China Airlines is as uncomfortable as I remember it; there’s just something about the seats that have me trying to bend metal by the end of the flight. Nice selection of media, however, including the 30 Rock 3rd season premiere (with Chinese subtitles) and enough movies to put together a a summer science-fiction marathon: Moon, which I liked a lot, seeing as how I actually had to put on the headset to follow—which certainly wasn’t the case with Transformers 2. I had to again for Will Ferrel’s Land of the Lost because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing had been released as a major motion picture. What a shame that they revisited this show without the awesome end theme.
Taipei’s TV lineup doesn’t seem to have changed much; in under a week I’ve seen every Bruce Lee movie and more than my share of Jackie Chan and Tony Leungs—had the time, being laid up with what we first feared was the H1N1, but turned out to be more akin to stomach flu or Traveler’s diarrhea. (I suspect the sushi my in-laws always insist on treating us with.) My experience with the health care here is, nevertheless, one for Michael Moore’s films: seeing a doctor and a bag full o’ drugs cost half my insurance co-pay back home.
Dreams, had a bunch, thanks to the mild fever. In one, Ron and his whore planned to drive me to the ocean and throw me in, so I broke his neck from the back seat without so much as an emotional farewell. The same night my then ex-wife, our child, another woman and I were registering at some Taiwanese agency, and the only word I understood from her responses was the state of her new relationship: “lesbian” …still, our breakup apparently was amicable. Then there was the Star Trek movie which had me feeling was worth a revisit, where original cast featured alongside Next Generation, Deanna Troi traveled the corridors in a floating seat and Kirk showed heroic vigor by placing a vital dumbbell-shaped part on his thick head of hair and running off to engineering to save the day with it.
The apartment 老婆 arranged for us reminds me of Blade Runner, except all the flying cars have descended onto the damp streets as scooters. From our eighth floor window I can hear all the noise from below, where shops repeat recordings through megaphones so distorted that even she can’t make them out, and I have to resist the urge to smash. One that played all night sounded like 發燒 (fāshāo), but instead of mocking my temperature, it’s 肉粽 in Taiwanese (バッチャン, because I’m not learning Pe̍h-ōe-jī just for the sake of this post).
Was explaining our stop at Fry’s last weekend to 老婆, and her response: that’s because they were made in China. (The Sony’s, which I successfully swapped them out for, don’t fit flush against my head as intended and has always been the case, insert with the speakers facing forward. Yanking on the extra-long cord brings up the same old concern, too.) Alas, the Zippy keyboard which has served me so well these past few years, comes to us from Taiwan; the flexible Tripp-Lite it replaced, which didn’t fare as well—what do you know, let gravity have at the wires inside and they fail—most likely from the mainland. But let’s hope that manufacturing, regardless of where it’s done, sticks to standards commensurate to premium products such as Deck’s.
The deep keystrokes remind me of my old Selectric II, but it’s as if the thick and hence less portable case is making the extra room for your fingers. Thankfully the FN commands to dim and disable the lighting work over USB to the 360 and PS2, because I’d be blinded by the LED’s at their highest setting. Or made to feel guilty by their gratuitous use of energy. There is, however, a niche concept behind it (even if it harks back to case modders from ten years ago), the braided cord, diamond plate bottom, that’s just as hardcore and uncompromising as Apple’s. At twice the price.
Then again, the headliner inside my Japanese truck designed and built in the US has come unglued and is sagging.
IIRC they used clips from this movie during the opening for Channel 56’s Creature Double Feature (which, along with Kung Fu Theater in Houston and Night Flight got me used to staying in on Saturdays), but I don’t think I ever appreciated the rest of it, after being turned off by the overpowered protagonist toying with his opposition.
It is seminal fantasy, the kind that’s alas too wild to be attempted nowadays, and easy to see the influence on later epics—even videogames, which is what that bizarre ninja door trap reminded me of. But if this is “pure”, Chris, and that, too, then what’s left for us?
Count me in as a victim of the “mass dream” referred to in the excised Wiki Lore section about this movie only recently re-released in un-remastered form by the Warner Archive. (To no editor’s credit, the new page now includes the name of an online review series as part of its title.) I really ought to stick to my lessons about plumbing the past, but the results can sometimes be interesting: the visual in my mind all these years of Carl Weathers being dragged by 浦島太郎’s turtle had been from a different angle. 22-year-old Connie Sellecca might’ve seeded our generation’s response to Kristin Kreuk, whose Chun Li burn might actually make it to the player if only she wouldn’t try to act. And that bit of the soundtrack which immediately struck me as being hijacked by the Shaw Bros. had me fast-forwarding through four more DVD’s last night, without any conclusion other than Super Ninjas has one helluva ending.
A few weeks ago I had a dream (most likely induced by 老婆’s request that I stop there for her) I was in Marukai, went up a back way and found a new floor where they kept a library of Japanese books. The curator approached me with my order, a scroll on a tatami plate, which her assistant removed from its wrapping by haphazardly cutting into the trim. She asked me to read it to her, but none of the characters were familiar. I BS’d and tried to run for it, but the stairs down led to the same place, like in the “House that Jack Built” episode of the Avengers I watched not too long ago. When I actually did go to the store the next day, nothing. Not even カレーうどん. Maybe I should’ve tried the second level?
Will’s online girlfriend appeared in another dream, accompanied by a male companion she introduced as Evan while we strolled down a Little Tokyo street. He said he’d check with her, but more than likely the connection is from our office guest with that last name—what exactly does she do, anyway? Or it’s time for me to dig up the Kentucky Fried Movie for an audience with Mr. Kim.
Last night I found myself in a gang like Angel’s (having also revisited the series finale recently) on a mission to defeat our deadliest enemies: Alfre Woodard from Star Trek: First Contact took on a corse-like creature by confusing it with songs, the last of which was the Jackson 5’s “ABC”. Myself and Kutner from House were charged with a pair of killers. We snuck upon them and I throttled one, but the other managed to produce a knife and stab my partner. He survived… unlike in Season Five, which I fast-forwarded through this lazy Sunday afternoon.
Emma Peel was asleep in a room on the second floor, but I had a hard time climbing the stairs to get her because you know how they are in my dreams, so narrow and dangerous, and I’m always crawling on them. Turns out she wasn’t there, but I met her in the kitchen instead. She wore heels and towered over me, prompting me to ask her if her husband Peter was even taller. We were needed, as it were, so she, Steed and my faceless sidekick jumped into a sedan. I took a seat in the passenger side, but realized that Steed was piloting with his umbrella from the rear, and congenially allowed me to take the wheel. My driving was hectic, with all the reckless abandon in a videogame, but after all, we were professionals. We arrived at a junkyard where the bad guys were about to crush some containers of evidence; I quickly executed a daring reversal into them, ruining their opportunity. They had us and used the electromagnet to lift the car in the air. I somehow escaped to the ground, but faced a 20-foot giant in their ranks. At first such a being was hard to believe, but I supposed with the right breeding, it wasn’t impossible. The crane wound up and flung the others into a far-away building, their bodies visible in the rubble (like on the OMAC cover), but Steed and Mrs. Peel survived. My assistant, however, did not, and Steed demanded we take a blood oath to avenge his death. So that’s where the name comes from.
He was a favorite of 할머니’s (the others being Paul Newman and Elvis Presley), and although she probably didn’t understand a word he said, she insisted on tuning into his broadcast every night. When Dan Rather took over, we got to watch Get Smart instead.
Had this dream last night that I rediscovered an old song on the B&W screen my 3G iPod with this title, pre-Pearl Jam and just the one word, by a band called Me Myself and Irene, also not to be confused with the Farrelly Bros. Jim Carrey movie. Cross-referencing the two now finds no connection.
This “review” gave me a good chuckle, when I got over my astonishment that a present-day thirteen-year-old could write so well: “I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.”
My first Sony was a more modern job (by then they’d reduced the size to little more than the cassette itself, while retaining the all-important metal switch) I picked up in Japan for about the same price as my 3G iPod and iPhone, but I did have a similarly-described Akai before it. Whatever its deficiencies and the amazing strides made in technology since, I’ll always have that singular transcendent moment afforded me by the Human League’s techno-bombast on the long walk between arcades at Memorial City Mall.
Again, I can’t remember what channel I first saw it on in Providence, or if it was even there, but they did a week of sci-fi at 3 o’clock and on at least two of the other days were almost identical bad Italian movies where the bad guys wore ugly wigs and carried flat light sabers. (Holy crap, was one of them Starcrash with Caroline Munro?) To be fair, though, very little distinguishes this from Message from Space, either. Future グラビア idol 浅野ゆう子 holds up quite nicely, and that rockin’ theme is to die for, but no one thought it was weird when the poor sap in the space station said “galleon”?
