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Hello out there in LJ-Land from the Kzinti Freehold!
How y'all doin'?
Did y'all your Tranqsgiving turkey yet?
We did! 15 pounds! Whoo!
Yeah, The Sibling and I are actually doing a turkey this year.
We did beef last year and the year before. But this year, we're traditionalists!


In other news, "Angel-A" came out on Region 1 DVD today! Wooooh!
For those of you coming in late, this is a charming black-and-white romantic fantasy comedy by Luc Besson set in Paris.
And it contains music composed by The Sibling, my brother, DJ Pascal. This is why we're so excited about today.
We got the DVD from Netflix and watched it tonight. The film is in French and Sony was nice enough to provide English and
Spanish subtitles that can be toggled on and off. This is much better than the DVDs of "The Corsican File" and "Casshern"
that we've seen recently, which featured hardwired English subtitles that actually obscured part of the movie itself.
The transfer is very clean, the film is widescreen, and the DVD comes with a 25-minute-plus making of featurette in French
(except for when Rie Rasmussen, who plays Angela, falls back on English) with toggeable subtitles.
And a bunch of trailers. And that's pretty much it. They're not very big on DVD extras over there in France.
The film is shot in Paris in August in the wee hours of night and day, so the city feels relatively empty.
And you're given a great opportunity to take in the sights and see just how beautiful she is.
The film is just as delightful as we remember it, and we encourage y'all to rent it and check it out.
Pascal's music is used for the entire duration of André and Angela's visit to the first nightclub.
And once again for the end credits.
This is an "auteur" film, something Luc Besson wanted to do for himself. And he brought his entire team with him,
including Thierry Arbogast, his totally awesome director of photography. So the film is simply gorgeous.
Rent it! Watch it! Buy it! Cherish it! Revel in its non-Hollywoodness! :)


Topic whiplash!
So remember when my desk chair broke after 2 years and the extra insurance people told me to get stuffed?
And I bought a cheap ($50) chair at Staples? And it broke a month later, so I exchanged it for a new one?
The exact same model? This chair?



Well, it's been over a month, so that means the replacement chair is due to break.
And guess what? It broke last week! But it broke _differently_.
The first chair's back adjustment knob had just snapped off.
Well, on this second cahir, one of the legs SHATTERED. Like this:



I've never had that happen before on this type of chair.
I decided to exchange the chair that same day, but I had errands to run first, so I ran them.
On my way home, I stopped at a different Staples and looked at their chairs.
They had a high-back manager chair for $69.99 (on sale, down from $99.99), and it looked good.
But they only had one and they were planning to assemble it as a demo unit.
So I asked the salesdude to print me out the specs of the chair so I could get it at the other Staples.
I got home, sat in the broken chair and did some stuff on the computer.
While I did that, a second leg shattered!!
Oh for the love of Joel!!
(No pictures of the broken 2nd leg, sorry)
So I grabbed the chair, tossed it into a convenient nearby empty shopping cart, and pushed it all to Staples.
Once there, I showed 'em the wreckage and went to look for the chair on sale.
They had it in stock, but it was normally priced at $99.99.
Urrrrrrrr, what?
I showed the other Staples' print-out and the manager said "oh, no problem, we'll price-match."
They price-match themselves. How nice. I just love inconsistent mystery sales, don't you? :-/
Anyway, got the new bigger chair, paid the $20 difference, put the (HUGE) box in a shopping cart, and pushed it all home.
I put the chair together carefully, because my right wrist has been hurting for a few days.
And the new chair looks like this:



It's bigger, comfier, sturdier, and I think it should last a year at least.
All that for just an extra 20 bucks.
Not-u bad-u!