Cirque du Soliel: Corteo

We saw Cirque du Soleil's Corteo show last Friday. It was a good show, but not as "spectacular" as the other Cirque du Soleil shows we've seen. The parts of the show that made me me uncomfortable involved the pair of dwarves. Clearly they were being exploited and at the same time they were very funny. Here's what I mean: at one point in the show they had the female dwarf character "Valentina" suspended by a bunch of large helium balloons so she was pulled up just enough for gravity to work. After the main character did his tricks with her, he threw her out in the audience to be tossed around like a beach ball. The audience loved it while I sat their appalled and hoping that she did not get bounced over to me, because I didn't like this. She's a person not a beach ball. Another uncomfortable time happened when the pair of dwarves were put into a mini-stage to do a clownish performance of Romeo and Juliet. Yeah, it was funny, but at the same time it felt wrong and with the rest of the performers joining in, somehow if seemed like a baudy performance you'd see in a movie about the 1700's -- French whore and all. I left the show equally entertained and disturbed. I comforted myself with the thought that this is the life the pair of dwarves chose and if it were bad life, then perhaps they wouldn't be doing it.

I'm Learning HTML and CSS

I'm learning html and css for work and for personal use. Tonight, I blew away the old omarissister.com website and replace it with a new template containing a construction message. Already it looks and loads a lot better. I love Cascading Style Sheets. It feel very natural for me to keep the formatting elements separate from the data. Using css makes designing, implementing, and updating my webpage so much easier. My plan is to move my translation efforts to the webpage and out of Blogger. I also want to create a print css template that will make the translations look really good when printed. *Grinz*

Thanksgiving -- Mass Effect

My husband and I decided this year to ditch our families in favor of playing "Mass Effect", and, in general relaxing and enjoying some steak. This is truly Thanksgiving bliss.

Movie Review: 3:10 to Yuma

"3:10 to Yuma" stars Christian Bale who plays, "Dan Evans", the most pathetic dirt farm EVER (his performance resurrected horrible memories of having to read "The Grapes of Wrath"). With the last shred of dignity he has left, he decides to join a group of men who are tasked with delivering a very dangerous, but charming, criminal to the Federal Prison train in Yuma for $200. He figures this is enough to save his farm from the railroad and to buy seed and some cattle in the spring. The charming criminal, "Ben Wade", is played by Russell Crowe, who is as charismatic as ever (actually it was quite amazing. A few times through the movie my husband and I whispered to each other, "He's good".) Ben Wade is an interesting character because he's as bad as they come (or so the tales say), but somewhere inside the bluster, there's a kind marshmallow. We know this because he draws pretty pictures and quotes the Bible.

This is a Western in the traditional sense of Westerns. The men are men and the women are soft. The hero is stoic. The anti-hero is a quick draw and bad to the bone, but he's got a heart of gold. The bad guys are merciless, criminally insane, and have wonderful names like "Charlie Prince." The indians, excuse me, native Americans are fierce and sneaky. They even find a place in this movie for Chinese "Coolies" -- the Chinese immigrants that contributed to the construction of the railroads. This easily could have been made 40 or 50-years ago with John Wayne as Ben Wade (that is if he ever chanced to play a bad guy) and someone like Jimmy Stewart as Dan Evans. I really enjoyed this movie both as Western and as a movie itself because it was a deeply psychological character study that kept me guessing until the end about the true nature of Ben Wade. Anyhow, the movie ending is very satisfying and leaves open the possibility of a sequel or two and that I definitely wouldn't mind :). 5/5 Well worth $7/ticket and the drive to Irvine.

By the way, I just found out this is a remake of a 50-year old movie.

Thoughts on the State of Modern Childhood

So I'm up late tonight thinking about the comment I wrote today in a co-worker's blog about the the recent academic success of women and the plight of boys in the US. Then I began to think about my own childhood and how most boys and some girls are very experiential. I've seen it in restaurants, theme parks, and stores -- parents who have mechanically inclined children and the parents have no idea what to do with these children. These children are often running around trying things out, crawling around on the floor, taking things apart, and generally touching everything they can put their hands on. And always with these children are shrieking parents who are always saying "no" or "don't." They seem to have mistaken curiosity for bad behavior.

I think a lot of times children are expected to act like little adults. They spend hours in class now with little or no recess preparing to tests or trying to meet academic standards. How can we expect children to sit still and pay attention for 4-hrs in class, when we as adults can't even get through a 4-hr meeting without taking several "bio-breaks." We label these children as troublesome, they lack the ability to focus, they have attention deficit, they need to be drugged so they can stay calm in class and calm at home as they do their homework. It's unbelievably sad when I think about it.

We want our children to sit down, be calm, and concentrate. We got rid of PE and cut down on recess to increase the amount of time spent on book lessons. Yet we complain that there is a childhood obesity problem and then we start restricting food at schools and make children worry about their weight when they are far too young. It breaks my heart to see a scrawny 10-yr order a chicken Caesar salad w/o the chicken or the croutons because they call themselves on a diet.

And then there is the tight schedules modern children have. They have school homework, music lessons, foreign language classes, sports, volunteer work and so on and so forth. I remember having friends some 15 - 25-years ago who were always too busy "play." At the time, I didn't know how I felt about this and I really had no point of reference then because I wasn't scheduled at all. But there was a time in my early adult life when I became lightly scheduled and I didn't like it. I can't imagine being a child and liking it either.

I worry myself about becoming a parent someday. How will I deal when a teacher tells me that my child is being disruptive? Will I get my children into a tight schedule trying to fill their young heads with all the best controlled activities that are offered now? (Okay, most likely not because that would mean that I would have to have a schedule.) How will I react to other parents? Will I let my children play video games and be on the computer as much as I and their Dad? It's scary ...

TV Series Review: Bad Couple (Korean Drama)

"Bad Couple" is a comedy/drama series from Korea. It runs 16-episodes and each episode is roughly ~1-hr. The story starts as a slapsticky comedy about a woman in her early 30's, Dang Ja, who doesn't believe in marriage but wants a beautiful daughter that looks just like herself. So in "ambitious woman" style, she sets out to find the man with the best set of genes in all of Korea to father her child. To get this man, Dang Ja resorts to pulling childish pranks, that play like modern-day Lucy Ricardo schemes (she's even got the red hair!), to seduce the unsuspecting target, a very soft-hearted and naive botanist named Gi Chan. (Oh, and yes, there's an Ethel character, too, to spur Lucy along.) In the midst of all fun, Dang Ja and Gi Chan fall in love, but Dang Ja, having little faith in men, rejects her own feelings and those of the very likable botanist. There is a more serious parallel story of a couple that had been married for 10-years going through a divorce after the husband admits to infidelity. The two stories cleverly intersect and intertwine to weave a story about the general state of modern femininity -- one woman who is highly successful and independent who drives her baby's father away and one woman who has been a dependant mother all her adult life who is trying to keep her baby's father. Both woman take a journey of self discovery -- the successful woman, through tragedy, learns to depend on Gi Chan and her friends and the dependent woman, through a new relationship, learns how to depend upon herself. By the end the of the journey, both women arrive at the same destination, happy and fulfilled lives (but not necessarily within the confines of a traditional family -- a modern and sensible ending that I was very happy to see).

I enjoyed this series quite a bit and during the comedic moments my husband seemed to enjoy it too, although, Dang Ja's contradictory behaviour got on his nerves as the story proceeded. 5/5 for another great TV series from Korea.

Obama's Popularity Uncovered

My husband had a revelation yesterday. Barak Obama looks like a Vulcan from Star Trek. Specifically, he looks like Tuvok from DS9, and, hence his popularity. We all have hope for a President who uses logic rather than emotion to run the country. Sigh ... but Vulcan's are fictitional, so Obama can't possibly be one. Oh well ...