Life Wonders

It's 3 am, some country song is playing in the background (it's The Once and Future Carpenter by The Avett Brothers), and my proudly-bought 20-dollar Ikea night light just sets the mood for musings.

I wonder what would have happened if I had

been born the eldest son.

sucked so badly in school.

been good at sports.

picked up the guitar in junior high.

not gotten the scholarship.

stayed on and gone to senior high.

sucked so badly that I was sent home.

actually made it to the drama auditions.

failed the dance auditions.

not moved to another junior college.

hated dance.

failed my law school dream.

been the badass kid in the family.

said yes.

stayed religious.

been simply mediocre.

Legal Fiction

I'm not sure whether I like Boston Legal. I still remember in my first year, right at the beginning of law school where everyone was a stranger and we had to do some introduction and say a thing or two about ourselves, someone said that he wanted to be the next Alan Shore. And the class broke into a laughter. The tutor then made some witty comeback, and another laughter ensued. Of course, I cracked a smile and laughed along, and lordly lord, I really thought that Alan Shore was some bigwig in the legal fora: a Chief Justice, a stellar judge, a minister, or someone of that stature. It does sound ludicrous but it may be surprising for you to know that right from the get-go some people did already have their legal chip plucked into them, which made me think there for a moment how come I didn't get the memo. Sometimes-- if not most of the times-- it did feel like I was in a secret club with a secret handshake. Only last week then I finally met this legal myth Alan Shore-- just in case you are like me then, he's the main character of the show-- and he was, well, okay. James Spader is definitely the best actor on the show (or poised to appear that way), and perhaps together with William Shatner and Candice Bergen they make the holy Boston Legal trinity. The rest just appear as pretty faces, accessory to these characters' larger-than-life (to say the least) closings and caricatural quirks. I think the biggest problem with the show is that it is very clear even after having watched just a few episodes how formulaic the plot is. Every episode will end with one or two closing statements (i.e. heroic lawyer attempting to convince the nodding-at-strategic-moments jury that their client deserves what they sue for), which more-often-than-not begin with a rendition of some statistics (which would have been dismissed in real court setting for want of relevance), followed by an argument (delivered with such a bravado, it borders on a melodramatic recitation), and end with a sound bite that necessarily triggers a couple of nods from the jury. Always. To be fair, the show tries to present an array of interesting (read: make-believe) cases to spice things up, and the same formulaic pattern is also noticeable in other cop shows or doctor shows, but something about it just does not connect. Perhaps it's the set (they simply jump from the lawyers' office, which is not exactly the happiest place on earth, to the court room, which is definitely not the happiest place on earth), or William Shatner's character Denny Crane, whose behaviour is harder to understand than is algebra. It's sad though because I really want to like the show, but I can't bring myself to do so. And bummer, there aren't that many lawyer shows out there anymore. Then again, I only watched half of the second season, hopefully it would get better in the following seasons.

Watching So You Think You Can Dance Top 20 Showcase Performances

Finally Season 8 is out! It's been a while since I was really into any TV shows these days. Season 7 was slightly wonky because of the change in format, and the stage was somewhat too big for TV, so I didn't really have a lot of good things to remember about it, except that Elastic Girl Lauren Froderman won, and Freakshow Kent Boyd came in second. Anyway, Season 8 for me has been exciting thus far. Early stand-outs like Jordan and Melanie, who are now in the top 20, blew me away. Right from the get-go I found the girls more beastly than the guys. The top 10 boys routine didn't really do it for me, especially after the whoop-ass intro video, I thought the routine would be as so. It looked slightly under-rehearsed, probably because it was a mixer of numerous different styles, and not all the boys were trained to dance a la LXD, they didn't really look like they danced together. Then again, who can blame them? It was the first time that they danced together ever.

The girls routine was fantastic. Probably the best one of the night? It was a style that almost all of them (except may be Iveta) were trained in, and Sonya is really a nut-job with a lot of flavours to bring to the table. The eleven of them together translated into one combustible reaction, and burn the stage they did. The world champion (and this season's only) Russian ballroom bombshell Iveta was a beast dancing with Pasha that night. The whole routine was entertaining from start to finish, kudos to Ausi-born Jason Gilkinson who made use of the cape splendidly. I would say he was the best ballroom choreographer they'd had on the show, or perhaps he would be neck-to-neck with Jean Marc and his wife, France. Alex da Silva was brilliant, but he was then indicted for some sexual assault, so there goes his career on the show. The same happened to Shane Sparks. Sigh. Anyway, it was refreshing to hear Nigel thanking Iveta for, in his words, humbling herself to join SYTYCD. I think he did that because effectively she would end up giving free crash-course ballroom lessons to whomever she would partner on the show. Can you imagine the first time you get those leather shoes on and you have to partner a world champion? And she held the title for all ten genres. Gotta be hard to wear the pants in that partnership.

The hiphop number was a snooze for me, not necessarily because of bad dancing or bad choreography, but again it felt like the guys didn't dance together as a group. There were these sporadic energies on stage that didn't synergise to elevate the routine to the next level. OMG I sounded like Lil' C. Another bugger, he should stop talking. He ruined it for me big time. I literally had to skip his comments because it was too painful to hear. Someone please get him an English dictionary, not a thesaurus.

My favorite routine of the night was Stacie Tookey's routine to In This Shirt by The Irrepressibles. Melanie was a stand-out. This girl was something special. Watching her during the auditions, I really thought she would be one of those vanilla dancers-- technicians with little performance quality, kind of like the dancers in Season 6 and may be 7? But in this routine she was some-heavenly-infant creature that was just stunning. She definitely ticked all the boxes on the list, my list. Speaking of good dancing and good technique, the choreographers needed to find another freak-show stunts for their routines, anything other than the ponche thing that the girls had been doing the entire night. Jordan did it once in the Sonya's Jazz routine (assisted by Marko), some did it in the Geisha routine, Miranda in Stacie Tookey's, and some others in the Little Bird routine. That's a whole lot of ponches in one night, and the same one at that.

Anyhoo like I said, this season has been exciting, and I've got the feeling that this season will give birth to more Katie-and-Joshuas or Twitchingtons. One thought that keeps bugging me: Ryan was a ham-- don't know why, just gotta say it. Congrats to Mary for the successful surgery she had had before the show kicked off (it was her throat I think), and for now not being the one with the highest Botox-content on the judging panel. Anyway, cheers to a start of a great two months of a lot of beastly dancing!

Denpasar Moon

Les Contes Des Fées

Of Places, Memories And Musings

Wonder what would have happened if I had never left.

Joye Sanz Fyn

After much drama over me missing my flight and the aggravating altercation with the rude airline staff-- may your Allah punish you well-- I finally managed to rest my feet on this long-forgotten motherland of mine, and sink my teeth into the much-missed gustatory goodness galore.

Really, my family might not have been blessed with the brightest of all minds, the most statuesque of all physiques, or the most bad-ass of all talents, but we know good food and we know how to find it. To actually witness with my own eyes the lengths to which we would go (and had gone), coupled with the timely display of agility of mind, in hunting those obscure havens where they store the country's royal secret to obesity, is really mind-blowing. It is so stupendous, it really borders on predatorial. The only one thing that is greater than these uncanny gustatory instincts is our cumulative waistline. This inane acuity transcends cultural, racial and taxonomical classifications: the only reason good enough--and I am guessing here-- to cage the beasts is the sometimes-unreasonable pricing. Thankfully, having lived in a third world country for almost the entire span of our lifetimes, we are now equipped with the "blink" a la Malcolm Gladwell to sieve through the cornucopia of gustatory teasers, and to winnow out pleasantries from pleasures.

We be going to Bali on Sunday, and oft you hear normal people giving their pedestrian gushing about the Garuda Wisnu Kencana, the sightseeing, the water sports adventures, blah blah blah, but not so much with my folks. All I hear is ribs, pork and seafood treats by the beach-- which is always a reason to smile. Long time ago I was told that "Nothing tastes better than skinny!", but whoever said that obviously never had a foot-long strip of unagi-tempura sushi shoved to his mouth at dinner after having binged on a plate of honey glazed pork ribs for lunch, and of course there were other things too. It's kind of hard to translate this taste-buds titillation into prose, but rest assured the food here is one of those stuff that makes one's mouth water and armpits juicy. Joye sanz fyn.