Pride and Pressure

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single person in possession of a sound mind must be in search of this site. Enjoy your stay here, gentle reader. (And do please be gentle, reader, because if you break it, you buy it.)

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

WTF, dontcha know?

Who would do this?!?!?
P.S. Sorry for the brevity of the posts recently. I'll try to get more about my fab CA adventures soon. Or at least about my weird CA experiences and thoughts in ref. to.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Umm . . . .

I'm not a big animal person, but I can still spot cuteness when I see it. Chrissy, this is for you.

Monday, August 29, 2005

Could Starbucks be any cooler???

Check this out. Would any other major chain have kept those cups after a Christian group complained? McDonald's wouldn't have; HyVee wouldn't have; I don't know about Target.

Starbucks gets a lot of crap dumped on it for contributing to the McCulture, but at least they stick to their guns. I have to respect that.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

I live in California now

It's official. Not only do I have an apartment in California, I live in that apartment. Which is wildly different from the 2 weeks where I had an apartment, but didn't live in it.

Some things I've learned:

1. Houses are only for sale on the weekends. During the week there are no "For Sale" signs up. My mother commented on it. Come Saturday, eighty-bazillion (That's right, I said bazillion which is not a real number. Wanna fight about it?) signs go up and many more people were scurrying about trying to sneak them onto other lawns. If I were ever to buy a house here, I would need almost constant reassurances that I could also own the home on weekdays.

2. If in a residential district, drive as far to the left of your lane as possible. Because people are going to come up on your right to turn at stop signs. And they're going to do it whether your in the way or not.

3. Libraries are more expensive here. They actually charge late fees. A quarter a day, up to $8 per item. I'm gonna end up in trouble. They also charge $.75 to transfer a book from another library in the system. Which is disappointing because I really wanted to request the Hugh Laurie book. That's right, House wrote a book.

4. There's a lot to do here. Today, I went for a walk on this trail, which, as you can see, is the site of a race in December which I would like to register for. It wasn't as pretty today as it's been cloudy and really freaking cold. Still, amazing and well worth the ass-kicking that the hills and steps gave me.

I've also found a French club which is meeting September 20. That means I'll be voluntarily going through what I went through in French class, i.e. trying valiantly to convey thoughts in a smelly and ungrateful tongue.

There's a nature walk on Sept. 10 on the above trail led by some environmental science, blah, science, blah, science guy. There's a hobby swap site where I might whore out my excellent English skills to an immigrant who can whore out their skills in their native tongue. I've maybe found a place where I can afford to buy some yarn.

On top of all that, I've got to try and find a job, feed myself, and take long walks on the beach. Because, let's face it, if I didn't take long walks on the beach, my entire life would be a lie.

5. Daly City is not, as has been said, one of the ugliest cities in America. Here are some pictures to prove it.
Pink House
Other cute house
Of course, not every place is as cute as those, but those will give you an idea.

And just because I happened upon it, here's the local Asian supermarket. Strictly speaking I probably shouldn't be linking to those pics, so let's keep it on the DL, shall we?

6. I'm firmly in the minority here. Only 26% of people in Daly City are white. That's kind of fun. I suspect each suburb is a different mix. This one is the Asian one. I like it.

I think that's enough to be getting on with. More later.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

OMG!!! Live Action Masters of the Universe

How cool is this:

Woo-Man And The Masters Of The Universe

John Woo to direct He-Man live action movie
“I am Adam, Prince of Eternia, defender of the secrets of Castle Greyskull.
This is Cringer, my fearless friend. Fabulous secret powers were revealed to me the day I held aloft my magic sword and said:
"By the power of Greyskull! I have the power!"… And I became He-Man, the most powerful man in the universe.”

So ran the spoken intro to He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe, that fabulously cheesy ‘80s cartoon in which a Hitler wet dream – muscle-bound, blond and, erm, a Master of the Universe – defended the planet of Eternia against the evil skull-faced Skeletor and his cronies.

Why do we bring it up? Well, as we all know, the series was turned into a cacktastic live-action film in 1987, with Hitler wet dream Dolph Lundgren as He-Man, but Hollywood clearly feels that enough water has passed under the bridge, because it was announced today that John Woo will both produce and direct another live-action version.

Adam Rifkin will write the script for the movie, which Woo will probably direct after his next movie, videogame actioner Spy-Hunter. There’s no word yet on the scale of the movie, or the plot (the Lundgren version misguidedly brought Aryan Man, sorry, He-Man to Earth for fun and frolics) or which Masters alumni will appear (although if She-Ra doesn’t appear, we’re going to throw our 12” Skeletor out of the window).

Woo faces a number of problems immediately: 1) Though the haze of childhood nostalgia (and the odd decent episode in the first season) tells us otherwise, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was actually a rather cynical exercise in flogging toys for Mattel (although Ram-Man was pretty cool), so concocting a serious story might be difficult; and 2) We all know what happened the last time someone tried to remake a Dolph Lundgren movie – The Punisher came along…

Despite all that, though, there’s something strangely exciting about the prospect of seeing Cringer, Castle Greyskull, the Sorceress et al brought to life with a proper budget and more CG than you can shake a stylus at. And with Woo at the helm, the action scenes have a 64.5% chance of making your eyes pop out of your head.

Of course, casting hasn’t yet begun on the project (Chow Yun-fat as Skeletor, anyone?), but pretty much every actor with a six-pack within a ten-mile radius of Hollywood will be in contention for the role. He may not quite fit the role snugly, but the front-runner is probably The Rock, with whom Woo will also soon work on Spy-Hunter, although there might be room for a total unknown. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re off to hit the gym, then Nicky Clarke’s.

Also available on Empire's website, but I'm not sure if you can access it without registering. But by all means, register. Because there's all kinds of cool stuff. There's info on a Kenneth Branagh version of As You Like It (which is good because I miss Branagh Shakespeare).

Anyways, too cool. I wanted to be She-Ra when I was little. Unfortunately, there was a character named Evil-Lynn (like Evelyn, get it. Yeah, I know, I don't think it's funny either). So my mom called me that.

Monday, August 01, 2005

This gives me a lot more respect for Ashton Kutcher

He's not just banging a hot older woman. He's also got titanium balls.

Kutcher Demands Brody's Oscar


Ashton Kutcher is demanding Adrien Brody's Academy Award, after successfully fooling the actor on his hit prank show Punk'd. While many critics felt that Brody deserved his 2003 accolade for his efforts in The Pianist, Kutcher believes anybody holding such an award should not have been so easily fooled. He says, "Somebody who's won an Academy Award, you would think that they would be able to identify actors. They should be able to go, 'Oh you're acting, right?' That's what we would think. Either A, everyone in my cast should win an Academy Award, or B, he should be stripped of his award and it should be given to me." In an episode of Punk'd which aired on Sunday night, Brody and his DJ pal Funkmaster Flex asked a teen to move a car which was blocking his vehicle, sparking an accident and a huge parking lot row.

From IMDB, where else?

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