So I just saw the film Avatar. All in all, I'll give it a thumbs up. I'd love to see it in 3D. While I knew that the love interest was going to be voiced by Zoe Saldaña (Uhura from the 2009 Star Trek reboot), I had no clue that there would still be some division amongst the Na'vi (the blue people). While it's not stated in the film, I noticed that the Avatars (humans using bodies that looked like the Na'vi) had thin lips, while the actual Na'vi had fuller lips that looked more Negro. I doubt highly that the casual viewer would notice this difference, but I sure did. I wish I could find some screen captures of it...
Afterward, I was due in El Mirage to meet up with family members. I made a left at the Grand Avenue exit right off the 202. Deja Vu set in. And then total shock. It was a single lane leading into Sun City. Serious cussing ensued, but that's part of the charm of entering the gateway to Sun City/El Mirage/Surprise. As I rounded the corner to El Mirage, I felt my stomach gurgle. Could it be the tub of popcorn I had just downed? It wasn't a good sign and I quickly decided to retreat to the safety of my own home. I don't play those games anywhere but home. Still, I hadn't been to the area in over a year and I took an extra few minutes to go through my former neighborhood. It was a little strange to drive though Surprise. Everything still looked sanitized and new. The house I used to call home still looked the same. I almost wanted to reach for the garage door opener, park the car and call it a night. I still needed to drive home which was still more than 30 minutes away.
On the drive back, David Bowie's Jump They Say blared though the speakers. I'm always amazed that this upbeat song is actually about suicide. It's a strange combination. Time to open my Christmas presents...
It's not the first time, but it's the first time in a long time that I've been out to the club on Christmas. And I was certainly trying to be incognito too. Well that didn't happen. You would have thought it was National Get You Groove On Chocolate Day. All I can say is thank God I'm 40, cuz I had the sense to bring my tired ass right on home. I think someone put a phone number in my pocket. I'm not 19, I'm 40!
Crazy. I'll blame it on Christmas and leave it at that. And I even made it home by 11 PM.
Wow.
It's Christmas. And all the running around, securing gifts for family has come to an end. Nevermind my atrocious gift wrapping. That alone should be documented. I just kept thinking of my friend Vania as I went through it, "Get It Done!" That was the battle cry and that's the pace that I went through it. Oh, and it wasn't pretty. Worse was the fact that because of my strange schedule, I left our targeted rendezvous spot without actually distributing my gifts. But that's another story. And that's a story indeed. There are gifts for my brother's entire family sitting in the back of my car. My parents gifts got left in the front seat of their car. Oh well... Strange Christmas.
So I've come home to own uneventful home. I ran around and cleaned up last minute gift bonanza, gift warp orgy. Into the closet for next year. I reached over and fished though the 2 remaining DVD that came from Netflix 3 days ago. I'm not really in the mood for Six Feet Under Season Two. The other film, Mommie Dearest is just a bit much to stomach on Christmas. I did manage to sit through 40 minutes of it however. For some strange reason this film is considered homosexual and high camp fun. If any portion of this film is true however, it's just tragic.
Rather than finish viewing this film, I went to Wikipedia to read further about Joan Crawford. I have to say that in her younger days, she was quite hot. She doesn't even resemble the caricature that is seen drawn up with gigantic eyebrows. I can't imagine that she would have dreamed that her legacy would be tied to her depiction put forth by her adopted daughter. And yet there it is... Strange Fruit.
I don't know how I'm going to get to 25 posts by the end of the year...
Next up with 148 plays in my I-Tune 25 Most Played list is Cloudscape by Philip Glass. The composition is from the 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi. I first saw parts of the film on public television in the 1980's and was astounded by the images. The film contains no dialog or narration, so a lot of what is seen is open to interpretation. The word Koyannisqatsi is from the Hopi Indian language and literately means 'life out of balance'. The segment in which Cloudscape plays starts with foreboding clouds twirling in the sky, then moves to a massive waterfall. The images together with the music is quite powerful. I first saw the movie in it's entirety in 2006 and have been drawn to it ever since. There are portions of the film posted on YouTube, which I will place the sequence for Cloudscape here now. I suggest renting the movie (available through Netflix) to see the full beauty of the film. The music itself stands on it's own however.
I have gift wrapping to do. Lots of it. Still, I looked over at my stats for the year and saw that I've only got 6 posts under my belt for the entire year. That's pathetic. I thought 2008 was bad with only 48, but 6 for 2009? Yeah, something has to be done about that. Immediately. I'm going to get that number up to 25 by the end of the year. I'd at least like to have more than half the number I did last year. So what to write about, that's the question. I glanced over at my I-Tunes account and noticed what songs were in my Top 25 Most Played. Now there's something to comment on. Coming in at 149 plays is Deckard's Dream by Vangelis. It's from the film Blade Runner and to my knowledge, it hasn't been officially released. In fact, the sequence in which the music plays wasn't even in the original cut of the movie. It was restored when the Director Cut was released in 1992. The scene itself features Harrison Ford playing a melody on the piano as he begins to daydream of a white unicorn running through the forest. Some say this is a clue that maybe the character Deckard is a replicant himself. I'm not sure, but I do like composition.
Recently, I received a message on my Facebook account from a friend I hadn't seen or heard of in 18 years. Facebook has it's perks, but I'm not a big fan of the service. It's great for making quick statements, but I prefer complete thoughts. My use of Facebook is limited. So I was a little shocked when a message came through describing a part of my work history that would best be described as ancient. I looked at the face on the profile. It sure didn't look like anyone I knew. It looked like a child. Heaven forbid I actually have to read the person's name.
Then it all clicked. You've got to love Facebook for it's ability to find people you've lost contact with. While it had been 18 years since I had last spoken to my friend, the time at which we were actually hanging out was closer to 22 years ago. Damn, I feel old. Anyway, it was nice to be reminded of the world of my youth and all the silly things things that used to mean so much. The crazy names we had for co-workers. My chief conspirator went by the name of Shifty. She came up with that name all herself. But there were others: Junior Jock, Golden Boy, FB1 & FB2. My friend who I haven't seen in years was gifted with the name Oral. No, it was nothing meant to be perverted, but one never knows. Perhaps the most infamous name that we created was Rockstar. In this particular case, the name did mean something perverted. The story behind it makes me want to reach for a beer and laugh my ass off. But anyway...
What I remember of my friend was that he was a foreigner. Meaning that he wasn't from Arizona. He drove a monster V8 Chevrolet Monza. Keep in mind that this was the 1980's, so this was still acceptable then. (Note: There will be some post in the future about the Chevy Vega derived Monza - which beget the Sunbird, Starfire and Skyhawk). He liked to claim that it would get 15 miles to the gallon, but I doubt it. Highly. If I remember correctly, I think he played the bass guitar too. I may be a little fuzzy on that fact. What I do remember distinctly is that he liked Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Yeah, you might want to cruise on over to Wikipedia because they're a musical group who never had much impact in America. I guess they have a song featured in the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I never noticed. Sorry, I was more in tune with The Dream Academy & Yello. Oops. Back to Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Anyway, the one and only song that I remember from them isn't even really a song. It's a commercial for ID Magazine that's stuck on the back of the song 21st Century Boy. Don't even ask me to describe it. I've taken the liberty of cutting 21st Century Boy off so you only have to hear the commercial. Mmmm Hmmm, I love technology!
I purchased my home because it was unique and didn't look like every other house on the block. I also appreciated the fact that I wouldn't be tied to a ever increasing home owners association bill every month for the next 50 years. But owning a older home brings with it the chores of maintenance that newer homes simply don't have to face. My latest item to add to the list doesn't even involve my actual home. It's the power to the neighborhood that seems to be the issue. I'm one of those lucky people who happen to have a transformer box in my backyard. In October, there was a major rainstorm that caused the power to go off for a few select homes in my neighborhood. I came home to find my transformer box open with a huge cord running from my house to another box down the street. The power company came out the next day and told me that some of the electrical plumbing in the neighborhood had reached its life expectancy and needed to be replaced. Whatever. Then we had another rainstorm in early December and the power went off again. It was only for a few minutes in my own home, but the house directly next to me wasn't so lucky.
The power company came out again and said that my neighbors never saw their power come back on, so they hooked something up to my meter and essentially I was feeding power to their house. The first time this happened, my transformer box was feeding electricity to the neighborhood. This time, I was feeding electricity via a cord directly to my neighbor's house. Nice. The person that I spoke to said that they fix these issues on a case by case basis so even though they had just been in my yard in October, they needed to fix the issue with my neighbors next. Whatever. Only this time, the work would be more intense.
Two days later an independent contractor came out and started spray painting the street directly in front of my driveway. Hmmm, this didn't look good. Then days passed. And passed. Then today, two days before Christmas, I was awakened to dogs barking and voices coming from the front of my house. I looked out the window to see a crew of about 8 men standing around. Almost on cue, someone rang my doorbell. "We've come to repair the issue with your neighbor's electricity." Whatever. I told them that my gate was unlocked and to get to it. Meanwhile, I'm sitting here wondering when the power is going to go off so they can do whatever needs to be done. Five minutes later, I hear the doorbell ring again. When the original contractor came out to spray whatever needed to be sprayed, they failed to do so in my backyard. To which my eyebrows raised, "what do they need to do to my backyard?" It seems that they need to dig up my backyard to place new cabling to the other house. The work crew was concerned that without proper markings, they could potentially screw the whole neighborhood up if they started digging. Sure enough, two hours later someone else came out and spray painted junk in my grass. Who knows when the original work crew will return to my house. And I'm sitting here thinking, you want to do this right before Christmas? To say that I'm not thrilled would be an understatement.
It's 12 O'clock at night and for some reason I'm listening to Yello. I can qualify this as music from my youth. And I can also say that I picked up on them before the most widely known single, "Oh Yeah". I first became aware of Yello with their underground hit "I Love You". I'll blame it on a chance viewing one night on MTV. I just remember some bitch in a car screaming "I love you" over and over. Sometimes all it takes is one viewing to lock you in. I didn't actually get a chance to buy the album until much later. And when I did, I wore the album "You Gotta Say Yes To Another Excess" out. Actually, it was on cassette tape.
What I can say is that music collection of today no where resembles what I had back then. So tonight when the song popped into my head, I had to cruise on over to youtube to check it out again. Needless to say, it's not what I remembered. I'm looking at the video now thinking this is hella crazy. I can only imagine what people must have thought back in 1983. Damn, that was almost 27 years ago. Anyway, check it out and see what you think.
This post has been a long time in coming. Granted I haven't written much in the past months, but that's not the point. No it's the simple fact that I've yet to write about my home. Last year this time, I was still searching madly for a home to purchase. I had pretty much ruled out purchasing a home because the cost of home ownership had gotten so out of control.
I remember it was during a break from a training class that I first saw the house on some website. I was immediately drawn to the modern profile of the home. There were no interior photographs on the site, but the price was right. For certain it looked like it needed some work, but I liked the bones. At the time, my brother was dabbling in real estate on the side. He could get the keys to the lock boxes, so we arranged to look at a few homes over the weekend.
We visited a few other houses before we saw the one above. The first home we saw sported a flat roof and modern profile too, but once we got inside it was all downhill. It reeked of mold, the kitchen cabinets were in disarray and there was a huge empty pool in the back yard that needed to be repaired. Plus it took up the entire back yard. Next, we viewed a house that was completely out of my price range. It had been freshly remodeled, but no one was living there. It was beautiful and had a large backyard. It too had a pool that needed help. Lastly, we went to the home above.
It wasn't what I expected. We opened the front door to find a wrought iron gate enclosing the entryway. Adjacent to that was a half brick wall that had been painted fire engine red. The house had been vacant for months. In the living room was gray carpet that had been soiled with dirt, soda spills and perhaps wicked pet urine. Walking into the kitchen area was an immediate step back into the 1960's. The small galley kitchen featured white cabinets that looked as if they had been refinished on the cheap. They were also missing a couple of doors. As we moved to the bedrooms, it was more of the same. The first bedroom was a decent size and also had gray carpet. The second bedroom was smaller, but for some strange reason had green carpet. The master bedroom was the scariest of them all, as it was missing any form of carpet at all. Just bare concrete and tracks from where the glue held the carpet in place. It did have a large walk-in closet. The vanity area was a nice size, but the actual bathroom was tiny, with a small shower to the left. The master bedroom had an Arcadia door which lead to the back patio. The entire back of the house was covered by the patio (a nice touch), but the backyard itself was tiny. Worse was the fact that it directly bordered a major shopping complex. A strange touch was that there was a gate that allowed access to the shopping center.
All could be fixed was the rationale. The fact that my mother loved the huge walk in pantry just to the right of the kitchen sealed the deal. A bid was placed on the house in early September. A few anxious days later we found out that another bid had been accepted. The process began all over again. We looked at more houses, placed more bids and went to home auctions. Paperwork was filed. We were outbid. We underbid. I forced myself to look and like other homes. And they soon had names. The Green House, The Rooster House, The Roach House, The Dead Pool House.
And then in late October it happened. The original house we had looked at came back on the market. In fact, I spotted it again before a new Realtor had been assigned to the property. Using my brother's connections, we placed a bid as soon as it became available. And then we waited. And waited. And waited. Buying a home that has been in foreclosure is a terrible process. In all, we waited almost 45 days to have the offer accepted. During those 45 days I continued to look at other homes. In the end, it was the first home that I considered that I ended up with.
The first thing to go was the popcorn ceiling. Then the gray carpet was removed from the living room and hallway. In its place went tile that also covered the bare master bedroom. The painting went rather quickly, replacing the 1970's yellow tinged color with a more modern Swiss-Coffee color. The most dramatic change came in the kitchen. We gutted the existing kitchen and moved the refrigerator out of the galley kitchen. This allowed for more cabinetry to surround the refrigerator in its new place and the removal of the cabinets that had blocked-in the kitchen before
For certain, there is a ton of work that still needs to be done. The front yard needs to be stripped. I'm not sure if grass or more rock is the way to go. The house needs to be painted. The kitchen/den area needs to have the Linoleum replaced. I've read that the flooring in a home should be continuous. That would mean more tile, but I was looking for a more modern appearance. The tile that was put down earlier this year seems to give the home a Mediterranean feel. Still, everything is 100% better than what it was when I first saw the place, that's for sure.
I still need to purchase furniture for the dining room, the master bedroom, the kitchen/den area. Actually just about every room needs something else. But it will get there, in time...
