10 minutes and counting down… October 31, 2006
The Latest , 13 comments by Me, I love Jules, Abner, Linda, Steph, and Maria.Ten minutes till Home Council
I sit here all alone
With the exception of Stephanie
Stephanie Paone
She doing chord progressions
I’m blogging on the net
Every Tuesday, it is certain
Home Council night is set
The hum of baby monitors
The smell of silicone
From everybody’s laptops
The Council of the Home
Sometimes it drags on a bit
Sometimes I fall asleep
Sometimes we take too long to vote
But everyone is sweet
We vote on dish checklists
We vote on parking spots
Sometime we even vote
On how to store provisioned socks
Its now 8:59
The hour, it has come
I’ll leave you now to go and vote
This poem is really dumb
Mr O’Toole October 27, 2006
The Latest , 2 comments by Marieanne and Wanis.I just stumbled across this picture I drew in 2004 that I almost forgot about. Copied from a photo of Peter O’Toole in “Troy”. Looks nothing like him but it reminds me of how fun it was to draw, I might just take it up again.
A gem from Home Review meeting October 25, 2006
The Latest , 3 comments by Beuribek, I'd better not say, and Paula.“No wonder our Home is so on the ball, we’re mostly women.”
–Stephanie Paone, 2006
One Night With the King October 21, 2006
The Latest , 6 comments by Risha, Ruthie, Maria, Charlock, Steph, and Jeff.Now in a theater near you!
The story of Queen Ester is very close to my heart. It was my dad’s favorite book of the bible and I have fond memories of us dressing him up as a king from our dress up box and fanning him with peacock feathers while he read it to us during family time. It deserves to have a great movie made about it; unfortunately, this latest one is a doozy of the highest order, hoping that the lavish costumes and computer-generated effects will distract us from the wooden acting and lamentable script.
First of all, it’s criminally misleading to call a movie with not the slightest hint of sex “One Night With the King”. C’mon, its the story of Queen Esther here, where’s the fun stuff? On the bright side, this means that as the parent of a JETT you can be at ease showing this movie to your impressionable young one, the purity level is about as high as it can get. Case in point: On the night of Esther’s “one night with the king”, instead of doing what should come naturally, they both start crying and he proposes. Geez!
It’s the same story we know and love (with a sub-plot thrown in here and there). Young Hadassah is taking from her doting Uncle Mordecai (played by John Rhys-Davies, one of the only believable actors) when the king banishes Vashti and calls for a round-up of Beautiful Young Virgins across the land. Having taken on a new name, Esther spends a great deal of time being beautified in milk and honey under the watchful eye of the obligatory Big Black Eunuch. She first meets the King late at night when he apparently calls for a random Beautiful Young Virgin to read to him from his archival scrolls. Esther instead charms him with the story of Jacob and Rebecca and from this nocturnal encounter, they both fall in love. A few weeks later, after their official one night together (in which nothing exciting happens), she becomes Queen of Persia.
The actress that plays Ester could have probably been believable if she would have had a decent script. She looks like a very nice Family girl; simple beauty, long hair, big smile etc. I have a feeling she’ll join someday and fit right in. The King looks like someone who could give you top-notch advice on skin care products and not much else. It’s also a little unnerving that he’s dressed much prettier than Esther for most of the movie. Strikes me as the kind of guy who would be best friends with Derek Zoolander. The costume designer must’ve really had fun with this movie, no style is left unexplored with the king. What really throws you off is when you meet of king’s counselors, who is this Chinese man with the authentic high-collared, red silk outfit. Uh huh.
The most amusing and ill-cast role, IMO, is the role of Haman. A shrimpy little guy who couldn’t weigh more than 120 pounds and looks like he just got out of grad school, he’s 90% eye balls that twitch a lot, especially when he’s making his eeeeevil face (the other 10% of him comprised of flaring nostrils). He has this really bad habit of talking about his plans for world domination and usurping the throne while holding his adorable toddler-age son. Tsk, tsk, Haman, one of the golden rules of parenting: don’t discuss problems around your children. When he’s not busy conniving in darkened palace corners and riding around the city giving eeeeevil looks, he’s campaigning in underground parts of the city, shouting “We must stamp out these Jews” to a group of folks who also really like to yell.
Through a series of pretty mean manipulations, Haman become a counselor of the king and convinces him that the Jews must go. Esther then summons her courage and saves the day by risking her life to appear before the king and plead for the lives of her people. In the end all is well and everyone is very happy, except for Haman, of course. There’s so many little twist and sub-plots in the attempt, I imagine, to make the movie more interesting, when it could have been perfectly interesting if they would have gotten decent actors in the major roles instead of the minor ones and not have the camera fade every time something remotely sexual begins to happen.
One major grievance I have with this film is that they give the incredible Peter O’Toole top billing. His name is on the poster of the movie. So I figure, “Peter O’Toole; great actor, top billing, must be good”. No. He’s in literally 12 seconds of the film at the very beginning, as the prophet Samuel in a flashback. But I’ve gotta say, he’s brilliant in those 12 seconds. After that, the movie goes steadily south.
Another grievance; and I’m sure this is a golden rule in Hollywood somewhere, you can’t substitute sweeping visuals for a bad script and bad acting. Every time the script starts to really lull (which is a lot), we get these sweeping aerial shots of the palace, which is real pretty and all (the palace looks like something out of Lord of the Rings with a tiny middle-eastern twist) but very overused. I remember this same tactic being used in “Glitter”, another bad movie; there were an unusual amount of aerial shots of New York to distract us from the glaring fact that Mariah Carey can’t act.
I believe that someday they’ll make a decent movie about the story of Esther. The actress will at least have a British accent instead of an American one, the word “OK” will not be included in the script, there’ll be more subtlety and less outright corniness, Haman will actually scare you instead of making you want to feed him something, you won’t be able to tell when the actors are wearing wigs, and by all that is accurate and historical and nothing to be ashamed about, we’ll get some real nudity, by golly!
P.S. There is a song to go along with this movie called, you guessed it “One Night With the King”. Criticism about this song could be a whole other post. Google the lyrics and have a good laugh.
P.P.S. Gosh, this is a long post. That’s what I get for suppressing the writers itch for too long.
Widdle Broder October 15, 2006
The Latest , 2 comments by Angel and Steph.Look at him. All grown up’n studly lookin’.
In other news…Steve, help me! I’m being spammed on my Kenji post by hordes of crazed nymphomaniacs. It’s corrupting me fast!
Awwwwww…. October 12, 2006
The Latest , add a commentThis is just beautiful! Made me shed a tear of joy!
Go here and share the love! And wish Maria a happy birthday as well!
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The Latest , 25 comments by AudioGuru, CHUCK, Tammy, Michelle lavigne, Leilani, Pabs, Woozers, Doe, Ruthie, Angel, Anita, Marieanne, Amanecer, Sonia, F|35h, Dawnie, Steph, Maria, Bill Breeze, Maya, Token-Black-Girl, and MOm :~).
A very happy Birthday to my good friend Chuck, who is coolest thing God created since popcorn and chewing gum. There really are no words to describe the coolness of Chuck, thus this post will fall woefully short, but here’s an attempt. Much like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, these are a few of my favorite things about her. Share some of your own favorite Chuck things and birthday wishes for her will you?
The fact that she must chew exactly three pieces of gum at a time, thus its very hard for her to give you a piece of her gum, as it will throw off her multiples of three, but she’ll do it anyway because she loves you.
The fact that she is so definite about what she likes, thus you can know that a surefire way to make her happy is to get her something red or something that smells like peppermint.
Our wonderful chemistry. She can be flailing about the room like a madman, screaming nonsense and running into walls while I sit quietly reading a book and we have a perfect understanding of each other. Its hard to explain but real fun to watch.
The fact that she has not abandoned me since gaining so many cooler friends than I.
Her tender heart.
Her dedication to the Lord and the fact that she can always convict me with it.
Happy Birthday Chuck, Chucky, Chuck the Gangster, The Gazzipo, Milton and Victory! This next year will be wonderful because Jesus is your Lover and everyone is your friend!
1980’s Revisited October 10, 2006
The Latest , 3 comments by Amy, Maria, and Mike.I digress from my usual stance of not blogging about parties to tell you about the hardcore 80’s party we had last night. Gosh, was it neat! From dancing to good old Family 80’s classics such as “Make Straight Paths for Your Feet” to playing sardines in the pitch black, hardcore combo-style 80’s fun all around!
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And she finally updates! October 2, 2006
Foolishness , 10 comments by Steph, Paula, Machi, Hobbyns, Niki, Jamie, Moon Child, and Smichelle's.And what better way to break the silence then with this gem of a masterpiece. My finest work to date.
It’s a rare and beautiful moment when Uncle Mike cooperates this well and I must say, he was truly a joy to work with.
Seriously now, this fanciful piece was commissioned as a skit prop. Lucky lucky me, I get to google “hot buff shirtless males”, merge the pefection of their anatomy with the flawless phenomenon that is the face of Uncle Mike and call it “work”. I love my job!
Many thanks to Michelle, my fellow PS enthusiast, who helped make it look so much better!
I’m thinking to make prints. T-Shirts are in the works as well. Contact me if you’re interested.