Bliss Part 6

1) Purchased my Jamie Cullum concert tickets today. A reminder to those who don't know which seats to get: his piano's always on the left side ( that's the audience's left, facing the stage ).

2) Borrowed Laurell K. Hamilton's The Laughing Corpse from the public library - couldn't resist! :)

3) Also have a tattered copy of Jeff Lindsay's Dearly Devoted Dexter sitting on my shelf.

4) Completed Episode 7 of Dexter Season 4. Wonderfully screwy, super-gory but with a smattering of hilarious scenes, and the script and acting are top-notch. Hasn't disappointed me yet, so it's currently my favourite TV show.

5) Lots of Chinese New Year visits lined up this weekend. Need to run a truckload of errands tomorrow.


Was watching the latest episode of So You Think You Can Dance season 6 this afternoon. It's the last Vegas round before the Top 20 are chosen. Excellent 2 hours, filled with eye-popping dancers and lots of drama. It's far superior to American Idol. Dancers are way tougher than musicians, rarely give attitude, and seem to share an optimism which I find extremely heartwarming.
So whenever someone who's good but not quite there yet gets cut, the judges holler, "Come back next year!" and the contestant almost always answers, "You bet I will!"
Awwww. :)

And American Idol's Top 24 have been revealed at last! Only the guys have made strong impressions on me so far. Am thrilled to learn that Andrew Garcia, Casey James and Tyler Grady made it through. Casey is a frontrunner for sure - a blues guitarist who looks like a movie star and sings like a dream. We shall see how far he goes with his gifts.

I don't know if you agree with me, but I find that the quality of American TV shows has skyrocketed in the past decade. Reality programmes form a large part of that jump - American Idol, SYTYCD, Survivor, The Amazing Race, Project Runway, America's Next Top Model, The Apprentice, etc - but the sitcoms and dramas are also way better these days.
Could be the edgier material and lax rules on nudity, foul language and taboo subjects. But TV actors now also hail from Broadway and film, like the Glee cast, Dexter's Michael C. Hall ( primarily a stage thespian ), Damages' Glenn Close, 30 Rock's Alec Baldwin, House's Hugh Laurie, and so on.

I'm just glad I have cable. Local programmes really suck - I'm allergic to all Mediacorp productions - and they censor just about everything.

Finally completed Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. Took me a few weeks, no thanks to constant distractions from work and New Year preparations, and the book was a huge chore to read. Haven't made a detailed comparison with the first Robert Langdon novel, Angels & Demons, which I loved back in 2005. But I remember A&D boasted much better writing, while Symbol seems painfully staged from beginning to end.

There're a few interesting plot twists, but the finale is a huge disappointment, with an irrelevant last chapter. I guess I get miffed when something gets built up to this level and ends up not really mattering in the whole scheme of things, y'know?

Anyway, I do NOT recommend this to anyone, but if you want to waste your precious time on it, be my guest.

Have been scouring the Net for travel ideas for the upcoming trip. Still a ways to go, but planning holidays always puts me in a good mood, especially when it involves the theatre and striptease. Excuse me, I'm single and in my 30s, it's all perfectly legitimate. :)

Also resolved not to kill myself during shifts. If it's busy, it's busy. The queue will clear eventually.