The Complete Substitute for All Forms of Sociability

...and there's goes my only reason for following the show. To look on the bright side, I'm a little glad she went when she did. I really don't have time to waste on escapisms like American Idol any more. Anyhoo, I'll keep an eye out for her post-Idol CD or some other curious stuff she comes up with. I just wish that she sang "Wicked Games" or even "House of the Rising Sun" in her last performance. I understand that "Think" made her a front-runner and it's only logical for her to remind America of that before they finally close the curtain on her, but IMHO the song is not her best performance. Not even the second time around. Tsk-tsk. Disappointed. But oh well. At least, there's YouTube to remind me of better days.

Oh, crud . And I mean, CRUD. I eat my words. I want to cry. This is beautiful. It's like the older, better-looking sister of the version sang by Michelle Pfeiffer and what's-her-face from the actual cartoon movie and not the soundtrack version. Siobhan, if you continue to sound this way in studio, then I believe.

Period drama. The 60s. Cigarettes and booze. Mad Men  is all about that and more. The brainchild of Matthew Weiner, this American TV series just ended its third season with a coming fourth season slated for a July airing date. And this when I'm only starting on Season 1. Ugh. But better late than never right? Mad Men  follows the comings and goings of the men and women of the fictional ad agency, Sterling Cooper. Mostly, the series is centered around one man Sterling Cooper's creative director, Don Draper, played to enigmatic perfection by Jon Hammer, his dealings with the ad agency's clients, which include hard sells like Lucky Strike and Richard Nixon, his superficially perfect family life with wife Betty (January Jones) and his many women on the side. Don Draper seems to be the embodiment of that period: on the surface, a successful and dapper man, but go deeper and you'll finds all kinds of emotional and psychological trauma and maybe remnants of the physical exce...

So uhm, I've been pretty quiet about the show lately. It's got less to do with the fact that my favorite this season, Siobhan Magnus , is taking heat from the judges and  audiences than with the fact that my Dad has been hogging the television lately so I have to resort to YouTube for my weekly AI fix. Actually, just Siobhan fix. Right now, she's the only Idol contestant I look forward to. Although I like Crystal Bowersox , too, and hate her at the same time simply because she is so good she makes everybody else sound so bad. My early bet, Andrew Garcia is off the show. I'm relieved. I've kinda taken his prolonged presence in American Idol as a personal embarrassment. The same goes for Casey James . He is still very cute but his performances are just not memorable. For the record, I did not see "Jealous Guy" and, strangely, not interested in hearing it. Lee Dewyze is Lee Deewyze. Maybe not as cute as Casey but his voice is just the sort of guy voice ...

This movie is based on an international bestselling and award-winning novel by the late Swedish author and journalist, Steig Larrson. The book, Män som hatar kvinnor (lit. "Men Who Hate Women") is the first of what was supposedly a ten-novel series but turned out to be only three, the series henceforth called, Millennium Trilogy. After watching this movie, I am very, very interested in reading these much talked-about books. THE STORY The film opens with courtroom drama: scenes showing the disgrace and downfall of financial journalist, Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist). Before he is to serve prison sentence for libel, he accepts a job investigating the disappearance of one Harriet Vanger, favorite niece of an elderly industrialist, Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube). Vanger believes that any one of his secretive, Nazi-loyalist family could be the culprit but with fifty years to bury all traces of the crime, Mikael has his work cut out for him. Enter Lisbeth Salander (Noo...

Internet piracy is a serious problem. All over the world, industries are losing billions to illegal downloads. There seems to be no solution. For as long as music, movies, software programs and the like are made illegally available and for as long as people have internet connection, then it seems inevitable. Personally, I think applications like iTunes and Kindle partly solve the problem. The popularity of the application has shown that people are perfectly willing to pay a minimal fee to download music or books LEGALLY if  -- and that's the operative word -- the whole mechanics is made easy and convenient for consumers. After all, that's the biggest sell of illegal downloads. It's not really because they're free. But because of easy access and convenience. However, people in the industry don't think it's enough or that it's working fast enough to overturn all their losses. After all, there are more people who illegally download stuff everyday than there...

Lent ends today. I did not see the S ugat  in our local parish. I actually woke up when the church bell rang for the mate  at around 2:30a.m. but didn't get up to get ready. I was waiting for my mom to come to my room and verbally abuse me into getting up and about at that freakishly early hour. Surprisingly, she didn't so I spent the next four hours in insomnia land. I think God was punishing me in a roundabout way. Anyhoo, I'm back in the city...to find that my inbox is filled with the usual spam and Facebook messages. No, D1ck 101, I do not want penis enlargement pills. I was born without that appendage, thankyouverymuch. And no, Abjit from India, I do not want to kindly accept your deposit of one million U.S. dollars in my name to some offshore bank in Papua New Guinea. Honestly. Facebook is...facebook. I do not know half of my friends, and haven't seen the other half in years. Oh, innernet!