Re-Watching LOST: Season 3

Season 3 so far:
In the last post, I expressed my love for Locke's vision quest (involving sweet, sweet Boone), jears and Ben's creepiness. Ben is still creepy as hell, the jears haven't stopped and no more Boone - this time, it was Mr. Eko who had the vision quest (which was also pretty bad ass).
I'm upset because when Sawyer and Kate were leaving the island, with the help of "some girl" named Alex, I blurted out "Haven't they figured out that she is Rousseau's daughter?!" and my old man turns to me and says, "Holy shit, I didn't even put two and two together". Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?!!! Come on! It's so obvious. Just like it was obvs that Ben was dying and that Kate and Sawyer were gonna get it on (AKA: CAGE RAGE!!!!)
Anyways - I still can't put my finger on why I can't stand Juliet. There's something about her that irritates me. Even after I got to know her flashback story, she still bothers me...
We were only able to get to episode 8 (Flashes Before Your Eyes) which happens to be when the time traveling / jumping begins (so it seems). And we also learn that Charlie is supposed to die. No!!! I like making Mordor jokes when he's around! And who's gonna help Claire raise Aaron (besides Desmond, who was giving her the eye but probs because he's weird).
So far I'm not dazzled by season 3, which is sad to admit but I'm sure it will get better. I know it will, dammit!



Love & kisses
Katzi
S.L.Y.A.S.D.I.

Re-Watching "LOST" Recap: Seasons 1 and 2

Guess what? Remember when the Lost finale happened and it was all "An end to an era" or whatever and I said that me and my old man wanted to start rewatching the entire series?
WE STARTED OVER
And we're on Season 3 already. Say what?! I know, I know, I should've been bloggin' it but I've been all wrapped up in it! Personally, I think this is the best way to watch any show (Dexter, True Blood, Big Love and all the other shows on channels I don't have).

Rewatching Season 1 went pretty much like this:

• Hey, I remember when they did that
• The next episode will be about such and such
• Oh yeah, remember the season ending like this?

Boom. Done. More like: Boone, done. Wokka wokka. (Still sad that he was a "sacrifice that the island demanded" per Locke).

Season 2 went pretty much like this:

• Oh yeah, I remember this one but I don't think I watched the next one.
• This was the one where I couldn't watch the season finale at work and you called me to tell me it was a doozy and when I asked you to tell me the ending, you wouldn't because it was crazy so I waited until 7:30am when it was posted to abc.com to watch the last 15 minutes and there was a white light and Jack, Kate and Sawyer were tied up and the whole island shook. Remember? <-- TRUE STORY
  

How we got to Season 3 pretty much went like this:
Sunday I woke up early after the super awesome OMFG party the night before (be on the lookout for photos!!!). I had only had 5 hours of sleep and I wasn't interested in watching Rome (yet another show I'm catching up on). So my old man suggests we watch a few episodes of season 2 till it got cool enough for him to mow the lawn. After every episode, he check the temperature on his iPod touch (NOTE: NOT a reliable weather predictor but it worked out perfectly for us). The temp was steady at 95˚F. "Wanna watch another one?" "Sure!" Temp check. 95˚. Another episode. 95˚. Another and another and another until it was 7:30pm. Made dinner, watched another one. Watched some more until about 11:30pm. We only had 3 episodes left till the end of season 2 at the end of Sunday. I think it was about 8+ straight hours of Lost. We finished out season 2 on Monday and my old man brought home season 3 yesterday and we were able to squeeze in the first 3 episodes. I'm pretty sure we're both in a blind spot now because I think we both dropped our love affair with Lost at the end of season 2 with the white light magnetic field thing. But I have the ultimate advantage: I've seen the series finale, so I know about Juliet (who annoys me for some reason) and various little things that my old man doesn't know. I gave away Ben when he got captured in season 2 (under the name of Henry Gale) because I blurted out, "Hey! They captured Ben!" My old man gave me the side eye, "Who the fuck is Ben?" Oops.

Highlights of Season 3 so far:

• Locke's vision quest with Boone as his spirit guide (BONUS Boone!) - Ep 3
• Jears within the first episode. I should've bet my old man because he didn't think Jack would cry. WRONG. Jack always cries.
• Ben is still creepy.

So - maybe I'll keep better track of my Lost adventure. It's actually quite fun.



Enjoy!
Love and Kisses,
Katzi
S.L.Y.A.S.D.I.

Road tripping (Part 1)

This past weekend, my old man and I went to Jacksonville, FL for Nicole's high school graduation. On the way there, I had some strange thoughts.

• My goddaughter will be graduating high school in about 10 years. *gasp!* They really do grow up fast!
  

• Possible Glee story lines: Will they perform at the local theatres in musical productions outside of school? What will happen with Finn and Rachel? Will Shelby let Quinn see Beth? What's up with Sue? How will they introduce John Stamos - will he be doing a dental procedure on Emma? What will the song in the sing-off between John Stamos and Matthew Morrison be (because you KNOW there will be a sing-off for Emma's love)? Will there be another Diva-off between Kurt and Rachel (for fun this time)? Is it going to go the way of Degrassi: TNG - like, will they admit any new students or will it be the current kids only?

• I get really happy when I see other ethnicities in South Georgia. Sounds silly, I know, but South Georgia (and North Florida for that matter, oh - and don't forget North Georgia too) make me nervous. If I see people of other ethnicities, I feel better.
  
• I missed out on a bunch of photo opportunities in Lumber City, Ga because I was navigating
• Why is my iPhone maps feature better than my actual Tom-Tom GPS system?
• What do people do for work in the middle of nowhere (AKA South Georgia)?

These are the things I think about when I can't quiet my mind - which happens to be all the time.

Also while we were at the beach, I made myself Mayor of the Beach via fake FourSquare (AKA my Twitter feed). If you want to check out pics from the Florida trip, check them out at my Flickr!

Love and kisses,
Katzi
S.L.Y.A.S.D.I.

Pizza Time!

Saturday, April 24, I started something I never dreamed of starting: a diet.
Yep. I started a freakin' diet. It's been a tough month but I've been powering through it. I'm trying to stay positive and upbeat about the whole thing but it's hard. It's like quitting cold turkey - I'm an emotional wreck. I'm hungry a lot. Whenever I see food, I get overwhelmed with sadness and longing for it. When I indulge (I try to at least once a week but I don't go overboard), I feel guilty. It's a love/hate thing that's really taking its toll on me but in the end, I will benefit and it will be worth it.
While I was at the grocery store, I had to buy the Cooking Light magazine pizza issue. I mean, I love pizza more than anything and the fact that I had been without it this long (except the "diet approved" pizza) was driving me crazy. So I declared that we would make pizza on Sunday.
It started with the sauce.

The recipe came straight from the magazine and was easier than I would have ever imagined. One major upside to this whole diet thing is that I'm not afraid to cook anymore. I used to watch Food Network all day, every day and I had all the cooking techniques down but I was afraid to apply them in my every day life. This has all changed AND I can apply everything I have learned watching Food Network to my food. Including making this very basic but really delicious sauce.
Then came time for the dough.
My old man has a book called Vegan With A Vengeance where we usually take our pizza dough recipe from but this time, we followed the magazine's recipe. Only we missed one major step: the dough needed to sit in the fridge for 24 hours. WTF??!!! I can't wait that long! Vegan With A Vengeance has a shorter prep time with only 1 hour of wait time for the dough to rise but we didn't make it because it calls for sugar in the recipe. Sweet baby Jeebus! What are we to do??? After pulling and stretching the dough, it was still too sticky. I was ready to give up until we decided that since Publix sells pizza dough, we should just get that and let our original batch go back to the fridge. All was not lost!

Then came the topping.
My original idea was to make a Pizza Margherita but we forgot the basil. Why, oh why?! I got the damn fresh mozzarella but I left the basil! Now it would just be a basic cheese pizza. Meh. That's okay.


Into the oven with you, little pizza! You look good, you smell good and now...the moment of truth. What will you look like when you come out? What will you taste like?


Success! The pizza was amazing! Although we had a little "dough disaster", it was still pretty awesome. I'll definitely have to try it again and maybe get all fancy with it and see how it goes.

To more PizzAdventures!
Katzi
S.L.Y.A.S.D.I.

"The Others" + "The Sixth Sense" + J.J. Abrams = "LOST" series finale

Last night, Lost ended in a 2 1/2 hour journey through a typical Lost episode: WTF.
There was crying (not by me, though)
There was confusion (definitely by me)
And there were laughs

Here's a backstory about me and Lost:
In 2004, my old man kept telling me about this show about an island. At the time, my TV watching was limited to what my co-workers wanted to watch when I used to work nights at a home shopping channel. Needless to say, I didn't know what the fuck Lost was. Then it happened. I suffered a horrible bout with the flu. I was on quarantined lock down (by decree of my old man) and exiled to the couch. But my old man felt sorry for me and brought me the first season of Lost to keep me company while I fought off the flu.
At first, I was really confused. I had a high fever and the whole first season felt like a fever dream. Polar bears. On a tropical island? A plane crash with a preggers chick? That dude from Lord of the Rings as a drug addict? That guy from Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet with a kid and a dog (that liked to run away). Okay, okay. It makes sense. I'm an X Files fan. There's something more to it than this. Cool. I can dig it.
Then, I tried watching season 2. At first, I was a little upset because there hadn't been a casualty at all and then they kill off the hottest guy on the damn show at the end of season 1 and I didn't want to give it another try but I did. Enter the "lost" Lost jokes. I was lost trying to watch Lost. (And those jokes never ended, btw).
My old man and I have been talking about getting all the seasons up till now (this was said at the start of the final season), catching up and getting wrapped up in the finale. But that didn't happen. We didn't really have a strong desire to get all caught up with Lost. Especially not after our new favourite show started airing: Fringe (also the brainchild of J.J. Abrams). So, what were we to do?
Of course we didn't watch any part of Lost leading up to the series finale but I couldn't help myself. Fox was showing Something Something Something Dark Side by Family Guy and I'd already seen it too many times so, I flipped on over to ABC and couldn't stop.
Who were these new people? Who was Ben Linus? Who was Desmond? Who the fuck was Juliet? Where was Michael and Walt and their damn dog? The flashbacks didn't phase me either - since that's what the show was based around anyway. But what struck me as odd was the double flashbacks. After about the third one, that's when I knew what was wrong with everyone. That's when I knew they were all dead. And M. Fox trying to avoid having flashbacks made it even more obvious.
But why 2 1/2 hours? I guess it would have made more sense if I had followed the show from beginning to end but even the internet crowd was divided. Half the people I follow on Tumblr (my safe place to "live blog" shows), were just as confused - which leads me to the same conclusion: it would make way more sense if I had kept up (I hope).
Okay, okay. Snowglobe theory: sort of correct. The Others theory: Check. Sixth Sense: Check. I've seen enough horror and suspense movies to see that coming a mile away (which kinda sucks because a lot of plots have been ruined because of that [see Community's season finale with Jeff and Annie]) but it makes me wonder about my other J.J. Abrams love: Fringe.
We know there's an alternate universe on Fringe. And we know that BizarrOlivia and regular Olivia switched places at the end of this season. Snowglobe theory again? Possibly. But both worlds are aware of each other. Well, at least both Fringe Divisions anyway. So...where could this go?
J.J. Abrams is a creative, sci-fi reimaginer. If anyone could take it beyond our realm of understanding and open our minds to even more possiblities, Abrams can. I'm ready for the mindfuck that is Fringe to get bigger, better and more other worldly.

Bring it on.
Katzi
S.L.Y.A.S.D.I.

From Nate's sister Alysia...

...(via her FB page):

The trial date is September 17th. The defense is going to try to say that Nate was a reckless driver and an irresponsible, party guy. Even if that was true would it change the fact that a 16 yr old idiot that didn't know how to drive pulled out in front of him?! Would it make Nate's life LESS valuable and therefore make that boy less culpable?! I am beyond enraged.

I knew Nate for a billion years and I'm trying to figure out what would make him an "irresponsible party guy". Was it because he just happened to be a bouncer at a strip club? Was it because he didn't get home till 4am on Sunday mornings (because that's when his shift was over at the strip club). Was it because he had a motorcycle and a car but he preferred to ride his motorcycle? Was it because he and his other bike-riding friends would take bike trips to North Georgia and even cross country? <>That sounds like a crazy, irresponsible party < / sarcasm>.

Nate was a good guy. In fact, Nate was one of the best guys I had ever had the pleasure of knowing. He was always a gentleman (to me), he was modest about his amazing bass skills and thought he wasn't all that great. Ever since I was 17, I remember telling him how great he was. Sure, we had our moments but he always took the high road - even when I was acting like a bratty teenager. (Cut me some slack, I was a teenager after all!) Even when we reconnected a few years ago, there was nothing out of the ordinary in his life. Sure, he worked at a strip club but so what! That didn't make him a criminal. Sure, he had motorcycles but that didn't make him a danger to society. Nate always took his motorcycle riding seriously. I know that for a fact because we talked in depth about one of his longer bike trips that he had just made. The guys he rode with were like brothers - they all made sure everyone was safe and having a good time. Nate was very clear on the safety part (because I made a friendly dig at his nerdy "safety first" speech).
But the above statement from Alysia hurts me. Nate wasn't a reckless driver or an irresponsible party guy. What a cheap jab. I mean, that 16 year old kid did take a life and he should get some kind of jail time for that. And I'm pretty sure that that kid had just gotten his driver's license, too. Talk about reckless driver.
I'm thankful every day that my Mom made me wait until I was 18 to drive. It makes sense now (back when I was 16, it didn't, obviously). I was more responsible when I was 18 and because I was driving my Mom's car, I was super careful about driving. God knows what would have happened if I had wrecked that thing (or run somebody over with it).
Nate was a great guy and this "party guy" defense thing is killing me. I hope I can be in court that day to show my support for Nate and his family.

Love and kisses,
Katzi
S.L.Y.A.S.D.I.

A few words on feeling inferior in the workplace...

Today is not a good day. No, it isn't. I was talking with a co-worker of mine about apprenticeships. I'd love love LOVE to be the apprentice of a wonderful, reputable editor and / or motion graphics artist but there's one problem: most of them think they're superior to the rest of us. Now I'm not saying ALL of them are like that but they can get a little patronizing.
Yes, I know what After Effects is and no, I don't use it to its full potential and neither do you.
Yes, I have worked on Avid before (granted it was only DV Xpress but Avid is still Avid) and yes, I work on Final Cut Pro now but that doesn't make me any less of an editor.
I know that the job I'm in now doesn't really let me have my full range of creativity but I make it work. I graduated college in 2001 and A LOT has changed in the post-world. But I have two things working against me that have been a major issue since the dawn of man: 1) I'm a minority and 2) I'm a woman.
So, working in a predominately male field was going to be a challenge from the start. I knew that when I had to teach myself tape-to-tape editing in my freshman year of high school (since no one would help me). But in high school, many people took video classes for the semi-easy A (or to make Quentin Tarantino-style shorts). I took it because I genuinely liked it. In fact, I liked it so much that I went to college for it.
In college, I met great friends. I rounded out a group of friends by being the "token" girl and the "token" minority all in one! And we made hilarious (Wes Anderson-style) shorts. But I noticed there was one small problem: I didn't really get to do anything technical.
I've always wanted to be an editor. Especially after I found out about Avid. Shit, even Media 100! Editing is, like, my dream job. Taking the chaos that comes with filming and putting it into a nice, pretty, entertaining order. I didn't really get a chance to do that in college. And the few projects I was able to got very weird reception.
My projects are strange, yes, but I've always loved film/video as an art form. When I had my first After Effects class, I freaked out.
After Effects is amazing! You can do so much with it! I love it! And if you've never used it before but you know Photoshop, it's easy as pie - for the basics. After you've mastered the basics, the possibilities are endless!
My knowledge with After Effects is fairly basic. When I do complicated things, I take the "long way" - I keyframe for days and days because I like that part. I enjoy the convinience of the Animation Presets but I prefer the tediousness of keyframing. It gets a little frustrating now and then but so what?! It's YOUR creation. Your own, personal creation with your own little quirks and things. That's what I enjoy.
Every once in a while, I get asked about it and I end up teaching someone the basics. Just the bare bones minimal. No problem there. But many times after that, they all think I'm some sort of idiot and they've surpassed me in After Effects knowledge - which makes them superior to me in every way. It's not just After Effects (or FCP, for that matter) - it could be anything. I took a Deko class just for the company I was working for with 4 other employees. We all learned the same material at the same time and I was given the task of maintaining the Deko machine. For some reason, one person in that group thought he was superior to me (with seniority yeah, sure) but little did he know that I would have to go back and fix his errors from Thursday night on my Friday house-keeping day. Every fucking Friday.
And sure, I was outside of "post-world" for a loooooong time and it's taken some getting used to but, dammit, I'm still fucking awesome at FCP. And I may not use the animation presets in After Effects but, dammit, I still get the mother fucking job done.
So where is this leading? When my friend and I were talking about apprenticeships, I told her that a lot of the "masters" in my field (in every other field, too, I'm sure) is kind of a dick - especially if you're a woman. The attitude always seems like, "Hey you crazy lady, what are you doing out of the kitchen?" Oh fuck no! There is no excuse for that sad, sorry attitude anymore. And what's funny is is that the company I work for now is predominately women! But since I'm the only editor on staff, they've had to out-source. No problems there - except one place where I felt inferior to all the men that do the same things I do except this time, I was telling them what to do as the "producer" of sorts. No problem there, I enjoy bossing people around in my own way, but there was an undertone that reeked of lack of respect. Like I wasn't a good enough editor so they had to pass it off to "real" editors. Fuck that! My bosses didn't realize that the amount of work they have is too much for one person to do alone (7 1 hour+ DVDs to edit and author PLUS in-house online only content and inter-office training sessions, etc). So, the bulk of it was passed off to a post house and the inter-office stuff lands on me. And there's plenty to do. But I just can't shake the lack of respect I'm getting as of late.
When we film for our DVDs, I'm in charge. The in-house folks ask me questions and they ask me my professional opinion. That part makes me feel validated and confident. But when someone comes up behind me and re-words what I say to make it sound like it was their idea, I really fucking hate that shit. Don't argue with me over something that will end up helping you in the end. It really knocks me down and makes me start to wonder if I even picked the right field. But discrimination and bullying like that is everywhere - no matter where you look, even outside the work place.
What people don't realize is that it is a form of bullying. Yeah - high school bullying. It's all petty and shit and I shouldn't let it get to me but it does because at the core, it still fucking hurts. It hurts to be undermined, it hurts when you patronize me, it hurts when you take my fucking ideas as your own, it hurts when you fucking treat me like shit, it hurts when you make me feel inferior and it hurts when you don't respect me.
I love everything about post production but I hate the attitude of the people around me. And it's not as easy as "If you can't beat them, join them" because that's not right. Post production is teamwork. If you can't respect your team, then why do you do it? I have 1000% respect for my "old" team. We have eachothers' backs. We don't pick on one another if we need help somewhere. In fact, we're not too proud to ask for help - we help each other out. But now, I feel like it's being thrown off balance because this lack of respect thing has gone on far enough. I mean, I am fucking turning 30 this year and I'm still dealing with the same kind of discrimination that I was dealing with in elementary, middle and high school. I thought that shit was over and done with but I guess some people just can't grow up.

< / rant >

Sorry for the rant, I just had to put this out somewhere.
Thank you

Love,
Katzi
S.L.Y.A.S.D.I.

PS - This was SLYASDI's 100th blog post! Wowzers meowzers!