I’m slowly going through a number of DVDs and CDs that I have recorded/created/burned over the years. There are stacks of them. Most not marked. I have been going through disk by disk trying to figure out what is on each. Right now I’m playing a recording that didn’t turn out so well. Seems like I had a lot of dropped frames in it. One more for the junk heap.
Finally after the casting issues have hopefully been taken care of, the rehearsal process for Little Women can finally get started. Apparently, one cast member (that I am aware of) decided that she would rather not be in the cast. Better to get that taken care of sooner than later. Hopefully, there will be no further predicaments to present themselves. Read through will be Thursday night from 7.30-10PM. Thank heaven for DVR so I can watch new episodes of Smallville and The Office at a later time. By the way, the second season episode “Booze Cruise” was absolutely tremendous. I just appreciate how much character development can be placed in one-half hour show involving most if not all of the ensemble.
Back to theatre (sorry to go off on a tangent). Today at work I had no less than 10 customers ask me when my next show is. My next show?! I told them all to keep June 20-29 open. Then I get the customary person who has seen me before but just can’t place me. Well, I worked at a major retail chain for like 6 years. No…. that’s not it. Well, I have been doing a bit of theatre…. That’s IT!!!! Then, it is time for the character from Liswathistan to return. BTW, my boss keeps telling me to say that my former place of employment stinks instead of going into my 2 minute speech about why I am not there anymore. Always nice to have fans.
No, I’m not talking about the movie The Island of Dr. Moreau… Many people thought it was awful, but I actually liked that movie, last time I saw it anyway over a decade ago. Scared the heck out of me though; I saw it in college and had to walk home from my friends’ dorm all by myself late at night afterwards… I was so freaked out that I ran all the way home, prompting some other college-aged jerks to jeer at me, “Run Forrest, Run!” See what they did there? That’s a reference to the great movie, Forrest Gump. Clever kids, weren’t they? I will have to try that Dr. Moreau movie again; even though I bet nowadays the special effects would appear outdated and it would just be dumb, but I’m not about to try it any time soon with all the nightmares I’ve been having…
Anyway, I was just looking for a way to tie in my latest activities, that’s why I called the post The Island of Dr. Moreau. I went to the Dr. today, and watched the movie called The Island last night. The Dr. visit was routine… but I do have to mention how I just sat there waiting for the Dr. to come in with nothing to do but stare at the walls because after reading the CNN article called “Don’t Let a Hospital Kill You”, I was too afraid to touch any magazines in the Dr.’s office. See one of my previous posts of that title if you would like to experience the same paranoia. Dr. told me we’re going to induce me a week before my due date because I have large babies… thank goodness for that, except that I’m ready NOW – do we really have to wait until July?!?
Now for the movie… The Island is a sci-fi movie about a factory that manufactures humans. It is set in the future – but not too far in the future, 2015 or something like that – there are monorails, flying motorcycles, and human clones aplenty. It’s funny how in one scene, they thought they were being clever by showing gas prices to be over $4 / gallon, but I guess our 2008 society is a bit ahead of them, not in a good way either 🙁
So anyway, in The Island, the general public is under the impression that their “insurance policies” – as the clones are known – are simply organisms being grown for spare parts and will remain in a vegetative state. The “insurance policies” however, are living, breathing, thinking, feeling humans who are housed in a self-contained facility within the factory. They live from day to day with the hope of winning “the lottery”, which will send them to “the island” – supposedly a place of bliss where they will live happily ever after. Ewan McGregor‘s character accidently finds out however, that winning the lottery is fatal, and “the island” is really what happens when a customer needs their insurance policy – ie, the clone is killed for its spare parts. I’m not normally a fan of sci-fi, but this movie has a very interesting premise that doesn’t go too over the top, and I enjoyed it. Without giving too much away, I would trade a scene in the middle (too cheesy!) for 2 at the end – scenes I thought should be added with things I’d like to see in the movie… if you see or have seen the movie, I’ll tell you what I mean. But I did like it, and like I said, I am not normally a fan of sci-fi, so I would recommend this one to sci-fi fans or action movie enthusiasts.
While we’re on the subject of politics, I was reading about Jenna Bush’s upcoming nuptial’s today, and I discovered an interesting article about the parallels of opposites between Bush’s daughter and former President Roosevelt’s daughter Alice, both of whom will be married while their fathers were Presidents of the United States; Jenna’s wedding taking place over a century after Alice’s.
From CNN.com:
Doug Wead, a former aide to President George H.W. Bush and author of a book on presidents’ kin, calls Jenna’s ceremony “the anti-Alice Roosevelt wedding.” Former President Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter was married in 1906.
“That wedding took place during a time of prosperity and peace; this one at a time of economic struggle and war,” Wead said. “The Roosevelt family was outgoing, flamboyant; this is a private family. That was one of the most popular presidencies in American history. Even John Adams didn’t go on Mount Rushmore, but Teddy Roosevelt went on Mount Rushmore. This is an unpopular presidency. Alice had no bridesmaids. Jenna has 14.”
And one more little tidbit about Presidential offspring: Jenna is the 22nd child of a United States President to marry while their fathers were in office. Not that money is usually a problem for a president, but I wonder how many of those were daughters whose daddy’s were expected to foot the wedding bills?
While I am a current events junkie, I am most reluctant to follow politics for some reason. Give me true-crime stories, entertainment news, or natural disaster tales any day – I can’t get enough. But when it comes to politics, I have trouble even forcing myself to follow the news, even though they talk about it on one of my favorite channels (CNN) nonstop lately. You’d think it’d be enough motivation for me to follow politics just to be “in the loop”, but it’s a natural instinct of mine to tune out political news. How interesting then, that my husband is really ONLY interested in current events involving politics… I guess you could say we compliment each other that way. So while he had on CNN following some of the last of the primaries tonight, I heard an interesting story developing… it seems poor Hillary Clinton, who lost horribly in North Carolina today, couldn’t even get a break today at her wrap-up party after the primary… They had 2 confetti machines ready to shoot confetti over the crowd, and they malfunctioned, only to shoot the confetti a pathetic 4 feet from the machine… just not Hillary’s night, I guess…
Two news items in one day after a drought! This one is about several parents being arrested- because their kids racked up too many unexcused absences. I am not really sure how to feel about this one. After all, parents do have a responsibility to make sure their kids are educated. But handing them over to the police? (shakes head in bewilderment). As long as this doesn’t involve criminal charges- unless they were doing something illegal with the kids- I guess it can’t hurt to scare them a little in front of a judge.
15 Fla. Parents Arrested In Connection With Children’s Unexcused Absences At School
Just a quick third post of the day. I just read this one- kids do really stupid things in school. Here is the latest:
Student Accused Of High-Fiving Teachers With Tacks
I think I will skip giving middle-school students high-fives for awhile…
The assignment I took for today at that furthest school was art and drama. Interesting combination as usually drama is the realm of the music teacher. It was actually a pretty easy day. School started at 8:00, so I was there at 7:45. My first class? 9:30. That’s right, I had over an hour and a half to kill reading, answering nature’s call, eating free food in the lounge…
This is teacher’s appreciation week, so the PTO provides food all week for the teachers. Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to offend the PTO by not doing my part here. Bagels, doughnuts, fruit, juice- a second breakfast! Okay, I didn’t eat that much, but suffice to say I was satisfied with my mid-morning snack.
9:30 rolled around and the first of three classes came in. Now three doesn’t sound like much, but remember this was art and drama so I had to teach two of the classes both, so it was really more like five classes- still an easy day though. This first class was 2nd/3rd grade, and it turned out I had subbed for this class before earlier in the year, which had its own interesting tale of two subs showing up for this one job. The teacher had requested a particular sub, making the arrangements herself, then proceeded to put the job in the system as sub needed but not filled so I took that job when it showed up. The principal chose to side with the system, so the requested sub had to do work elsewhere in the building. She wasn’t too happy because this apparently was the second time this had happened to her.
Anyway, back to today they just completed a project for art- in fact all three classes did, though differing projects of course- and then I got to teach some drama. Well, play some drama games with them. We did a game called “Change Three Things” which was n observation game. They partnered up and observed each other for several seconds. Then they turned around, changed three things about their appearance then turned back and tried to figure out what changed. It could have been something as simple as closing an eye, or as obvious as, well I will use one of the students as an example for this- one boy unbuttoned his shirt and put it on again, backwards. Yes, he held up the game doing this- it took as long as you can imagine. Now if it was a t-shirt like most kids wear it would have been quick. Oh, well. This was a pretty wild group so we only did one round of this. Next we moved on to a murder-mystery game, where one person is throwing a party (his/her choice of type of party) but there is a killer at the party. They walk around shaking each others hands while at the same time acting like the type of party it is- pizza, tea, whatever. The killer would “kill” someone by tickling another player with his/her finger while shaking hands. The “victim” would wait ten seconds before “dying” dramatically. The ten seconds being so we wouldn’t catch the killer in the act. Of course, being 2nd and 3rd graders this more sophisticated game didn’t go quite so smooth. Sometimes they would forget to wait ten seconds or the killer would forget to be discrete. And of course everybody wanted to guess at once.
6th grade was only art, so I will move on the the last class, 4th/5th grade. This class was supposed to be a pretty bad class, but to be honest, aside from a few boys who just wanted to make origami “fortune tellers” because they were finished with the project then go and bug everyone around them with their fortune tellers, I had more trouble with the 2nd/3rd grade class. In any event, for drama I didn’t get to choose the mystery game, so for them we did skits about three items. In groups they would pick three unrelated items (example: frog/basketball/telephone) and make a skit around these three things. The trick was they were not allowed to say the names of these objects in the skit. When a group finished, the rest would try to guess the three objects. Of course the goal was to make the objects easy to guess and this would be an indicator of how well they got their message across in the skit. In the end, many were easy to guess but there were a few tough ones. In all, I would say they did a pretty good job with it. Only some audience participation left something to be desired.
Well, I was able to find another job in the same district tomorrow while writing this. More free food I hope. 😀 Same school as the rejected job, a school I will be at on Friday as well. So far four days in this same district this week.
Over the weekend I was updating the hardware on one of my computers. While I had the case open, and my hands busily putting in many different parts, my daughter told me that the family computer wasn’t working. Grumble Grumble. I seeing it I thought that the video card was a goner. It looked like the hard drives were still working, the key pad would display the proper lights when hitting the NumLock and ShiftLock keys. So I took out the card and swapped it with another. Still nothing. I think after 2 1/2 days of tinkering with the stupid machine, I found the problem to be a bad install of DirectX. Grumble, it wasn’t the hardware at all.
Why don’t I just use linux????
I’ve been told I have a different taste in movies. I know that I watch and like some movies that others do not. The reason for this is simple, I go to movies to be entertained. If I lose myself for 1-4 hours (Lord of the Rings was at least that long on the extended DVD) and come out feeling entertained, I feel the movie did its job. The kicker on this is if I think the movie has a chance of entertaining me again. There is where I get my choices for good movies. Now for the movies that have been dumped on by critics, friends and family, but I still like them…
#1 on the list, but not in my favorites, this has just been dumped on by almost everybody, even the lead…. Catwoman. Yes, the one with Halile Barrie. I knew from the start that this movie was not going to follow any comic book ever written about Catwoman. It wouldn’t even be close to any of the Batman movies, TV or cartoon catwomen. But Hallie looked real good in the leather jump suit. Hell, her male stunt double looked good in the leather jump suit. I heard that she had a male stunt double for some of the fights, flips and other stunts but I had a hard time believing it. I was finally able to pick out the double, and CGI catwoman most of the time. Other than that, the character they developed for Catwoman was interesting to me. In knowing cats they came up with a good human characterization of the cats qualities. I found the transition from the mousy woman at the beginning of the show to the proud feline at the end was a good use of what this type of thing could do to a person. The beginning story line trying to find what was poisoning people, and the classic business cover up was good to. What I didn’t like was “Stone Faced” Sharon Stone. For 1 it was a really bad pun, but I don’t think that Catwoman needed that kind of adversary. It would have been better to put more mystery in the story and have the “Cat” stalk for it. More cat like in my opinion. I could go on but there are other movies to list…
2) League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Just a fun flick. See how much they took advantage of the characters, and they did stretch them a bit, was pure enjoyment to me. The story was so-so, the acting was iffy, but it all worked as a whole for me.
3) DareDevil. Again, the story just kept my attention and I walked out in a better mood than when I went in.
4) Electra — Same for this one, I just enjoyed the movie.
5) The Shadow. I grew up listening to these on a little transistor radio hidden under my pillow. The show brought back fond memories of staying up late and not letting my parents catch me.
6)More B movie sci-fi fantasy than I can remember. Beast Master hits me as one of them. There was another, that I can’t remember the title of, but it was fun watching the heroine’s dress go from torn to whole to torn to dirty, to clean to whole in about a 15 minute period. I don’t think she ever had time to change.
…. More to come I just can’t remember all of them.