Most of the time I like my job but lately those times seem further and further apart. I actually screamed "that's it, I quit!" yesterday. Okay, admittedly, it's a very casual office but even I feel that was over the line. Or at least an indication that I'm stressing out and taking this shit way too seriously.
Latest updates from the looking-at-things dept:
(1) have started reading Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for the Food (thanks Sarah!). It's just about what you'd expect, if you've seen Good Eats (and if you haven't -- who are you and what are you doing here?!?). In other words, it's way more information than you might at first think you want to know about, say, searing meat (the chapter I read last night). But it gets me to think about cooking, about what I'm doing when I'm cooking, in a way I usually don't. A lot of what I do in the kitchen is if not unconcious at least highly routine. While that does make things go faster it can also lead to food all coming out the same, regardless of what I set out trying to do. Highly recommended, of course. Updates to follow (of course).
(2) Last night I also read Fabulous Las Vegas in the 50s which I got for Sarah when I was out there last month. Well, read is perhaps a bit overstated. It's really a coffee table book. But lots of great pics of Fremont St and the Strip the way it looked back in the 50s. And some stuff I didn't know. Por ejemplo, I did not know that the Stardust which currently has a very cool sign, used to have a sign that was equally cool, if not even cooler (note: i just spent about 40 min. searching around the interwebnet for pics of the original 50s Stardust sign with varying degrees of no luck at all... alas) Anywayze, lots of great graphics and design ideas which I'll no doubt be referencing if/when I get around to v2.0 of Mondo Mundo.
(3) Finally got around to watching City on Fire which I'd recorded from IFC a while back. Upsides: stars Chow Yun Fat (looking very young but the movie's from 87, a year after he starred in A Better Tomorrow altho still 2 years before Woo's the Killer); also stars Danny Lee, who also co-starred w/ Chow in the Killer; letterboxed; inspiration for Reservoir Dogs. Downsides: this was the US version so bad (and I mean really bad, US-version-of-Mad-Max bad) English language dubbing -- also probably bad US soundtrack and possibly bad US edits. Director Ringo Lam is no match for John Woo in terms of visual style, but he gets in some nicely shocking bursts of unexpected violence (ala Kitano), one great moment of gross-out comic relief (what IS that on my foot? augh!), and, hey, his story was obviously good enough to be ahem referenced by Tarantino. It is mostly the story that's the same, and not so much the look of the movie. But there is this one shot of the gang walking towards their first heist that's gonna seem familiar to anyone who's seen Dogs before seeing City on Fire. Worth seeing, but more highly recommended if you can get hold of the subtitled version.
Forgot to mention this the other night and thought I'd add it now, since it's th-hers-day (for the ladies...). City on Fire contains an almost completely gratuitious Chow Yun Fat nude scene. Not frontal, of course, but not fleeting either.