Weekend activities
So what did I get up to this weekend? Nothing especially exciting.
On Friday evening we celebrated my grandmother's 79th birthday with cake, presents and a family dinner. Afterwards, in one of the most bizarre birthday activities ever (especially for an almost octogenarian), we all watched a terrible South African exploitation/porn film from the 1970s, called Glenda, or Snake Dancer. We stumbled across the film (based on a true story) on Magic World, an obscure DSTV channel that I didn't even know existed, and were utterly transfixed by its simultaneous awfulness, graphic-ness and sudden shift into a morality tale. You see, Glenda is a good Christian girl who turns her back on a teaching job to become an exotic dancer (using all kinds of weird and wonderful props), and gets pursued by the public decency police. If you can endure it the film is a fabulous snapshot of a very fucked up era in South African history.
On Saturday morning, I made sure to snatch up my personalised URL facebook page. Saturday evening was spent at the bf's place sharing some quality time together before he departed on a month long work trip in the United States.
Not that I envy his 24 hours of traveling to get to Roseburg in Oregon (including a full 17 hour flight from Johannesburg to Atlanta :P), but still, I'll miss him. Flying solo for so long really sucks. You just feel so hollow and isolated without your partner and best friend around. Especially when the vast majority of your single girlfriends have long since left the country, the others are too busy, and your anxieties about traveling long distances alone late at night mean you end up ruling out many evening activities because you just can't get there and back.
Anyway, we had a little-DVD-and-a-lot-of-wine evening on Saturday. Appaloosa, despite being highly recommended, and featuring a fantastic cast (Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renée Zellweger, Jeremy Irons), was a dud. The film started out well enough with lawmen Harris and Mortensen (cooler here than he's ever been) sent to bring evil rancher Irons to justice. However, about halfway through the film veered off into nonsensicality, with characters doing the dumbest, most illogical things. That's what I get for attempting to embrace Westernzzzzzzzz I suppose.
Otherwise I also finally watched Vietnam classic Platoon, which was fine, and jam packed with famous faces (Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Johnny Depp, Forest Whitaker). However, after watching the disturbing and haunting Apocalypse Now a few weeks back, Oliver Stone's film just didn't hook me to the same degree emotionally.
On Sunday, I hung around to see the bf off, watched several episodes of House Season 3 and Battlestar Galatica Season 1, finished Book #2 in the Orcs: First Blood trilogy (Omnibus edition) and made some serious headway on the next Girlz 'N' Games webcomic, which is due for online debut later this week.
Please note that tomorrow is a public holiday in South Africa, so I'll be taking a break from blogging and instead catching up on some movie releases I just haven't been able to get to until now. Normal updates will resume as usual on Wednesday.
On Friday evening we celebrated my grandmother's 79th birthday with cake, presents and a family dinner. Afterwards, in one of the most bizarre birthday activities ever (especially for an almost octogenarian), we all watched a terrible South African exploitation/porn film from the 1970s, called Glenda, or Snake Dancer. We stumbled across the film (based on a true story) on Magic World, an obscure DSTV channel that I didn't even know existed, and were utterly transfixed by its simultaneous awfulness, graphic-ness and sudden shift into a morality tale. You see, Glenda is a good Christian girl who turns her back on a teaching job to become an exotic dancer (using all kinds of weird and wonderful props), and gets pursued by the public decency police. If you can endure it the film is a fabulous snapshot of a very fucked up era in South African history.
On Saturday morning, I made sure to snatch up my personalised URL facebook page. Saturday evening was spent at the bf's place sharing some quality time together before he departed on a month long work trip in the United States.
Not that I envy his 24 hours of traveling to get to Roseburg in Oregon (including a full 17 hour flight from Johannesburg to Atlanta :P), but still, I'll miss him. Flying solo for so long really sucks. You just feel so hollow and isolated without your partner and best friend around. Especially when the vast majority of your single girlfriends have long since left the country, the others are too busy, and your anxieties about traveling long distances alone late at night mean you end up ruling out many evening activities because you just can't get there and back.
Anyway, we had a little-DVD-and-a-lot-of-wine evening on Saturday. Appaloosa, despite being highly recommended, and featuring a fantastic cast (Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renée Zellweger, Jeremy Irons), was a dud. The film started out well enough with lawmen Harris and Mortensen (cooler here than he's ever been) sent to bring evil rancher Irons to justice. However, about halfway through the film veered off into nonsensicality, with characters doing the dumbest, most illogical things. That's what I get for attempting to embrace Westernzzzzzzzz I suppose.
Otherwise I also finally watched Vietnam classic Platoon, which was fine, and jam packed with famous faces (Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Johnny Depp, Forest Whitaker). However, after watching the disturbing and haunting Apocalypse Now a few weeks back, Oliver Stone's film just didn't hook me to the same degree emotionally.
On Sunday, I hung around to see the bf off, watched several episodes of House Season 3 and Battlestar Galatica Season 1, finished Book #2 in the Orcs: First Blood trilogy (Omnibus edition) and made some serious headway on the next Girlz 'N' Games webcomic, which is due for online debut later this week.
Please note that tomorrow is a public holiday in South Africa, so I'll be taking a break from blogging and instead catching up on some movie releases I just haven't been able to get to until now. Normal updates will resume as usual on Wednesday.
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