the scorpion king is total cornball. it comes more from an innocent time where we had films like the beastmaster or conan the barbarian, when muscle bound scantily clad men fighting the forces of evil was all the rage and people took that kind of movies seriously. today's audience are a bit more cynical, they're more aware when something is totally cheesy and over-the-top, which is what this movie is all about. i had a good time watching the film, but i can easily see how others might hate it and completely dismiss the movie as anything worth watching. the secret to enjoying a film like this is to just accept the situations, no matter how ridiculous.

it's hard for me to take the rock seriously. for me, he's just some beefy dude who wears a little black underwear and beats up equally beef dudes in different colored underwears for the sake of lowbrow entertainment. not that i don't like the rock. as far as wrestlers turned actors go (hulk hogan, jesse ventura, tonya harding), the rock's got enough charisma to carry him through a few more movies. he doesn't have the seriousness or lethality of a vin diesel, but i like the rock nevertheless. i just like saying, "the rock." it's just so silly but somehow it works for him, so bravo. people are going to naturally compare the rock with that other great muscular action movie favorite, arnold schwarzenegger aka conan the barbarian. i personally like arnold more. his performances as conan were more authentic (yeah, i meet a lot of barbarians in my line of work). he's totally serious about the role. the rock as the scorpion king on the otherhand, it's different. the rock seems to realize the laughable nature of the film, and he's sort of laughing about it with the audience everytime he gives his signature smirk. i think that's what makes the movie work, that the rock is in on the joke. while everyone else plays up their character perfectly serious, the rock seems to be having a good time, he knows he's the hero, he knows he's going to get the girl in the end, and so does the audience.

okay, enough about the rock, what about the real star of the movie, kelly hu, as the sorceress cassandra? girlfriend is looking fine in this movie, wearing the requisite revealing fantasy outfit made out of chainmail material or that thrown together robe that's loosely tied so that everytime she moves people are breathlessly captivated as to how she can keep herself from falling out of her outfit (because it's a pg-13 movie, the audience never really sees anything, but it's still titillating nevertheless). oh, and who can forget the bathing scene where she's wearing nothing more than strategically placed hair? my only wish is that maybe her role could've been more kickass. in this age of dark angels and buffys and rachel weisz (mummy returns) and jennifer garner (alias), i just would've liked to see kelly dispense some serious ass kicking to some unfortunate baddies. true, her role in the film is that of captive bride-to-be of the warlord memnon, and it'd change the storyline if she was all tough and skillful in fighting (because then she could escape). oh, and kelly hu looks nothing like the woman portrayed in those movie posters!

and what is it about those virgins? cassandra can only forecast the future if she remains a virgin (you can probably guess what happens towards the end of the movie, especially in a movie starring the rock). despite the fact that she's never been with a man before, she seemed pretty proficient (that was some sweet hot fade to black action!) when it came time to losing her powers. i suppose with a body and a wardrobe like that, you can't really lead a chaste life, the details of which i will leave to the reader's fetid imagination.

my favorite line from the movie: "we've killed mesopotamians!"

so is the scorpion king worth seeing? well, it's a fun movie. it asks a lot in the suspend your disbelief department, but if you can overcome that, it's a pretty entertaining film. if you're a fan of the rock or kelly hu (or both), that's further incentive. it's not the best film out there, it doesn't deliver any social messages (other than, "don't mess with the rock!"), but if you're looking for some mindless entertainment that will make you groan and laugh over the cheesy dialogue and situations, you're in pretty safe hands.

i worked no more than 2 hours at home last night, starting at midnight. so it goes without saying that waking up this morning was a struggle. i sat on the bus with my eyes closed, almost fell completely asleep. before arriving at the office i went to seattle's best and bought a large chai latte, sort of my little reward system for getting up this morning and not just giving up like i'd been fantasizing about. i had a rare meeting this morning. on most days i'm excluded from these meetings (which i use to love so much and was my only opportunity to actually see the members of my team, since they're all downstairs and i'm the only one upstairs) as it might potential detract me from my nonstop coding work.

after the meeting i slowly walked around the building to the darkness known as rogers street and climbed the stairs up to srm level 2. i immersed myself with work, and once more ordered the office lunch (exact same thing i had yesterday, when i'm tired from coding, i really don't have time to weigh my options, it's easier to just get the same thing everything). i didn't listen to any music, i prefer the deafening sound of silence when i really need to focus and concentrate. i still wore my headphones though, but more to drown out distracting background noises than for music.

my venus flytrap with the fly inside remained closed, which is a good sign that the plant is actually starting to eat the fly now. i freaked michael out when i let him touch one of the remaining one traps with a paperclip. when the jaws suddenly closed up, he flinched. i noticed that the jaws didn't close all the way, which is what it does on the initial close, when the hairs inside don't get triggered anymore. later, after work, i let elias trigger a trap too.

all day long i was amazingly jittery. unbeknownst to me, chai latte actually contains a lot of caffeine. not being a real coffee drinker, i'm very sensitive to the effects of caffeine. i noticed this morning my my hands were shaking, but then throughout the day i couldn't stop moving. either i was chewing my lips, twiddling my finger, tapping my head (i help me think, to jostle out the thoughts), answering calls and instant messages, twitching my legs (tandem twitching), shaking my head for no good reason, rolling my eyes and rocking my head back and forth, taking off my headphones and then putting them back on again, checking the cellphone to see if i have any messages, periodically looking back behind me -- i was seriously jacked on something. even now, late at night, i'm still feeling jittery. i'm going to take a break from the chai latte for a while. it's not good for me, especially if the caffeine makes me crazy.

at the end of the day i was in a race against time to burn some cd's going out for delivery tonight. i finally made it, only 30 minutes behind schedule. after i passed the cd's, elias (who once more started another freelancing gig at srm) and i took the t (red line to green line) to kenmore square, where we met dan at uno's for dinner before going to fenway 13 for opening night of the scorpion king. the clam chowder i had was total crap, the bbq chicken pizza was much better but because we were racing against time in order to get to the theatre and grab good seats, who only had 15 minutes to eat our meal before we had to leave. i'm a slow eater, but i tried to smoosh as much food into my mouth as possible. when we left uno's, i felt so totally stuffed.

going into the movies i saw that i missed a call on my cellphone. when the movie was over (and when i was in the money saving weekend and night minutes zone), i finally checked the message. it was from todd, the project manager, alerting me to the fact that unfortunately the cd's i burned tonight had some bugs and i'd have to come in tomorrow morning saturday to do some debugging before we burn another fresh set for delivery. i know i volunteered to come in on saturday if something went wrong, and in my heart i was already prepared for the worst, but on a friday night, to get a message saying that i have to work tomorrow, it can be a bit demoralizing to say the least. immediately i start having visions of all my other coworkers enjoying their weekends, while me and the project manager slave away another weekend in the office to make the delivery. not counting last sunday when i wasn't in the office for a change, tomorrow will be my asterisked 26th consecutive day of being in the office. that's like a whole month where not a single day went by when i wasn't at the office (thought technically, a few of those times i wasn't officially working, but still, that's a lot of office time, regardless of what i was doing). i mean, is there any compensation for all these hours? i know what the newly minted employee handbook says about it (no overtime compensation) but my life has been entirely consumed by work. a month of my life has been robbed and i will never get that back.

walking back home from the bus stop, that's where i had a skunk sighting. normally people wouldn't notice because it's dark and skunks are dark too, other than their stripe. i thought i saw something moving in the shadows and i turned to see a skunk grazing on a neighbor's lawn. i slowly took out the camera and tried to get a few shots, but the skunk was too far away and i didn't want to move any closer for fear of scaring the skunk away or worse, getting sprayed.