productive day, the reef, and comic-con wrap up
I have been super productive today. I exchanged my HP7 for 2 Ngaio Marshes, mailed a package home, got my photos done, booked a hostel in CC, set up an appointment to see the aprtment, booked my airport shuttle, and got my haircut. Twice, actually. The first woman (at a mall place) just took some off the bottom, but it still looked like CRAP, so I went to an actual salon, where the woman was able to make it almost look like a real haircut. So, its back to being sort of a bob, although it isn’t perfect, because some of the layers need to grow some more. Anyways, it looks fantastic, hopefully it’ll look that was when I do it myself in 2 days to go see the temp people.
Oh! And I got Absolute Garbage (they didn’t have the DVD but I got the remix CD at least). Oh my god; they picked some of my favorite photos for the booklet, and Shirley says, “A big hand of love to everyone who has ever gone crazy for one of our tracks, laughed and screamed and cried at one of our shows, stuck us on a home made compilation, written us a letter, called themselves a Garbage fan, or even acted like one.” Hmmm – all of the above? Check.
(So far – I like the world is not enough, special, cherry lips, I think I’m paranoid (crystal method), stupid girl, When I grow up is okay, I’m not a huge fan of Breaking up the girl, but it isn’t one of my favorite songs either. Ditto milk, but the remix is really lush and lovely. The Androgyny remix is not my thing. I prefer the hermaphrodite remix on youtube. Queer (rabbit in the moon remix) is great. Not surprising – I’m sure I’ve heard rabbit in the moon stuff before and liked it. Ooh – I like the you look so fine remix. The last two push it and bad boyfriend are both ones I’ve heard before and which are pretty good. The first CD is a greatest hits collection (one that the fans think has some odd choices.) The only new song on it is a remix of ‘it’s all over but the crying’, which is fantastic. Although I am NOT happy about it closing out the CD – more Garbage! MORE!!! GET BACK TOGETHER SOONER!!)
Ahem. There are pictures from Sydney and Melbourne (and the trip out to the reef) here.
Speaking of shirley, here she is joining Gwen onstage (not good quality, unfortunately)
Did I mention that I saw Dances with Wolves a couple of days ago? It was really good.
So! The reef. The pictures did not come out very well, but there are some here.
It was really fantastic. The pictures don’t do justice to how colorful it was. There were amazing technicolor trigger fish, which you could hear munching on the coral, butterfly fish, bat fish (giant), some giant grouper things, aligator gar fish, yellow pipe cleaner fish, angel fish, a moorish idol, a unicorn fish, clownfish, gobys, damsel fish, wrasses, surgeon fish. Some cool fish with giraffe spots. Clownfish darting back into their anenomes. There were fish absolutely everywhere. No matter where you went there were cool things showing up. Unfortunately no sharks (I kept swimming away from everyone towards the deep water but no luck) and no sea turtles. Lots of the fish were much larger than expected. Lots were about 12-18 inches, and a couple were about 26-28 inches. Lots of technicolor fish. The color gets lots in the photos (particularly reds) but they were very cool. And you could get quite close to a lot of them. I swam through a school of little sardine-looking fish with horns and some others that were small silver fish (about .5 inch long) that flashed in the sunlight. I spent about 30 minutes snorkeling in the morning, followed by the intro dive (which our instructor said went really well), and about 100 minutes snorkeling in the afternoon (I was unbelievably pruny). I saw so much, its sort of hard to remember everything.
There was brain coral, needle coral, staghorn coral (there were some giant bushes of this that were fluorescent purple that made me think, Octopus’ garden), mushroom coral, plate coral. Lots of different colors.
Scuba diving was fun. I got to hold a sea cucumber. It was great to be able to go deep, although I had trouble going up. I decided to only snorkle in the afternoon though – since I saw more that way (there was too much to focus on while diving, plus my mask fogged up a bit)
We saw some migrating minke whales on the way, mostly blowing out water, and raising their tails. No breaching, but it was still really exciting. I’ve never seen a minke before.
Really – the whole thing was incredible. I wish the photos had come out better, particularly because they don’t quite capture how many fish there were. I really liked going down and seeing the fish hiding under bits of coral. Oh – and I saw some giant clams and some fish digging in the sand at the bottom.
Fun stuff:
Hilary’s letters to a Scripps prof (thanks Kristl)
Jon Stewart to guest on the Simpsons! Yay (also info on Walk Hard (with Jenna Fischer)
Get Smart, Invasion, Shannyn Sossamon, Be kind, remind, and Kevin Smith
Paris Hilton joins musical thriller Repo! Easily the weirdest headline I’ve seen today.
A snippet from the Australia screenwriter, courtesy of cinematical, “Notice that [the screenwriter] calls Kidman “unremarkable to look at.” [Ryan — what is he, insane?] He says that in the flesh she’s awkward and nervous, but she can turn on the jets when she needs to. He even claims to have brought this up with Luhrmann, who told him that Kidman simply has the ability to “act beautiful.”” Haha.
Listmania: 50-26 biggest tearjerkers, the online community top 100
Re: the last one: I like this list. It’s got Leon, Run Lola Run, Ed Wood, Eternal sunshine, Fight club, the matrix, princess bride, American History X, the Big Lebowski, Memento, and a bunch of others that don’t often make the top 100. I also like how the hitchcock’s got grouped:
19. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
18. Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
17. Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)
Oh – and Disney has decided to release a Narnia film a year for the next 6 years. Take that, New Line! Sheesh.
Neil Gaiman interview incl. info on Neverwhere.
Trailers; Horton hears a who, dedication (this looks awesome. I love Billy Crudup), king of california, descent, august rush (this has been out for awhile, but it looks interesting)
Tags: Travel
jwdmeow
1. You wrote them a letter?
2. What do you mean, you haven’t seen “Dances with Wolves”?!?
3. I used to work with a woman who had been a professional model, and in person she just looked normal. (This was obviously in the days when models were thin, not anorectic stick insects.)
Once she was “glam”, she was on the covers of magazines. Maybe Kidman has that, too. We always see her fixed up.
I haven’t had a chance to check all all the links, but the tear jerker one made a mistake or two. The most poignant moment in The Way We Were is when Barbara reaches up and pushes Robert’s hair off his forehead. It’s such an intimate, loving gesture.
The original Imitation of Life with Claudette Colbert is much better, imho, than the re-make, partly b/c CC is a much better actress than LT. Also, the black daughter (don’t know the actress — sorry) is better. ALSO, the black “maid” is more a partner to CC and less a servant than in the 1950s version. They seem much more like friends.
And, like all lists made these days, everything is skewed toward modern (films, books, plays…). There was an entire genre of films made in the 1930s and 1940s with women protaganists that were terrific tear jerkers. Stella Dallas, Mildred Pierce, Letter From an Unknown Woman, In This Our Life, etc. They were called (rudely!) “Women’s Weepies”. Regardless of the demeaning title, many of them are excellent films….
Who? Oh, Garbage? God, yes. During the version 2.0 era they used to respond to fan letters on their website, so I sent them one. They didn’t pick mine for a response though, *sniff*.
Well, now I’ve seen it. Snark.
The only reality show I’ve ever seen, America’s Next Top Model, is just like that. The girls hang around the house and half of them aren’t even pretty, but then they glam up for photo shoots and are gorgeous.