Showing posts with label at. Show all posts
Showing posts with label at. Show all posts
Saturday, March 4, 2017
Moments at Madrona
Moments at Madrona
It has taken me fully a week to recover from the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat.
It may be premature to speak of "full" recovery. I may never recover fully. I know I have been changed by the experience. Im not sure I want to change back.
The retreat hurtled past with such velocity that I find myself unable to offer a fluid narrative. All I have are a sprinkling of moments, and a handful of dreadful photographs. (I know my limits. I can be a participant or I can be a decent photographer, but not both. I chose to be a participant. Carpe diem.)
Herewith, a small selection of the memories (sweet) and the photographs (otherwise).
Funny Moment: Meet Faye
I was prepping the classroom for round two of "Photographing Your Fiber" when I heard a student come through the door. I turned to welcome her, and was startled to meet a lady in dark glasses being led by a Seeing Eye dog.
Now, Ive had students whove forgotten more about lace than I will ever know show up for my "Introduction to Lace" class, and Ive managed to show them a good time; but I confess to a moment of panic at wondering how one teaches a blind lady to capture true color.
The lady in question was Michelle, and Michelles guide was Faye.
Happily, Michelle can see well enough to knit and to make photographs; in fact, photographing objects makes them easier for her to encompass visually.
Faye, on the other hand, hadnt brought a camera. She settled herself under the table at Michelles feet, with her furry derrière sticking out from under the cloth. Occasionally, while I was speaking, her tail would thump delicately against the floor. Or during a pause, I would hear a gentle complaint from her squeaky pony.
Im thinking of re-writing my classroom requirements henceforth to include a desk, a flip chart, four thick markers of different colors, and a puppy dog.
Personal Note to the Universe Moment: Pocket Wheels
I rode on one of these and I @#$*!! WANT ONE. Just putting it out there, Universe.
Guess Again Moment: Mystery Knitting
A lady in my "Antique Patterns" class held up her half-finished mystery project and asked me, "Is it a vagina?"
No, it is not a vagina.
Shes Pretty and Talented Moment: Sivia
I stopped by the Abstract Fiber booth and Jasmine showed me a glove design from Sivia Harding, so new it was still bleeding.
Its simple, yet intriguing. Its energetic, yet elegant. Its perfect. Its typically Sivia. If I didnt like Sivia so much, I would want to smack her.
Excuse Me for Drooling on Your Booth Moment: Retail Therapy
Churchmouse Yarns and Teas.
Socks That Rock.
No further explanation necessary. Moving on.
Sometimes It Pays to Have Puppy Dog Eyes Moment: Goth Socks
The night before everything started I got to peek around the marketplace and saw an entire booth of hanks by a dyer whose work makes my eyeballs knock together, Rainy Days and Wooly Dogs. This is she.
Steph dyes the increasingly famous Goth Socks–including the only self-striping Ive seen in years that I truly want to knit with, if for "want" you read "lust with the fiery passion of a thousand guys fresh off a six-month deployment on a submarine."
By the time I got to the market the following morning, during the first break between classes, this is what all the shelves in the booth looked like.
Gone. Gone. Thats not a rush, thats a feeding frenzy.
I grew despondent, until a gentleman to whom Id just been introduced–the friend of a dear friend–took pity on me and insisted on sending me home with his own hank of Goth Socks "Dark and Twisty." And hes straight! He didnt demand sexual favors or anything!
The kindness of some human beings is not to be believed.
Sock one is nearly complete, and it is to die. Pictures coming soon.
Getting to Know You Moment: Karen and Jacey
At the teachers dinner I sat between Karen Alfke and Jacey Boggs, and amidst the lofty talk and low (but delicious) gossip going on around us, we shared our personal experiences of public nudity, both first- and second-hand.
Thats all Im saying. And no, there are no pictures.
Lord, Let Thy Servant Depart in Peace Moment: Evelyn
During the Teachers Gallery event at which we displayed the patterns wed written, Evelyn Clark came to my table, picked up Sahar and said, "This is absolutely lovely."
Fanboy Moment: Vivian
I got seated at the banquet next to Vivian Høxbro. It turns out she has to eat food, just like a normal person. I always figured her to be the type who lives on pure mountain air and ambrosia.
I asked if she would mind having a picture with me. She did not mind.
Jeepers Moment: View from the Lectern
Anybody who goes to Madrona will tell you that among all fiber retreats, it is Different. The reasons for the difference are legion, not least the organizers insistence on treating the faculty with enormous respect and courtesy. (At some events, the employer/teacher relationship is closer to that of, say, Pharaoh and the Israelites.)
When the teachers are happy, everybodys happy. We all came together–students, teachers, organizers, vendors–for a merry banquet on Saturday night; and I had the honor of addressing the company.
This (if you will tip either your head or your monitor to one side) is what I saw when I looked down from my perch.
Its enough to make a guy choke on his angora.
The warm energy in that room was enough to sustain me through about 365 days of swatching, ripping, re-charting, re-writing, re-ripping, re-knitting and answering e-mails with the subject line "I Think Theres a Mistake in Your Pattern."
But I still dont know how Im going to wait until its time for Madrona again.
Available link for download
Friday, March 3, 2017
Saturday, February 25, 2017
Morgans at 401 Melbourne
Morgans at 401 Melbourne
When I saw the blackboard special of poached eggs and bacon on potato roesti, I decided it was time to try breakfast at Morgans at 401, 401 Collins Street, Melbourne, Tel +61 3 9224 5196. My only hope was that Morgans breakfast performance would be better than its recent federal election tipping performance.
Poor old Gary Morgan got it all wrong in 2001 when he tipped a Kim Beazley landslide, only to fail again in 2004 by tipping a narrow win to Mark "train wreck" Latham. He may not actually have tipped an ALP victory in Afghanistan, but he does seem to have a nasty habit of over-cooking ALP support by about 2 percentage points.
Luckily, Morgans didnt overcook my breakfast. In fact they cooked it just right. The poached eggs were excellent. Nice soft yolks in a vibrant shade of dark orange. The bacon was also very good. Just the right amount of crisp. The only let-down was the roesti, which was too much like a pancake for my taste. It needed more spud.
For a city venue, Morgans has a pretty good range: eggs benedict or florentine ($9.90); omelettes ($9.90); pancakes with blueberries and cream ($9.50); muesli with yoghurt and honey ($5.90); muffins; croissants; toast and more.
And as if to stress that tipping is best left to the experts, the Morgans menu declares: "gratuities not necessary"
13/20 "good eggs"
Eggs & Bacon $7.90 BB100 -21%
Available link for download
Thursday, February 23, 2017
My goodness would you look at the time!
My goodness would you look at the time!
Well, the Tour de France is over, so please join me in congratulating the winner, Chris Froome:
By the way, I should point out that wearing cycling shorts with your sumo loincloth is the equivalent of wearing underwear with your cycling shorts, which makes Froome a total Sumo Fred.
Anyway, if you didnt follow the race this year youre not alone (hi!), and Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Gay (who is the only remaining mainstream journalist who continues to take the sport seriously) suggests this could be due to the sports financial inequality:
Chris Froome won the Tour de France on Sunday, his third in four years. This was not a big shocker. Froome seized first place on the first day of the Tour’s second week, and, outside of a Three Stooges-style fiasco in which he lost his bike in a crash and briefly ran up Mont Ventoux in his yellow cycling shoes, that was pretty much that. Presumed competition never materialized. Once more, Froome and his team, Sky, were too deep and dominant, suffocating all challengers and turning the final ride to Paris into another ceremonial, soft-pedaling coronation.
Hmm, a dominant rider with an illness backstory and a strong team powering to yet another unsurprising Tour de France win? Where have we seen this sort of thing before? I seem to recall similar scenarios playing out back in the early aughts (right down to the thrilling "fiascos"), but when I went to check out the results from those years the winners name had been stricken from the record books:
Im sure theres a pretty juicy story there, maybe somebody can fill me in.
In any case, Froome knows those "marginal gains" dont come cheap:
Still, Froome acknowledged something significant the other day. He admitted that if he rode not for the well-funded Sky, which can afford to surround him with well-paid lieutenants, but for a smaller, lower-budgeted outfit, he probably would not be in the running for the yellow jersey. “If I was riding for a small team, it would be different,” Froome said.
No shit.
Indeed, Sky somehow manage to spend €35 million on racing their bicycles, while other teams like Cannondale-Drapac are forced to scrounge the contents of Skys half-eaten gel packets and hoard Nashbar coupon codes:
During the Tour, the French sports newspaper L’Equipe estimated Sky’s budget at €35 million, or $38.4 million. There are a couple of teams in that financial orbit, but many others with less than half or even a third of that budget (L’Equipe estimated the budget for the well-liked American Cannondale-Drapac team at €10 million, or about $11 million.) There is worry that this disparity is draining excitement out of the Tour—at least in the overall yellow jersey competition—because the have-nots do not have the personnel. Froome possesses a phalanx of teammates who would be leaders on other squads, giving Sky staggering ability to control the race. If you include Bradley Wiggins’s yellow jersey in 2012 (for which Froome was Wiggins’s top domestique), Sky has won four out of the last five Tours. ( 21st Century Fox Inc. owns 39% of Sky PLC, the major sponsor of Team Sky. Until 2013, 21st Century Fox and The Wall Street Journal owner News Corp. were part of the same company.)
See, heres how it works: In this sport, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the jersey. Thats why Sky is the Tony Montana of cycling teams:
And what could be simpler than that? Indeed, what could be more American than that? Rapidly-growing income inequality and real power concentrated in the hands of the very few is what this countrys all about. If anything, between that and the fact the riders keep getting hit by motor vehicles Im surprised pro cycling isnt Americas national sport. Alas, this has not happened, and ironically the handful of Americans who have weathered the scandals and remain in the sport want socialism:
The push for financial leveling has been kicking around the sport for a while. Advocates include Cannondale-Drapac boss Jonathan Vaughters, who thinks some version of a budget cap will not only improve competition, but also bring badly-needed stability to the sport. Cycling’s every-team-for-itself approach is undoubtedly chaotic—teams open and shut every year on the whims of sponsors, donors and even governments.
"...said Vaughters as he combed the road shoulder for discarded bidons."
But is the financial gap really whats taking the excitement out of the Tour? Or is it the fact that the race is fucking long?
Meanwhile, a budget cap is not the only suggestion out there to spice up the Tour. There are also appeals to reduce the number teams, or the number of riders on teams (from the current nine to maybe six or seven) or tinkering with stage formats and distances. Stapleton thinks a lot of Tour stages go on way too long and favors “shorter, more intense” races. Velon is using technology like on-board cameras to change the way the sport is seen.
This makes good sense--until you realize that nobody gives a shit about the shorter races either.
And yes, Im looking at you, ironically-sponsored bike race:
Meanwhile, in parenting news, a former pro skateboarder wants your kid to wear a helmet:
(Via @asacmartin)
In skateboarding, as in life, no kid wants to be seen as uncool — even if being “cool” means a broken arm and 3 hours in the emergency room. And in a sport where wearing safety gear is shunned, few pieces of equipment are considered as uncool as the helmet.
Okay, sure, but what the hell do helmets and broken arms have to do with each other?
I dont know, but heres his reasoning, and if youre anything like me when a pro skater gives you life advice you listen and you listen good:
“In the end I had 3 good reasons: My wife and my 2 daughters,” says Vallely, “I wanted to be around [for them]. When I step on my skateboard today, I wear a helmet.” And while he calls his decision a “personal” one (and doesn’t want to be seen as hoping on — and probably grinding off — a soapbox), that hasn’t stopped him from joining forces with safety gear company Triple Eight to launch the Get Used to It campaign, aimed at raising awareness for helmet use and head safety. In the end, he hopes helmets are treated like seat belts (“It should be intuitive. Just click it and go.”) and has strong feelings about getting kids to wear one, as well as why not having brain damage is better than being cool.
Wait a minute. 30 years of pro skating and now suddenly hes worried about not wearing a helmet? I mean, I dont begrudge him at all for "joining forces" with a safety gear company (I certainly hope theyre paying him to do this), but it seems to me that if he got this far without a helmet hes in the clear.
But its not just about him, its also about the children, wont somebody think of the children:
Get Them While They’re Young
Convincing teen skaters – especially serious ones – today about the virtues of wearing a helmet is pretty much a lost cause, says Vallely. “They’re just entrenched against it.” That’s why it’s critical to slap a lid on your youngest before he or she even knows what cool means. Inevitably, they’re going to face pressure to ditch the helmet, be it from friends (or corporate sponsors). You want the idea of not getting brain damage to be so deeply ingrained in their undamaged brain that they don’t give it a second thought. “Families need to be steadfast in their commitment to protecting their heads,” says Vallely. “Kids need to be encouraged to keep the helmets on [as they get older].”
Sadly, this entire paragraph is completely undermined by the photo that follows it:
Thats not a helmet, thats a choking hazard.
I wondered if this same publication had any cycling-specific advice for neurotic parents, and indeed they did:
Wow, talk about idiotic! Its true bike fatalities are down for kids, but the reason for this is that kids dont ride anymore:
(PDF)
Idiots.
The article then immediately goes on to explain why kids falling off their bikes is no big deal:
The Smaller the Kid, The Shorter the Fall
Because your child isn’t named Johnny Knoxville, you understandably get upset when they take a nosedive into the pavement. But you also should realize that falling hurts less for young kids. “When they’re young, they don’t have a long way to fall, they don’t carry a lot of speed, and they don’t have a lot of mass, so they bounce right back up,” says Wells. “When they’re young, they bend.”
But somehow if theyre not wearing a helmet theyre an idiot and theyre going to die.
Still, I do agree that you should always wear one when robbing a bank:
His parents obviously raised him right.
Available link for download
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Myfanwy at Oxford John Betjeman
Myfanwy at Oxford John Betjeman
Guest poem sent in by Steve Forsythe
(Poem #1908) Myfanwy at Oxford Pink may, double may, dead laburnum Shedding an Anglo-Jackson shade, Shall we ever, my staunch Myfanwy, Bicycle down to North Parade? Kant on the handle-bars, Marx in the saddlebag, Light my touch on your shoulder-blade. Sancta Hilda, Myfanwyatia Evansensis --- I hold your heart, Willowy banks of a willowy Cherwell a Willowy figure with lips apart, Strong and willowy, strong to pillow me, Gold Myfanwy, kisses and art. Tubular bells of tall St. Barnabas, Single clatter above St. Paul, Chasuble, acolyte, incense-offering, Spectacled faces held in thrall. There in the nimbus and Comper tracery Gold Myfanwy blesses us all. Gleam of gas upon Oxford station, Gleam of gas on her straight gold hair, Hair flung back with an ostentation, Waiting alone for a girl friend there. Second in Mods and a Third in Theology Come to breathe again Oxford air. Her Myfanwy as in Cadena days, Her Myfanwy, a schoolgirl voice, Tentative brush of a cheek in a cocoa crush, Coffee and Ulysses, Tennyson, Joyce, Alpha-minded and other dimensional, Freud or Calvary? Take your choice. Her Myfanwy? My Myfanwy. Bicycle bells in a Boar's Hill Pine, Stedman Triple from All Saints' steeple, Tom and his hundred and one at nine, Bells of Butterfield, caught in Keble, Sally and backstroke answer "Mine!" |
Here's a poem by Sir John Betjeman that's about both young love and the experience of a middle class Brit in an upper class college environment. Light-years away from my own college experience, but it still paints a vivid picture of that time and place. His "Myfanwy" is Myfanwy Evans, later Piper. Steve [Martin adds] There are very few poets whose individual style shines so clearly through their works as does Betjeman's. Here, after just one line it is nigh unmistakable. (The flip side is that a lot of his poems end up sounding very similar, but that is just a surface thing and doesn't detract from either their merit or their appeal.) martin
Available link for download
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Muntadar al Zaidi threw his shoes at President Bush
Muntadar al Zaidi threw his shoes at President Bush
Muntadhar al-Zaidi adalah seorang wartawan broadcast Irak yang bekerja sebagai wartawan untuk basis Kairo - Irak pada stasiun Al-Baghdadia TV. Muntadhar al Zaidi bergabung dengan stasiun Al-Baghdadia TV pada bulan September 2005.Lulusan ilmu komunikasi Universitas Baghdad menjadi perhatian internasional dengan melempar sepatu dua kali ke arah George W.Bush saat konferensi pers di istana perdana menteri di Baghdad hari minggu, 14 Desember 2008. Konferensi pers itu didampingi oleh Perdana Menteri Irak, Nouri al-Maliki. Kedua pemimpin itu akan menandatangani persetujuan keamanan yang akan menarik pasukan Amerika dari Irak pada akhir 2011.
Beberapa saat setelah Bush berbicara, tiba - tiba wartawan TV yang duduk di baris ketiga melonjak dari tempat duduknya dan berteriak : “It is the farewell kiss, you dog" dan melempar sepatu kearah presiden Bush namun meleset.
Bagi masyarakat arab, budaya melempar sepatu adalah sebuah perbuatan ekstrim kurang baik. Sembari melempar dia berucap : ini adalah untuk janda dan anak yatim dan semua yang dibunuh di Irak.
Setelah insiden melempar sepatu kepada presiden Bush itu usai, Al-Baghdadia TV mengeluarkan pernyataan menuntut al-Zaidi dilepas. Berikut pernyataan Al-Baghdadia TV :
"Al-Baghdadia television demands that the Iraqi authorities immediately release their stringer Muntadhar al-Zaidi, in line with the democracy and freedom of expression that the American authorities promised the Iraqi people on the ousting of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. ... Any measures against Muntadhar will be considered the acts of a dictatorial regime
Durgham Zaidi, sang kakak al - Zaidi berujar dihadapan pers bahwa adiknya menderita patah lengan, rusuk ribs internal, dan pendarahan setelah kejadian itu.
Bilamana Zaidi terbukti bersalah menghina kepala negara yang berkunjung, wartawan TV itu akan diancam hukuman 2 tahun penjara, namun 200 pengacara telah siap membela Zaidi tanpa dipungut bayaran.
Wartawan TV pemberani Muntadar al-Zaidi
Sang kakakMuntadar al-Zaidi : Durgham Zaidi
Zaidi saat melempar sepatu sembari berkata "this is a farewell kiss, you dog"
Lemparan sepatu ke arah Bush namun meleset
Zaidi tampil di halaman depan media massa
Video Bush "Shoe Attack"
Sumber inspirasi 1, 2, 3
Available link for download
Monday, February 13, 2017
My Agile Suitcase at XP2010
My Agile Suitcase at XP2010
My favourite session until now at XP2010 has been the Agile Suitcase session by Martin Heider and Brend Schiffer. I dont think it created any ground-breaking insights, though it was an excellent, high energy methods of reiterating the values that we live by to revolutionise IT and champion software excellence. The format was really quite simple. Five experienced Agilists, Rachel Davies, Mary Poppendieck, Joshua Kerviesky, Jeff Patton and Patrick Kua delivered five fast paced Pecha-Kucha presentations to address the following situation.
Imagine you are an agile consultant or coach. You are called by the inhabitants from waterfall island, who haven’t heard about agility before and want to benefit from your advice. Which practices, principles and values would you pack in your agile suitcase for providing them guidance? What would you leave at home?
Heres what I caught from each of the speakers and the points are perphaps a bit paraphrased too.
Rachel Davies
Rachel was carrying a backpack instead of suitcase so it doesnt get lost! Good metaphor. So here are the points from her presentation:- Environment matters for Agile software development. Keep learning and keep the environment conducive to the learning.
- Great software takes time.
- While building great teams seems like herding cats, teamwork is essential to Agile.
- Stickies, markers, index cards, whiteboards - all will be in Rachels suitcase. Shes big on consensus building.
- She refuses to carry planning poker cards because they dont measure true value in her opinion.
- She focussed on the importance of slicing and release planning.
- Focus not just on pairing for programming but pairing for non-programming tasks too.
- Try tea-driven-development so you can reflect on what youve done after each little salvo.
- Deal with technical debt early - write clean code.
- Ship early, ship often.
- Show courage.
Mary Poppendieck
Marys talk focussed on her husband Toms passion for photography. It was a spell-binding slideshow of amazing storytelling through pictures and Marys objective seemed to be to talk about the way Tom has reached this stage of mastery. Tom is an addict with photography and as a consequence very passionate about all aspects of it. Hes gone beyond the usual novices approach to snapshots - he can tell stories with pictures. His intellection has taken practice, hard work, time and heaps of experience.Toms persistence with the skill has lead to the fact that hes ready to capture the right photograph when the opportunity comes by. This is a factor of preparedness and skill which again comes from years of deliberate practice.
I think Marys message was quite simple but used a powerful example to show that expertise stems from passion. Magic doesnt happen by magic, it takes time and we need to invest time in our skills or just be snapshot photographers. When Toms done learning, he passes on learning and tools to others. For example he passes on his cameras to his son. In the same way, when we gain mastery at something we need to pass it on to others as well.
Joshua Kerievsky
Again the theme seemed to be around getting better. Here were some interesting points from Josh:- Make awesome users.
- Values trump practices.
- Agile is about riding two dolphins at a time - the technical and the managerial. Theyre not mutually exclusive and you need to build skill riding both at the same time.
- Begin any Agile transformation with a readiness assessment.
- Discard the iron project management triangle. Adopt the Agile triangle and focus on quality, value and constraints instead.
- Think of a project community that involves all stakeholders; this goes beyond just the development team.
- Educate the anti-bodies. People that are unhappy with you, your approach or your success need you to educate them about why what youre doing is valuable.
- Ship when necessary - the Industrial Logic team doesnt do iterations or so it seemed.
- Perform usability testing, because you dont want to make your users think.
- Unit testing is the USP of Agile, so why arent all Agilists writing unit tests?
- Build the important stuff - itll take care of the rest.
- Measure what is valuable.
- Do your retrospectives.
Jeff Patton
More than anything else, I loved Jeffs typography on his slides so I missed a minute or so because my jaw had dropped. Anyways, heres what I think he said.The question we need to keep asking ourselves is are we there yet?
- We need conversations which are about words which we hear, then see and then can draw out to create shared understanding.
- Its about learning in a timebox, because we need that as a feedback mechanism and a constraint.
- We need subjective measurements such as how good something is or how valuable it is.
- We need to celebrate success, but more importanly celebrate outcomes over outputs.
- We need to learn how to observe users in their real work context over taking them out of context and asking them questions. Ethnographic research is a key tool in our toolbox.
- Describe your users, role-play them to understand their motivations.
- Keep learning, ship it and change the world!
Patrick Kua
Pat made some rapid-fire points with very interesting pictures and I love the fact that he resonated many of my thoughts about coaching and learning. Heres what I think he said:- Passion is the biggest thing in any professionals toolbox - we cant live without it and its pointless doing what youre not passionate about.
- There are no silver bullets - context is key.
- Learn about learning - people rarely learn through push so help them learn by pulling what they need and create the context for learning in the workplace.
- Focus on the big picture of the system - a bad system will beat a good person each time.
- Share ideas and be open to new ideas.
- Practices we should never forget:
- Retrospectives: they tell us its OK to look back in safety and think of how we can improve.
- Kaizen culture: make changes one small step at a time.
- Timebox: we need constraints to innovate; constraints drive innovation.
- Connect with users.
- Whole team: include everyone.
- Celebrate successes.
- Lastly, have fun - its sustains you at work!
- Pat also talked about the metaphor of planting seeds and creating the right environment for growth."Trees dont grow overnight nor do people."
- Create safety for people to fail fast and learn from their mistakes.
- Leadership means, getting your hands dirty - action matters.
- At the same time you need let go as well. There will be a time you wont be around and you need to plan your obsolence.
- Invite others with your passion to share ideas and improve the process.
- Prepare for change since its the only thing thats constant.
Massively Multiplayer Agile Suitcase
After all the talks were over, Martin and Brend got the crowd of 80 people to come up with their own Agile suitcase by first working in pairs and then in silent groups of four, eight and 16 people. That ensured that each group of 16 had their best five items in the Agile suitcase. Each team then volunteered someone to go up on stage and stick their post-its on the big suitcase whiteboard beside Brend and Martin. All in all a massively multiplayer Agile suitcase achieved in about 16 minutes. The reason I loved this session was it gave me some great ideas about getting groups to work together to come up with thoughts and also a great way to create an engaging learning experience for people.Available link for download
Sunday, February 12, 2017
My Movie Biography Where Its At Now in 2012
My Movie Biography Where Its At Now in 2012
(2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011) Well, were heading into the home stretch now. Tomorrow is the big day. Just to let you know, you will probably have trouble visiting the site for a while. Dont worry, (fingers crossed) everything goes fine and Ill be back up and running this time tomorrow. Hope to see you there! Anyway, 2012 in my movie biography...
- By some small coincidence, all of the movies I got at one time from Fatso were by Roman Polanski. So I started off the year with Chinatown, Repulsion and Rosemarys Baby. That was...fun.
- I saw The Muppets and The Adventures of Tintin on the same day. I felt so awkward being this 16 year old all alone in cinemas filled with children. Funnily enough, I preferred Tintin a lot more, but now The Muppets is pretty much my go-to movie when I want to feel better about life.
- I finally got out of NZ! My father and I went to Melbourne, Australia for a week and that was exciting. I was pretty excited for the plane trip, because Drive was playing on the plane and I hadnt seen it because it was an R18. I did really like it when I saw it, but I completely forgot about the fact that it was censored, so I was left wondering what was so R18 about it. Then I looked it up on the internet and apparently there were 70 swearwords in it, but I hadnt heard any of them. When I got the film on DVD, I finally embraced it and it became my second favourite movie of 2011. While I was in Melbourne I bought a crapload of movies because they had everything that Id been looking for. And theres like, five JB Hi-Fis in the city, so I was in heaven. Also heavenly was the Pancake Parlour, but thats another story. I also went to the cinemas a fair bit because I wanted to escape the heat. I only really wanted to see The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, because I thought it was going to be an R18 in NZ and it was only an MA15+ in Australia. I was so excited to be all rebellious. Then I got back to NZ and I found out that it was only an R16. Which was somewhat disappointing. I also saw The Descendants and Hugo just because I could. I really miss Melbourne. It was such a nice place. One day I hope to go back.
- While I wasnt as excited for the Oscars as much as I was last year (I blame the fact that I hadnt watched many of the movies), I still thought it was a good idea to wake up at 3am and watch the Oscar nominations for fun. It wasnt all that fun until I saw that Rooney Mara got nominated, in which case I let out this weird squeal that woke up everyone in the house. I stayed up until at least 4.30am ranting with people on Facebook about them. Which probably wasnt the best idea, because once the morning hit we were going to Palmerston North to watch War Horse. It didnt affect the experience. I still spent the entire film crying my eyes out. And when I say the "entire film", I mean the entire bloody thing. As soon as I saw that horse I was in tears.
- The Oscars themselves were kinda exciting. Mainly because I made them more exciting than they were. I just jumped up and down all day, then I took peoples phones so I could search up photos of the dresses. When I saw Jessica Chastains, I almost cried. It was so beautiful. I spent my entire Bio period checking my phone to see who won stuff, which was pretty good because the teacher was always helping other people so I could sneak my phone out. I just about ran home to see the rest of the awards being handed out, which was pretty exciting. When Bret McKenzie won, I was doing little happy dances around my room. What can I say? The Oscars just get so much excitement out of me.
- Another exciting part of this year was being told that I was going to direct the school production. I was so excited that I even laughed at something in I Dont Know How She Does It. Alas, that didnt turn out too well.
- I made the mistake of watching Contagion while I was sick. Take it from me: it makes you feel ten times worse.
- LOL, I saw I Melt with You. I just cant forget how jaw-droppingly bad this movie was, even while it wasnt bad in a bad movie kind of way. Christian McKay, I still love you.
- June was my French New Wave month. That was kinda exhausting. But I did love the fact that I was introduced to films like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Vivre Sa Vie and Breathless.
- Hey, I did this speech. I was actually so stressed about it. Mainly because I didnt feel as ready as I usually do for it. And I was first up because the teacher "wanted to start off with some real quality". And it was like, 16 minutes long. But everyone loved it, which was something I really wasnt expecting. That day I also got to go and see Brave, which I cried a lot in. That was nice.
- I won a LAMMY for Best Rating System and also got runner up for Best Blog. That was exciting. I found out literally minutes before I had to go for school, and I was so excited about it that I just ran to my friends house. Unfortunately it was raining and blowing a gale outside, and I forgot to put my phone in my pocket. Later that day, my phone stopped working. I blame all of you who voted for me. Jokes, that was a very exciting day.
- I saw Shame!!!!!!!!!!!! I loved that movie so much. At the end I sat on the couch like kinda crying, kinda howling. It was a bizarre noise I was making. My pets were very worried. Ironically, that night I had watched Jack and Jill, which became my least favourite film of 2011. Shame was my favourite.
- We Need to Talk About Kevin became the scariest film ever when that earthquake hit. Since then I havent dared to turn the lights out when Im watching a movie. I still cant believe that there was another earthquake the second time I watched it. For a long time after it I was in denial over the fact that I found Ezra Miller VERY attractive in that movie. After a while I was just like "stuff it". Now Ezra and I are going to get married. LOL.
- July happened. BEST MOVIE MONTH EVER. Especially when there were so many releases one week that I had to take six movies home at once to watch them all. They were 50/50, Like Crazy, The Skin I Live In, J. Edgar, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and John Carter. The quality of those movies was insane. Ive never seen a week like that before in my life.
- The Dark Knight Rises happened. I was so excited that Id just be doing something random like selling someone a Lotto ticket, and then Id have this mini excitement surge go up my spine because I knew I was getting closer to seeing it. Im in the minority who absolutely loved it. Seeing it was so magical. At the beginning of the film, I would casually just squeeze my friends hand when someone exciting came on, like Bane or Batman. But then after the first thirty minutes, my hand didnt leave his hand because things were getting too intense. When he checked the time, I saw that we only had an hour of the film left and I started getting so sad - I didnt want it to end. Then once the end hit, I was crying like a baby. It was so beautiful.
The next day, though, something strange happened. I felt so empty and sad, and I didnt know whether this was because I felt sad because the excitement was over or because I thought I was disappointed by the film (I wasnt). I couldnt shake that strange feeling. Then, that night, as I was watching Spirited Away, I found out about the Aurora cinema shootings. This shocked me to the absolute core. I just couldnt process any of what was going on. It just felt very close to home because it happened in a place which I love so much, and during a movie which I love so much. I know it didnt really "affect" me, but for weeks after that, I was haunted by the face of the shooter and of the thoughts that it could happen here. It was just such a depressing time. - My birthday happened. That was exciting. The weekend after my birthday I thought it was all over, but I arrived home from work and my friends were there to give me my first surprise birthday party. That was cool. They made me a Captain America cake to go with the Batman cake I got a few days before. It was really nice.
- Little Shop of Horrors happened in September so I didnt get to do a lot of anything. But Im still extremely proud of that production, even though I didnt really feel like a big part of it.
- One of the best things about this year was that I met Lena, our German exchange student. She flew out of NZ today which makes me extremely sad. She is just the coolest, happiest person ever. I felt really bad though because we had this beach gathering for her which was overnight. That weekend I got really sick with influenza and all I wanted to do was go home because I was pretty much dying. Still, I managed to keep the illness at bay and proceeded onto being the funniest person I know for the large majority of the trip. It wasnt so nice that I got absolutely no sleep because I couldnt breathe and I looked like a train had hit me. But yes, I do miss you Lena, and hopefully you still read my blog while youre in Germany!
- Watching Prometheus this week with my friends was the funniest thing ever. Before I begin, I must say that I really liked the movie. But it seemed to run along on people being really stupid. Seriously. We were yelling at the screen most of the time. Especially at David, because he just had to touch EVERYTHING, which would ruin EVERYTHING. Had we watched that film in cinemas, we would have been those annoying people that everyone complains about.
- I have 12 days left of year 12. Next year is my last year of school. Im terrified of that fact.
- I guess I should end this with what Im doing right now: I dont think Ill be watching a movie tonight because I have so much planned for tomorrow that I should get an early start. My foot is really hurting but I have no idea why. Today is the two year anniversary of The Last Station being on the new release wall, which makes me laugh because it isnt exactly a new release anymore. And yeah.
Thanks for reading this long series! Hope to see you all back tomorrow. Meanwhile, how has 2012 been for you? What movie has been the highlight of your year?
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