spicy pasta

for years i have been rewinding my chosen peeves in this page. thus deciding on some process of elimination, a few excess baggage like posts on confounding behavior, blog jaunts and people with no interest on the back pages of the paper would be trimmed down to control my jibes. besides those subjects, i have nothing to talk about really. i don't go to restaurants or indulge in food photography. there are no prada conventions in the horizon. i'm pretty certain any of roland mouret's creations would fit my thumbelina frame. the pictures i've seen so far from london's fashion week are still not up to par. although i've got to admit, london's got style with fashionistas all dolled up in the underground on a chilly weekday.

as for my quotidian liturgies, the art and science of overblown potassium and ureas are not that exciting. the co-morbidities exacerbate if not hasten the disease process. plus it all reminds me of my dad. an environment bereft in patience, gratitude and humility may not nourish the soul but i've learned to render a spin on the positive vibes. a friendly demeanor is just right in the alley. maybe.

as i explore words and stories in my menagerie and wrestle with chores such as tidying up the endless room clutter and utilizing the cleaning brush with such ferocity, i promise myself to be more productive. i'm actually bad with promises. so i'll just walk my walk, read a little, write a bit and tinker in the kitchen. right.

screwed reality

tropic thunder is a panoramic blitzkrieg on hollywood's star system. it is an engaging satire of the industry that produces celebrities adored by the masses and the individuals involve in the trade and probes deeper in the trenches of the personification of stardom. a more provocative version of zoolander which took a dig on male models, this star-studded production also includes an indignant steve coogan, a snippet of tobey maguire and a stimulating turn from tom cruise.

derek zoolander : "have you ever wondered if there was more to life, other than being really, really, ridiculously good looking?"

i usually like ben stiller when he's on ostentatious display as the villain, like his white goodman on dodgeball. aside from tropic thunder and zoolander, i have only seen one other film he directed which was a bygone film from another era and it's not the cable guy. every bit of tropic thunder is hilarious even if they make fun of serious subjects like international adoption. a baby extracted from the third world is merely an accessory to publicity. hollywood and adoption always brings to mind scenes from mommie dearest. it's a relief when a film is not afraid to reduce method actors, academy award winners, airy-fairy agents, junkies, greedy producers, overwhelmed directors, special effects techies, studio assistants into mere caricatures. and tom cruise as les grossman? he made me forgot that bumbling idiot who was bouncing on a couch. suri's dad has all the money in the world. no need for stuff such as valkyrie when he's excellent with character parts.

tropic thunder illustrates that the seeming paradise of movie making is no silent water. it parodies a pyrotechnical production, exposing insecurities and frailties. there's the insatiable desire to attract the most common representation. it's all about the bottom line.

reality bites.

press play to watch

my oscar night wasn't such a wreck after all. flocked by friendsters at the work station, the proceedings were enlivened with enthusiastic vigor. work wasn't a drag. we were the fashion police. yes, if we could afford to wear an elegant gown, we would choose taraji p. henson's or natalie portman's gown.

after an hour's breather, i came back with sean penn being sean penn. surfer dude spicoli was brilliant as harvey milk. but i love comeback stories and that lingering hope was thwarted when michael douglas read the name of the winner. sean penn, just like meryl streep or kate winslet is a perennial oscar nominee, he will get lauded again and again, forging an academy career similar to spencer tracy or jack nicholson. whereas guys like bill murray and mickey rourke are rarely recognized by award giving bodies. the wrestler might have been mickey rourke's only chance in the same way bill murray has not yet matched his lost in translation red carpet forays. other than the best actor category, all the other results reflected the bafta choices and i'm happy.

now the musical, i mean the presentation itself. i had it recorded and i watched the show when i should have been sleeping. i truly adore the pause and forward buttons of my clicker. where was digital tv when i was younger? pressing the forward button for all of will smith's portion was essential for my time management. the masters of ceremonies was foxy. he's not a natural comic like all the previous hosts but then he's hugh jackman, people's current sexiest man alive. i knew he's a trained musical stage actor but i didn't know wolverine possesses a great singing voice and could rotate and spin like gene kelly. i got mixed reviews with the film australia and will pass. but i'm relishing to see the adamantium claws of wolverine.

i'm pondering deep within myself to be more accomodating and forward thinking. but the acting awards being presented by five former winners, who instead of showing clips of their performances, eulogized the nominees with more than generous amount of superlatives. it felt like a spurious attempt to tug the deepest core of affections. they were already extolled by the academy, we know they're great. as a movie fan, it's a thrill to see de niro, hopkins and michael douglas in the same podium. but the hollywood biggies belong in the same circle. it's not only a mutual admiration society, their presence and the words of adulation were part of the script. but i was hoping daniel day lewis was able to present an award. maybe next time.

the droning sound

just like the past four ceremonies, i will miss the live broadcast of the academy awards. i forgot to request the proper shift at work. but then i reckon, would it be such big deal if i won't see the events live? the show would be recorded in our skyplus and i'll be able to view the proceedings two days later. anyhow, there are tons of ER's in my planner that i haven't played for five weeks and i kept deleting episodes of university challenge. since movies and music are not tea room topics by a long shot, i would be merely communing with the web and the fine print. my mom was such a connoisseur of the oscar awards ceremony that's it's kind of brutal that she's not around for a chat. i'll make sure i would get my fill during the days off that would follow.

i've been reading a lot about the oscars the last few days, touching base with the predictions, exploring the motivations in method acting. if mickey rourke is a method actor, as written in this article, did he use the method approach in 9 1/2 weeks? my erstwhile charmer is querying.

blog jaunt

wandering in the wilderness for eloquent celebrity bloggers seem to be a harder job than i thought. writing is a more laborious process. if some of my more articulate friends do not even blog, how can i expect my favorite performers who are sometimes reluctant to grant interviews to promote a project divulge their thoughts to the world? that's nearly asking the impossible. but there are some exceptions. zach braff's a good read. but the scrubs star only updates his blog twice a year. other than him most celebrity bloggers are mostly published authors who write efficient, interesting, cerebral pieces or celebutantes posting the trappings of wealth in their sites. i'm more of a words person. i bury myself in all kinds of journal spheres. i seldom delve through my friends' photo albums in our customary web hangouts. however, it's still such a treat if the person maintains a blog as i jotted down in these pages almost two years ago and in other texts i couldn't trace at present. their lingering choices, hobbies, styles, travels, peculiarities and structures are transformed into lavish sentences. sauntering unto stringent phraseology need not be mandatory.

schmaltz tv

one of the most noteworthy things that my tita two taught me when i was a child was not only how to pronounce my b's and v's properly by the time i was eight, but she also paved the way for my fixation with american primetime soaps. it was the 80's, the decade of big hair, flowery dresses and oversized hats. unlike the plots of the action series which were easy to discern for my prepubescent mind, my tita two untangled the interwoven narratives of our regular viewing habits in the san sebastian house. falcon crest, dallas, dynasty and knots landing stories were mostly about greed, money and the american dream. the men were rich and determined, the women were feisty and glamorous. the good girls cry all the time, the bad seeds triumphed episodes after episodes. the scenarios were incredulous. it was trashy tv, period. but i considered them an early education in the art of malevolence that seemed to be the norm in actuality. out of the four shows, i was only able to get a grip of knots landing. i mostly read about dallas and dynasty in the magazines. in falcon crest, i got engulfed with one dynamic love-hate character. i'm getting reacquainted with the role at this juncture as falcon crest is being rerun in one of our digital channels. yes, watching those soaps was a cursory undertaking frowned upon by highbrow society. but what is shallow and easy to the eye is somewhat enjoyable. i feel the same way with situational comedies, furnish me with my cherished sitcoms and i would easily relax and have a ball.

one degree love game

there might be other films out there that are not as nauseous as he's not that into you. but i have a rule for shedding cinema money for two slebs no matter how dreadful the commodity or how lousy the enterprise. all the others, like a chick flick from yonder and beyond or a critically acclaimed project (not starring any one in my sweet list), i usually await on digital or blue laser disc. deeply entrenched in my fab but highly-disquieting 30's, i may have, in all probability, ceased being such a sucker to romcoms. i could no longer laugh at the punchlines or pseudo-punchlines. being in seclusion with other moviegoers in a dimly-lit cinema is an anathema to my misanthropic tendencies. while most of the audience laugh at the predictable lines and dialogues of the star-studded production, i cringe at the illustration of adultery and infidelity. the state of the art celluloid experience has no forward button to recoil from the shabby parts. scar-jo is the modern day venus, the temptress, playing the other woman anew like her nola rice in woody allen's match point, although brumspur's opinion of her as being another porcelain doll lucky enough not to do porn, stings a bit. jennifer connelly essays a role reminiscent of her jilted wife character in little children. however, after the break up and dodgeball, this is the first time i've seen justin long play the regular geezer. his alex is quite likable, an impressive foil to the anguish and concerns of the bubbly but over-analytical gigi (ginnifer goodwin). drew barrymore is barely a cameo. ben affleck appeared in about three or four scenes. his leading lady, jen aniston on the other hand has a few more bits, venturing into backdrops from her real life, as the despondent old maid, as if there's anything derelict in being a single female or a forsaken ex-wife or girlfriend. it's great to be in-love but it's even greater to walk tall amid the serrated claws of the splenetic antagonists.

aimless trickles

it was just a mere thought, but it occurred to me while i was shivering in the cold walking away from the workplace. i was going to compile all of jen aniston's mag covers and flick away, she's forty today, a forty year old non-virgin virtually naked on the cover of GQ. but i'm exhausted to the max and there's a date to watch jen's latest chickflick tonight with my loving chef, the significant person who wouldn't spare a dime on frost/nixon because it's only about a feckin interview, his words not mine.

as a dutiful spouse, it would be a privilege to queue for the wrestler, his choice. i sat through joyously on every bit of the blu ray rendition of tropic thunder which is a marvelous dig on the fripperies of hollywood. tropic thunder superseded the hilariousness of superbad. one of its stars, RDj is getting kudos for his performance as the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude. RDj was lovable even in Only You with marisa tomei. i can remember as far back as Chances Are. twenty years seem not so long ago.

the dark knight should have been embraced and lauded by the so-called academy not by virtue of heath ledger's mesmerizing take on the joker but by its star christian bale's exhibiting his amusing invectives on the set of that terminator flick. fine, that tirade has nothing to do with the pulchritude of the dark knight. but i cannot pontificate, the A-list optical illusions that we see on screen are not susceptible to random displays of their dark sides. stars are more devils than angels once they've attained the fame and glory. most of them are divas, primma donnas who consider themselves the savior of mankind. however, my favorite person, julie, is not a sleb. she even touts the bible on sundays. but she's one of the few souls in this world who is very nice to me. while some of the others, in the blue-dark blue continuum are most likely the fairweather adjuncts to all my rants. in fact i like julie more than i like jen, who has more money and who lives in beverly hills. actually, i like all my friends more than i like jen, who can treat her all BFF'S to a holiday in the world's most exquisite beaches. but as i filter my rubbish bin of trashy tabloids, i can roughly surmise that jen is not a diva. yet, she might be the biggest bitch of them all.

weekday lull

time off work is such a laxury that it's a wonder it doesn't happen often. but this is a bad economy to be laid back. the currencies are falling against each other. the banking system is in dire straits. as a master procrastinator, clocking more hours at work to earn the keep remains a wishful thinking. the days off are just too good to waste procrastinating. it's just sad that i don't follow my to-do list to a tee and become bemused and baffled with my lack of productivity. but then i read a bit, sharpen the wits a little and my day becomes more riveting. i'm learning to write poetry, beginning the process by trying to decipher some great poets like keats and TS eliot. still, my day of hoovering, even gyrations to battle it out with the assiduous accumulation of fatty tissues, would cause the most vociferous of gossipmongers to suppress a yawn. now back to johnny panic and the bible of dreams.

twisted binge

as a wide-eyed thirteen year old schoolgirl, i was already an aficionado of all kinds of reading crap. woman today, a newsprint magazine almost the size of a daily tabloid, was my weekly ritual. from amongst the folios of the said mag and just before the cover interview page, comes the womenagerie column of jz. based on my cache of cutouts, the erstwhile voice of my generation began her stint in the mag when i was fourteen, percolating in deft strokes all kinds of compelling stuff -- the informative and funny side of politics, the skewered aspects of the entertainment industry, portraits of herself and all the other categories compiled in the book adaptation first printed on 1995. fast forward to twenty years later, jz is still the indefatigable writer and observer and my escape from alcatraz ( a dominion of scrub wearing professionals who haven't read her, haven't heard of her and wouldn't even try reading her). thanks to the tenacity of the lovely ivy, who clearly has the talent in communicating with national bookstore salespeople, i was able to lay my hands on jz's eighth twisted book, the 14th jz book in my repository. unlike the previous versions of the earlier twisted titles, which were chronicled in the broadsheet today, the eighth edition has a diffrent format. if i can gather succinctly, most of the stuff in the eighth twisted were transcribed from her primordial blogger turf. not that i don't prefer the internet variant but a book compilation still triumphs over a blog page. in this age of blogs and blogs, jz could actually update her current blogs almost twice a day. when it comes to writing, the bespectacled lady in black clearly doesn't dawdle.

in the subject of tennis, i don't linger in jz's path. in the last decade i've tracked down her tennis writing, she has rooted for the success of marcelo rios and goran ivanisevic when they were still active, and marat safin and roger federer at present time. between andre agassi and pete sampras, she prefers the former. in her words during wimbledon 2001, "I don't like pete sampras. I find him lacking in personality, which of course has nothing to do with his ability, his incredible focus or with the game itself, and I know this, so don't write irate letters telling me I don't know !@#$ about tennis, thank you. Sampras doesn't need you to tell me that he's probabbly the best tennis player ever --- the number 13 sums it up very neatly. My not liking him is no hair off his back."

i may have missed sampras london return at the royal albert hall in december, but so unlike jz, i'm a sampras fan. as i venture deeper into life and living in my raving 30's, i've accepted the hard facts -- the youngest US open winner is no longer the greatest tennis player in history. that title belongs to federer, by virtue of reaching the french open final three times and loads more clay court titles. thanks to the tenacity of one rafael nadal, the swiss master is being brought down to earth. perhaps i could write about federer the way jz wrote about sampras. but i will leave it to the likes of nadal, djokovic, andy murray and any more up and coming tennis prodigies to annihilate his assault to overtake sampras. so as a divergent entity from all other glory-hunters within my blue-wearing circle, i cheer for nadal for the sampras perspective.

aside from the essays, the eighth twisted also comprised the usual movie reviews, introspection of sundance and european sojourns, topics embracing various interests that are as thought-provoking as they are captivating and three short stories of which the starlet suicides is clearly my runaway favorite. blithely, a lot more jz books would be forthcoming in the vast horizon and her audience wouldn't mind anew matching wits with the perplexed salesclerk.