt into the life of a broadway understudy. At the end of the show, Sam performed Man of La Mancha in the nude, (with naughty bits strategically hidden by stage props of course). I've not heard many songs more powerful than the song of Don Quixote. Nor a love song so full of sweet pining, as Dulcinea.

To each his Dulcinea ...

That he alone can name,
To each a secret hiding place:
Where he can find the haunting face --
To light his secret flame ...

For with his Dulcinea beside him so to stand,
A man can do quite anything:
Outfly the bird upon the wing --
Hold moonlight in his hand ...

Yet if you build your life on dreams,
It's prudent to recall:
A man with moonlight in his hands --
Has nothing there at all ...

There is no Dulcinea ...

She's made of flame and air,
And yet how lovely life would seem:
If every man could weave a dream --
To keep him from despair.

To each his Dulcinea ...
Though she's only flame and air ...

Starch Recipes

Just spent the evening researching recipes for cooking starch.

Made a batch to repair a chair I bought from Ikea.

It's one of those type where the seat is made from a fabric stretched across a metal frame. Very comfortable. Until the fabric stretched and the seat started to sag.

Had made several efforts to repair it already. This will be the final attempt. Dismantled the fabric. Cooked up a small vat of starch, soaked said fabric in starch, stretched fabric back onto frame. Wait to dry. Hopefully, this will work.

In the midst of this, also digging up my old video collection. Attempting to convert Band of Brothers into mp4 that can be viewed on an iPod. Lenogo seems to work very well for this.

OOTS: #330

My blog still pops up on Google searches for Haley's cryptograms on Order of the Stick. Thus, I may have a duty to make sure I deserve my spot on Google.

The solution to #330's cryptograms, are once again, on the official forums of Giant In The Park.

Panel 3: I guess there's no point in me asking a question.

Panel 4: You can understand me?

Panel 5: Huh?