No NaNoWriMo for Moi!

I’m a little bit sad that I won’t join NaNoWriMo this year. Unless I seriously have a death wish by writing, doing NaNoWriMo this year is a big no-no for me. Let’s see: I have a full-time job, a part-time job (recommended by my FT job boss), and I contribute to 2 major beauty magazines in Vietnam. I don’t want to talk about money at this moment but with the insane amount of work I do, I don’t want to add another thing on top of the load. Nuh-uh, man! I need my sleep!

To think about it, the only years I did not join NaNoWriMo were during the nascent stage of my grad school years. I think I didn’t do it for 2 years because grad school was insane (and insanely bad at the same time!) But from 2004 onto now, I’ve been pretty much consistent with joining in the game, although winning it is a different set of equations all together!

So yeah, I am sad that NaNoWriMo won’t be a part of my life this November. However, I have a whole bunch of writings I need to do. My writing life has never been dull lately and I’m glad to have it that way.

To those of you who are going to partake in this noble quest, I wish you all good luck.

May The Force be with you. Live long and prosper. I am Ironman.

Whatever it is, you are going to need a lot of it. And caffeine, too!

Snow White & the Huntsman: Not a Fairy Tale

Hi everyone,

I think this summer, we have had enough of Snow White to last for the rest of the year. First, we had “Mirror Mirror” and then “Snow White and the Huntsman” came out in theater. I have to admit that I’m not a fan of Kristen Stewart, pre or post-trampire incident. Chris Hemsworth has potential but would he be a good huntsman? But Charlize Theron, the star hailed from South Africa, got my attention. I had to watch this movie.

Due to the fact that I’m sleepy and there’s Wikipedia available, I’m not going to recap this story. Come on, it’s a Snow White story, what is new here?

Eh, wrong. A couple of things are new:

• The Queen has a brother who might be a pedophile. And he’s interested in Snow White: that and that only would not make this a PG-13 movie at all. No, nuh uh, I don’t think so!
• We get a glimpse of how the Queen turned so evil: it is just a flash but it explains a lot. I do believe in back stories and this part is finely done.
• Lots and lots of fighting scenes and Charlize Theron dipped in some sort of black magic liquids
• And yes, the Queen not only will consume your heart, she can suck out Lily Cole’s youth: that, my friend, is scary!

And now, for the performance:

• Charlize Theron: I would not ask for a hotter, more evil, image-obsessed, soul sucking queen than her. Charlize Theron is perfect. But I guess back when the Grimm Brothers wrote “Snow White”, this little thing called botox didn’t exist just yet. If it did, we wouldn’t even have this story. When the Queen asked, “Mirror Mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”, the mirror could have given her the address to the closest dermatologist office with the direction ingrained into an email.
• Chris Hemsworth: believe it or not, he’s better in this movie probably because he dyed his hair brunette? I don’t know. But the lack of Thor-ness in him makes me like him more.
• Kristen Stewart: I know I ripped K-Stew’s performance in Twilight so many times before. She’s better in this movie but her facial expression is still quite bland. Maybe that’s what the Queen wants from Snow White: an expressionless, over-botoxed face?

Overall, this movie is long, the pacing is uneven. It’s also scary as hell. Definitely not a movie for kids. But again, I’d watch it because of Charlize Theron.

Fifty Shames of Earl Grey

Hi everyone,

Y’all probably know how I feel about the latest mummy porn saga “Fifty Shades of Grey.” (If not, click here. Srsly, you haven’t heard of it?) The thing about this particularly bad attempt at writing bondage erotic novel that moonlighted “Twilight” was simple: the whole “Fifty Shades” thing became famous. Like, really really ridiculously famous to a point that people are talking about making a movie out of it.

As we all know, once something is famous, people would try to make fun of it. Entrez “Fifty Shames of Earl Grey” written by Fanny Merkin, which is an alias of Andrew Shaffer. I have to say I didn’t expect much from it, providing how bad Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey are. In my mind, if “Fifty Shames” is any bit better, regardless of how minuscule it is, then it’s a winner.

Two hours later, I found myself in bed sweating profusely because I was laughing so hard. This book is funny. Nope, scratch that, it’s top of the line funny. It’s about the story of Earl Grey, a mega tycoon, and Anna Steal, a student. Yup, that’s all I can remember because I was laughing so much while reading it. All the things I hate about “Fifty Shades” and Twilight are poked fun in this book from Christian Grey’s ridiculously rich attitude of “Imma buy you errthang” to Edward’s sparkles. And I mean it, all things and everything ridiculous in those 2 books are here, with one exception:

This book is well written!

Yup, I said it. If only E.L. James and Stephenie Meyers took time to attend some writing classes instead of actually writing bad novels, we (and many generations later), wouldn’t have to witness these atrocities. But Fanny Merkin (who is actually Andrew Shaffer in real life) can write well. And do you know how ridiculously difficult it is to write a parody? Which is why I love “Fifty Shames of Earl Grey” so much!

And by the way, here’s a Barbie and Ken re-enactment of a scene in “Fifty Shames.” When he said BDSM, he meant “Bards, Dragons, Sorcery, and Magick.” It’s like Dungeons and Dragons but with hot women that he found on Craiglist and paid for their services!

So yeah, I encourage everyone to read “Fifty Shames of Earl Grey.” There’s sex but the sex is also absolutely ridiculous like the rest of the book. If I have to choose between “Fifty Shades” and “Fifty Shames,” I would have to go for the later. There’s nothing better than a good laugh in the middle of the night to make people think you are crazy!

Where I Edit

Hi everyone,

To “celebrate” my editing strike, I’d like to write more about how I edit my novel. This post is not about the nitty gritty logistics of editing. For that, I would refer you to Stephen King’s famous book “On Writing.” He wrote an impressive chapter about editing that includes an example. I think everyone would benefit from this book.

In this post, however, I would like to show you where I actually edit my book with a complete view of the tools I use. And they say the picture speaks a thousand words:

Since I read in bed, I also edit in bed. It just makes more sense and feels more comfortable for me to do so. Can you imagine sitting straight up just to read? I can’t. And I haven’t done so in such a long time. In order for me to edit in bed, I need a few things:

• A clipboard to hold the chapters I am about to edit
• A permanent marker with twin tips: I use the fine tip to cross out unwanted things and the ultra-fine tip to write. You can get  a bunch of them at Office Depot or Target or whatever. Word of warning: don’t put your nose too close to the marker. The smell will knock you out cold before you can edit anything!
• Post-it notes: I use 3×4 and cut them in half. The three colors I use have their own purposes: yellow to summarize the chapter, green to mark a plant, and pink to let me know a major plot change for the rewrite.
• Dictionary or Kindle Fire with internet connection: I have a real dictionary, believe me. However, I find the Kindle Fire to be more useful as it has a dictionary app inside as well. Also, if I want to do a quick fact check, I would use it instead of my laptop.
• (Optional) Your non-human writing companion: my teddy bear has been my writing companion for such a long time. He is cuddly and he makes my writing better. Also, he is non-judgmental. I could never write when my cat was around. All he wanted me to do was to pet him and pay undivided attention to him. Since he was quite burly, he did not go as far as jumping on my laptop to stop me from writing but he did knock it down once. Therefore, my teddy bear is a better writing companion

The advantages of editing in bed are quite amazing:

1. It is comfortable
2. I can switch positions as many times as I want
3. The work surface is huge
4. If I get tired, I can take a nap and wake up to edit again. Of course, you can nap at your desk but it doesn’t feel as comfortable.

So there you have it, the down and dirty of how I edit my first novel. And guess what? I don’t feel weird at all! I need comfort to edit and being in bed provides that to me.

How about you? Where do you edit your work?

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Hi everyone,

Perhaps “Snow White” is one movie that’s been re-maked to death lately. We have “Snow White and the Huntsman” and “Mirror Mirror”, which is enough of this princess the world can take in a year. While I haven’t watch the first movie, I recently got a chance to watch “Mirror Mirror” and it was quite, how can I put it, interesting. Not bad, not good, but very interesting.

First of all, the costumes were out of this world. I mean, look at Julia Roberts and Lily Collins’ costumes. They are practically a drag queen’s dream comes true:

It got to a point that I was confused: wasn’t Snow White supposed to be poor? She lived with the dwarfs and dressed in rags and all. And then, it occurred to me that I got the wrong girl: the one I thought about was Cinderella, not Snow White, duh!

Secondly, this movie is actually funny. Julia Roberts was excellent in playing a psychotic step-mother queen while Prince Alcott had a couple of funny lines himself. The dwarfs are less sullen than in the Disney animated movie. They are quite fun and their characters were well developed. Of course, their names were changed from the Disney version as well as their personalities.

The biggest difference in this movie compared to the Disney version is the story: they practically rewrote the whole tale. The Queen becomes some lavish and beauty-obsessed hag instead of a power hungry, evil, and vain one in the original story. Julia Roberts made her seem more passive-aggressive and lunatic than an evil person. Snow White is not a helpless girl who ran but a girl who fights back. However, the biggest change in character is Prince Alcott. He is handsome, yes. He has a blinding sparkly smile, yes. He is also shirtless, yes. Twice.

Wait, what?

Yup, the prince was shown shirtless in the movie twice, ladies and gentlemen, with chest hair and all! Which made me wonder: is this a movie for kids? For tweens? For teens? Or for the Twilight/Fifty Shades of Grey obsessive moms? I mean, there are little girls watching this movie and showing them a half-naked man with his hands crossing over his nether part is not too much, right?

I don’t know. I love the prince despite his lack of fighting skills but his half-naked scenes look a lot like soft porn to me. Ok, probably not soft porn but if you show kids this kind of thing, they would end up watching raunchy stuff (and like it) like True Blood when they turn 13 or so.

Mirror Mirror is an interesting movie to watch. I would probably not watch it with my teenage nieces though. However, as an adult, I fully enjoyed it. Again, it is entertaining and fun. It will make you laugh but then, you will forget all about it. Mirror Mirror is a fast food kind of movie and should be enjoyed like so.

Ring My Bells with “Battleship”

Hi everyone,

Two movie reviews within a few days apart? I’m on fye-ah!

 

To loosely quote Saito in “Inception”, if I don’t write something about Battleship, I felt like I would not “Take a leap of faith and become an old woman, filled with regret, waiting to die alone.” Nope, this movie is no “Inception.” It’s probably a hair better than the “Transformers” franchise but is nowhere near the league of Nolan movies.

“Battleship” is entertaining. It also came from the game Battleship by Hasbro. This reminds me of the humble origin of the Pirates of the Caribbean. If a Disney ride could become a successful franchise, why wouldn’t a game get the same treatment? I anxiously waited for the movie to arrive but was not convinced enough to watch it. After all, Battleship: a movie. Really?

But I ended up watching it because of Alexander Skarsgard. This gem from Sweden would read a phone book while wearing trash bags from the Mugatu Derelict collection and I would buy my own ticket to watch him. You know I would do anything for Eric Northman.

If I were to divide Battleship into two parts, I would say the first part is called “Skarsgard alive” and the second part is “Skarsgard goner.” Like srsly, director who is not Michael Bay, I mean Peter Berg, why on Earth did you allow Alexander Skarsgard’s character to die? I mean, did you even look at him and then look back at your main character? I love Taylor Kitsch but he ain’t no Stellan Skarsgard’s progeny. Basically, after Alexander’s character died, I lost interest in the movie until that fighting scene using tsunami warning buoys with Captain Nagata (the only character in that movie whose name I cared to remember.) That scene worth the ticket price as it basically the way you play Battleship but in a military setting. To me, it is the best scene in this movie and the only reason for me not to trash it so hard.

Like Transformers, you are going to hear a lot of metal clanking and scratching sounds in this movie. There was one scene that only had those sounds for a good 5-10 minutes. Taylor Kitsch’s character is your regular pompous jock at the beginning who went through hardship and came out a little bit less of a pompous jock. We have Brooklyn Decker and her boobs in most of her scenes in this movie. Rihanna’s debut character is somewhat flat. I think if you delete these two characters in this movie, you don’t even notice the difference. The characters that impressed me the most are not even played by professional actors: Mick and the naval veterans are real-life military people and I cheered for them more than the actors. I guess that kinda tells you how “great” Battleship is.

With all that said, I enjoyed Battleship. While it has its own weaknesses (and the script being one of them), Battleship is still an enjoyable movie. If you are a fan of the game, the Navy, and/or Alexander Skarsgard, you should watch it. However, if you don’t, I don’t think you would miss out anything. Well, maybe those 5-10 minutes of hearing screeching sounds of metals clashing on each other, of course!

Player Got Played in “Tower Heist”

Hi everybody,

I’ve watched way too many comedies that I can’t laugh at random funny things anymore. In order to gain my laughter, a comedy has to be funny and witty at the same time. I believe the last time I watched something at that caliber was “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” To me, a good comedy movie is something that still can make me laugh the second (and the third, and so on and so forth) time around. With me fully knowing all the tricks in the bag, it is hard to laugh at lame jokes. Believe me, I tried. Even during certain sub-par episodes of “The Big Bang Theory,” I didn’t laugh.

I know, I’m tough as a coconut when it comes to watching comedies these days. But “Tower Heist” made me laugh, ok? It’s not one of those funny and witty movies that I like. It’s just plain funny. And twisty as hell, that’s what I’d like to put it.

When I first saw the DVD, my inclination was not to buy it and not to watch it at all because Ben Stiller has stopped being funny for a while now. The last movie he made that gave me a couple of ha-has was “Tropic Thunder” and I wasn’t even laughing at his character’s antic. I was laughing at Tom Cruise (ah, the irony!) Even Eddie Murphy did not have enough power to convince me to buy the DVD.

But it was Gabourey Sidibe that tipped the scale (no pun intended, girlfriend! You know I love you!) I mean, the girl is really talented and I wanted to watch her doing comedy. So I bought the DVD, went home, watched it and laughed my ass out!

Seriously, this is one funny movie! We have Ben Stiller doing the best nice-guy Ben Stiller. We have Eddie Murphy doing the old-skool Eddie Murphy. We have Matthew Broderick doing a nerdy and kinda wimpy version of himself, which is refreshing, by the way. On top of that, we have Casey Affleck (brother of Ben), and Téa Leoni. Seriously, with a cast that has so much talent, there are only two possible outcomes: the movie is either a flop or a big hit.

Turns out, it is a hit but ironically, an understated one. The tower robbery story has been done over and over again. Hello, Ocean 11, 12, and 13? But this is nothing like the Ocean franchise, not just because we don’t have George Clooney. This movie is so different, thanks to all the twists that makes it almost to the witty level that I’d like. There was no lag at all, the movie keeps on rolling from one high to another quite seemlessly.

To put it gently, this is a really good comedy. I watch a lot of comedies, believe me, I know! If you want a good laugh, please watch it. I’m sure it will not disappoint you.

No More Girly Push Ups for Me!

Hi everyone,

Remember this post when I told you that I could do push ups? Well, that was in February and this is the end of April. Three months almost go by and yet I’m still talking about it. Wanna know why?

It’s quite simple, really. In February, March, and pretty much the first half of April, I was doing push ups, alright, but they were on my knees. Yeah, the girly push ups people invented so women could do them, too. The only thing about knee push ups is they don’t work your whole body the way real push ups do. Also, for those who have knee problems like myself, it makes your knees sore if you do a little bit more push ups than you should.

But I had to live with what I could do while working on something else: planks. I can hold a 5-minute plank now and a 10-minute session of multiple sets of planks are getting even easier to me. I don’t actually remember who or what coerced me into planking like a mad woman but I love every minute of it. Plank is what makes your core stronger and tighter. You can do crunches until the cows come home but it won’t strengthen your core the way planks do. Also, it builds up your upper body strength, which is something I need to do my push ups properly.

While I was happy doing planks, I did not realize my push ups have improved. P90X is wonderful and I have to say they have the best upper body workouts ever! I did the Chest, Shoulders, and Triceps DVD while cursing Tony Horton out loud. That DVD contains all the push ups I could never imagine myself doing and more. The first time I did it I was so miserable. But then, the second and third time around was charming, I could do them all, albeit being on my knees.

Then, yesterday while I was doing yoga, I came to realize that I could finally do the perfect push ups. My arms did not flare out anymore and my chest hit the deck first, instead of my stomach. Also, my upward-facing dog pose was actually proper with my knees off the floor instead of me moonlighting the cobra pose and calling them upward-facing dog for ages. I felt so proud, as if I finally graduated to the big league already. All that could happen because I do planks, not because I have done a ton of push ups or anything else.

Next week, I am starting phase 3 of P90X, which means this round is closing to an end. I feel proud of myself and if I can do it, you can, too. P90X is not as difficult as people make it out to be. And if you are reading this because you want to try P90X, please do not let all those pull ups scare you. I haven’t done a single pull up since I am not allowed to drill the pull-up bar into the wall. But other than that, the modified version with the band works as well.

So yeah, I can do real push ups with ease and I can plank my heart out.  I have about 30 days left on P90X and I feel fantastic. If you want to work on your fitness then you should not wait. Go ahead and do it, you’ll be surprised of how far it is going to take you.

Let the Brooding Begin!

Hi everyone,

Last Sunday, I did something crazy: I watched the whole season 4 of True Blood in one day. Again, if you haven’t watched this show, you should. I don’t care whether you like a supernatural noir show with a twist of comedy or not, True Blood has a lot to offer when it comes to creating characters and especially, ending an episode. They have a way to end it that makes you want to kill yourself if you don’t press play to continue on to the next chapter. Now, I have watched a lot of TV and movies as well as read a lot of books but so far, nothing could supersede the way True Blood ends each and every single of their episodes.

In season 4, Sookie has a breakthrough in term of relationship. After she gets a chance to see who Bill really is, Sookie did not want to belong to him anymore. Then comes brain damaged Eric (ok, he was not really brain damage. Some witch put a curse on him.) I have to say Alexander Skarsgard is an awesome actor. Since I was so used of him playing kinky psycho Eric, the new hush puppy Eric is something to talk about. He is like the perfect boyfriend if such a thing exists. Also, new Eric kinda looks like this all the time. Scratch that, Eric always look like this, except sometimes he puts on his leather jacket and skin-tight jeans (being your teenage dream tonight.)

What say you? Yummy, ya? The more I get into True Blood, the more I like Eric. Of course, Sookie has other love interests but none of them can compare to Eric. Alexander Skarsgard is the new Ryan Gosling to me. I’m just sad that he is not well known beyond True Blood, which is a waste since this guy has talent.

Now, since I managed to finish season 4 in a day, I am brooding for season 5 to come. Lucky me, Game of Thrones is coming in a few days, which significantly ease the pain. However, nothing can compare to naked (or half-naked) Eric with fab abs. Well, except for Ryan Gosling in Crazy Stupid Love, of course!

So, if you haven’t watched True Blood yet, what are you waiting for? Start from season 1 and if the sex scenes make you feel uncomfortable, just fast forward. This is a show too good for you to miss.

In My Dream

Hi everyone,

I’ve been happy with P90X. Really happy. Put a smile on my face kind of happiness. And you wanna know why?

Because of Ryan to the Gosling

Every time I get sore, I would think of him and his lovely abs and what they would do to me. A girl can dream, you know?

And it goes like this:

Ryan: hey girl, you want me to take my hands out of my pocket? Guess what’s gonna happen if I do:

*break into rapping*

I wanna, rub-rub-rub you from yo’ head to yo’ toes
And I wanna, move from the bed down to the down to the to the flo’
Then I wanna, ahh ahh – you make it so good I don’t wanna leave
But I gotta, kn-kn-kn-know what-what’s your fan-ta-ta-sy

Me: You really want to know my fantasy? Well, how about you, those hands, my legs. Harder. Ahhh! Thank you, dahlin’!

Some dream, I know. But it’s a good one.