The Goonfather offers an alternative to reading or playing PSP in the toilet.

Presenting his latest toilet hobby…

I am rendered quite speechless.

Something funny happened at my shoot today.

There was this part in a scene where the leading boy actor asks a bit player, “Uncle, how’s your hand?” (in reference to an earlier accident.)

And the uncle is supposed to hold up his hand, look at it and say, “Oh.”

For a few takes, the uncle looked at his hand and “oh-ed” before the boy even finished asking his question. (A pretty common mistake inexperienced actors make in their hurry to get their lines over and done with.)

So the director told him, “You must listen to the boy. Hear his words, then respond. Don’t just say your line without thinking.”

Uncle said ok, but he did the same mistake again.

So, director whispered something in boy’s ear and they redid the take.

This time, the boy said, “Uncle, how’s your leg?”

Uncle held up his hand and said, “Oh.”

Director said, “Cut!

“Why are you holding up your hand? You were asked about your leg.”

Uncle said, “I think the boy said wrongly. He’s supposed to ask about my hand.”

Director said, “I asked him to change his line because I want you to listen to his question before you respond. I’m going to change a body part with every take now. If he says leg, you touch your leg. If he says head, you touch your head. Ok?”

After that, the uncle finally responded at the right time to the right body part, although he took a few takes to get used to the idea that he had to listen before reacting.

Coolness. I love this director (incidentally the same director who made us do 40 takes of the same scene on Monday).

Okay, that’s all for today. Super tired after 12 hours of shoot and 2 hours of acting class (with only three hours’ sleep last night).

But I have photos.

Martin, the project manager, has been fiddling with my camera the past few shoots and he’s taken some cool shots. So I have appointed him official photographer for the duration of the shoot! Heheh.

Today’s ABT class was funny. (ABT stands for Abs, Butts & Thighs, which is pretty self-explanatory.)

Our instructor is a kooky uncle type (looks to be in his late 30s) who tries to motivate the class by throwing out random suaning comments at random people such as: “Pretend to move your board around only right? We already started doing three counts and you still moving your board.”

Nanny Wen’s name today was Pink Colour 小姐 (Miss Pink) because she happened to be wearing all pink. Mine was Blue Colour 小姐 (Miss Blue) because I happened to be wearing all blue.

“Pink Colour 小姐 don’t play cheat, move your leg higher.”

“You all har… do properly!”

“See, Blue Colour 小姐 think you all no standard.” (Because I was giggling away nonstop.)

Anyway, today’s class was also a torture. I still haven’t recovered from yesterday’s shoot and I was so tired I kept spacing out and lunging the wrong directions when we did lunges.

On a separate but related note, I WON A LUCKY DRAW PRIZE!!!!!!!!

Well, it’s not a very big prize but it’s always cool to win a prize.

Most Singapore Sports Council classes cost $65 (for 12 hours total), although there are a few $85 and $110 ones. But I’ll probably chose a cheap class because they’re more fun. Like kickboxing and hip hop dance.

The $85 classes are boring. Like yoga. Most boring thing in the whole world. I attended one yoga class at California Fitness ages ago and it all but put me to sleep. How can people do yoga on a regular basis? One class put me off it forever.

Anyway, I cheated in ABT class a lot today because I was SO tired. Which kinda defeated the purpose of even going to class. But I did get a somewhat reasonable workout and will make up for it next week.

I feel ready to keel over and die right now.

We did this scene like 40 times today. It’s a two-and-a-half-page scene, which translates to about 2.5 minutes of actual running time.

First, we did a wide shot with the camera capturing everyone. Because the director is a perfectionist, everything had to be perfect in the entire take or we had to redo the whole thing from scratch. Because it was 2.5 minutes long and involved many kids and many lines and a high energy level, it was very hard to get it perfect each time. We would play each take till the end and then start over again, hoping that the next take would be IT.

The kids were finally bribed with ice-cream if they could do it perfect. But after a few takes and the perfect take didn’t happen, the ice-cream didn’t happen either. Poor kids.

A long time later, when the wide shot was finally a good take, we went for close-ups on every single last one of us (six). For each close-up, we had to again act out the entire 2.5 minutes, for as many takes as it took for each person’s close-up to be perfect. Everyone else had to maintain the same energy level even if it wasn’t his/her close-up.

I only had three hours of very restless sleep last night (woke up every 15 minutes to toss and turn), so I was already ready to keel over and die without the added burden of having to act super energetic and happy 40 times 2.5 minutes. It was supposed to be a very lively scene with fast-paced bantering and lots of laughter.

It also didn’t help that it was a supremely hot and humid day and I was in uncomfortable clothing and we couldn’t turn on the fans in the room because it interfered with the sound. I also had blisters in my feet from wearing new shoes.

Can die.

If not for my indefatigable will to survive in showbiz, I would have just died on the spot. You don’t know what is hell until you try acting happy and excited 40 times in a row at a time when your body and mind are suffering major sleep deprivation.

I was on the set for over 12 hours, starting from 6.45 am, filming a total of four scenes.

It’s all over now!! Whheeee! My bed is looking very welcome.

Okay, so I just signed up for a Twitter account. What that did was further my belief that we are now smack in the middle of the Me Age.

Two hundred years later, history students will read in their textbooks: “The year 2000 marked the start of the Me Age with the proliferation of Internet activity. The possibilities for self-publishing created a social phenomenon that took the world by storm as increasing individuals bought a piece of Internet real estate to advertise one predominant product — themselves.”

I mean, this is totally what is happening and I do not exempt myself from this mounting horror.

In 1996, I made my very first website for my IRC community. I had photos and funny blurbs of all my channel regulars. I wrote a witty article extolling the virtues of IRC. The website’s purpose was to show off my web designing skills (which was then a big deal), my writing skills and my sense of humour.

In 1997, I made my first personal website. Its purpose was to glorify myself and shout to the whole world that an individual such as I existed.

And, you know, that tradition of narcissism continues till today. But I think it’s all good because, really, it’s not only about me.

People who have their own websites and blogs aren’t only saying “look at ME”. They’re also expressing their individuality, creativity and talents through the design of their site, through their written words, through the photographs that they themselves have taken. Creativity must be shared with the world.

But twitter is another matter altogether.

What the hell is twitter?

When I first started seeing it on all my friends’ blogs, my reaction was something like, “Har? Can eat or not one?”

I didn’t get an account because it seemed stupid to me. Like, does anyone care what you were doing at exactly 4.26 pm last Friday? Honestly, no.

And if you must tell the whole world that you are, right this very moment, enjoying your char kuay teow, why must you put an extra box in your blog to say that? Why can’t you just post a one-line blog entry instead?

So, I finally signed up today to see for myself what all the fuss is.

I have posted my first update, clicked all over the site and read a few strangers’ rants.

And I still don’t really get it.

Twitter is totally the spokesperson for the “Me Culture”. In the little pink and blue boxes that are fast invading more and more corners of the Internet, we see nothing more than shouts for attention.

“Look at me! I just did my laundry and wiped the kitchen counter clean!! Can you beat that???”

What the hell? What the hell?

Where is the creativity? The entertainment value? The thing that will make people go, “Ahhh… that was worth my two seconds reading it.”?

And you thought the narcissism of personal web pages and cam whoring couldn’t get any worse.

To all my friends who have twitter, don’t fret. Even though I think twitter is stupid, I still love you and I will read your twitters because you’re my friend.

But allow me to ask you this:

Do you think I should just STFU and get with twitter already?

Thank you for reading.