senatorhung's pad
ramblings of an information troubleshooter
ramblings of an information troubleshooter
i fell in to a burning ring of fire
permalink Sunday, 11DEC2005:wandered up to the french school this afternoon to attend a rehearsal for 'shape of a girl'. i picked up a copy of the script and got an idea of how the directors want it lit. they want to try an 'in the round' performance, so i'll read the play over and see what i can come up with.
afterwards, i circled the entire AWG complex before i figured out where the youth centre was. i hung out for an hour, reading my SOAG script and bugging janine until the rest of the playback troupe arrived. the crowd took a while to warm up until victoria began to reward those who were willing to tell stories with juice boxes.
in the evening, i hit the astro theatre to catch 'walk the line'. typically hollywood hokey, but what do you expect around award time. however, joachim phoenix was outstanding as johnny and reese was lovable as ever as june. both actors were able to hold their own while singing the classic songs. the music was the feature attraction, after all, and i can say that it was done well enough that i'll see the flick again before it leaves town.
- link of the day: CIPPIC's 2006 election issues dealing with the internet
top 10 movies that i saw in theatres in 2005
permalink Monday, 12DEC2005:was dragging most of the morning due to lack of sleep but the 2d burst of liquid caffeine seemed to get me in shape by the afternoon. after i got most of my to-do list for the day accomplished, i wandered up to the high school tisi in the evening to check out the xmas concert.
lipstick vogue has listed her top 10 movies of 2005. here's my list:
(2) = watched twice
- kamikaze girls - J-pop loudly remixes western culture and spits it back in our faces
- walk the line - "if you were run over and lying in the gutter with 5 minutes left to live, is that the song you would play ? i didn't think so"
- just like heaven (2) - build your own garden while you can
- house of flying daggers (2) - breath-taking betrayal by blind beauty
- sin city (2) - a bombastic ride in fabulous style
- 3-iron - silently memorable love story
- lord of war - this *is* the way the world works - no one says you have to like it
- batman beyond (2) - this is how an iconic character and his traditions should be treated by hollywood - seriously
- hitch (2) - watch out when the players get played
- kung fu hustle (2) - an unbelievable pastiche that somehow works like a charm
lest you think that my top 10/20 list is just a log of every film that i watched this year, i hereby disabuse you of that heretical notion by relaying some of the other movies that i watched in theatres this year: sky high, star wars: revenge of the sith (2), 40-year-old virgin, the interpreter, stryker, where the truth lies, life aquatic with steve zissou, vera drake, elektra (ugh), ong-bak, million dollar baby, the island, stealth, the wedding crashers, broken flowers, the constant gardener, the corpse bride, charlie and the chocolate factory, north country, downfall, crash, a history of violence and harry potter: the goblet of fire.
to finish off the year, i will be seeing 'walk the line' again and i plan on seeing 'narnia' and 'king kong'. 'memoirs of a geisha' will likely have to wait until 2007, as our local theatre likely won't be able to get it in until then. gems of the year: reese witherspoon (J.L.H., W.T.L.), rachel macadams (R.E., T.W.C.), clive owen (S.C., DER), cillian murphy (B.B., R.E.) and michael caine (B.B., BEW).
bald impulses
permalink Tuesday, 13DEC2005:for a brief spell in the afternoon, i thought about getting my head shaved, including the long bangs. on the frigid walk over to scottie the barber's place, i reconsidered and went for my usual. dunno why i was itching to make such a drastic move on such short notice, but i'm keeping my head covered for the next few days so i don't get laid out by another cold.
the mouse that roared
permalink Wednesday, 14DEC2005:skipped out on the departmental xmas party this evening to go to the last broomball game of 2005. i'm feeling less inclination to join in the rah-rah fests and just want to hunker down, get my own sh*t together and wrap things up in a nice little bow before i make a run for it sometime in 2007.
iqaluit broomball chronicle:
team white: jacques, julian, me
team black: mark, sebastien, kevin
for the 2d game in a row, everyone who showed up to play notched up the scoring board. me, i even managed my first hat trick of the season, tho only one of those went in cleanly. team black was walloped out of the gate with mark and jacques tag-teaming, so i switched with mark to even things up a bit. we turned the nets around to cut down on the long bombs, but this just meant that someone HAD to stay back or else any breakaway would be an almost automatic goal.
the scoring was still furious, with kevin getting beat more often than usual and mark tossing it over julian's shoulder repeatedly. julian made up for this somewhat by extending his streak of games with goals by 100%. jacques played doggedly around the opposition net while sebastien, having been on hiatus from the rink for years, made up for lost time by racking up his own hat trick.
highlights from this month's comic order:
- mouse guard #1 - a fantasy where there is a guild of mice who patrol and protect the trade routes between far-flung mouse colonies, presumably from humans and other predators
- crying freeman v.1- kazuo koike and ryoichi ikegami - i already have a few volumes of this classic series about an assassin who cries when he kills, but my pull file has gotten so meagre that i decided to splurge on these new japanese format editions.
- sam and twitch - the bendis tpb v.1
- the portent - some interesting artwork by a swedish illustrator, with characters along the lines of naifeh's plus lots of haunting landscapes
- how to self-publish comics #1 - while i don't have any plans on publishing any comics of my own, an understanding of how it's done successfully might be adapted to other pursuits
- the white dragon dvd - featuring the lovely cecilia cheung !
riffling in the face of defeat
permalink Thursday, 15DEC2005:despite all of my pre-game bluster, i was soundly trounced by anna and jillian tonight at scrabble at the 'adult' table, while odile swamped joanne and olivia at the 'kids' table. still, i'm happy that i at least scored 160, seeing as i never got to play more than 3 tiles on any of my turns. i think i played 24 tiles in all - pretty gruesome.
afterwards, we had 1.5 rounds of cranium until we decided that the humming was the best part and began to riff on metal and 80's boy bands. anna then proceeded to wow us with her prowess on guitar, singing some of her original songs and impressing me with her vibrant singing voice.
good news today was the arrival of my poker chips in the mail. i practiced riffling the chips all day at the office and all evening at scrabble (to the dismay of the other players), but by the end of the evening, i was able to stack 6 chips pretty consistently. this was excellent timing as an announcement was sent out this afternoon notifying me that the latest poker tourney at todd's would take place friday (tomorrow) evening. i can't wait !
hubris puts me in my place again
permalink Friday, 16DEC2005:uploaded my latest mix 'running out of rainchecks' today. i was working on a different mix and took a break to start this as a quick one-off intended to poke fun at a friend who has trouble keeping her busy schedule straight. however, once i started demo-ing tracks, a bunch of other themes bubbled up to make themselves heard and i ended up spending way more time on this mix than i had anticipated. while the initial playlist was mostly about wisftul disappointment, an overlay emerged about a relationship that never really gels, where for one reason or another, a good time for one party is a bad time for the other. a train motif also charged its way into the mix, along with a disturbing sense of up and down moodiness, perhaps emulating the feeling of a loss of control brought about by our too-hectic lives.
got all hyped up about tonight's poker tourney. i told myself that i would be patient and disciplined, showing off my new poker shirt. i brought some samples of my new chips to keep my hands occupied and a few copies of my tracking spreadsheet to make notes of each hand so i could keep my mind busy with analysis whenever i was out of a hand.
however, it was all for naught as, on the 5th hand of the matchup, i found myself looking down on pocket rockets. i raised from the small blind, driving everyone out except for todd who called and darryl who raised again. i called that and we saw the flop of 8h Qh 7d. i checked my pocket pair, intending to raise whoever bet. well, todd was game and threw in 75 which darryl quickly called. i paused and threw in 300 to drive out anyone drawing for better. todd called and darryl folded.
now, when the turn came 8c, i should have slowed down, checked my 2 pair and let todd bet to give myself a chance to figure out what he had. the fact that todd had called 300 on only the 5th hand should have signalled something to me, but i was so caught up in winning the hand that i forgot that i was there to win the tourney. i bet another 200 which todd raised. that should have been the final wake-up call for me but instead i went all-in and was still clueless when todd called that bet as well.
well, todd also had himself a pocket pair, 7s and 7c, giving him a full boat to bust my aces. starting with 1000 in chips, i bet 970 on the 5th hand and was out first of 9. how embarassing ! vinnie followed me to the sidelines, with peter and nik going out in turn. vinnie and i played a heads up round of dealer's choice. i made the mistake of calling 'vinnie's game' and watched as he soundly trounced me with an A-2-4. when vinnie called that game again later, i fold out and he shows me ANOTHER A-2-4. next time that game gets called, i'm just going to fold after the ante. we even played 'go fish', throwing in a nickel for every pair made and he beat me 14-12 after he dumped his hand with only 2 cards left in the kitty. however, i was finally able to prevail and he hightailed it to the legion.
the 5 remaining players went for an extended period of time before spencer busted marc, darryl busted patrick and todd busted darryl's pocket rockets. at 12:30, spencer and todd went heads up while the rest of us wandered over to the legion lineup. after waiting for 10 minutes, i decided that i had inhaled enough second-hand smoke for the night and decided to head home to submerge my miseries by continuing to read neil gaiman's 'anansi boys', a book that reinforces the idea that misery loves company.
my limitations reveal themselves
permalink Saturday, 17DEC2005:for the third day in a row, i have been starkly reminded of my limitations. after joe woke me up with a phone call early in the afternoon to announce that he had figured out how i was to be paid for my snowmobile, i went outside to prep the machine. however, one of the locks used to fasten the chain around one of the building's pilings would not accept the proffered key and we ended up dunking it in a vat of boiled water before realizing that we were using the wrong key. so much for common sense.
however, the worst was when i tried to start up the machine and couldn't even get the headlights to blink on with each pull of the ripcord. what's the point of owning a vehicle that you can't even get started ? we ended up having to call joe's co-purchaser to give it a whirl and he had the machine revving in less than 2 minutes. i guess i'm just not cut out to be a motor vehicle owner, so any thoughts of picking up a moped on my return to the south are hereby banished.
i capped that exhausting afternoon with a nap before picking up some deep fried wontons from the nav to contribute to marjorey's seasonal holiday party. i gorged myself on wings, meatballs and curry chicken roll-ups. i had brought along my new chips to show off and managed to interest a few people in a demo of texas hold'em. one thing led to another and soon we had a 4-way game (just for chips, of course).
mildred surprised nearly everyone as she turned out to be the shark of the table. jim, the erstwhile pro, found himself out of the game when her trip tens trumped his top 2 pair. krystina also showed notable ability, taking me out early on after i took an ill-timed run at her. this just confirms that ageless adage, 'those who can't do, teach' ;)
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