June sucks

June has been an awful month for me. The windshield on my car cracked. One of my rear tires got a hole in it. We were hit with a hail storm last weekend that destroyed part of our tomato plants. There's another hail storm that is supposed to roll through today. Then there were some personal problems with neighbors as well. And now I have some sort of summer cold that might possibly be the flu. (No, don't be freaking out that I have the swine flu or anything. I'm not sick enough that I'm going to die or anything.) So, The Geek Within is officially on hiatus until June is over. Luckily, that's only tomorrow ^_^ Goodbye June! You suck!

The State of The Geek

The domain for TGW has been renewed for yet another year. This month marks the second anniversary of The Geek. OK, technically, the anniversary was back on June 1. Way back in 2007, I was migrating all of my reviews and things over from my Vox account. I haven't been watching nearly as many jdoramas since then and that is something I need to fix. So here are some plans for the future: * Watch and review more jdoramas. Even the sucky ones need to be talked about. Possibly retool the format for jdorama reviews.

* Talk more about music. I love music and I've gotten away from talking about it.

* Get back to reviewing video games. I haven't played a lot of games lately. Though I shouldn't just talk about the ones I play. I should talk about the ones my husband plays too.

I will gladly accept any ideas for any other topics you'd like me to talk about. I'm currently into Asian BJD (ball joint dolls) so I can always talk about my experience with various types of dolls.

JDorama review: Kamikaze Girls

shimotsumamonogatari Title: Shimotsuma Monogatari Also known as: Kamikaze Girls Release date: 2004 Genre: Slice of life Cast: Fukada Kyoko, Anna Tsuchiya Plot: Momoko (Fukada) is a Lolita girl. Ichiko (Tsuchiya) is a delinquent. This is the story of their friendship. What is good: The cinematography is beautiful. What is bad: Tsuchicya's acting seems very forced and fake. Letter rating: C Overall: As a general rule, I'm excited to see live action Japanese movies get licensed in the United States. Unfortunately, for every Death Note, there's a Kamikaze Girls. The movie isn't completely awful. I did manage to get through it entirely. However, it is dragged out and dull. While you would like the characters to better themselves, you don't really care about them and, for the most part, you'd prefer if they just left each other alone for once. The ending is very sweet...it just seems to take forever to get there.

JDorama review: Mop Girl

mopgirl Title: Mop Girl Broadcast dates: 10/12/07 - 12/14/07 Number of episodes: 10 Genre: Mystery Comedy Cast: Kitagawa Keiko, Tanihara Shosuke Plot: Momoko (Kitagawa) starts her new job at a small funeral services company. She soon finds that she has the ability to go back in time when she touches a precious object of someone who was wrongly killed. What is good: The interaction between the characters was pretty cute. What is bad: The ending felt unfinished. Letter rating: C+ Overall: I started watching this because Kitagawa played my favorite senshi, Sailor Mars, in the live action Sailor Moon series, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. She's not a fabulous actress but she is definitely getting better as time goes on. Unfortunately, the role of Momoko is dull. She's klutzy and beyond dumb. There are many times when she could have solved a problem on her own. Instead, she ran to Otomo (Tanihara). Then, at the end, when they show the surprise relationship between Momoko and Otomo, the story doesn't go anywhere with it. It actually gets ignored completely. On one hand, I'd like to have a special episode to tie everything up. On other hand, the story isn't really worthy of an extra episode.

Entertain the kiddies

Ah, Monday. This weekend wasn't nearly long enough. My daughter had dress rehearsal for her dance classes, which took up our entire Saturday. Next week is the recital, which will also take up an entire Saturday. the teachers at the studio ask the parents to bring something for the kids to do while they aren't dancing. There aren't any televisions in the dancers' waiting area so we're kinda left to our own devices. (I volunteer to help backstage.) I generally bring coloring books and crayons. I think last year I brought those magic pen books where the ink 'magically' shows up when you use the pen. Other than that, I'm out of ideas for inexpensive and clean ways to entertain the kids. We're talking about kids aged 7 to about 10. Ideas gladly accepted!

Dead Like Me

I finished watching Dead Like Me last week. That was a really funny series. The movie was pretty terrible though. Anyway, one of my favorite parts of the series was when Happy Times had the emergency drill and someone had made grilled cheese with the AED defibrillator. I can't imagine that they would have made a particularly tasty sandwich but it was still funny seeing the melted cheese stuck between the paddles. I'm so sad that the series is over (yeah, I know, it's been like five years and I should get over it.) So, I need a new series to watch on DVD. Any suggestions?