Every day after lunch I grab an individually wrapped Twizzler out of the candy jar on the receptionist's desk. Suffice to say, I'm hooked.
I wasn't always a Twizzler man. I used to prefer Red Vines. Or those seemed to be more accessible. 'Cause you see, I rarely buy candy myself, but will certainly help myself to the candy goodness of others, and giant buckets of Red Vines tended to be more popular than Twizzlers. In any case, when I rediscovered Twizzlers, I thought to myself, Twizzlers are kinda bland. Not nearly as packed with flavor as Red Vines. And Twizzlers are more of a brittle chewey and not as a gummy chewey that Red Vines are.
For a brand name candy, they certainly didn't seem that great. But for some reason I kept coming back, day after day. Part of it was the novelty of it. They're shaped like straws! Candy straws! Not just the same old wrapped hard candy. Now, over time, I've really grown to really like them. I appreciate the more subtle flavors and how I don't have to work so hard (chewing wise) to eat them. Mmmmm... Twizzlers. That doesn't mean I still won't eat your Red Vines. Just that Twizzlers have won me over.
I've found myself more and more taking pictures of the food I eat. I used to think it was weird when people would post photos of their food. It seemed uninteresting to me. But I've since changed my opinion of foodtography, at least when traveling. I take a lot of photos like the good tourist that I am. Eating local cuisine is good portion of the joy of traveling, so it seems like a logical extension to photograph the food you try. Especially since it doesn't cost anything to take a photo with a digital camera.
I moved apartments about two weeks ago. Yesterday, I browsed through Home Depot looking for anything I might need for my new pad. I ended up buying just a power strip and some duct tape. But walking through every aisle of Home Depot made me wish I was more of a handyman, so at the very least I could make my own lightsaber hilt and proton pack plus neutrona wand. Obviously I'm not gonna be able to make a real lightsaber or a real ghostbustin' device, but being able to put together battery-powered LED lights would be nice. Oh, and I guess to you know repair things or whatever.
One of my favorite classes in middle school was woodshop. In fact, I took it all three years from sixth to eighth grade. Looking back it seems kinda crazy - that a sixth grader was permitted to operate power tools and bandsaws and belt sanders. How old were we in sixth grade? Eleven I think. But eventually, when you know, I have kids, could I imagine letting my eleven year old kid take woodshop? When I was sixth grade I felt pretty mature, didn't feel like a kid, so I think that's something to keep in mind. Despite how tiny they look now, kids are smarter and more savvy than we might think. After all, we were all once kids. It's just too bad that woodshop has been canceled at my old middle school, 'cause it was really fun.
Side note, I think the only "serious" injury I sustained from woodshop was actually trying to cut... felt. With a box cutter. I had the box cutter upside down, and pressed my thumb against the bladed side. There was lots of bleeding, but my blood clotting kicked in and I healed like Wolverine. And then I judo chopped that box cutter.
I hate jaywalkers. Let me be more specific. I hate jaywalkers who TAKE THEIR TIME. If you want to dash across the street when there's no incoming traffic, be my guest. If you can make it across without requiring a driver to half to slow down, fine. BUT if you slowly saunter across the street, such that I have to slow my car to a crawl, then you my friend, or really that should be enemy, are on my hate list. If there were only some way to teach these people a lesson... you know... without running them over. Because that's the lesson they need to learn! They're lucky I have catlike reflexes.
... I don't really want to be dragged to hell. That's just the name of a movie.
I don't particularly like horror movies. I don't like loud creepy noises, things jumping out at me, or grotesque images. But occasionally I will watch one -- provided that it;s good. Last week, I watched Drag Me To Hell, which has 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Before that I watched The Orphanage, which is 86% on RT. Before that it was probably the Resident Evil movies. I kinda equate people who like Horror movies to people who like Spicy Foods. They're spicy movies that target the senses beyond what is comfortable. But I do like spicy foods.
So back to Drag Me To Hell. It's actually a fun horror movie. Pretty much right from the beginning it was trying to scare you. And it wasn't torture pr0n. There were some gross out moments, but nothing that relied on blood and guts. Where the Orphanage was more atmospheric in it's scariness, Drag Me To Hell had things jumping at you and then quickly relieving the tension with ridiculous gags, like projectile vomiting. Director Sam Raimi has a quirky sense of humor. I haven't seen any of his old horror movies, but you can certainly see the similarities in his style of directing for the Spider-Man movies.
Horror movies are fun with large audiences, when other people are also jumping in their seats or making comments about how coming to watch this movie was such a bad idea. When the movie is over, you feel good that you "survived" the experience. According to Michael, Drag Me To Hell was one of the scariest movies he's seen. And he whined like a little baby that the speakers in the theater was too loud. And then he huddled in a corner with his hands covering his ears. JK. Well some of it is true, you can guess which parts.
Although Drag Me To Hell was a pretty "fun" experience, I still don't like to be scared in general. But I am perfectly willing to watch a good horror movie.
When Google started providing targeted ad service, I always wondered how they could generate enough revenue from people clicking on these ads. I know I never click on them -- okay maybe a couple times a year. Even if people are tricked into clicking on ads, as people get more Internet savvy, wouldn't people learn to eventually navigate the advertisement minefield? I'm sure some people intentionally click on ads, but what percentage is this? And when people expect everything on the Internet to be FREE, understanding that there will be ads everywhere, but avoidable, can purely ad supported sites even stay afloat in the long run?
Now that the economy sucks, I feel obligated to randomly click on ads on the sites I frequently view, so that they can earn 10 cents from me each time I visit. I will single-handedly save my favorite sites from a pitiful demise.
90+ posts later and there's finally been a lull in the regularity of my posts. I haven't forgotten about this blog, and I can't promise that I'll pick up the pace again, but... actually there is no but. There's really no point to this post other than to make the obligatory acknowledgment that I haven't posted in a while. Given the quality of my posts, it may not seem like I spend a lot of time composing a post, but I do -- more than I'd like to, so laziness has kinda set in. Oh well! I guess I'll... try harder? Or maybe not. I dunno. Hopefully I'll still find stuff to talk about and be motivated enough to write about it.
I've been going to trivia night at a pub occasionally. It's pretty fun, but it makes me feel fairly useless - that I don't know enough useless knowledge. And it makes me feel like a Philistine. Current events? I am useless. History? Useless. Art and literature? I can sometimes get the more pop culturey questions. Music? Useless. Recognizing famous people on photographs? Somewhat okay. I'll be happy if I can contribute like more than five answers per night and I am quite pleased when I do get a more academic type trivia question.
I should learn my presidents. Every trivia night there's like one or two questions pertaining to presidents. Like... who was the first president to have an assassination attempt made on him? The following are some questions I was able to answer this week. From what state was the winner of Miss America? In what movie is Dr. Cockroach in? What instrument does Jamie Foxx's character play in the Soloist? See the kind of questions I can answer? Haha. I can sometimes get sports related current events, as I pay more attention to sports than the people I usually go with. I am by no means a fountain of sports knowledge though. I wish there was less downtime in between rounds, because sometimes it feels like the waiting goes on foreeeever. The prize is fairly worthless: six bottles of beer. Teams are capped at six people.
Answers: Andrew Jackson, the seventh President North Carolina Monsters vs. Aliens Cello
Why I like to use plastic shopping bags as trash bags: 1) They're free. 2) Employing one of the three R's - Reuse. 3) Requires frequent trips to the dumpster.
Why is 3) a good thing? Back when I lived with three roommates in an apartment with large trash cans, it would take too long until it was necessary to take out the trash. You might think this is a good thing, since less trips to the dumpster equals less work. Although it does mean less trips, it also means more time for the food to rot in the trash, causing the place to smell. Moreover, larger trash bags require more effort to remove, so people are less inclined to want to do it, which only worsens the smelly problem.
On a related note, recycling here kinda sucks. Berkeley only recycles types 1 and 2 plastics, but when I get food to go, the plastic containers are of type 6. The city of Berkeley may think not accepting such plastics is a deterrent for using plastic containers, but that's just wishful thinking or a lazy excuse -- people are going to keep on using them. Considering how hippie it is around here, you'd think people would care more about the recycling program, by you know... making it easier to recycle. Instead, I save up these plastic containers until I make a trip to the South Bay where I can recycle plastics up to type 6. And there I don't even need to separate my recyclables!
One of my pet peeves when watching a movie is when the driver doesn't pay attention to the road. This usually occurs when the driver is talking to the passenger and feels the need to look at the person he's talking to. Pay attention, numnuts, your passenger isn't going to want to talk to you after you send the both of you into a fiery death, because this is a movie and when a car crashes it explodes in a blaze of glory. I consider myself a decent driver, but if I take my eyes off the road for more than like a second, I get the feeling something horrible is going to happen.
Somewhat related, but not really -- what also bugs me is when an actress who I know is pregnant in real life, but is drinking alcohol on a TV show. For example, Alyson Hannigan is pregnant in real life, but her character Lily in HIMYM is not. Although they try to hide her pregnancy, it's getting pretty noticeable, enough so that when I see her character drinking on screen I want to shout, "Put that bottle down, woman!"
Yesterday I went to the Get Motivated seminar. Before you roll your eyes, let me just say I got the tickets for free (actually probably everybody got the tickets for free), and I scoffed at the idea, until I saw who would be speaking. Those attending included Rudy Giuliani, Steve Forbes, Michael Phelps, and Colin Powell.
The event was okay, I didn't really pay attention to the speakers I didn't recognize. There was one guy who was your more stereotypical evangelist/motivational speaker. He was funny, but I also wanted to punch him. Yes, I'm sure your sons who dedicate their lives to the unfortunate in Africa are also making hundreds of thousands of dollars on smart investments due to your tutelage.
Anyway, my main motivation (har har) for going was to see Phelps. Since I guess he's not an orator by trade, his segment was done Q&A style. He talked about how he trains seven days a week and has been planning for Beijing pretty much all of his career. And then he talked about the virtues of smoking pot. Kidding. That was an obligatory lame joke. Then Colin Powell talked about how he occupies his time since he was Secretary of State. I would suggest to everyone to develop a solid hobby before you retire.
For lunch we walked over to Pizza Chicago. It was a good day.
Last night I went to a talk with Ang Lee and James Schamus. As a refresher, Ang Lee directed Eat Drink Man Woman, Sense and Sensibility, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Hulk, Brokeback Mountain, among others. James Schamus has collaborated as a writer/producer with Ang Lee on eleven films. The talk was a conversational format, with Professor Jeffrey Knapp discussing their movies with them.
Unfortunately, the discussion focused heavily on The Ice Storm, which I have not seen. Apparently it was the first movie Ang Lee intentionally tried to make artistic. I did enjoy listening to the insights and connections Knapp made about the movie, and then Ang Lee describing how he approached certain elements. Ang Lee really enjoys figuring out how to make something that's seemingly unfilmable into a movie and delving into the psychology of the characters - to elevate melodrama.
In regards to Lee and Schamus's frequent collaborations, Knapp tried to make some connection to the titles of the movies, to which Ang Lee replied that only a scholar would make such a connection. The scripts that Schamus writes are often pretty bare. A lot is left in the margins of the pages for the director to interpret. This is why Ang Lee enjoys working with him. He receives a lot of scripts, but oftentimes he feels that a script is so carefully planned out, plotted for success (in whatever genre), that any director could do a reasonable job by following the script, and that there would be nothing extra that he could bring to the table. This is especially the case in the TV industry. The writers run the show and the directors aren't important. With Schamus's scripts, the director has more room to work.
We were also shown a few minutes from their next movie, Taking Woodstock, starring Demetri Martin. I think it's about the inception of Woodstock. After making a string of depressing movies, they wanted to do something a bit more upbeat. In fact, they even mentioned that they had one point thought about making a musical, and are still open to the idea. Regarding Taking Woodstock, I'm not that interested in the subject matter, so unless it gets amazing reviews, I probably won't watch it.
In the Q&A portion (questions submitted by audience members), Ang Lee responded to a question about the advice he'd give to Asian-Americans trying to make it in the movie industry. His advice was to write your own material and to be willing to expand beyond your own personal experience. You have to be relevant to many people and oftentimes Asian-American films are too narrowly focused on a slice of Asian culture (at least I think that's what he was getting at).
Ang Lee was pretty low key, but he had some funny remarks. On the subject of Sense and Sensibility, he said whenever someone tells him that they love that movie, he wants to punch them in the face. I think he's tired of hearing about that movie. When asked what he would do if he wasn't directing, he said he'd probably be a loser.
So after the talk, which lasted only 90 minutes, my brother wanted to wait around the stage exit to see if we could catch Ang Lee leaving. We were quickly able to meet James Schamus for a brief moment. However, there apparently was also some private reception going on. Not sure where Ang Lee would be leaving from, my brother actually made his way to the parking lot and found Ang Lee and got an autograph and picture with him. I didn't :-/. I guess Ang Lee is a pretty private person, and we're a bunch of bothersome gnats. Oh well!
Sorry Dennis, I wasn't able to have Ang Lee corroborate your claim that he held you when you were a baby.
Student tickets for the Dalai Lama talk went on sale yesterday. I made a feeble attempt to get a ticket, but alas, I was too late. Apparently people had started waiting in line 11pm the night before. Why don't they just sell tickets online? Think about all the sleep, studying time, LEARNING time, the students are losing by camping out by waiting in line for HOURS. Is this a technological issue? Is the demand so high that the servers wouldn't be able to handle the load of kids frantically clicking for Dalai Lama tickets?
Maybe they just want to ensure that the most dedicated, Dalai Lama loving students will get admission. While buying tickets online depends on luck, people who wait in line are making a commitment. First come, first serve. I would certainly like to hear the Dalai Lama speak, but is it a big deal if I miss it? Probably not.
In any case, waiting in line is an experience. Afterward, you have a story to tell. Not the most interesting story, but still a story about passion, and pain, and how you overcame boredom, and coldness, and boredom. Want to hear about how I spent 24 hours at a Barnes & Noble so that I could get Bill Clinton's autograph? Yeah? Ok, it went like this: I went to Barnes & Noble, waited nearly 24 hours, and I got a book signed by Bill Clinton!
I'll probably try to get a ticket when the general admission sales go online.
Short Review: I liked it a lot. I thought Zack Synder did a good job compressing the graphic novel into a 2.5 hour movie. It was a visual feast. Rorschach was awesome.
Long Review (Filled with SPOILERS!!!!!): This is just a copy of a comment I made on a TV blog I read.
I enjoyed the movie a lot. I'm a comic geek, but never went gaga for Watchmen. Let the flaming commence.
I understand why it's so highly regarded. I understand its impact. But that was twenty years ago by the time I read it. I was like one year old when it originally came out. I found it... to put it bluntly... boring. I guess that highlights that I'm not a literary man.
As a single narrative it's hard to stay engaged. The emphasis is on all the back stories of the characters. The murder of the Comedian sets up the story, but is lost in all the history. The Black Freighter intercuts the narrative, making it difficult to move forward. A story that could have been told in six issues was expanded to twelve. There's a lot of stuff in there. It's certainly dense. If you have the patience you'll probably be rewarded. I don't have that patience.
This is why I liked the movie. I remembered enough about the story to have no problem following along. It hits all the major themes - sure maybe not as fleshed out as it could have been, but it was enough to give you something to think about.
I tried rereading Watchmen afterward. I ended up skipping all the same things (the prose, Black Freighter) and ended up thinking Snyder did a good job compressing the interesting parts of Watchmen into a 2.5 hour movie. I see the point that this maybe isn't a movie that should have been made, but I'm glad it was.
I'm just going to make random comments in response to previous comments:
I agree that Laurie's revelation came very sudden in the movie. I was not impressed by the actress.
I would've liked to see more of the psychiatrist, although that would be too much of a detour for the movie.
The sex scene might've been cheesy, but it's in the book, including the fire climax, which I found amusing. I'm juvenile.
The movie is R for a reason - blame the parents.
I like the slo-mo, speeding up, and zooms. I think it's an interesting experience. Like when reading a comic book, when you move through panels, the artist may zoom to different parts of the scene or you can take your time to admire a certain sequence.
By speeding up time, I think Snyder can get away with a lot more violence without it being too uncomfortable. A lot of discomfort is the anticipation or the act of violence, not necessarily the final result. He speeds up time to the point where he's almost just cutting to the bone finally breaking or the cleaver having entered the skull, and so he can illustrate what has happened without putting you through the act of it happening. He presents you with the shocking image and relieves you of it quickly.
I still think the original squid ending, a truly external threat, makes more sense in uniting the world.
I've been taking a sculpting class for a few weeks now and I am loving it. It's nice to actually work on something with your hands - in THREE dimensions. I'll probably talk more extensively about sculpting, but for now I'll just post a few in progress stuff. The following two pieces were done during a live model session. The first one I had ten minutes to capture the pose in clay and then I spent a lot more time afterward refining it - working solely from my own knowledge of anatomy. Ugh, I hope it looks better in person than in these low contrast crappy camera phone photos. Looks very Gumby-ish here.
This next sculpture started from a 20 minute pose. I focused on the head and bust to give me a little more time to try to capture detail. It's really hard to see from these photos though.
My force drawing course ended last week. I have to admit, I feel completely enlightened. Let's go Buddha, fire me up to Nirvana. I feel like now I have a good grasp on what to look for in the human figure and how to capture it quickly. Look for force then shape, force then shape. I don't think I'll ever feel the emotional connection to the act of drawing that the instructor wants us to feel (he claims he's gotten students to cry from the experience), but I definitely find it more fun than frustrating now. One thing to keep in mind is to enjoy and invest in the process and not worry so much about the end product.
I also recently discovered that Berkeley has figure drawing sessions Friday evenings and Saturday mornings for $2 for students. Here's a few nekkid sketches I did from last Friday evening. These were from 20 minute poses, although I probably spent two to five minutes on these. After taking the force drawing course, I now find long poses to be boring, because the models have to find poses that they can hold for a long duration and tend to look static. The poses that models assume for 2 minute poses are much more dynamic and fun to draw. It also forces you to be quick. The first image is for you, Andrew.
Okay, you might find this weird, but one of the criteria I have for a good comic book artist is how well he can draw hair. Since 20 minutes is an eternity for gesture drawing, I just spent a couple minutes trying to do just that.
Hrm, whenever I look back on past work, it's never quite as good as I remembered it was as I was drawing it.
Usually I spend a lot of time on the exhibition floor, but I wasn't looking to buy anything and there weren't any artists I wanted to meet. So this time I spent almost the entire day in the main hall where all the movie panels took place.
Watchmen Watchmen is based on the graphic novel that is considered to be the Citizen Kane of comic books. Director Zack Snyder (300) introduced the film by showing us the first 22 minutes of the movie. Looks really cool - I'll certainly be there opening day. With a running time of 2.5 hours, I'm not sure if I can handle a midnight showing though. The opening scene is quite spectacular and appropriately brutal. There's still some of the slo-mo Snyder used in the 300 fight scenes. Rorschach looks badass. Afterward, the majority of the cast came out and did a Q&A. However, I was kinda distracted by Batman wandering around the hall. "Is that Batman in line?" asked Snyder (or maybe the moderator asked that). Top to Bottom: Zack Snyder plus Moderator, Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach, Malin Ackerman as Silk Spectre II, and Dave Gibbons (original artist of Watchmen)
Alien Trespass Caught the tail end of this panel. It's a small movie in the vein of old alien invasion movies. Stars Eric McCormack (Will from Will & Grace). Star Trek I was able to make my way towards the front of the room, so I could actually watch the panel without staring at the giant screens. Director JJ Abrams (Alias, Lost, Mission Impossible 3) came out and showed us a new trailer for the movie. One that Paramount may choose never to release. Abrams is a funny guy. Zachary Quinto (Spock, Sylar from Heroes), Chris Pine (Captain Kirk), and Zoe Saldana (Uhura) came out for the Q&A. I could probably count the number of Star Trek episodes of scene on my fingers (and maybe toes), but I'm looking forward to the movie. Origin stories are always quite cool (Batman Begins & Casino Royale).
Top: JJ Abrams Bottom: Three on the left are Saldana, Pine, and Quinto
The 9 Based on an Academy Award nominated animated short, The 9 is about a group of ragdolls looking for their place in a post apocalyptic world. Elijah Wood, who voices the main character, and the director of animation gave a Q&A. Nice to know that Elijah is a self-proclaimed fellow geek. The trailer looks amazing, probably 'cause of the awesome soundtrack - the clips that were shown haven't sold me. This will be a movie I'll wait for the reviews for. Up We were treated to about 17 minutes of clips from the uncompleted movie. Funny stuff. The movie is described as an adventure movie with an 80 year old curmudgeon and a little cub scout. Director Pete Doctor (Monster's Inc) and Jonas Rivera gave a Q&A. There were a lot of good questions about the animation process and what they look for in a good animator. Later that evening they screened the first 45 minutes of the movie at the Metreon.
Terminator Salvation Director McG brought out the cast of the upcoming Terminator movie. First he tried calling Christian Bale (although the voicemail recording was a girl's voice?), who was a no show, chastising him for not coming out to Wondercon. McG was a little crazy in his excitement. Standing on tables, calling up random audience members to join the panelists at the table (some guy who does an Arnold impression, and some guy just dressed up in ridiculous garb). We saw the new trailer coming out and a few clips with visual effects still uncompleted. I'm still not sold on the movie. Looks very Resident Evil: Apocalypse and Mad Max like.
Hopefully the movie asks some really interesting science fiction questions. I think they try to go into the question of at what point does a cyborg cease to become human and becomes a machine. For example, with hip replacements and other artificial stuff we put in ourselves, it doesn't seem too far fetched for there to be artificial heart replacements or artificial portions of our brains. What then, does it mean to be human? Also, John Conner (Christian Bale) has to trust the guy he's going to send to the past, to impregnate his mom, so that he can be born into existence. Weird, huh?
Left to Right: Anton Yelchin, Moon Bloodgood, Common, Bryce Dallas Howard, McG
Okay, no convention would be complete without getting a quick free sketch from someone. I got one from Travis Charest. I have to admit, I haven't read any of the things he's drawn for, but I've always liked what I've seen of his art. Some of it is very Drew Struzan-esque. I left it up to him to choose what to draw. And here's a crappy image of a guy dressed up as Pikachu:
Last weekend I went to Universal Studios. It was a nice way to spend a Saturday, but I'm not quite sure if it's worth the ridiculous admission price of $67 dollars. Or even the $59 after using a coupon.
There were very few rides - I only went on The Mummy ride and The Simpsons ride. The Mummy ride was kinda lame. It's suuuper short. And since I take off my glasses on high velocity rides, I couldn't really see what was happening. The Simspons ride was a fantastic motion simulator ride, you know, like the Star Tours ride in Disneyland. I guess I went on three rides if you count the Shrek 4D thing as a ride. The chair moves while you watch a 3D movie. Kinda cool. Probably the most exciting ride in the park is the Jurassic Park one, which I didn't go on this time. I remember going on it the last time I went to Universal Studios over ten years ago. This time I didn't want to get wet. Overall, the lines actually weren't that long. Probably because everyone is poor now and cannot spend $67 on a theme park that only has like three rides. Four if you want to count the ridiculously long escalator ride between the main and lower levels of the park. It's like going up the escalator system in Hong Kong. So many sections.
I found the studio tour to actually be the most interesting part of the park. If you've ever been to Universal Studios you've probably been on this. What I liked was that they had some stuff from newish movies, such as the vehicle from Serenity along with the old Delorean from Back to the Future. Perhaps the coolest part of the tour was that we got to drive through Wisteria Lane from Desperate Housewives, which is still a working set. And we saw the miniature Skull Island from King Kong, the set from The Grinch and the plane crash site from War of the Worlds (okay sure, these weren't THAT recent). Anyway it's cool to see that these sets are still being used even today (somewhat).
By far the biggest disappointment of the day was that there was no Spider-Man ride!! Ugh. Apparently the Orlando park has one. MUY DISAPPOINTED.
Haha, when we first got inside the park we checked out the information booth to sorta get a sense of what there is to do (not much actually, the park is pretty small). The guide mentioned the Backdraft thing. My sister, being the tactful person that she is, complained to the guide, "Isn't that movie REALLY OLD??!" putting him on the defensive.
Out of everything we did, I think my sister was most enamored by the "indoor" skydiving thing that was set up. I put quotes around indoor because it's indoor skydiving, but the setup was located outside. The setup wasn't even IN the park. It was located before the entrance at the City Walk. Looks fun - I'd certainly try it.
I need a phone with a decent camera - I'd like at LEAST 3 megapixels. Preferably 5 with flash!
Oh, yeah! Haha, after we looked at our photos from The Mummy ride, we rounded a corner and some lady on stilts, dressed in Egyptian garb jumped out at us. She got us good. Man that would be a fun job. A poorly paid job I'm sure, but fun nonetheless, spooking random park-goers.
There's a corridor and its two doors I must pass through to get to and from my office. The doors are locked on the inside of the corridor. Today I found myself in the corridor with my keycard forgotten on my desk. I was stuck. Since the building is undergoing some renovations, the desks closest to the two doors connected to both sides of the corridor have been unoccupied for quite some time. No one could hear my knocks.
*knock*
*knock*
"Who's there?"
WRONG. NO ONE HEARD ME, REMEMBER?
Luckily the number to call security was posted on the wall and I had my cell phone on me. This is not the first time I've trapped myself in this corridor. Not even the second time.
For the past few years, Wicked was the only item on my list of must see musicals (Avenue Q almost makes it). Now, I can finally cross it off my list. Prior to Wicked, The Lion King was the only other musical to hold a coveted spot on that list. Regardless, somehow over the years I've seen quite a few musicals.
So I watched Wicked last week and thought it was quite good. I think of all the musicals I've seen, Wicked has the most interesting storyline. Or at least one that I never felt got boring as I find most stories in musicals do. Usually I'll find the first half of a musical to be great, but then after the intermission I tend to get bored. That was definitely the case for Mamma Mia and Phantom of the Opera.
If you don't know already, Wicked is based on a book by the same name. It tells The Wizard of Oz story from the Wicked Witch of the West's perspective. Actually it takes place even before the events of The Wizard of Oz and we get to see when the Wicked Witch wasn't really so wicked. I'm a sucker for these kind of stories that take a well-known tale and put a twist on it.
Wicked had some pretty cool tech too: an animatronic dragon and Wizard of Oz. How they set up the final "shot" of the first act with the witch was quite impressive and compelling as a visual. For the songs, I can only recall two: Popular, which I hear all the time on TV commercials and Defying Gravity, which I thought was the most memorable.
Here's a list of musicals I've seen in no particular order:
Phantom of the Opera Les Miserables Rent Urinetown Spamalot The Lion King The Producers Mamma Mia Wicked Flower Drum Song Hairspray Chicago Pacific Overtures Movin' Out Bombay Dreams
Wow, that's a lot. I think it's time to note that I enjoy musicals in the LGW. It's great as far as live performances go. Musicals are high energy and a feast for the eyes and ears. Not a huge fan of plays, operas, or ballets though.
I've amassed this large musicals watching due to the following factors: 1. Whenever we go to New York City as a family, my dad insists on watching some kind of a performance on Broadway, usually a musical. 2. My sister is a musicals nut. 3. I did my undergraduate roughly 90 minutes from New York City so a. It was really easy to go and watch something. b. My residential college took trips into the city to watch shows at $25 a ticket.
Favorite musicals? Les Miserables and The Lion King. I would not be able to tell you anything about the plot of Les Mis, but I like the songs in it. Wicked comes close.
I guess this is my ranking of the Best Picture noms:
1. Slumdog Millionaire 2. Frost/Nixon 3. Milk 4. The Reader 5. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
After finally watching The Reader, it was a lot better than I thought it would be. To call it a Holocaust movie does it a disservice (you know, if you're tired of Holocaust movies). Underneath the nudity and Nazi trial, the movie subtly? points out the pressures we face in a society to go along, even if our moral compass would suggest otherwise.
I've been making myself steaks recently. If I had known it would be this easy I would've made myself steaks all the time long before. Sure they're not as good as what you can get at a nice restaurant, but when it only costs a quarter of what a restaurant charges to make them myself, then they are pretty darn good. The taste to cost ratio is quite high.
How did I come to this revelation? My uncle is a really good cook and while I was home one weekend he asked me if I wanted a steak, and I said sure. Ten minutes later it was ready. I was like WTH, so fast! And it was good. And that was when I discovered his time machine.
So he explained to me the magic of the dry rub. Starting with a decent cut of steak (I usually choose New York strip), I massage in black pepper, salt, and some other random spices on both sides. Then I put it on a hot pan with a little bit of oil. Heat both sides roughly four minutes or so and I'm done. EASY PEASY. Although I still can't tell if I've hit medium without stabbing into it with a knife. Since I feel guilty for eating just red meat, I'll usually eat it with cooked spinach, which is like the easiest vegetable to cook. Heat up garlic in oil, add the raw spinach and a bit of salt, and it's done in a few minutes. You don't even need to add water because the spinach is composed so much of it already. NOM NOM NOM.
I consider my drawing abilities to be decent. I'm pretty good at drawing what I see. But it's a trap. A dirty, stinkin' trap. The trap had been sprung. And I fell for it. Like dominoes. A single domino. Me. Into this trap.
I started taking a class on force drawing during lunch at work. Not The Force, but the force in human movement. It was in the first session that the instructor talked about this trap, which I thought characterized my own struggles. When you learn proportions and become good at measuring and drawing things to scale by eye, you can draw things pretty well. But it's a trap. It becomes easy to think you know everything there is to know about drawing and that there's nothing left to learn. You see someone else's drawing and you think, "I could do that." You probably could make a pretty good copy of it, but could you create it from nothing? Maybe not.
This was the reason why I wanted to take this class. Internally I felt unsatisfied with my drawing abilities and I wanted to work on being more expressive. The fundamental idea of the class is to draw verbs rather than nouns. Obviously a single drawing is static, but from a single drawing you can convey a sense of motion as opposed to creating something that looks like a drawing of a statue. So it was nice to hear the problem of the trap elucidated in words, and how to push past it.
What is this "force" drawing class? Well, the instructor is Mike Mattesi, a former Disney animator. Each session has a live model. If you've ever taken a drawing class, at some point you've probably had a live model who poses in intervals as short as 30 seconds to intervals as long as 20 minutes. That is, the model changes poses every 30 seconds and you quickly try to capture each pose on paper. Professional models are adept at creating difficult, lively poses, and being able to hold them. The focus of the course is to make these poses alive on paper. As an artist you have to ask yourself: How does the model support herself? Is there stretch in her body? Where is there strain? What direction is she moving? How do the contours of her body connect fluidly? It may even help to construct a story or an action behind the pose. And then the goal is to use lines to convey and emphasize the force, the strain, the stretch in her body to make the drawing alive. Don't worry so much about proportions. Experiment. Push the boundaries. You might be skeptical, but when you look at the drawings of someone who can do this well, you'll understand the distinction between force drawing and a literal drawing.
There's only four sessions to this mini course, but hopefully I'll get a better sense of what to look for in the figure and how to interpret it. There's only been one session so far, but the instructor ensures us there's a method, a science to doing this. It's not just a bunch of crazy artist mumbo jumbo. And he wrote this book.
Every workday I walk through eight doors between the parking lot and my office. Eight. AT LEAST. The high frequency of walking through doors introduces many scenarios in which I will hold open the door for a coworker. You might be thinking to yourself, "That's... nice of you, Kenrick. But really, who cares? That's just being a good fellow citizen." Sure in an ideal setting, holding the door open is a simple task, and one you should do with regularity. However, if you look more closely, there are MANY variables to the art of door holding. An art I cannot claim to have mastered. Every day I must wrestle with the monumental task of balancing efficiency, courtesy, and my own convenience. To keep things simple, I will ignore worrying about people tailgating, and assume everyone I hold the door open for belongs in the complex.
The basic tenets* of door opening I have honed from my undergraduate days. When you approach a door that swings towards you, you pull it open and give way to the people immediately behind you to pass through. When you approach a door that swings away from you, you charge through and then hold it or at least apply enough force so the next person can pass through. And there is no gender bias.
These decisions are easy to make when the other people are in close proximity or far away. If the person is really far away, then you do not need to hold the door open. The difficulty arises when there is some distance between you and other people. This gray area between close and far is the most maddening of door holding etiquette. If they are far and you hold the door, the person feels compelled to rush or run so that you, the door holder, is not overly inconvenienced by performing this nice gesture. By trying to be nice, you make them feel rushed and troublesome. If you don't make an effort, you may look like a jerk. It's a lose-lose situation.
What do you do if you and another person approach the door at the same time, but from opposite directions? Here, efficiency should win out. The person who pushes the door should have right of way, and the person pulling the door must wait. The logic behind this is as the door is being pulled, the person pushing can already make headway. What if the door swings both ways? Hey! Pay attention! Doors are asexual, okay. Well, then we must hope centuries of civilization will temper the madness that is to follow from such an occurrence.
If there is a long stream of people following behind you, how long are you obligated to hold a door open? What if you are in a rush - are you exempt then? If you are a tour guide, should you take lead more often than not? If you push a door too hard, does its closing momentum make it more cumbersome for the person behind you? Such are the questions that keep me awake at night.
*I do not claim to be an expert of door holding. You may disagree with me at your own risk.
Coraline opens this Friday. In 3D too! I'm excited. Coraline is a stop-motion animated film directed by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) based on a story by Neil Gaiman (Stardust, The Sandman). Here's the trailer. I bet if I watched this movie as a kid, I'd get nightmares. Have you ever wondered if there is another world beyond a mirror? A parallel universe that looks eerily similar, but is slightly twisted? I have. Or how about if you're the one trapped in someone else's mirror. This movie reminds me of such thoughts.
Over the weekend I went to the Cartoon Art Museum in SF to check out the Coraline exhibit. It was small, but pretty cool. They had one of the Coraline puppets/armature (articulated metal skeleton) that they used to make the movie. It was quite interesting. The face is composed of two parts: from the eye level and up and the eye level and below. Decomposing the face into parts allows them to mix and match different eyebrow expressions and nose and mouth expressions. Imagine how time consuming it would be just to swap out the parts to make the characters talk. The clothing was also quite amazing, because it was made on such a small scale. They had to use needles that were roughly the thickness of a human hair.
If you get the chance, I recommend taking a look. The Totoro Forest Project is also on display but ends this weekend. The Totoro Forest Project Charity Auction is a series of paintings/illustrations inspired by Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro, done by various artists. The pieces were auctioned off to raise money for Japan's Sayama Forest.
After numerous tries to be sure (for research purposes of course) I have determined that Moccacino is my favorite pearl tea place in the East Bay and definitely the best in Berkeley, which I had previously thought to be a blight on the pearl tea world. I had been going to Lotus House and Mandarin House, and while they're acceptable, they're not what I would call good or great. I'm not sure how long Moccacino has been open, but I can't believe I've never tried it until this semester!!1!!!21! The biggest drawback to Moccacino is that it closes early (8 or 9 pm), which really sucks.
The sweetness of the Moccacino's pearl tea fluctuates a little (sometimes a little too sweet), but I can taste the tea, and the pearls are sweet and of pretty good consistency. The price is great if you choose the two for $3.00 special. The special is limited to Black, Jasmine, and Thai, but still that's an amazing deal. Their barley milk tea is supposedly pretty good - I'll have to try it some time. The bento box combo with salt and pepper chicken is a decent buy too. Another plus is that their straws are individually wrapped, so I don't have to roll the dice with my health on the line each time I grab a straw.
You're probably wondering what I would do, buying two PMTs at a time. Here are some possibilities.
Drink both. Drink one, save one. Give one to my roommate. Give one to you. Throw one at you. Shoot pearls out of a straw off my balcony. Give one to a hobo. Save all the extras ones for a month and put up a little PMT stand by the side of the road. Make a tapioca totem pole. Leave one on the sidewalk and see if anyone is willing to drink it. Tie one to the end of a fishing pole and see if I can catch me some Asians. Pour one loudly into a public toilet while someone is in an adjacent stall.
Milk Good movie. Although, it did take about a third of the movie until I really got into it. I'm also not a huge Sean Penn fan - something about him just annoys me. However, he did a good job stepping into the role of Harvey Milk, such that I no longer thought I was watching Sean Penn on screen blabbing, but rather witnessing an important civil rights movement. It's really quite amazing what occurred in San Francisco, just across the bridge, thirty years ago. I'll even see the Moscone Center in a new light.
Er... (minor) spoilers ahead I guess.
It's sad that thirty years later, there's still a struggle to preserve gay rights. In 1978 Harvey Milk fought against Proposition 6, which would make the firing of gay schoolteachers mandatory, and won, and yet Proposition 8 passed in California last year. Okay, sure, Proposition 6 was probably much more egregious. On the other hand, Proposition 8, whether it passed or not, wouldn't affect non gays at all, so why did over 50% of the population seek to pass it?
End spoilers.
Makes me wonder, if Milk (the movie) would have had any impact on the election, had it been released before it. Would it have helped or hurt the cause? Why wasn't it released before the election? Not close enough to Oscar season? Or were the filmmakers afraid it would have a negative impact on the fight to preserve gay marriage? Anyway, it was interesting watching this movie in light of Proposition 8 have just been passed a few months ago.
Doubt Didn't feel like making a separate post. Liked the movie. Like Amy Adams. Possibly my favorite actress ever since I watched Junebug.
After not having gone to the dentist for two and a half years, I had discovered that I needed to get a few fillings. Today I got two of them in the area between my upper right bicuspids (premolars). And I'm going to need fillings for the same teeth on the left side. Darn. I hadn't had any dental problems since I got in my adult teeth. At least this allowed me to get a guided tour of dental restoration. Yay. I held a mirror to see what he was doing as he explained why he was doing it.
First I got a shot of anesthesia. You might say, no pain, no gain. I say no pain, shut up. Using a couple drills made of different alloys, the dentist drilled into my teeth to remove areas of decay/demineralization, which look white and porous. This left my teeth with gaps *sad face* and it was time for some dental reconstruction. But before adding the resin, my dentist added a layer of fluoride, which is good for slowing down decay (it's in our drinking water and helps strengthen enamel). He claimed that not all dentist applies it because it takes extra time (albeit small) and that it costs them more to do it because they can't charge for it.
To create a proper toothlike shape, a metal band was placed around my tooth to serve as a "mold" for applying the filling. Then this bluish acid was used to etch the surface of tooth to allow for micromechanical bonding with the resin. This is different from chemical bonding.
The composite resin was then applied in little dabs and shaped. The resin has a built in catalyst that apparently is activate by light of low wavelength, so after each dab, a blue light was shined on it to harden the resin. Once all the resin was applied, further shaping and smoothing was done. The smoother the surface is, the better it does to prevent bacteria from settling on it.
So that's pretty much the entire procedure. The dentist actually modified my biting surface. My teeth are more triangular than they should be, such that my upper bicuspids come into a tiny point of contact with each other on their outer edges. Unfortunately, this leads to food being more easily pushed into the space between the two teeth. The resin was used to create a little more contact surface to reduce the amount of food that gets trapped.
Regular flossing would've removed stuck food particles and help prevent tooth decay, so it's made me a little bit more gung ho about flossing. But anyway, the procedure was relatively painless. The filling I got is composite resin, which is a mixture of powdered glass and plastic resin, so it is tooth colored and unnoticeable. The only nuisance is that the resin doesn't last forever, about 10-15 years, so I'll have to go back and restore the fillings in the future.
My favorite part of the Lunar New Year, aside from the obvious red envelope, which I don't get anymore 'cause im an old fogey, is eating nian gao. I freakin' love that stuff. My grandma used to make it for me all the time. Sure everyone else would eat some, but I knew she really made them for me.
Traditionally, nian gao is eaten on the Lunar New Year, at least if you're Chinese. Usually I'm too lazy to make them myself, but my mom will at least make them as part of the festivities. It's actually quite easy to make. Buy a cake of nian gao from an Asian supermarket and slice it up. (Hmm, I still have a whole cake of it in my freezer.) Mix some flour and eggs and dip the slices of nian gao into the batter. Heat up a good amount of oil in a pan and lightly fry the nian gao. You don't want to leave it in too long or the whole thing will turn too gooey/soggy. It should still be firm when you remove it from the oil, because the residual heat will still melt it through. Yum!
Well, happy new year. We should get the day off. I think we deserve to observe at least one Asian holiday.
Nominations are out. I'm rooting for Slumdog Millionaire, with Frost/Nixon second for Best Picture. Unfortunately there is no second place. Just first place and four losers. Some of you might say Slumdog is overhyped. I'm going to say, I don't care. If that's what it took to get people to see it, let it be "overhyped." What I like about Slumdog is that it appeals to everyone. Sure, it's not a "family film" but I think there's something in it that most everyone can enjoy. It whisks the audience away to this magical place called "India" where lies hope and despair, love and loss, and at the end of it you feel happy to have experienced it.
What is all this love for Benjamin Button? I can understand its noms for more technical awards, but it wasn't THAT GOOD of a movie. At least its 13 nominations give me an excuse to post this:
Still need to see Milk so I can't really say anything about that. However, I don't usually care for biopics: The Aviator, Ray, etc. How did The Reader get a Best Picture nom? I haven't seen it, but geez, it's only 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. I previously had zero interest, but I feel like I should watch it now. Eh, still don't wanna. The Wrestler is 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, maybe that should've taken it's place? Not to mention... Wall-E.
It would've been pretty awesome if Wall-E had been nominated for Best Picture. I'd imagine it'd be a shoo-in to win Best Animated Film, but really, who cares? Who cares if it beats Bolt and Kung Fu Panda (though both are entertaining films)? Who. Cares. It would say a lot more if it had gotten nominated for Best Picture even if it eventually loses. Beauty and the Beast was the last and only animated film to have the honor of being nominated for the Best Picture category.
Keeping this one short. Made a gingerbread car instead of a gingerbread house over the holidays. We made the gingerbread from scratch so it took a while, but it was fun. I was going for a Batmobile, but it actually looks more like the Ecto-1. If you're wondering, I didn't eat it.
For Jon's bbq we made hamburgers from scratch. It's a lot like baking I imagine. Put all the right ingredients into a mixing bowl and... mix. Apparently the meat should be handled sparingly, because the warmth from your hands can melt the fat. Anyway, after making equal-sized portions in a roughly patty-like shape you put it on the grill.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is one of the funnest games I've ever played. It's an action adventure game where you can perform a lot of parkour type moves such as running on walls, climbing up beams and ledges to get from point A to point B, while killing monsters that get in your way. An added dimension to the game is the Dagger of Time that allows you to control time. For example if you miss a jump, you can reverse time up to a degree so that you can redo it. Additionally, you can speed up time, slow time down, etc.
This week I went to a talk by Jordan Mechner, the creator of the Prince of Persia series. He created the original Prince of Persia for the Apple II back in 1989. He only had a small amount of disk space at his disposal, the size of a small jpeg (can't remember the exact number of kbytes), to write this program. Aside from the feat of putting a game into such a small amount of disk space, what was also impressive about the game was the animation. He rotoscoped the prince's movements, which gave the animation a more realistic and fluid look. Rotoscoping is the tracing of live action footage to create 2D animation. He used an old Errol Flynn Robin Hood fight scene to create the swordfighting movements.
In 2010, a Prince of Persia movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer will be released. The story will be different from the game, but Mechner did write the screenplay. What I found most interesting about the talk was when Mechner described some of the challenges of adapting the story from a video game to a movie.
There are different schools of thought on the purpose of the story for video games. For Mechner, the story is largely unimportant. It's just a wrapper to service gameplay. At it's core, the story for Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time is pretty basic: a princess gets captured and you must save her. The gameplay is the driving force and the goal was to create a game where you could free run to avoid traps and kill bad guys. The gameplay creates a unique story for the player. When you tell your buddies that you played Prince of Persia, you don't talk about how utterly romantic and heroic it was that the prince saved the princess and righted all wrongs. You talk about how your health meter was down to its final blow but you managed to withstand the last minute of the boss fight without a scratch, thus ensuring victory. To keep the focus on gameplay, you don't want to have endless cut scenes or have the character constantly meeting people and chatting with them. To avoid this, in the beginning of the game a curse is unleashed so that all the people are turned into essentially sand monsters that you can kill and not have to talk and have tea and crumpets with. Prince of Persia:Sand Monsters::Resident Evil:Zombies. However, if you make a movie based on this plot, the main character would spend the whole movie running around and killing monsters never uttering a word. Something has to change. Developing a strong cast of characters to populate the world might be one.
Also, the game device that allows you to control time is the dagger. This Dagger of Time was introduced to service the gameplay so that players can reverse a portion of time to retry a dangerous jump or attack without having to restart the level. If the dagger in the movie had the same abilities as in the game, then there would be little danger to the prince. He could reverse time on a whim and get out of any situation. The audience would not be as invested in the character and his fight for victory if there was no threat of failure. Therefore in the movie, the power of the dagger must be reduced somehow. Point is, the story of the game cannot be adapted exactly.
If you think about bad video game movies, which there are a lot of, maybe this helps to explain why it's so difficult to make a good movie based on a game. Film is a very different medium. A movie tells us a story and lets it unfold. We listen. The characters in the story interact and overcome challenges. We become invested. For games, where having a strong plot or characters is not as important, it makes it much more difficult to derive a movie out of (ie Doom and Resident Evil - although I admit I kinda liked the Resident Evil movies, but you can see how they're quite different from the games). This is not an excuse for bad video game movies, but it provides insight as to why a video game movie may not be completely faithful to the source and if not handled well, could result in a very poor movie. I hope the Prince of Persia movie doesn't fall victim to the bad video game trend. Mechner was inspired by Raiders of the Lost Ark, so hopefully the movie will be good adventure movie. And since it's being produced by Bruckheimer, it's certainly aimed to be a Pirates of the Carribbean type movie.
On a side note, regardless of the dangers of making a video game movie, I would very much like a movie based on The Legend of Zelda to be made. The Zelda series has a rich mythology and unlike Prince of Persia has a much larger focus on telling a story, which may or may not make it easier to adapt.
Game trailer for Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time
Game trailer for the latest Prince of Persia, which looks quite beautiful
Tried out bolding key words. Let me know if it's annoying.
I've been contemplating starting a web comic back since my undergrad days. I could never quite get myself started. It was a combination of a lack of ideas, lack of time, and I guess a lack of determination. It was very lacking. Even when I had an idea in mind, I would get stuck, because I could never settle on a style and it was difficult to ever complete anything. I would get really nitpicky with my work and then eventually just abandon it.
Just to keep the bar low, this probably won't amount to anything. I sketched out a strip that I had meant to do like four/five years ago. It's not clever at all, but whatever. Maybe this will get me started, maybe I'll just forget about it. It's nice just to have something "done." I purposely kept it sketchy, because if I ever tried to polish it, I would never be able to finish.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Not as good as I expected. It was a pretty movie and the one war scene in the movie that was as exhilarating as any, but the movie was just too long. It was certainly no Forrest Gump. I don't really see what Brad Pitt's character saw in Cate Blanchett's character either and the timeline seemed wonky. On another note, and hopefully this doesn't ruin the movie for you, I couldn't help but pay close attention to how the actors' faces were digitally altered so that they would appear younger. Don't get me wrong, it was still enjoyable, but I didn't think it was particularly remarkable.
Frost/Nixon I really liked this movie a lot. At first I thought this movie would be really dull, because the first ten minutes was the splicing of interviews and historical footage and I'm not usually a fan of movies that are historical accounts of events, but once the movie really started, it was like a political thriller. Frost and Nixon had a good ol' boxing match but with words. Word, dawg.
Happy-Go-Lucky The movie was pleasant enough. It's not really about anything. The main character, Poppy, is this perpetually cheerful woman who is both endearing and annoying. She's not oblivious to things around her in her cheerfulness, as we discover in her interactions with other people. She's actually quite perceptive. Eventually, the events of the movie and her behavior towards others all lead to a gripping confrontation, which was about the only thing that really got my attention. I can't help but mention this: I found her fashion sense horrendous. It was like a candy store barfed on her or a five-year-old picked out her wardrobe.
BLAM BLAM BLAM! I went to the shooting range for the first time a couple weeks ago. It was quite fun. Five of us went and we rented two USP 9mm handguns. Each magazine holds 10 rounds. What surprised me the most about shooting a gun is how incredibly loud it is, even with acoustic earmuffs on. Actually it's not too bad when you're the one firing a gun, because you know when the gun is going to go off. The recoil isn't too bad either. The recoil looks stronger when you watch someone else shoot, but again it's not too bad when you're the one firing.
I admit I was pretty nervous going in. Would I make it back out alive? Would I receive multiple gunshot wounds? But actually I found the whole event to be pretty safe. Load the gun only just before you fire it and make sure the safety is on when you're not shooting. Use common sense and don't be stupid and you'll be fine. Each of us shot four clips of ten rounds. Naturally, I found shooting the first clip to be the most exhilarating, because I was thinking, "Wow, this is awesome!!!! TO THE MAX!!!" And interestingly, I did the best on my first clip. Hit the bullseye once and my shots were decently clustered around the middle. However, as I went through more clips, my shots seemed to hit lower and lower. My shots were still fairly clustered together, so I was fairly precise, but my accuracy seemed to get worse. Maybe it was a case of overthinking that led my shots being more off. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and overall it cost each of us 20 bucks for renting two guns, using two lanes, and using 40 rounds of bullets each.
I haven't done this in a long time. Didn't have much to do today so I thought I'd draw something. I'm always surprised by how I lose track of time and get completely absorbed when I do a digital drawing/painting. The drawing part I always find fun, but I don't particularly like the coloring/painting part. Yet, somehow I feel compelled to do color it, as if it's unfinished if I don't. Anyway, here are the line drawing and color versions.
I should try to do something more creative than just drawing from photographs. Drawing from photographs/life is easy and relaxing, but somehow not as gratifying. Oh well.
Drawn with a Wacom Intuos 2 in Photoshop and colored in Painter and Photoshop.
Man, I've been listening to the song Jaiho from Slumdog Millionaire all day. I find it so catchy. JAAIIHOO! BAILABAILA!
I hope this song gets nominated for an Oscar so there will be a crazy Bollywood dance performance. Slumdog Millionaire was also a very good movie. I would describe it as, half City of God half love story. Actually half __________ is a better description, but I don't want to imply anything.
