Category: Entertainment

Life’s a Struggle

I came across a Taiwanese rapper last year (宋岳庭, Shawn Soong). He died at the prime age of 23 as his music was just beginning to take shape. I should also mention that his music was only discovered after he died of cancer. The lyrics are blunt, raw, dark and reveals a side of life that popular Taiwanese pop’s lack of sophistication can’t compare. The topics are so sophisticated that the rest of the Taiwanese music industry seem like a big joke compared to his most acclaimed single “Life’s a Struggle”.

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War of the Worlds

I joined PeerFlix a couple of weeks ago mainly to get rid of DVDs I regretted getting, and hopefully, I can exchange them with something I wish I’d gotten. Against my better judgement, though, I got “War of the Worlds“. I read reviews and they all said the movie sucked. But I had to see it for myself.

What a mistake.

The movie sucked…

Well, coming from a special effects and 3D background, I have to give it to Steven that the effects are great in the movie. But the plot, story, logic, ending… sucked, sucked, sucked and sucked. I think I am going to avoid Steven Spielberg films until he can remove that sappiness from his ass and starts making movies with decent plots and endings. “A.I.” suffered the same fate when he got too sappy with the ending. The movie could have ended and stayed decent when David gets trapped at the bottom of the ocean. But NO, Steven has to reunite David with his mommy for 24 hours and kill her off for good using Alien technology.

Now I just got to get the rest of the movies on my list, including “Sign with your Baby Training Video“.

Speaking of movies, Grace and I watched “PTU” (Police Tactical Unit) again the other night. It’s easily among the best of the best Hong Kong films, especially those with the Hong Kong police force as their underlying themes. Johnnie To never disappoints. Even crappy scripts can turn into gold with his magical directorship. While we are on the topic of Hong Kong films, “Infernal Affairs” (more about it here) is also an excellent movie though its subsequent sequel and prequel weren’t quite as tightly written and directed. Like all good movies, prequels and sequels never live up to the excellence of the original release of the film (with the obvious exception of “Lord of the Rings. But then that trilogy doesn’t really count because Peter Jackson cheated by making all three movies in one go with creative editing). Yet others will say that the “Godfather Trilogy (more here) should also be excluded. But I say, “whatever, dude”. To see an A-Z list of trilogies Hollywood ever made, find them here.

Self-portrait Over the Years

Thanks to Jason’s blog entry on this time-waster South Park self-portrait site, I found myself remembering the various versions of myself over the years…

Days of Innocence (High school)
Self portrait: high school

Days of Freedom (College)
Self portrait: college

Working Life (New York)
Self portrait: working life

Jobless Life (California)
Self portrait: Jobless

Grace’s Mental Image of the Ideal Me (Next life)
Self portrait: ideal

What Happens If I Can’t Get A Job (Hello, Defenseless Taiwanese Military)
Self portrait: army

Friends

After more than 15 email correspondence between the Malaysian/Indonesian gang, everybody finally settled on meeting at Michelle’s apartment on Friday night for hot pot. Bryan behaved exceptionally well, sleeping through most of the night, while the adults dined and wined.

We talked a lot about the troubles Chee-hoi and Widodo went through with “cat problems” around their houses. They complained that neighborhood cats refuse to stay away from their yards with occasional acts of retaliation, especially with Chee-hoi’s back yard. Then Widodo proudlly shared his money-saving tricks on his pool (one of the only TWO in the entire neighborhood, according to Google Earth). I never knew pools can take so much to maintain! Kind of takes the romance of owning a pool knowing all that insider knowledge.

On Saturday, Yi-sheng, an old friend from high school called to see what we were doing. So we decided to get out of the house and show him this Thai noodle place in San Francisco we love so much. We just love Thai food!

Sunday afternoon, we went over to visit Jason and Alicia, good friends I met from college, over at Menlo Park. Jason made us some really nice home-made Japanese dishes. The visit also gave me a new insight to Jason and Alicia’s past through a series of albums (including a scrap book that Jason’s mom made of his baby years). According to Jason’s mom, he liked Kung-fu when he was four years old. Maybe it’s a good thing he didn’t really follow through with it. At over 6-ft tall, he could easily be a killing machine.

We also saw Jason and Alicia’s two cats (finally). It was amazing to see how their cats are so totally fine with having leash put on them when going out for a walk. It was also funny to see how cats just can’t tolerate baby cries (ours eventually got used to it after a couple of months). But Bryan did OK today. We went through three diapers and a bottle of formula during the visit. Jason blogged about our visit soon after we left. He has a couple of tight shots of Bryan. It was very nice to just talk to friends without other distractions in the way.

It was nice to be out of the house to get some fresh air.

CG Wonders

One of the reasons I didn’t go into the CG/visual effects industry was because of its intense and long work hours. And quite frankly, I was already getting more into systems administration stuff than actually creating 3D models or texture maps. But sometimes I do wish I was still in the creative industry, especially after sites like this sprouts all over the place. The forums showcase some of the greatest CG works I have ever seen.

But I still don’t miss setting up or skinning a skeleton. And I don’t miss having to redo work for every other new version of Maya (backward incompatibility).

Katrina Humor

Katrina Humor

翻譯:
左邊路人甲: “你是說照片裡的直升機不是在救水災難民?”
右邊路人乙: “你想太多了。他們正在把一個黑人居民丟回洪水裡面啦!”
(此圖隱喻著美國白宮和州政府當局對美國窮困及低收入黑人在這次災難反應緩慢的醜聞。一班人認為, 由布希白宮代表的右派體系對窮困及低收入黑人都是以睜一隻眼, 閉一隻眼的態度去處理。)

via [Mister Snitch]

Over There

NPR aired an interview with Steven Bochco, the executive producer of a new show on FX, “Over There“. The interview got me interested enough to want to at least check out the show.

Days later, I’d completely forgotten about the interview, but somehow I stumbled upon the show anyway one night. It was the rerun of the premiere. The show follows the lives of a small combat unit in Iraq. Though none of actors in the series are well known, their acting is fantastic. The show focuses on the human aspects of the war from the perspectives of the soldiers as well as their family members. Al though the show takes no political stance on the war, the intense story telling and “Saving Private Ryan” type filming of combats take the audience on a roller coaster ride they grow more and more attached to the soldiers.

All I have to say is, it sucks to be in a war, combat or anything that involves killing or to be killed. I wonder had George W. Bush been in Vietnam instead of hiding in Texas behind his daddy’s political might, would he have waged the wars as he did?

What a jackass.

PSP Porn

I guess it’s only a matter of time before everything else also turns into portable porn machines (via Tokyopia).

PSP Porn

But this is not the only thing “sexy” in the news. The Feds have been onto the “GTA: San Andreas” case for a couple of weeks now. To serve those of you who actually follow my blog, a video can be found at here along with mods.

GTA San Andreas Hot Coffee screenshot

Like I said, everything is going porn these days. A quick Google revealed a site that has everything to turn your game consoles into little pornertainment centers.