Messages from abroad, not massages from a broad

What is up with men playing the role of Edna Turnblad in Hairspray?  I don’t get it.  Travolta is a terrible singer.  I know he had a singing career in the 70s, but that was 30 years ago.  And even then, his vocals were pretty weak.  I mean, just because you are a ’singer’ and have some albums doesn’t mean you can sing (*cough* Britney Spears).  Honestly though, what the fuck is so special about having dudes dressed in drag to play large women?  This falls in line with America’s wonderment with Tyler Perry and his crappy ass movies: Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Madea’s Family Reunion and Madea’s Class Reunion (Crap, Crap II, and Crap III).  Considering the high level of homophobia in America, I’m really surprised that people embrace these films; enough to make them box office successes.  I guess the real question is, can these male actors really convey the character of a woman better than an actual woman?  I highly doubt it.  Travolta sucked in Hairspray!  I just think it’s kinda silly.

It’s 4am and I am procrastinating on my packing.  I’m heading out to Barcelona in about twelve hours and I’m feeling lazy.  It’s funny that I resorted to updating my blog considering I am typically too lazy to update this on a regular day.  Does that even make sense?  I’m procrastinating on a task with another task that I typically procrastinate on.  I am an idiot.  Actually, this reminds me of a comment that I heard someone make when I was walking to the Metro the other week.  I passed this couple walking on the sidewalk and the charming bloke wittily said "I’m so fucking hungry, I don’t think that I can fucking eat, I’m so hungry."  This totally struck me as odd because a) it didn’t make a lot of sense at the surface, and b) his girlfriend appeared to be genuinely amused by his comment.  I mean, I get it.  He was so hungry, he physically couldn’t muster the strength to eat, but come on?!?  Seriously?!?  I think it had more to do with the way he said it or maybe I was bothered that the woman was enjoying his "wittiness".  Whatever!  To each their own.

So I cracked open my paint supplies and decided to try my hand at painting.  I don’t think I’ve painted anything artistically since 7th Grade (the American way of saying Grade 7).  I still remember Art that year with Mr. Bone.  What a strange fellow he was.  He drove around in a blue station wagon with bright pink hub caps.  Ballsy and crazy at the same time.  Anyway, painting is friggin difficult.  I really need a lot more practice and I think I need to familiarize myself with my brushes before I can paint the way I want to.  The results are just not good enough for my own standards.  Come to think of it, I think I probably need to invest in some other painting tools, brushes, better paints and an arsenal of colours.  What I have now is seemingly inadequate.  Yes, I am blaming the tools and not my lack of talent.  :)  I managed to paint a weird looking bird on a saturated green background.  It will not see the light of day!  So that was painting #1.  If I ever become famous, then that will be worth millions!  haha.  I made myself laugh!

Well, time to pack.  I am off to Barcelona in about 12 hours, barring delays at the airport.  I’m only gone for a few days, so it’s a short trip.  I’ve had a lot of people ask me if I’m excited or not.  For some reason, I’m not.  Maybe cause I know I’m only missing 2 days of work or maybe because I will be back within a weeks time.  Before I sign off, I’m gonna list some new songs that I find worthy of a recommendation.  Some are questionable, I know:

Duran Duran - Nite Runner (Timbaland produced this album, give their songs a chance)
Duran Duran - Falling Down (JT co-wrote this song)
Duran Duran - Box Full O’ Honey
Duran Duran - Skin Divers
Chris Brown - With You
Chris Brown - You
Chris Brown - Down (ft Kanye West) (Kanye doesn’t disappoint)
Leona Lewis - Bleeding Love
Jennifer Lopez - Brave (I hate her voice too, but the whole arrangement is catchy)
Britney Spears - Radar (God I hate her, but this song is catchy enough to warrant a mention)
Backstreet Boys - Unmistakable (the piano part remind me of another song that I cannot place)
Alicia Keys - No one (my colleague Kwaun has been playing this song for over a month at work. i’m kinda sick of it now, but at one time, it was a fantastic song)
Ingrid Michaelson - The Way I Am
Silverchair - Straight Lines (not the same sound from the 90s band; they’ve totally re-invented themselves)

So after I returned from the cruise, I had become moderately more interested in paintings and other works of art.  I bought some art supplies and decided to try my hand at painting.  I haven’t done that yet, but I’m sure it will be (don’t laugh) magical when I do.  :)  So I found out that Peter Max was going to be making an appearance at the mall.  He’s pretty famous for his work and he’s been painting for at least 40 years. 
I called the store up and found out that with any purchase, you would get an additional sketch drawing, a picture with Max, and his coffee table book with personalized inscription (a value of $265 on his website).  I missed the morning appearance and decided to trek all the way out to Tyson’s Galleria to check out the event.  Tyson’s Galleria is far away and a pain in the ass to get to when you don’t have a car.  On paper, it doesn’t seem so bad.  Go to West Falls Church Metro station and take the bus to the mall.  Well, I was on the Metro, taking a nap, and this large woman sat in the empty seat next to me except she missed the seat and got mostly my arm and leg instead.  No sorry, or excuse me was uttered.  Wow!  Rude!  Anyway, I must have missed the bus for the hour because I wanted about 55 min for the next one.  What’s really stupid is that there are actually three buses on that route that goes to Tyson’s.  Whoever thought up the weekend schedule is a moron because all three are scheduled to come within a 5 min period.  So instead of spreading out the bus service, everyone gets pooled up at the bust stop for an hour and then the three buses swing by to pick everyone up.  Does anybody else see the inefficiency in that?  To make things worse, the bus drivers I encountered were fucking assholes and liars.  The first driver stopped at a mall and I asked him if it was Tyson’s Galleria, and he said, so I got off.  I walked into the mall only to find out that he had let me off at Tyson’s Corner.  To put it into perspective, it’s kinda like getting dropped off at Science World, only to find out that you need to be at GM Place.  WTF!!??!!  I made my way back out to the bus stop and saw the 3T pulling away.  I knew it was going past the Galleria but the mofo said he wasn’t.  He hesitated when he answered me and I knew he was lying too.  Prick!  So I ended up walking to the Galleria which was about 15 min away.  I left my apartment at 3pm and I didn’t get to Tyson’s Galleria until 6pm.  At that point in time, I thought ‘maybe I should really buy some art to make this trip worth the effort’.

Well, I got to the store at exactly 6pm, when the event was supposed to start.  There were a lot of people there.  And free Yellow Tail wine too!  I was quite impressed by the pieces that they had on the walls.  A lot of it was mixed media pieces and very few were full out acrylic on canvas.  The ones that were fully painted were really expensive.  I liked a lot of them, but I didn’t like the prices.  There were supposed to be about 200 items for sale, ranging from $2000-87000.  As tempted as I was to purchase one, I could bring myself to pay $2000 for a tiny little painted heart with a few other squiggles of paint.  I stared at a couple for a while, but I just couldn’t do it.  I thought that I could do the same thing.  I also thought that for $2000, I could buy another TV, or go home 3-4 times, or go on another extravagant vacation, or etc…  I like his work, but apparently not enough.  Peter Max was not what I expected.  I’ve seen a lot of images of him and it was always an artsy silhouette of his face or some dated photo from the 70s or 80s.  So I was quite surprised to see that he was really old frail looking guy and a bit perverted looking too.  Sorry Peter, if you’re reading this, I don’t mean any disrespect, but I saw you stop everything you were doing to talk to some beautiful chick and take a picture with her while there was a line of people waiting to meet you.  And I couldn’t help but notice that you spent a little bit more time drawing more detailed and nicer sketches for the (busty) women.  In fact, I think that’s quite all right with me.  I would probably do the same.  Well, suffice to say, it was a thrill to see you in person and I think that every website should update their photos of you cause it’s really deceiving.  Those pictures of you are 2 or 3 decades old!  Anyway, I vow to one day own a piece of your work!  So after mulling around and convincing myself not to buy a painting, I left after about an 75 minutes later.  It took me another two hours to get home.  Buses suck!

This week was Halloween.  We had a company event on Tuesday and I decided to dress up for once in my life and have a little fun.  I even joined the costume contest
but I didn’t win.  My peeps let me down during the judging period.  I guess they didn’t cheer loud enough.  I think it was a close event and it wasn’t particularly accurate since the woman with the device to measure applause was walking all over the place and obviously not getting a consistent reading.  Most people thought the costume was great though and I’m glad I did it.  For $22.30, you cannot go wrong with it.  The next night was actually Halloween, so Anand, Nakisa and I went out to Georgetown to soak in the festivities.  We were a tad early so we had dinner at Uno first.  I’ve decided that after trying deep dish pizza for a 3rd time, I will never order it again.  OK, maybe not never again, but at least not for a long time.  I’ve never eaten it and thought that it was anything special.  It’s only always been alright.  I get way more joy out of a regular pizza from Pizza Hut or even the craptacular $.99 pizza slices from Fresh Slice downtown Vancouver (Iraqi Spice anybody?).  To accommodate all the extra toppings and the weight of all of all of the ingredients in a deep dish, the crust is generally more doughy or thick.  I just don’t like it.  I like my crust crispy, oily and light and deep dish doesn’t provide that at all.  So we wrapped up dinner and walked around Georgetown.  Stupidly, the cops didn’t close out the streets yet and it was nearing 930 pm.  So everyone was crammed onto the tiny Georgetown sidewalks.  We were packed like sardines and I’d say that the whole experience was relatively disappointing.  I expected to see a lot more people dressed up, but only 10-15% of the people there were in costume.  And I had heard that there would be a lot of hoes dressed like hoes, but I only saw a handful of them in a 10-12 block walk.  Halloween was way more fun in NY.

I also went to the DC United playoff game this week.  Aaron, Brad and I got some decent seats near some obnoxious Chicago fans.  I’m pretty sure we weren’t like that at the Canucks game, because these guys were running around pointing and screaming directly at people.  One guy in particular was being a grade A dick.  The game was pretty good.  The United were down 2-0 at the half and they came back to tie it.  They also scored the go-ahead goal in extra time, but it was called back because the ref called a hand-ball infraction.  Unbelievable call!  That cost the United an advancement to the next round.  It was fun though; there was great beer and good peanuts in the mix.  Brad, you have me hooked on shelled peanuts now!

In terms of work, I’m going to try to move into a new department.  Let’s hope things work out.  If things don’t work out, I may be coming home earlier than I expected.  Haha.  We’ll see how things go.  Wish me luck.