Light and Fluffy

I know, I've been a bit of a downer for the last few posts, squiggly black cloud and all. So I'll try to keep it light.

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I get proud of myself for a few things - usually things that require traits that I don't normally possess, like courage or tenacity. One of them was winning our van at the car auction, utilizing a combination of patience and lighting quick arm response.

Well, yesterday, I managed to attach the microwave handle that came in the mail back onto the microwave, and I didn't even break the microwave! No instructions, no manual, just some web digging, a lot of staring, and some make-shift tools. Good thing too, I didn't look forward to returning a 55 dollar handle. By the way, the company was in Canada, so I got billed a foreign transaction fee on my debit card as well. Stupid handle.

But I was pretty proud of myself, having fixed that and the faucet (I did mess that up a tad, I kinda defaced the coupler.) I'm no handiman, so when I fix something and it doesn't explode, it's a bit of a celebration for me. Woohoo.

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I was at the doctor's office waiting for my mom, and punching out my treatment, and boy, if I keep the dialouge snappy and loaded, and I keep the details intact and good, the script is going to be something else. I'm getting excited about the story, because I'm hoping to dispense with the usual one-dimensional characters I usually spurt out to make a joke work, but instead trying to craft these multi-dimensional characters that people expect to watch nowadays. It's not a huge breakthrough in character development in storytelling, but it's pretty big for me. I still don't have a proper timeline of when I'd like the movie to be made, but getting the treatment done helps.

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Well, I did post a few things on The Chipper Report a few days ago, including one of Frank Welker, who is the voice of Curious George. And a great wedding party video that someone else shot, whereas the wedding party do a pretty smashing rendition of "Thriller." Go see it.

Tech Post

Don't get too excited, it's not as techie as you'd expect.

Funny thing today, some courier delivered a package today - it's the handle to our microwave, which had broken off and is now only attached on one end. Because it sorta came with the house and it's one of those above the stove microwaves, we couldn't just replace the darn thing. I found the handle online for 55 bucks, and had to fork it out because, well, it's not my microwave.

Anyway, the guy rang the doorbell, and then left. One of the good things about this neighborhood is that they tend to leave packages at the door, not always requiring a signature. So I kept listening for the door to open downstairs, and it never happened. I went downstairs and asked my wife who it was, and she said she didn't know - she didn't open the door. I got the package and then proceeded to poke fun at her, because her reason for not answering the door or even peeking at who it was was that it might be Jehovah's Witnesses. Or maybe a murderer who wants to shoot her. So I told her that since she was watching TV with the window open, whoever it was saw the TV on and the back of her head just dandy, so whichever sinister figure it was could do it from the window if they wanted to.

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So yesterday, I saw some videos on youtube that were movies that were made from "The Movies" game, which is some simulator for Hollywood, like "The Sims". I was interested in it initially, but hey, storyboarding and making mini mock-ups of my feature? I was stoked. I spent some time downloading the demo on the PC downstairs, and then it didn't run because the graphics card in the PC was impotent. So I thought I could get an emulator for my Mac, and run "The Movies" on my Mac.

I know, if I had thought it through... Anyway, I got my iBook going, running "Q" which was a free emulator, and was in the process of installing XP when I thought about running PC programs, and how slow it would be, and how I don't really like running PC programs anyway... and I stopped it and trashed the whole idea. A perfect way to waste a few hours.

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Cnet or TUAW, someone noted that there was speculation that Apple might adopt taking on a flash hard drive for a subcompact computer, which would be interesting, I think. Don't know if I would go any dinkier than an iBook, which is interesting to note. When my friend Jay saw my iBook, he said it was tiny - which I said, yeah. Why wouldn't it? I mean, the big difference between the American market and the Japanese market is the demand for the sizes of notebooks. Japanese commuters like the compact ones, and for whatever reason, Americans like their notebooks to be tanks. It's just odd to me. I do like bigger displays, but I just hook mine up to a bigger monitor, and then just run it like that. Final Cut Pro is a bit of a pain on the iBook, which is why I gave up on editing just on the iBook's display, but I like the iBook's size just fine. Any bigger would seem like defeating its purpose of being a laptop. Well, who knows, maybe Americans have bigger laps.

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Trying out Camino instead of Firefox. Safari doesn't handle Google apps well, like Gmail and Blogger, so I use that for email and blogger. Seems okay, I suppose.

Yeah, I'm pretty much just killing time.

Censorship or Parenting?

So my wife and I were talking last night about a ton of stuff, such as incestuous couples having biblical precedence in their actions since Adam and Eve's family tree didn't exactly fork in the beginning, and who the inventor of doors was, and my idea for an invention for celebrities, and then I told her that I was quite weird. I consider myself quite a liberal, but at the same time, I am tremendously conservative. My wife said I was more conservative than I was, and I probably have to agree with her.

I told her this, and I will get some flak about this, but I told my wife that I didn't think it was a great idea for our kids to go to friends' houses to play, or to spend the night. I know, boo, hiss. And I'm not even talking about now, I'm talking well into their teenage years even. Yeah, I know. Am I a Nazi? Well, no, that'll be an oxymoron.

The logical comeback would be that hey, idiot, kids do have parents, you know. Parents ensure that their kids have a safe home, and for the most part, they make sure that any visiting kids will be safe as well.

Well, yeah, and no.

I personally haven't had a bad experience per se, and even with JL there's only been one instance whereby the parent was lame as hell. It was just as bad as not having a parent around. But okay, let's say that the parent doesn't own a gun that he doesn't lock up, or that he doesn't buy drinks or cigarettes for his children. Let's say this parent makes sure that nobody swears, no trash is talked, and is basically a saint on the side. But you know, the kids go to the room, and there's either a TV in there, or a computer. Is that bad? Yes. And No. Yes, they'll likely watch MTV and surf the internet, or look at photos they've taken on the camera. Or they can turn up the music, the videocamera, and do stripteases for youtube. I'm not kidding, it's not that rare to find kids on youtube in their underwear. Sometimes you don't have to even look that hard. They could get on a webcam and flirt with someone online, and not have any knowledge of how their webcam can be captured. One of JL's friends, Kaylee, swear to god was like 4 years younger than JL at the time, so she was 11 or 12, and she was over at our place wanting to watch BET. BET is fine for some people, but not for me.

Yeah, I'm paranoid, I can't shield them forever. The world has a lot of vices, and goddamn if I don't partake in a few of them. However, I'd like to be there when it happens, so that I can educate them. Porn? Yeah, it's around. Don't click on it. Go enjoy your childhood and your cartoons. Guns? Yeah, they're fun but you won't touch one until you know how to handle one, and the enormous burden that it comes with.

Well, I'm off on a tangent, but yeah, I don't mean to shelter my kids. Not at all. But I think sometimes there are a lot of things that parents can do to protect their children. I don't want my kids to turn out one way because I was too lazy to say, "Perhaps that's something you don't need to see right now." or "You don't need to be doing that now." I will get a lot of crap, from other parents, from my own children, why my kids aren't given the same rights, privileges, and access as the other kids at school, and the only thing I'll have to say is that I'm their father. And I'm not trying to hide the truth, but hold it off a little longer.

When I was in kindergarten, or around that age, I remember getting ready in the morning with my mom in the kitchen. We lived on the 12th story, and I remember hearing a loud crack, the sound of a tree or something. We looked out the window, and we knew something was up. Across the street, people were starting to gather. We had to go by the building somewhat to walk to my kindergarten, and I don't know if I knew, or if my mom told me, but someone had jumped off the building. There was a crowd and I think I told her I wanted to go see, but my mom said no. And I cannot tell you how glad I was she didn't just indulge me.

It's an extreme example, or is it really? The internet's blessing and curse is that it is pretty much a free internet. I want it to stay free and uncensored. When I hear of China censoring websites, even Livejournal, it annoys me. Actually, when I surf youtube for things like Hello Kitty, and a banner with a woman in a bikini comes on, it annoys me. But I like the internet to be free. And damn straight when my kids need the internet, it'll be in the family room, within my sight. We did that with JL, and we'll do that with Alex and Zoe.

I'm probably overcautious, overprotective, overbearing to a certain extent. MY struggle stems from my cultural upbringing, versus the typical American upbringing.
I don't know, feels like our society entitles children to have an excessive dose of freedom, privilege, and rights. Don't get me wrong, children have basic human rights, that's a given. But own phone, TV and computer in the room? Nah. Allowance? Maybe, if they work for it, but my teens will never have expendable income, because we will either monitor their spending or all of it will go into savings. Car because they're old enough to drive? No damn way. They can drive when they're 18, and have a job to drive to. It is not a coincidence that teen-related automobile deaths are higher than other age groups.

I dunno, a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that I'm diving into old mini-dv tapes right now and archiving them on DVD. I've done it before, but there's been no organization, so I can't usually find what I'm looking for. So now I'm labeling everything, and naming the disc and tapes. And to see them just a year ago and how much they've grown makes me worry that they're already growing up too quickly.

The Prestige

Okay, first of all, I do recommend this movie, because it was well made by Christopher Nolan, and the themes of duality, obsession, and rivalry are well represented on screen. I think a lot of people felt very strongly for it, and it's not that I'm against it, but I felt a little duped at the end of it, more confused than surprised. And with that, a warning for those who have not seen the movie, and should not read on if they have not seen "The Prestige."

SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS AHEAD!!! ARRRGGHH!!!!

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Right.

Okay, I had to read the outcome on Wikipedia, and on forums, and a little bit more to get the whole story. I mostly got the ending, though I think I didn't know why that was the twist. See, I was expecting a twist, but I think I was expecting a different twist. I think the primary problem for me was that usually the twist occurs for the benefit of the protagonist, and the antagonist in the movie is the one that gets screwed, right? Well, my issue is that the movie had convinced me that Angier was the protagonist all along, and Borden was the bad guy! So when the movie ended, it felt as if the movie had resurrected the bad guy, and killed the good guy!

Reading the forums, I saw the bigger picture. Yeah, Angier was the lazier magician, wanted a machine to duplicate himself so that he could do a trick, rather than trying to figure out how to do the trick himself, the hard way. Angier disregarded Olivia's feelings and sent her off to the enemy. Angier was so obsessed with Borden, that he tried repeatedly to sabotage Borden. Angier did shoot Borden. Angier even went so far as to kill his clone every night, for 100 nights, (or whatever), to stage a performance. He framed Borden and gained custody of Borden's little girl. Yeah, that kinda makes him not the nicest guy.

HOWEVER...

The movie presented Angier as the protagonist to me because he was the one with the dead wife, who was mourning her death and rightfully sought revenge from a man who seemingly had no regard for what he had done, tying a knot that may or may not have caused his wife's death. Angier was Cutter's ally, and Cutter was a seemingly neutral party in the whole thing, a good guy, and one whom you could trust with your life. Angier had the nicer personality, despite the things he did. He didn't come across as a villian inasmuch, until the last few minutes.

But more than who Angier was, Borden classified himself to be more the villian, because of his manner and actions. He is arrogant, arguing about what knot to tie when a person's life depended on it. At the funeral, he was apologetic, but the same way mob bosses apologizes to the family that they've just killed, insincere, cold. He loved Sarah, which was great, but then he didn't, and acted like a jerk. We know at the end why he did that, but during most of the movie, you can't help but despise him because he tooled Sarah around. He always had Fallon around, which was a problem for me because Fallon did not fade into the background as the filmmakers had hoped, in fact, he stood out like a sore thumb. He was obviously disguised, he was obviously secretive, and he was like a giant pink elephant in the room. I didn't know throughout the whole film that he was a twin, but I thought he was either a clone (since he sent Angier to Tesla, perhaps he had the machine as well, even though Tesla, we learned, had never built a machine before) or someone we've been watching all along. But anyway, Fallon being someone crucial was not a surprise for me. And also, in the first few minutes, we were lead to believe that Borden was responsible for Angier's death. This turned out to be false, but nonetheless, misleading.

So anyway, now I get it. The line in the movie even says that part of the magic is just sitting back and letting the illusion fool you, because if you figured out how it was done, you'd be disappointed. Having the whole movie turned your perception around in the last 5 minutes is a little cruel, I think, but one of the things this movie does that I wanna attempt to do is to switch perceptions, having the audience sympathize with one and hate the other, but then have that shift slowly throughout the film. I think The Prestige attempts this with mixed results, with too subtle clues and too much hinging on the last few minutes. At the end of it, I kept waiting for Angier to pull another one out of the hat because I thought he was the protagonist.

Origins of my Surname

Don't know if I've got it precisely, but I'll cut and paste it here so I can find it later.

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Hakka surname Looi is also
Chinese surname No.69 Lei2
Lei2 means: thunder
e.g. Lei2 Yu3 means : thunderstorm
Surname Lei2 is about 4600 years old.

Abstract: Surname Lei2 was originated in an area which was called the
Feng2 Ye4 Perfecture during the Han4 Dynasty (206BC to 220AD).
The present day location of Feng2 Ye4 Prefecture is in
Da4 Li4 county in Shaanxi province China.

Surname Lei2 is a very, very old surname, as old as Huang2 Di4
(Yellow Emperor). The way of writing this character Lei2 has
changed ten times through out the recorded history. It is so ancient that
much of the information about surname Lei2 has been lost or not
been preserved properly.

According to the Shi3 Ji4 (Historical Records) the surname of
Yellow Emperor's wife Lei4 Zu3 was Fang Lei2. The Shi3 Ji4 also recorded
that Yellow Emperor employed a man named Lei2 Gong as a herbalist. This man
was well known for his formula of mixing herbs. Any sick patient who came
to him for treatment had a high chance of recovery after taking his herbal
medicine. His medicine was like elixer. Yellow Emperor adored him.

After his death, in order to commemorate him, his children adopted
LEI2 (thunder) as their surname and left the word Gong (grandfather
which was the title of respect his patients give him).

Shi3 Ji4 (Historical Records)
The character of Lei2 in Kang Xi Zi3 Dian3
(Kang Xi Dictionary)

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Concerning the surname "THUNDER" (Lei, Louie, Looi, or "Loy" in my case), I recently discovered from a cousin in China that any Chinese with the last name THUNDER (I will use "Lei" in Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin) comes from the minority tribe or nation called SHE.

A search on a good search engine for minority nations in China will lead you to more information. Look out for people who are primarily agriculturally based, who like to sing when they work/talk, and whose women wear black with red outlines and have their hair tied up like the tail of a phoenix. The SHE's have 5 different last names attributed to them, and there is an interesting legend that connects those names. The Lei's (unfortunately) have the legend of being associated with dog-headed people! :)

Out with the Old, In with the New Problems

So I was up till five yesterday morning, burning off DVDs so that I could get them in Saturday's mail. They were already late, and waiting for one more day probably wasn't a big deal, but I needed it out of my home. Anyway, there was a bit of a feeling of relief when I unloaded the DVDs at the post office, and now I've got four more weddings to do. Luckily, they're all smaller ones.

Anyway, a new problem surfaced - our kitchen sink faucet mysteriously broke off in the middle of the night. I don't even know how it happened, but the plastic casing just snapped the hell off and neither my mom or wife even touched it. We're blaming it on the cat, but we all really know that it was likely me, sleepwalking and burning DVDs in the middle of the night and hosing myself off because I'm such a dirty boy.

Talked to my brother and checked online and it seems that there's no easy way to fix the stupid faucet other than getting on my back, shoving my head under the sink, and taking a nap. I am not looking forward to it whatsoever, being behind on the weddings and really sick of little projects.

On top of that, I'm starting to feel a bit ill, like I'm coming down with something - a terrible feeling to pile on top of being overwhelmed. Hopefully it'll be gone by tomorrow, or at least weakened.

So, I rewatched United 93 today with my wife, after telling her that it was quite interesting in the sense that the movie works more like a eyewitness account to the things that happened. It tells the story actually in a pretty objective manner, considering how the country feels about the whole thing. The terrorists are frightened, one of them calls to say he loves them on the phone, the pray as the passengers do... It's pretty mature of Paul Greengrass to give this event such a respectful, insightful glimpse into part of that day's tragedy. It's almost like the director chose to step back and let the events unfold, bringing very little directorial ego into the project. It's well made, an important film to watch, but it sure as hell isn't easy to watch it. As it unfolds, there was a tightness in my chest and a sense of dread because you get the feeling that the actors in the movie weren't characters - they were actual people. The mundane conversations between them before the hijacking wasn't exposition for the story, it was just chatter about everyday things. I would imagine that when my kids get to the right age, they'd be showing this in school - the film is that important. A lot of people generally avoided it, saying it was too fresh in their minds, and too real. But I think films like United 93 truly explores our humanity, the value and fragility of it, and the cost of religious fanaticism. I was just speechless at the end.

To brighten up my disposition, I made my wife watch Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, a Shane Black movie with Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer. Shane Black was this dude who wrote Lethal Weapon, the Last Boy Scout, and so you'd be expecting this macho, buddy movie crap that used to work in the 80s. But it's delightly untrue, because it takes all the cliches you'd see in the movie and turns it all around, even breaking that fourth wall occasionally to wink at you. It's funny as hell, the characters are very likeable, and it showcases two very good actors with their comedic chops fully loaded and gunning for gold.

Okay, that was a weird thing to say.

Watch them both. In that order would be preferable.