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A fine day off...
Feb. 17th, 2001 07:06 pmWoke up without the benefit of an alarm clock this morning, fresh as a pickle and fit as a fiddle. Yesterday's big news was the NASA physical, which basically is the same thing as an air traffic controller's Class II physical. They did all the usual things you'd expect, testing bodily fluids, hearing, sight, heartbeat, respiration, and blood pressure.
The most interesting part of the business came actually before the physical, when I decided to show up a little early to see if I could get out a little earlier. It turns out that I was an hour early by my wristwatch, but since I had forgotten to wind it, it had stopped about an hour previous to when I looked at it, with the upshot being that I was pretty much on time.
Afterwards, I ran a few errands in the neighborhood, including a stop at the storage place Galina had engaged to take care of our overflow from the house, and then went back to Pearland, where Lee was waiting for me.
It turns out Lee had already been to see Hannibal, and was so affected by the intensity of some of the scenes, that she left the auditorium for part of the movie. I certainly don't remember the book being that shocking, so I don't know what to think about the movie, nor will I really know until I go see it. I have my reservations, though.
In any event, she really wanted to go see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, despite having already seen it once. We left the house, intent on a local 8:00 pm show, but upon arrival, we learned it was sold out. We left for another cinemaplex, but there, too, the movie was sold out and besides, it had already started.
We decided to eat out, so we stopped at a favorite place, the Outback restaurant on Bay Area, where we typically order a pair of steak specials. Afterward, we gravitated toward the local Barnes & Noble, where I acquainted myself with the latest crop of Linux books. None of them really struck my fancy, being basically compendiums of operating system documentation.
We returned to the local cinemaplex for the 10:50 pm show of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the auditorium was pretty full for this showing, too. The previews seemed endless, though my heart stuck in my throat when I saw the trailer for Pearl Harbor; it looks like it may be a very powerful movie, and its timing for Memorial Day release will probably help it get off the ground with a good start at the box office.
I don't know whether one can fairly classify Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as "kung-fu" movie; I don't think so. This movie is very different from what one could find in movie houses in ethnically Chinese neighborhoods in the 70s and 80s. Those films seemed to have been stamped from the same cookie cutter, much like romance authors seem to reissue the same basic story under a variety of different names.
In a "traditional" martial arts epic, the story generally ran along the lines of:
A modest hero, of respectable but not world-class skill in martial art, living in a small town. He has an attractive girlfriend and his girlfriend's parents think he is a fine young man. His teacher, too, thinks the young man has promise. Everybody likes the young man.
Everyone, that is, except the bad guys, who show up out of nowhere to wreak havoc for the fun of it. They beat the heck out of the young man, leaving him for dead. They rape his girlfriend and kill her parents and his teacher. Such behavior establishes their bona fides as far as nastiness is concerned, and they set up a regime of arbitrary terror in the village.
The young man, in the meantime, retires to a mountain where he spends a long time steeling himself for the fight to come. He repeatedly thrusts his bare hands into mounds of hot rocks. He practices with various exotic weapons. He trains. Hard.
Finally, he is ready to return to the village and mete out death and destruction to the bad guys. He does so. The end.
CTHD seriously broke that model. There are strong female roles in the story, and the male role is trying to renounce a violent past. There are fabulous scenes in the movie, in the classical sense of that word.
I'll not say anything more, as to do so may spoil the movie for those who have not seen it yet. It was worth the price of admission, even at non-matinee rates.
Today was a lazy day that was taken up with shopping, a survey of the property, a little house cleaning, a viewing of the 1996 version of Hamlet, starring Kenneth Branagh (a great film, by the way), and now some work on the computer.
Tomorrow morning starts my stint working the Execute Package, so it'll have to make sure I go to bed at a reasonable hour. I also have to remember to go to the clinic the first thing in the morning, so I can bare my forearm and show that I had no reaction to the TB test that is part of the physical.
Ciao for now.
Cheers...
The most interesting part of the business came actually before the physical, when I decided to show up a little early to see if I could get out a little earlier. It turns out that I was an hour early by my wristwatch, but since I had forgotten to wind it, it had stopped about an hour previous to when I looked at it, with the upshot being that I was pretty much on time.
Afterwards, I ran a few errands in the neighborhood, including a stop at the storage place Galina had engaged to take care of our overflow from the house, and then went back to Pearland, where Lee was waiting for me.
It turns out Lee had already been to see Hannibal, and was so affected by the intensity of some of the scenes, that she left the auditorium for part of the movie. I certainly don't remember the book being that shocking, so I don't know what to think about the movie, nor will I really know until I go see it. I have my reservations, though.
In any event, she really wanted to go see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, despite having already seen it once. We left the house, intent on a local 8:00 pm show, but upon arrival, we learned it was sold out. We left for another cinemaplex, but there, too, the movie was sold out and besides, it had already started.
We decided to eat out, so we stopped at a favorite place, the Outback restaurant on Bay Area, where we typically order a pair of steak specials. Afterward, we gravitated toward the local Barnes & Noble, where I acquainted myself with the latest crop of Linux books. None of them really struck my fancy, being basically compendiums of operating system documentation.
We returned to the local cinemaplex for the 10:50 pm show of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the auditorium was pretty full for this showing, too. The previews seemed endless, though my heart stuck in my throat when I saw the trailer for Pearl Harbor; it looks like it may be a very powerful movie, and its timing for Memorial Day release will probably help it get off the ground with a good start at the box office.
I don't know whether one can fairly classify Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as "kung-fu" movie; I don't think so. This movie is very different from what one could find in movie houses in ethnically Chinese neighborhoods in the 70s and 80s. Those films seemed to have been stamped from the same cookie cutter, much like romance authors seem to reissue the same basic story under a variety of different names.
In a "traditional" martial arts epic, the story generally ran along the lines of:
A modest hero, of respectable but not world-class skill in martial art, living in a small town. He has an attractive girlfriend and his girlfriend's parents think he is a fine young man. His teacher, too, thinks the young man has promise. Everybody likes the young man.
Everyone, that is, except the bad guys, who show up out of nowhere to wreak havoc for the fun of it. They beat the heck out of the young man, leaving him for dead. They rape his girlfriend and kill her parents and his teacher. Such behavior establishes their bona fides as far as nastiness is concerned, and they set up a regime of arbitrary terror in the village.
The young man, in the meantime, retires to a mountain where he spends a long time steeling himself for the fight to come. He repeatedly thrusts his bare hands into mounds of hot rocks. He practices with various exotic weapons. He trains. Hard.
Finally, he is ready to return to the village and mete out death and destruction to the bad guys. He does so. The end.
CTHD seriously broke that model. There are strong female roles in the story, and the male role is trying to renounce a violent past. There are fabulous scenes in the movie, in the classical sense of that word.
I'll not say anything more, as to do so may spoil the movie for those who have not seen it yet. It was worth the price of admission, even at non-matinee rates.
Today was a lazy day that was taken up with shopping, a survey of the property, a little house cleaning, a viewing of the 1996 version of Hamlet, starring Kenneth Branagh (a great film, by the way), and now some work on the computer.
Tomorrow morning starts my stint working the Execute Package, so it'll have to make sure I go to bed at a reasonable hour. I also have to remember to go to the clinic the first thing in the morning, so I can bare my forearm and show that I had no reaction to the TB test that is part of the physical.
Ciao for now.
Cheers...
