Keep it in the family

Today Mela and I went to see Crazy, Stupid Love together. It was the first time we went to see a movie together in the cinemas.

The movie was fantastic – and what else would you expect from Steve Carell? In an interview, he said that Ryan Gosling stole the show, but I think Carell still kept it his own. His comedic timing and facial expressions were still as on point as always. Julianne Moore kept up her end of the deal, portraying the infidel but regretting wife opposite Carell, mirroring his amazing skills. I have to say, though, spouse-wise, the chemistry between Fey and Carell in Date Night was much better.

Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling’s storyline was brought in almost as an afterthought – or so it appears at the start. But a twist in the plot – nothing Sixth Sense, don’t worry – saw that it was still brought together in a neat little bundle. Still, I feel that the structure could have inserted Stone and Gosling’s storyline a lot sooner, but as it were, it wouldn’t have made sense to do so.

It was a sweet movie, with the obligatory heartstring tugging declaration of love. The difference to the usual rom-com is that the main declaration was done indirectly over the phone in a manner more fitting for a couple who’s been married for 25 years. Nonetheless, the second declaration was done in front of a huge crowd with the cheesy “I should have fought for you” idea – I suppose there has to be a cliche moment somewhere.

In all, it was a very enjoyable film where the subplots were all brought together in one big climax. I would highly recommend seeing it, although perhaps not on the Xtremescreen – it costs too much.

Alex.

Sitting Here Lonely With No One To Hold Me

[Control Myself – Maroon 5]

I went to see RED today with Catherine.

The cinema wasn’t very full – I think it’s at the end of its run – but I think that it was actually better off that way.

The movie, in my opinion, was actually really enjoyable. It didn’t go over the top with amazing improbably action stunts, but it did have it’s amazingly cool moments – Bruce Willis stepping out of a spinning car, calm as a hardwood coffee table, John Malkovich exploding a bazooka missile by shooting it dead on its head – but I think the best part was that they made it funny without appearing to try.

A lot of the humor were more subtle than in-your-face comedy – there were some reactionary expressions, meaningful silences, and some plain hilarious situations. There were times when the pacing of the dialogue, in trying to show that these guys were relaxed seasoned spies, was a bit slow, but mostly they made up for it.

And I think that John Malkovich did a pretty damn good job of being a paranoid retired spy who was “given a dose of LSD daily for 11 years”. I liked him since Johnny English, and every time I see him on screen I think “oh this should be good”.

I wouldn’t say go out of your way to see it, especially since it’s ending, but if it comes up as a movie choice on DVD night, pick it!

Anyway, after the movie Catherine and I had our newly made yearly tradition of a Nandos lunch together, and we had a good talk about Uni and her future choices. She did not laugh like Ernie once. I was disappoint.

Alex.

So Young And Invincible

[Kids In Love – Mayday Parade]

Today I went to see Knight&Day with Jac. I went into it thinking it won’t be great because someone had said they’d fallen asleep halfway. But I had faith in Diaz. And that faith wasn’t proven wrong.

While it wasn’t the BEST movie ever, it wasn’t a waste of money or time. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment, bar the few lulls and the kissing scenes (ew, why would you kiss Cruise). I like the slightly predictable but witty nonetheless dialogue, and the way that the actors carried out the lines were definitely praise worthy. While the fact that Diaz’s character June was out cold for most of the exciting parts of their adventure – and, as the audience, we were “out cold” along with her – it wasn’t that much annoyance, and probably served to lessen the boring and improbable ways that Roy (Cruise) escaped from clutches of death, and instead made it funny.

I do recommend seeing it, but if you don’t want to see it in the cinemas, DVD isn’t a bad idea either, especially if you’ve got decent sound.

Alex.

Eff My Life!

Today at lunch, just before going to guitar ensemble, I sat with Julia, Jen, Bo and Spanna, and we basically shared FMLs we’ve read.

So, to make you smile (or cringe) here are some of the Tops and Flops from FMyLife.com (on my blogroll).

I’ve actually just c/p’d from the Tops and Flops. I didn’t go look for them. I trust ranking.

Today, I proposed to a girl I’d been in love with for 6 years. I filled the balcony of the building where I’d first laid eyes on her with innumerable roses and, under the starlit sky, I did it. She later posted on facebook ‘OMG. This geek I knew from high school did the FUNNIEST thing today’. FML

Today, I was at a family function. We were all sitting on the couch and I ended up falling asleep. I was woken up by my cousin, who threw a glass full of water at me. Everyone looked at me horrified. Turns out I masturbate in my sleep. FML

Today, I had my first kiss at a party. Later, I was told that the guy had been dared to kiss the ugliest girl in the room. FML

Today, my 14 year old sister deleted my entire iTunes library, which had every song by The Doors, The Beatles, The Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones, because she thought my music was “weird.” She replaced it with Britney Spears, Panic at the Disco and the Jonas Brothers. FML

Well, see, your life isn’t that crap, is it?

Alex.

Children’s Audio Books?!

Today I noticed in “incoming links” that this random Children’s Audio Books site linked to my blog, the post about that time when we went to see Potted Potter last holidays.

Yeah, hopefully they don’t read through the rest of my site, whomever sees that link. Might not be kiddy friendly. Even hopefully-er, they don’t read April’s as well.

By the way, check out United States of Tara.

It’s about Tara, as acted by Tony Collette, who has a split personality disorder.

She turns into T, a slutty 15 year old, Alice, a proper 1950s housewife (who’s a little on the creepy side) and Buck, an ex Viet Veteran…MALE.

Collette does all of these characters.

If you thought that mom who turns into her evil sister from Heroes is scary, this one is even better! It’s not SCARY it’s just funny.

Do check it out, please. It’s worth it. Can’t wait ’til it comes here to Australia.

Alex.

I’m a dick…I’m addicted to you…

While I was thinking of a snappy title I remembered that weird-ass song by Simple Plan.

So, going with a non-my-life-is-shit-because blogging style, I think I might share a few things that I’m quite into at the moment.

Firstly, and I know it’s disgusting that I’m eating it for breakfast, but I love MICROWAVE POPCORN!

I especially like how sometimes, because the flavor isn’t distributed properly, one particular popcorn would taste saltier and greasier than the others. Mm, cholestrole…

Speaking of cholestrole and heaps of salt, I like those Campbell’s CHUNKY canned soup things. You know that ad “Fully loaded man’s got ball of meat”? Well at least I think that’s how the ad goes. It’s a random-Panda ad (ok ok I’m trying to get something caught on here. Random-Panda, or if you say it fast it enough “Randa-Panda”) but the soup is quite nice, if you get past the momentary blindness from the soup. No no no I’m kidding.

Okay that wasn’t quite the one I was looking for, but it’s close enough.

Speaking of manly (loving my segways?), there is a duo that’s NOT SO MANLY but still pretty fully-loaded. Yes I’m speaking about the HAMISH AND ANDY SHOW! Specifically, their Podcasts.

Because you don’t look stupid enough on the train bopping to your music, but to actually be trying to suppress a very creepy smile when listening to Hamish trying to read Fred Baset while being chased down by cars…

TETRIS! No segway there but they don’t NEED one!

(Whoever was playing that during the screen shot is an epic noob…I mean LOOK AT IT!)

I’ve been trying to beat my best score of 1:38 on Tetrisfriends Sprint for about a month now. I know the time is quite shit, compared to oh, Dom’s 58 seconds, but I’m trying my best okay?!

Yu-Gi-Oh, the Abridged Series. I’ve watched most of the episodes, and yes, I have been quoting “ATTENTION DUELISTS! MY HAIR IS NOW AN INTERNET PHENOMENON!”

And finally, I know this is a waste of time, I’m addicted to uberly long phone calls. I’ve been calling (or have been called by) Catherine for nearly every night and we’re just chatting and chatting and I’m not letting her study. Which is shit for her because she has an exam on Wednesday. But phone conversations are awesome, and as Train said, “Can you imagine no…five hour phone conversations, the best soy latte that you ever had, and me?”

I thought that was a funny picture, because that’s what Catherine’s probably doing every time.

Well, that’s all for today. Just wanted to update and be awesome, as always.

NCIS and HIMYM finished for the season (like, a week ago, but anyway) and so right now I’m just catching up on Merlin and Ghost Whisperer. I suppose I should put those two on as well.

Could her shirt  BE any more open?

Alex.

Potted Potter

Sorry I was going to blog this yesterday but things happened. Well, rather things didn’t happen, ie I didn’t blog it.

Yesterday was a pretty cold today. The temperature itself wasn’t that low it was just that it was very windy, raining, and oh the previous day had been nearly 30. So it was a shock to the system.

I went to Melb Central and did Chinese homework (please kill me or I’ll die from shame first) at the foodcourt, and then went to Dani’s place. Andrew’s friend, Shin was there and they watched Bboy videos while Dani and I played on her guitar, and Andrew’s guitar (that is, Andrew brought his as well). We tuned the guitar with the “online tuner” which basically plays a midi of each string, tuned, and you tune to it by ear.

We went to Melb Central, or rather UCMC (look I think it’s a clever shorthand way of texting someone the meeting point) with April, who had shown up at this point in my recollection. We saw Cathy, but also we saw Stoner, her cousin, Dee and her girlfriend. Dani saw another friend of her’s, so for about 20 minutes we just stood at UCMC and waited around. Then we went to Red Silks, and sat in one of the inside booths things.

During lunch, we did this thing where we used the “sexy voice” to say random items on the menu. For example, “You’re my crispy chicken and stir fried noodles.” Or “You’re the Red Silk’s Specialty.” Etc. Then, and I don’t remember how we got to this exchange but…

Me: [said something]

Dani: “Don’t you mean ‘he’?”

Me: “I said ‘he’.”

Dani: “Yeah cos I was about to say, ‘Andrew’s a girl.’ [pause] I MEAN BOY! ANDREW’S A BOY!”

We went to the Town Hall to watch Potted Potter, A Parody of All 7 Harry Potter books. It was very clearly targetted at children (Cathy wanted it…she wanted it) and actually The Shak from Ch 9 was filming there (I TOTALLY SAW NITRO). The two guys, John and David were two British lads and they talked really fast, and were really excited. Some of their jokes I think were actually really connotative. Like when David said,

“And so Voldemort entered Harry [pause] into the Triwizard Tournament.”

“And their wands touched.”

Not to mention the “Basilisk” mostly attacked “Harry’s” nipples. And the dragon from the 4th book, a hand-puppet, went between “Harry”‘s legs.

There were some pretty creepy things they did, like when John, who is in charge of acting as everyone apart from Harry, acted as Hermione, and kind of did this creepy Transylvania “Hello…I’m Hermione, a girrrl.” And David asks John “Have you even met an 11 year old girl?” Or Snape, who I swear is a gay pedo.

At some point near the end, David shouted, “Hang on! I just realized, playing Harry for the past 60 minutes. HARRY IS REALLY BORING! He always stumbles from one misfortune to another and does NOTHING! And how do you make him more boring than he already is? YOU MAKE HIM NOT BE ABLE TO MOVE…AND INVISIBLE! (referring to just before Dumbledore died)”

But I think the best part was the Quidditch game, where they got 2 audience members, both of whom were around 4 or 5, and then got the rest of the audience to throw a small beach ball around into hula hoops on either end of the room. Well, it was fun when we’re just bobbing it around, but then one kid decides to be the hero and spikes the thing into the head of the audience member in front of him, and then later on when a dad decides to be uber macho and smacks the ball right into some poor toddler. Andrew and I pissed ourselves laughing at that.

They ended with 2 parody songs. Voldemort and Harry did a duet to “I Will Survive” but with different lyrics, and then “Dobby” (who is beyond creepy) came in with an interlude “All By Myself”.

I suppose in the end it was worth the 18 bucks after all.

Alex.

It’s Beautiful, Man!

I went out today with Bee to watch YesMan and then had lunch with Carmaine and Eunice.

Haha, if only all my blogs were that short.

Regardless of how fucking hot it was yesterday (because I didn’t go out at all – score) I still maintain that today was close to being unbearable. Anything above 26 is pretty bad for me. I said to Bee, “I hope this winter is a cold one because we get to wear our own clothes so we don’t have to be stuffed in school uniform.” and she argued that our uniform isn’t that bad. But still. Those blazers stink when wet.

I took my walk to the bus stop and as I was sitting there waiting, April called. So I chatted a bit, and got on the bus, and Bee got on at her stop down the road, and at the end of the bus ride I nearly toppled over the seat in front of me because it – the bus – braked suddenly and I was in one of the back seats.

Bee laughed. Jerk (not really. I deserved it).

We went to the Glen and I got my recharge (yeah, there’s a gripe behind that that more or less goes along the lines of “stupid Optus”) and then went back to the cinemas and bought out tickets. Who do we see being the solitary ticket girl? Pam. Yep, I had actually thought this morning that it would be rather funny if we got Pam for our ticket chick and sure enough, Pam was our ticket chick. So of course I asked to be put down to children tickets. Gotta love Pam. Chatted a bit (but not too much) and then I got my Chop Top and we went up to see YesMan.

We got there rather early, and were the first ones in the cinema so we just talked loudly to each other until one of the guys who I suppose makes sure the cinema is in good shape came in, and according to Bee he was “really cute” and he chatted with us for a bit with his “nice voice” and then after that a few more people came in so we couldn’t talk loudly anymore.

Anyway, so my two cents on YesMan.

It wasn’t the best movie that Jim Carrey has done, then again Jack Black and Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler have all gone a bit kooky (granted I’ve yet to see Tropic Thunder so don’t hold me on my words there). But I had some pretty good laughs and came out of it feeling like I could…say yes to ANYTHING! (Except, as Bee found out soon enough, wear a dress. Ha.) But there was a rather sweet scene in a barn in the rain when the lead girl Alisha suddenly hugs Carl (Carrey) and I’m sorry, I nearly said “aww” there. Or maybe I did. The old lady “repaying Carl for his kindness”, that part, that was rather disturbing. Because he actually liked it.

After the movie, we were a little late to the pre-arranged meet time for lunch at The Arena in the Glen near David Jones (nearly 9 years living in this area and I’ve never been there) and so Carmaine and Eunice were there already when we got there. I said to Bee later on, “You either miss someone like crazy from the get-go, or you don’t realize how much you’ve missed them until you see them again.” And somehow both were the case today. Because I’d been on the phone with Bee a lot I hadn’t been out of contact per se with her as much, but I hadn’t talked to Carmaine and Eunice much at all and it was incredibly good to be BRuCE again, just being retards (or just me. Look I was influenced by Carrey, alright? Got a big loud and gesture-y) and laughing and catching up.

I ordered a really big burger, unfortunately it wasn’t good enough to warrant a “this burger is so good…”  but the fries were really good, and everyone kept on nipping one or two there.

We went to Country Road, then David Jones (you may remember The Arena was NEXT TO David Jones and Country Road IS NOT) and then went out to Real Gelati near the library. I saw Carmen working there! (I mentioned Carmen a couple months back from Chinese school) And so we chatted for a bit, and then we…went back to David Jones for Carmaine to be picked up by her mom – who was really nice and wished me a Happy Chinese New Year. Eunice and I had a couple of “Your Face” moments before that, and a lot of high-fives (or burger-five, or parody-five) were passed around. I even made Bee high-five me a couple of times.

Eunice went down the escalator (sorry, chronological disorder. This was all before saying bye to Carmaine at David Jones) and so Carmaine and I shouted down from the first floor “BYE EUNICE!” And yeah it was fun to embarrass her like that. You should try it. You, in general.

Bee and I took the bus home to her place, and we watched Scrubs. Oh, Eunice, we watched the episode with the line “I love this moment so much I want to have sex with it.”

Mom picked me up – and with the fact that she has a phone now, I called her on her MOBILE to confirm I was at Bee’s place – and came home and my face is hurting a bit so I’m guessing I got a bit burnt. Yes. I burn easily. Laugh it up, mortals, laugh it up. Because…THIS…IS WHAT A MONSTER LOOKS LIKE…[throws glitter in face].

I don’t think I’ve ever employed my [] in blogging before. Have I?

In one scene in YesMan, Carl stopped a guy from jumping because he played a song on the guitar, an instrument he learned in a whim. I think if I can stop one person from jumping by playing them a song, it’s worth it.

I have no idea how I hit 1000 words already but I should stop.

Keep Cool (apparently),

D.F.