Condo for Sale! Rat free! Coconuts in abundance!

I've had something like 20 people come trotting through my place the last couple of weeks. Strangers. My condo is up for "show" as I try to leave my home of 7 years (!) for a new abode down the lane. So all these people are coming by and they leave and no one makes an offer.
What is it that they are looking for, I wonder? What makes a person want to buy a home?
Of course the answers to all of life's questions are found in one place: Survivor. Yes, the show that proved that peanut butter is a prize worth getting naked for has shown me the secret of what people really want in a home. You see, they merged the tribes this week on the venerable show that kicked off the endless cycle of unreal reality tv (so you know who to thank when you're watching Flava Flav living it up on the Surreal Life). So part of the merge process is deciding which of the two tribes' living space the mega-tribe would call home.
Somebody from one tribe shouted "We have no rats and tonnes of coconuts!"
The other tribe squealed, "We are so there, baby!"
"But we have blood-sucking ticks galore."
"Don't care. You got coconuts? Su casa me casa, hombre!"
And in two seconds they're off.
What have I been doing by keeping my floors clean and bathtub scum free? Well, okay, keeping the floors clean ensures that no small piece of lint is mistaken by potential buyers to be rat droppings. But I had a nicely arranged bowl of fruit on my counter just for presentation sake. I had bananas, apples, tomatoes (which I'm told are fruit), and some oranges. No coconuts. What was I thinking? Now I could see it clearly as people came to view my place:
"Not a bad size. 5 appliances, good. Big balcony...what's this? No coconuts! What the-? Where the f--- are the f---ing coconuts?! He expects us to buy this hole and doesn't even have the decency to put out some f---ing coconuts???"
So without further ado, I have added the coconuts.
$195k buys you 625 sq.feet and all the coconuts you can jam down your gullet.
Make me an offer.

Riding the You-Tube

Matthew Amuck

A video I did of my little brother about 2 years ago. Nowadays he's 2 years older, maybe 10 pounds heavier (if he's lucky), but he still acts exactly the same. Except now when he bumps into things, aside from hurting himself, he usually damages something. Hilarity ensues...often followed by comments that the kid could use some "downers". Not much else to this video really except for two things: (1) it shows how I didn't know how to spell "amuck" back then and (2) it's proof-positive that Elvis music can make anything amusing.

"Angela? Am I seeing double?"

Possibly my favourite video on Youtube...aside from Choco-party ("Good! Good!"). Whoever these twins are, they look exactly like the little girl who visits me at the reference desk at work and draws me pictures. I'm trying to get her used to drawing the symbol for Gucci (yup, child-labour thrives in the Children's department). Her name is Angela or Erica or something...she always says "yes" regardless of what I ask her.
"Are you a girl?"
"Yes."
"Do you like rabbits?"
"Yes."
"Is Stephen Harper an over-stuffed Ken-doll on meth?"
"Yes."

Whatever her name is, she's a sweetheart and so are these two.
"Yes."

Far Out, Far East Films: "Saving My Hubby"

Saving My Hubby
(dir.Nam-seob Hyeon)
This was the first movie from my Korean collection that I had seen before that I pulled out and watched all the way through again. Kind of odd since I wouldn’t have ranked it as one of my favourites. I guess I decided to watch it again after seeing Take Care Of My Cat and Ring Virus. I wanted to see if it was the same actress playing the level-headed, oppressive-family afflicted character in TCOMC and the evil psychic girl in Korea’s version of The Ring playing the overly anxious, harried lead in Saving My Hubby. Indeed, it turned out to be one and the same, Du-Na Bae. She’s all of an entire year older than when she acted in TCOMC but looking a little more weathered. It’s fitting though considering that she’s playing the part of a young new mother, Geum-sun, trying to cope with raising a child, learning how to be a wife and homemaker, and giving up on her dreams of being a star volleyball player.

That’s just her character profile. The movie then takes Geum-Sun and sets her on her way in a mad dash around the seedier slums and nightclubs of Seoul as she searches for her husband, Jun-Tae (played by Tae-Woo Kim from The Contact) who is being held hostage by oafish swindlers. In the process, she has run ins with two mob groups, fights off a letch, avoids a mysterious menacing stranger, beats up her husband’s superior, and has to negotiate her way through the denizens and cast offs in the urban slums. All the while, she’s toting around her baby girl (whom everyone mistakes as a boy to Geum-Sun’s dismay) papoose style on her back. AND…this is all a race against the clock as she tries to find her husband and get back home in time to meet her stern in-laws who are coming in on the morning train. Oh yeah, she also needs to find a couple of mackerels. The North American movie it reminded me the most of was After Hours with Griffin Dunne as the lost innocent wandering the city streets at night bouncing from one oddball situation and characters to the next.

This is your basic “pile on” movie: set up a simple scenario, wife tries to find husband, and then pile on as many obstacles and problems as possible. The keys are to avoid making the absurd situations ridiculous and to have a convincing performance from your lead who has to keep it together in the acting department. An over the top performance would send the movie into farce and that’s not the type of comedy it’s attempting to be. It’s trying to build sympathy for the put upon, Geum-Sun, as she, in one night, has to transform from an unprepared and directionless young mother, to an independent, fast thinking and mature individual in light of the comical and stressful situations around her. Du-Na Bae engages this role successfully. Her performance in the earlier part of the movie is properly whiny and spoilt. As she’s put through her paces through the middle parts of the film, narrowly avoiding all the dangers coming at her, the determination in her becomes more and more evident. So by the end, as she eventually reaches her boiling point and breaks down crying, the audience is sufficiently prepared to sympathize with her.

One thing about the ending: while the final scene is appropriate and clearly discernible as a “happy ending”, it felt to me like a sequence was missing between the final scene and the one preceding it. Geum-sun’s maturation as a mother and a wife was never really acknowledged by anyone, even by herself, even though that seemed to be the idea of the movie. The story pays due diligence to resolving part of her problem as she gets to live out her dream again. But running around the city all night should have also taught her about the responsibility and appreciation of having a family, not only about how to spike a volleyball.
Rating: B

And away we go...

Hello and welcome to Robert's first blog. The creator is jumping into this like he usually does with all things...without a road map. While this space tries to find an identity please look forward to lots of rambling reviews of everything and anything that catches my fancy or ticks me off. Also expect many parenthesis (like this). The blogger is big on parenthesis. Along with being symmetrical, they are evidence of how muddled his thoughts are at the moment. For those who know me from work, you may want to consider this as the next step (or leap off the precipice) in the evolution of the Circuitbreaker, my printed newsletter. Probably less heavy on workplace happenings, since who in their right mind, outside of TPL staff, would care what's going on in, say, the Facilities offices of the Toronto Public Library (you don't want to know...oh lord, you don't want to know)?

Anyway, like I said, please stop by once in a while and see where this experiment is headed. Motivation is such a hard word to repeat over and over. And we'll see how it goes from there...