Monthly Archives: January 2006

Here comes Frosty (the other one)!

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As a typical immigrant trying zealously to fit in with the natives, I have embraced Boston’s love of ice cream in all seasons; in fact, I love the idea of walking around with a cone on days when the air is colder than the ice cream itself. This, however, is the first time I’ve ever seen an ice cream truck rolling around in the middle of January in Boston, and I confess that I ran out the door shoelaces untied when I heard the tinkle of “The Entertainer” at about 4pm this afternoon. And like the other neighborhood kids, got me some ice cream.

Then the Frosty drove away, thumpety thump thump.

2001… reasons to put out your eyes

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There are some movies so terrifyingly awful that they evoke a fight or flight response, and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of them. Now, I admit to a certain Pavlovian response because I’d seen parts of it while suffering from a fever as a small child, but it’s also quite possible that it was the movie that induced the fever. All I know is that today, having wasted the last 2 hours watching this travesty (I made insufficient use of the FF button), I am still working off the adrenaline and hostility to its profound pretentiousness. The art snobs who have put this film in IMDB‘s top 250 clearly viewed it with medicinal aid, because any normal person’s natural reaction to this film would be to chew off his leather bindings (no one would watch it willingly) and run away, far away. As one of the saner IMDB commentators noted, “3 days after I’d seen
it,
I was still trying to ease my brain with the mantra that it was just a
movie, and not a piece of propaganda from a Russian concentration
camp.”

I Heart Shampoo Girl

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One distinguishing feature of Asian hair salons (or at least the 5-6 I’ve been to) is that as part of the shampoo you also get a nice scalp massage, sort of a watered-down (pun intended) shaitsu. Today my stylist was getting her hair colored and highlighted (which is itself weird, kinda like seeing your dentist get a root canal) so to stall for time the shampoo girl went double overtime. Now I know some find the shiatsu-ish thing pretty annoying, but I consider it the highlight of the haircut. In fact, if it didn’t seem impropritiously fetishistic, I’d totally go for a hair wash just for its own sake. Maybe that’s why people go to spas.