JunkFood Fun.

Has your mother ever told you not to play with your food?

For me the answer is no, because a) I was an okay-well-behaved child and b) also an intensely paranoid kid; something about germs and touching and food did not mingle well for me.

However it is a different story with junkfood. As kids you are encouraged to play with your snacks. Whether it is to slap your friend with a Fruit by the Foot or to play make-believe as a fantastical zoo keeper (of your animal shaped crackers), junk food simply tasted better as toys.

I, myself, have fond memories with cigarette-shaped bubblegum (harmless really), Dunkaroos, Pop Rocks, and the Fun Dips.

Even as an adult, I find myself categorizing my Skittles by their colors and then later rearranging them into my latest and greatest artistic masterpiece before stuffing them down my gullet in gleeful frenzy.

However, the more 'adult' we get, the less playful our junkfood becomes. It's the kids that get the fruity flavored crystal Ring Pops while the mature population gets stuck with the less conspicuously fun Welches Fruit Snacks. Well, I have several suggestions that might revitalize the fun in the way we see common snacks.

Enjoyable Snacks to Play With in an Adult-like Manner:

1. Skittles

Ingredients: 2-3 regular packets of Skittles (more if you prefer), Creativity (art degree not required)

Serving Size: 1

Time: 5min - 10min

Instructions: Open the packets and just lay the candy out on a clean table. With washed hands, rearrange them by color (ROYGBIV, if you'd please). Then- release your inner artist spirit/demon, and go crazy! Make yourself a nice mosaic of colorful images. If you have leftover Skittles, feel free to munch on them while appraising your artwork.

Suggestions: I usually create a lone sunflower in an open grassfield. The purple could be used as pollen or bugs on the ground.

2. Pocky

Ingredients: 1 regular sized Pocky (chocolate), Mischief

Serving Size: 2

Time: Depends

Instructions: Open your Pocky packet, take a Pocky stick, and chew until you have a 1 cm of chocolate covered part left. Now you have yourself a fake match. Repeat until you have loads of fake matches. Collect them in a container if you'd like. Wait for an opportunity to take them out to show people.

Suggestions: Great for April Fooling a smoking friend when they ask for a light. They shouldn't be smoking anyway.

3. Oreos

Ingredients: 1 package of Oreo cookies, Steady Hands or Patience

Serving Size: 1 or more

Time: 20min - 30min

Instructions: This is a bit difficult to master but not impossible. Open your Oreos package and take apart every single Oreo cookie sandwich until you are left with double the amount of cookies. Using the cream as a building paste: stack the Oreos so that there is cookie at the bottom, cream, cookie, cream, cookie, cream, and you get the gist. You will most likely have a leaning tower of Oreos. Feel free to take pictures and show them off to a possibly disinterested friend.

Suggestions: None.

4. Dum-dums

Ingredients: A package of Dum-dums variety pack (120), Some honesty

Serving Size: 2-3

Time: 1hr and up

Instructions: No, no, do not bang these potential drum sticks on the table although it might be highly tempting. We are not children. We are adults and can't possibly afford nasty glares and/or annoyed faces.

Real Instructions: Do not unwrap the lollypops. Instead tug on the candy until the head pops off the stick. Do this for all candy. Throw away sticks. Clean your hands and begin unwrapping all the stick-less candy. Throw away wraps. You will have a pile of colorful orbs. Mix them up and place them on a clean surface. Your guessing game begins. Begin by pointing at a orb and guessing its flavor. Your friend will pick it up, eat it, and confirm whether you are correct or wrong. If correct you earn a point. Next, it is your friend's turn. Turn by turn, repeat until there is no more candy. Count points and name a winner!

Suggestions: A great drinking game. The game allows for an easy change/switch to a punishment or reward system.

5. Welches Fruit Snacks

Ingredients: A package of Welches Fruit Snacks, A flair for drama, Imagination

Serving Size: 1

Time: Depends

Instructions: Simply, lay the snacks out and individually pick it up the way you would the normal fruit. This might be hard for those with big hands- use fingers. For example, with the Welches grapes (the fruit snack), you'd pick them up by the stem with your pointer and thumb. Take a tiny bite off of an individual grape. The aim? Imagine you are a giant in a tiny land, eating tiny fruit.

Suggestions: You can stick your pinky out when daintily chewing on your fruit snack and pretend you are a classy fruit eating giant. Do not swallow the whole fruit- you might choke on it.

Delicacies Talkin',

SJ

A Very Specific Request on Craigslist

An eloquent way of putting things...

Dilly-dally Talkin',

SJ

Movie Review: 71: Into the Fire (2010)

Introduction

I get especially excited when I see foreign films make it into the US "big screen." It somehow feels like rooting for the underdog. It's the contraflow of foreign films to the US (opposing the usual Hollywood flow to the rest of the world), which enriches the US cinemas with commendable films like Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000).

I just looked up the definition to "contraflow" to make sure I used it properly, and found this very cool picture:

A "contraflow" lane reversal traffic to evacuate Houston from Hurricane Rita (2005). (via Wikipedia) Looks like the apocalypse dunnit?

[Warning: May Contain Spoilers.]

And so when a friend discovered South Korean hit 71: Into the Fire (2010) playing in a local movie theater, I had to watch it.

Before Watching The Movie

I was excited because the synopsis seemed so intriguing: "71 South Korean high school students (volunteers) fight in war to defend South Korea from a formidable North Korean invasion." Oh and the "true story" part made it even more appealing. I expected a wave of emotions to be felt, as well as some powerful lessons to be learned.

During the Movie

First fifteen minutes of the film: Emotions were most certainly felt and powerful music most certainly heard; alas, the tragedies of war.

Middle of the film: Powerful music heard but emotions dried out by redundant war images.

Last fifteen minutes of the film: Oh, so this is what a war porno looks like. Lovely.

After the Movie

Thoughts on 71: Into the Fire (2010)

It's obvious the director (Lee Jae-Han) of 71 wanted to convey the atrocities of war but went about it rather poorly. Showing lots and lots of guns, lots and lots of gore, and lots and lots dead bodies is all fine; I'm okay with that. I'm sure that is how real warfare looks like. Saving Private Ryan did the same thing: smoke, blood, and tears. But Private Ryan had critical somethings that 71 does not: character...and characters.

Characters that looked felt, smelt, and tasted real. Private Ryan had audiences emotionally invest in these fictional people. Suddenly those piles upon piles of dead bodies actually meant something to us. When people died in Private Ryan you felt an overpowering sense of loss and grief. You personally felt the consequences of war right down your gut because you closely followed these individuals and their story no matter how it fit in the general schema of World War II.

71 on the other hand does the exact opposite. It takes real people and reduces them to 2D cardboard figurines in an elementary play set. 71 creates a good vs. evil story with a typical wide-eyed hero on one end and a typical wizen villan (who severely resembles King Leonidas from 300 btw, fyi, tysk) on the other. 71 sets up 2D puppets that either run into gunfire or shoot at those running into gunfire (I guess the title makes sense). This small but true heroic event becomes over-bloated as the crux of the overall outcome of the war; diminishing the heroism of the actual event to a Sunday morning cartoon.

There's no backstory as to why these 71 children want to fight in the war (I guess they were just all courageous or something); the one rebellious student with an actual motive (revenge) is your usual prototype bad guy with an abnormally large heart. 71 throws aside potential content that expands on personality and depth, and instead relies on the flashy horrors of warfare to carry the weight of its eye-rolling message: "War = bad" or as one character puts it "Mama, why does such a[n awful] thing as war exist?" (or something ridiculously similar to that).

The Pessimist: Yes, I'm furious. My expectations have fallen flat on their faces and have been repeatedly run over by a tank full of bad cliches. Yes, true-story-inspired movies are all embellished to an extent. But was the Hero vs. Villan Showdown gun duel at the end of the film necessary? Or the inevitable redemption sequence of the rebellious wayward student popping back out from nowhere to save the day? Was there any originality in 71? Was there any new or thought provoking messages that 71 put out on the vast table of war flicks?

[.oN .oN .oN .oN :rewsnA]

The Optimist: If I wanted to watch a mindless war movie, I'd watch this. There are plenty of bodies shot, liters of blood spillt, and loud war cries hollered. It's perfect. And also, if I wanted to watch a burning car, I'd YouTube "burning car" and watch a car burn for hours until it slowly reduces itself into bits of ashes.

More importantly, comparing the similarities between these two madmen becomes an enjoyable activity:

Bad Guy of 71... and

King Leonidas. His muscular Grecian twin.

P.S. I was going to finish off with something witty and biting like: "I'd put 71: Into the Fire (2010) into a fire" but I'm not going to even try. It's too easy and it's not worth it. (Just kidding! It's really hard! But still not worth it!)

Snarky end comment: Watching 71: Into the Fire (2010) may be an equal experience as to viewing a full season one marathon of Joey without the commercials.

Conclusion

What is most disappointing about 71: Into the Fire (2010) is that it is a typical Hollywood action clone. What about the diversity and inventive quality of the foreign film contraflow to the US media? It is easy to stereotype all foreign film as magical masterpieces that go against the grain when in fact there are loads of unsavory flicks out there. Such as this one, which revels in mainstream American action cinema without it retaining much of an identity. Or soul.

Overall Diva Scores:

71: Into the Fire: C-

Saving Private Ryan: A-

Joey: C-

Diva Talkin',

SJ

Seriously?!

I've been tinkering around the web a few days ago, searching for various interesting news (Google News I love you forever). I happened upon several interesting highlights but these two really gave me severe (but awesome) chills despite summer:

Supernatural Anime!

CW's popular TV show Supernatural, starring Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, comes to Japan...in anime form! Reputable anime studio MadHouse (Death Note, Trigun, Black Lagoon) has picked up the series in a 22 episode format delineating the lives and exploits of the Winchester brothers to the Japanese population. The anime Supernatural is expected to release in DVD/BluRay in January 12 and April 6, 2011. (via animenewsnetwork)

animationized to....

this, which looks magnificent.

To view the trailer go to Japan's WB website. The trailer actually looks amazing. I'm loving the art style of the anime. While promising, Supernatural the Anime comes out in 2011, so we (the USA population) probably won't see it until 2020.

Ho-hum, and the other news....

Jersey Shore Videogame Extravaganza!

MTV has recently released Jersey Shore just in time for the summer- the Jersey Shore videogame that is. Featuring an array of your favorite sun-tanned cast members, the Jersey Shore videogame is a fighting game on Facebook that lets you battle it out with your friends, Jersey Shore style. The game is still in beta and lacks a complex fighting system; but watching a cartoonish mini-version of "The Situation" spraying himself with "Bro's glo" in order to replenish health is quite a sight to behold.

Facebook is useful for lots of things. You can use it to interact with friends, update your status (real time), and play games that blow your mind. One of which is the Jersey Shore Facebook game. By no means do you control the characters in this 2D fighting game. All you do is click at the various items (that you've purchased beforehand) to either throw at your opponents (to kill their heath points) or heal yourself. At the end of the day, it comes down to who has the best items to survive the onslaught of pure Jersey Shore madness.

The items themselves are hilarious and the customization of your character (one of the Jersey Shore avatars) are some things to look forward to...once you can afford it with the high in-game price.

Diva Talkin',

SJ