ptooey, he said...

Friday, April 27, 2007

Credo

My wife, hiccup, and I like to watch movies. Our taste in films is admittedly a bit off-kilter, and that's just the way we like it. We generally shoot for bottom-of-the-barrel B-movies. Mid-'50s sci-fi with giant radioactive insects are the best, but we've found that we've watched so many of them that it's getting difficult to find anything new. We've been forced to branch out a bit.

Lately, we've been on a martial arts movie kick. I really like these films. They're simple, sure, and the plots are laughably predictable. But they're fun. There's something to be said for movies that have no message, and are meant only for entertainment. Also, even in the cheesiest low budget ones, the action scenes can be pretty impressive. Those cats really ARE fast as lightning.

I find the dialogue in these to be great fun, particularly those that have been translated and redubbed with English-speaking voice actors. The other night we watched a flick called Invincible. It starred, believe it or not, a Bruce Lee impersonator who billed himself as Bruce Lee, Bruce Li or Dragon Lee, depending on the film. It was a fun movie to watch - cheesy and packed with great phony sound effects.

During one moving scene, our hero consulted with his mother as he was about to go out and avenge death/defend honor/kick ass, and the mother pleaded with him not to go, delivering a line with such raw voice actor overemotion that I find myself still cracking up about it. I have found my new motto in life, for I too am "...only one man, and I don't know ANY kung fu."

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Unpleasant Encounters

Firstly, yes it has been a month since I posted. It has been an insanely busy month filled with work, kids' soccer games and dance classes, home improvement and general pandemonium. Sometimes it's exhausting simply existing.

Justine's recent post reminded me that I wanted to jot a quick note about what happened to me a couple of nights ago.

Our house is on a very quiet street. It's a very good thing because I am a ridiculously light sleeper. To the point that the furnace kicking on often wakes me up. I also retire relatively early most nights because I wake up very, very early. My head had just hit the pillow a little after 10 on Monday night when very loud rap music thumped its way into our bedroom. I figured that it was someone visiting the teenager across the street and they would leave soon. After 5 minutes or so, curiousity got the better of me and I went to to the window to see what was up.

There were two cars parked on the street right in front of our house. One was aimed the wrong direction, and there were several people gathered around the nearer of the two. The doors were all open on this car, which was obviously the source of the racket. I decided that I really didn't like being kept awake by these idjits. I went out to the living room and turned on our porchlight, hoping that would be enough to spur them to move on. Unfortunately, it wasn't. I got dressed and went out to the car to ask them to turn it down. As I was walking up, I noticed that two of the people gathered around the car were kids. There was a girl who looked to be about 10, and a boy who was perhaps a couple of years younger. A lady was kneeling at the passenger door of the car, letting fly with an impressive stream of expletives - "I don't have the effing keys, dips*t." "I don't effing know where they are." "Eff you." Charming.

There was a man in the driver's seat of the car, twiddling knobs on the car stereo. I yelled at him that there were people trying to sleep, and asked if he would turn it down. He looked at me, bleary-eyed, and said that they were being quiet. I pointed out to him that his stereo was very loud, and again asked him to turn it down. He turned it down to a more reasonable level, and I thanked him. As I turned to walk away, he cranked it up VERY loudly for just a second, then back down. Fine. He made his point. That'll show me. I went back into the house, grabbed my phone, and figured I'd give them a couple of minutes before I called the police. As it turned out, they drove off after just a short while, and I went back to bed.

My wife asked me if I was scared, approaching them like that. Truth be told, I wasn't really until I noticed how out-of-it the dude behind the wheel was. You never know, I guess. The really frightening thing was that there were two kids out well after 10PM on a weeknight with at least one chemically impaired adult and another who was demonstrating a less than wholesome abuse of the language.

Who are these people, and why do they live like this?