Please go away

Saw these at a store today, countdown to Bush's last day in office:

I love 'em but refuse to let Bush influence what I will waste money on.

Movies, no spoilers

We got a movie pass again. It is a 2-week free trial at Blockbuster that's like an in-store and online combo thing that's just a crazy good deal, which only exists because obviously Blockbuster wants to stop people from using their nemesis Netflix any way they can, which in this case is just give away movie rentals. (For anyone interested, here's the deal. They send you movies and you send them back, and you can have three at a time. But that's not all! Each mailed movie can be returned in-store in exchange for an in-store movie, which does NOT count toward your three-movie maximum. Moreover, they give you one free in-store rental coupon. Of course, per Blockbuster's new-ish policy, no late fees (I'm not gonna go into the catch). All of this free for two weeks. In addition, supposedly you can keep getting the two-week free trial over and over again and no one cares.)

OK I didn't mean for that to be that long. Anyway, here is what we've rented: Children of Men, Night at the Museum, Notes on a Scandal, Wordplay, Deja Vu, Borat, Munich, Blood Diamond, A Scanner Darkly, The Last King of Scotland, Superman Returns, An Inconvenient Truth, Rocky Balboa. The last four of which have yet to be watched, and I've got a thing or two to say about each... which I won't do here... but so far all have been pretty good to great, except Borat, which I found extremely disturbing, excruciating to watch, and by the way, those were all unknowing/innocent people except for Pamela Anderson, so it really sucks for them. I would recommend people not see Borat. Even if you are curious, it's not worth knowing how dispicable it is. Secondly, Deja Vu has a huge plot hole! If you don't think about it TOO hard (because honestly you have to think about it pretty hard to sort out the plot and its hole), it's okay to watch. But my husband, being some mathematic/logic psychotic person, put the plot hole together right away, which makes Deja Vu the dumbest movie of 2006. Otherwise, I enjoyed or appreciated all the others very much, although none of them are for repeated viewing, as they are mostly hard to watch or very serious.

Even amidst our two-week rental extravaganza, we made time to see the very wonderful Waitress, which I must rave about so anyone reading this will be nudged to see it. Sadly, it is only in 116 theaters, but one of those theaters is Century in Evanston--so I'm not sad! I would probably see any film that has Nathan Fillion, and I sorta love Keri Russell after her small role in M:I 3, but it is also critically beloved, with a 89% tomatometer rating on rottentomatoes. It will make you smile in an Amelie kind of way, except it's not at all in utopia.

Goodbye Gilmores

Last night was the Gilmore Girls series finale. It was sad and extremely heartfelt. It ended with Rory getting a job and leaving, which makes total sense that the show would end when Rory graduates and leaves forever. Loralei and Luke were left open-ended. And the last shot was really sad but the absolute perfect ending. It's not exactly appropriate to mourn a TV show, but for Gilmore Girls fans, it is something to be mourned--at least for a short while. I feel like crying just writing this, which is something only its loyal viewers would understand. We will miss the Gilmores, Stars Hollow, it's inhabitants, and the hour we spent once a week in their lives.

Heroes

Tonight's Heroes episode has been my favorite so far. Problem is, I think my husband has a crush on Peter Petrelli (played by Milo Ventimiglia). Of course I am way ahead of him, since I've been crushing on Jess in Gilmore Girls (played by the same) since the turn of the century. Peter Petrelli is almost TOO cool and amazing, it's sickeningly sweet:

Weekend

Fri: Vietnamese dinner in Argyle, episode of Firefly

Sat: Brunch at Sola, Lincoln Park Zoo, dinner in Chinatown

Sun: Tennis

Lincoln Park Zoo (it's free!) has a very cool greenhouse/plant area. This is our second visit, the last time was two years ago right before a huge controversy/scandal when elephants died. Animals in zoos will always be controversial, but plants are equally fun to look at and do not carry controversy. These are da bomb:

And lamas are da bomb. I would want a lama if I ever have acres:

Cool pic of my flowers in Tiffany

from Cecilia in NYC. There's nothing like this in Chicago. Love it.

SUV moment

I love peace and am trying to be a big person, trying to say It's okay I'll do fine, trying to say I can innovate, but it pisses me off that I have two new competitors who are not playing fair by ripping off others. My mind is consumed by how I am going to crush them. I mean, that's how any normal business owner would react, right? It's not me being malicious, this is just a normal reaction!

Dear Competitors:

First Competitor, your website is an obvious copy of mine. You know, some people try to be creative and take pride in their original work. Maybe you should try it, you'll know what I mean. People say imitation is the best compliment, but I am highly offended that you would flat-out rip me off! Honestly, if you changed your site to not resemble mine, I'd be cool with you. But now I'm sorry to tell you this pool is not big enough for two fish. I've got tricks up my sleeve.

Second Competitor, you are hogging all the ad space. You are entitled to that, because all it takes is $, but it is totally unethical of you to steal an image from another person's site. If it were from my site, I would hunt you down and bitch slap you for that. You can't take a simple picture yourself, you have to steal it from someone else? And your aggressive ad placement just screams inferiority complex.

Prepare to get crushed.

in a pressure cooker

It's insane how much I've learned about singing and being a performer in the past 8 months or so. I know this is hard to believe, but being a singer/musician is a lot like being an athlete:
I. Physical aspects
a) muscle memory--training your muscles to have an automatic response from repeatedly practicing the action. First you build the muscles, then they move automatically when required. In singers, these are mostly abdominal muscles and muscles around ur mouth/throat, which are not easy to control (when compared to the bicep, for example), and the movement/contraction should be almost involuntary.

b) stamina. My singing sucks if I haven't eaten, which is why I stockpile bananas. I know it's "just" singing, but it's so tiring... for example, a recital that is about an hour long is quite difficult for a singer.

II. Mental aspects
a) concentration--both athletes and singers have to be "in the zone" to perform well. There are all sorts of weird exercises to help them tune everything else out.
b) evil mental garbage--ever see the movie "Wimbledon"? Thinking you'll mess up, thinking you're not good enough, what ifs... affect performance. You know how just some days you can't filter through the garbage, whether you're working or eating or reading, etc?

Well right now I'm singing a very beautiful aria called the Bell Song, from Lakme. My last lesson did not go well, because I couldn't stop thinking about the People Who Owe Me Money.

I'M BACK!!!

I've been living a hermetic blog life for a while but OK I have stuff to say.

Let me start of with the issue of PEOPLE WHO OWE ME MONEY.

Dear People Who Owe Me an amount of money large enough to be the down payment on a house, as in, you large corporation that rakes in the bucks but has issues paying vendors in a timely manner: I love you, I really do, you gave me loads of business and have been very nice to me and loose with money the whole time... [edited out details] ...and for that, I thank you.

However, it is not cool for you to pay me 1 - 2 months after your very complex order has been successfully delivered--early, even--without a single problem. I know this is not an outrageous amount of time for most large companies, but I am small, and if I had the money you owe me, I can put it into a CD account, for example, which is why there is such a thing as "interest" that occurs as time passes, to make up for those hundreds of dollars in earnings lost.

Again, you are awesome, I would probably want to work for you if I had a 9-5 job, and your products are legendary, but, this is just not cool.

To anyone who's reading...
I highly recommend the series finale of some dumb 5-season show called "Alias." OK I sorta love that show. I (badly) stayed up unnecessarily late to rewatch the finale. Some scenes feel like Mission Impossible 3. The bad guy REALLY gets it. I mean, the worst thing that can happen to a bad guy who wants to take over the world. The ending is very bittersweet, which is exactly how a finale should be. Surprisingly, every character is accounted for in the end. I appreciated that the creators did not rush through the story to end the flailing series. As a bonus, both the series finale and series premiere have scenes in Hong Kong. I would also recommend the first 2 seasons, especially the series premiere. Have you noticed that Sydney cries in every single episode (and I mean, in all 5 seasons, that's more than 100 times--because sometimes she cries more than once)? Of course one of the premises that makes the series work is that Sydney is extremely emotional--a very emotional CIA double agent woman who saves the world with her once-estranged father, her ex-fiance who got married to someone else when he thought she was dead, and her ex-fiance's new wife (who turns out to be working with evil terrorists), her half-sister whom she didn't know existed, and at times, her ex-KGB mother whom she believed to be dead most of her life who killed her ex-fiance's father among many, and the bad guy who is also her half-sister's father. Drama ensues.

It doesn't sound like it, but I've been very busy! Until this moment, now I'm not very busy again. Yay.

I think I might be going crazy. My mind's having these images or stories flash in and out that I sometimes can't figure out are dreams or reality.

I have been very busy making a living ever since getting back from HK but can finally breathe as I shipped off the order yesterday, yay!! However, I was able to carve out time to see the best movie of the year in the opinion of the wong-ko household: PAN'S LABYRINTH. It is disturbing and depressing but oh so glorious. It's a movie that sticks with you. I am rooting for them for all their Oscar noms.

Too bad for the Departed, only got acting nom for Mark Wahlberg.

Hong Kong

Holiday in HK was fun. Got to see important people. It always gives me a lot to think about, which might not always be good... Some pics...

BEFORE the trip:

Me with major Christmas decorations and a sea of people in the background:
Jared fixing his hair:

At Florence's wedding:

Tuesday Syndrome

Tuesdays are i-hate-me days. I work my butt off practicing an aria about 100 times in a week, then go to my lesson and totally mess it up! Man, opera is freaking hard. There's everything technical, then there's emoting. I personally, humbly speaking, find it very hard to emote in a language I don't speak! It's too easy to forget what you're singing.

And my teacher totally coddles me! She is very unmean! But I still feel like crap.

On a different note, see an absolutely AMAZING Eponine here. "One more day all on my own! One more day with him not caring!" Original Broadway cast of Les Miserables. Kinda scary Marius and Cosette (why does Cosette have to wear the ugly black dress with lace collar BTW?). Everyone else is beyond brilliant. I've watched this video like 15 times.

Paris

My husband surprised me with a trip to Paris over thanksgiving so we went for 5 days!! It was fun. We went to see all the touristy stuff. France is so craaazy I could've taken a thousand pictures. Like all the ornamentation on the buildings, those boggle my mind. Fashion-wise, there was a huge trend of wearing your boots over your pants, I guess that's kind of an 80s comeback. And it is very strange, there are really no fat people in Paris. But I must say their subway is really disgusting; I've been spoiled by the MTR in HK.

Shot of the river:

A store window with a fancy castle:
PRINCESS MONONOKE!!! (At the Louvre):
Notre Dame:
Crepes:
At Versailles. Since we went in the winter, Versailles wasn't looking its best. This fountain was sooo cool though, the bottom tier has four merfolk (split-tail style, like the Starbucks logo), then cherub mer-kids above, then fish, then lobsters on top. HOW COOL:

Self-explanatory. I am thankful that a steady-handed tourist girl walked by at this moment:

I can't believe I watched 4 episodes of X-Files while folding and chatting tonight. I'm so happy I got to chat with Karen for a long time tonight :)

SCULLY: That was Detective Manners. He said they just found your bleeping UFO.

ok i didn't actually watch 2.5 of the episodes since I was chatting. Another one's starting right now but I am going to sleep!

hi world

For the past week, every day has seemed like a grind repeating itself over and over again. Every night when I turn my light out at (avg) 3:45am, I feel like where did the day go, this is just like yesterday. There's so much in my head that I wish to calm by reading or writing, neither of which I can do, because I've been doing a project that has me working from the moment I wake until the moment I turn the light out... but I'm shipping that order off today!

One exception was Casino Royale and Babel that we saw on Saturday.

Casino Royale: the new Bond is very... sinewy. If the world is a buffet and we are all food, the new Bond would be roasted prime rib. A yummy, juicy hunk of steak. The Bond girl (Eva Green) would be molton chocolate cake.

(Me: an out-of-season mango.)

Babel: remind me never to see another Babel/Traffic/Syriana type movie ever again. You know the ones--1) three separate stories that are connected, 2) involves children dying or in danger, 3) scenes that take place in the desert or Mexico or both in the case of Babel, 4) stars a cast member from "Ocean's 11", 5) moody cinematography and music and reality-style camera work, 6) and don't forget the political issues such as drug trafficking, oil, gun control, illegal immigration! OK I liked Syriana a lot. But these movies are so depressing and disturbing, I can't deal. I will stay away from any future movies that give off a Babel/Traffic/Syriana vibe.

Confession:

I LOVE "SPY GAME" (the movie)

I'm a dork

No wonder I'm a K(nock)O(ut) :P

Time's Op-Ed article last week I found very funny. It's about a study that shows people form opinions about other people in a 100-millisecond glance based on their faces, using a very low-level part of our brains. For example, Clinton looks like an "affable rascal" and Putin is "less gentle grandpa than live mink." The interesting question posed is to what extent do our personalities form our faces VS. our faces forming our personalities. Here is an excerpt (it's not on their website):

"Faciel symmetry appeals to us too. Dick Cheney's least trustworthy feature is easily his smile, a lopsided thing that makes him look as if half his face is pleased with something while the other half is paying bills....

The mingling of face and temperament raises the question of whether the two co-evolve or one produces the other. Was John Kerry's hangdog face responsible for his sodden campaigning? Did Richard Nixon grow his shadowy stubble, or did his shadowy stubble grow him? The British weekly New Scientist has touched on this, exploring what is known as nominative determinism--the common case of people whose names echo their jobs. There is a director of penal reform Frances Crook, the marine biologist Steven Haddock. American culture has been rife with such synchonicity--pitcher Rollie Fingers, Senator George McGovern. 'Are these whimsicalities of chance," Carl Jung once asked, "or the suggestive effects of the name?'

If name drives careers and faces drive personalities, we should have sympathy for politicians consigned by countenance to personalities they might not have chosen. As the midterm elections end and presidential hopefuls look ahead to 2008, there are perils for both the lovely and the unlovely. Those easy on the eye should take care not to overstate the point (MITT ROMNEY: MORE SYMMETRICAL THAN EVER!). Those with aesthetic hurdles should consider whther it's finally time for that eye lift or chin tuck...."

Recital

Today was the recital for my teacher's students. First off, it was in a house that had the most stunning entertaining area I'd ever seen; they obviously only bothered with the 2 living room areas, dining room, and kitchen; their bedrooms and basement was just so-so. It had a contemporary style with clean lines and spacious rooms and large beautiful wall art, huge ceiling-to-floor windows stretching and wrapping around the whole area. The room we sang in is made just for this type of thing (the homeowner's a huge opera fan), with a Steinway grand piano, friendly acoustics, hardwood floors, and light flooding in from the glass walls and skylights. OK I just had to start with that.

About 14 people sang (my teacher has 32 students though). My song went okay I guess. Well basically, every person who sang, I'd be like "OMG this person is SO GOOD." I was so focused on how good everyone else was, I don't really know how I did.

The order went like this: 2 ladies who aren't very "serious" singers went first, then 8 advanced students, then intermission, then 4 less-advanced students. I was in the "advanced" section, something that increased nervousness... and these people were freaking GOOD...

In the advanced section 1) there were 2 musical-theater girls abt 25 yrs old who were amazing show stoppers, just perfect and showy. I didn't really get to talk to them, but they sounded completely pro to me. One of them had been with my teacher since she was 10, which makes it 14 yrs with her, waa?

2) There were 4 opera men who were REALLY good, at least I though so! One of them is 27 and is my teacher's star student who's going pro soon. However, I was more blown away by a teenage tenor, who, unfortunately, went right before me.

3) And there was 1 opera girl and me. She was good. I guess it didn't blow me away. Dunno.

For the less advanced people, 2 of them were like 17-18 I guess, and I know one of them wants to apply to music school this yr, and they were yeah not very impressive. Although everyone COULD sing, just not all great, sorta like how everyone on America's Next Top Model could be a small-time model somewhere. Anyway, of the less advanced, one of them was 15, and she was sweet, and one was 12, and she was such a charmer, cute to the extreme, and a decent musical theater singer... actually, she is EXACTLY like the little girl in "You've Got Mail" (Tom's Hank's aunt) who sings "Tomorrow," remember? Anyway, she did three songs and finished with "I Feel Pretty." She nailed the "for I'm loved by a pretty wonderful boy!" Everyone died of her cuteness.