view from hamster heaven: September 2005

Monday, September 26, 2005

She's 37.

She's 37. And she has 3 kids.

Image from the Entertainment Weekly photo shoot.

Rockstar.

Heard one of our neighbors playing the saxophone a few Sundays ago.
Sax-o-phone.
Not a guitar. Not drums.
Saxophone.
Wonder who it is; I wanna get his/her autograph.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

In-your-face movie review: The Cave

Try watching this movie alone, in a seedy-looking movie theater with only a handful of audience, on a rainy night. Wear a jacket, but not the warm, fleecey type. Wear one with a thin material, wherein the cold can still seep through. If you're claustrophobic or you entirely hate dark, enclosed spaces, and seemingly-unending underground tunnels, so much the better.

This movie reminded me of a book called The Descent by Jeff Long (which was said to be adapted into a movie in the UK, although I'm not so sure given the synopsis, wherein the only thing the movie and the book -- and The Cave -- had in common were monsters living underground and humans being mutated by bacteria infecting open wounds).

If you fancy an inspiration to do extreme sports like scuba diving, spelunking, and rock climbing -- aside from being snatched by monsters in the dark -- this movie's for you.

Spoiler! I thought Piper Perabo was gonna be like the mascot / scream queen of the movie who strutted around in a tank top and shorts in an underground cave, but no -- she was able to kill one of them albino-skinned mutated bat-like creatures -- before getting killed herself. So her death was actually honorable.

Saturday, September 17, 2005

The usual suspects.

Mission name: Oplan: Tsibog
The suspects:
The Sales Director aka Bos Mike
The Business Development Officer aka Mean
The Marketing Assistant aka Jong
Account Manager 1 aka Tito
Account Manager 2 aka Boss Vic
Account Manager 3 aka Joey
Destination: Italianni's, Greenbelt 2
ETA at destination: 1300HRS
The plan: Plan Alpha Beta Zeta (Translation:Intentionally NOT inviting The Big Boss aka The Lolo to the department lunch)
Phase 1:
Bos Mike and Joey have a meeting with a potential client.
Mean and Jong have a meeting with an event organizer at The Power Plant.
Boss Vic and Tito have their own businesses to attend to.
Phase 2:
Mean and Jong are dropped off at the ground floor by Bos Mike.
Bos Mike drives off to get gas.
Joey struts in leisurely.
Tito and Boss Vic "accidentally" meet each other at the elevators.
Mission duration: 1.5 HOURS
Mission status: Accomplished due to The Lolo's poor memory and short attention span.
Next mission: Oplan: Tsibog 2: Tsibog-All-You-Can.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Idiot of the week no. 2

Stealing a little company time because I really need to get this out of my system.

Client: pwede mo ba akong padalhan ng ad material nyo for souvenir program 81/2 x 11 ang size nya at logo. kahit email na lang yong ad material for souvenir program paki CD na lang kailangan ko sana with in the week. (Yes, she e-mails me in Filipino.)
Me: (with company logo attached in my e-mail) Will send ad material tomorrow or Friday. Is ad colored or black and white?
Client: black and white, Joan asahan ko 2day or friday ang ad. yong logo nyo pa email na lang. hintay ko na lang messenger nyo dito opis.

Ahh. Paki e-mail daw ang CD.

Confessions of a literature junkie

Stolen from Sarah's blog.
Again.
Because I'm not original.

Total books owned:
Hm..I've always wanted a bookshelf.
Make that three. (If three is too much, that leaves room for more books!)
Include a ladder.

Last book I bought:
Trip to Quiapo: A Scriptwriting Manual by Ricky Lee. (Someday maybe you'll see a movie poster entitled, "Brosia: Ang Babaeng Hinde," written by yours truly.)

Last book I read:
I'm currently reading Trip to Quiapo. Before this, I was reading Introduction to Buddhism and Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching that I've downloaded from this site. If you don't consider them books, then I was reading False Memory by Dean Koontz (in limbo, interrupted by Trip to Quiapo.) and Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte (got bored, didn't finish it).

Five Types of Books I Read:
My sis calls them weird. I call them friends. A+B=weird friends. Whatever.
1) Mysteries / thrillers -- take up most of the space in my bookshelf. The Hardy Boys even have their own box. Include the graphic novels.
2) Jeanette Winterson -- I consider this Goddess in a category of her own.
3) Greek Mythology -- must be the Xena thing
4) Classics -- especially the comic book-type Pocket Classics. My favorites are Black Beauty, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Mysterious Island.
5) Biographies -- the light stuff, none of those Hitler and Churchill types

Five books that meant a lot to me:
1) How to Solve a Murder: The Forensic Handbook by Michael Kurland -- I was a CSI geek even before Grissom and the gang came to life. I even bought it for just Php149.50!
2) Stone Monkey by Jeffery Deaver -- Must be the human smuggling that got me hooked.
3) The Hardy Boys Casefiles: The Phoenix Trilogy -- Where Fenton gets "killed" in Kenya and the boys go to Sweden and stumble upon a human smuggling operation...
4) NKOTB: Where's Joe? -- Ok, ok. So maybe I loved NKOTB. This book introduced me to the Mardi Gras Festival and culture of New Orleans. Yeah, Hurricane Katrina brought back memories.
5) Art & Lies by Jeanette Winterson -- Gave me a terrible headache, but inspired me to become a writer (and an even greater literature junkie. I should marry my bookshelf.)
5) Mythology by Edith Hamilton -- I guess I'm just geeky. It even reminds me of my favorite teacher in high school.

Favorite Filipiniana Book:
Trip to Quiapo by Ricky Lee (I'm still on page 39, but I've been loving it since Foreword.)

Friday, September 09, 2005

Half-cooked Movie Review: Kamikaze Girls

Wowow Channel aired this Japanese movie entitled Shimotsuma Monogatari (Kamikaze Girls) again last night.

To put it simply, it's about a girl with that creepy "Lolita-look" who befriends a tomboyish biker chick (only that her bike is a pink scooter that looks like a deformed spaceship). Biker chick gets into trouble with her gang and Lolita girl jumps in to defend her. Friends forever. The end.

Since it was a Japanese channel, it didn't bother to have English subtitles. Despite the headache I got from trying to make up my own lines based on the visuals, I enjoyed the movie.

Hm...wonder if they have it in Quiapo. With the English subtitles, hopefully.

Monday, September 05, 2005

let's party

The NZ ALL BLACKS win TRI-NATIONS Cup!

Lovely.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

A little respect

Lucy: "So you're an assassin."
Ninotchka: "Da."
Lucy: "How does it work?"
Ninotchka: "Mostly freelance."
Lucy: "So you just go out and kill somebody?"
Ninotchka: "Ya. Sometimes maim. Maiming's more...but mostly, I want to be dancer!" (Gestures with her arms.)
Lucy: "Oh really?"
Ninotchka: "Ninotchka doesn't have enough money to pay dance teacher. So he says, 'My wife is having an affair. You kill her lover, I give you free lessons.'"

That's diamond thief / smuggler Lucy Diamond on a blind date with the Russian assassin Ninotchka from the short movie D.E.B.S. Yeah, and the story turns out to be a Romeo and Juliet type (minus the tragedy. Oops, did I just reveal the ending? My bad.) -- only that it becomes Juliet and Juliet when Lucy falls for one of the girl spies (the same premise as in the short.)

Now don't expect any deep story and John Woo action in this one. The movie's quite campy but fun and well-directed, the script well-written, the production not bad, the actors terribly hilarious.

Haven't laughed in a while. That was good.

For more info about D.E.B.S., click on this.

Scud (Lucy's chief lieutenant): D.E.B.S. en route, two minutes.
Lucy: Do I look all right?
Scud: (pause)
Scud: This is retarded.

view from hamster heaven