Philip Seymour Hoffman Wins Big

I’m watching the DVD for Owning Mahowny, a story about a bank VP who embezzles millions of dollars to maintain his gambling addiction. The movie is hard to watch as our “hero” ruins himself. It doesn’t help that it is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. His ability to nail the character makes it harder to watch. He’s wonderful. Watching him gamble big and sometimes win and more often lose is intense.

See the movie if you love great acting and can handle watching a man wreck his own life and hurt others. See it if only for Hoffman’s performance.

Salsa and Stripping

Remember my experience with stripping down to a bathing suit at Saturday night salsa? It happened again. But this time I didn’t stop at my bathing suit. Oh no. I stripped down to my skin. The shame of it all.

It started innocently enough. It was a Halloween themed dance tonight. Brace Coral wanted us to dress up. Now I don’t really get into the whole Halloween costume thing, but I had picked up a freebie t-shirt from SYD: Style Your Destiny that had a pumpkin with the pi symbol. Get it? Yeah! Pumpkin pi! I’d also picked up some freebie shoes from ZHAO that had pumpkins, spiders, bats, and other fun stuff on them (the Fabulously Free in Second Life blog is amazing — I found out about these freebies from reading the blog). With my orange bangles I had my bracelets and earrings. I was ready to go and I do have to say I looked mighty sexy:

It does look nice with that black background, doesn’t it? Here’s a better look, along with a closer look at the shoes:

The hair is from Analog Dog and is called Madison. Very nice and curly.

So, I get to Brace’s salsa party (Brace Coral throws the best salsa dances) and everyone is in costume. I took a picture, but you know, if it weren’t for the pumpkin theme it really looks like any other salsa night. Face it, people wear pretty flashy costumes all the time in Second Life.

Well, it got all hot and heated and I did it. I took off my skirt and shirt! I was running around in my nudie-bears! It certainly looked fun when dancing the steps to “Thriller” — except we were dancing to hot salsa music. Hey, those Thriller dance steps can work with all kinds of music:

Hey, my chest looks pretty nice, heh? I can’t help but flaunt it. And you do have to admire my avatar — she’s got a great bone structure. Oh, the skin and eyes I’m wearing are from Boing Fromage. It really offers a nice look. I don’t even feel the need to wear prim eyelashes.

Dan in Real Life is a Real Treat

Just got back from seeing Dan in Real Life. Now that’s how to do a comedy. Take a trite premise — Dan is in love with his brother’s girl friend — and make it a special movie with lots of laughs and some incredibly touching moments. Steve Carell and his co-stars make it all very funny and touching. I’ve got to write my review tomorrow and I sense an A grade for this one.

Posed for Greatness

It’s 1:00 in the morning. I meant to go to bed hours ago. But what do I do? I re-read Natalia’s post on creating poses. So, here I am creating poses like crazy and having way too much fun.

Natalia Zelmanov’s Diary offers a slew of tutorials. When she showed us how to create a pose with us holding something in front of us like a candle I thought I could do that. So tonight I did!

Natalia gives us all kinds of guidance and pictures to help us see what we’re trying to do. The software she uses and I tried is a freebie called QAvimator. My first attempt using QAvimator didn’t come out right. Sure my pose looks like I’m holding something but it ain’t a candle:

Of course it’s perfect as a pose to hold up something bigger like I am demonstrating something. So I kept it. I tweaked the candle pose and played with the settings some more and this is what I got:

Isn’t that great? Well, that wasn’t all. Once I did that I was hooked. So my late night work found me creating my first standing pose of my own design:

Aha! My avatar is clay in my hands! Well, sort of…it takes lots of tweaking and it’s not so much clay as movable body parts. Still, I feel quite godlike tonight…er…this morning.

I wasn’t done. I created a sitting pose:

It needs some tweaking. The right arm doesn’t meet the leg and the right hand should be under the left. Once again though, I’m pleased as punch at what I can do with free software and some late night obsessing.

I s’pose I should go to bed now. I can do more tomorrow and I’ll keep you “pose”ted. Yeah, go ahead and groan. I do need to get some sleep!

Hallelujah and Let’s Shift Control the Night Away!

My poor laptop was damaged by some spilled hot sauce. The hot sauce from Burritos Fiesta is mighty powerful and it took out my left Shift and Control keys. Do you know how hard it is to change your typing patterns to capitalize the letters that I normally do with the left Shift key? Even worse, do you know how much you are used to using the Control key with the C, V, and Z keys to copy, paste, and undo? I certainly found out.

The good news is that my keyboard has just been replaced by the tech folks and it now works oh-so-nicely. Whoo hoo! I’m ready to use those keys tonight and tomorrow and the next day and…well, you get the idea.

Purple Mood

It must be fall or it must be all that time hanging out with my niece. Whatever it is I seem to be in a purple mood.

I went shopping in Second Life today and picked up a few items that certainly qualify as purple. First I went to Amaretto and picked up the Delia outfit. It’s a fuscia dress with low, puffy sleeves and I couldn’t resist. So, when I ended up at Tesla looking for her Diva shoes, what should I do but buy a pair in violet? Needless to say, when I was at Cotton Candy looking at some shops my eye found this lovely knit sweater with a cowl neck at MG.

On the left:

• Sweater: MG – Gwyn knitted sweater in purple
• Skirt: Nyte ‘n’ Day – mini-skirt in black
• Shoes: Tesla – Diva in violet
• Hair: ETD- Lisa II in black
• Skin: Celestial Studios – Vogue Champagne tone with Smoky Plum makeup

On the right:

• Dress: Amaretto – Delia
• Shoes: Tesla – Diva in violet
• Tights: Tete a Pied – black tights
• Hair: Analog Dog – Ayla in black
• Skin: RaC – Drew
• Bracelets: my own making

Sure I bought stuff that wasn’t purple, in fact I went crazy with the snake look and ended up as a bad character in a B movie. Just call me Tondalea – Wild Woman of the Jungle.

• Dress: Amaretto – Hear Me Rawr
• Shoes: Boing Fromage – Ankle Wrap sandals in brown
• Hair: Analog Dog – Madison in black
• Skin: RaC – Drew

Okay, I’ll stick with purple. It’s a good color for fall and I don’t look so silly. A purple mood is much better for my fashion taste than a snake mood. Still, if I find purple snake skin clothes I may just have to buy them! 😉

Good Luck Chuck review

I enjoyed Good Luck Chuck. It was not an A+ film, or much less a B+ film, but there was enough crass fun to keep me smiling. Here’s my review of the movie.

The Darwin Awards review

I’m at home today, sick with a cold. My brain is fuzzy, my body weak, so what’s a blogger to do? Why post some stockpiled movie reviews of course! Not a lot of thought or strength needed.

So my first review is The Darwin Awards. It was a DVD I kept picking up and wondering about. I love reading about the Darwin Award winners. We even get to see some of these winners in action in the film.

Here’s the review. You may discover that I was underwhelmed by the movie.

Barely Surviving

Today’s the last day of the babysitting marathon. God, I’d love to ship the kids off somewhere for a couple of hours. Yeah, I’m barely surviving.

We’ve managed to put up with each other so far and we’ve had fun off and on. Today is bowling day. A trip to the lanes for a few games should keep them entertained. It’s just the question of what to do after that. Sigh. I don’t think I can talk them into taking a nap…’cause I sure need one! 😉

 Update: Bowling worked well. It was a hit for all involved. Now it’s countdown time to the last evening of putting the kids to bed. Oh may it go smoothly.

Will I Survive?

I am about to enter the lion’s den. Can I survive? Can I maintain my composure? Can I just not break down into tears? Yes, I am babysitting my niece and nephew this weekend.

Gulp.

I think I can. I think I can. I think I…will be walked all over by the kids. I’m hoping there aren’t many tears, especially on my part.

Business is Booming

Well, booming may be a bit of an overstatement. What is happening with my new shop is that I’ve managed to sell three of my shapes. So though I still have lots to do, a few people who stumble upon the place are finding something they like.

Today I sold my first male shape. Adam was fun to create. There are lots of shapes that have bulging muscles and tiny pinheads on guys. I tried to do something a little more believable…and attractive. Here’s Adam (I’ll do a thumbnail — click on it to see it full size):

I try to show the avatars I create with different skins. At Mosi (Bristow/3/240/121), you can read about the skin and hair used — there are even landmarks. What I do for my business. It kills me to buy skin for male shapes. It’s more expensive AND I can’t wear it except for these photos!

Here are two other shapes; Alex and Ariadne:

I even managed to make a few mannequins. I put them down on the ground below my shop and included a teleport up to Mosi.

Aren’t they cute? I was so pleased with myself at creating them. You can get a better sense of their size with me added to the picture:

Fun, huh? It’s certainly been an adventure putting this together. I can’t wait until I can do more than avatar shapes. I really need to learn more. I’ve played with hair, clothes, and shoes, but haven’t really spent tons of time doing it. That’s my next goal. Besides figuring out the advertising/marketing part of owning a business in Second Life.

Hey, I’ve sold three shapes without any marketing. Maybe I can sell three more if I do come up with some form of marketing! It’s worth a try. 😉

The Third Man

I just got back from seeing The Third Man on campus tonight. If you haven’t seen it yet, do try to rent it. There’s something so wonderfully decadent about post-war Vienna accompanied by that amazing score of zither music.

Black Market shenanigans, sinister characters, an innocent American confused by it all (Joseph Cotten), and Orson Welles as the marvelous Harry Lime — a villain of charm and wit. It’s a fun movie and very interesting for its time.  And did I mention that score? Director Carol Reed dumped the traditional musical score and just had Anton Karas playing the zither. There’s something hypnotic about the use of this music and it sets the movie apart from most mainstream films.

And how can you not love Harry Lime’s speech? Let me leave you with this unique view of life:

Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

Technology vs Hot Sauce

Hot sauce wins! I spilled some hot sauce on my laptop last night and now the Control and Shift keys are acting all funky. May many cleanings and gentle treatment and less spillings of hot sauce make it better.

The Virgin Queen Returns

Just got back from Elizabeth: The Golden Age. It’s not perfect by any means, but it kept me entertained. And let’s be honest — any movie with Clive Owen being incredibly dashing earns extra points.

Costumes and settings were superb, the cast wonderful. Samantha Morton as Mary, Queen of Scots has some wonderful scenes, but it is Cate Blanchett’s movie the whole way. A few too many scenes of Elizabeth getting all insecure and angry, but when she is the Queen, she plays it with that capital Q. I loved it. Jordi Molla was quite the opposite as King Phillip of Spain. In another wonderful performance, his king is a shuffling zealot out to invade England.

All in all, it’s a good way to spend time at the movie theatre.

Saturday Yay

May I just say “Yay!” for Saturday? There’s nothing like an easy-going morning of drinking tea and debating over whether to make toast with eggs or toast with peanut butter and banana. So meanwhile, I just drink my tea with feet up, surfing the web. Yep, Saturdays are pretty darn okay.