Movies, movies and more movies...

I too have unabashedly stolen this interesting little meme (Ok it’s not exactly little but is interesting) from Voenix Rising who stole it from here. Using the Entertainment Weekly list of the top 100 movies from the last 25 years:

• Bold the movie if you’ve seen it
• Put asterisks next to the movies you’ve seen and really liked.
• Put a line through the movies you saw and hated. (I couldn't figure out how to put lines through them even after i copied this from Word so I coloured them red)
  

I’ve seen 57 of the Top 100 films. I hated 16 of the 57 that I saw for reasons from to boring, to gory or IMHO just plain stupid. I won’t tell you which is which; I’ll let you guess. I’ve also taken this process one step further and I’ve put movies in italics that I started to watch and finally just gave up on and stopped watching because I just could not be bothered to finish. Once again I did so for a variety of reasons but the main reason was I just could not get interested even though I’d heard how great the movie was supposed to be so said the critics. I usually find I’m a better critic when it comes to the movies I choose to see. If a critic says some movie is a “fantastic, must see, Oscar potential” movie I am a bit leery if not down right positive I won’t like the movie, but if they say the hated the movie then I’m pretty sure I will love the movie and I usually do. Anyway, this was my take on this meme. If you want to try it feel free. Enjoy…

1. Pulp Fiction 1994
2. The Lord of the Rings trilogy 2001-03 **
3. Titanic 1997
   
4. Blue Velvet 1986
5. Toy Story 1995
6. Saving Private Ryan 1998
7. Hannah and Her Sisters 1986
8. The Silence of the Lambs 1991 **
9. Die Hard 1988
10. Moulin Rouge 2001
11. This Is Spinal Tap 1984
12. The Matrix 1999 **
13. GoodFellas 1990
14. Crumb 1995
15. Edward Scissorhands 1990 **
16. Boogie Nights 1997
17. Jerry Maguire 1996
18. Do the Right Thing 1989
19. Casino Royale 2006 **
20. The Lion King 1994
21. Schindler’s List 1993
22. Rushmore 1998
23. Memento 2001
24. A Room With a View 1986
25. Shrek 2001
26. Hoop Dreams 1994
27. Aliens 1986 **
28. Wings of Desire 1988
29. The Bourne Supremacy 2004 **
30. When Harry Met Sally… 1989
31. Brokeback Mountain 2005 **
32. Fight Club 1999
33. The Breakfast Club 1985 **
34. Fargo 1996
35. The Incredibles 2004
36. Spiderman 2 2004
37. Pretty Woman 1990
38. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 2004
39. The Sixth Sense 1999 **
40. Speed 1994
41. Dazed and Confused 1993
42. Clueless 1995
43. Gladiator 2000
44. The Player 1992
45. Rain Man 1988
46. Children of Men 2006
47. Men in Black 1997
48. Scarface 1983
49. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2000
50. The Piano 1993
51. There Will Be Blood 2007
52. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad 1988 **
53. The Truman Show 1998
54. Fatal Attraction 1987
55. Risky Business 1983
56. The Lives of Others 2006
57. There’s Something About Mary 1998
58. Ghostbusters 1984 **
59. L.A. Confidential 1997
60. Scream 1996 **
61. Beverly Hills Cop 1984 **
62. sex, lies and videotape 1989
63. Big 1988
64. No Country For Old Men 2007
65. Dirty Dancing 1987
66. Natural Born Killers 1994
67. Donnie Brasco 1997
68. Witness 1985
69. All About My Mother 1999
70. Broadcast News 1987
71. Unforgiven 1992
72. Thelma & Louise 1991
73. Office Space 1999
74. Drugstore Cowboy 1989
75. Out of Africa 1985 **
76. The Departed 2006
77. Sid and Nancy 1986
78. Terminator 2: Judgment Day 1991
79. Waiting for Guffman 1996
80. Michael Clayton 2007
81. Moonstruck 1987 **
82. Lost in Translation 2003
83. Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn 1987
84. Sideways 2004
85. The 40 Year-Old Virgin 2005
86. Y Tu Mamá También 2002
87. Swingers 1996
88. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery 1997
89. Breaking the Waves 1996
90. Napoleon Dynamite 2004
91. Back to the Future 1985 **
92. Menace II Society 1993
93. Ed Wood 1994
94. Full Metal Jacket 1987
95. In the Mood for Love 2001
96. Far From Heaven 2002 **
97. Glory 1989
98. The Talented Mr. Ripley 1999 **
99. The Blair Witch Project 1999
100. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut 1999

Friday night at the movies...

Like last Friday night I have a glorious quote from a past movie. I'll tell you who said it and in which Movie and you have to quess the second one.

First up we have :

"I'd ask you to stay and have a drink but I'm afraid you might accept"

Character: Lynn Markham
Played by: Joan Crawford
Movie: Female On the Beach

Now your guess:

"I'd like to take you south of my border and north of my garter"

Character :???
Played by:???
Movie:???

The answer to last Friday's quote is:

"If you look at her carefully, there are so many lines on her face you could drive a train on it"

Character: Marina Rudd
Played by: Elizabeth Taylor
Movie: The Mirror Crack'd

It's the weekend. Enjoy...

Back to back to back...

Well we're back from Sydney and I've seen the doctor. To make a long story short, we have to go back to Sydney next Thursday. I will be checking into hospital on Friday morning at 6:30 am to have lower back surgery. Since it's a Friday I don't suppose much will happen over the weekend and I'm looking to be there based on that until at least Tuesday but more likely Wednesday. I'm not sure if the doctor will restrict my flying or not but if he doesn't then I'll be back home ASAP.

I have to have the surgery as the opening were the nerves run through up my spinal column is narrowing which is affecting the overall nerve patterns. This is the reason I'm having so much pain from my back and down my leg not to mention I'm losing sensation in my left leg all together. We are also hoping that as an added bonus this will give me a little extra relief from the pain associated with my peripheral neuropathy in my feet. Only time will tell if that wish is granted.

As for James' mum, she is holding her own. She needs to gain so much weight but she has no appetite. we took her out to eat several times and she did eat but other than that she eats nothing. We will work on he some more when we are up there next week. She's a fighter and we will fight along with her as long as she wants to fight.

So that's the excitement around here. I'll still post a few useless post between now and next week until then I'm out of here. Enjoy...

One more thing before I go..

If you haven't noticed, I finally got around to changing the banner and background. I know the background is a bit stark but I thought what better colour to represent winter. I'll be back soon. Enjoy...

Hi Ho Hi Ho it's off to Sydney we go...

Well, we're off to Sydney for a few days. I have two doctors appointments on Monday as well as another MRI scheduled of my lower back to see if the problems with my lower back got any worse since I was in hospital a few months ago. If it is worse than we will start a course of steroids to hopefully reduce some of the swelling on the two disc in question. If that doesn't work then I have two options steroid injections or surgery. I have no plans to have the injections because they are way to painful and basically I'm not a big one on pain. I'm sure it will all be just fine.

The other thing the doctor will want to know is how I'm doing since we increased one of my medication a month ago. All I can tell him is that I fall asleep a lot more often and especially whenever I'm stationary for more than ten minutes or sometimes even in mid conversation. I actually fell asleep the other night for an hour sitting on the toilet. Good thing I didn't fall off and hit my head on the bathtub. On top of that I never did what I went in there to do.

They other strange thing is I have these little like mini sleeps where I'm asleep but not asleep and I have these kind of little dreams. When I start to wake up I start to act upon the dream as if it was real. It's hard to explain but extremely freaky. Anyway, I'll ask the doctor about it. We've decide that it was really a good idea that I gave up driving. You can only imagine.

The rest of our time in Sydney will be spent with James' parents so that James gets to spend some more time with his mum. I think it's really important as we don' know how long she will be able to fight this cancer. The doctors said 6-12 months. We are all hoping for 12 and maybe more who knows others have down it.

Okay, I best go finish packing. James is at work. He will be exhausted after doing 4 shifts in a row and it's been a busy three days so far in the Emergency Room. Maybe tonight they will get a break. At least James is on triage so he gets to sit down for a little bit in between patients.

I'll let you know when we get back and who knows I may even have some pictures to share as I'm taking the camera with me. Until then you take care and just Enjoy...

Winter settles in...

Well it's taken a few weeks but winter has finally made it's self known here in the land down under or at least here in Tasmania. We had two of the coldest mornings so far this winter. The past two days both mornings were below freezing and both days never even reached their expected highs, missing them each day by 4 degrees, which if you translate those numbers from Celisius to Farenheit it means we missed the mark by 7 degrees.

There was frost on the lawn and in the garden. We even had a bit of ice on the windshield of the car to go along with a nice coating of frost that covered the entire top of the car. The frost was so thick on the car it looked more like snow as it was about 1/4 in thick. It was really pretty cold. I know it's nothing as cold as it gets in say Minnesota but then again now where gets as cold as Minnesota, unless maybe Winnipeg Canada, or Siberia, or let me think... Oops sorry, I started to wander. Old age will do that along with a heavy dose of pian medication.

Where was I? Ah yes, it's winter here. Anyway, so since we figured winter has finally settled in we decided it was time to winterise the garden. We got stuck into raking up the last of the dead leaves, trimming a few trees, and pruning back the roses etc., etc. To be honest, James did most of the winterising. My contribution, other than giving moral support, was planting some new pansy's we bought at the nursery. Hey, planting pansy's is hard work. I had to plant like 50 new plants. OK maybe it was only 10 but by the time I had cleared out all of the pots, recyclde the old soil, refilled them with new soil and actually planted the flowers I'm telling you I almost broke a sweat. On top of all that did I fail to mention having to decide which pansy's were going in which pots and in which colour combination. I had to take at least 4 hot tea breaks. Let's not forget I also found time to put together a new pot of herbs to put in the kitchen. Let me tell you there was some manual labour going on my friend, mostly on James' part but none the less it happened.

After it was all done it looked really nice. You know even when all of the leaves are off the trees (except for the conifers of course) and the majority of your flowers have gone to sleep, there is still something to be said about a nice clean, tidied up, pruned back garden topped of with a bit of extra new mulch to protect the bulbs and to minimise the weeds, which although not as prolific as in summer still seem to be the only thing that grows in the garden on going. James worked really hard and I just kind of put bows on everything to make it all look pretty. I'm just sayin'.

Mosaic...

I stole this from this most interesting blogger. I agree with him that the procedure is labor intensive but the output is quite interesting I also agree with him that I could show you where i got the pictures based on my answers but Iwill let them speak for themselves. As the say "A picture speaks a thousand words" So here how it works:

The concept:

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page of results, pick one image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers.

The questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food? right now?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. What is your favorite drink?
7. What is your dream vacation?
8. What is your favorite dessert?
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. What is one word that describes you?
12. What is your Flickr name

Here's how mine ended up. Enjoy...

Friday night at the movies...

Well it will be Friday when I post this even though it's still Thursday for most of you so you'll just have to work with me on this one. So I'm going to try and see if i can start a new regular feature which will be "Friday night at the movies..." ("FNATM..."). Now what this will entail is really something very simple; each Friday I will post two or more quotes that have appeared in a movie (not necessarily from the same movie). I will tell you from what movie and which star/character uttered the immortal lines, keeping in mind that theses lines are that said the line. Occasionally I'll leave that information out and see if you know who said what.

So to start off the very first "FNATM..." we will have one with all the information and one without everything you needed to know and you can tell me where the quote is from and who said these great and sometimes scathingly scripted lines. Enjoy...

"Paris is for lovers. Maybe that's why I stayed only thirty-five minutes"

Character: Linus Larrabee Played by: Humphrey Bogat
Movie: Sabrina 1954

This one is for you to guess

"If you look at her carefully, there are so many lines on her face you could drive a train on it"

Character: ??? Played by: ???
Movie: ???

Pride...

A lovely man named Kelly definitely wears his pride on his sleeve. (His Gay Pride that is) Every year Kelly post a picture depicting Gay Pride in some form or fashion and then he asks fellow bloggers to also post the same picture. Once the picture is posted the the blogger just lets Kelly know so he can add a link to a list of the bloggers who are participating. This year Kelly has also asked each participant to write a little something about what makes them proud or maybe they can write about when they can out or even why the feel like they can't come out. So in honour of Gay Pride month and in honour of Kelly here's my reason for being proud.

• I'm Proud for surviving 22 years being HIV+ (I plan to continue for many more)
• I'm Proud for the support of my family and friends from the very start and in the future
  
• I'm Proud to have known so many good, kind, and sweet people who touched my heart and allowed me to be a small part of their lives before their lives were abruptly ended and taken from this world
• I'm Proud of a community that so valiantly rallied around all of those friends and loved ones when no one else would
• I'm Proud to see and know that there is a community that continues to fight for the right to be treated and seen as more than second class citizens and to fight for the right to be treated as equals
  
• I'm Proud to have been a part of all of this and more and to know that I will continue to do so in the future.

You're too kind...

I truly appreciate all of the recent comments and I am taking them all on board so from now on you get what ever I've got to say; be it good, bad, ugly, pretty, angry, happy, optimistic or pessimistic, which ever it may be you can be guaranteed that I will be telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God, Buddha, Allah, Shiva who ever..

Now I need to first follow through on a recent tagging, by this lovely man, that occurred back on June 4th. so I'm a little slow on the uptake. Unlike a lot of you I read every blog on my list. OK I'm kidding. :) Ok no I'm not, I actually I do read them all. I have way to much time on my hands. Anyway, here's how the meme works, although I must first notate that the rules were changed slightly from the originals but I'm doing as I'm told:

Step One – pull out a book on the book shelf.
Step Two – go to page 123.
Step Three – read and write out the 5th sentence.
Step Four – tag 5 more people.

1) My Book is "The Year of Living Biblically" A. J. Jacobs

2 & 3) " An ancient Israelite sect called the Essenes dressed in white, as do some kabbalists."

4) I'm not a tagger as I learned from last time I did such a thing so I won't be tagging a single sole. Now on the other hand if you want to try this then I say give it a go. Don't forget to let me know if you did try so I can have a sticky beak as to what you came up with. Enjoy...

I'm still waiting...

...or maybe I'm not. Maybe there's not enough of you out there that want to leave me a suggestion/comment as to what I might write on my blog. I guess that speaks volumes. Maybe I'm just being a big baby and throwing a tantrum because no one wants to play with me. Well except for that one guy and maybe he should distance himself as he wouldn't want to be known as the guy that played with the kid no one else wants to play with because he doesn't fit in. Don't get me wrong this is not a pity party even if it sounds like one, believe me I learned to play with myself a long time ago. (HaHa I made a funny)

Maybe I shouldn't have expected anymore of a response than what I got and it was my fault for expecting/assume that people would respond. Maybe as I said before in an earlier post I am just a bitter, angry, jaded old man that was trying to be part of this whole blogging thing. Maybe I'm just not cool enough. I've never posted any pictures of hot, lean, ripped, half naked men with sweat pouring off them in all the right places. I don't talk about all the kinky sex or dates I've had in the past few weeks/days. At the same time I don't tear into the current administration in control of the USofA. Although mind you I have plenty to say but to be honest it's all been said before by so many other bloggers all saying the same things so who needs one more blogger to rehash the same old news. Maybe I'm just not a good enough writer to come up with witty repartee and double entendres to fill a few paragraphs.

To be honest with you I don't know what I'm waiting for, and I probably never will. As I said I could start showing half naked pictures pictures, begin writing huge rants on Bush Jr. trash Madonnas latest CD or even write up some of my sexual escapades (believe me you don't want to know as they are way to vanilla) and really it's all been done before. So why bother? I might as well just keep putting out my plain nondescript stuff about everyday life, as boring as it may seem to many but in reality it's what most of life is about. At the end of the day I write about what is happening in my life and if that's boring to you, then I can't help you. But don't say I never gave you the chance to have me write something else .

You tell me what to write...

So here's the deal as usual I'm having a huge dose of writers block so I've decide to turn to you my loyal reader, fans, friends, buddies and yes even those of you that occasionally pass this way by accident to tell me what to write about. What do you want to know? For example, would you like to hear about my coming out, my first gay date, or what it was like growing up going to catholic school with old bitter nuns. Maybe you'd like to hear all about the time I had sex in the parking lot (no never mind I forgot my mom reads this too. Sorry mom believe me that sex thing in the pool never happened. Really never, not even once.)

Let's see what else might you want to know. You could maybe ask me about how I met my current husband and ended up here in the land down under, although that could be a really long story that would have to be broken up into several post or I would have to leave out a lot of the juicer parts. Maybe you'd like hear me rant and rave on about what it's been and has been being a jaded cynical old man living with HIV for 22 years (no that one's even to depressing for me). Alternatively you might have a list of odd lot questions you'd like to ask. I'll take those.

Anyway you get the idea. You ask what you want or tell me what/you want and I in return will attempt to give you a nice readable post full of witty prose, edge of your seat stories that will have you asking how did he ever mange his way out of that, or at worst you'll get the answers to a list of things you never knew about me nor ever wanted to know but will have to read anyway because someone else wanted to know and I promised to answer.

Put on your thinking caps or just steal one of the examples I gave earlier and ask away. As I said I'm open for any suggestions, except for the sex in pool thing. You can ask me anything you want. You can leave your suggestions or questions in the comment box or if the question list is too long or if you wish to remain anonymous you can always send me your suggestions via email me at agardner@ozemail.com.au. I'm waiting....