Universal Studios

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.

Trapped

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.

Wicked

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.

The Oscars

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.

Steak

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.

Open Hearts

If you watch TV I'm sure you've seen the ads for Open Hearts by Jane Seymour line for Kay Jewelers.


I get the idea of it, but I think the design is flawed. This is what I see instead:

The Drawing Trap

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.

The Art of Door Holding

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

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.

Moccacino - Favorite East Bay Pearl Tea

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.

Superbowl XLIII

Go Cardinals. Bring some respectability to the NFC West. Don't let me down, old man Kurt Warner.