Froodee

Living. Blogging.

Tripping on Tattoos, Makeover Shows and Nelly Furtado

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While winding up for working on some other writing projects, I started flipping through the channels, looking for something informative or entertaining to watch. I was thinking of going for either BBC, CNN or a documentary-type thing when, when I flipped to ETC, I spotted Jay Manuel, whom I had adored on Tyra Banks’ America’s Next Top Model, and decided to stay on.

The show, I realized, is named “Style Her Famous,” and since I’m a little too lazy to look it up right now, I think it seems to be another makeover show. Don’t we all love makeovers?
[Read more…]

Why Travel?

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From the good old book of words, traveling or to travel is to go from one place to another, as on a trip; a journey. However, we have different reasons, reactions, expectations and experiences when it comes to traveling. In this article, I will neither write about favorite beach getaways nor about rich historical sites. No, there are plenty more opportunities for those. Instead, in this article, I will write about traveling itself. And perhaps one of the most basic questions anyone would ever ask is, “Why travel?”

When I was younger, I’ve always thought of traveling as a privilege few can afford. Even before high school, I had already visited Japan, Hong Kong and other exotic and historical islands that form part of my country (Of course, I was a self-centered, frilly-dress wearing brat then). As I grew up, I began to form a more mature trail of thought about things. Not just about traveling. I’ve long since gotten rid of the idea that traveling is just a cool way of showing off at a grander scale and letting everyone know (in a subtle but sure way) where your family went off to for the summer.

Hopping across different blogs and simply talking to different people, I have learned and gathered numerous answers and reactions. Some of the most interesting and outstanding are listed below:

“Sometimes I have felt aimless when traveling. Maybe I have traveled so much to fill a void. I look at it as I have an insatiable desire to know everything! Ask any of my friends and they will tell you how incredibly annoying this is. Maybe it’s annoying for them, but it is endless for me! So the answer is both. I have wandered aimlessly and in pursuit of something. Traveling is like peeling an onion. There are so many layers to discover.” –Jer

“I realized that what I treasured most about travel was not that it gave me a chance to see novel things. Travel gave me a chance to look with new eyes on familiar things. Windows to the World was one thing; but windows to death, littering, the right to remain silent, and the right to travel were others. I was returning home a different person—not Indian or Chinese, but a wiser and changed American because of them.” – Amy Huberman

“I travel to wander, which allows a sense of freedom. Generally, I fly to one airport, then drive to another a distance away and take off to go back home from there… so it’s a road-trip, too! Travel also keeps me open-minded and more accepting of other cultures and beliefs (as it is with anybody, I would think).” -dempather

Traveling is and will always be a journey of self-discovery. It doesn’t matter how old or young you are, there is always something new to learn, something new to see or perhaps, something to remember about ourselves. Whether we travel for business, enjoyment or for other personal quests, I do believe that every experience is littered with a whole bunch of lessons just waiting to be stumbled upon.

My own reasons for traveling have greatly evolved from my childish ideas almost ten years ago. I see traveling as an opportunity to learn, to get myself in sticky situations and eventually crawl out of them and to enjoy the beauty in every grain of sand or busy market street that I encounter. It’s a way of forging strong relationships with other people and creating very wonderful memories.

~:>

Keeping Secrets of the Wizarding World

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It’s funny what lengths some people go through to keep a secret. But in the case of famous Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling, I suppose such lengths are to be expected, especially when it comes to the last installment of the wizarding series. I plucked out a copy of Time magazine from the bookstore a couple of days ago and saw an article on Harry Potter and the ten steps the whole Potter brain trust team took to ensure that nobody gets a hold of a copy or even a page of the most-awaited book until July 21, 2007.

It was called “The Epic Saga of the Seventh Manuscript.” Or, how the supersecret final Potter tale went from finished draft to hardcover in 10 very careful, complicated steps.

1. Rowling, who dreamed up Harry while on a train from manchester to London, finishes the story on Jan. 11, 2007. The final book will weigh in at 784 pages.

2. Scholastic lawyer Mark Seidenfeld picks up the pages in U.K. For safekeeping, he uses the manuscript as a seat cushion all the way back to the U.S.

3. Seidenfeld hands off copies of the draft to Arthur A. Levine (Rowling’s American editor) and Cheryl Klein (the Potterologist), who look for problems.

4. Meanwhile, artist Mary GrandPre reads a copy and works her end of the magic, crafting illustrations. She has called the Harry Potter books a “candy store for an illustrator.”

5. Back to Rowling. Editors’ notes in hand, she revises the first draft, then hands it off to her agent, Christopher Little…

6. … who orchestrates another handoff to Klein, who has flown to England for the mission. “I felt very special, I felt like I had a secret.” she says. Klein’s cover is almost blown when she is stopped by airport security.

7. Klein gets the manuscript safely back to Scholastic. What happens in that Chamber of Secrets and at the presses is the process-that-shall-not-be-named.

8. Potter is printed, somewhere. The record-breaking first run of 12 million dwarfs the number for the first novel: initially a mere 50,000 made it to stores.

9. In GPS-tracked boxes toted by FedEx, the books fan out across America. To limit leakage, millions of copies arrive at bookstores within an eight-hour window.

10. Finally, if all goes to plan, on July 21 at 12:01 am., the magic moment. bedtimes around the U.S. ar delayed for the sake of reading.

The whole set-up almost seems like a fun spy movie to me. However, there have been very real attempts to steal copies of the 7th book (that were thankfully thwarted). It’s not like Rowling and the rest of her team are trying to be selfish about Harry Potter. In fact, they’re trying to protect something more than intellectual rights. There is such a thing, according to the article, as a “magic moment.” It is the moment when a person opens the book for the very first time and reads the pages without having any knowledge about what would actually happen.

Personally, I know what the “magic moment” is all about. While there are other readers out there who read the last few pages first (in order to see if they would like the ending), I prefer reading things through the end. No spoilers for me.

And then a few weeks ago, rumors about a Harry Potter spoiler came out. The spoiler infiltrated the net and there was even an article about it on froodee. Thankfully, I have decidedly steered clear of the whole thing and at the moment, I still am spoiler-free. Plus, here’s some good news to fans all over the world. They’re saying that the spoiler is not valid and that “Gabriel,” the person who caused the whole ordeal, has not offered a shred of evidence on his “findings.” Besides, using the reason that his move was a “counterattack against a work that promoted the Neo-Paganism faith…?” Can anyone say, medieval? It’s a waste of time, in my opinion, to even give this person the time of day. Time spent worrying over him could be time spent anticipating Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! ~:>

Holy Hotels! (Turkey)

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When we say hotels, what is the picture in our heads?
I would probably say, “plush carpets… large, four-poster beds, glass windows, marble tiles… and of course elevators and 30 floors.” These answers would probably match most of yours. After all, isn’t that what hotels generally look like?

It would seem so. However, there are those who want to create a different image for hotels. They could be artists who want to introduce a new way of vacation living or just the uniqueness of a country’s culture showing through. Whatever the case, we will look into them and marvel at such original concepts waiting for guests to experience them.


You no longer need to be upset when people ask you if you have been living under a rock all this time. Here in Turkey, you can simply smile and say, “Wouldn’t you like to know?” This is the Gamirasu Hotel in Turkey. It is actually located on a restored Byzantine monastery and is said to be built from volcanic rock. If you want to be close to luxury, nature and history all at the same time, then this place is worth visiting.

P.S. And yes, for those who are asking, they have cave suites.

Ghostbusters: Legion – Review

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Ghostbsuters Legion

In 2004, to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the original Ghostbusters film, fledgling comic publisher 88MPH Studios released a brand new Ghostbusters comic book miniseries titled “Ghostbusters: Legion”.  The book was to be the beginning of a grand Ghostbusters resurgence.  However, due to incompetence and fraud on the part of 88MPH Studio, the book floundered despite the art and story quality.  However, I’ll get to what killed the Ghostbusters after my review of the book’s actual content.

Ghostbusters: Legion is a sequel to the original Ghostbusters film, ignoring both Ghostbusters II and any of the cartoon shows.  Additionally, the events of the first Ghostbusters film took place in the year 2004, rather than 1984, allowing the title to be more modern.  Aside form the year change, everything happened exactly as it did in the movie.

It’s been several months since the Ghostbusters battled Gozer and detonated the Stay Puft Marshmallowman, the general public thinks of the Ghostbusters mostly as a tourist attraction, a fad or just glorified exterminators.  Despite the existence of ghosts having been proven, nobody really cares.  The Ghostbusters, Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler, Ray Stantz and Winston Zeddemore, are going on with business as usual, busting New York’s spooks for a hefty price.  However, something even stranger is going on: the ghosts are becoming organized and seemingly more intelligent.  The ghosts are developing strategies to elude the Ghostbusters and are generally behaving more abnormal than usual (such as robbing multiple banks at one time).  This all has something to do with escaped mental patient, Michael Draverhaven, who once worked with the Ghostbusters during their college days (before they became the Ghostbusters).

I’d like to hand it to author Andrew Dabb, he had the Ghostbusters’ personalities down pat.  All the characters acted true to form, the dialogue was as witty as ever; he didn’t miss a beat.  The story was rather interesting; I believe this is the first time you ever got to see the Ghostbusters during their often-talked about college days.  In the movie and throughout the television series, Egon, Ray and Peter would routinely mention their time in college together, but there were never any flashbacks.  Shoehorning Draverhaven in as the “Lost Ghostbuster” was a bit convenient, but he made for a decent villain.  He was a clairvoyant who was injured during an experiment on campus, resulting in his inability to shut the voices of the dead out of his brain, causing him to go nuts.  Of course, he comes back for revenge and all that.  Draverhaven had one good speech during the climax, where he mentions how the ghosts fear the Ghostbusters, and even tell “Ghostbusters stories”.  Rather amusing.  His defeat was the weakest part of the story, though.

There are a few subplots going on, one for each character (accept Winston, since no writer outside the cartoon has ever been able to figure out what to do with him).  Janine’s and Egon’s is, of course, their budding romance.  Janine tries various means to get Egon to notice her and he remains blissfully ignorant of her affections.  Amusing, but nothing we haven’t seen before (save for perhaps the risqué nature of her attempts to attract him).  Peter is trying to keep a relationship going with Dana Barret, but his natural lack of a serious disposition combined with his hectic work schedule is causing large amounts of strain.  In comes Louis Tully, who has cashed-in on his fame from the Gozer incident and become a millionaire.  He appears to have some sort of stalker obsession with Dana and is trying to worm his way between her and Peter.  A stark difference in characterization from the second movie and the TV series, where he was presented as the wannabe-Ghostbuster.  Then there’s Ray, who is depressed that nobody takes the Ghostbusters as serious scientists and that there’s an escaped mental patient out to kill him (Ray inadvertently caused Draverhaven’s injury).  Ray mood-swings between his happy-go-lucky self and this new emo version.  It’s alright but a bit forgettable.

The artwork can range from ugly to excellent at the drop of a hat.  Steve Kurth’s pencils look good, particularly the weapons, vehicles and environments; they look like they jumped right out of the movie.  He tends to draw people a bit too ugly and deformed for my tastes, particularly Janine.  He doesn’t always draw them that way, though.  The inks and colors provided by Pierre-Andre Dery, Chuck Gibson and “Blond” really outshine Kurth’s pencils, adding some fantastic atmosphere (the ghosts are all luminescent like Christmas lights).

There are a few in-jokes and cameos here and there that you might want to look out for.  Slimer, while unnamed, appears at the climax of the book as one of Draverhaven’s ghostly slaves.  In the second issue, Egon messes his hair up and it forms into the classic “Dairy Queen swirl” from Egon’s Real Ghostbusters design.  In one of the few equipment designs that deviated from the movies, the Containment Unit appears as it did in the cartoon series.  There’s also some other stuff I noticed, but that just might be because I was looking too hard, like Peter wearing an outfit in his Real Ghostbusters colors at the beginning of issue one, or the Phantom from the Real Ghostbusters episode “Sticky Business” appearing when the legion of ghosts lay siege to New York.

Overall, the book itself is a really cool, really spot-on Ghostbusters adventure.  It showed so much promise and it could have been one of the better books released during the whole “80’s revival” fad.  Sadly, the imbeciles running 88MPH Studio couldn’t get their act together and they narrowly finished the miniseries, leaving little hope for the advertised on-going series.

Each issue was delayed several months past cover date.  Though it was advertised as a monthly title, it was released quarterly.  By the time the next issue came out, nobody but the hardcore fans cared anymore.  There was discent amongst the staff, as Sebastian Clavet (head of 88MPH) was having trouble paying his employees.  Eventually, it all ended with a terrible scam where Sebastian took hundreds of pre-orders for the hardcover collection of Legion on Halloween, 2005, then shut his website down and ran away with the cash.  The hardcover was never produced.  Pathetic.

So, how can you read this comic?  Well, a trade paperback collecting the book was released by Titan Books, but only in the UK.  You can order it off Amazon UK, though.  The individual issues, each with a ton of variant covers, can be found on eBay or in back issue bins at your local comic ship.  Being only 4 issues-long, it shouldn’t be too costly a venture.  I’d recommend it to anyone who ever liked Ghostbusters.  A shame the property and creative team hadn’t been hired by a real comic book publisher.  If that had happened, the on-going might have actually happened.  As it stands, a great look at what could have been.