{"id":348,"date":"2007-03-12T02:20:31","date_gmt":"2007-03-12T07:20:31","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-03-12T02:20:31","modified_gmt":"2007-03-12T07:20:31","slug":"nipa-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/?p=348","title":{"rendered":"Nipa Fish"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday night I finally checked out the “Filipino Fast Food” restaurant down the street. It was awesome, I ate several dishes that I honestly never thought I’d taste again. Now I can have them whenever I want (and fast!).<\/p>\n

As a lot of you know – the previous owner of my condo cut a hole in the wall of the bedroom to put a tv in there (the other side of the wall is the inside of the walk-in closet). I watch tv on the computer – so I moved the TV to the living room. That left me with a big framed hole in my wall. I asked around at a few local pet stores until I found someone that could build me a custom tank. After about two and a half weeks I now have the tank and everything else in place. Now two little goldfishies are swimming around half in my wall and half in my closet. <\/p>\n

See photos below (I couldn’t find the “before” photo…sorry).<\/p>\n

Outside (interior of bedroom)
\n<\/p>\n

Inside (interior of my closet)
\n<\/p>\n

Oh yeah – and we went to see 300<\/a> at The Bridge<\/a> down by LAX<\/a> after eating chile relleno<\/a> at On The Border<\/a>. It was awesome. The movie, the food and the theater. The parking, however, was terrible.<\/p>\n

About the film: While 300 was hyped as overly violent and “gory” it wasn’t disgustingly gory in the “Saw<\/a>” sense. There was little in the film that differed from the “gore” in Lord of the Rings (decapitation, limbs sheared off, etc.), so I was surprised. The special effects were very good and put to good use. Although the entire film was filmed in green screen there are few times where it becomes obvious. Even though the film was a great artistic achievement – I had a few problems with it. They are both philosophical and perhaps can be overlooked by others – but Gerard Butler’s (Leonidas) Scottish accent colored his speech in an often very non-Greek way. It seemed strange for the King of a society hell-bent on being culturally homogeneous to speak with an accent acquired in the potato fields of Scotland and not the wheat fields of Greece (Sparta specifically).<\/p>\n

Which leads me to my next point… Does anyone else see similarities between the Spartans and the Nazis? The film opens by explaining any baby with “impurities” is inspected and thrown off a cliff. Societal engineering if I’ve ever heard it. Also – the spartan leaders believe in ancient prophets, magic, etc… Much like Hitler’s fascination with the occult. From the very beginning of the film I had to wonder if I was really supposed to be rooting for the Spartans. After all Ephialtes (the deformed Spartan outcast) is cast out by Leonidas and taken in by the Persians… so… we should side with the Spartans and believe that disfigured people should be thrown off cliffs at birth? Towards the end of the film I found myself more wanting to see Sparta get taken over than see the 300 prevail.<\/p>\n

Which leads me to a third point. What happened in the year between the last two scenes? Surely once the 300 had been dispatched King Xerxes would have just marched into Sparta. So… how did Dilios stall Xerxes for a year in order to rouse up 40,000 Greek warriors? Perhaps I misunderstood the narrator, but I swear I heard the word “year.”<\/p>\n

Oh- and are we going to have a sequel about Theron’s bastard child?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday night I finally checked out the “Filipino Fast Food” restaurant down the street. It was awesome, I ate several dishes that I honestly never thought I’d taste again. Now I can have them whenever I want (and fast!). As a lot of you know – the previous owner of my condo cut a hole […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andrewlorenzlong.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}