Mood:  bright

Googling Takato Yamamoto will result in a slew of blog posts and flickr collections.  Seems a lot of people already know about this amazing artist, but nobody thought to tell me...  Somehow the serene expressions of many of the subjects suggests to me that their being mired/contorted/picked to pieces is somehow a private indulgence that I have just walked in on uninvited.  These works are fascinating, gruesome, and beautiful.  I would like to see much much more.  More than this at the Mondo Bizzarro Gallery.   

Mood:  a-ok

So, I was at 7-11 this morning getting some coffee and sunflower seeds when I saw Borba skin balance water.  I'm kind of a sucker for vitamin enrichment--its a kind of healthy washing, I know, like the green washing that's been running rampant around slightly guilty, lazy environmentalists.  

I picked up the acai berry, Age defying, potion which is 0 calories and high in antioxidant vitamins C & E.  I went with acai berry because I already knew I liked the taste and, honestly, the Borba take on it is pretty good (more on that below).   

You can find more on the flavors and line of drinks on the Borba Blog.  I did manage to pick up the squarish new packaging and, though I don't know what I'll do with the cuppy thingy--it is eye catching.  Perhaps the cup is there to remind you that there are actually 2 servings per container?

Oh, yes, and there are some beautiful nude desktop wallpapers under the downloads link on the Borba skin balance water site--if you like naked model bodies in sultry lighting.

Now, ON TO THE TASTING!

1st sip -- hit with the blaring taste of sucralose.  I'm probably hyper sensitive to this--I mean it is the 9th listed ingredient, but I've had a lot of issues with artificial sweeteners, drink a lot of plain water, and don't even sweeten my tea/coffee. I know I am a minority in beverage consumption and so won't even go on a rant about why-must-everything-be-sweetened here.

more sips -- the more sips, the less I notice the sucralose except for a slight after taste at the roof of my mouth.  I do, however, feel as though I have put on lip gloss--the slightly sticky kind.  It tastes right in line with the acai berry juices I have had before--though less strong.  It is a bit thicker than water and the packaging suggests shaking to mix in the sediment.

I do not yet notice any change in my complection , but I could be experiencing a, possibly imagined, B vitamin boost.  YEAH!  Over-all, Borba skin balance water tastes more healthy than say Vitamin water, and gives my palat a little something different from plain old filtered water.  My lips still feel like I glossed, but its not a bad feeling. 

Mood:  cool

 So, way back in 2008 the story  "Gundam cartoon academy to turn fiction into reality in Japan" was making its way around the web.  The first whisperings of real gigantic human piloted robots is the mostly imobile and just for show Giant Gundam that is currently in Japan (on Danny Choo).  

Mood:  a-ok

So, even though I was already acquainted with and a fan of Thu Tran's Food Party, I still managed to miss the first two episodes on IFC.  I was even warned about it premiering ahead of time on Serious Eats.  How could this possibly happen?  What could possibly be wrong with me?  Am I so preoccupied and harried that, not only am I not blogging, writing, web building, crafting, I can't even catch a show on TV--or set my DVR to record?  Will we ever know the answers to these questions?  

Much better than trying to figure out, is to bury yourself in the Food Party that's already out there and waiting for you while you wait for the next episode on Tuesday. 

Mood:  happy

Being the nerd that I am, when I read the story about  Mice engineered with gene for human speech(io9) I immediately thought of The Secret of Nimh.  If I am remembering correctly The Secret of Nimh revolved around a group of mice and rats who had escaped their lab imprisonment where they were made extra smart and given the capacity for speech and planning as they battled each other over the rats' idea that humans should be taken out.  

So scientists today have engineered transgenetic mice with the gene for human speech.  They have made the first step in a chain of events that is going to take away Mrs. Brisby's home and put her children in danger!  Not to mention that if the outnumbered and well meaning among the small animal world don't succeed, the rat's are going to rise up, steal our electricity and murder us all!  How can we let some lab coat buffoons put us all in danger like this without censuring them?  Is anyone keeping tabs on these crazy scientific advancements?

Previously:

Anime beats real life again

Sci Fi Movie Reality

What anime hath fortold

Electronic Face Masks and Animated Prophesy

I love me some futuristic architecture

Successful Arm Transplants and a Murderers Hands

Lasers in the Sky:  life from the movies

Mood:  caffeinated

Allow me to introduce you to Levi Levi.  He is a private detective, but really he'll do just about any odd job and if you throw him something he won't do, he'll find you the guy/girl who will. 

Levi has been hanging around in my head and sketch book for a little while waiting for his chance to provide me some respite from the very long comic project I've been working on.  His segments will be relatively brief and offer a world of variation.  For months now, and completely unlike me, I have been so focused on my extra long/involved project that I didn't need to use him, but it just so happens I felt the need last weekend and have a few pics and pages done already.  

I have given him his own blog/rss feed thingy because it was the easiest way to present a page with those neat previous/next entry links without having to create pages from scratch.   I'm thinking I will post new pages for him here too when I get them in, but I'm not resolved on how I'm going to do it.

I'm actually kind of nervous.  Though I bought into the free website fad long long ago and eventually started renting ad free space and a domain for my artwork and craftiness and ever expanding list of projects and ideas, this one feels completely new and unexplored.  Hope you like it in any case.

Mood:  happy

The DVR is both a blessing and a curse for me.  It allows me to catch shows I am genuinely interested in without having to chain myself to the TV.  It enables me to program my own viewing even more than I did when I would routinely put in a movie to avoid TV programming.  And it helps me catch shows and movies that I would have never seen because my passing curiosity was never enough for me to try and catch it when it aired.  Warner Bros.  Another Cinderella Story is one such movie.  I would have never seen this without a DVR.  That said, I do like a lot of teen movies.  I'm not really sure why I do, and I don't like all of them, but.....you get it, right?  

I pushed play on a lark late one night to peruse the thing and see if it had anything to offer.  And once Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins from Ginger Snaps appeared on the screen, I was committed to the rest of the movie.  I first became acquainted with Isabelle and Perkins from the Ginger Snaps movies.  Werewolves, more than vampires I think, have a cheezy and unfortunate movie history.  Ginger Snaps got it right for me.  Not to say that there isn't enough fuel in the three movies for some robust geek debates, but I was satisfied, and entertained, and happy.  And I was even more happy to see the two actresses who played the sisters in Ginger Snaps playing the evil pseudo step sisters in Another Cinderella Story.  If they were only given more time on screen!  

Unfortunately their parts didn't even have the meat of the adversary role in the film and they primarily occupied a comedy relief position in a movie that was kind of comedy all over.   The rest of the film was kind of cookie cutter, pretty teen drama, with the added bonus of semi-musical, attitude-heavy dance routines.

Anyway.....'sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters.  never had to have a chaperon no sir.  I'm here to keep my eye on her......'

Mood:  cool

If The Music Man is a clever, albeit doily covered, soda shop/tea room of great musicals then Sweet Charity is a smokey, red-velvet covered after-hours club.  

I have to admit, before I met my husband, I knew very little about the crazy creative force that was Bob Fosse.  I knew what I liked, but it never occured to me to dig into it and rip from its bowels what would be the shared essence of other things, similar things, I might like just as much.  I was a late bloomer musically too--about the only creative product I was completely up on until college was visual art.

Knowing a little more, now, about the personalities that mold any one creation, its easy for me to see that Sweet Charity reeks of Bob Fosse's sweat, and genius, and insanity, and it is lovely for it.   I'm not big on heavy video posts, but I cannot help myself here.  I'd rather watch these than continue to rattle on about it, so that's what you get to do too. 

Sammy Davis Jr. and the "Rythm of Life"

My favorite number -- "Big Spender"

"Rich Man's Frug"

"There's got to be something better than this"

Mood:  bright

Every morning I turn on the TV while I'm getting ready.  First for the Weather channel (which is really unneccissary in Summer as every day is exaclty the same!) and then to a music video channel.  I can't say why I started TV-ing my mornings, I'm not all that addicted to the box; and I remember, long ago, I used to wake up with a stereo and music.  Anyway, the music video channels have become my only link to popular music in my radio-less existence.  I am far too used to finding stuff online now and have developed a strange and exclusionary music persona.  While I like discovering the random Ting Tings' "That's Not My Name" and Honey Honey's "Little Toy Gun,"  there is only so much Theory of a Dead Man, and 'lil Wayne I can take (no offense--just personal taste).  Well, wouldn't you know it, my incomplete salvation was at hand!  Hiding in a free-on-demand channel in my digital cable was Bento Beat Box on Anime Network.  This half hour show is like a mini music video channel for Japanese Rock brought to you by JRock Revolution. 

So, ah, I'm not going to say that Rock in Japan isn't just more of the same done different--music 's like that all over the globe, but the fact that it is done different is refreshing in its own right.  I'm also not going to say that it's not necissary at all to understand the lyrics in order to get all you can out of a song 'cause there is a lot of beautiful poetry in music, but really there are several popular songs supposedly in English that no one understands.  I am going to say that even people without my strange and exclusionary musical persona could really enjoy the show.  And now that I said all that I'm gonna whine, because I don't actually get the Anime Network as a channel and I really want to, and my free-on-demand doesn't update but once a month so I only have access to one measly episode.  For those of you without my particular obstacles--go and discover some music, boost its ratings and all!

Mood:  chatty

There are movies in my collection that are both so good and so not mentally taxing that I can run to them every time TV programming pisses me off.  This is a lot.  And so, these movies get watched a lot--and that's how good they are, as I never get tired of them.  One such is Noises Off!.  It is the story of the stage production of something called "Nothing On," which is full of sardines and telephones and doors.  My only ever roomate, ex-roomate, wonderful friend can't stand this movie because she said it was too spot on (or something like that, she'll probably deny everything).  I've never worked in theater myself, so I couldn't say though I have worked in artist spaces--which are just as flaky--and been in the small and buzzing enclosed spaces of a working theater production, so.....The characters in Noises Off! are the amalgamated caricatures of theater.  At least I hope they are amalgamated caricatures, and amplified.  It would be like walking around in a cartoon if one were surrounded by people like this.  Walking around in a cartoon might seem cool at first, but I have a feeling it would drive everyone to lunacy(like Who Framed Roger Rabbit right?)--that's why cartoons are so fun to watch and not live.  That's why Noises Off! is so much fun to watch.

A few random, closing thoughts:  I wish Christopher Reeves had done more comedy.  Carol Burnett is and always will be the bomb.  I miss John Ritter.

Mood:  a-ok

After gallons of work and heartache (I know, I watched) the much asked after Bavadoom is complete and offered up spread-eagled like on that paramount of horror movie obsession sites:  DoomedMoviethon.com.  From the Cinema Somnambulist (child and successor of DoomedMovieBlog):

"The moviethon consisted of 17 Mario Bava films watched in a little under 54 hours. While it was not as insane as Argentophobia and it wasn't nearly as drunken as Doomed Fulci-thon, my Mario Bava moviethon was a whole hell of a lot of fun."

Mood:  chillin'

While everyone is in a tizzy about Twilight and True Blood, I have been watching a completely different vampire drama and enjoying it very much, thank you.  Rerunning on the SciFi channel right now, Moonlight is the classic vampire detective set up.  Those of you who read The Vampire Files by P.N. Elrod will know what I'm talking about.  While I have little to no interest in current SciFi shows I have been pleasantly surprised by some of the re-runs that pop up.  This is how I discovered The Dresden Files, which I later bought;  I will most likely buy Moonlight as well.  

Of course, since its a re-run, perhaps all those Twilight and True Blood fanatics tuned in when it was new.  I am behind the times--it happens a lot where TV is concerned.  Moonlight offers up all the angsty, I-don't-want-to-be-a-vampire sentiment without getting too whiny; it has action, sexual/romantic tension, flashbacks, vampiric psuedo science, alternate history and a damn handsome leading couple.  And while it may not be the most nourishing TV sustenance, it isn't complete junkfood--at least I don't feel dirty watching it.  It's kind of like vitamin enfused softdrinks, that way.  If you want to give it a try you can view clips on CBS.com.   

Mood:  a-ok

So, I've hinted before, but have I really told you the whole story about the Great Book list?  A year or so ago I got the remarkable and ordinary idea of keeping a list of all the books I read.  Only, this list would have all the books I've already read in it too.  I wasn't satisfied with the idea of just starting from where I was now because it wouldn't be fair to all those awesome books I could remember reading.  Then, I figured that I should attempt to track down all the books I could only remember whiffs of, because I couldn't possibly let them fall through the cracks.  

So I started with the easy stuff, the stuff that touched me deeply enough that I didn't have to verify title and author; and then I scoured public school reading lists to cover all those things that I read because they were assigned to me.  You see, I didn't start skimming and cliff's notes cheating until college, so I can actually say I read all that primary school stuff.  And then finally I was left with the whiffs:  a blue haired girl here, and a computer generated rock star there, a wizard on the cover and something about a wooden sword, some aliens, and the magical world of Florida. 

And then I lost the list.  I forgot about making back-ups and blindly relied on a web server out there somewhere.  This resulted in a minor breakdown and the ruining of my day as well as the promise that I was not going to do all that crap again.  My angry resolve lasted about two weeks when I started scratching my list together once more.

Eventually my list became complete sans one small puzzle piece--the young adult romance boom of the 80s.  My grandmother, for some reason, had no objections to mass consumption of nutritionless YA romance, but she wouldn't let me read sci-fi/fantasy while I stayed with her;  I mean, she gave me Riders of the Purple Sage to read in lieu of Dragonriders of Pern.  But that's another story.

The story for today is about the only book I ever read twice.  Being a person who remembers way too much of the books I read to revisit them very soon, I only have one of these on my list right now:  Her Majesty's Wizard by Christopher Stasheff.   That said, the Great Book list has brought up some titles that I want to try reading again now that more time has passed.  I just grabbed up a copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel at a swap recently and am looking forward to fattening my memories on it. 

Back to Her Majesty's Wizard, I can honestly not say why I could read this book, of all books, more than once in a two year time period.  I can only recall bits and pieces of the story now that impressed me:  the strange way the main character bridged the divide between reality (in a coffee shop, I think) and a completely fantasy world, making soldiers out of teeth, sexual tension, a dragon--that's it.  Before you ask why I'm writing about it if I can't remember much--it's 'cause it's the only book I ever read it twice!  Which means it is totally awesome, and once I get my hands on the book box in my Mom's storage unit where my copy is (of course I kept it) I'm going to read it a third time. 

Mood:  don't ask

Hmmmm, I'm finding it hard to begin.  Death Note is a hugely popular manga and anime series internationally(US offical anime site).  So popular, in fact, that it's become a muse of sorts for a killer in Belgium.  Recently the internets have been buzzing with the news that  Warner has aquired the rights to make an American live action movie based on the story. 

Anybody who's been reading my ramblings for a while now will, no doubt, have stumbled across my crazy rant about Hollywood xenophobia.  So it appears that regardless of how amazingly easy it is becoming to get my grubby little paws on overseas movies, meaning, to me, that I am far from the only grubby paw person out there, most of our media consuming population is still unable to read subtitles, unwilling to accept the small cultural quirks that make their way into movies made elsewhere, and completely fine with being fed the same uninspired, uncreative regurgitated mess that is our current 'Now Showing' list at the movies.  The second of the Japanese live action Death Note films is available through netflix and has recently visited my house.  Both it and the first one are awesome, in my opinion, and need no reworking.  I hope for the best, but I am thoroughly rankled.