Saturday, August 26, 2006 -

Yeah...like the title suggests...its time for a revamp...an overhaul if you will,of some the content of my blog posts...

I've been reading through some of my recent(HA!) posts and I think I would like to cut down the amount of emphasis I place on my ramblings about the army and my NS life......sure NS is a HUGE part of my life now and I'm practically in camp 2/3rds of the time but I read through some of the previous posts and.......it's pretty tedious to wade through all that stuff and even more tedious to write it.....

So.....Finito.Asta la vista.C'est La Vie to all the paragraphs upon paragraphs of detailed descriptions.Time for some change (in this post at least).......

I'll write about my NS life..sure but I'm gonna limit it to one paragraph that sums up everything without any elaboration.....This post will be an exercise on Retraint on my part.......short and sweet with only key pieces of info...

Here goes:

Lack of manpower in camp.Long-ass duty hours every day.Countless arguments and fights between platoon mates.Slept only 4 hrs a day for three weeks. Look like a dead man walking.Brain functions slowing down.New Seargents are here. Gonna have to take orders from punks born in '87.Almost a total lack of anything resembling a social life nowadays.My promotion in flux .Practically a veteran blood donor for mosquitos and bed bugs.Retarded Platoon mate with a chest full of hair.Mocking him brightens my day.Wary everytime he offers to fill my bottle for me.Could add piss or spit in it.Or worse..Both.Moral of the story:Better to be paranoid then drink somebody else's piss.Going back to my old base soon.The off system there changing to do 2 days rest 1 day. Dammit.double dammit. Triple dammit in fact.Who know what the future holds...

THERE YA GO!Short and sweet and yet encapsulating all the vital points needed!!One paragraph!!! now on to....errr....whatever comes to my mind.....

Met up with Felix and the girls for a movie one saturday..... a month or 2 back.........Watched the Adam sandler movie: Click. Now this movie is the kind of movie I have no intention of watching if not for others and that I end up enjoying after all in the end...kinda like the time I watched "The terminal"......Anyway I thought this was a total comedy but it's actually kinda a semi comedy/touching movie that makes interesting points about the kinda lives we lead and the pitfalls we stumble into and the tendency to let the best years of our lives slip through our grasps.....how we,sometimes in our zeal to succeed professionally,end up sacrificing the things that are really important to us and how its to late too regret when you lose something you took for granted.The rewinding scene with Adam Sandler and his dad is pretty touching. Plus I liked the fact that they made it a semi-comedy cos without all the funny moments the film will be a real downer of a movie......weighted down by its own seriousness og the themes. It was a solid flick. Made some laugh,some cry(Gerald!!)..... I rate it 7/10

It was nice to meet up with the girls again.Haven't catch up with them for like 1-1 1/2 mths prior to that..... due to stuff like Felix being out of action,conflicting schedules and generally cos there ain't a movie worth a damn in theatres after Pirates of the Carribean 2 came out........Felix took a while to warm up and was kinda flustered after not seeing the girls for like 2 straight months but warmed up to his usual self towards the end.........and me? Errr.......Shagged as hell from duty and trying my best not to be shitty company.....hahaha..

I'm glad Felix is back in action........everything is over and done with.He's back working in his camp....he's healthy again and the whole nonsense with him having Bipolar syndrome is resolved....Good for him. ..2 mths out of action is a long time.....nice to see him back on his feet...

Haven't seen Ah Liang or met up with him for a while now.....like 2-3 mths?!....Just talked with him recently....talked about going for some year end trip to Taiwan..... catch up on stuff......I'll try to meet him up soon and just shoot the breeze....been a long time since we done that...

Anyway onto the continuing saga of my Obsession with buying DVDS......seriously I am so glad Singapore's censorship laws have been toned down in recent years...it has opened a whole new world in cinematic experiences for me.........

Taxi Driver.Casino.Godfather.Apocalypse now.Schindler's list.Fight Club.Good Fellas.Raging Bull.Don JUan Demarco.Clerks.Ghost world.Bram Stoker's Dracula.Capote.

Back when I was young.........all the best movies by the best directors were all censored cut or not even available for sale in Singapore.Now I rediscovering all the all-time greatest movies ever made on DVD.........and its an orgasmic experience....hahaha....(come to think of it...every damn thing seems to be orgasmic to me)..hahaha

I just watched Don Juan Demarco starring Johnny Depp as a Modern day Don Juan(The legendary Greatest Lover that ever lived.) and Marlon Brando(My Favorite actor!!!) as his psychiatrist. The story is set in the present,where Johnny Depp thinks he's this legendary Don Juan demarco and goes around seducing and pleasing women.After having lost his greatest love Dona Ana...he decides to end his life but Psychiatrist Marlon Brando talks him out of it.

Marlon Brando is deepy interested in his new subject and Don Juan Demarco tells him seemingly fantastic and implausible stories about his childhood and how he ended up trying to kill himself. Don Juan is such a presence that he ends up winning over all the female staff and the doctor.....and bit by bit the psychiatrist himself is inspired by Don Juan to spice up his own marriage to his wife. In The end? Let's just say that Don Juan is not mad and his stories are not untrue...its just that he intrepretates everything in such a beautiful,romantic and fantastic way...........and they both help each other out. Marlon Brando finally brings him back to terms with reality while Don Juan helps Marlon see things in a new,fantastic,make-believe kind of way....

I think Wenjun,Huiling and Gerald will love this film......Don Juan Demarco is like the ultimate lover who makes every woman think she's something special and this story is kinda touching sweet and has this fairy tale fantasy feel to it........its a romantic comedy..plus it's got a great sound track by Bryan Adams...with songs like "Have you ever really loved a woman"

I also Saw Bram Stoker's Dracula(directed by my 2nd favorite Director,Francis Ford Coppola of Godfather Fame) and its one of the best Vampire movie I've watched. Sensual.Atmospheric.Eeerie. It tells the story of Real Life Legend,Vlad the Impaler. A Warlord who fought in the name of God and who rejected God after his wife committed suicide and would be forever damned to Hell. Gary Oldman is awesome as Dracula....it also stars Anthony Hopkins,Keanu Reeves and winona Ryder......

The next film I caught was "The Score" starring Marlon Brando(Notice a pattern?),Robert Deniro and Edward Norton. Aa heist Movie that has an experienced thief played by Robert deniro teaming up with a smart,rookie thief,Edward Norton to steal a priceless sceptre for Their employer Marlon Brando.....good stuff, Edward Norton holds his own against this two great actors.....in order to infiltrate the museum,he spent weeks working as a mentally retared cleaner in the museum and he's so effortlessly retarded as that character.....hahaha

The Best New Fim I watched this year though....has to be "Capote". This is a non-fiction story based on real events.Truman Capote is squeeky voiced,homosexual,weird,ecentric and famous writer for the New York post and he's fascinated by the brutal killing of a family of 4 in kansas. He decided to write a book on this murders and he goes around kansas interviewing everybody and digging up all kinds of info and even forging a friendship and bond with the two killers in order to get their stories and accounts of the traic incident.

He spends three years of his life researching his book"In cold blood",forging a close friendship with the killers,manipulating them,trading his own life stories with theirs........but he knows that his book can never have a satisfying ending until the two killers are executed.So he secretly and perversely wishes that the killers would be executed to give his story the closure it needs.When the killers execution is postponed,he tells his close friend(the writer of "to kill a mockingbird") that he is gonna have the "biggest mental break down of his life"............after he has all the info he wants,he withdraws all help to the prisoners,but at this time he has already forged a strong bond with one of the killers and fallen in love with him...but he knows that the success of his story depends on having a suitable ending(the killer's death)......he witnesses the hanging of the killers......his book comes out,it becomes a best selller....he's become the world's most famous author at the time......but he lost his soul in the process.Ne never wrote another book again till he died. I rate it like 9/10.....good shit....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capote_%28film%29

Now Marlon Brando(THE Godfather) is widely regarded as the Greatest actor in this Century and is my all time Fave actor. His acting is on another level man.....So I've been reading a semi biography on him by his best friend of 48 years,Robert Englund.Instead of being a boring,straight biography of his life.....the book features conversations and specific incidents between them recounted by his best friend/writer...Robet Englund and it provides great insight to Marlon Brando as a man.

Hailed as the greatest Actor of his generation.Worshipped by his peers and Juniors. Unhappy with all his films.Paranoid of all the people around him. A great seducer who has bedded hundred of Women. Difficult to work with. Hates all Figures of Authority. Born to a uncaring father and an Alchoholic mother. His son Killed his sister''s husband. His widowed Daughter comitted suicide. Died as a fat,over weight shadow of his former self.

There's this great anecdote in the book abt Marlon Brando that shows his keen insights.Once during an acting class,in a particular exercise, his acting teacher told him and the class to act like Chickens would when an atom bomb was about to be dropped on their hen house.......all the other students clucked madly and ran wildly like chickens with their heads cut off...

Marlon Brando just sat there.Doing nothing.Protecting his eggs. When his acting teacher asked him why? He said:"I'm a goddamn chicken....how the hell would I know what an atom bomb is?"

I've been tracking down all his best works on DVD. From his best films like the B&W movie "a street car named Desire" to his role as Don Vito Corleone in the Godfather, Jor El in Superman, The Psychiatrist in Don Juan Demarco, The Score with The great Robert Deniro and Edward Norton, the totalled effed up Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse now...he's great in all of them. Great actor.....May he RIP.

I'm also about done with the best Movie Trilogy of all time :The Gofather trilogy.......the most complex,well-crafted and intelligent trilogy of movies ever made man......I'm gonna be watching the third and final film after I Finish this post........Al Pacino is My 3rd fave actor behind Brando and Deniro and his descent into the darkside is some scary and tragic shit. I've also bought and plan to watch "Once upon a time in America", "Kundun"(the life story of the Dalai Lama by Martin Scorsese), Schindler's list(cited as Steven Spielberg's greatest and most touching film),"A street Car named Desire"..........and when my Cash flow is better....I'm gonna get "The Freshman",Lord of the Rings trilogy,the Usual Suspects,Dog Day Afternoon, Se7en.........whew..

As for the comic purchases...I just bought the ultra deluxe,oversized Absolute hardcover Edition of Kingdom Come....one of my all-time favorite Comic book stories featuring the Justice League and other DC heroes......wonderfully written and beautifully painted by Alex Ross......plus its got tons of extras like sketches,concept artwork,story script samples and other goodies.....it was selling for $130......but I waited a couple of weeks and so happened KINO's anniversay sale was on and I managed to buy it at 20% off the normal price......around $100.....worth every cent...hahhaha....in my opinion that is....ah but what do i know....you know what they say....

"Opinions are like Assholes. Everyone has one and they all stink!"

Anyway I'm saving up to get the Absolute hardcover edition of The Dark Knight Returns......its my favorite Batman story of all time but it costs like $172....once payday comes....IT WILL BE MINE!! SO IT IS WRITTEN.SO SHALL IT BE!"

Anyways some updates on the artistic side of things.....I 've comepleted two pieces of art...both featuring Batman.One is fully inked and the other is completely pencilled. You know I used to insert friend's names,draw them in small unintrusive cameo appearances or make some references to them in my artwork here and there....they are usually very subtle and I have a hard time detecting them after i finish the art and I'm usually delighted when I spot them when I look through my old stuff......anyway.....for the inked Batman piece...it features Batman in an alley carrying Joker's limp body and the walls of the alley are stained with Grafitti....so I decided to incorporate some of the names of my poly friends in the grafitti.......scrawled all over the walls are the names"Felix","Junzz","Ah Ling","Gerald","L.J","Sylphie","Badumba","TB31" and the word "Bimbit" on a chinese take-out box lying in a dumpster.....hahaha....the piece turned out okay....a bit self-indulgent maybe.....for my liking...but a few years down the road.....it'll probably make me smile........at how "subtle" my artwork is....hahaha....goddamn....secret words and messages.......I'm like creating my own version of the Davinci code!!

As for other personal stuff, I'm kinda unhappy that I'm not 100% nowadays....You Know.....The lack of sleep.....like 4 hrs a day for the past 3 weeks have resulted in me talking and acting somewhat like a zombie. I take A long time to answer questions,I slur when talking, I'm unfocused and rambling.......takes me slightly longer to string together coherent sentences....I mispronounce words...........urgh!......I wanna be my normal self again,my mind working at all directions at the same time,firing at all cylinders,effortlessly spontaneous.........I used to be spontaneous as all hell, direct me to a specific subject like let's say an indian friend of mine or a fat girl and off I go......I used to freaking do a real time,unrehearsed,stream of conscious kinda mocking/insulting/joking routine about any given subject...for like 1 1/2 hrs.....just coming up with joke after joke after joke without much time lapse in between, and infront of a group of 7-8 people..........now? When I'm shagged......holding my own in a conversation with a single person takes effort...I don't like that... My brain is blocked when I'm tired..........but personal observation has revealed that as long as I have one full day rest....I should be ard 75% of my normal self.........hope once I get back to my old base and the rest time is increased.....I'll be in good verbal shape......

Well.....that's about it for me for this post. For the coming weeks.....I'm looking forward to watching "The departed",martin scorsese's remake of Infernal affairs......Looking forward to finish watching every DVD i bought...also I'm going back to my old air base soon and will be having more stable off days until of course the system changes for the worse next year......hmmm......future blog posts will feature more tweaking about the content.....some stuff is stagnant....lesser reviews and Movie stuff perhaps? Up the amount of sarcasm and mocking of people? A retrospective of my childhood?A one year look back at my army days?A word-free photo only post? I dunno.........we'll see how everything goes...........Anyway two weeks from now I've be celebrating my 1st year in army.....

What a year it has been....I'm proud that I've done everything that is required of me and passed all the necessary trials and I've never resulted to doing anything morally questionable in order to escape duty,ease my work load,etc.........and I'm still a non-smoker in a platoon overrunned with smokers...........hope the next year is a smooth one....

Ok.....another blogpost put out to pasture......and ....Abbedi-abbedi---that's all Folks!!!

8:20 AM