Fatvision

Hey! Peeps! Do you have this problem? My mom has fatvision, among her many other ailments. That's when you see everything as needing to be fatter, or bigger, than it should be. Like if something, or someone, is a tad bit thin, then it's too thin to her. Or let's say if a portion of food is just right, she thinks it should be bigger.

She does this with salting pasta, where the directions usually call for a tablespoon of salt for every 3-4 quarts, but then she pours in about a quarter cup. That could also be connected to one of her other ailments though, saltizing.

Greek-Style Pasta

I made this dish a while back, like, over a year back, but I forgot to post it. It just goes to show I do a lot of things with pasta.

This meal was inspired by antipasti salad (which I know is Italian but, hey, I added feta so it's Greek now). It's pretty much spaghetti aglio e olio (again Italian, for garlic and olive oil) and tossed with dry salami, olives, pepperoncini, red pepper, and feta cheese (Greek). Because of the salty, sharp flavors involved, it's kind of refreshing and makes your taste buds explode with flavor.

Tuna Baked Potato

I really like this blog called NeverSeconds about a nine-year-old girls school meals. The blog is pretty famous at this point. One of the days she featured a tuna baked potato as her main course. This blew my mind. And it tickled me. What a great, simple meal! So I set out to make it.

My tuna baked potato might be a wee bit fancier, in that it includes corn and cheese along with the requisite tuna, mayonnaise, and baked potato. It was wicked good! It didn't take very long to prepare, and it was both filling and extremely tasty. I will definitely be making this again.

Big ups to the butter lettuce in the back for keeping it real! And healthy!

Celebrity Sightings - DJ Lance

So my niece really enjoys "Yo Gabba Gabba." I find it pretty entertaining as well. The songs are so catchy.

While attending this month's Channel 101 (which you should go to, too), I spotted a hipster black guy. Now, there aren't a lot of black people who attend Channel 101. In fact, my brother and I probably make up the majority of the minority attendance. So every black person who isn't Demorge Brown kind of stands out. Except that this time the black person was DJ Lance (AKA Lance Robertson) from "Yo Gabba Gabba!" I got pretty excited, but as is my habit I didn't bother him. Since he wasn't dressed up as DJ Lance, he looked a little different. He was dressed all in brown, a far cry from his orange get up. But in his back pocket he had an orange fro pick! Just like DJ Lance would have!

I've been going to Channel 101 for some time now. I wonder if I'll see any more celebrities there?

Natto Buta Kimchi Spaghetti

I thought this would be a good idea ... and it was! Natto (fermented soy beans) is not for everybody, mostly because some people think it stinks to high heaven, plus it's slimy. But I like it, and it's super healthy.

I'm pretty sure that natto buta (buta=pork) kimchi is something that you can get at an izakaya. And I've made natto spaghetti carbonara before, so combining pasta with natto buta kimchi didn't seem too far fetched. It's a tasty and relatively healthy pasta dish that you won't find just anywhere, unless you eat at Chez MidnightHunnyRun.

Binagoongan Baboy

Contrary to popular belief, I am not dead.

Okay, I'm not even going to lie and say I know how to pronounce the name of this dish. I know it as pork bagoong (shrimp sauce), which I can pronounce. I know because that's what the guy at the restaurant called it. I am not Filipino, but I eat a lot of Filipino food. Right now I'm on a relatively unhealthy trend of going to either one of two of my favorite Filipino restaurants once a week.

Anyway, one of the places that I go to serves this, and I really, really like it. Not quite as much as lechon kawali, but almost. I was curious about how it's made, so I looked up recipes and it looked easy enough. And it was. Not quite the same as the restaurant's, but good. The key ingredient is the bagoong.

Celebrity Sightings - Kevin Pollack

I was feeling stressed out, so I decided to take in a movie, "21 Jump Street." Imagine my surprise when I saw Kevin Pollack (Todd Hockney in "The Usual Suspects," among many other movie parts) and his young girlfriend (his words, not mine) at the automated ticket kiosk getting tickets. I didn't know what he was watching, and didn't want to bother him while he was on a date. Imagine my surprise again when I take my seat in the theater, and I'm sitting right next to them. Now this is coincidence as the seating at the Century City AMC is assigned, and I did not know what movie they were planning to watch.

Now at this point I only suspected it was him since he looked a little different out of makeup. But when the trailers started to roll and he let out a burst of a laugh, I knew it was him. He really enjoyed the "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" trailer by the way.

Now he was good in "The Usual Suspects," and I enjoyed his cameo in "Wayne's World 2," and his impressions of William Shatner and Christopher Walken are second to none. But the one thing I wanted to comment to him on? That one TV show where he had sex with a robot played by Heather Parkhurst and got his penis stuck inside her. Yeah, so I guess it was good I didn't bother him on his date?

This marks the second celebrity I've seen at the Century City mall. Another time I saw Keanu Reeves. He was tall, but with his stubble and messy hair, he looked just like a regular dude.

My Other Favorite Movies

I list my favorite movies in my profile. However I must confess that that's my snob list, as those are the movies I'm willing to admit to watching. While I truly do love all of those movies and have and will watch them many more times, I admit there are certain movies that I will watch over and over again once I pop them in my DVD player. In some cases, I just let these play on repeat. In no particular order, these are:

"The 40-Year-Old Virgin"
"Beverly Hills Cop"
"Big Trouble in Little China"
"Black Hawk Down"
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind"
"definitely, maybe"
"The Fog"
"Forrest Gump"
"Heat"
"It's a Wonderful Life"
"The Lady Eve"
"The Last Unicorn"
"Macross: Ai Oboete Imasu Ka"
"My Fair Lady"
"The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!"
"Pineapple Express"
"The Rock"
"The Shop Around the Corner"
"Simply Irresistible"
"The Thing"
"This is Spinal Tap"
"Three Kings"
"When Harry Met Sally"
"You've Got Mail"

(I lied. I put them in alphabetical order.)

Shitty Movie Review - "The Killing of Satan"

It's been quite some time since I've seen any shitty movies. Good movies, yes, bad movies, most definitely. Some movies, like "The Dragon Lives Again" which I saw recently, were very entertaining and intentionally so, so I couldn't truly consider those shitty movies. However I have one for you today.

Much thanks goes to Everything is Terrible for continuing to be the curators par excellence for all things terrible, and for bringing "The Killing of Satan" to my attention. Trying to acquire a proper copy took quite some time, but eventually, through the power of Amazon, I was able to get it on DVD no less, so, you know, top notch quality.

Now, unlike some of the other shitty movies I have reviewed, "The Killing of Satan" does have a discernible story and plot. But before you fret that I am getting lax in my coverage of truly shitty movies, let me reveal that this movie was released in 1983 in the Philippines and was originally filmed in Tagalog. I watched the English language dub of course, because if I've learned anything about shitty movies, it's that one way to instantly bump it up to the next level is to re-dub it.

Now here's the short story. A small, deeply religious village is under attack from the Prince of Magic. When their priest and elder is struck down, they contact his nephew Lando San Miguel via, wait for it ... magic; because everyone knows that phone calls, letters, or even leaving your village to actually find a guy are far less reliable means. Somehow their message gets through and Lando shows up, but now must rescue his kidnapped daughter and cousin from the clutches of the Prince of Magic, and, ultimately, his master (Betcha can't guess who, but here's a hint: check out the movie title).

Pretty straight forward, it would seem. Except for all the MAGIC! Strange magic. Once Lando has reunited with the rotting corpse of his dead uncle, he is endowed with strange magical abilities, like elbow-generated force fields, super breath, and punching power that even Manny Pacquiao would envy. But the Prince of Magic is no slouch in his red tights—he commands an army of black-tights-wearing, telekinetic boxers and shape-shifting seductresses. And don't forget he's being backed by an even greater power (dammit, it's Satan okay). This isn't the hideous beast of Dante's Divine Comedy, no. He's more like ... Beck. The singer. Kind of small and wiry, with facial hair and horns and tights and a pitchfork. Eventually he morphs into a slightly better nourished version of himself, but the secret's already out.

Perhaps the best part of the film is the dubbing. For some reason, albeit a great one, the American distributor cast all but Lando's part with English-speaking Filipino actors, so that everyone save for Lando has accents. Lando's voice is sonorous and clear, and while he is the most understandable, he is also the most ridiculously out of place when it comes to speech. Combine that with the tritely rewritten dialogue, and you have a recipe for success.

There are plenty of other gems in the film, and while it does drag in a couple of spots, stick with it since the trippy-ness ramps up towards the end. I guarantee you some snake slapping, a mute boy, gun fights, lots of spinning, cheek ripping, and a cage stuffed with nearly-fully nude girls (they're wearing classy black ribbon chokers).

My shitty movie review: 8.5 turds out of 10. This movie is a headscratcher, since it's not necessarily poorly executed, but it's not well-made either. You get the feeling the creators met their intentions, and yet it comes off badly. Great if you're looking for a shitty movie.

Shitty Movie Review - "Runaway"

One has to wonder where Tom Selleck would be had he gotten to play the role of Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark." He was already a successful TV star with "Magnum, P.I." Did he ever really envision himself as Mr. Baseball? Or Quigley down under? Or Sgt. Jack Ramsay in the Michael Crichton's "Runaway?" No, surely he could not have foreseen himself as Sgt. Jack Ramsay, fighting copy machines, spider-bots, and a make-up-less Gene Simmons. But then again life has strange plans for us all.

"Runaway" is not a typical shitty movie—no, it is a thinking man's shitty movie. You don't have the usual abundance of poor direction, bad writing, or terrible acting—well, maybe the bad acting. But what you do have is an abundance of robots, and we can all agree that robots, no matter how cool they might seem in the beginning, ultimately suck. And these aren't even the OP robots like Chip or Vicki, or the hip robots like Johnny 5 or R.O.B. These are Michael Crichton's gritty, realistic 80's robots, the ones shaped like boxes and ... other boxes, with one, maaaybe two claw hands. Because Michael Crichton is all about the realizable future, wherein robots, the most effective and helpful ones, are basically mobile boxes with claws. And batshit crazy and destined to take over the world. That's where Tom Selleck comes in. He plays Sgt. Jack Ramsay, a good cop with one flaw—he's afraid of heights. But you know one thing he's not afraid of? Robots. That's why he's in the police runaway division, nobly chasing rogue robots.

Here's a sampling of some the many robots prominently featured in the film:
table robot
lamp lowering robot
farming robot
floater robot
stacking robot
housewife/telephone/receiver/stereo/jukebox/cook robot
security robot
sniffing robot
driving robot
exploding robot
spider robot

In Michael Crichton's future, robots have advanced to the point where most of them can do one thing, and can do it so well that that's their name. The lone exception is L.O.I.S. (I'm going to assume her name was an acronym since it was the 80's), Ramsay's home robot who apparently can do almost everything except hold a decent conversation. And yet she is amazingly a better actor than the one who played Ramsay's child.

Michael Crichton paints a grim future. I, for one, do not want to live in a world with signs such as the ones below posted around construction sites:

CAUTION ROBOT AND HUMAN WORK AREA
CAUTION ROBOTS NOT EQUIPPED WITH HUMAN SENSORS
ROBOT AREA PROCEED WITH CAUTION

First, I guess animals or plants aren't allowed in the robot and human work area. Second, why would you not equip construction robots with human sensors? If you can make them mobile and arm them with heavy machinery, why would you not give them sensors to detect humans, especially if they're going to be in close proximity? And third, does it even need mention that you should proceed with caution? I mean these are robots we're talking about. Despite all these signs, the construction workers seemed pretty nonchalant about the rogue robot chucking sandbags off the top of the building.

Aside from the robots, the main antagonist is none other than Gene f'ing Simmons of Kiss. Yeah, I hate his guts because of multiple personal run-ins, but that's besides the point. He's a dick. And in this movie, he coincidentally also plays a dick, and an evil one at that. You want a surprise? He's also a shitty actor. Oops, guess I gave that one away. Anyway, he has scientists build chips to reprogram robots to kill humans, as if they wouldn't have done that on their own. And he also uses the chips to control the missile guidance system of his tracking missile gun, the same gun you see Tom Selleck holding on the poster even though he never uses it in the movie. The rounds, or smart missiles, may be heat-seaking, highly-maneuverable, and explosive, but they're also only a tad bit faster than a running human. If only that one scientist had zigged instead of zagged.

And how does Tom Selleck fare through all this? He's Tom Selleck dammit, the man with the stache so powerful that women swoon. At one point he knocks a bunch of monitors onto the floor and beats a robot to death with a chair, WWF-style. He orders sushi from a neon sign. He gets called a wienerhead and doesn't even blink. He does the splits between two moving cars. He gets shot in the face with acid and goes out to dinner with the girl. And he gets her to cook. Tom Selleck, no matter what, will be fine. This movie only reinforces that. So what if he didn't get to be Indiana Jones? Did I just watch "Runaway" starring Harrison Ford? No, that's Tom Selleck dammit. Long live the stache.

My shitty movie review: 8 turds out of 10. This movie, while shitty, is simultaneously genuinely though-provoking and entertaining. I've never seen erector sets put to such good use. Plus it's got a young Kirstie Alley and she actually kind of looks good here. Still bitchy, but attractive.