Waiting to Exhale Soundtrack

Truly one of the best albums of the '90s. I really miss the days of amazing soundtracks that were almost always better than the movies. lol. I was bored and randomly watching the end of "Two Can Play That Game" when a song by "For Real" came on and that got me into playing my faves off this album. The album has a song for every stage of a relationship - beginning, middle, end, years later, first kiss, cheating etc etc. Anyway, these are some of my faves of that album:

Don't you go breaking my heart... don't run away from these arms. Something I need you to know. love will be waiting at home.


If we meet in the street, you should not even bother to speak... 


I can't believe it's real, I can't believe it's you. I can't believe it's happening, I can't believe it's true. And I can't believe that you are here with me.. And I am here with you... Kissing you. 


Never again that's what I said to myself. No, I never wanna feel your kind of pain again no, Just when I think it's over, just when I think it's through, I just find myself right back in love with you


You can melt in my body and I will slowly melt onto you. Caress your face in my valley (LOL), let me feel the sweetness of you. Baby you know I'll keep it special each and every time...

I can't help loving my Usher boo.

I am indifferent about the man himself but I've been a fan of his music since the first album. I don't care what people might say about his latest work because I always fall in love with some songs on each of his albums. Like these ones on Raymond v. Raymond:



I just love the chorus of this song

So the Entourage Finale...

... yeah, this season was trash. The end didn't make me feel like tuning in next year - unlike last year's finale. Oh well... will probably still tune in anyway :D

I saw the first episode of Nikita. I was a huge fan of La Femme Nikita so I didn't want to go anywhere near this remake. Anyway, some good reviews made me give it a shot and it wasn't completely crap. It's different enough and I'll keep watching to see if it stays interesting. I do not, however, want a Nikita/Michael relationship in this version. I feel I won't be able to stomach it. Cos Nikita/Michael in the other version was like the OTP of all OTPs... I mean, their chemistry and relationship was just crazy and I doubt these fakers could even compare. So they should spare me. lol.

Have I lost interest in my Taiwanese drama, Endless Love? I think they are being way too cutesy and I need the drama ASAP. Since they already told us he's going to jilt her at the altar, that's all I'm waiting to see... so all this falling in love crap is freaking boring. Can we get to the good part already?

Playful Kiss is as cute as cute... but not compelling enough to make me think of it all week but cute while I watch it. So it's like my weekend drama.

It looks like it was a good idea to hold off on watching I am Legend cos it seems to be dragging and not as fun (based on comments I've read so far). I really hope I can find a drama to draw me into its world the way Coffee House did. Kang Ji Hwan and Park Si Yeon, please freaking do another drama together. For my sake. PLEASE!

Now I've begun to watch a British series called Married Single Other. I do like British relationship series like Coupling (probably my favorite sitcom of all time - at least top 3 for damn sure) and Cold Feet. So far, it's okay. I've only seen one episode but we'll see how the other episodes are. Ages ago, I watched another series called Ny-Lon starring Quincy Jones' daughter and the dude from True Blood. It was nothing special, not very realistic and had no ending. Or an open ending. Well, me no like open endings. At least give an open ending that's not so wide open.

Entourage ends tomorrow...

... which marks the end of my American summer shows. I watched Drop Dead Diva (an okay season), Psych (sporadically so no review yet. But better than last season so far) and Entourage which ends tomorrow.

I'll say the current season of Entourage is definitely not the best but the guys are still funny even if Vince is completely boring and the entire Turtle storyline has proven to be pointless. Eric is normally boring anyway but Drama was funny to me till the last two or three episodes when his storyline stopped moving. Ari was fun this season except for the stupidity of the last episode. Ari has a crazy temper but he's not foolish. In the last episode, he acted like a fool. Truth be told, this is probably one of the worst seasons so far but I just like these guys so I don't mind watching them for 20 minutes once a week. 

And who in the hell takes a hiatus right before the final episode? But whatever. I hope the finale will make me want to watch the final season next year.

Since Fall has begun, I guess we're going to be going back to our regular programming. I started off last year with three shows: Cougar Town, Gossip Girl and Bones. However, by the time May rolled around, I was only watching Cougar Town.

So now, I'll start off this season only watching Cougar Town. Let's see if I'm still watching it next year.

On the Asian drama front, I am still watching my Japanese drama, Natsu-Niji. It's not something to get all crazy over but it's cute enough. I am also watching Playful Kiss which is another that's cute enough but nothing special. But how often do we get "special" dramas anyway? The third I'm watching is a twdrama called Endless Love. So far, so okay. It's Cliche Central with a spoiled, little rich girl and a noble poor boy. Except the girl isn't so spoiled and the guy is not as noble as he initially appears. Then we have the oppa the girl is in love with who doesn't give her the time of day. But you know how that goes... once she starts to like the poor guy, oppa begins to notice her. He's already getting on my nerves so I am sure he's an annoying character. There's also a fourth character a.k.a. second lead girl but she hasn't appeared yet. The synopsis says the poor guy will jilt the rich girl at the altar at some point... lol. So I'm looking forward to that. The first three episodes are about the meeting, initial dislike and now the journey to love. I hope the drama ends up not being a waste of time. It's funny how the lead actress has won two awards for previous roles yet she comes off quite terribly in this drama. I wonder if her family owns the organization(s) that gave her those awards.

So with only a few shows to watch, I guess I better learn to kill time in more productive ways.

Possible new fic?

Sometime last year, I kicked around this idea of a girl in a love pentagon. It would be girl, three guys: one from match.com, a co-worker, I can't remember who the third would be (I think an ex), and her best friend. Then there was going to be something about her wanting to become a singer and I think getting gigs through her ex. The best friend also helps her professionally... but I can't remember what his job was but I think he was supposed to be a very silly type.

Anyway, since I got sick of writing, I threw that out (especially as I had two unfinished fics lying around). Now that I've decided to finish this other fic... I'm now rethinking the idea. But instead of a love pentagon (lol), how about a love triangle? :D The truth is I don't really have firm love triangles in my stories. I figure a couple can have a lot of drama without adding a third person. However, I think it's nice to at least mention that there are other people attracted to my protagonists. 

And I also noticed certain things about my writing:
I love dance scenes. If it's not a club, it might be dancing in the living room.
I like my characters to have history. Even in Femi's Diary where she met the guy in like chapter 3, the first relationship explored was with her ex and the relationship with the new guy wasn't explored till much later when she met him by chance in another city.
I used to like open endings. But now I've stopped that since I freaking hate open endings myself. I like to write open endings but hate to watch or read open endings. How weird is that? LOL
I like the guy to love first and harder. I tried to make the girl love first once but it was a total FAIL.
In all my stories, the couple doesn't get together till the end of the damn story.

So I've decided to try something different with this story (if I ever write it). It's still going to be romance with humor (like I can write anything different) but instead of the couple getting together at the end, the couple will get together at the beginning. Then another man will show up. And I think for the first time, I will have a real love triangle.

Okay, I am lying. I wrote Consequences in 07 (stopped at 5 chapters to go... must try to finish it) and it had a love triangle involving a girl in a long distance relationship, her boyfriend, and the guy she met in the new country. So that's a story where the girl was already in a relationship. Hmm.. but this one will be different because it won't involve an already established relationship.

Anyway, we'll see if I have the energy to write this. Loads of ideas float in my head but I'm just to lazy to actually do anything about them. lol

P.S. I am most likely going to write a short Coffee House fic simply called "Christmas Eve" :) 

The Psychology of Coffee House (Final Part)

So why do we watch kdramas?

I think most kdrama viewers are romance fans, seeing as regardless of genre, romance generally plays a huge role in the plot. I don't know if it's because of precedence already set in this genre or just the nature of it, but most of us like to know who the ultimate pairing it.

Kdramas, particularly the miniseries, differ from American dramas in that there's only one OTP. So unlike in American television where you can watch a character embark on a number of relationships over a series of years, with kdramas, it's usually limited to one relationship over the course of 16-20 episodes. So the audience, in general, needs to know who the OTP is so we can know which characters to emotionally invest in.

Because Coffee House decided to have a pair that followed the usual kdrama patterns even though they weren't the OTP, many were misled into thinking that they were and ended up emotionally investing in the wrong couple. Now, I don't know what was in the director's or writer's mind but I don't think that these people were intentionally misled by the drama. I think many allowed their preconceived notions of what a kdrama is cloud their judgment. So instead of focusing on the real story unfolding, they were fixated on following kdrama paths that would lead to their preferred ending.

As many say, Coffee House twisted a lot of kdrama cliches. And as someone who's seen enough romantic stories from all over the world, I think it's fair to say that I'm pretty much familiar with every romance cliche out there. Once Dong Wook was introduced, I pretty much believed that the final pair would be Jin Soo and Eun Young with an open ending for Dong Wook and Seung Yeon. This was way before the kiss and what not. But the journey to this predictable ending wasn't as smooth as I expected. I'd predicted that the JS/EY contract would be nullified and for JS to come begging for it to be reinstated. But I didn't expect for him to get nutso and insist that it was later on. I'd expected Grandpa to set EY up with Lawyer Park so that Jin Soo would die of jealousy and while Grandpa did set EY up with the dude, he turned out to be a very lame, possibly gay, Jin Soo fanboy. LOL. Now, did I appreciate my cliches being turned upside down? Well, while watching, instead of appreciating the twists, I was frustrated that the story wasn't going the way it should - the way I wanted it to.

Now, Coffee House isn't a perfect drama, however it followed its own internal logic that made sense. While it might have taken the usual kdrama path, in a few instances, it led somewhere else. So doesn't that mean that we should all be grateful for this freshness?  Well, it depends.

I think a lot of us want to know what to expect when we start watching a drama. If a story is billed as a romantic comedy, I don't want to start watching and find out that it's really a horror movie. Now, depending on one's personality and how open minded and easily adaptable they might be, one might deem that movie to be the worst they've seen even if objectively, it's a great film. As we all know, a huge part of enjoying a movie or a drama is based on one's prior expectations. Hype can kill a movie while low expectations can make an otherwise average movie quite enjoyable.

So watching a drama for 18 episodes only to discover that a couple you were convinced were the OTP doesn't end up together can turn an objectively good drama into the stupidest thing you'd ever seen. Suddenly, you feel like you've been taken for a ride, misled and/or betrayed. That's a huge difference from rooting for a couple you knew weren't the OTP like say Shin Woo Hyung and the chick in YAB. Even if you thought they looked cuter together or that he'd be better for her, seeing her end up with the main dude doesn't offend you because always knew it would be the case. So that fact doesn't turn a good story bad because, the story followed the path you'd always expected it to. And ended right where you knew it would.

To cut a long story short, I think many people who watch romances are comfortable with all the cliches. I don't know if this is the culture that evolved over time or shared characteristics between fans of the genre but many people like to watch a romance drama knowing exactly what to expect. This differs from those who like mysteries or thrillers. So when the drama starts to take unexpected turns, turns that make sense for the story but not necessarily follow the usual romance patterns, it can get uncomfortable.

Personally, I don't think Coffee House was really that unpredictable. When that guy disappeared for two years, I expected Eun Young to be engaged when he returned. But to Ji Won of all people? Come on! Even though her explanation made sense as she couldn't be with the one she loved so she just chose to be with the one who loved her (and she couldn't find anyone better)... and it makes sense in their world and even the real world, it was very annoying for me as a viewer. So does my dislike deem this bad writing? I don't think so. And what is bad or lazy writing as many accused Coffee House of when the story didn't flow the way we wanted it to? Well, that's for another day's discussion.

I'll end this by saying, while I enjoyed the drama, the whole culture that evolved while watching it was very interesting to me. Shipper Wars aren't new to me but I'd never seen any this intense in an Asian drama and I think this was due to never having a case where both camps were convinced theirs was the OTP. In addition, reactions and reviews have also piqued my interest. I've noticed that most reviews by those who began to watch the drama after it aired in its entirety have been  positive. Is this because those who watch now know who the OTP is? Probably. And I also think that there's far less time to spend predicting the future episodes so there's far less disappointment on that front. 

What have I learned from all of this as viewer? I think the most I've learned is I should just sit back and enjoy my dramas :D lol... if I think it sucks, turn it off. If I enjoy, then I should just sit back and enjoy whatever story is being told to me instead of expecting too much or waiting for different plot points I expect to materialize in some future episode.  If I'd written Coffee House, there'd be no episode 12 disappearing act and it would have been a lot more focused on the journey of a couple from being friends to lovers. That's probably why I enjoy the beginning of episode 9 so much because it was what I hoped the drama would be. Instead, we got a time skip, a marriage plot and a love triangle. But even though that wasn't what I'd hoped for, it still had its own merit.

What can a kdrama writer or director learn from this? It's not that easy to create a new genre. Having a character with so much screen time not participate in the main love story is confusing.  The audience is not a clean slate and will always expect your drama to do the same dance others are doing. If it's not, some might consider it a "flaw" or think it's senseless even if it's not. Make the OTP clear (although I think they actually did during the promotion of the show). And if you decide to follow your own rules, understand that you might be sacrificing some of your commercial success.

Yori Yori by Bracket

This song was popular last year and I really like it. Anyway, looks like they've recently released a remix. But who releases a remix over a year after the original? How about a new song instead? lol. I still prefer the original although the remix is quite nice too. But what's going on with that one girl's weave in the remix? It looks like something the cat threw up.





Hmm... actually, after listening to both versions again, I'm wondering if I prefer the remix now. LOL

This chick needs to back off!

What color/print are his pants? lol.

lol... this pic is both sexy and hilarious. Honestly, what's going on with the clothes?

All I can say here is: Lucky B****!























Source: Tumblr.

Playful Kiss is not bad

Frankly speaking, IMO, it's already better than that crappy Boys Over Flowers but perhaps it's not exciting enough with people getting beat up and other craziness that some say it's boring? The tone is different - actually quite jdrama-esque so perhaps some just don't like that. Plus it's slice-of-lifish.

I didn't find Kim Hyun Joong's acting to be terrible as his interpretation does fit the character and he had chemistry with the female lead. It's not the kind of show you watch and spend all week wondering what will happen in the next episode but it's like the bowl of popcorn you have while watching a movie - something that isn't there to quench your hunger but is nice, anyway.

I did skip the first half of episode 1 because I figured it would bore but from ep 1.5 through episode 2, I enjoyed it. The leads have a cute chemistry plus the lead is not as annoying and stupid as Ariel was in ISWAK.  So far, not bad.

How cute is this?

Granted, we don't need all men to go this far but how nice it must feel to have someone who'd put in so much time, effort and even money into making you happy. I wish them a happy life together.