To be honest, there's no real weekend intelligence this week.
Don't worry, you're not missing much. We would have gone to our annual ball. I posted no link for a reason, but Google "San Antonio Easter Ball" if you *absolutely* have to know... But, since we had plans for going out on Monday, we decided that two all-nighters in a three-day window was probably a bad idea. Especially when it overlapped with the work week. So we stayed home and had a quiet Easter weekend with the kiddos.
However, Friday was a good time. You see, D has become an
independent consultant and purveyor of fine romance products via Passion Parties. The link is slightly NSFW, but honestly, check it out when you have time and privacy; she'll be getting an online store soon, I hear. Anyway, this means she schedules parties at other people's houses, generally on a weekend evening, and takes her products to showcase there. Which means she's not at home on a weekend evening. And you know what that means...
No, midgets and strippers were not involved. >.>;
And even if they were, I wouldn't admit to it here. My friends, family, and (most importantly) wife read this blog, and I try to keep it on the dark side of a PG-13 rating around here. Though you'd never know it with all the
4Chan references. Don't click that.
No, I'm talking about the classic, trusty guys night in staple: some ol' fashioned bad kung fu flicks. You see, I'm a big fan of bad kung fu, not to mention the badass feeling you get after watching bad kung fu. So is Kevin. The lower the budget, poorer the dubbing job, more improbable the physics and incomprehensible the plot, the better. The kind of films where no fewer than half a dozen people were likely seriously injured during the filming due to non-existent stunt budgets and/or legal safety regulations in the country.
Does the movie have subtitles? Then they obviously had too much money.
These are the kind of movies that assume you're viewing while consuming copious amounts of alcohol. They might as well have a "
Best Served While Slizzard"
advisory printed on the DVD. And there was plenty to be had of that: I had just kegged a batch of pear cider, and we had a 12-pack of Woodchuck, rum, whiskey and vodka at our disposal. Not that we drank all that in one sitting. We more or less destroyed the Woodchuck, that's about it.
We saw three movies that night. The first was one called
Ong Bak. Technically, it wasn't a kung fu flick; it was a muay thai flick. Whatever. It actually was not bad at all: well-shot, no CG or wire effects. That's not to say there weren't plenty of ridiculous situations. In one scene, they're tearing through the streets of downtown Bangkok on... golf carts.
That's right,
golf carts.
Complete with the hero jumping from cart to cart and ninja kicking people to the curb. In another scene, the hero gets caught in an explosion, only to emerge, lower body on fire, and deliver a flaming roundhouse kick onto someone's head.
Next was
Legend of the Red Dragon, some really, really early Jet Li stuff there. Basically, the government in ancient China looks and acts a lot like the government of modern-day China: it gets what it wants and doesn't mind cracking a few monks in the process. Except in ancient China, they apparently had
invincible kung fu zombie warriors who drove around in sawblade cars wherever the hell they wanted and didn't afraid of anything. I heard they were pretty cool guys. It was obvious that this movie was winning in the first scene, when the guy who would become the zombie later attacked the hero with a giant flaming log he had stuck with his claws. The hero countered this by sticking his spear into the other end of the log, spinning it really fast to drill all the way through the log and stab the not-yet-a-zombie.
Then the log exploded.
The last was
Story in Temple Red Lily. This one is so horrible in that it's damned near impossible to follow. I'm pretty sure there's an evil baron after a prince. There's a drunk guy, too. And a giant bird that some of the people used to get from place to place. The rest is poorly dubbed political intrigue, camera angles that never seem to quite capture the subject (they got some awesome shots of talking trees) and fight scenes that make physics cry itself to sleep in a corner.
Bingo.
For nearly three years, D and I have been following an awesome EBM artist from Hamburg, Germany. We've listened to him get progressively awesome in that time in ways that few artists allow themselves to grow. And while his skill is superb, he has said time and again, despite constant prodding from us and the rest of his US fanbase, that he would never do a US tour...
