Phrase of the Moment:
¤ Phrase: "hella"
¤ Usage: "Hella m'ungry, Punchin!"
¤ Origin: Old Valley-Girl speak, or something like that. It was big in the 80s, vanished, and has been reborn largely thanks to Cartman.
¤ Etymology: It's short for "hell of" I suppose, even though no one has ever used that two-word phrase for the purpose that "hella" exists. It's basically a synonym for "very" or "extremely" and is best used to great excess, or for intentionally-annoying sarcastic effect, in much the same way adults can effectively use L33t sP34k.
¤ Notes: An annoying and stupid word, but one you'll soon find yourself almost powerless to cease overusing, if you dare take a verbal step down that mixed metaphor of a road.  Cartman says "hella" about twenty times in an old episode of South Park, driving everyone else crazy, and while it's amazingly annoying to hear him say it... neither Malaya or I can keep from throwing it into conversation when we get a chance.  Mostly to each other, as a sort of "that sounds so stupid it's funny" joke, but we slip up and use it when talking to other people from time to time as well. Much to their horror, I'm sure. -- May 3, 2004

hursday was a special day. Our first anniversary. Malaya and me, I mean. It was also my first anniversary, meaning that I'd never dated a woman seriously for more than a year before. I rather enjoyed the occasion, as it turned out.

First of all, it's hard to determine an exact anniversary for Malaya and I, since we met online, typed to each other, and spoke to each other over the phone dozens of times before we actually met face to face. She knew me, sort of, since she'd seen my name in the news on the D2 site for years, but it was only when she finally followed a link to this site, read a blog and a short story, and mailed me about it, in early January 2003, that we actually had any direct interaction. We first talked on the phone a few days or a week later; I'd post the exact date but I don't recall it. I'm sure Malaya could tell me, since she stores away relationship info and exact dates like a squirrel caching nuts before an ice age, and hell, you could probably find it yourself by scanning the blogs from January of last year. But Malaya's asleep and I'm summarizing here and trying to keep my flow going, so you'll have to do without an exact date for now.

Anyway, date accuracy debates aside, we're going to go with May 20th as our anniversary, since that's when we first met, in the Oakland Airport, when I got off my plane and she was sitting by the baggage claim, waiting to meet me with a black trenchcoat, high heels, and Matrix-style sunglasses on. I do remember that part pretty clearly, at least. ;)

I'd link to the blog from May 21, 2003, but there isn't one. I was still blogging 7 days a week back then, and you can see my pre-trip blog on the 19th, and my post trip blog on the 28th, but there's nothing in between since I didn't get a computer set up here, and wouldn't have spent much/any time on it anyway, as busy getting to know, freaking out from, and falling in love with Malaya as I was.

Our bigger anniversary should probably be July 11th, since that's when I arrived here in a U-Haul and moved in with her, but I'll let you know how we commemorate that day in a couple of months.

We didn't do anything that big for the anniversary, mostly since we're not big celebration type people. Or at least I'm not, and Malaya is nice enough to not force me to do big celebration type things since she knows that I don't enjoy them.  She had some meetings to attend in the afternoon, and I took advantage of that to slip out and buy an Anniversary card and a pretty plant with blue flowers for her. We then headed out to see Shrek 2, browse some in Borders, return home for the Entertainment book, select a restaurant, and dine at a nice Italian place in Lafayette. As for what we did after we got home, I'll leave that up to your imaginations. (Funny how now that I'm having sex, I hardly ever talk about it anymore, eh?)

It was a nice day though, even if we didn't spend that much more time together than we usually do. It's nice though, since we see each other for at least several hours a day, and always interact one on one for at least an hour or two. One benefit of her not working full time and me not working at all (at least not working out of the house). Someday in the future we'll be busy with more work responsibilities, kids, household chores, etc, and finding an hour or two just to hang out will be a special occasion. I don't much look forward to that time.

¤ With no new physical maladies to report/discuss in excessive length, and no chance of any more appearing in the next two days (plumbers are working on our tub Friday, re-grouting it, and we can't get it wet for at least 24 hours afterwards, which rules me out for doing anything sweaty), I'll have to actually think of something interesting to talk about today.

Or perhaps I can just do another movie review and post some reader mail from last blog!

The movie review is below, and it's Shrek 2. I'm more to the point, more incisive, and less lengthy than I am in most movie reviews, so perhaps I'm finally starting to get the hang of them.

¤ As for the reader mails, they number four, and all in regards to the tedious grammatical quiz I posted a link to on Wednesday. My main objections to it were:

1) The sample sentences were ridiculous constructions, created only to work in the multiple choice correction options, and would have uniformly been best edited by deletion and a complete rewriting.

2) The script did not show the whole list of correct answers, nor did nor did it tell me which ones I got right/wrong. It didn't even tell me exactly how many I got right/wrong.

The first mail was from Adam, who is Swedish. His result: Grammar God, which he took to prove my contention that non-native English speakers (at least non-American ones) generally have better grammar, in English, than most people who are born speaking it.

Next up was Donnie, who is American (a bad sign when it comes to grammar). He expressed skepticism over his result:

"You are a MASTER of the English language!

While your English is not exactly perfect, you are still more grammatically correct than just about every American. Still, there is always room for improvement..."

Now come on. You have read my site before, Master of the English language is probably not the first thing that pops into the mind when reading my writing. With that realization I decided to try the test again and just pick the first answer to every question. The result was "Master". I then took it once more, picking every last answer, the result was "a complete bastardization of the English Language". It was at exactly that point that I realized that the test was a spoof.

When I did a google search on grammar tests I found a lot of them that seem like they are intended to be spoofs, such as jcomm.uoregon.edu/~russial/grammar/grambo.html While others were actually grammar tests for people with English as a second or third language, like this one www.world-english.org/test.htm I am not sure where the one that you posted about would fall, as the questions were a lot more advanced than what one would expect on a test where English was not the first language, but I am only a stone's throw from the trailer park myself, so who knows.

Next came Caaroid, a Hungarian.

I did the test. I was called a Grammar god, with the suggestion that I should devote my life to the preservation of the English language. So I went back and checked my answers:

#1:3 #2:5 #3:3 #4:5 #5:2 #6:3 #7:1 #8:4 #9:1 #10:2

#11:1 #12:4 #13:1 #14:4 #15:5 #16:2 #17:1 #18:2 #19:5 #20:4

Then, being the good IT-person I am, I sent the test to another friend of mine who speaks very good English. He also got a Grammar God status... but when we compared results we had only 12 matches.

Caaroid mailed back an hour later, with more results:

Ok, I had another friend do the test. He also got Grammar God. The three test results match only on 8/20 instances.

GO figure :)

After reading these, and curious to test out Caaroid's claim that, "Clicking 'show all results' shows a photo of a girl that makes taking the whole test worthwhile." I took the test again, echoing Donnie by quickly clicking the second option for every question.  My results? Grammar God!  Better than I got actually trying to get the correct answers. And correct on just 4 questions, if we go by Caaroid's Grammar God results.

From this testing, I think we can conclude from this that there are some serious issues with the answer scoring software. And that the "Student of the English Language" girl is pretty damn cute indeed, and worth clicking the first option for every question to see, if not worth taking the whole test over again. Of course since you can just click here to see the photo itself, I just made reading the blog today more than worth the trouble.

I could also go over it, post the questions with my answers, and ask for reader evaluation and hammer out a consensus list of the test answers. But since that would be like... work, and I've got novels to write and cats to play with and Malayas to squeeze... feel free to do that on your own time and send me a link to your results. Kthx.

hrek 2 review.

Malaya and I saw the film Thursday afternoon, after much anticipation on both our parts. We liked it, but I don't think either of us thought it was the equal of the first film. Also, if you see Shrek 2, be sure you sit through the first 3 or 4 minutes of the credits, since there's one last scene from the movie in the middle of them, and it is by far the funniest thing in the entire movie.  I laughed so hard I was sobbing, and that was my only real belly laugh in the entire film. All the while Malaya was sitting next to me with a perplexed look on her face, saying, "Um... I'm not sure I like this... Um..." which just made it that much funnier, to me. Most of the audience had left by then, and I didn't hear anyone else laughing that hard, so maybe it just struck me funny, but I'd almost pay to see the movie again just for that one scene.  In fact, I'm laughing out loud right now, just thinking about it.

My quick score for Shrek 2:

Script/Story: 6
Acting: 6
Action: 3
Eye Candy: 8
Comedy: 6
Replayability: 8
Overall: 7

I added a "comedy" score since... it's a comedy. I kept in the "action" score since there was a fair amount of that in Shrek, though there's much less in Shrek 2. Also, the overall score isn't in any way an average of or derived directly from the partial scores.

Just for the sake of comparison, here's what I'd rate Shrek 1, though this is a skewed score after seeing it in theaters 3 years ago, and half a dozen times on DVD since then.

Script/Story: 8
Acting: 7
Action: 8
Eye Candy: 10
Comedy: 8
Replayability: 8
Overall: 9

I'm surprised my Shrek 1 scores are that high, actually. I hadn't really thought about how much I enjoy that movie until now. Most of my higher Shrek 1 scores are simply due to Shrek 2 doing cool things, but they're cool things we've already seen in Shrek 1. I'll discuss these scores a bit below, and there will be some minor spoilers.

Script/Story: Shrek 2 is basically a repeat of the first movie. Shrek's an ogre, Fiona's a human, can they get along happily; can Fiona stand being an ogre, will a human prince win her heart instead, can their love survive the interference of evil humans. There are tons of minor clever things in Shrek 2, but that was true of the first film as well.

Acting: Well, it's computer graphics, not real actors, but you know what I mean. It was better in Shrek 1, which had more interesting minor characters with more realistic reactions to things. In Shrek 2 the familiar characters did more of the same thing, and the new characters weren't real vivid, with the exception of Puss in Boots, who was pretty good.

Action: There's not much of it in Shrek 2, far less than in Shrek 1, and it's not as funny or clever or essential to the plot.

Eye Candy: It looks great, but it's not new and ground-breaking, like Shrek 1 was, and there aren't any sets that can hold a candle to the inventiveness of Dulac, or the gorgeous dragon's castle from the first film.

Comedy: Shrek 2 is funny, but I was disappointed to see that the vast majority of the funniest stuff was featured in the trailers and the film clips. I now wish I hadn't seen any trailers or clips, since they stole the surprise of most of the best jokes.  With the obvious exception being the last comedy scene shown during the credits, and that was so hilarious to me largely because I didn't see it coming.  A lot of the comedy is visual and short; homages to other famous film scenes, and those were clever, but mostly in a "Ahh, that's just like the scene from Lord of the Rings/Beverly Hills Cop/The Princess Bride/Ghostbusters, etc."

Replayability: This is the one category in which I'm ranking Shrek 2 as high as Shrek 1, and it's mostly due to the dozens of tiny things, film scene homages, etc. I would enjoy a second viewing (I can wait for the DVD) just to try and spot more of those things, catch every parody store in Far Far Away Land, etc.  I do not think the overall story will hold up as well as Shrek, since it's not such a love story with so much emotional weight from the characters. Everything in Shrek 2 seems more preordained and the stakes are far lower.

Overall: I can watch Shrek 1 just about anytime, and enjoy it all, or I can watch the dragon castle part and love the look and action, or I can watch the humor scenes and laugh. I can't see Shrek 2 being that lasting or long term enjoyable. If I were just ranking Shrek 2 vs. Shrek 1, I'd probably give Shrek 2 a lower overall score. However, since it was a good movie and I'm comparing it to all other cinema, it deserves a 7. It was certainly better than any other movie I've seen in the last six months, other than Kill Bill 2. Which I do want to see again, perhaps enough to pay movie theater prices to do so.

 

Shrek 2 perfectly illustrates the problem with a sequel, since you can't help but compare it to the first movie, and it's virtually impossible for a sequel to be better, if only because all of the most interesting, surprising, novel things are now familiar. Sequels can work well if they take beloved characters and put them in a new place doing new things, and especially if we can skip the introductory stuff, get right to the story, and delve deeper into the characters.  Shrek did a lot of good things in that aspect, since it got right to the story, and sent them to a new place where they could do (somewhat) new things. However it failed in the character development, and that's my biggest complaint.

Shrek, Fiona, and Donkey were exactly the same people (um... yeah) all through Shrek 2 that they were at the end of Shrek 1. Shrek 2 was a lot less based on the key characters and their emotions, so they had less screen time, and they had virtually no emotional growth either. They just confronted slightly different versions of the same things, and had the same emotions and reactions to them this time around.  Too much of the movie rested on uninteresting sub-characters, and I was never very interested in how the King, Queen, Fairy Godmother, or Prince Charming felt about anything. None of them were interesting or quirky or wacky. Puss in Boots was, and he was fun, but the other four were very normal and average and dragged the story down with their screen time. They didn't suck, they weren't out of place, they were just average and boring, and in a comedy you don't need that many "straight men."  Especially since Shrek hardly did anything funny or interesting in Shrek 2, and Fiona did nothing either.  Basically all the humor came from Donkey, Puss, and the story/plot/situations/film scene homages.  Hell, annoying little Lord Farquaad in Shrek 1 was a far more interesting character than any of the new ones. Other than Puss.

Even the scene homages got a bit distracting and pointless. For one late, minor example, a catapult was destroyed by an incoming projectile, in a shot that was essentially identical to a scene from LotR:RotK. The catapult being destroyed made perfect sense, and was fine, but why stage it exactly (same camera angles, same direction of shot, characters in the same locations, etc) like the one from Return of the King? It didn't add anything to the film, and in fact it took me out of the scene, since rather than being in the excitement and enjoyment of the battle, I just thought, "Oh, that was from RotK." I had the same feeling through most of the last 15 minutes, with virtually every scene emulating something from another movie. Rather than watching Shrek 2, I just felt like I was trying to figure out what movie scene they were going to impersonate next, and trying to figure out if something they just showed was meant to be an homage to Movie X, or if it just happened to be similar.

It sort of reminded me of the opening of the disappointing Austin Powers 3. If you were fortunate enough to not see it, the movie opened with a short movie within a movie, sort of The Austin Powers Story, and it was funny to see Tom Cruise playing Austin, Danny Devito playing Mini-Me, Steven Spielberg directing it, and all the rest of the characters played by big Hollywood stars. The problem was that it was a boring, cheesy segment, enlivened only by seeing which famous actors showed up. A cute novelty, but nothing better than a novelty, and one that got old in a hurry.

The film scene homages in Shrek 2 didn't get old as quickly, but I thought they were overused to the point of distraction, and I'd have been just fine with 50% as many.

 

Still, I can't recommend against seeing it, even though you shouldn't expect it to be as brilliant as the first film. And I strongly recommend that you do not watch any more commercials, film clips, or trailers of the movie, if you're going to see it.

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