Posts tagged with "movies"

All Work And No Play

I’m sit­ting on my chaise in the dark, Macbook Pro in lap, cur­tains open to the snow out­side. Every now and then, the wind catch­es a loose patch of snow, and it sounds like sand drag­ging along the ground out­side. If you close your eyes, it’s like you’re sit­ting on a beach at low-tide under a night sky.

I haven’t done this in a while.

The show is over. There’s sup­posed to be one more inter­view next week, but at least I can breathe now. I’ve final­ly had time to clean the house, which is prob­a­bly why I feel com­fort­able enough to write.

There are icons for movies on my desk­top, ones I’ve start­ed watch­ing but haven’t fin­ished, because I haven’t been able to emo­tion­al­ly invest in them. I did, how­ev­er, get a chance to watch Cidade de Deus which is the best movie I’ve seen in months, and Constantine, pure­ly for the Tilda-Swinton-as-angel fac­tor.

Tilda Swinton in Constantine

I real­ized that I like girls who look like boys. I hope this does­n’t mean I’m gay.

On a sticky, I seem to have writ­ten “a small pair of skis”. I don’t remem­ber doing this, or what for. There’s also a phone num­ber there with no name. I want to call the num­ber to find out who it is, but I’d just hang up if some­one answered and that’d be rude.

I should call Dan. I should reor­ga­nize my pho­tos for appro­pri­ate back­up. I should be prac­tic­ing Tai Chi. I should be hav­ing more fun. I should be fill­ing out my thought record work­sheets.

But right now, I should real­ly be in bed.

Christmas Wish-List '07

A look into my cur­rent tastes, updat­ed for 2007. This list is some­what short­er than last years because the ones I haven’t checked off still apply, and I’ve been guilty of some spend­ing this month; The first two sea­sons of Robson Arms on DVD (which I des­per­ate­ly wait­ed two years for), sea­son six of Trailer Park Boys, my mit­tens, a RAZR 2 (the cell phone I’ve had for five years died), an elec­tric tooth­brush, and var­i­ous gifts.

Photography

  • Bogen / Manfrotto Background Support System 314 ($280) — To quick­ly set up dif­fer­ent coloured back­grounds in my pho­tog­ra­phy room.

    Bought it on sale, which was still $260.

  • Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 Ballhead ($475) — My cur­rent tri­pod isn’t strong enough to hold most of my lens­es in place, and the lock­ing mech­a­nism is extreme­ly chintzy. Very frus­trat­ing when work­ing with dark shots. A ball­head would give me tremen­dous flex­i­bil­i­ty.
  • Gitzo GT3530LSV Mountaineer 6x Carbon Fiber Tripod Legs ($625) — Carbon fiber tub­ing makes for an extreme­ly light and portable set of tri­pod legs. Packed with all the impor­tant lit­tle fea­tures like an anti-leg rota­tion sys­tem, the Gitzo leg lock­ing sys­tem, and remov­able rub­ber feet.

Furniture

  • Rubix Cube Ottoman ($129) — A black, two-toned square ottoman to go with my leather couch.

Housewares

  • Bodum Assam 2‑Cup Tea Press ($25) — I have one of these at home, but it would be great to have one at work too, so I can make more than one cup of tea at a time.

    Julie bought me a Stokes gourmet Formosa tea infuser for Christmas 2008. A lit­tle cham­ber for loose leaves dan­gles from the top, as opposed to a press, which can cre­ate bit­ter­ness in tea.

  • Braun Impression WK 600 Kettle ($90) — A large ket­tle for my tea. Right now, I have to boil water in two cup inter­vals, which takes a while when guests are over.

    Andrew and Alex bought me a sim­i­lar mod­el for my birth­day, and it’s SWEET.

  • Tingler Head Massager ($15) — On Jason’s rec­om­men­da­tion on my recent post about man­u­al stim­u­la­tion. The reviews say that it helps put you to sleep, and that can nev­er be a bad thing.

    Found a cheep one at Zone for five dol­lars! Doesn’t vibrate or any­thing but still pret­ty good. Next is find­ing some­one to use it on me.

Games

  • Orange Box ($50) — A nos­tal­gic trip back to the days of my favourite game ever: Team Fortress Classic for Half-Life. I hear the game­play has changed a lot, but I don’t care. We’ll prob­a­bly be play­ing this at the next LAN.
  • Odin Sphere ($40) — A side-scrolling fan­ta­sy RPG for the PS2 that I don’t want to miss.

Movies/Shows

  • JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA ($52) — My favourite ani­me of all time: a com­bi­na­tion of fas­ci­nat­ing uni­verse, and very intel­li­gent action. I cur­rent­ly have a copy in Japanese with French sub­ti­tles. While this helps me learn more French, I also don’t under­stand much the phras­es.

    Found a copy of this for down­load.

  • Reno 911 sea­sons 2–5 ($90) — An hilar­i­ous, orig­i­nal look at law enforce­ment. Trailer Park Boys from the oth­er side of the law. I have the first sea­son (thank you Music World for going out of busi­ness and giv­ing me 20% off), but I’d love to get the rest, along with the movie.

    Bought all of these on a lark. Did not regret the deci­sion.

A New Winter Ritual

Snow col­lect­ed on the grass last night.

This makes me dream of week­end morn­ings in my liv­ing room, tea and a lap­top, look­ing out to a blan­ket of white. Dolly curled up on the arm­rest next to me, as she always is. No oth­er con­trast feels as cozy.

Ritual dic­tates that I watch Onegin or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind on the day of the first snow­fall, a trib­ute to win­ter scenes and warm romance.

This year, I’ll buy myself some skates. I’ll pack a snack and some water. Maybe my cam­era in case an image catch­es my fan­cy.

As the strings shud­der and the beats go on, I’ll carve a lit­tle path for myself on the canal, and burn beneath the orange sky.

And this will be my new rit­u­al.

Life Is Full Of Possibilities

How sim­ple a thing is hap­pi­ness: a glass of wine, a roast chest­nut, a wretched lit­tle bra­zier, the sound of the sea. All that is required to feel that here and now is hap­pi­ness and a sim­ple, fru­gal heart.

—Zorba the Greek

I feel like writ­ing.

Saturdays are usu­al­ly reserved for relax­ation, but I mixed it with a few errands through­out the day. Bought extra auburn foliage for one of my pots, and a fun­nel to get fresh-ground pep­per into my new pep­per shak­er. Picked up my week­ly gro­ceries. Sat down at the piz­za par­lor to start Beautiful Losers while my Hawaiian was being baked.

I watched Zorba The Greek tonight, about the adven­tures of an aim­less Englishman who goes to Crete, and the lessons he learns from a man he meets named Zorba.

Thumbnail: Zorba the Greek dances

Thumbnail: The Crete widow from Zorba the Greek

Though gen­er­al­ly jovial and light­heart­ed, it was heavy and heavy at times. There’s a scene where a beau­ti­ful wid­ow (the love inter­est of the movie) is rit­u­al­is­ti­cal­ly stoned and killed out of jeal­ousy by the men of the vil­lage, sim­ply because she would­n’t let any of them have her. The direc­tion is a lit­tle incon­sis­tent, but Anthony Quinn’s por­tray­al of the Grecian spir­it keeps the movie in tact. Many believe the movie to be an analy­sis of Apollonian vs Dionysian thought, but I saw it as a nod to Taoism as well.

Zorba’s a Taoist, whether he knows it or not. He shuns intel­lec­tu­al thought and analy­sis, and loves life with bub­bling spon­tane­ity. In the end, the Englishman learns from Zorba, not about life, but how to live it.

And it inspired me. Not just the dia­logue or the play­ful­ness, but the loca­tions too. It made me want to trav­el, to see new places, to meet more peo­ple, and explore oth­er cul­tures.

One day. For now, I’ll enjoy the com­fort of my house.

So here I am, stay­ing up late with my back next to the open win­dow, eat­ing but­ter pecan tarts, drink­ing Dragon Well tea, and writ­ing as much as I can.

I think I’ll go prac­tice the form now.

Tomorrow, I have noth­ing to do but live.

Chasing Amy

And while I was falling for you I put a ceil­ing on that, because you were a guy. Until I remem­bered why I opened the door to women in the first place: to not lim­it the like­li­hood of find­ing that one per­son who’d com­ple­ment me so com­plete­ly. So here we are. I was thor­ough when I looked for you. And I feel jus­ti­fied lying in your arms, ’cause I got here on my own terms, and I have no ques­tion there was some place I did­n’t look.

I sup­pose I would have enjoyed Chasing Amy more if the dia­logue had been more believ­able, but I could­n’t buy it.

We don’t live in a Dawson’s Creek world where every­one’s a psy­chol­o­gist, com­plete­ly in tune with their emo­tions and the emo­tions of oth­ers.

People aren’t con­fronta­tion­al in real life either. They don’t say what they mean or mean what they say.

And when you’re try­ing to tell the girl that you’re in love with her, it does­n’t come out as some flow­ery, roman­tic verse, it comes out in jum­bles. You’re trip­ping over your own words cause it’s the girl.

Maybe I was just hop­ing for a love sto­ry that worked out. I would have giv­en in to the sus­pen­sion of dis­be­lief that peo­ple actu­al­ly talk like that, had there been a hap­py end­ing.