I read a lot, I watch a lot of movies, and I have a lot of opinions.

I have decided to single out four movies and two books. Four movies I have seen and the two books that I’ve read that the movies were based on and do I want to read the other two?

The Kite Runner: I was stubborn, very stubborn and for whatever illogical reason refused to read this book. Too many people were going on about it. One of them as coincidence or fate - whatever you want to call it would have it - was one of my BFF’s who lives in Beijing. Every single time we’d get onto MSN he’d ask me if I had read it yet. I can not for the life of me remember other than wanting to shut Jimmy up why I finally gave in and read it. What a read, I read it in, [oh this book even has the exact finish date written in it how you like that?!] or should say finished it on November 24, 2006. It was originally released in 2003, I held out a while. I flew through the book lost completely in the story, it flows beautifully and grabs you from the very first sentence, not unlike how Hosseini’s second book does with its opening chapter.

Due to the fact that I read a lot of non fiction when books like this come along they never feel fully fiction to me and I think that if the writing is good enough this then does nothing but draw me further into the story.

By the time I had read the book and got back online with Jimmy the film that I had no idea about was a month away from wrapping and James sprung the news that he was still in Kashjar, China as Caterer on the movie. HELL YAY! There are one or two photos in my TV and Movies set on my Flickr but due to normally bad connections only half of what he sends me makes it.

I’m always nervous when I watch a movie that has a book attached to it that I didn’t just enjoy, I loved. The fact that my friend was a part of the crew made me ridiculously nervous yet overly excited to watch the movie. I held to my ban of big movie theatres and brought it home shortly after it was released on DVD.

To say the movie was good is a complete understatement, it was bloody amazing. It gives me chills just thinking about it now. It you didn’t know that it was filmed in China you’d swear they had somehow gotten into Afghanistan for more than just reconnaissance and stills. I thought I was proud of James for the locations he had worked in while head chef for the cast and crew of The Painted Veil but it had nothing on the locations for The Kite Runner.

The book, the movie, they both left something with me; they opened up my eyes to a lot of situations that I generally read about from the perspective of a memoir be it a solider, a journalist, a victim and/or survivor. The story is deep and extremely multifaceted yet simple and eye opening in ways that I never saw coming I guess because sometimes the simplest of things are the hardest to grasp.

Into the Wild: I have read three Jon Krakauer books; Into the Wild was the third one I read in April of 2005. The book was a gift and the giver’s favourite book. I enjoyed this book and I got it, I related to it on a couple levels from the character’s relationship with his parents, to trying to find your own way in a capitalist society, his stubbornness and inability to see very far ahead of himself, the feel of needing to do something, anything but to just do it none the less. Without sounding too cliché here I think I can safely say there is a little bit of Christopher McCandless in all of us, I’d say that has a lot to do with why his story is still gripping new people some fifteen years after his journey into his own seemingly private solace began.

For me this movie should have never been made, I wish I had never seen it, I do not recommend it and I think if you want the real story read the book, the visual you are given on the page is so much better than even one minute of what comes across the screen it was almost un-watch-able. From the horrendous use of his personal letters through most of the movie and especially the beginning to casting Vince Vaughn (EWWW), back to the worst decision ever to have used a soundtrack by Eddie Vedder I just hated it. Adam made it exactly six minutes, started to laugh his ass off and went to bed. He has not read the book. The only thing that saved this movie for me to any degree was the use of a narrative by the actress who plays his sister that was touching and well placed throughout the painstakingly long and large cinematic piece of shit and I enjoy Catherine Keener no matter what she does.

I figure the only reason the McCandless family went along with this screenplay crap was because it was so poorly done it worked for them because they didn’t have to see what their son really went through. Have you seen The Machinist? Christian Bale loses so much weight it is awe inspiringly scary and impressive. Emile Hirsch was just not strong enough for me; Justin Timblerlake is the better actor in Alpha Dog, Hirsch did not do the McCandless role justice. If it weren’t for some superb makeup that I’m only calling superb because Hirsch was so ill-equip to handle a role of this magnitude the heavy makeup when he is dying is necessary because he loses so little weight I can’t even believe he was allowed to act in certain scenes. I counted the ribs I have showing with my hands over my head spinning around like on a bus roof and I have the same amount showing as he did since my drastic weight loss from my head crack and I’m not portraying someone who is going to die I just got sick.

The cover of this novel states “He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself,” YET we see the character of McCandless in a different t-shirt in almost every scene. This really bugged me what a ridiculous oversight by the costume department, I just can’t see a guy who abandons his CAR and burns his CASH caring that much about what t-shirt he is wearing and I found it really distracting. I want a movie like this to be REAL not a bunch of wardrobe changes and fancy makeup. Nuff said.

Atonement: In my humble opinion this is the movie that should have won the 2007 Oscar. It is amazing, beautiful, poignant, outright sad, flabbergasting, real - even through the illusion of fiction.

Two words, James McAvoy.

Droooooool central, but it is worth mentioning that all of the performances in this movie are brilliant.

I saw lots of people walking around with this book with the movie cover on it a long time before I saw the movie and now I’m annoyed because it will take me forever to find this book without the movie cover on it. BOOK NERD CONFESSION ALERT: I despise owning books with movie covers, it infuriates me. One time, I lent my copy of The Beach to a friend and she accidentally spilt pea soup all over it but the movie was out then and when she ordered it for me even though she asked for original cover they sent STUPID Leo cover and I was MAD not at her at the book, I had it sent back and it took I kid you not NINE months to get it delivered with original cover I had about given up and forgotten about it when one day I came home to an unexpected delivery of it and had a good chuckle.

I want to read this book pretty bad, considering how incredible the movie is, I think I can safely assume that it will be an out of this world read but I will wait until I can obtain it sans movie poster cover to own.

No Country for Old Men: I walked out of my shrink’s office one day and saw a dude reading and I spied with my little eye the author Cormac McCarthy and the book title was No Country for Old Men. I thought cool beans MAN because I had just recently become a McCarthy fan after falling in love with his latest novel, a post-apocalyptic father and son’s journey called The Road and I had no idea he had written No Country for Old Men until right then.

Although Javier Bardem does deliver a fantastic performance, to be able to still pull off sex appeal with a hair cut like that alone was impressive, the movie was an utter disappointment it felt as if they had taken a story that may or may not be a good one and stripped it down to their favourite parts of its dialogue and severed it up as a movie with guns and blood and Javier delivering some of said dialogue with a sexy psychopathic drawl. When it comes to Oscar worthy I think it would have been a lot harder to pull off the sort of performance delivered by Ryan Gosling in Lars and the Real Girl than a gun toting funky walker dirty talker.

When I get sick I am a pretty big baby combine that with seasonal allergies and night time barfing and things have been fantastic!

Boooo last Friday I had to cancel therapy re: being sick, no girl time re: being sick and I had only been looking forward to that for WEEKS! Adam is sick as well so we’ve been passing this shit back and forth and at first I wasn’t snotty I just felt EXTRA balloon migraine head with MILD head cold, NOW I’m getting full head cold and snotty. YAY! I’ve been having really awesome night sweats as well and I haven’t been forgetting to take my crazy people tits and so therefore I can not pin point a reason other than being SICK.

In other news, The Greeper has a new place that she likes to sleep. Pretty exciting shit eh? I know, I thought so too until it turned out she’s serious and has taken over half the spot I sleep in. She has of course had other phases, other places she goes back to. The fashion box, the tent, I’m sure she will get bored of sleeping right below BUT almost ON my pillow soon.

Our camera is not back from being fixed yet so we had to buy a back up one. We couldn’t delay the monkeys any more due to lack of photos, but at the same time we HAVE to be able to take photos of our product. This issue of course led us into a discussion of other things that could happen to slow us down, when we are just about done with a lot of the start up necessities and can now work on picking up our production pace. I mentioned that there would come a time that we’d make a monkey, look at it, hate it or it would not meet our quality standards and we’d have to start over. Really, did I say that out loud? Because it happened the monkey after I said it! YAY! We have informed the buyer, I figure honesty is best, there is only two of us and both of us had a hand in it sucking so we’ve had to start over. Now we have a physically challenged monkey in our apartment, at least Dr. Vegas finally has a monkey that isn’t going anywhere to play with mostly because it is blind and can’t speak. Once that red thread goes on for the mouth the suckers don’t shut up. Banana this, poo in your face that.

My Dad is supposed to be dropping two boxes of stuff off to Adam and I on Saturday, some of my stuff, some stuff they are giving us, some stuff that has been in the family forever that I am taking because I’m the last member of our family and I don’t want it leaving the family till I die I guess. Small problem though, my Dad and I got into one of our infamous fights today. Oh how I love them. Always in regards to the exact same issue(s) hidden by topics seemingly cloaked in difference that spread years, weeks, months some just days - we some how manage to piss each other off regularly even when not in big fights. My mom is going to be all upset now and that’ll be my entire fault too, I’m sure. Super awesome, we both resort to behavior befitting that of two year olds and just generally spin in circles for a while. Fun times. We have worked hard on things as a family but my Dad and I, man we’ll just always scrap, sadly that is just how we are, we can’t seem to communicate in any sort of healthy way. Wonder how many more phases this move to Bali holds in store for us.

Just finished my fifth book of the year leaving me three behind my minimum quota for 2008, I will get off my ass and post on them soon. This year has been good so far aside from The Time Travelers Wife. EWWWW.

So I will go BULLETS on you.

• Every single time one of us sits at the computer Gus jumps straight onto a lap she has her head buried in my arm right now. She is the most adorably cute annoying cat in the world.

• Adam hurt himself at work and has been off here and there and so I’ve had to carry some heavy shit and;

1. it made me wonder how the hell I was ever as independent as I was
2. someone held the back door to the apartment building open for me, I made it all the way up the stairs to my floor and swung the door open so I could let it hit me in the back to go through but I didn’t move far enough over and the door knob NAILED me so hard that it happened on Monday and I still have pain shooting in a couple of directions and a massive LUMP.

• COMING SOON!!! HUGE and I mean HUGE MOOOOO-VIE post. While we make monkeys we watch movies, mostly movies we’ve seen or I watch them twice or vise versa, some will be old and some will be new movies. I feel that my one liner-ish reviews are generally better than if I go all out anyway.

• Speaking of movies, and forgive me as I’ll probably repeat some of this somewhere down the road but I FINALLY got my hands on a copy of Into the Wild BUT now I’m afraid to watch it, WHY? Because see, I read the book in April 2005 [NERD ALERT/reminder: I date all of my books when I finish them] I have also read most of Jon Krakauer’s other books. The book Into the Wild is a 199 pages, with epilogue 203. I had this funny feeling having just watched two movies of perfect length so I looked at Into the Wild and saw that it is 143 minutes. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I’m now convinced that Krakauer and Penn are conspiring against all of man kind, how the HECK does a 199 page book become a 143 minute movie? Krakauer wrote Into the Wild before he became known for being an arrogant thinks he knows it all, extremely repetitive journalist [NOT SAYING HE HASN’T BEEN THROUGH A LOT re: Everest] but seriously is half this fucking movie going to be Penn and Krakauer masturbating their egos and Krakauer getting us back for writing such a short book in comparison? I guess I’ll see once I watch it.

• Also coming soon a very personal review of Dry, Augusten Burroughs, [who has a new book out on April 29 YAY!] and I wasn’t planning on reviewing it at all but I have a few things to say about The Last Days of Socrates, Plato. Once I start talking about the damn Socrates I can’t shut up now, I feel similar to how I felt after I read 1984.

• OUR CAMERA IS BROKEN!!!!!! On one hand I feel really lame getting so upset over a materialistic possession but our camera is not just a play toy for us anymore we NEED it for our business so we are pretty stressed about it or rather I am, Adam doesn’t really stress much about anything in life. I have a couple tricks up my sleeve to hopefully get some photos of two monkeys that will be done this weekend and HOPEFULLY by the time the Jedi one is done THAT IS RIGHT A JEDI ONE, the camera will be fixed. I don’t pray but if you do please say a prayer for our new business. All start ups have glitches. We’ve officially hit a glitch.

• I finally had the pleasure of meeting Raul over the last weekend at Tanya’s housewarming party. I am like the last blogger in Vancouver to meet him I think. He was everything he has been talked up to be and more! I was the one at the party with the sippy cup. I had every intention of joining y’all at Every Third Tuesday this month because the Hamburgler [Monica Hamburg] was the speaker, I call her a friend, she doesn’t read my blog, that is cool man, but she is rad, I heard she did a great job, sorry I missed it, been taking care of my dear husband yo.

• We now have our FOURTH coffee pot in less than two years. The first one I broke in a tantrum of mass destruction, although I was not TRYING to break the coffee pot I just forcefully put it under the tap and knocked it into something. THEN Sarah and Jack bought us a rad coffee pot for a wedding gift [can’t find the post re: FUCKED archives] but even though we know at least four other couples/people who have that coffee pot and they ALL still have it ours broke!! WOOOOOOOOOOO! RIGHT after the warranty was done, probably the day after. I then bought a $24.99 twelve cup coffee pot, cheapest one I could find. Last week the heating plate went on it. Adam likes burnt coffee I blame him. SO I bought YET another coffee pot, and this one makes loud noises and I want to throw it out the window and I don’t have the box to take it back because I am a recycling freak and actually get excited about the amount of things I have to recycle and FUCK now I have to wait out this shit coffee pot, watch it last ten years, seriously.

Ps. Dr. Vegas is always a mentor to the Sock Monkeys, he always gives em’ some advice before they leave our infantry but this particular monkey the Dr. really took to. They had a pretty awesome jam session before he departed, Vegas has already shown off his guitar though so he took it off for the photo.

Last week things started to have a feeling of normalcy around here. FEELS like I’m back to my regular old depressed self. She’s cool, majority of the people I know can handle me in this state. It is no wonder that Tori Amos and her music always bring me so much solace during shit times, after I finish reading The Last Days of Socrates, Plato I am going to read Tori Amos Piece by Piece, Tori Amos and Ann Powers. I picked up a hard cover on blow out for five dollars. I can’t even tell you how happy finding hard cover books I want for five dollars in perfect shape makes me. And it is still an early enough printing that the book itself is still grooved like honeycomb.

I went out on Thursday for a friend’s birthday and I bowled! No photos though, Adam’s pictures thankfully did not turn out. Thank you very much to my Bowl for Big Brothers sponsors: readers and friends of Gus Greeper put me in second place behind Tod Maffin for most amount raised, you all helped me raise $296.00 respectfully and I greatly appreciate it!

We had to leave said birthday celebrations early because my energy level was beyond low and although dinner was awesome it wasn’t enough to keep me energized very long and also with all the great people to talk with I faded out pretty fast. At dinner it was OFFICIALLY decided that I am no longer allowed at any parties without a sippy cup because I am a Hand Talker Extraordinaire aka spilly drinker. This came about only after Kimli had already spilled a full glass of water onto Adam’s crotch [hehe that was so funny] and my cat like reflexes had caught at least four or five ‘almost spills’ from my flailing talker hands, hence past parties came up where really I haven’t necessarily spilt anything, but I did almost break or did break my toe, so we came to a general consensus. I want an extremely childish one with a neck strap on it etc. It will debut at Netchick’s House Warming. Hopefully I will have gained some weight back by then and not hate cameras.

My therapist mentioned on Friday that he didn’t think I was any smaller than I had been back in 2003 when I started to see him, I was a serious wreck back then, so I had to explain to him that yes he was right it was simply the lack of muscle mass that was making it so obvious because in 2003 I was still in stellar shape.

I have taken my nerd-dum to new heights and am now sporting FLARE on my purse. This is a very out of the box thing for me to do so we will see how long it lasts. I do enjoy the extra feelings of nerdiness it gives me though.

Last week was also a killer week for mail and I’m going to show it off!

Jennie Roth sent me these seriously kick ass slippers. I’m going to hang them above my makeshift monkey making area, these mailed before I had my not so fun break down and therefore arrived just in time to help cheer me up! Thanks again Jennie me lovez them.

I normally do not post any of my correspondence because there are many many people I have met online not to mention my ‘in person’ friends - I LOVE TO SEND AND RECEIVE MAIL - I send mail to and they send me mail. This card was too cute not to post to my flickr because it made my day and made me laugh laugh laugh and then laugh some more.

And I was also in complete shock when the post woman left a package at my door which I opened to find this fantastic painting of myself to myself from the seriously awesome Tiana aka Sassy Red Head, the original photo is here.

My friends and their thoughtfulness never ever cease to amaze me. Thanks again so much!

As a locations Production Assistant I had the experience of working out at Riverview, what is known throughout the city as Coquitlam’s insane asylum, I didn’t know until I just read one of the few articles I could find on the place that it used to be called Essondale until sometime in the 60’s. In all the years I have lived here I had only ever driven by the massive looming Crease Clinic on the colossal piece of property knowing nothing of its history until one day I was called to set.

I quickly learned the building had been long closed down, hearing horrid rumors of psychotics and the permanently insane, of lobotomies and leftover ghosts from every person who had worked on that locations set before. If it is scary and it was filmed in British Columbia then it was probably filmed in that building.

I spent two days in there. I toured as much of the building as I could alone without getting lost and the one time I did get lost I almost pissed my pants from fear, and we were filming in the tunnels to boot. Being that I suffer from mental disorders myself when I got the call just knowing it had been an insane asylum had me intrigued to say the least but I was determined to believe that it was only rumour and that the building would not “find its way inside me”.

I don’t know if it did find its way inside me or not but I would say I did have somewhat of a problem getting a heaviness off me, just thinking of the place makes me anxious, it is not a friendly place, it does not have any good vibes, it is dark where there is light, it left me freezing cold in the middle of the summer for two whole days where the horrors that took place there consumed me. I would never ever work out there again. A security guard told me while I was waiting for the circus to drop that there are grown men, police men that WILL NOT enter that building.

The previews for the movie Shutter got me all riled up I still don’t know what I think of ghosts I just know what happened to me out there and it would take a whole nother post to tell you but of all the photos I took that are now viewable on my flickr im showing you one because it is my favourite of all the shots I took I don’t claim to have any photo taking talent but there is just something David Lynch creepy in the one called Holly Drive and this is where I ask you to click on the photo and look at those red dots. That is the fourth floor where it is rumoured the lobotomies took place. Is that a ghost in my photo?

Recently inspired by good book conversation and seeing photos of their book shelves I decided to take some photos of mine.

I LOVE BOOKS! A lot.

I wish I owned every book I have ever read, it is a goal, and I do look for used copies of great books I’ve borrowed or have somehow found myself reading, but I normally try not to borrow as a rule.

The photos have notes, click on them and run your mouse over them and if you still don’t feel close enough to them pick ‘all sizes’.

Random photo story time! PLUS you get the bonus of TWO videeeos!

Whenever I think she just CAN NOT GET ANY MORE CUTE-ER-ER she goes and falls asleep in the clean laundry with her head for serious resting ON the pillow like she USES a pillow human style.

While we are on Gus, did I mention she has her own TENT? Can you meow spoiled much. Send all fan mail to 1068 Purr Street please. Tent comes complete with hanging bell and fleece blanket that *she* prefers in her studio fashion box.

I took this photo and I really like it and I thought I was hot shit and like a real photo taker for about five seconds and it was a GREAT five seconds.

I used to work on this street right behind the building where Adam is standing on the other side. When I was Corporate and wore suits and seriously hot shoes. They film Smallville around there ALL THE TIME. And both Fantastic Four movies have ‘major’ scenes set up from where Adam is standing spreading down three blocks, not to mention about a million and sixteen other movies.

I was pretty depressed here whereas I am feeling a TAD bit better NOW so I was just being a JERK stepping on the head of the dude you can’t see because he is under my foot. Adam was polite enough to at least use the bridge to cross the ocean.

If you don’t stay on your own side you will get yelled at or run over some times you have a choice. Due to my balance issues I have the best luck running across the bridge, I find it much harder to not fall into people walking. [Burrard Bridge going South-ish]

Impromptu C.J. look a like contest WINNER!!!!!! DING! DING!

The thing about cons for me is that they are so hard to give up, I’ve had these since 2005 they are being held together with duct tape. I wear loving socks with them but they aren’t going to last forever. *sigh*

We went to a drag show with one of the John’s I know. John Agro is a really great friend, I’ve known John since 1997.

KID YOU NOT I WOULD NEVER LIE TO YOU! This dude seriously, for real serious looked like Patrick Swayze circa Roadhouse. The Queens loved him which took us over the edge. I wanted to fight him, and go Ninja on his ass, but I was wearing my Unicorn socks.

ME: LET’S DANCE!!!!!! or chair dance.

ME: I’M EVERY WOMAN! ps. John started it, good thing Adam caught THAT on videeeeo.

Inspired by Mr. Nightmare/Swayze look a like we watched Dirty Dancing. WHAT A COINCIDENCE I had just bought six dollar leg warmers and felt like wearing my short shorts. [post on just why I wanted to wear those short shorts is coming …. soon] and I danced to almost all the songs and sang them all and I put on a show let me tell you. Sorry you weren’t invited.