A Horrible Week

This may be the last time I'm posting. If I die from overwork this week, there will not be any future posts.

If, miraculously, I survive the week, I will see you again.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

A Good Day

Woke up, lazed around, went for a triple-movie marathon at The Picturehouse.

Came home, cooked some dinner, lazed around some more.

Maybe a bit of work in a little while.

If only every day was like this.

The Voice of DIY Hair Coloring

After imbibing copious amounts of the medications below, my throat recovered enough for me to do some voiceovers today.




And apparently, I'll be teaching unsuspecting passersby in a chain of personal stores the correct way to color their hair using DIY kits. I can't imagine a higher honor. Getting the highest per-hour paycheck I've ever received plus a bag of products is just icing on the cake!

Maybe I'll be lecturing kids on the finer points of contraceptive use in my next gig. I can only hope.

Sucks For Me

This is what my throat's been feeling like the whole day.



With things like this coming out of it.












As a result, I have no choice but to do this.

















Which makes me feel like this all the time.



And hence this is neglected.












Which sucks for me because my deadline is, like, now. Whee.

Double D

I have succumbed and ordered food from McDonald's 24-hour delivery service (Argh! The Devil made me do it!).

I must be desperate. Or delirious. Or quite possibly, both.

11 pages and counting.

Why Can't I Write?

I'm really doing quite horribly the last few days, work-wise. Just can't seem to get things off the ground and actually start writing some shit. What's worse, I feel so lazy and lethargic during the day, and seem to be only able to function at night. This would be well and good, but I often have meetings and such in the mornings (at least for this week) and this pretty much saps my energy.

Now the deadlines are breathing down my neck. It's a high-profile project, and so far I've only got less than 10 pages to show for writing almost the entire night away. Yes, it blows. It doesn't help that I have another project that I have to juggle with almost-as-pressing deadlines.

Cigarettes? Check. Nibbles? Check. Batman Begins soundtrack on repeat to get in the mood? Check. Beer? Um, I haven't started on that, but I've got some in the fridge. What else do I need? Or are they all just distractions?

Am I about to royally fuck myself over?

The Da Vinci Code, Like, Totally Rawks!!!

Because of all the hype surrounding the upcoming movie, my 16 year-old cousin has started reading The Da Vinci Code. It's the first novel (well, anything over 200 pages, really) he's ever read in his life. It's scary, but I have a feeling a large proportion of Singaporeans are like him, and may never pick up a book as long as they live.

While it may not be a great novel, it's certainly good blockbuster entertainment and travel reading. And if it actually starts someone on reading, then I say, bring it on. It may not be "Literature", but it's certainly proved its merit to me.

He also showed me a little magazine-type flyer that was handed to him at an MRT station. It's printed by some Christian organization concerned that readers and viewers would be confused by the book regarding matters of faith. How insulting is that?

You know, if you're worried that your religion will be affected negatively by a book or movie, then I'm of the opinion that it's a reflection of your own lack of faith, and that deep down inside you probably recognize that your so-called religion is a bunch of fetid bullshit to begin with. If your religion is really that strong and unshakeable, then you shouldn't be worried at all. Silly insecure little shits.

The boy aims to finish it before he watches the movie. He just turned 16 and is excited to go to his first official NC-16 movie. I promised to bring him next week. Let's see if he's up to the task.

And if he ever wants to read anything else, I told him, just ask. I've got The Satanic Verses all ready and waiting.

Green Fairies

I just had a bit of absinthe, straight up. It is ridiculously potent (70% alcohol) and absolutely hits you immediately. Jesus fucking Christ.

I hope I wake up for my flight tomorrow afternoon.

Please Don't Die

My trusty laptop died yesterday just before I left for Pigotts. I freaked out, obviously, but decided to let it be for a bit.

When I returned today I discovered it was still fucked, but through trial and error found out that it still works fine when I connect the power directly and remove the battery. So I guess only the battery is fucked.

Whew.

Addendum: It now works with the battery as well, and in all other such combinations. So all I had to do was take the battery out and put it back in, apparently.

Computers are bizarre.

The SIFF Diaries, Part Three

Let's finish this damned thing off before we really move into Manchester, shall we?


Mon 24 Apr

The Art of Flirting - As Told in Four Chapters (Singapore)
"An intense and disturbing drama" is how the description puts it. Well, I wouldn't really call it that intense and disturbing, but nonetheless, it is quite absorbing. The actors give fine free-flowing performances that feel instinctive and improvisational, and the roaming handheld camerawork captures that spirit. It's all very guerilla, and highly watchable. Male and female dynamics and interaction are pretty spot-on.


Thu 27 Apr

Noriko's Dinner Table (Japan)
I had no idea before I saw this that it was a sequel/prequel/follow-up of sorts to Suicide Club, which I'd seen a few years before at the Chicago International Film Festival and enjoyed (Don't ask me to explain that movie, though - it's still frightfully bizarre and I'm not even sure it makes sense). So picking up the references and recycled shots from that first movie was a very fun and exciting experience.

This film follows a young girl, Noriko, from her formative years in a small town to her life after she runs away to the big city (Tokyo) and falls in with some very suspect characters. The suicide club thread is introduced suddenly about a third into the movie, and shifts the entire movie in another direction.

This time more is revealed about the Club, how and why it functions, and this comes out as Noriko's father, a small-time journalist, manages to track her whereabouts down. This ultimately leads to a climax that manages to be intense both in action and emotion. In fact, the entire film has a strong emotional arc that runs through it, which is a vast improvement on the first movie, in my opinion.

A drawback that some may find off-putting is the almost constant narration from different main characters. However, I do appreciate that it doesn't always state the obvious, but gives us a window into the thoughts and feelings of the characters, given that their actions and reactions are so fucking repressed.


Fri 28 Apr

Fluerne på væggen (Flies on the Wall) (Denmark)
Nå skal du høre (Grandpa Is a Raisin) (Norway)
Russia/Chechnya: Voices of Dissent (United Kingdom)

I went to dinner and karaoke with my colleagues, so completely missed these. I don't really regret it though, because I was rather festival-ed out.


Sat 29 Apr

Little Birds (Japan)
A moving, if slightly overlong documentary on the real victims of the War On Iraq. The filmmaker was living in Iraq when the war broke out, and managed to capture on tape images that escaped most braodcast stations. This is not politicians arguing for or agianst the war. This is no grandstanding speech, no excuse or justfication. This is merely one man going out there with his camera and capturing what he sees.

A father has to deal with losing 3 of his 4 children in one night. As he hugs his 4 year-old daughter's broken body to him, he sobs how her brains were spilling out when he found her. A mother cries every night because her 15 year-old son has only one arm now. A 12 year-old girl bravely faces the operating theatre to remove shrapnel from her eye so she can regain her sight. American soldiers mill around looking busy, taking souvenir photographs against battle landmarks, giving rote, confident answers. But when the questions come again and again, accusatory, angry, they look away. Japanese soldiers smile and eat their rations as the press hovers around waiting for a photo op. An old Iraqi man points to bodies surrounding him. "Is he a weapon of mass destruction? What about him? Is she one too?"

By following certain individuals on their journey to recover and rebuild, we feel real pain, real horror, real grief. We root for them desperately, but everything seems bleak. There is no rhetoric because one is not needed. The film has already shown us everything we need to know. Now the question is: What do we do next?

Promising Time Out

Sorry, I just had to put this in here right now.

Chen Kaige's The Promise is showing in the USA, and apparently, they love it. I haven't seen The Onion give an 'A' to a movie in a long time.

I'm astonished. Is the movie showing in America the same one they showed all across Asia? How can something be so reviled here and loved in the US at the same time? It doesn't make any sense.

Amsterdam to Manchester

Amsterdam's Schiphol airport looks really depressing, and the walk to my connecting flight was fucking long. Imagine dragging your luggage along for a 15-minute hike. It's ridiculous.



They do have a nice little display case of a model of the airport, made entirely from Lego. After all, Amsterdam is the home of these popular bricks.





The connecting flight is even worse than usual. It was supposed to be an hour long, but it feels like many times that. And if possible, the plane is so small and the seats so close together I can't even fall asleep properly.

Below us, tufts of white clods come together and form a beautiful, inviting blanket. But you don't realize how far away the clouds really are until you see a tiny little plane far below, plunging headlong into the fluffy mass. Then you get your perspective.

The plane descends over the English countryside. It all looks landscaped and pretty, a far cry from the depressing stretches of the American Midwest.



I grab my luggage then Customs asks to swab my bags for drug particles. I'm like, whatever, I'm way too early anyway. Funnily enough, I find myself trying to adopt a Brit accent, though not very successfully. Or at the very least, toning down the whole American thing and trying to sound more neutral. I also have to ask almost everyone to repeat themselves. Damn Brits, why can't they speak proper English?



Now I try asking Information how to get to the Film Festival's offices. Good thing they don't know the directions, since I call YP right after and find out I'm supposed to go to the hotel instead. Hop on the train, and off I go. It's only one stop, I should be there soon. Apparently the hotel is just a short walk away from Manchester's Piccadilly train station. Hooray.

2.5 Hours to Amsterdam

Remaining flight time: 2.5 hours

I take off my eyemask and blink furiously, painfully in the dim cabin. The rumble of the aircraft is a distant drone. Bless whoever invented earplugs! With the combination of mask and plugs I've managed to cocoon myself away for a good portion of the 12.5 hour flight.

It's hard to believe 10 hours have passed already. Let's see... I've had some nibbles, a meal, a few drinks - but nothing alcoholic (surprise, surprise!), read half my book (Sidney Lumet's Making Movies, highly recommended) and basically stayed unconscious the rest of the time.

I'm actually supposed to do some work on the flight, but I really don't feel like taking out my laptop. It's such a hassle, plus there's no real elbow room to speak of.

I haven't even touched my iPod yet. In fact, I've been neglecting it for a few weeks now, ever since I moved. Gadgets come and go in cycles, don't they?

I have no fucking clue what to do once I reach Manchester, but I'm sure things will work out. It's good to know someone who's going; at least I can call her for help.

It's nice not to fly United all the time - at least the food on KLM is better - but damn, I miss the extra legroom in Economy Plus! Being the idiot that I am, I forgot to request for an aisle seat. The silly woman stuck me in the centre all the way! It's times like these that I wish I was shorter and scrawnier.

Funny fact: For the longest time when I was a kid, I actually thought KLM was a Malaysian airline. It never occurred to me that it might be Dutch. I mean, KL - Kuala Lumpur (the capital city) and M - Malaysia. It's perfect!



Anyway it's 4:20 am, wherever we're flying over. Time for me to pass out again.

The SIFF Diaries, Part Two

I probably slept less than two hours last night, waking up early to bring my stack of namecards to the printers' so I can collect them later today. More on that later.

Let's continue with the (lacklustre) fest, shall we?


Fri 21 Apr

Shooting Dogs (UK/Germany)
Basically, Hotel Rwanda set in a Catholic school. Like most films made about Africa by the West, it takes a white man's POV, namely that of a young teacher who spends much of his time moping around and freaking out. While I felt Hotel was more forceful and graphic about its depiction of the Rwandan genocide, Dogs gets bonus points for shooting in the actual locations featured and for including survivors of the killings in the cast and crew. Just try to keep a stoic face when you see their pictures and bios in the credits.

John Hurt gives a powerful performance as the priest and head of the school (I would've sworn it was Ian McKellen, but maybe all skinny old white men look alike to me - reverse racism? Ha!), and since it is set in a Catholic school, religion rears its (ugly) head often. However, its used tastefully, and it was interesting to see how the characters tried to reconcile their faith with the horrors that were going on around them. And of course, sometimes they snap. Hurt's priest, after returning from a shattering trip outside the school grounds, is told by the UN commander that they are about to start shooting the dogs that have been eating the bodies of victims outside the fences as a health measure. This from a peacekeeping force that has refused to fire on the Hutu aggressors unless fired upon. Incredulity and anguish written consuming him, the priest launches into an almost hysterical torrent of abuse. I have to say that those were some of the most powerful uses of the word "fuck" I have heard in a while.

Dogs also bravely goes into territory Hotel doesn't, when it comes to the West's apathy towards the genocide. A British reporter tells of how when she was in Bosnia she cried everyday, because when she saw the dead white women she felt it could've been her. But in Rwanda, they're just dead Africans. It's tragic, but unfortunately very true. And fingers are pointed directly at the UN for not doing more "peacekeeping" instead of spending their effort and resources protecting citizens of the West. In a little throwaway sequence that's remarkably powerful, an African man is prevented from joining his Caucasian wife on the truck carrying Westerners to safety. Simultaneously, a dog is carefully lifted onto the same truck. A little blunt? Perhaps. But effective, nonetheless.

Comparisons are inevitable, and ultimately pointless. Both films deal with the genocide, and are but different stories within the same tragedy. Together, they paint a more complete picture of the horror that was Rwanda.


Sat 22 Apr

Short Films About the Tsunami (Thailand)
I should've read the program more carefully before going to this one. I somehow didn't see that it was by experimental artists and video/filmmakers. I hate experimental film in general, so I had an absolutely awful time. I find it inexcusable that because it's supposedly experimental, it means that you don't have to bother about exposure, focus and other trivial things like that. And after all of that, putting a "cinematography" credit there is completely unjustifiable. You might as well have gotten a chimpanzee to shoot it. And of course there were the usual masturbatory entries, some more literal than the others.

Still, there was a beautifully shot film, apparently shot on a Panasonic HD camera. Unfortunately it also featured a ten-minute shot of a crippled boy walking along the shoreline. I was amazed I didn't fall asleep. He then proceeds to change a long line of red flags into green ones (or is it the other way round?), and finally gets in a boat shaped liked a swan. I'm sure that symbolism runneth over, but somehow I get the impression that if I were Thai I would've gotten much more from it.

Apparently there was another one that was a rather pointed indictment of the supposed "aid" that villagers got, but I was asleep and missed it. According to my companion, a villager said in his interview that the help would only be given if they renounced their religion and converted to Christianity. They were worried about losing their culture and heritage, and refused. They did not get the aid.

This is completely appalling. What kind of fucking assholes would do something like that? How can you look yourself in the mirror and think that you're doing God's work? Shouldn't it be about caring and loving everyone, regardless of their belief? These are people who've been stricken by a disaster, for crying out loud. It disgusts me.


Mozartbrot (Mozartbread) (Germany)
In the near future (or is it recent past?), Germany's chief export is its people. Artists and other such useless, unproductive people are cheap exports to labor-intensive factories and farms in Asia. A young female clarinet player charms a young man working in a bakery, and love blossoms. And there is much eating of bread. Rather amusing, if forgettable.


Gourmet Club (Finland)
A TV movie made in Finland, of all places, and having in the cast Michael Badalucco (The Practice) as a master chef. Finally, a movie at the festival that made me laugh out loud, and rather often, too.

A doctor belongs to an exclusive Gourmet Club, where members take turns providing a secret ingredient and wagering to guess what it is. The good doctor is in trouble, running up debts due to bad investments and the like, and is pressurized from all sides. So when its his turn, he desperately uses the one ingredient he has unlimited access to... One that he removes from children almost on a daily basis... And one that strangely enough, has an incredibly aphrodisiacal effect on everyone...

Loads of fun, and while at times I could tell it was shot on video, the effect was negligible, and stuff still looked good. Well, anything would look good after the experimental crap I'd just seen.


Sun 23 Apr

Iraq, My Country - An Exile's Return to Samawa (Australia/Iraq)
Documentary portraying the lives of ordinary people living in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. While it does give some insight into their lives, it seems more like a collage of images and scenes than anything with a coherent argument. And I fell asleep again.


Tinnsoldatene (Tin Soldiers) (Norway)
While it means well, somehow, ultimately it isn't as hard-hitting as it should have been. There's nothing wrong with it, just that with a little something extra it could've been amazing.


The Sex of Self Hatred (Canada)
Aargh! Experimental film! About some Jewish writer I don't know and don't give a fuck about! Done in an artsy retro early 20th century style!


Cowards Bend the Knee (Canada)
I've been wanting to see a Guy Maddin film for a while, and while I'm surprised that this 2003 film is only just now making its festival rounds here, I was still eager to check it out.

Made in an early 1900's style (I'd really like to know what processes he used on his film) and filled with intrigue, incest, jealousy, murder, and all that good stuff, Cowards is so jam-packed with content and style, it's almost criminal. The plot takes off in every direction imaginable, and while you need the patience to sit through it, it's quite easily the coolest entry I've seen at the festival this year.

The melodramatic excesses are hilarious and fun, but for some reason even though it was rather short at 64 minutes, it seemed much longer than that. Perhaps it was due to the breakneck "let's fit every damn thing we can into an hour" pace or the frenetic, crazy editing, but man, was I tired after the movie.


8 Screenings, and only 3 good shows. The hit ratio doesn't seem to be high enough... But still, at least at this point in the festival, there were a couple of hits. To be continued...

The SIFF Diaries, Part One

The 19th Singapore International Film Festival came and went, and I decided to stop being a petulant little boy and cease my boycott of it. Unfortunately, I only got my hands on a schedule after the festival had started, so I missed quite a few screenings I was interested in even before I began. Here's a rundown of the stuff I saw.


Tue 18 Apr

Cosplayer (Japan) (Short)
Apparently it "cleverly depicts the universal discommunication between the basic way men and women tend to think". I saw a silly girl try to get a silly boy to invite a man she has a crush on to a party. The man isn't particularly attractive, and anyway he turns her down. The silly girl then talks to the silly boy a little. Then I couldn't be bothered and promptly fell asleep. My companion told me Silly Girl gives Silly Boy a blowjob at some point. Whatever. I had a nice nap.


Question (Japan)
Horribly shot on DV with the auto focus function on the camera apparently left on throughout the whole movie. This is simply awful, and guilty of several cardinal sins.

#1: It's got tons of sex scenes, but all of them are boring as hell.
#2: The whole story is completely gimmicky.
#3: The characters are never real, and every note feels false, every plot turn orchestrated.
#4: They also insist on telling the audience exactly why they did the things they did, and what was going on in their heads when they were doing it.
#5: The 75 minute runtime feels like 7.5 hours.

The best part of the movie for me was this: When the woman was giving the man a blowjob that seemed to go on forever, my female companion's stomach growled loudly (we hadn't had dinner). That made me laugh in the middle of my yawn.


Thu 20 Apr

I Love Cinema (Egypt)
When I read the synopsis, I thought it would be something like Cinema Paradiso, something that shows how a boy's love for cinema changes his life.

Unfortunately someone decided while writing the screenplay that the more subplots the movie had the better it would be. Every single family member gets his or her own subplot, and all are given almost equal weight - all except for the supposed protagonist's!

We are supposed to see the world through his eyes, yet his story isn't really explored fully. We are told all the time how he loves cinema and how it's changed his life, but we never really see the how and the why. In fact, for a film with "cinema" in the title, we see a movie theatre in less than five scenes! It doesn't help that the kid is fucking annoying and forever playing pranks on adults that are supposed to be humorous, such as pissing on them. It just makes me want to give him a good smacking.

Overly melodramatic in its presentation, the movie never really takes off for me. Apparently it was a huge hit and very controversial in Egypt. I say, "Meh". Shorten the whole thing, toss out half the subplots, get rid of the kid and maybe it might be a good movie.


只愛陌生人 (Innocent) (Hong Kong)
My third screening in the festival, and so far not a single watchable flick. Can you tell how desperately I wanted this to be good? It's a sad situation when I'm grateful for something that's just plain mediocre, like this movie.

Let's look at the plot, that seems like an oft-taken route. Gay Teen Boy moves with family to Toronto. Gay Teen Boy is full of angst. Gay Teen Boy has crushes on every hot or not-so-hot guy that he sees. Gay Teen Boy falls in with Nice White Older Man, but in a delicious twist here, the East is fucking the West in the ass! Oh, a reversal, how clever! Anyway Gay Teen Boy is outted at school and becomes even more angsty at being called a faggot by everyone from his classmates to the cafeteria lady. Meanwhile Gay Teen Boy's family Falls Apart from the stress of Adjusting To A New Home. Daddy gets blowjobs while jogging from a cute little Asian chick. Mummy hangs out with a Creepy Mainland Chinese Man who wants to help her start a restaurant - and maybe more. Sister... Sister just likes to cry in bathrooms; no one knows why and no one gives a shit. I certainly don't. Gay Teen Boy gets another crush on a Mainland Chinese Hunk working at Mummy's restaurant, and helps him escape to New York. Mainland Chinese Hunk gets rid of the needy kid the first chance he gets - who'd blame him? - and poor Gay Teen Boy is alone again.

Wow. I can't believe I actually remember that much of the plot. Basically, there's nothing here which hasn't been done to death in gay-themed movies before - not that I've seen that many, it's just that they all seem to be the same movie rehashed with a different cast.

Besides this, my main gripe is with the falsely uplifting ending. Where the fuck did that acceptance and optimism come from? A music cue? That's so not enough to make me buy it.


So far the festival had been complete shite for me. Fortunately, that was about to change... But it'll have to wait for my next post. I think I'm finally feeling a little sleepy, so I'll go to bed now. Dammit, I always have trouble sleeping before a trip.

Countdown to Manchester

For some reason I always get a strange impulse to blog like crazy just before a trip. Since I'm leaving for Manchester in less than 24 hours, you just might see an avalanche of posts today.

Or I might just decide to forget about the whole damn thing and pack instead. I really should. Oh, and do laundry. Yes. That would be a good thing.

I guess I can always blog from my hotel room - fully paid for (bless film festivals!) - on their exorbitant internet charges. Maybe I can save a bit of money by actually writing the posts beforehand while I'm on my flight - also fully paid for (bless the SFC!) - instead of sleeping and watching lame-ass in-flight movies. I can still remember the fetid crap I saw the last time: 50 First Dates and Meet the Fockers. Ugh.

Über-Freaky

Having read about the new gourmet burger joint Überburger at Millennia Walk, I decided to try it out on Saturday night, even though I didn't exactly have the budget for their infamous S$101 wagyu beef and foie gras burger.

Looking through the menu with its "look-at-me-I'm-so-alternative" presentation wasn't that difficult. True, having $14 written as 4teen$ might be perplexing to some, but it's not something that would faze most SMS-crazy folks today. It does get annoying though.

The drinks list was pretty comprehensive, and the one-for-one deal they had going on for their beers on tap was very welcome, especially since the beers were Stella Artois and Hoegaarden. And this is where the "freak" part of the title comes in.

Our burgers arrived after we'd been nursing our beers for a while. I quickly demolished half of my food, but decided to slow it down a little. I really do eat too fast for my own good. I placed my burger back on the plate and lifted my pint-bucket of beer.

At this moment, there was a loud CLINK as the entire bottom of my glass fell out. Beer exploded all over my food and clothes. And I was left holding an empty glass missing its bottom and staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed. What. The. Fuck.

Waiters hurried over, incredulous looks on their faces once they understood what had happened. We were swiftly whisked to another table and I left for the bathroom to try to clean up.

Which brings me to another point. Unisex bathrooms are fine and dandy, but not when you've just had a freak accident and beer just exploded all over your body. It's really not cool to be standing at the sink in your underwear trying to wash beer out of your clothes when someone of the opposite sex waltzes in. So I decided to dab at the beer with toilet paper instead, not very effectively, and gave up after a while.

A quick note on the mechanics of how the freak accident could have happened. To make a long story short, the frequent chilling and unchilling of beer glasses can cause stresses in the material of the glass. Fractures can develop as a result. In my case, the fracture went all the way around the circumferance of the bottom of the glass, and it was pure bad luck that I was holding it when it decided to give way.

By the time I returned to the table, they'd refilled my beer and replacement for my food was on the way. The chef brought the replacement burger himself, and swore he'd never seen such a freaky incident. I took a bite of the meat and found that it was dry as a sponge. My original order was for a medium-rare burger, and they'd just completely bypassed asking me what my preference was and gave me a well-done one as a replacement.

I don't like to waste meat, so I tried eating it. I couldn't get past half the patty because it was too dry, and because I was full. I swear, I almost choked on the meat due to the dryness. So obviously when the check came I bitched about it, and managed to get the entire S$29 burger taken off. So at least one good thing happened.

Anyway, foodwise Überburger wasn't that amazing. I think that the only real burgers are thick, juicy, and greasy as hell. Even my so-called decadent medium-rare burger with its bacon wasn't the explosion of flavor I expected it to be, and the little bucket of fries looked rather sad, a far cry from what the description promised.

There's another part of my story. I forgot to check what time it was when the freak accident occured, so when I decided to buy 4D, I had to buy a whole range of times. Two sets of numbers hit for the time range I bought. Unfortunately I didn't get a system entry (with all possible permutations of the numbers) and had also decided to buy the numbers based on a 24-hour clock instead of a 12-hour clock.

So yeah, nothing to show for the night except for clothes that still smell of beer and a free rather blah burger.

I think I'll stick to Carl's Jr. for now.