Thanks for the info about that song. Now I remember the Jimmy Cliff version. And Cool Runnings. :)

Welcome, freshman and alia. People often tell me I'm quite different in person, which basically means I'm manic when blogging, and antisocial everywhere else. Remember that well. :P

It's 11pm, and I'm sitting in my room, cat happily perched next to me, Michael Buble playing in the background. Aaaaaah, life is good. :D


Kingdom Hospital

The series premiered on cable last Sunday, and unfortunately, almost put me to sleep. Despite all the hype, my initial excitement soon gave way to bewilderment, then irreversible boredom.

Produced by Stephen King and Lars Von Triers, with a potentially riveting storyline that combines supernatural and medical components, the show made the huge mistake of thinking audiences would forgive and forget its glaring loopholes and ( at times ) completely unbelievable plotlines.

In the pilot, for example, a man is hit by a distracted van driver while jogging, then mercilessly left in the middle of nowhere, paralyzed and bleeding. There's even some rather, um, interesting "conversation" between the conflicted culprit and his victim ( whose thoughts are beamed to us Look-Who's-Talking style ).

Okaaaaay, I think. Surely this can't get any worse.

WRONG. The next few minutes left me -- to put it mildly -- befuddled. Enter weird-looking creature -- ie. an aardvark, for crying out loud! The animal -- which is later revealed to belong to the ghost of a little girl -- carries on some telepathic exchange with the injured guy, then helpfully drags him to a more prominent location, where he's rescued by a passing truck driver and brought to ( you guessed it ) Kingdom Hospital.

And here's where the overall kookiness escalates to massively overblown proportions.

First, the logo is horrendous. Kinda like 2 blood-red scythes or some horned demon in abstract, ugh. If I were a patient, I wouldn't step into an institution emblazoned with a symbol as gruesome as this even if my life depended on it. Drive on! No, don't you DARE stop the ambulance! I don't care if my guts are spilling out of my abdomen!

Second, the whole place appears to be some Third World / rural hospital from hell. As far as I could see, there's only one security guard on duty ( who spends most of his time reading porn ), and the medical staff looks even more confused than the patient on certain occasions. The only familar face that I can pick out is Andrew McCarthy -- whom, I'm a little embarrassed to admit, I harboured a huge crush on way back when I was a teenager :) -- who plays a neurosurgeon (?) cum borderline sociopath, if his demeanour during a craniotomy is anything to go by.

But that's all right. Really. I'm all for quirks. I love Joel Fleischman the uptight Jewish doctor who was dumped in Alaska in Northern Exposure. I adore Jeffrey Geiger the warbling cardiothoracic surgeon with lots of skeletons in his closet, and the sexy yet dangerously gung-ho orthopod Billy Cronk ( Chicago Hope ). And of course, plastic surgeon Christian Troy from Nip/Tuck, who's so obviously worthy of a woman's disgust, but gets our hormones raging nonetheless, dammit. :)

However... sigh. McCarthy did nothing for me in this thankless role. And the script leaves much to be desired. By the end of the first hour, I'd fidgeted so much my mom thought I had a rash, and I finally decided to call it a night.

If you happen to watch it and disagree with my review, feel free to state your reasons. I'm always open to conversion, like with Sex And The City. :)

The Bachelorette 2

The new season has begun! I'm such a sucker for this show. :P

Meredith from The Bachelor 4 has the honour of being the star this time round. Not the prettiest of the lot, but radiant and classy, and highly sought after by 25 eager beavers. The standards remain high, and this bunch of men far outshines the group Trista Rehn faced. Successful, sophisticated, good-looking, charming -- why aren't these people married?!?!

I know who she picked -- read that somewhere -- and he's certainly a tasty specimen, haha. :D One of the other contenders ( who may be a runner-up ) looks like Viggo Mortensen, ack! Some women have all the luck! :P

And speaking of Viggo, I've been catching up with his film career lately. Besides Hidalgo, I also rented A Walk On The Moon and 28 Days. The latter two are pre-LOTR, and I just don't understand why he never made it big then. Rugged good looks, flawless physique, lovely voice, gentlemanly manners, soulful blue eyes ( my favourite features :)) -- hello? Anyone paying attention? Glad he made it anyhow. Harrison Ford hit stardom relatively late as well, but is none the worse for it.

Getting late. More next time.