Tuesday, April 11, 2006

This is disturbing and depressing

About a year ago I posted about the idea that there are probably blogs out there whose writers have died. Now I find something really kind of disturbing out there--

http://yourdeathspace.blogspot.com/

This blog links to the myspace sites of people who've died. I looked at a few, and it seems way sadder and more poignant than just reading the news stories of the deaths.

Sorry--maybe I'm just feeling a little morbid today. I will check if my friend who knows my password still remembers it though, to post or delete this blog if it becomes necessary.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

The ADD Movie Usher Reviews

Memoirs of a Geisha

So this movie was kind of... weird. I mean, I'm all for chick flicks--just ask my boyfriend--but there's some things that don't make sense here. First of all, how does this Japanese girl end up with blue eyes? Huh? And how come they're all speaking "japanese" but at times near the beginning it's actually japanese, but then it's english, and then when the americans come after the war they all just speak the same english which used to be japanese with exactly the same fluency and accents?

I mean, it's like King Kong where you see this giant critter and the chick is up in his nest place and yet... No monkey poop. I mean, I've seen the cages at the zoo, and well, I just don't get it. For that matter, that monkey didn't even eat anything hardly... Oh yeah--right. The geisha.

So she ends up being put up for a bidding war for her "virtue" or whatever the hell it was called--kind of like in that movie that Brooke Shields was in--Pretty Baby, I think it was. Yeah, they put her on a big plate and she was what, 12, and her mom let her do that movie and all and then there was Blue Lagoon and what kind of parent lets their kid... oh right.

So this geisha chick is pursued by this guy who's all scarred because he's a "war hero". Right. I mean, I didn't exactly ace history, but I remember the stuff about the rape of Nanking and how the Japanese behaved in Manchuria, where this scarred guy saved his buddy. Fact is, both of them are war criminals, and the chick was what, 15 or 16 when all these middle aged--hell, the doctor who bought her had to be 60--are bidding for her virginity.

I rate this movie... double ewww.

Friday, April 07, 2006

Poetry By Dythandra

A Road Trip

I see the ad online--Switchblade Symphony,
In concert, but too far away for a day trip.
I do have friends, messages fly
Our plans are made.

The parentals, choosing unwisely,
Pick this time to make their stand.
Seems the school's been calling about me
Yet again.

I don't argue, so much as glare.
Still, they are insistent,
And needing cash more than permission
I am marched into "counselling".

I recognize the counsellor,
She's tried to break through before
I am resistant, but she holds my travel plans
Unwittingly, within her power.

I see her family photos, smiling--so... traditional,
Not that her... orientation matters;
I see such tastes as fluid and evolving
And so it begins.

"I'm ugly--no one wants me," I complain.

No dear, you're really very lovely,
Under all that white makeup...

And so our exchanges go--
I've already scripted my part,
And the mini-recorder is easy to hide.

I spend a day editing;
The results are better than I had hoped.

I call her direct line--she sounds so... ill-prepared
I just play the recording of her words
If their sentiment were real
I might even blush.

She tells my parents what they need to hear,
And my trip is justly my reward.
Unfortunately one of my compatriots,
Is not a worthy travel companion.

You've never really tasted blood, have you?
Your own doesn't count.

I could lie, but why rise to her bait?
"Poser" is such a cruel word.

Our discount hotel is not so careful
About locking up their kitchen knives at night
A large one finds its way up to our room.

She wakes to find me sitting, crosslegged
Beside her on the bed,
Fingering the blade, humming.

"I just dreamed your blood tasted... salty"

She's gone by breakfast time.
Luckily for her,
'Twas only her ticket that was scalped.


Monday, April 03, 2006

A class act

It's been less than two weeks since I emailed Carrie Fleming, a former student, after finding her email address online. I asked if she were in town sometime if she'd come visit my acting class. Today she did.

It's strange to think she was 15 when she was in my class and also the first musical I ever directed--that was 16 years ago. Now she's got a long and interesting list of performance credits in film, t.v. and commercials. It was fun to listen to some of the stories of things that she's experienced and learned.

Recently she was featured in the "Masters of Horror" cable series starring in an episode directed by Dario Argento. "Suspiria" is probably this italian director's best known movie. She also told us about recently being sent a script by a director I won't reveal here, but I guarantee you know the name.

Afterwards, it was nice to catch up over a drink and I think we'll have her back again before long, perhaps to do some audition practice with some of the group. Here's a pic of Carrie with Ashley and Rachel (who were most impressed by the fact she was in an episode of L-word, I suspect):














It was a cool afternoon, all round.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future in

Daycare

Daycare, huh? Let me guess--babysitting is the only job you've ever done? Really? Okay then, it will probably go something like this:

You'll go to college for four years to get your degree in Eary Childhood Education--even though you might not want to teach preschool, you'll need the qualification anyway. It won't really be that demanding--it's one of the few university degrees where finger painting isn't just a metaphor, but actually on your transcript.

Once you graduate you'll go to work for some licensed daycare facility. The only difference between licensed and unlicensed is that yours gets inspected once a year and you actually have to pay taxes on your income.

Your dating life will suck. As the junior person, you get the early 6 a.m. start that nobody else wants, which means you don't have many late nights, and when you do go out and meet guys, they're turned off by your job. Face it, guys in their early 20s don't want to think about kids and they assume since kids are your chosen career you're just itching to start a big family. Plus, when some jock tells you how he broke his ankle hang-gliding, he doesn't want to hear the patronizing first person plural comfort ("we got a boo-boo on our ankie") that you offer instinctively.

You barely eke out a living, and it irks you that a kindergarten teacher with similar years of college training earns twice what you do and has full benefits. Fortunately, your employer likes you and offers you the chance to buy into the day care, so as part owner you can begin to improve your financial picture. Unfortunately, you aren't aware that your afternoon relief, her son, has an inappropriate interest in some of the young clients of the daycare and when the lawsuit and criminal investigations happen, you escape charges, but your personal share of the liability cost, as one of the owners, forces you into bankruptcy.

You try to rebuild your career, but your references--you worked the last four years for a daycare that is infamous due to the publicity around the scandal, and you have a bankruptcy that makes people wary as well--simply make it impossible for you to be hired by any daycare in the area. Finally, you turn to one of those job placement services for the truly desperate, and they place you as an au pair with a wealthy family in another city.

Unlike most other live-in nannies, you are not looking for a way past immigration restrictions, but you suffer the indignity of a pathetic wage just the same. You realize how your employers view you when they keep forgetting and slipping into spanish to give you instructions. The wife insists you do all manner of menial labor that means you have little or no free time for yourself, and when she's not around to nag you about dusting, the husband is creeping you out with his inappropriate advances.

Eventually he goes one step beyond what even your virtually nonexistent self-esteem will tolerate and you quit. You go to the same lawyer that handled the class action suit against your former daycare, but before you get to trial, you are shown a video of the rich couple's maid explaining tearfully how she caught you stealing from them and you threatened to kill her if she exposed you. You remember that she had been a successful actress in her home country before the revolution and it comes in handy when she sobs her suspicions that you have a serious drug problem.

Your lawyer advises you to take the offered settlement and forget about court. It isn't what you deserve, but it's enough for you to make a down payment on a big old house in a bad neighborhood, where you open a group home for foster kids. A steady stream of deeply troubled kids move through the home, and you soon have spent a fortune on padlocks and smoke detect0rs.

One of these troubled teens will be responsible for your untimely death--either the abuse victim whose anger at authority finally gets out of control, or pyromaniac who found where you hide the matches. Either way, your next of kin will hear the words "beyond recognition" uttered at your inquest.

Hey--might be a good idea to make sure your dental records are up to date.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

The ADD Movie Usher Reviews

Napoleon Dynamite

Yeah, strange kid that one. Actually, the whole movie is weird. I was sitting there--well, leaning, really--we're not supposed to sit. I think it's kind of stupid, since we're supposed to be able to watch the movie and the audience that we have to stand up all the time.

Anyway, this Napoleon kid is pretty creepy. I mean, what's the point of all these kids wanting to watch this movie and talk like this kid when if he went to their schools they'd just shun him and mock him. And that Pedro kid--if he talked at a normal speed, this movie'd be over with a lot quicker.

And tell me this--when I worked that show there were two couples in the back making out. What the hell? Who gets turned on by this stuff? I mean, if he asked you to dance after seeing those moves would you? Not that my boyfriend dances any better--but I figure Napoleon was supposed to be sober when he was dancing.

Oh, and Napoleon has this brother who's as geeky as him but gets this hot drag queen from the internet. My friend says it wasn't a drag queen, but I kinda think it was. I give it 2 stars. (That's outta five stars.)