lazy monday

murata range is a damn good artist. i really enjoy his stuff. if only i could draw as well as he. plus, i can't help but find his imaginary boys (or are they?) to be damn good-looking. here are full versions of the pics shown above: left, middle, rite. and some more girls: in a kimono, getting ready, and pensively holding a potted plant. all pictures, except for the one from his website are in his artbook, futurhythm. it's only ¥3990 on amazon, so if you want to see more, buy it!

american idol finally got to hollywood where the final 24 are chosen. it zipped thru all the contestants and some were sent home while others went on to the next round, like some i've previously mentioned: carrie, anthony, lindsey, travis, amanda, and mario. they're still looking and sounding good. i hadn't mentioned vonzell before, but she did really well this round and i like her look. she auditioned at first with different colored shoes on, and i have to say that was great. marlea made it thru this round, but quit, because she said she missed her kid. poor girl, she could have made it a lot farther. i still don't like mikalah; she's still ugly and i still don't like how she sings. and i definitely don't like how she acts. what did they inject into her puffed up lips, liquid crack? some of the people got to visit the oc set, which makes me slightly jealous. they went to harbor high, and the bait shop. this was all too overwhelming for jaclyn, and she burst into tears like she does every time someone so much as talks to her. i dislike her already. one last thing before we move on, didn't this asian dude make it to hollywood last year? so, next they tried to see if the idols could work well in a group, because you kno, they need to be able to do this so that when they lose, they can go on tour with the other losers and make the producers money. not much to say here, most of the people i liked got thru, including oh so cute mario. timothy, whom i previously wrote off as just another queer, is kinda cute here, but what is he wearing, and he should really do something about his hair. additionally, judd looks really... small. they ended this episode with the worst of the worst. they didn't sing well, and they didn't kno their song. i don't even kno why they all got thru. my only guess is that by the end of the day, they had not filled their quota for how many people they had to let thru and so they gave these fuckers a break. i'm pretty sure none of them will make it to the last 24 tho, thank goodness.

the final episode of the amazing race 6 began with a train ride from shanghai to xi'an, china. this was fun, because they took an overnite train and "oh my god i've been there!" i rode a ton of those kinds of trains all across china and i actually have relatively fond memories of them. nothing like getting on a train in the evening and waking up at your destination. anyhow, on the train, aaron likened the cornfields of china to michigan, where he's from (yes, there are cornfields in china), and hayden liked how it smelled. yes, that's rite, she liked how it smelled in china, while sticking her head out the window of a train. lemme explain something to you about the trains in china. after you flush the squat toilets on the train, water comes down and the bottom opens up and flushes all that shit and piss and whatever else garbage you got straight onto the train tracks. as a result, much of the area around trains smells like shit and piss and garbage. i don't kno what kind of strange fetishes hayden has, but apparently, she loves the smell of shit and piss and garbage. run, aaron, run! perhaps it was too much fecal inhalation that caused hayden to freak out like a rabid monkey thruout the entire episode. in xi'an, they sprayed a car chassis (boring) and then went to pick up a clue at the tomb of the first qin emperor, the one with all the terra cotta warriors. i haven't been there, but it is something i'd like to see. then they went to one of old sacred mountains of china, huashan, where they had to go thru thousands of locks to find the one that their one key unlocked. again, not terribly exciting, but it wore on the people that performed the task. i think if i had to do this one, i'd go nuts, especially after having to climb a mountain. well, hayden did go nuts, and they skipped the task, causing them to lose the race. of course, aaron felt bad for her, so what did he do to cheer her up? he asked her to marry him. yeah, best wishes... the remaining three teams then flew to hawaii, the place where chip and reichen (oh, reichen) won the amazing race 4, and did some skydiving, which looked really fun. they didn't have time to enjoy the weather tho, since they were sent packing to their final destination: chicago! and their final task? they had to eat a deep dish pizza. come on, amazing race! you can do better than that! after finishing their pizza, freddy and kendra made their way to the finish line and won a million bucks... nooo!!! kris and jon should have won! but perhaps they got along with each other too well, and were too deserving. and if you think about it, at least adam didn't get his hands on any of the money (unless he's dating freddy now or something).

but let us now look to the future! as this amazing race ends, another is getting ready to begin! let's give the new a-racers a quick look. this time, we finally have another queer team, lynn and alex. no, they're not women, one of them just has a woman's name. wait a minute, mebbe they are just bull dykes... oh, no, they're labeled as "boyfriends." they've been together for four years, and one of them is 30 and the other 22. four years ago, cradle-robbing 26-year-old lynn swooped down and snatched up a young and innocent 18-year-old alex. yikes! anyhow, while, neither of them are super hot like reichen, i will still throw my early support to the gay, at least until i find out they're horrible people or something. as a back up, i'm prepared to root for susan and patrick, the mother/son team, of which the son part is a big gay. he'd also be better looking with shorter hair. the mom looks like she could be a huge bitch, and that should be fun. one team i'm already rooting against are the engaged survivors rob and amber, not because they already have a million dollars from survivor, but because rob is a fuckhead, and amber is lame! the only person less deserving of the survivor million is vecepia from survivor marquesas, who basically did nothing for the first half of the game, and then went back on her word for the second half and used god as an excuse to do so. but we're not talking about vee, we're talking about amber, who sat under boston rob's protection while doing nothing for herself. grargh! just thinking about it again makes me shake my fists at no one in particular! the rest of the racers are not terribly interesting to me just quite yet. i do have some questions about megan and heidi tho, and no, it's not about their stupid bandana headbands. they are roommates, but one of them is a stay-at-home mom. where does heidi get the money to stay at home and be a mom. last time i checked, they didn't make any money. is she married? if so, is her husband living somewhere else? why is he doing that? is she just incredibly rich? if so, why is she living with 26-year-old fashion designer? could these two just be secret lesbians!? i'll be keeping a close eye on them (sidenote: megan has an extreme phobia about flying... i wonder how well she'll do with all the uh... flying you have to on the race). i also hate old people! especially old men with women's names, like meredith here, with "his" wife gretchen. first it was the girl hayden from ar6, and now we have guys named lynn and meredith. i salute our servicemen abroad, but why is ron's occupation listed as "former iraq war pow"? is that really a job? does he go to work every day, doing the work of a former prisoner of war? why didn't they just put "student" down there, which is what he actually does? this show is giving me a headache already. chuck has the most boring job i've ever heard of, just short of manhunt's air filtration system salesman, maurice. he "works in boiler tube replacement sales." what is it about selling things that do things that's so boring to me? last thing, joyce is kinda scary-looking, like her eyes are just a little too big, kinda like a gremlin... i hope that's just a bad picture. anyhow, the next race premieres tuesday, march 1st, at 9 pm. don't miss it!

the oc was fantastic! sandy made the mistake of trying to juggle his wife with the memory of a long ago love with that rebecca of the bloated whores! why would he do that? what is he thinking? i think they need to give us a reason why sandy is doing all this. so far rebecca is losing to kirsten in every single way! it just doesn't make any sense! by the end, sandy had abandoned his wife on valentine's day to make out with the bitch-on-the-side for no good reason (one of two kisses to rock the oc!), and kirsten shut him out. i would have too! you go kirsten! and sandy, come to your senses. i kno her dad died, but she fucking abandoned you! argh! ryan played pool with caleb for the prize of leaving him and lindsay's relationship the fuck alone. mostly boring storyline, but still fun to watch. seth and summer and zach went to san diego to pitch their comic book idea, but since seth was worried about zach and summer spending the nite in the same bed (in the room next door!), he didn't get any sleep and completely fucked up the pitch while at the same time letting summer and zach kno how he still feels about summer. damn it, seth! i love you, but sometimes you do the stupidest things! of course, perhaps it wasn't so stupid. letting summer kno you still want her will only add to summer inching her way back to cohen. ingenious! who do i love more and more every time she appears? why, it's julie! what a huge bitch she was, as always, especially to lindsay, whom she doesn't want to be included in caleb's inheritance. this we found out when julie and marissa had dinner together. but before that happened, they had the best back-and-forth in this episode: julie: "marissa, you kno, when i was in europe, i did some real soul searching." marissa: "i hope you didn't hurt yourself." WONDERFUL! next, marissa: "you can't take away my cell phone!" julie: "oh, i think i just did. you gonna throw the bedroom furniture in the pool now?" AWESOME! i think julie wins this round. then, the moment everyone was waiting for, the hot hot hot lesbian kiss on the beach. let's look at it from another angle. ho, yeah...

the apprentice was entertaining, no doubt, but i miss the days of the second episode. this one started off with the whole of magna telling michael he needs to stop being so fucking stupid. but what can he do? he can't help the way he is. this week's task was to make a commercial for dove body wash, and both teams failed miserably. what were they thinking? on the magna side, they decided to go with a horrible "vegetable porn" wherein a female chef stroked her gay assistant's cucumber. does that make you want to buy body wash? me either. but it doesn't make me want to rub someone's abs. yes, that's rite, erin took the opportunity as project manager to hire an actor with a great body, tell him to pull his pants down, and then scrub his tummy. see, that's why it would be fun to be a director. why it wouldn't be fun is i would have to deal with bitchy actresses like the weirdo no-name diva-wannabe who was mad that she was not "received" and had been paid to do nothing for two hours. i don't understand this woman. she had a job for the day and she should be god damned happy about it. how does someone so average-looking get so demanding? she even threatened to walk out, as if there weren't hundreds of other actresses, i'm sure better-looking actresses, who would have jumped at the opportunity to do this. i'm pretty sure she just wanted to create some drama so that she would get some camera time on the apprentice. what a little troll! on the net worth side, it was a lost cause rite from the beginning when kristen became project manager, because her boyfriend was a director and she had been on a set before. uhm... no. well, audrey (whom kristen disliked a whole lot) summed it up pretty well, "she has no respect for others. she is a BITCH, a royal BITCH." oh, i'm liking audrey more and more every week. kristen didn't kno what she was doing, and she did even that poorly. it was painful to watch her "direct." what a mess. angie's take on it all, "i'm not excited at all about this idea. there's nothing innovative about it. there's nothing compelling. it's not even that funny. i want to see 30-seconds of something innovative and outside of the box. this is so fucking in the box, this is rite in the middle of the box. this IS the box," all the while waving her hand wildly around. i don't like angie that much, but she does have a point, and plus she was the main attraction of the second episode. so, both teams went to the boardroom, and since magna actually worked together on the task, project manager of net worth, angie was easily fired for her gross incompetence. funniest part of this episode was when out of nowhere, chris called homosexuality disturbing and yelled out, "i am not a homosexual!" apparently, in an effort to get someone on magna fired for using gay content. what a weirdo!

finding neverland was good, but it wasn't spectacular, definitely not something i would have expected to get an oscar nom for best picture. million dollar baby, on the other hand, was a great movie. good direction by clint eastwood, fantastic acting by eastwood, morgan freeman, and hilary swank, very well written, and the story was just heartbreaking at times, but oh so well done. it also gave me a new appreciation for boxing. it looks like there'll be a bit of a fight between the aviator and million dollar baby for a few of the oscar races. now, i'm a little bit more excited for oscar. i also saw bride & prejudice, which was such a fun movie. the story was jane austen, and the style was bollywood, complete with song-and-dance sequences. gurinder chadha won me over in bend it like beckham, and she doesn't disappoint here. plus, martin henderson and daniel gillies are in it with aishwarya rai, three really hot people. go see it!