leafing through

Last Friday, I went to the Smithsonian Freer Gallery to watch House of Fury.  They’re playing a few movies for a week or so to celebrate their annual Hong Kong Film Festival.  Good movie.  The audience laughed several times and applauded at the end.  Here’s the Smithsonian website synopsis:

A throwback to the glory days of Hong Kong’s fun, freewheeling action movies, Stephen Fung’s film stars Anthony Wong as a boring dad who embarrasses his kids with endless tales of his adventures as a secret agent. His children have to save him when he is kidnapped, and he gets to prove he is not so boring after all. Film writer Grady Hendrix calls it a “hard-hitting, emotionally alive, shamelessly mainstream crowd pleaser.” 2005 / 102 min.

On Saturday, I went to this donut shop called Fractured Prune.  Weird name for a donut shop since prunes are healthy and donuts are the opposite.  I had the French Toast one and it was yummy!  Warm and chewy cake donut.  Not like Krispy Kremes which for some reason I never liked much. 

I just witnessed a lady in our office (new hire) rinsing the conical boob latch pieces of her breast pumps in the kitchen sink and then stick them in the microwave. I’m mildly disturbed and squeamed out. Am I over-reacting? I didn’t say anything to her or nothing, except to introduce myself. I don’t remember her name now though because I was only thinking that there’s breast pumping equipment in the microwave.

Kinda’ sad but good.  Zhang Ziyi plays 3 generations of women in a family, the grandmother, mother, child.  Grandmother becomes an actress, gets pregnant and abandoned by the guy who knocked her up.  She moves home to live with her mother and raise her daughter.  Daughter grows up and meets a nice guy, they get married, she’s infertile so they adopt a daughter.  This grand-daughter grows up to marry a guy who knocks her up then abandons her.

The story has a happy ending because in the end, these women (the grandmother and the granddaughter) live optimistically.  They’re not bummed out by the dudes. 

Popcorn and potato chips (Ruffles) make sad movies not so sad. 

To offset my couch potato tendencies, I went out for a bike ride last night.  I’m trying to practice getting off the bike the proper way as my coworker explained it to me.  Step forward from the seat and land on one leg propping yourself up.  Right on.

The mumps and rubella titers came back A-OK. The measles: equivocable. Is that even a word!? I didn’t make it up, that’s what the nurse practitioner said on the phone, only she stumbled over it like it was some kind of tongue twister. I felt like telling her if she can’t say equivocal, it doesn’t count so I’m just going to pretend I didn’t really understand a lick of it.  La la la, no comprendo… So I got a booster yesterday and it stung like a bee. But I’m not sore like the last time unusually. Was it the arm stretches I did beforehand? Or maybe the lady was smart and stuck me somewhere it wasn’t going to be sore. She told me to put my hand on my hips then I noticed her feeling around my arm like she was looking for some valley in my rippling bicep and tricep. I’m not really sure since I wasn’t looking at any of it.

Man Cheng Jin Dai Huang Jing Jia (The capital city is filled with people wearing golden armors in semi-literal translation) – doesn’t Curse of the Golden Flower sound sort of goofy? I guess if he wanted to title the film as a summation of the storyline a la Four Weddings and a Funeral, he could’ve called it “Poison Your Wife, Everybody Dies in a Brutal Fashion.”

The latest Zhang Yimou film is yet another miss. It’s still the fluffy eye candy with very little filling. Jay Chou is not an actor, he’s a singer and he ought to stick to singing, at least until he gets some acting lessons. In the meantime, don’t put him in films next to Gong Li and Chow Yunfat. I cringed when he talked. He’s hot though, but that follows the same vein of style over substance.

Quick summary of the film: A Tang Dynasty emperor is slowly poisoning his wife. He can’t kill her quickly because he achieved his career status with the help of his wife, namely by marrying her. I guess her family would be pretty ticked off if he killed her. Well, she gets fed up with the slow agonizing death and decides to get her son to force her husband to abdicate. It turns into a big puddle of blood. The end.

Clearly, I don’t like the gratuitous gore which is why I’m in such a funky mood writing this review. I’m all jittery and spastic from watching so much violence. I shouldn’t have watched it the second time around huh? Which brings me back to the review, obviously if I really hated it, I wouldn’t have watched it twice. Something about this movie (the pretty scenes?, Jay Chou’s pretty face?, Chow Yunfat’s pretty face?) drew me to it.

An article in yesterday’s WashPost talks about a 32 year old man who buys a Hummer and, because it’s too big to fit in his garage, leaves it outside. Five days later, it’s vandalized by enviro-nuts who smashed the windows, slit the tires, and scratched “FOR THE ENVIRON” into the body.

Vandalism is bad. Hummers are bad. I don’t feel bad. I respect a person’s right to live how they want to live as long as it doesn’t hurt other people. When a kid is suffering from smog-related asthma, don’t tell me it’s your right to drive a Hummer because you can. We all pay for your stupid Hummer, stupid.

There’s one thing I feel bad about this whole thing and that’s when he gets his tank fixed, it’s going to generate more waste. The glass, paint job, new tires… bummer. The other thing that has me concerned is where do you draw the line? Are people who drive Escalades next? What about a soccer-mom who uses her SUV as a veritable bus? Sometimes there’s a need. And fighting the Hummer using this guerrilla tactic just feels wrong. $10/gal gas might do the trick though.

I really really want to visit China one of these days. Especially since the Great Wall was recently picked as one of the new Wonders of the World. Well, we all knew the wall was something special when we could see it all the way from the moon. I didn’t need some organization to tell me how great it is to figure that out. Those Huns were something else, I tell ya. Fighting makes people acheive great things. Snickers, M&Ms, highways… I’m getting sidetracked. Besides, there are lots of other things I want to see there like the Forbidden City, the terra cotta army, Tang Dynasty’s (and China’s) only female emperor’s wordless monument.

Lately, I’ve been having some thoughts about the idea of visiting. There was a recent bust on a pork bun maker in China who made his buns with cardboard. He soaked it in caustic soda, chopped it up, added flavoring and fat and served it up hot ‘n fresh. The guy wouldn’t eat the stuff himself. Can’t blame him, cardboard doesn’t seem all that appetizing to me.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEZu7u4kHqY]

You don’t need to understand Chinese to see what they’re doing. He said it’s 60% cardboard, 40% fat.

But that’s just a chip off the ol’ rotten block that’s going on there. And yeah, the three words ‘Made in China’ just got a bit scarier. Maybe next year…

Also, I’m well aware of the spinach e. coli mishap that happened last year right here in our good nation. I know there are rats running amok in fast food joints all around our nations capital. The FDA allows a certain percentage of rat droppings in peanut butter even. Heck, the White House mess hall is a veritable vermin resort.  No, not that vermin, the other vermin.  However, the difference between this and that is that the melamine in the pet food, the diethylene glycol (anti-freeze ingredient) in the toothpaste, were deliberately put in there. Being unsanitary is neglectful and inexcusable. Being deliberate is something entirely different. The bun guy wasn’t shy about showing this person around telling him how he did it. He was unabashed about the whole thing. There’s just something wrong with that blase mentality that it’s okay to hurt people for a buck. I’d be very worried if Skippy started putting rat droppings in the peanut butter to fill up the jar.

I came out of work to find this!

All these blessings on my car. Must’ve parked under a line of bird nests. It was all over the roof, hood, and windshield. I know better next time. Was sort of hoping it’d rain hard on the way home because I heard thunder, the air was dense, and clouds dark and heavy, but nada. Will have to get it cleaned up the other way.

I rode up and down my neighborhood streets Saturday night. The place is usually pretty quiet, especially at night, but every once in a while a car goes by. Sometimes I’d get nervous and try to get off my bike on the side of the street to let them pass and apparently my skills are still not up to snuff in that area. A coupla’ cars stopped to make sure I wasn’t going to fall on their car or something crazy like that. One lady asked if I was alright. Heh, nice folks. I clearly still need to work on that getting off the bicycle gracefully thing. I think I look like I’m semi-tumbling off because I’m semi-tumbling off.

I got a tetanus shot today. They suck. Whine, complain, carry on, etc. Then I got a blood test, measles and mumps titer to see if I might need the MMR. So I might need another shot. Great. The suckage continues. When are they going to come out with the hypospray for the general public?? Come on, it’s the 21st Century!! Get with it people.