License to Drive [1988] review

In honor of Corey Haim’s memory, and to revisit a movie that has long had legendary status in my teenage recollections, this Saturday’s movie was LICENSE TO DRIVE.  I can remember being stoked to go see this movie when it came out in theaters, though at that age going to see any movie at the theater without parental supervision was cause for an ecstatic state.  As always with seeing a movie for the first time in 22 years, I was not sure at all how it would hold up.  Within the first five minutes all doubts were erased and I was reliving LICENSE as if still 14 years old.

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4 hours of sanity

Due to a set of very unusual circumstances, I found myself with 4 hours of sanity today.  It was a preview to how my days will be once I win the lottery this year, except of course in the parking lot will be a Porsche 911 Turbo instead of a Saturn Vue.  I found myself being very grateful for something that should be a given, not an extraordinary exception.  Such are the ill things one is often trapped into when living in the world of Men.

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LOST 6×01 & 6×02 “LA X” Parts 1 & 2

A lot has changed for me since the first season of LOST back in 2004.  Has a lot changed for the show?  Read on but beware of spoilers.

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AVATAR [2009] review

I was fated to see AVATAR alone.  I know this now.  AVATAR is a powerful environmental message exactly when the human race needs it.  It is a move that rivals the epic NAUSICAA in its organic environmental message.  It is an expression of imagination and wonder far, far greater than any movie I can remember that tried to do so.  The thing that made me most skeptical of the movie, its CGI characters, were in reality its greatest asset.  Human actors could not replicate the adaptation and harmony with the environment that the Na’vi had.  The moistness in their eyes illustrated their love for there world.  AVATAR IS A MASTERPIECE film by James Cameron.

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Poem in Amber

Amber is the color of no pain, no happiness, no fault.

Preserved in all is amber stasis

Not failing, nor succeeding, locked in potential

On the verge of everything in a reality of no-thing

Amber suits a life of side stepped opportunities

Dreams never fall into amber, vivid colors only

Fame in Truth is found by mastery of amber phasing

Amber is the color for what was before the Future

• Written at:  Saint Petersburg, Florida
• Where exactly:  my desk in notepad on MacBook
• When:  Sunday December 06, 2009 12:45am

Florida Family Thanksgiving 2009

It had been a long time since I was in Cape Coral at my mom’s for Thanksgiving, long as in since 2001.  The past few Thanksgivings were spent at the Pink Cow in Tokyo.  Before that I cannot remember.  Despite the time away I did try to revive some of the old customs, like playing football before dinner.  This year it was running around a baseball outfield wrestling with Kiki (above).

This was Aya’s first ever Thanksgiving in the U.S. and as seen above my mom started showing her how to make all the traditional Thanksgiving dishes.  With the pumpkin pies and stuffing already made, all that was left was to make the corn muffins.  Well, that and the tofurky!

As with all Thanksgiving dinners, the waiting is the hardest part.  Kiki took it particularly hard as it was also her very first Thanksgiving too and she had no idea how long the wait could be.

Finally, after 90-minutes in the vacant apartment next door’s oven, the tofurky was ready to be carved!  I had long heard of tofurky, but never eaten one and was very stoked, though a little skeptical it would be enough for me as its size did not look that large.  I was dead wrong.

The tofurky provided three full meals of satisfied sustenance for Aya and I.  It was totally delicious too.  Absolutely no reason for millions of turkey birds to be murdered anymore.  It’s an outdated ritual that’s time has past.

We closed the holiday by driving out to Pine Island and watching the sunset.  I made this family portrait using the self-timer on my Nikon D300.  This Thanksgiving was much smaller than those of my youth where extended family gathered together, but it was still a very pleasant and stomach filling one.

Skimboarding 2009 Sessions 01 & 02 “Golden Flair”

My 22nd season of skimboarding began and ended in 7 days.  True, I have been on my skimboard many times in 2009, but those were not skimboarding sessions.  This may seem unfathomable as one of the main reasons I moved back to Florida was to once again skimboard on my beloved Sunset Beach, the place I love most in the world.  This is testament to the challenges returning to the U.S. after a 9-year sojourn have inflicted upon me.

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WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE [2009] review

Why?  It is the one question I thought the most while watching the weirdly mesmerizing and somewhat off-putting emotional exploration that is the 2009 film WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE.  As most kids of my generation, I can recall holding that oddly shaped hardcover book.  The illustrations almost seems to shuffle in your eye with a natural twitch.  The movie version did not replicate that twitch, but it did very successfully bring the monsters to life with amazing puppetry and only the necessary CGI.

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