Well, that was a bizarrely crap movie. Must walk the dog, and then either do some work or get myself to bed. I hate having this huge workload hanging over my vacation.

If I'm getting my picture taken (both color and black and white), should I wear my makeup much darker than normal? Advice?

I don't think so. You might be okay for b&w with darker makeup, but you risk looking weird for the colour.

Just highlight your strengths and mask your flaws. Smile, and look natural. And throw a hissy fit if the try to shoot you from your bad side.

Also, make love to the camera.

I'm afraid I caved and bought season 1 of House, today. Also, of Grey's Anatomy. Plus, I went bonkers and got Brokeback Mountain, King Kong and Chronicles of Narnia. Not done with electronic media, even then, I picked up the latest incarnation of Civilization and a Shanghai game. I was feeling a tad splurgey.

I almost got Brokeback Mountain yesterday. But I read somewhere there's going to be a more special version. Not sure if that's true, but I held off and only bought Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Does the current version not have commentary and making-of docs?

Yes, it does, but I haven't watched them yet, only the movie, which made me very sniffly and my daughter very depressed. Only I don't know if, because I wasn't paying attention, I overlooked a widescreen version, but the one I got is pan and scan. Boo.

The third time I watched Brokeback Mountain (The first having been in the UK on the big screen, the second having been on a crappy pirate DVD on my computer) was a few weeks ago, at the British Club in Heliopolis. I mean, clearly it ain't going to be hitting the cinemas here any time soon, but they've got a reasonable DVD collection and a big telly, so they had a Brokeback Mountain night, which was free (although entering the club costs 10LE, ie about a buck and a half). The British Club isn't some kind of Lawrence of Arabia deal, incidentally - it's basically just a converted house, or maybe a villa - sort of warren-like - which isn't actually allowed to have a bar, but gets around it cheerfully by selling tickets rather than alcohol. You then exchange said tickets for alcohol. It's a thing. Anyway, mostly I don't ever go there, because they don't allow Egyptians on the premises unless said Egyptians are actually married to an ExPat (which, WTFF? )...however, in this instance I caved.

My watching experience was in a room that was basically the roof of the building, with makeshift wooden walls and ceiling. (This is common here - we only get rain 4 or 5 times a year, so most all architecture is built on a 'rain, what rain?' theory. People use the top of their building like an extra room, oftentimes, and poorer people build terrifyingly ramshackle shacks on top of them. Sometimes on stilts.)

Within the first few minutes of the movie, it started to rain. Rain poured through the roof in numerous places, but we all sat there anyway, while puddles formed around us. A., the Norwegian Soprano Soloist in my Choir, happened to be there; her English is excellent, and she had no trouble following the thick accents of the characters (unlike my French friend F, who found them, if you'll pardon the term, impenetrable). Luckily for F, however, the movie had English subtitles. Unluckily for the rest of us, the English subtitles had evidently been written by a non-native speaker of English, because they were frequently wrong. Every time a particularly bad one happened, A (Soprano Soloist, not known for her quietness or self restrained) HOWLED with laughter.

Thus was Brokeback Mountain transformed from a sweeping tragic epic into something of a comedy.

(In honour of F, I should mention that after we saw the movie he and my friend K and I hung around for a wee while shooting the breeze and drinking. The call to prayer cropped up in conversation. F asked whether either of us had had big gay sex with a Muslim during the call to prayer, because it was great. Apparently he has a prayer mat in his room. He wins a whole Special Hell of his own for that one, imho.)

Did it, however, have a corrugated tin roof, Fay? You haven't experienced life until you see a movie under a tin roof with no walls during a rain storm.

As for accents, it was even unpenetrable in spots to us! My daughter made me turn the closed captioning off at the beginning of the movie. By the third of fourth time one of us asked, "what did he say," I looked over at her and said, "closed captioning, baby, there's a reason for it."

One of the (several) times my sister saw Brokeback Mountain the sound cut out around one of the pivotal scenes at the end (where Ennis is talking to Jack's widow on the phone) and was replaced by Cher singing The Shoop Shoop Song, all the way through until he leaves Jack's parents' house. There were some pissed homosexuals (and my sister) demanding refunds, let me tell you.

I ate crickets tonight! They were very crunchy, like you'd expect a fried cricket to feel.