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I'd like to dedicate this post to my favorite team: The Golden Girls of La Bamba,

When the event was kicked off a number of people doubted it could be delivered. Right up until zero hour neither myself, nor the Bar owners, were 100% sure how it would turn out. It would have only taken, if the media were present, one bad incident for them to focus upon to undermine all the work and sensationalise it. Of course I am delighted it went off so well with no hitches nor incidents. One our professional photographers will be posting selected photos on a proactive media web site that distributes photos to all media. An article will be published (soon) in Pattaya Mail with accompanying edited photos. I have written/registered the Event with Guiness Book of records - awaiting reply - it is the firts LadyBoy Water VolleyBall event in the world and Ananconda are world Champions! Video was taken BUT it needs a great deal of work as so many BMs are uncomfortable about their appearance. It is far more difficult to 'photo-shop' video. In many ways I think the privacy issue is over-reacted to. It was a Fund raising event - 1/3 of attendees are not 'into' LBs but attended as it was for Charity. Members of Rotary club with wives, my neighbours etc. Let us take one step at a time. It was a resounding success but not many would have forecast that belief. We now have a solid base on which to build. Let us not put the roof up before the walls! My position, this time, was that we would control all media in house.

and the unique snick cam ™ shots

I watched Lana's speech this morning, and really enjoyed it. She's one hell of a funny girl, and a great talker (as she says). Well worth the 10 minutes I spent watching it. Went to see Cloud Atlas tonight, here's a few thoughts. First, I went to see it in Imax. But the theater I saw it in wasn't truly an Imax theater. Instead of the super large film format (larger than 70mm) that Imax was founded on, this was an Imax "DLP" theater - it used digital light projection instead of film, so it was playing a digital copy of the movie with no "film" per se. And it sucked. There were visible pixels, and the usual razor-sharp Imax image was noticeably fuzzy. Letters, as in the opening credits, were like watching an old NTSC tube television. I was shocked. I'd been hoodwinked, as the theater complex also includes the REAL Imax theater that I've seen all my favorites at, but it was showing something different and we were shuttled off to this smaller theater that uses the DLP process instead. I spent the first 20 minutes wondering if it was worth demanding a refund and leaving, but figured I'd never get around to getting to another theater to see it if I did. If you have the chance, see it either in TRUE Imax or in a 35mm projection, but make sure you don't get suckered into this DLP bullshit. Second, I loved the movie. It definitely took some getting used to, and the idea of having all the cast play various characters in different time periods (and sometimes different races and genders) took a while to begin working. At first, I couldn't help but be distracted by the makeups and accents. But once it got going, it actually became fun working out who was who. To be honest, I didn't know what was happening or what was being said about 1/3 of the time, but it didn't spoil my enjoyment. The result was that I was actually moved by the denouement, and loved the message. I loved the overlapping stories and the score was amazing, as was the script. The reference to Soylent Green was great, and obviously was well-placed as it actually figured into the movie in 2 places. One of my favorite moments was one that I think went unnoticed by most of the audience. Keith David (below) is one of my favorite character actors, and plays a security specialist in the 1970's portion. The film leaps forward in time and you see he's playing the leader of the future rebellion. But if you look very closely, you'll notice it's not him - it's actually Tom Hanks, in makeup as him, with Keith David's voice dubbed in. Bizarre but cool. If you cannot suspend disbelief, the makeups and character shifts will kill you. But if you can see beyond that conceit, it's one heck of a ride.