New Movie Reviewers

Here's a funny item I caught at the CBC website:


Crusty Muppets become movie reviewers
Last Updated Fri, 24 Jun 2005 14:39:14 EDT CBC Arts

Statler and Waldorf – the crusty Muppets who lobbed insults from their balcony seats on The Muppet Show – have been recruited by the website Movies.com to act as film reviewers.

The two, remembered for their acerbic comments on television in the 1970s, will appear in short biweekly episodes on the site to discuss the latest movie releases.

In the debut webisode, which appeared Thursday, the old men critique Bewitched and War of the Worlds.

Statler notes that the latter movie, directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the H.G. Wells novel, is this year's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial – except that instead of enjoying Reese's Pieces, the aliens in War of the Worlds enjoy incinerating all of humanity.

Statler also singles out child actor Dakota Fanning for praise. "And for a completely digital character, that little girl is remarkably lifelike," he quips.

Dan Sherlock, a Movies.com executive, told the Hollywood Reporter newspaper that the reviews are an attempt to connect with users.

"It strikes a chord of nostalgia with our target audience, 18-34, who remember the Muppets very well," Sherlock said. "After all, who could forget Statler and Waldorf?"

Movies.com is a site that allows moviegoers to purchase film tickets online. It is owned by the Walt Disney Co., which in turn owns the Muppets.

"We have access to a variety of the Muppet characters, but obviously certain Muppets lend themselves better to this forum, so we'll be gearing it toward those," Sherlock added.

Statler and Waldorf "auditioned" for the spots by doing commentary on this year's Academy Awards webcast. The site's users responded with positive feedback, so the regular feature was created. A new batch of reviews will appear on the site every two weeks.

Sherlock said the reviews are "very much a partnership" between Movies.com and the Disney subsidiary that controls the Muppets. Both sides work in tandem on the scripts for the reviews.
Other Muppets are also scheduled to do spots as guest reviewers. In the first episode, Pepe the King Prawn serves as the DVD specialist.

Known for his thick Spanish accent, Pepe provides commentary on the Bruce Willis movie Hostage, Samuel L. Jackson's Coach Carter and Sandra Bullock's Miss Congeniality 2, which he pronounces as "Miss Congenetalia."

Weird Dream

I've been having some odd dreams lately. Last night I had a pretty creepy one, though. I'm not even really sure where to start.

I had gotten this room at a hotel. I wasn't staying there because I was out of town and visiting someone or anything. I must have had some sort of premeditated plan.

Yeah, I really don't know where to start.

Anyway, long story short, I killed a Family Pizza delivery guy. I didn't even know him, but I knew I was going to kill him. I killed him in the shower and there was blood everywhere except on me (can't remember if I stabbed him or what). Once I killed him his body disappeared, so my main concern was with cleaning up the blood in the shower. I rinsed most of the blood away with the shower itself, then left my room to go buy some proper cleaning products. Just as I left my hotel room a couple of investigators came up to my room with guns in hand. I guess the delivery guy had already been reported missing, which surprised me, but it didn't surprise me that I didn't get away with killing him. I immediately confessed to what I had done, giving the strange reason that I wanted to kill the guy properly, without as much pain as I had endured when somebody tried to kill me at a previous time. We went in the hotel room and the investigators looked around quite carefully. They were still looking around when some guys came in and started cleaning up the tub surround in the bathroom. The investigators hadn't looked in there yet and it was the only place where I expected there to be any evidence. The cleaning guys felt compelled to do their job, but it also seemed they had some sympathy towards me.

Next I was at some huge prison yard that reminded me a lot of a rail yard. One of my friends was climbing around fences to get to talk to me. He expressed a lot of regret that I had done this, and blamed himself for not acting better, pushing me away, etc., thus not preventing me from killing that guy.

Moral of the story: don't mess with me in my dreams!

. . . Man it's still weird even after typing it out.

I was tagged!

... like, two weeks ago. See Lynette's blog June 14, 2005

1. Number of books I own: 279 ... wow ... 24 of those are in a box because I don't want them anymore ... and I could probably get rid of a bunch more and not miss them. Many of them are textbooks from various stages of my education. Others were purchased when I was deeply interested in history or playing with language, and was not very good at holding myself back from buying them.

2. Latest book(s) I am reading: "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin, and one on personality type and communication in health care (I left it at my friend's place for when I'm housesitting there).

2. Last book I read: Douglas Adams' "Starship Titanic" by Terry Jones.

3. The last book I bought was: I bought a sketch book yesterday, does that count? Before that it was most likely "Choice Theory" by William Glasser. My newest acquisitions are a couple books I got from Joel, who is moving this week: one on the development of Tolkien's writing of the Lord of the Rings, and the other one is a stretching book.

4. 5 books that mean a lot to me:

• "The Miracle of Mindfulness" by Thich Nhat Hanh. This was a gift to me from my friend Athena. It's an introduction to meditation. I have tried to read it several times, but have yet to finish it.
• "The Silmarillion" by J.R.R. Tolkien. Amazing, amazing, amazing! I really admire how Tolkien developed such a living world with a vast history, but you're still able to connect with the characters as people with their own stories.
• "Saskatoon: The First Half-Century" by Don Kerr and Stan Hanson. I'm a Saskatoonophile, what can I say. I really enjoyed reading the part about the boom time early in Saskatoon's history. Land speculation is evil.
• "Structural Yoga Therapy: Adapting to the Individual" by Mukunda Stiles. This is a book given to me by my friend and mentor Pat. We saw it once on a trip to Regina and it looked like a very good anatomically-based book. I anticipate this book as being a useful one to have professionally.
• "The Rutland Dirty Weekend Book" by Eric Idle of Monty Python. Before my friend Debbie moved away, she invited me one night to hang out with some friends of hers. They had a game for us to play where we got into teams and had to find and solve these word puzzles they had hidden around the house. My team won, but I think she might have skewed the results in our favour a bit. Since I was the huge Monty Python fan in our group they let me keep our prize! There's even a picture of Henry Woolf in a stereotypical harem girl outfit!

Feel free to share any book-related comments you might have.

P.S. 6 months until Christmas

More River Watching

Today I took the same path as yesterday, and oh is the water even higher! It's such an awesomely powerful thing to witness, particularly from up close to the river or from high above the weir. Here are some pictures I took today with my friend's digital camera (thanks Jay!):

• Here are some people hanging out at the Mendel overlook thingy
• Here's a picture of a place where I took pictures yesterday
• Here's a path behind the Mendel, facing south towards the overlook
• The west side of the weir looks like this
• And this is another view from the west side of the weir
• The view from the train bridge
• Here's an amazing shot from the east side of the weir
• And lastly, here's my nomination for a jigsaw puzzle

Pretty amazing to see. And no gophers were killed on today's trip either...

Red Deer, Alberta

When I was young my grandparents lived in Red Deer, Alberta. They lived in a neighbourhood very close to the Red Deer River. I've been watching the recent news stories about the flooding there. I was pretty curious about how bad it was and have stolen some pictures from the website of the city of Red Deer.

• This first one is from Sunday, June 19, 2005. This shows that the river is quite full and pretty much about to spill over its banks. The closest neighbourhood on the other side of the river is where my grandparents lived. Those ponds beside the river are called the Bower Ponds. They are nice and blue because they don't have any of that murky river water in them yet. I remember going for many walks in that area. Once a bird crapped on my head there!

• The second picture is from Monday, June 20, 2005. It shows a close up of the main building there. The water has completely enveloped the ponds. Those colourful little things all lined up are paddleboats.
  

Ah Declayuh!

I declare that the hobby du jour in Saskatoon is river watching. After work today I went for a nice little walk by the river. I walked from City Hospital to the boat launch at the Mendel Art Gallery. From there I walked along the Meewasin Trail to the weir. Now there's a busy place! There was quite the throng of onlookers there. From there I crossed the bridge to get a good look at the river from above the weir on the east side of the river. I took 20 pictures on my little tour. I still have a film camera, so I can't show you any pictures at this point.

I have never seen the river so high before! It's quite impressive. Apparently the river has about four to five times its normal flow right now. It looks like the drop over the weir is only a couple feet high (more on the east side than on the west). To see a wonderful chart about how the water flow in the river is compared to normal, read this news item.

The pelicans are loving it! I had the opportunity many times to take some pictures of them flying majestically over the tumultuous current below. It was fun to watch them come from the island sanctuary near the university, float down the river in the speedy current, then just blip over the weir like it was nothing! Mind you they weren't all that brave. Some would start flying a few feet from the edge.

I had a quite surprising experience on the east side of the river. I was sitting on one of the lovely benches overlooking the weir and talking to my friend Jay on my phone. Suddenly this huge white dog rushed out of nowhere and made a giant leap! I thought it was going to jump off the cliff there! However, what it was really doing was chasing down a gopher. By the time the owner caught up, the gopher was dead. Then she threw the dead gopher in the garbage can - ew! Pretty exciting though!

All in all it was a very nice walk, and I shall have to soon repeat it!

Considering the weather lately. . .

"Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine." -- Anthony J. D'Angelo

y.e.t.a.n.o.t.h.e.r.e.b.a.y.l.i.n.k.

I've been looking for percussion instruments on eBay lately. Maybe if you bought it you could make your money back by charging people money not to hit them with it!

Newfoundland Ugly Stick

eBay find

Heh! I had a good laugh when I saw this one!


(edit - June 8, 6:30 pm) maybe this link will work http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=309&item=6403774705&rd=1

A Smidgeon of Dawson Creek

As some of you may know I went to Dawson Creek, B.C. in April. The purpose of this trip was to visit with my friend Debbie and do some dance instruction. It was the first trip I'd ever been on where I came back with more money than I went with! Gotta love that!

Anyway, I performed in a show while I was there. It was a fundraiser for a First Nations dance troupe so they could go on a short tour. I did three dances: the Cymbal Dance, an oriental veil solo, and a duet of Arabic Andalusian with Debbie. It was nice to dance with her again! I hope that's not the last time . . .

Here are some pictures that we took after the show:

• Here is Debbie and her dance friends
• and this is me and Debbie
• now here's the four of us, flaunting our assets
• and here we are with the MC

It was a fairly stressful night, but don't we all look fabulous and happy!

Geographically-challenged

Heh, just got an e-mail from a woman in Atlanta who is coming to Montreal at the end of June and was wondering if I knew about any places where she'd be able to see some performances. Makes me shake my head, it does.

Haiku the fourth

They have disappeared -
where have all the haikus gone?
Here's me writing one.

A nice gift this week

As some of you may know, I have been participating in an 8-week course for women with self-esteem issues. This week one of the activities was to fold over the top of a piece of paper, write your name on the flap, and underneath the flap write something positive that you had learned about yourself since beginning the course. Then we passed our papers around the circle and each person wrote something positive that they had learned about that person since the group began. When we were done writing our messages we put our own paper away and couldn't read it until later. It was like a gift. Here is what these women had to say about me:

• I find you a very friendly and outgoing person.
• You see the lighter side of life.
• You exude a quiet confidence.
• Lorianne, I appreciated the confidence you have & your willingness to share it.
• You have a great future because of your way of meeting challenges.
• I appreciate how comfortable and accepting you are of yourself.
• I get such a sense of confidence from you, I admire that.
• Lorianne, you have such a positive outlook on life. You seem to be very ambitious and I am sure that you will succeed in all that you do.
• I appreciate your smile and warmth.

Confidence seems to be so prominent on this list. It feels a little strange. I don't really feel entirely confident. However, I do know that I feel very strongly about not wanting to be held back by fear. And that's about as far as I can think on that, right now.

Future plans

So, over the past week or so I've been considering where I'd like to end up when I'm finished school. I really like Saskatoon, but I think I would really benefit from getting away to somewhere new. I'd like to find somewhere with an active, supportive belly dance community. From the e-mail lists I'm on I'd have to say that Ottawa appears to have that sort of spirit to it. Mayhaps I'll end up there someday...