Scarecrow, my old man and the new guy in town

Be on the lookout, Hirosakiites, for a big, unfamiliar-looking, blond haired Canadian muscle man roaming the streets. He's the new boy in our office since Jeff's leaving this month, and he's not hard to miss because he's twice the size of any Japanese person. And he's got blond hair, which is also a dead giveaway. Haven't had the chance to talk to him in length just yet, but he seems like a good lad. His name is Julian, and he's new to the scene so if you meet him say hello.

I don't post as much on this blog now. It's a matter of not having the time, nor the motivation. I'm quite a busy boy at work, and when I get home, which is usually after nine in the evening, all I ever seem to do is watch movies. Movies are something I've always ignored in life until now. I never had the patience to sit there and wait for a story to get underway, and I'm usually very critical of them if they're not well thought out enough. However, I've been nurturing an appreciation recently and now I'm hooked. In fact, I don't think there are enough films left in my local store to keep me going for much longer.

Among the tripe that I've sat through, or not, on a number of occasions, I've found corkers, real corkers. With the likes of Al Pacino, I've fallen in love with classics, such as the scene in Godfather 2 when he meets his brother on the dance floor and does the "You broke my heart" line. But my favourite Pacino scene has to be when he imitates a pirate at the end of the movie Scarecrow. If you've never seen it you should make time for it one evening. It's just about the most inspiring film I've seen this year.

And there are other, less well-known scenes, like when Woody Allen's character in Annie Hall blows two grand's worth of coke into thin air with one sneeze.

The movies might just be starting to take control over my engagment with reality. After watching the Clint Eastwood movie, The Outlaw Josie Wales, I was responding to people's statements with "I reckon so" way too much to be taken seriously.

Sean Penn is another man I like in films. Hurlyburly was a fun movie, with lots of wrecked characters and no particular direction (a combination I like in a film). Sean Penn plays desperate characters very well, but comes off a bit mediocre in other roles.

The criteria I look for in a move has become very recognisable. Like I said, I look for loose endings and a lack of plot. My reckoning is that if a director can pull off a movie without either of these two constituents then either the acting or something else has to be bloody good. I like good directing, and the characters and their interaction more than anything else. For me, two main characters is best. I like two main characters with self-expression issues and tension and a lack of trust.

I'm actually thinking of maybe getting involved in some kind of amatuer dramatics scene when I get back home next year. It sounds like a joke, I know, but I reckon it'd be an interesting thing to have a go at.

On a different note, and one that really doesn't relate to anybody who reads this outside of my family and friends at home, my Dad's been very ill for the last few months. He was semi-diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome originally, but a couple of weeks ago the doctors told him it was a different complaint altogether. He went in for major surgery the other day and apparently he's getting better now, but all the same it's frustrating being this far away from the old bugger right now. I don't want to go into the details of what it was, but I felt I should write at least something about it.

That's all I can think of to write. I could bang on endlessly about climbing or boarding or hiking (which I've already started up again for the new year) but they're just obssesions of mine that I don't want to bore you good readers with. No new photos either, apart from this old pair of gloves that fell into the snow the other day.



I went to pick them up, but I grabbed my camera and took a picture of them first.