Career Path

In the space of a couple of hours last night I had my thoughts on jobs and what they mean for the people who do them challenged. Perhaps it's better to say that the subject came up and I gave it minimal thought. Yeah, that seems a bit more like it.

I met a Swiss watchmaker for Bulgari. Very very cool guy, but his reaction to my reaction to his job was interesting. When I he told me, I commented "Wow, that's really cool!". He looked at me with just the slightest hint of exasperation and said "Everyone says that, I don't know why."
So what is it that makes meeting a Swiss watchmaker so damn cool? I think it's the idea of living a stereotype and also the idea that this guy can get inside the guts of something and rebuild it blindfolded. That has enormous entertainment value for me, though I'm sure he'd get sick of me getting drunk and pulling him out as a party favour.
"Hey look guys, it's a Swiss watchmaker! I'm going to smash this watch, blindfold him and watch him put it back together. The book is now open - opening bets start at $10!"... I'm really not a very good friend am I?

In case you need instructions on repairing your watch :


I also met a senior purchasing officer for Panasonic. Nerdy, petite, the whole librarian thing going for her . She revealed to me that she's also a Body Combat instructor. But wha..?! Yes, a body combat instructor. It reminded me so much of the Clark Kent change into Superman that I was distracted all night. Mild-mannered purchasing officer by day, microphone-toting, spandex-wearing combat instructor by night. I wonder if she gets her own phone booth with the gig.

In case you need to know exactly what body combat is here's a random guy in red trackies laying the moves :


So in the space of two hours I see someone living the stereotype and someone blatantly flouting the laws of accepted convention. Sigh... people are naughty for messing with my mind like this.

Oh yes, and here's a Superman changing in a phonebox. I like it when he "flies".

Pinocchio the movie star!

I went to see Jumper today, because that's what we self-confessed geeks do. The previews looked fun, mixing the special effects from the Matrix sequels with the Nightcrawler teleportation effect from X-Men 2. I saw my first preview for this about 6 months ago. Now the interesting thing about this is that the previews involved a LOT of teleportation which is natural when you're marketing a movie to the comic and sci-fi geeks. Thus you didn't see a lot of the main characters in close up, except Samuel L who was there to give the movie some "cred" if that's indeed what he does. I only found out about 2 weeks ago that this film actually stars Anakin Skywalker himself - Hayden Christensen.

Now I recently sat through a couple of seasons of Entourage so maybe my mind is bent towards the behind the scenes drama that goes into marketing and selling a movie. It's interesting that at no point in the marketing for Jumper did they shout out that two actors that starred in part of the, arguably, most successful film series of all time were in the film. Is Christensen's reputation that terrible that you wouldn't use him as a factor in selling the film? Honestly, he wouldn't sell me. I wanted to see this because it had dudes teleporting and I'm kind of easy to sell on stuff like that. But Christensen really is, if it's possible, more wooden in this film than he was in the Star Wars films. So I wouldn't play up the fact that he is in this film so naturally, as often happens with films that have Samuel L as a co-star, it rests on Shaft's shoulders and special effects to sell the film. Deep Blue Sea anyone?

Though I do have an irrational love for Deep Blue Sea. How can you possibly go past a film in which they genetically alter sharks to be bigger and smarter and then expect everything will be ok!


Movie News :
- Hayden Christensen will be the lead character in a film adaptation of Neuromancer. Crap crap crap. Now I really don't want this film to happen.

- There's a film adaptation of one of my favourite books of all time coming - The Master and Margarita.