Pfangirl Through the Looking Glass

This post forms a part of the Pfeiffer Blog-a-thon Festival held to celebrate Michelle Pfeiffer’s 48th birthday on 29 April. Happy birthday Michelle! Thanks to Nat over at The Film Experience for organising this initiative. Bless me, pfans, for I have sinned. In the past few years I have become one of your most hated and frustrating kind- a lapsed fan. I’ve put away my ‘shrine’ of magazines, scrapbooks and other memorabilia- now it’s just my Catwoman poster looking down on me. I’ve neglected my pfansite. My e-zine has quietly shut down. My careful monitoring of box office trends and Award Season patterns has deteriorated into a very casual interest. All this in the past 4 or so years of numbing Pfeiffer career silence. I’m experiencing a resurgence of excitement at the moment with the release of romantic comedy I Could Never Be Your Woman only 3 or so months away, and Michelle’s involvement in Stardust, the… er… star-saturated adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s adult fantasy novel (my copy a...

For the past 2 weeks I’ve been going on Monday evenings to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu classes taught by Paul’s cousin Micah. And I’m really enjoying it. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is different from a lot of martial arts because it is focused on grappling on the ground- what you do when you take an opponent down, or when you are taken off your feet. Micah loaned me a DVD of no-rules fighting and it was interesting to watch how practitioners of Kung Fu, Aikido, Thai Kickboxing, and even straight Boxing, were utterly defenceless once brought to ground. The wrestlers and Judo practitioners fared a bit better. Naturally, the on-the-ground approach is especially beneficial for women in terms of self defence. Similarly important is the fact that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is also more about technique instead of the use of strength. Smaller weaker fighters should be able to defeat any size opponent in this manner because Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu isn’t about punching and kicking your opponent senseless. Striking is virt...

I read the following in The Indespensible Calvin & Hobbes this weekend... I think it sums up my tastes, both in terms of creation and appreciation.

I’m not going to bore anyone with a long detailed day-by- day account of the long weekend, so here’s the highlights package: The Not so Last Supper of Holy Thursday Met up with Ashley, Ian, G and Shirley at Mimmos Musgrave for dinner. G’s brother Nick was also there and he’s a very cool guy. The same can’t be said for G’s brother-in-law to be, Ashley, who is the loud-mouth, empty-headed salesman cliché (Ashley, and G’s sister Paula joined us halfway through dinner). Paul and I ended up trapped at the far side of the table with Ashley. After dinner I just had to move to the other side of the table for some reviving intelligent conversation, and to speak to friends I hadn’t seen for ages. After dinner, back at home, Paul got it into his head to play drinking card games… with shots of straight Southern Comfort. Although neither of us got drunk, after a while our throats refused to open for the vile liquid. Southern Comfort- an alcohol to MIX with other drinks. Retail Therapy Good Friday I...

It's 'Pics of me' season at the moment - on Saturday I had a photo shoot of sorts with Ashley to replace the much-maligned 'deer-in-the-headlights' photo that's been appearing in the GEAR magazine over the past 4 or so months. Anyway, while Ashley is at work editing the formal posed pics of me, I present some other photos from a month or so back (taken by Ian) to confirm my girly geekness. Please note my lipless 'concentration' face.

Apart from trying to learn how to play as the Night Elves in Warcraft III this weekend (I’ve fallen in love with the bear-transforming Druids of the Talon), I got to see 2 movies. On Friday evening, in an impromptu move, Paul and I went to see Ice Age 2. Although the film basically follows the same storyline as The Land Before Time, and is ultimately forgettable, it’s still the best family entertainment in a while. The animation is stunning- especially the very expressive eyes- there’s a lot of adult humour and there’s more Scrat to keep audiences happy. I wasn’t too keen on the annoying, hyperactive possums (there no doubt to amuse children) but the ‘straight men’ of the film, Ray Romano’s Manny the mammoth, and Denis Leary’s Diego, a sabre tooth tiger with Hydrophobia, kept me happy. Queen Latifa also puts in some fine voice work as a species-confused mammoth. The trailers before the movie included Eight Below. Up until that moment, I had expected Eight Below, starring Paul Walker, t...

I forgot to post this up earlier in the month, so here is my column from the first solo issue of GEAR (for people not in the know, Gaming Equipment & Reviews has been running since Dec/Jan, but was included with PC Format and T3 magazine until now). It seems to make even more sense to post the column now that the launch issue of GEAR seems to have sold out all over the place. The First Lady Returns April sees the return of Lara Croft, the undisputable First Lady of Gaming, in Tomb Raider: Legend, exactly 10 years after the character made her social debut, so to speak, in the original Tomb Raider. I began this month’s column with the intention of focusing solely on the positive contributions made to gaming by the Tomb Raider series. Looking closer, however, it was impossible to ignore the fact that Tomb Raider reflects both good and bad gaming trends in the last decade. Tomb Raider’s obviously paved the way for more female leads in games. As a woman it was refreshing to finally play...

How different is my new company from EvilCorp? Well, there’s an office club where, apart from a monthly lucky draw and snacks, you go on various regular adventures. Last night we went on a bar trawl through Durban on the Rickshaw bus. We had to dress skanky, or dodgy (T-shirts included ‘Vaginas are weird’ and ‘Die beste pomp op die dorp’), and apart from all the free booze, and snacks, we had Johnny’s Roti’s for dinner. In the course of 5-6 hours we stopped in at Joe Cool’s, Cool Runnings , Cockle Jack, Cotton Fields and Flagons and Dragons for a little karaoke to round off the evening. Cool Runnings was awesome; the best stop of the evening- a Jamaican themed pub down some dodgy alley in Umbilo. It also was the place where the company’s main director entertained us by jumping on tables doing his Tarzan impersonation as a result of the ‘Peg game.’ The ‘Peg Game’ ran all night. Essentially 2 pegs were secretly circulated, attached to people’s collars and shirtsleeves. When a whistle was...

Just my usual wrap-up of the weekend. Penny, the girlfriend of Paul’s cousin left yesterday for six months in the USA and Brazil, where she’ll be training and defending her Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu World Champion title. Anyway, on Friday evening, Paul and I went to a farewell for Penny in a law firm above Billy the Bums. We didn’t really know anyone there and Penny kept dishing out a vile sweaty-sock tasting alcohol that is the Brazilian equivalent of Cane, so we headed home around 10:30 or so. Saturday was more eventful, after a slow start. We ran some admin tasks around Durban, including Paul getting a new CD player fitted in his car, and me having my annual blood test for my Eltroxin levels- I didn’t even have my usual panic attack / dizzy spell after having the blood drawn. Of course, the combined efforts of the Saturday Independent newspaper and East Coast Radio had me furious with their very convincing April Fool’s joke- imagine no electricity on Tuesday Best TV night?! --- http://www...