If you believe these kinds of things...

Life has been pretty crappy lately. With that conference I've got coming up and the talk I'm delivering during a lab visit....work has been biting my curvy ass for a while. While I was on the bus home, I read my zodiac in the s'Mx (its on the same page as the sudoku), and it said this...

A project gathers momentum and honest hard work pays off.
The benefits gained can be shared with the people around you
or re-invested for future growth
Your heart is currently in the right place.

If I were a superstitious girl, that'd be damn good news! But what do they mean by my heart is in the right place?

Speak of the devil!

Given yesterday's post....I will admit to being kinda amused by this...but what I find even more amusing are the comments.

Read on if you can handle the spelling and grammar! *shudder*

Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana

I am officially turning into one of those cranky old people. Certainly, age has brought combination of apathy and yearning for the good old days when it comes to children's entertainment. I remember when Hillary Duff started releasing music and I went *who the hell is that?* and then *who?* again when a younger cousin tried to explain the whole Lizzie Maguire thingy. Well it's being repeated again with the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus *juggernaut* but this time, I feel the urge to speak out.

Normally I don't give a rat's ass about whatever tw/eens are watching nowadays. But today I opened to a newspaper lifestyle supplement and the cover image was of Miley Cyrus. Again, I don't give a rat's as to whether she wants to be a good role model or whatever. What I'm raising issue is why the hell does this 15-yo look like she's 30?!

I couldn't be bothered making a scan of the cover but here's another photo that'll give you the gist. (Source)

The posing, the caked on makeup, the grooming...I don't remember what it was like to be 15, but I sure know I didn't look twice my age. The thing is, she doesn't even look like a child pretending to be an adult, she looks like an adult. Where has the juvenile facial softness gone? Is this really what teens are aspiring to nowadays? Something about this just strikes me as being incredibly wrong.

On the flip side, I wonder if she'll look like she's 50 in ten years' time or if she'll go through a Britney-style spiral.

argh!

I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth (yet), I've just been doing nothing worth writing about. Well that's not completely true, I've been preparing for a conference in the US (for which I leave next week) and for which I haven't finished my various presentations.

Here's my poster so far....


I dunno, even though I'm swinging around Euro-land again, I'm not feeling the same sense of excitement that I had for the Great Eurotrip 2007 and 2004. I'm sure that will change once I hit NYC and get some shopping under my belt.

I just don't understand....

no matter how much I think about it....why do people wear make up to the gym?

There was a girl with full-on raccoon eyes there today. Why bother?

Carmencita!

Well the opera pimp got her wish and we had a large crowd of people decided they wanted subscriptions this year. The first performance of the year was last night - opening night of Carmen in Melb.

Ah Carmen...it's got great songs but sometimes the characters just annoy me. At intermission I walked out growling about chicks who use their sex-appeal to get what they want and the weak-willed sucker guys who fall for it. Grrrrrr!!!!!! I suppose this is a good thing because it means I really got sucked into the whole deal. But then it has been pointed out to me that while Carmen flirts, its the guys who chase her - interesting. And it has been argued that there are indications that Don Jose is not the squeakiest clean of guys. No matter, an enjoyable night was had by all.


Highlights! Rosario La Spina may be a slightly portly Don Jose, but goddamn he has a beautiful voice! Especially his La fleur que tu m'avais jetee, it was just lovely. All the livestock on stage! There was a donkey, a chicken and a horse! When Escamillo rode out singing Votre toast! while seated on the back of that horse...I was just waiting for it to crack it during one of the rousing moments. Everytime it pawed the ground....and then to finish it off, the horse was brought out and did a curtsey at the curtain call!

Lowlights....hmmm, maybe this is being picky but some of the artists' pronunciation in the spoken bits need a bit of work. And some people complained that the ending was given away in the program notes. What do you expect from opera, a happy ending?!
(Picture source)

Becksillas

Well I found more pictures of man-love between Casillas and David Beckham.



Awww....and here's the full over the shoulder profile shot that has made girls around the dept go *ay carumba!*

¡Dios Que Hombre!

¡madre del dios! I can't believe I ever forgot this ad!!!


Did you spot the eye candy who burned his way into my memory? No, I'm not talking about David Beckham, I'm talking about the goalie, Iker Casillas! Sheet, I can't believe I forgot to add him to my eye candy hall of fame!!! And he falls perfectly into my age range!

Anyway, here are some more pics

Watch modelling
(source)

Just making sure you get the profile and eyes
(source)

And it's nice to see he enjoys horse rides as much as I do
(source)

I remember seeing a heap of the Casillas/Beckham man-love pics years ago but can't seem to find them. Oh well. Su ling, do you want to learn Spanish?!

Quiet weekend

No weddings, no concerts, no huge booze ups.

Just a lot of sleeping, tv, food, and laundry.

Life is good.

Stormy Weather

Well now. The weather here can get pretty crazy but yesterday it was nuts! Sitting at my desk, I could hear the wind squealing through the window like a crowd of primary school kids. And then the rain came...but because the wind had done it's business drains were clogged with leaves and branches so the streets were a bit flooded. It made walking to Brunswick st quite an athletic adventure as I had to juggle my bags and umbrella while gracefully dodging the giant puddles.

Then I got to uni today and saw this gum tree had gone and keeled right over on South Lawn!
Here's a poor quality photo from my phone.


And you can see it's wasn't a small one either. Nice.

Movie review - Be Kind, Rewind

Heheheh, if there's one word I can use to describe this film, it's *clever*. From the twisted mind of Michel Gondry who brought us the screw job Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind*, BKR is a fun film, especially for buffs.

Mike (Mos Def) works in a failing video store in Passaic NJ, that only rents out VHS tapes. His friend Jerry (Jack Black) believes that the powerstation nearby is messing with his brain. When the store owner (Danny Glover) leaves the shop in Mike's hands, Jerry accidentally wipes all the tapes (he got magnetised in an attempt to sabotage the powerstation). When Mia Farrow requests Ghostbusters, and Mike is unable to source a VHS copy of it, he and Jerry decide to re-make the film themselves. As more customers request more films, they cook up a scheme to charge their increasing number of customers to remake - or *swede* because the films come from Sweden - their favourite films, and use the funds to restore the shop and town to glory.

Like other Gondry films, I can see this polarising viewers. On one hand, a lot of the cleverness of the movie derives from the visual jokes that come out of Mike and Jerry's attempts to recreate the movies requested by their customers. The low-techiness of the *special effects* to recreate the scenes is both hilarious and ingenious. On the other hand, if you haven't seen those movies, you probably wouldn't get why it's so clever. It also didn't show as much *sweding* as some viewers may want. It runs out of steam a bit when the movie turns away from the ridiculous and towards drawing the community together, and having read other people's thoughts...I do have to agree that while it is very well acted, there is pretty much no character development.

The movie also raises a lot of issues that it doesn't resolve such as conglomerates vs. the little people, gentrification, racial stuff, hell, even whether the community are successful in their attempt to save the shop is left ambiguous. I suspect that the answer we're supposed to come to the conclusion that the store was demolished, but the creation of the Fats Waller *documentary* drew the people of the Passaic together, which is a far greater reward (yes, a bit mushy here). This may frustrate some people, but I like that - them not having to spell out everything for the audience.

Anyway, I really enjoyed it. Pooey thought it could have done better.
7-8/10 (5-6/10 from Pooey)

*Bonus!* For people who would like to see the sweded movies, the BKR people have sweded their own version of youtube and stuck the movies at http://www.bekindmovie.com/youtube.html
Enjoy!

Maroon5 concert or how Adam Levine made sexy eye contact with me...

... and then admitted it was part of the act but that it was weird to do it here because there were a lot of guys in the audience.

Bloody hell, what have I been doing for the last week? There was a lot of eating and working and not much time for blogging :( The weekend was pretty full-on too, kicking off with (longer than I expected) drinks on Friday with the PhDs and then Pooey and Spuey while they were still in town, before kicking onto the Raymanda Wedding on Saturday and then the Maroon5 concert with Dr. Nance.

Anyway, she managed to get us tickets that allowed us to be present at the sound check. We believe something went very wrong here because it was held up by almost an hour and the reps admitted things were a little NQR. This showed because when we met the band they did seem a little cranky, with Adam at one point even decribing the sound as *brittle*. But they were still gracious enough to take their photos with us. While I went through and shook hands with all of them, Dr. N was engaged in convo with Mickey and Jesse (who are really nice) for a while to the point that when their rep said it was time to take the photo, she just grabbed me even though I was trying to insinuate myself into their hug line.

Us blocking Matt

Anyway, there were two official supporting acts, Brandi Carlisle (who I've never heard of but did a nice rendition of Radiohead's Creep) and OneRepublic (who we have all heard of now). Oh, Dr. N managed to get us front row centre seats so they really were that close in our pictures

Adam doing his thing.

Dr. N's new favourite, Mickey.

Jesse at the keys

The audience putting their mobile phones up for *Won't go home without you*

Video of most of *She will be loved* (sound quality not great)

If I had to complain, I'd say the show was a little short, about 1.25 - 1.5 hours? Where was *Sweetest Goodbye* or *Must Get Out*? Ah well. I still had hella fun and we sang our way back to her place to crash!

SETLIST

Little Of Your Time
Makes Me Wonder
Harder To Breathe
The Sun
Can't Stop
Secret / In The Air Tonight
Shiver
Wake Up Call
Sunday Morning
Won't Go Home Without You
This Love

-Encore
If I Never See Your Face Again
She Will Be Loved

Nobu, do I rate it?

In short, no. Quite frankly, given what we paid ($90/each) and had been led to expect from an international chain from a celebrity chef, it was sorely lacking. Here's the breakdown.

1. Food. I know Nobu is a fusion between Japanese and Peruvian in an attempt to please the Western palate, but out of the six dishes (+ dessert) we had, we all agreed that we could have gotten the sashimi, salad, vegetarian tempura, and dessert at any old jap cafe at similar quality and much cheaper. I do rate the creamy chili snow crab, the beef special and the cod but it has been pointed out that they weren't exactly ground-breaking. I felt particularly ripped off with my dessert which was described as a chocolate bento. A bento has compartments which are filled with different things. My *bento* had only a chocolate pudding and green tea ice cream. I found it amusing when I just looked up Nobu on wiki and found that the Iron Chef judge rated it a 10/100 for food. This then brings me to....

2. Service. That same judge rated it 90/100 for service. I disagree. I don't know if it was simply different restaurants give different levels of service or the staff took one look at us and thought we wouldn't notice, but for someplace that is supposed to have a bit of cachet, I did not walk out feeling like a princess. No siree, it was no Le Gavroche. Staff had to be waved down, they questioned our ability to order, hell, we even saw them just standing around talking to each other. While no one was flat out rude, sometimes we did get the impression that they questioned our intelligence. Not a good way to treat one doctor, three soon to be doctors, one optom and someone who's job is hush-hush.

3. Decor. Okay, maybe I'm starting to get petty but I would have thought that a high-end jap restaurant would use lacquered chopsticks instead of the disposable bamboo ones in paper wrapper. And the table seemed a bit high. That also brings me back to my bento. I talked to a japanese collegue at work and he said while one compartment boxes are still technically *bento*, he would say that if someone was describing something to him as 'bento', he'd expect five different compartments. Yeah.

So as you can probably tell, I don't rate Nobu. I'd rather spend that $90 to fly to Sydney and eat Menya.

Movie review - Horton Hears A Who!

Strange. I was (and still am) a pretty nerdy kid. I read a lot of books and went through a whole Dr. Seuss period...but I don't recall ever reading this one. *shrug* Regardless, I don't you need to be a nerdy kiddie book reader at all to enjoy Horton!

One day, a little speck is blown off a flower, flying through the jungle of Noob. As it goes flying past Horton the Elephant (Jim Carrey), he can hear a little cry come from it. Turns out the speck is really the entire world - where the Whos of Whoville live. The Mayor of Whoville (Steve Carell) realises the implications of what this would mean for his civilisation (and his 96 daughters and one son) and convinces Horton that he needs to place the speck somewhere safe. Being the all-round nice guy that he is, Horton takes this task on with alacrity. However, Sour Kangaroo (Carol Burnett) does not appreciate Horton's belief in *imaginative* worlds, and conspires to stop him.
This film is a lot better than the last Dr. Seuss adaptation and it's all down to the writing and animation. I know those books aren't long enough to make a two minute movie, much less a two hour one, but at no point did I sit there and think *padding!* The humour is spot-on with no real jokes that will only appeal to certain members of the audience, but it's also very touching with a particularly scene of Horton in a cloverfield that Pooey admitted afterwards made her feel really sad!

However, the real star of the show is the animation. It is absolutely BEAUTIFUL. The attention to detail, the colours, the characters' facial expressions, and particularly the FUR are just gorgeous. And everything about it just screams *Seuss*. You can usually spot an artist's particular style and Seuss is very distinctive. The CGI (and one traditional segment) faithfully replicates Seuss in a way that live action NEVER can. And there's also an anime-segment to represent Horton's imagination that is bloody hilarious.

I'll admit, I wasn't too keen on seeing this movie because the trailer that had Horton dancing around to Sir Mixx-a-lot's *I like big butts* did not appeal. I was soooooo wrong. It's goofy, it's funny, it's lovely. Go see this movie. You'd have to be a Sour Kangaroo to not like it too.
(Ooh, Seuss-ian line!)
8/10
(Photos from rottentomatoes.com)

Hangin' with the skanks and Kanye

Woah-ho ho!!! Well I predicted that last night's activities would provide one heckuva blogging topic, and boy howdy, it delivered! Me and various members of the Circle (Grand Empress + T, Kahunes, Jessabella + Leighbee, Moans, Jade, Peishapan, and Pooey) headed down the Southbank to hang with kids.

First things first, Pooey pokkai'd on Fri night so there was a big question mark as to whether she was going to skank up, but she pulled through and was therefore able to see these shockers in person....

The slutty Easter Bunny (I had to photoshop the shadows out of this but I assure you, I'm not good enough to photoshop her pants out)

The walking mirrorball

For some reason, there were also a lot of hens around - I don't know, I doubt that I'd celebrate my last few days of freedom from indentured servitude by hanging out with kids but hey, however you get your kicks.

But the real prizewinner of the night was some guy who we nicknamed Kanye because he was wearing those 'sunglasses' Kanye West has been wearing for his performances and also in his clip for *Stronger*.

(I originally thought they were from D&G - because they're the crazy kind of things I'd expect Domenico and Stefano to make - but I was wrong, they're from Jeremy Scott. Photo source)

Now, I won't say Kanye looks good in them but he manages to pull them off because he's got the right attitude to look so-so in something so ridiculous. KANYE LAST NIGHT JUST LOOKED STUPID. It brought us many laughs.

The night was rounded out with a trip to PPs where me and Moans proceded to eat Canadian Pancakes - 2 pancakes (with butter), two fried eggs, bacon, banana, and pineapple. I'm not sure where the banana and pineapple and *Canadian* come together, but it was enough to feed a lumberjack!And here's Pooey with her Swiss Mountain Malt. Nums all round!

General update

There hasn't been much to write about this past week. I mean, it is a loooooooooooong weekend for Easter. The only really significant thing that's happened is the influx of The Circle back into Melbourne. This has meant I've ingested a larger than normal quantity of alcohol compared to what has become my normal.

Right now the Grand Empress is trying to convince me to go asian night clubbing with her....hopefully this will result in a highly amusing entry within the next few days!

Movie review - The Other Boleyn Girl

Two sisters, once best friends, compete for the love and affection of one man. Power, money, sex politics and...err....religion....all come together in the movie based on the *historical fiction* book of the same name by Phillipa Gregory (I don't care what you say, Lydia, it still sounds like a romance to me!). Another retelling of how Henry VIII changed the face of England to get his fat hands on Anne Boleyn. Great historical saga or an opportunity for heaving bosoms in low cut dresses?

I won't go into the real historical events...the story presented to us are that the Boleyn family are a poor-ish relation branch associated with the Duke of Norfolk. Now that Queen Katherine (of Aragon) can no longer bear King Henry (Eric Bana) a male heir, the Duke schemes to pimp out a female relation as Henry's mistress, acquiring riches and power for his family. They settle upon the ambitious Anne (Natalie Portman) but it is her more unassuming sister Mary (Scarlett Johansson) who catches the King's eye. Details, details, details, Anne ends up catching the King's eye but will stop at nothing to become queen, not even if it means hurting her sister!

As I said, I know this book is based on fiction so I won't go into the historical inaccuracies of which there are many. Even taking this into consideration, the word that kept rolling through my mind while I was watching this was *clumsy*. There was absolutely no subtlety in explaining or even showing how or why the players were trying to get what they wanted.I couldn't decide whether it was the script which has some pretty bad clunkers in it, or the acting that made me wonder how much longer the movie was going to go for when Anne returns to court from France. The characters were so one-dimensional (Mary is an innocent simpleton! Anne is a bitch! Henry is a horny-toad!) that maybe actors were so over the top to try and compensate?

Acting...I like Natalie Portman. She was excellent in Leon/The Professional and Closer, but as Anne Boleyn, she's a shocker. Again, this may be due to the script, but she was portrayed as a petulant child determined for revenge after having her initial ambitions thwarted. There's none of the intelligence and sexual allure that the real Anne used to get Henry's attention - apparently she did it by using a well-timed double entendre here and there. ScarJo as Mary? Meh there wasn't much for her to do except look tragic here and there. And Eric Bana seemed to be overwhelmed by his costumes.

Speaking of costuming, I'll admit that the movie looked nice. The editing was a bit clumsy but the colours were nice and bright. I also liked the attention to detail that gave Anne the pearl necklace with the initial B - something that can be seen in her official portrait.

If you're not fussed by stuff like script and whatever, you may like The Other Boleyn Girl. If you want something better about the same stuff, either go watch The Tudors (featuring the really hot Henry Cavill) or Anne of a Thousand Days because in my opinion, heaving bosoms won again here!
4/10

Pritti pritti shoes :)

Okay, to recover from the shock that was my last entry, I'm posting a pic of the pritti pritti shoes Pooey brought back from Londres for me.

*sigh* They may not be real Chanel (thank-you, Zara!) but they're darn comfy and, again, really really pritti.

Fanks Pooey!!!

Crimes against fashion

Number.....oh god, this crime is so heinous I can't give it a number.(this entry refers to the girl on the left, the one wearing a hanky as a shirt)

Trinny and Susannah are right - DRESS FOR YOUR SHAPE, YOUR AGE, AND BE BLOODY APPROPRIATE. Me, Nance, Dr Kelly, Silly Natty and Kenny were having a pleasant walk around the city last night when we came across this shocker. We were heading up the Paris End of Collins which isn't exactly known for being a hotbed of strip joints. If I could have bottled the looks we gave each other in response to this, priceless.

And to add insult to injury, the front did not compensate for the shocker of the back, although Kenny did note that at least we couldn't see a Whale Tail. That bit was solved later when we saw the girl walking towards us wearing a completely see-through dress and black underwear.

SHOWDOWN!!!!

Nickyliou and I were having a discussion as we were walking down to the city to get gelati: Who is hotter out of my favourite eye candies? I mean, sure, Dean absolutely smashed Sam. That's a no-brainer. But how does he stack up against one of the world's most beautiful people? I've also decided to include my *turner* for guys who can't make themselves assess the male appearance.

So vote!

more at twiigs.com...

In case you guys have forgotten....

Monica Bellucci

Dean Winchester/Jensen Ackles

Marat Safin (I was in the audience for this one!)