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I mean, it's so crowded that it's pretty much useless to try to ride the rides. At around 9pm, Space Mountain was a 190 minute wait (that's over 3 hours!). Or, you could pick up a fastpass for it, if you wanted to return at 2am! No thanks! So crowded that just moving around was a major challenge, with most of the major thoroughfares being shoulder to shoulder traffic jams of people. On most any day at most any place, these kinds of conditions would have people agitated, frustrated, and angry, but at Disneyland, on new years eve, everyone's having a great time.
Sean, Neil, Mirabelle, Justin, Oanh and Lawrence on the Matterhorn
And it was a great time. It wasn't nearly as good as the 2000 year -- that year they had souvenier glow sticks (that were actually just in case the power went out due to the Y2K bug) and countdown clocks and other stuff. This year they still gave out party hats and noise makers, but the really bad thing was that they decided it would be a good idea to start handing these things out at around 6PM. So for about 6 hours straight all you could hear around the park was the constant piercing honk of people blowing on their noise makers. Maybe next year they'll wait until 10 or so to hand them out cuz I know the cast members were getting pretty annoyed with them too :)
But like I said, it was an overall great time, a huge party with about 80,000 people at a place where people wanted to be, that (cost of my annual passport notwithstanding) cost me nothing. Now that's what I call a great party! Also I happened to run into my friend Scott and his girlfriend there too. I had suggested they try coming out there but I didn't expect that they actually would... but they did!
One cool thing -- they recently revamped the Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln attraction. Now it's got this whole preshow thing that happens almost entirely on these wireless headsets they give you -- the technology involved is pretty amazing. It sounds like there are people walking around behind you, talking, chatting with you, even cutting your hair, and it sounds so real you can feel it! Yet you pull the headphones away from your ear and you realize you are sitting in a completely silent auditorium! Amazing! Next time you're at Disneyland, dedicate a few minutes to Mr. Lincoln just to experience this. Even if you don't particularly like the content of the show, I'm sure you'll be glad you were in there just to experience this feeling.
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So
anyway, that was new years eve. Now on to today, new year's day. As you
may or may not know, Koreans have a tradition where you bow and show respect
to your elders, and wish them a prosperous new year. Then (this is the
fun part) they give you money. You might even dress up in traditional
Korean clothing and play a game called "yoot" where you toss some sticks
and move your pieces around a board.
Actually, I characterize "yoot" as being sort of like the Korean equivalent of the Jewish dreidel game. I'm sure it was pretty fun centuries ago, but by today's standards it's a pretty primitave game that no one really plays except on its traditionally associated holiday. But my mom forgot to bring the game with us so we didn't get to play.
Anyway, it's just another good excuse to spend time with the family and have a good time. And the collecting the cash thing ain't so bad either. And since (at least in my family), it's a generational thing -- you only have to give money to people who are generations below you. In other words, your siblings and cousins (no matter how young) don't collect from you. Since I am the oldest out of all the cousins, this puts me in a pretty good position -- I won't have to pay anybody until either my sister or myself have kids! I'll probably be damned close to 30 before I have to pay out a dime! Pretty good deal, eh?
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Anyway, instead of "yoot" which we forgot to bring, we played charades. And ate, and did all that other good stuff. I love spending time with family, it's (almost) always a great time. Fun to play with the kids and everything. And well, family is important. So tomorrow I should be heading back to San Diego, and well, there'll actually be some things about the LA area that I'll miss. Aside from family, there's 88.1 KLON, the best damned real jazz station ever! Oh, and sub $1 gas :)
A pretty damned handsome family, if I do say so myself!
Friday, 4 January 2002
11:59pm
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I'm actually waiting around to see if I can find that Bose Acoustic Wave infomercial on because I am pretty sure that the quality of sound I get out of these Paradigm speakers while watching the infomercial will be better than the system they are actually selling in the infomercial. Also, in other purchase news, I got an Onkyo receiver to go with these speakers, and well, the receiver is pretty good, but the thing I'm really happy about is the remote control.
This is honestly the ///BEST REMOTE EVER, at least, the best out of any remote that ever came with another product (as opposed to specialized home theater remote controls sold separately in order to purposefully control everything)... because this remote really does control everything!! It looks great, feels great, and is able to learn and control everything and anything you want. It comes with built in modes for controlling the receiver, as well as a TV, DVD player, VCR, CD player, Minidisc deck, and satellite and cable TV boxes!
And it learns, so you can use the pre-programmed setting for whatever you have, plus add any obscure features you want using the learning feature! For example, my TV is made by Samsung, and not only can I control all the usual functions with it, I also programmed the remote so that I can switch the display aspect ratio (as it is a 16:9 tv)!! It's amazing, one remote really can control all the different components even though they are all from different manufacturers! It's so great!
Anyway, enough about hardware. Here's a DVD review for your reading pleasure. Today's selection? Apocalypse Now.
Apocalypse
Now
The movie: Again, another movie I rented from Netflix because I should have seen it a long time ago, and never did. This movie was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and was released in 1979. It's based on Conrad's Heart of Darkness but rather than being set on some African river (i think), it was set in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. I read Conrad's story many years ago, back when I was in junior high school, so I don't remember too many details about it except that there was a river, a jungle, and a guy named Mr. Kurtz at the end of that jungle.
In this movie, that Mr. Kurtz is a Colonel Kurtz and he's played by Marlon Brando. Somewhere along the line you run into Robert Duvall who utters the famous line "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." Hey didn't these two guys work together with director Francis Coppola on a little movie called The Godfather? Speaking of which, the guy who played Senator Geary in The Godfather Part 2 had a bit part in this movie. And speaking of bit parts, one Harrison Ford played a small role. And oh yeah, another actor in this movie was one very young "Larry" Fishburne.
All though this movie may have been billed as starring Marlon Brando and Robert Duvall, the real star was Martin Sheen, who plays the guy who is assigned to seek out and kill Col. Kurtz (Brando). This movie was well, wacky, weird, but very cool. In fact, it's one of the very few movies that have ever made me want to watch the "director's commentary" on the DVD, the only other movies being the Godfather DVD collection, also directed by Coppola.
It's rather odd, but really cool in some weird way that I can't really describe right now, but it's definitely worth a watch if for no other reason than to see the increasingly insane madness as you travel along down the river. But yeah, I recommend this movie, you should see it if you haven't already.
The DVD: Some time during the year 2001, Apocalypse Now: Redux was released on DVD with almost an hour's worth of extra footage. I could have rented that version, but I chose not to, as I wanted to see the version that everyone has already seen and thinks is so great. But before I go on, the Redux version is also a new film transfer of supposedly high quality. I haven't seen it though, so I can't make any judgements.
The version I did see was presented in a weird 2.0:1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio... weird not only because it's an odd number, but the original (or so I've read) was a 2.35:1 version, and this one has been cut down a bit. It also had a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack that I suppose was remastered since the original (as far as I can tell from the credits) was in Dolby Stereo.
The film transfer is clean, but 1970's grainy. A blurb I read about the Redux version claims that it has better color, but again, I cannot make any such judgements since that's not the verison I saw. Special features include a theatrical trailer (which was surprisingly encoded anamorphically as well), director's commentary, as well as some text about the production of the movie... and unlike most movies, this movie was actually interesting enough for me to want to actually read that stuff on my TV... this is probably the first movie ever that I've done that on.
So yeah. This is an interesting movie that I think you should see if you already haven't. And the DVD for the most part, just presents the movie without too many extra frills. And of course, if you're a real fan of this movie, there's the Redux version with the extra footage that you might wanna check out. The end.