What's the Frequency, Kenneth?

I was hoping that this post would be a little more sentimental, but that's life in Jersey. A few months ago, I was informed that child car seats are not permitted in Jeep Wranglers, and to make sure that somebody like me doesn't put one in anyway, Chrysler doesn't put the seat anchors in, as permitted by the NTSB. So, I've had to buy a new car.

I took Baby out this evening to break the news. I felt a little bit like the time we had to take Duke to the vet one last time. I used the "It's not you, it's me" speech, but it wasn't too bad. Baby had noticed my wandering eye, and knew it was only a matter of time. I had brought my new camera to take some last photos of Baby before I sent her off to the knackers.

Baby wanted to know about the other car, but I refused to discuss Pepper, the sleek German model I was about to make it official with. Nothing positive would come from that conversation. We laughed, and we cried, and then it was time to take the photos.
Here's where it all became a little surreal: I got one shot off, when a rather irate individual came up and asked what I was taking photos of. I told him, and then he told me I should have asked his permission first and demanded to see the photo. I showed him -
As you can see, he is nowhere in the photo. He was clearly agitated about something, and accused me of trying to take his photo for a website he called "Babyfuckers of Czechoslovakia". I could have been an asshole and asked him if he was indeed a babyfucker, but the situation was escalating well enough on its own, so I went the other way with the more intelligent "That's unusual, you don't sound Czech". I reminded him that I was in a public place and that I was entitled to take photos of anything I could see. Quizzically, he told me that we were not in Russia, and that he had the right to walk in the street without his photograph being taken. At this point, it occurred to me that he was a pedophile, because obviously only a person who is a babyfucker would think that that is what the general public thought of them. In any event, he was definitely somebody who had been to prison. A police car drove by and rather than flag it down and tell them that his rights were being violated, he turned away so they wouldn't see his face. He continued to goad me until I finally told him that if he had a problem, he should speak to Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson. I reached in through the passenger window and opened my glovebox. A bluff, of course. He didn't know what to do with himself so he threatened to take down my plate. I welcomed his enthusiasm. He did nothing in the end, but as he walked off I snapped a photo of his out of state plate. In Jersey, you never know.

Bye Bye Baby.

Free Movie Time

I won a double pass to a preview screening of Sicko by Michael Moore last week, but of course it wasn't really a sneak preview. I asked Bobby if he wanted to come, he had to work of course. So I asked Randy. He's usually good for a few free beers and a movie, but not this time. He had already seen the movie a few days before on youtube. So I went by myself, and I got there late so it was a good thing because finding two seats together was impossible. I ended up sitting next to a gay couple who were quite friendly, well at least the one closest to me was. The opening scene of the movie is perhaps the most graphic, and the old queen sitting next to me almost fainted. I advised him that this was only the beginning of the film and that he should think about watching the rest of it. He stayed for the whole thing and touched my knee gently at the closing credits. I'm pretty sure it was an accident, so I didn't say anything plus his boyfriend looked to be a very jealous type. It was an honest mistake - my stylist gave me a free haircut because of all the free goodies I brought her from Japan, but she gave me the "extra gay" cut. I didn't tip. Twenty-five percent of zero is still zero.

I'm not going to critique the film because it is a documentary. It's done in the usual Michael Moore style and has a few funny moments, but I just want to say that he does skew the facts a little bit in his favour. I happen to know, thanks to our fair brethren to the north that the Canadian health system is not as good as Mr. Moore paints it. The truth is, he covered the health system in the province of Ontario which just so happens to be the best in that country. My friends on the west coast and on the Canadian prairies tell me that even though Moore says that health care is totally free (it may be in Ontario), it is not the case in Vancouver. Each taxpayer is required to pay a monthly fee for basic coverage, and in one of the prairie provinces (I forget which), a for-profit health care system is already available for those who can afford it. I'm also pretty sure that he simplifies the French case. So you see, while the health care systems in Canada, Great Britain, France and Cuba may be better than the systems in the States, they are not necessarily free. I still believe that the point Moore is trying to make comes across loud and clear, despite a few inaccuracies and am amused that the anti-Moore camp focuses the majority of it's attention on the coverage of the Cuban health care system. They can't argue with the NHS, and ignore the French and the Canadians. For good reason I say, generally. Fucking Socialists. I never really thought about it, but I guess my own little example of free health care never would have been possible had she been born in New Jersey. Technically, Japan does not have a free health care system - it's very much like the States, but at least in Japan infants get a free pass. Foxy has changed so much since the above photo. That was taken when she was a week old. Now she's looking more and more like Jabba the Hut with a toupée, little by little each day.

I sent some Vermont chocolates back to Japan for my mother-in-law because she got some as a gift when she came to the wedding and wanted more. How could I deny? The package was opened by Customs officials because they suspected an explosive device. Apparently, they did not sample any of the fine chocolate from the Green Mountain State. It may have been a good thing, because when my father-in-law sampled a piece, he lost a dental filling. It's a good thing he's got insurance.

I spent the weekend before the Fourth camping with Bobby, his boss' family and some important clients in Vermont. Fifteen people in all. It was the first time I'd been camping in many years and it was the first time that I was able to use my tent, the five-year service gift I received from a certain employer. It was actually quite large and I fancied taking Foxy and Ali camping next time around. How young is too young to go camping?

Actually I Would Like to Eat My Cake and Have It Too.

It's been a while since I've seen any movies, and I'll be pulling it all from memory but I saw some really, really good ones on the weekend. It all started with wanting to see Hot Fuzz starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, both of Shaun of the Dead. Again, Edgar Wright directs. This was a film that I looked for while I was in Japan, and couldn't find it obviously because it hasn't been released on video yet. I found that out at the video shop on Friday. I thought I'd go for Kaidan nobori ryu, aka The Blind Woman's Curse starring Meiko Kaji who would later star in Joshuu 701-gô: Sasori. No luck, someone had already rented it. There was a new guy working the counter, so I thought I'd let him choose. I asked for anything by Park Chan-uk. He listed off the usual films, and then added Saam gaang yi or Three... Extremes.

"I'll take it!" Now I should have been tipped off by the behaviour of the new clerk, but I guess he wasn't having a good day. He sent me home with Saam gaang, the "sequel" to the movie I had asked for. I also went home with JSA: Joint Security Area. I got through two of the short films in Saam gaang before I realized that I had the wrong video. The shorts on this disc were entertaining, especially the third. The first one is called Memories, a Korean film directed by Kim Ji-woon starring Jeong Bo-seok, and Kim Hye-su as a married couple. I have to say that I couldn't tell what was going on in these short films, so I'll just kind of relate my interpretations. In this one, the wife has gone missing and is seen in a series of flashbacks, which may or may not be contemporary. The husband does not recollect what has happened to his wife, but she is a ghost. She is trying to rejoin her family in their new home, but cannot reach them. You know, ghosts can't use the telephone. The movie goes along with the husband denying that he killed his wife, but that he really wants to remember what happened to her. He then sees a duffel bag (why is it always a duffel bag?) in his living room, and opens it to find the body of his wife. The rest of the film depicts the woman realizing that she is a ghost and the husband perhaps remembering that he killed her in the first place. Nothing really new here.

The second film is a Thai film called The Wheel directed by Nonzee Nimibutr. I have no idea why this film is called The Wheel, because there isn't a single wheel in it anywhere. It's about a group of performers who fight over the puppets they use in their shows. Apparently, these puppets control the performers and cause bad things to happen. Not a lot going on here.

The next day, I called the video shop and told them what had happened and they offered to exchange this disc for the right one. Well, not before I watched the rest of it. I'm glad I did. The third was the best of the three I thought. Written by Teddy Chan, the same guy who directed Wan 9 zhao 5, this movie stars Eric Tsang, yes executive producer Eric Tsang, and follows the story of a single father trying to find his missing son. He suspects his neighbour, a guy who pushes his wife around in a wheelchair because she is dead. But you aren't supposed to know that yet. Anyway, the neighbour had strangled his sick wife and bathes her daily in a mixture of chinese herbs to keep her refreshed. He also talks to her so that her spirit knows that it has not been forgotten. Peter Ho-sun Chan does a great job directing the story. Tsang's character is held captive by the neighbour because he doesn't want anyone to find out about his dead wife, but eventually they do and he gets arrested. By this time, the wife is beginning to return to a healthy life after three years of being looked after daily by her husband when he is suddenly killed in a car accident. The wife does not receive the final care she needs and dies for good in the police morgue. Tsang later reviews video cassettes found in the neighbour's flat only to find that the guy was not crazy, that he himself was brought back to life by his wife several years before. It had been his turn to care for his wife by doing the same thing she had done to him. Now that the husband and wife were permanently dead, their unborn daughter could now join them in the afterlife. I don't remember if Tsang's son is ever found, but it was the ghost of the daughter that lured him away to begin with. This was the best of the three films.

I went back to the video store and exchanged the disc for the one I wanted originally, and came home with three more shorts. Director Fruit Chan was first up. Dumplings stars Miriam Yeung Chin Wah as an aging wife who wants to retain her youth, attract more attention from her husband and have a child. The film also stars Bai Ling. She's famous, I guess. Anyway, the squeamish should read no further. I figured out the plot to this film at about the same time that Bai Ling says she is her own best advertisement. Bai cooks dumplings which have a reputation of helping people stay young. What's the special ingredient? Babies. Yup, babies. How does she get these babies? You don't think she cooks all day, do you? Nope, she finds wayward girls who are in a situation and helps them out. See, she helps them and they help her. Everybody wins. Of course, Bai is no professional and she ends up killing one of the girls I think. She disappears after it is discovered that one of the babies was the product of incest and has created nasty dumplings. Yeung's character is sickened to learn what she has become part of and after discovering that she is now pregnant, she aborts the pregnancy. Now the really fucked up shit happens right here. She continues to eat the dumplings. What? I thought she no longer wanted to have a baby. I might have missed something here because the subtitling was white on white a lot of the time, but it seemed to me that she really didn't care about having a kid and just wanted to stay looking young to satisfy her vanity. Good film, easy plot but it's put me off dumplings for a long time.

The second film is Cut by Park chan-uk, starring Lee Byung-hun, Lim Won-hie, and Kang Hye-jeong. I found this film to be a lot like Takashi Miike's Bijitâ Q, in that it involves a stranger who manipulates a family. In the film, a director is subdued in his own home by an extra who appeared in all of the director's films. The extra has a bit of a problem because he is jealous of the wealthy, virtuous, well-liked director who is a contrast to his own life. The extra somehow feels that the director should be punished for his goodness and has wrangled the director's wife to a piano and has ordered the director to sin by killing a girl who happens to be tied up on the sofa. If he doesn't do it, the extra will cut off the fingers of the piano-playing wife. Eventually, the director attempts to kill the girl and discovers that it is in fact the son of the extra, whom the extra could not kill himself that morning. The wife manages to bite a chunk out of the extra's jugular, only to witness the son swear revenge as his father bleeds out. Again, I missed a lot because of the white on white thing, but it was pretty fucked up. But in Park's style, the viewer is challenged to determine what is right and wrong.

And for a little treat, the third film was directed by none other than Takashi Miike and was called Box. This is the story of a young woman who is haunted by the ghost of her sister, whom she accidentally killed as a child in a circus fire. The twin sisters are contortionists who work in a magic act, but as the magician favours one sister, the other becomes jealous. She locks her sister in a box and unfortunately causes a fire before her sister can be released. The magician reunites with the woman, and tells her that he wanted to do them both and that he liked them equally. At about that time, he grabs a sheet of polyurethane and pulls it over the girl's head. A lot of this is dream sequence and flashbacks and I'm not sure what really happens in the end, but I think the older sister gets buried alive. Some people have suggested that the two sisters are actually siamese twins who dream of being separated, but I'm the type of person to watch a film over and over again to try and analyze everything, or count legs.

JSA: Joint Security Area stars Lee Byung-hun of Cut, Lee Yeong-ae of Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, and Song Kang-ho also from Lady Vengeance, but perhaps better known for his role in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Lee Yeong-ae, who is allegedly fluent in English, plays a Swiss soldier sent to investigate a double homicide on the Korean border and locate the missing bullet. She's not fluent in English, and it really messed up the flow of the film. Lee Byung-hun plays a South Korean soldier who is saved on a reconnaissance mission by a pair of North Korean soldiers, one of them played by Song Kang-ho. Lee is thankful to the North Koreans and sends them gifts. He develops a friendship with his enemies and establishes a routine of crossing the border and fraternizing. He ropes his new partner into the friendship and the four men carry on like there is no such thing as the DMZ. At some point, the four are discovered by a North Korean officer who has a bit of a Mexican standoff with the southerners. He gets distracted by a stereo, and takes one in the head. The two South Korean soldiers and escape while the second North Korean is also left dead. The film dissects the murder scene from different points of view. The junior South Korean soldier tries to commit suicide, forcing Lee Yeong-ae to decide who tells the better story, Lee Byung-hun or Song Kang-ho. This is part of Park's greatness, he can tell the story like no one else. In the end, Lee Yeong-ae is removed from the case because she is trying to uncover the truth, rather than reinforce the official view. The two former friends turn on each other and Lee Byung-hun is eventually implicated in the death of the North Korean officer and junior soldier. He manages to wrangle the side arm from a South Korean MP and commits suicide in front of Lee Yeong-ae, who has just learned the truth of that night but has promised to deliver a report clearing the South Korean of any wrongdoing. The only soldier to survive the investigation is Song Kang-ho who continues to serve the Republic as a guard in the DMZ. Seven movies for the price of two. Not bad.

Just a Little Something

It's been bugging me ever since Foxy came home from the hospital. I even tried to catch the look a few times, but what infant holds a pose? But she looks like one of my favourite actors, Oliver Platt. Although, with that face, Foxy reminds me of this guy. I couldn't find the right photo, but I'm sure I've seen this look before. Maybe this one is better.

If you think comparing the cutest baby west of the international dateline to photos of old(er) men is a mean thing to do, at least I'm not dressing my daughter in ridiculous outfits, or amusing myself by feeding her pickled onions. Ali does that sort of thing. Like mum used to say, it's cheaper than movies, and in some cases funnier. Ice cream when she's older. It would be just cruel at this age. Actually, all of our friends and family have been blessed with an acute sense of baby fashion. My fave is the handknit hand-me-down pantsuit she received from her cousin. Oh, and the cape... What baby needs a cape? Don't say Superbaby.

A Reason to Crack Open a Can of Iced Coffee

I had a whole bunch of stuff I wanted to write about on here, but it's been so long now that I only remember Tommy Lee Jones and some stuff about kosher meals on my flight. We all know that Hollywood stars come to Japan to film endorsements that never get seen back in the States. A very famous example is Sean Connery's ads for Suntory whiskey, and another is Cameron Diaz' multimedia campaign for a cell phone company. You pretty much see cutouts of her in every mall you might visit. I'll bet you didn't know this, or perhaps Tommy Lee Jones doesn't want you to know but in his spare time he is a champion race horse trainer and relaxes after every win with a can(!) of Boss' Rainbow Mountain Blend iced coffee. There's no better way to celebrate for Tommy - at least that's what the commercials want you to think. I liked that commercial because at least the ad tried to tell a story. Others are just straight plugs.

I have now seen the complete filmography of Wes Anderson and I hope to see The Darjeeling Limited with Jason Schwartzman and Adrien Brody when it finally comes out. I saw The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou starring Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum and Michael Gambon of Layer Cake. Also very briefly Seymour Cassels. For kicks, I asked my wife to check the video store for Bottle Rocket, but in her typical style she guessed what the clerk would say and told me they don't have it. This is the biggest problem I have with Ali - if I ask her to do something, she'll come up with a reason not to do it, or sometimes no reason at all. This is of course a small problem in the grand scheme so I don't let it bother me. too much. So we spent forty-five minutes in the place looking for Bottle Rocket because they sort it by genre. Well, what if the renter has never seen the fucking movie, dumbass? Or what if it spans several genres? How do you catalogue it then, Dewey? After some prompting at the counter, the clerk told us that Bottle Rocket wasn't in their system. I asked for Wes Anderson and she listed off everything she had. One I had never heard of before, so I asked her to get it for me. She brought back Andy's Happy Motel aka Bottle Rocket. See? We wasted forty minutes all because Ali didn't want to ask a question. We also rented Enquete Corse because it looked interesting and had Jean Reno on the cover.

I first watched The Life Aquatic which is about a whacky marine biologist whose time is torn between searching the ocean for the shark that killed his best friend and self-promotion. He makes films to show his colleagues and benefactors, and gives interviews for a cover story, and has a press agent to handle all this stuff, and runs a fan club. I found that part of the movie very intriguing. What I really liked about the film was Anderson's make believe. I don't know the actual term for it, suspension of disbelief or something, but he exaggerated the backstory to make it believable, but improbable. It wasn't a total fiction, but everything was pushed to the limit to appear as though it could have been true somewhere, but it wasn't. For example, it is possible to have a steam room designed by a scientist from the Chinese space program, but it is improbable that anyone actually does. Anderson does this in all of his movies, though not as much in his first film. Rushmore had it, The Royal Tennenbaums had a pantload of it.

In The Life Aquatic, Steve Zissou is also approached by a man who claims to be his son. Throughout most of the film, the pair spend time together and work to discover if Ned, played by Wilson is his son. Both claim that they don't know, but both do know and they know that the other knows. Neither wants to call the other a liar, so they carry on the innocent bit. Zissou tries to have an affair with an already pregnant journalist (Blanchett) who is really interested in Ned, while trying to mend things up with his wife, played by Huston. There is also a bit of a rivalry between Ned and Klaus, played by Dafoe, the first mate on the ship who has always looked up to Steve like a father.

While hunting for the shark, the boat is hijacked by pirates and an underwriter is kidnapped from the ship. Zissou searches high and low for the underwriter, whom he doesn't really like anyway, and finally finds him at a deserted resort, held captive alongside Zissou's rival and fellow researcher played by Goldblum. Klaus dynamites the hotel, finally stepping up and becoming his own man. I don't remember exactly why, but Steve and Ned, a pilot by profession, decide to take up the rickety helicopter that accompanies the Belafonte. The engine fails and the chopper crashes into the ocean. Ned bleeds out and Steve is rescued. Steve finds the shark, and does not kill it as per his contract, and manages to get another movie completed.

Before I forget, I want to mention the cutaway of the Belafonte. Apparently, this was a massive undertaking, but just by watching the film, you can already see that. There are two scenes in which the cutaway is used, the first and most artistic in my opinion is the part where Steve describes his boat. It's very well done in Anderson's way, with stage displays and music like a little vignette. Anyway, there's a reason you don't see this in a lot of Hollywood movies, and that is that it takes time and effort to put something like this together. I'm glad Anderson did it.

Although the closing credits thank but deny any association to Jacques Cousteau, it is obvious that the whole movie is heavily based on him. I guess that's part of the reason why I was drawn to this film in the first place. Being the son of a whacky marine biologist, and being well, I won't say forced... allowed to watch Cousteau's material on the telly when I was little probably helped create a personal interest in this film.

Alright, next up is Enquete Corse, or the somewhat more promising title The Corsican File starring Jean Reno, Christian Clavier, and Caterina Murino who also appeared in Casino Royale which starred Daniel Craig from a great movie called Layer Cake. Ahem, anyway I nearly shut this one off because of the cheesy music at the opening. It was clear that this was not a cloak and dagger type film as the box cover photo had insinuated. That's all I had to go on. Everything was written in Japanese. So the opening credits mentioned that the film was based on a comic book. As I reached for the eject button on the remote, I remembered that actually some of my preferred films are based on comic books. For instance, Ichii the Killer. I'd give Jean Reno another chance. The movie was essentially a live action retelling of the comic book, and though I applaud the fact that they stayed true to the original I also feel that this was their Achilles' heel. The movie was basically flat, telling the story of a private detective (Clavier) who is sent to deliver a letter to someone in Corsica. The private detective believes that the person he is looking for has inherited some money, but eventually discovers that his target is a fugitive and that he has been sent to Corsica to flush out the criminal.

So like I said, the movie is flat and fairly predictable if you are familiar with stereotypical French humour. They spend about half the movie playing cat and mouse, about twenty minutes cracking jokes about the differences between Islanders and Continentals, and the rest of the movie trying to sort the whole mess out - which it is, in the end. There's not much else worth mentioning about this film except that there was a character named Figoli, played by a dude named Pido. He bears a strong resemblance attitudinally to Bruno Lucia who played a character named Wayne Lovett in an Australian television show called All Together Now.

And now we come to Andy's Happy Motel, Wes Anderson's first film which was later made into a feature length film starring co-writer Owen Wilson, his brothers Luke and Andrew Wilson, James Caan, Robert Musgrave and Lumi Cavazos. So why is it called Andy's Happy Motel? Because Andy (Luke Wilson) meets Inez (Cavazos) at the motel and falls in love with her. Andy has just been "busted out" of a mental hospital by his friend Dignan, played by Owen Wilson who has also planned a crime spree to impress his former employer Mr. Henry (Caan). It appears that Dignan is a failure so far in his young life, and hopes to turn things around with this new venture. They recruit their friend Bob (Musgrave) as the wheelman and convince Mr. Henry to let them do a job. Mr. Henry is more than happy to let them handle a heist at a refrigerated warehouse, and very soon it is understood why. Bob comes from a wealthy family, and any reason to get Bob and his friends out of the house is a good reason because while Dignan and Bob and Andy are trying to rob the refrigerated warehouse, Mr. Henry is robbing Bob. Simple. Of course, Dignan loses control of the robbery at the warehouse and one of his crew is shot. While the rest of the crew scatter, Dignan goes back into the warehouse to get Applejack, played by Jim Ponds. He believes he won't get caught because he is "fuckin' innocent". He gets caught and serves twenty-four months in jail, while everyone else gets away with it. Dignan has a fascination with bottle rockets, and I guess that's why the film is called Bottle Rocket, but it could also be used as a metaphor for Dignan's life. Quick, fast, brilliant and then suddenly, nothing. He serves time in jail believing that he will be able to continue this criminal enterprise upon release and shows that he doesn't quite learn from his mistakes. We never really find out because the movie ends right there. I liked this movie, but it was easy to see why the initial cut received poor ratings from the focus groups. The story is hardly original, but it is told in a very simple way and it is clear why Wes Anderson has become a much sought-after Hollywood director.

Kibbutzing in Kyoto

And now that we have that little surprise out of the way, I can get on with Dax Watches Movies. This all happened before I watched Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, but I wanted to put it after (above) the post about the film because I did say that my next post, that one, would be about a movie.

By the way, her name is Foxy Cleopatra. Because I was watching Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold like an idiot, instead of going to the hospital to be near my wife while Foxy was born. Oh, and Foxy because of Pam Grier, but I didn't really have to type that out, did I?

I was never promised a rose garden, and I am not the type of person to expect one but I was promised a wedding party. I won't say by whom, but a wedding party was promised. For such purpose, I shlepped my tuxedo (not the rental in the wedding photos, but my actual tux), and two of my best suits and all the extra bits to Tokyo. Well, it turns out that I brought an extra bag because there was/will be no wedding party. Instead, Kohei-san had planned a tidy little three day trip to Kyoto for Ali and me. Kohei and Genya Number Two would shadow. Separate hotels and trains and such, but they were never not there. That turned out to be a good thing.

On the second day Ali and her father were feeling a little under the weather. I put that down to the deep-fried fish bones they ate the night before at the sexiest restaurant I've ever been to. Ali was not doing well for a completely different reason, and slowly got worse as the day progressed. In the early hours of the third day, Ali conked my forehead with a hotel tumbler and rather loudly said, "Hello Fuckface. Get up and ring [Genya Number Two]. You stupid fuckface, get up!" I still can't pronounce the guy's name, but whatever. I dialed the number, so many numbers, and before I could even get my trousers on the night manager was there with two really big dudes and a stretcher. Moments later, GNT and Kohei arrived and rang for an ambulance. The two big dudes went away with the stretcher, and three dudes with a stretcher replaced them. These guys looked official, they had white helmets and first aid kits and all that. We went downstairs to the ambulance and while Ali, Kohei and I waited in the back of the van, GNT and the driver spoke in hushed tones about which hospital to take us to. The driver got a little excited and at that point GNT had to speak over him. I'm guessing GNT doesn't like to raise his voice because that was the last thing said by anybody apart from radio chatter until we arrived at Kyoto First Red Cross Hospital.

It's at this point that I should mention that Japanese hospitals are weird. I've never been in a hospital where everything except the emerg is shut between 8:00 pm and 8:00 am. Ali was in labour, so the doctor admitted her and gave her some muscle relaxants to delay contractions and antibiotics for nothing. She was four and a half weeks early, so the doctor didn't want things to escalate. Because we had some very expensive non-refundable shinkansen tickets and I had an assignment due, we swapped out. Ali's mum came down to Kyoto and Kohei, GNT and I all went back to Tokyo. I buried my nose in the books and had the assignment done in record time - all for nought, but I didn't know that then.

Two days pass, and we wait. We got the call while watching Cleopatra Jones, at about 10:00 that Ali was going into the delivery room. We were standing on the platform at Tokyo Station waiting for our train to Kyoto when we got another call. The baby was born. I had to wait for a third call before I could know the gender. Mr. and Mrs. K don't say a lot when they talk to each other. Which is why we didn't know sooner that Ali was in labour and why several calls are needed sometimes. Speaking later with the doctor, the only person in Kyoto besides the overworked hotel clerk who actually tried to speak English, I was informed that Foxy came out so fast there was an audible "pa-shoon" sound in the delivery room.

This time, I brought my books with me. GNT set me up in a business hotel, not the nice hotel I was in the first time I was in Kyoto. I don't know where he stayed and I don't want to know, but he wore the same clothes and they never got dirty. Mr. and Mrs. K stayed somewhere downtown close to Kyoto Tower. On the second day, Foxy had to be transferred to the NICU and be held for observation. She did well, and was released earlier than expected but after a reasonably safe time in the hospital. In perhaps a surreal way, we did some more sightseeing in Kyoto while Ali and Foxy were in the hospital.

It was starting to get to me. My hotel included Viking, which is what many Japanese people say to refer to a buffet meal. They know they are the only ones who say it, so when a gaijin like myself walks into the restaurant, they also say buffet but in the French way not the American way with the short u. It always makes me laugh to hear it that way because it reminds me every time of a line in La Reine Margot when Daniel Auteuil as Henri says he wants to get down and dirty with the Queen. All the chicks in my French class cringed. Back to the point - it was getting to me. Every morning I was reminded of Randy at the deli (or delica as they say in Japan) in Patterson:

"Who do I have to blow to get some decent pumpernickel in this place?" Spoons dropped, and chatter stopped but somebody quickly ushered Randy's less than acceptable Reuben away.

"You know they're gonna spit in the new one, dude".

"I don't care. If it's quality bread I'll take my chances". Not for a second did I think he was serious, and he wasn't. He checked.

I couldn't get any milk for my tea. I was getting rather frustrated because they always gave me cream as if it's the same thing. It's not, it cannot be. Even after painstakingly using words that I know they use in Japanese, the staff still couldn't understand. I guess because even if I say it perfectly, I'm still a gaijin so I can't possibly be saying something Japanese. The only thing that prevented me from getting angry was a little perspective. I thought back to Donny K., and the hissy he threw because he couldn't get a proper cuppa in the Andes. At the time I thought he was being ridiculous. I felt like offering to go outside and milk the nearest llama, but Don was serious so I thought I shouldn't make light. In my situation, it would have seemed even more ridiculous to have a hissy because I wasn't sitting in a shack at a multinational goldmine in Peru. I was in Kyoto, and if I swung a cat I'd hit at least one mini-mart, and a pachinko parlour. So instead, I told myself it could be worse and sipped my tea, ate my scrambled eggs wih chopsticks and listened to Bryan Adams muzak. So perfectly Japanese.

On my last night in Kyoto Mr. K decided it was time to eat. He often thinks of food, in fact he never stops thinking of food. We had to find a place to eat. We roamed the back streets of Kyoto and I spied a sign for Red Stripe. I said we should eat there because they have Red Stripe. Boy, was I wrong. After being mocked by the waitress, I went to the barman and led him outside to the poster of Red Stripe. He apologized and said that the poster was actually for a promo and handed me a flyer for a Jamaican dancehall gig that was happening up the street every Saturday. Like many people, I can't turn down Jamaican dancehall but there was Perspective again, encouraging me to think about my wife and newly arrived daughter. I just shook my head and asked for two large Asahi. It was during this meal that I witnessed the near collapse of a marriage and the birth of a new plan. Flowcharts and timelines determined what was in the best interests of everyone involved. Mr. K, myself and GNT would again return to Tokyo and Mrs. K would stay there to help Ali with anything.

Ali and Foxy and Mrs. K came home when Foxy was a week old, and I met them at Tokyo Station. Foxy is a good baby. She doesn't cry and she sleeps most of the time. I almost want to say that Enzo J didn't get enough sleep when he was that age because I remember that he was up a lot. Sissy was fixing bottles too often it seemed. That's a step Ali has managed to avoid, but it just feels like this baby is too easy.

Northern Monkies and Southern Fairies

So it was pretty shitty here in Tokyo for the last week or so. I did mention in one of my videos that I hate Tokyo. That is not entirely correct. I like Tokyo, but I don't like some things about Tokyo. I may have mentioned in an earlier post that I can be a nightmare house guest, and that almost happened last week. I'm trying to remain positive, so I won't dwell but I am starting to feel a little like Bob Harris. Not the guy who used to do The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC, but the guy in Lost in Translation. As it turns out, that is exactly the problem.

My wife recommended that we rent a few videos, and so we went to Tsutaya and got three. I always have to be pushed to watch a Wes Anderson film, but I did in this case as it seemed the shop had way too many copies available. We also rented Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, a film I'd always meant to see but which was marketed in very strange way. Which is the secondary reason why I still haven't seen Snatch, the primary reason being Brad Pitt. We got a third film starring Jean Reno which I know nothing about. I got around to watching Lock, Stock and Two Barrels today, and it was really nice. A little violent and very similar graphically to another Mathew Vaughn film, Layer Cake. You may have heard of it. Oh, did I mention? I watched Casino Royale before I left Newark. Very good work from Daniel Craig albeit in the ironclad James Bond format, but I like his work in Layer Cake better. Layer Cake. Dexter Fletcher of Layer Cake and also of Press Gang co-stars as Soap alongside Jason Statham as Bacon and Nick Moran as Eddie, investors in a card game. Moran is the card player and is warned by his father played by Sting to not play cards. Where does Sting find the time? Anyway, Eddie goes to the game which is fixed and loses his shirt - and 500,000 pounds.

He finds a way to steal the money back, by ripping of his neighbours who are in turn planning to do what we like to call a grow rip. That is, they plan to rob a marijuana growing/selling operation run by as it seems Steven Mackintosh aka Winston who also played Nigel, the best friend in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4. It's only tended by Winston, and is run by Rory Breaker who also happens to be the proposed client of the grow rip proceeds. Only because the rippers don't really know the rippees, or that Breaker runs the show. The sale is brokered by Nick the Greek, a bumbling fence who only knows half the story, as does anyone else.

All the while, the guy who set up the crooked card game also really, really, pretty please wants two rifles that are up for auction. Only he doesn't want them to go to auction. He wants them to be stolen so he asks his Genya to arrange the acquisition. Barry "the Baptist" played by Lenny McLean recruits two "Northern Monkeys", Gary and Dean played by Victor McGuire and Jake Abraham respectively. There's also a collector who plays a part in all of this, but he stays on the periphery with Sting until the very end.

So Gary and Dean retrieve the rifles as requested, but because they are not in the gun cabinet, they claim them as their own and sell them to Nick the Greek, who sells them to his associate Tom, Jason Flemyng who needs some firepower for the rip. The first group of thieves go to the grow op and make a complete cock up of the whole thing, but get away with the money and as much weed as they can carry. Eddie, Soap, Bacon and Tom are all waiting back at the neighbours' ready to take the money. For some stupid reason, they only take the money next door to Eddie's flat. The neighbours find it, and when Rory Breaker comes calling he catches the first group rather than the group that has been ratted out by Nick the Greek. Rory's group and the first group pretty much finish each other off, meanwhile Gary and Dean have been warned that they must locate the two missing rifles. Unknowingly, the two attempt to get the rifles back from the guy who wanted them in the first place. Gary and Dean don't last long against the two rifles, but end up eliminating Barry and his boss in the process. The collector, who works for the boss too, had delivered the 500,000 pound account moments before, only to be told to retrieve it by one of the original thieves whom he stole it from in the first place, and who was now holding the collector's son hostage. After being summoned, Eddie and Tom go back to the boss' office only to find Gary, Dean, Barry and the boss all dead. Eddie takes the money, and Tom stays behind to collect the rifles. He really likes them for some reason. In a panic, on the way back to the office to get the money, the collector rams Eddie's car and manages to wrangle the money back. Eddie, Tom, Soap and Bacon are all sent down for the crime, but are released because they are not part of the original group and the only witness cannot identify them. The four decide that they don't need the money because the debt is no longer collectible, at which time the collector comes in with the money bag. He hands it to them with a fair warning that if they ever try to find him, he will kill them. He leaves Sting's bar and rides off into the sunset with his son. The group open the bag only to find that it is empty save for an auction catalogue. Tom has been sent off to destroy the rifles because these are the only things that connect them to the crime. While he is away, the three remaining thieves discover that the rifles are worth upwards of 250,000 pounds each. They frantically try to ring him as the movie ends with Tom trying to answer his phone and grab the rifles as he hangs precariously off the rail of a bridge.

The ending leaves it open for interpretation. Did Tom fetch his beloved guns and race off into the night to profit at auction? Or did he take them back to the bar so that each could gain equally? Or did he let the guns fall into the river? I hate these endings. All that work to tie everything together and Guy Ritchie leaves one little thread hanging. Silly. Apart from the ending, a very good movie. I would like to see more work from Nick Moran. Maybe when I get back to Newark.

I don't hate Tokyo anymore. I hate the fact that my credit cards work at half a dozen cash machines in the city, and that Visa in particular employs staff to lie to me about it even after I have been put on record as having told them so. I hate that people don't listen to me and assume they know what I want more than I do. I got together with Yumi yesterday, an old acquaintance and she showed me around. It was quite nice. We found a Tully's, and hid in there for awhile. That is the first time I've ever had to wait to be seated at a coffee shop - and that is exactly what Yumi hates about Tokyo. Later we went for Indian food. Very nice. I came home and watched the Monte Carlo Grand Prix in Japanese. It was a good day.

Ill Prepared, He Journeyed On...

I woke up late this morning trying to scramble to the bank before it shut, and I was greeted by a note in the lifts saying that they might be taken out of service today. Cursing softly under my breath with Caruso on the iPod, I prepared to hoof it down thirteen storeys to the lobby. Luckily, the lifts hadn't been shut down yet and I was able to make it to the ground a lot quicker. The doors of the lift opened and I was greeted by two SWAT members with machine guns pointed at my face. You'd think I'd say something involuntarily, but I couldn't. My knees just buckled and I dropped to the floor, instinctively lacing my fingers behind my head. The two officers stepped back, lowered their guns and told me to stand up and exit the lift. I walked in to the main part of the lobby and noticed a mix of about twenty more SWAT and police officers.

Casually lounging on the sofa yakking on his Blackberry was the Police Media Relations Officer. Media crews were waiting outside, including one from the station that plays all the Bollywood movies. I went over to him and asked what had happened. Apparently, I slept through the whole episode. He said that some of my neighbours had been hoarding restricted and illegal weapons and possibly explosives in one of the flats in the upper third of the building. I automatically thought it might be my organized crime neighbours, you know - the guys who double and triple park their Cads and Maseratis in the carpark. I have to say that they are only allegedly members of organized crime, and happen to be really nice guys. Well, I found out later that it wasn't them, wrong floor. I made it to the bank just in time.

Sissy had come for a visit a few days ago and noticed an increased police presence on my block. I shrugged it off saying that the police always use my street as a shortcut back to the main depot. Well, the next day I was woken up at about 10:00 by a low flying helicopter. The MRO denied that this was part of the police operation, but did mention that the Armed Forces had been called in. Just to show how blissfully unaware some people can be, I told Sissy what went down today and she told me that it might have been a terrorist cell. The thought never occurred to me. I guess I've always felt that lightning wouldn't strike twice. I've got to check the news tonight to see what it actually was, but I seriously doubt it was what Sissy said. The building was never evacuated, so I don't think there was a serious threat.

On to other things - The next instalment of Dax Watches Movies will originate FROM JAPAN! I don't know exactly how I'll manage to watch a film without subtitles, but I'll think of something. I've been taking my sweet time getting ready for this trip. Yesterday, I went out for lunch with a friend from Singapore. It was nice to catch up with her and talk about old times. I tried to do some more homework before going to the salon one last time before I hit Tokyo. Trey worked his magic and was done a lot sooner than I expected. I had plenty of time before I was supposed meet my buddy Randy. Haven't seen him since Air Guitar Nation, but he's got a gift card to a swish Italian restaurant that he's been dying to use up so he took me out for dinner. He was a little late, so I started with a free bottle of Moretti and waited. Already feeling guilty about all the calories in the beer, I ordered swordfish and grilled vegetables with rice. Fish is supposed to be healthier, and it is but it kind of negates the whole dieting aspect when they give you a meal big enough for three. On the way home, we checked out a car dealership because I have recently discovered that my Jeep is not suited for baby seats. Of course, it behoves Randy to visit the luxury lot. Maybe it was because I told him that I had priced out a Quattroporte coupe, but it might also be because that's how Randy is. I gazed at the Ferraris as Randy snidely remarked that the yellow one was well within my price range. Sure, but there was no place to put a baby seat, let alone a diaper bag. We continued in the direction of Randy's place and came across some really good ideas. A Volkswagen or a Honda, something simple that Ali can actually drive. Sissy and I had seen a Toyota Matrix with 2 baby seats and a jogging stroller all crammed in. Randy gave me some more ideas. Things elsewhere are moving along nicely. Jay is putting together an album with another DJ, and they will probably have moved their monthly gig away from the lesbian bar by the time I get back. Too bad, I really liked that lesbian bar. Good times.

I have no idea what I'm in for. Bobby took me to the bookstore to buy my birthday present hoping that at least 1 of the major brand of guidebooks would have something to say about Ali's hometown. Not one. In fact - Lonely Planet I believe - actually wrote in their most recent book that there was absolutely no reason to go east of Tokyo because there's nothing of interest to tourists. Google Maps? What a joke! I can't read Japanese so I can't read their stupid maps. My poor pregnant wife is going to have to take me everywhere. I did find a nice hike I want to take though, but Ali won't be able to go with.

Oldboy

I've completed the Vengeance Trilogy, finally. I didn't necessarily watch them in order, but there is no order in the sense that the film's are somehow related. I'm actually glad I saw them in the order that I did. The Jesus waif at the video store was right. Chinjeolhan geumjassi is the one to see first. I met a couple of Korean girls the other day who were lost, trying to find a Korean grocery. They're lucky they grabbed me. I took them straight away, and as we made our way downtown we had a nice chat about Korean television and movies. They were quite surprised that I knew Full House. I think I accidentally saw a Mandarin-dubbed version of it the last time I went to visit Bob. They agreed that Chinjeolhan geumjassi was a great film, and had only praise for Choi Min-sik, but suggested that I watch more of Li Yeong-ae's work.

I didn't know how to feel after I watched Oldboy. Again, the need for vengeance is explained very well, and the concept of justice is striking but I think it's more challenging to decide who is right in this one. Both of the main characters have committed wrongs, but I guess in the end I side with Oh Dae-su, who has clearly suffered more than Lee Woo-jin. There is a lot of common imagery between this film and Chinjeolhan - snowy mountains, a schoolhouse, abandoned flats, a salon, funky wallpaper and of course prisons. The music is remarkable in this film as well, and if I can get my hands on the soundtrack to any of the three films, it would be a good day.

The set up goes like this, if you've read the comic then you can skip this part: A drunk is released from police custody by his longtime friend No Joo-hwan played by Ji Dae-han who also appears in Chinjeolhan. I recognized him by the way he eats a bowl of ramen in the cafe. While Joo-hwan is on the telephone explaining to Dae-su's wife what has happened, Dae-su goes missing. The film continues to follow Dae-su's confinement. He's held in some kind of prison, but it's not a government prison that's obvious. He makes a list of all the people who might want to do this to him, and spends fifteen years getting in shape and vowing revenge. He doesn't really plan his revenge like Geumjassi did, but he's plenty mad. He's sick of eating substandard gyoza, and I can sympathize. He manages to dig his way out of the cell, almost only to find himself next breaking out of a suitcase on a rooftop. He meets a guy who wants to jump off the roof, but Dae-su won't let him. He wants to tell the guy played by Oh Kwang-rok who also played one of the anarchists in Boksuneun naui geot and appeared in Chinjeolhan, his story of vengeance. As Dae-su walks away from the block of flats, we see the jumper fall to his death, mashing in the roof of a perfectly good Kia (I think).

It's on, Oh Dae-su is free and he wants to kick some ass. He knows that his wife is dead and that he has been framed for her death. He comes across some grubs on the pavement and takes a cigarette from one of them. They don't take kindly to that, and attempt to kick his ass. Oh comes back with some very good moves, allegedly peformed by Choi himself, and goes on his way. Sitting on the pavement staring at a fish tank, he is approached by a homeless guy who hands him a cellphone and a wallet. I think the wallet is full of money, but I don't know what won look like so maybe it was just paper. He's hungry and makes his way to a sushi restaurant and asks for something living. The chef thinks that she has met Oh before, but they decide that it must be because of her television show that Oh watched while in confinement. She hands him a small octopus and he doesn't waste any time filling his stomach. He receives a call on the cell phone and it happens to be the voice of his captor. He collapses and the sushi chef takes him home. There's a reason for all this seemingly normal behaviour which is revealed later in the movie. While Dae-su sleeps, Mi-do, played by Kang Hye-jeong reads his journals. She's fascinated by his story, but he doesn't like her reading it.

Oh decides that the only way he can find his captor is to locate the shitty dumpling shop that used to deliver his meals. He remembers seeing a tag to the Blue Dragon restaurant. He tries every Blue Dragon restaurant in Seoul, but can't find the right mix of ingredients. Almost losing hope, he sees one last add and checks out the cuisine. Score. After telling Mi-do that he can't trust her, he takes a hammer from her flat and chases the delivery boy back to the block of flats where he was kept. He fights his way onto the floor and discovers that the place is totally wired for video and that the surveillance company has had a contract to do what they did to Dae-su. He goes to town on the manager's jaw with the hammer, and then the crew and pretty much kicks butt. He likes to fight, and gets stabbed in the back which doesn't hinder him.

Thinking that his daughter has been adopted by a Swedish family, he plods on trying to piece together the mystery. He visits his old friend Joo-hwan who runs an internet cafe. They google the alias of the captor and find a connection with their old school. Oh goes to the school and rifles through the records to discover the identity of his captor. A rather youngish Lee Woo-jin played by Yu Ji-tae who's actually younger than I, but is meant to play a character who finished school more than ten years before me. Tsk tsk tsk. At the school, Oh gets all the clues he needs - he discovers a flyer for a salon where he learns of the connection between himself and Woo-jin. It goes back to his friend Joo-hwan who is killed while giving details about Woo-jin and making disparaging remarks about Woo-jin's sister in the process. Woo-jin just happened to be listening.

It seems that Woo-jin's sister, Soo-ah, played by Yun Jin-seo had an undeservedly bad reputation and this caused her to kill herself. In turn, Woo-jin swore that he would kill every woman the perpetrator of the rumours had ever loved. See, Woo-jin had loved his sister in that unnatural highly taboo way. He believed that it was consensual and therefore not exactly wrong. This is pretty much why I can't give him any sympathy for what he ends up doing. He attributes the rumours to Oh Dae-su, and after the highschool retrospective is over Dae-su learns that he has unknowingly allowed Woo-jin to regain custody of Mi-do. At this point, the viewer is treated to the final bit of mystery - a piece of mystery I had figured out after the sushi restaurant scene. Woo-jin shows a photo album to Dae-su in which he learns that he has been diddling his own daughter. He begs Woo-jin not to tell Mi-do, which he agrees to do after Dae-su cuts off his own tongue and grovels at the feet of Lee. As Dae-su is left spitting blood in the aftermath of a gun battle which featured Kim Byeong-ok as Mr. Han, and also as the weirdo preacher guy in Chinjeolhan, Lee goes down in the elevator and shoots himself in the head.

Disgusted with himself, Oh Dae-su disappears. This is the part I said I would explain later, earlier. While in confinement, Dae-su had been visited by a hypnotist who programmed him to think that Mi-do was just some chick, and to fall in love with her. Woo-jin had also been looking after Mi-do since the death of her mother, there never was any adoptive Swedish family, and he had hypnotized her to act in certain ways when she would later meet Dae-su. After the whole shoe-licking, tongue-cutting episode in the penthouse, Dae-su tracks down the hypnotist and convinces her to hypnotize him again so that he can forget everything that he has done to Mi-do. She agrees, and Mi-do finds him in the mountains and I think that was the end.

It has occurred to me that my posts, particularly the ones about movies, were much more interesting if I wrote them while drunk. Things have changed, haven't they?

Andrew Collins... You Will Be Missed

I listen to BBC - BBC Asian Network, BBC7, 6Music and occasionally Radio 4. It started because I couldn't stand the monotony of my job. A little music, I thought was better than other options because I could do two things at once. Work and listen. You can't really work and talk to your only friend on Instant Messenger at the same time like one of my ex-coworkers would do. Andrew Collins' was the first show I listened to. He used to do the late afternoon slot which was late morning for me. Good music, intelligent conversation and funny anecdotes. They moved his timeslot to weekends where he would do two shorter shows, rather than five 3-hour weekday slots. And now that's over too. At first I thought that the BBC had decided not to renew his contract, because there are whole lot of others who left 6 at the same time, but it seems that Andrew is a man of many interests and had decided to try something a little different now. He's writing, and blogging about stuff like movies, and theatre. See his blog here. I don't know if I'll go back to 6music anymore - I can't listen at work and Phil Jupitus is gone as well.

Apparenty Not a DVD Recorder

Ali sent me a package today and had told me that there was something extra in it. I knew it was the wedding DVD - her video-grapher friend sent the DVD from Manhattan to Tokyo and then Ali sent it back to Newark. From the size of the box, I thought the "extra" might be the DVD recorder that Kohei promised me the day he went home. According to the letter that came with the box, it's sake but Ali doesn't know if it's any good. Oh, and two sake glasses and some chocs. I'm set.

300... Air Guitarists

Jukka. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? It's a homonym to Yuka, so it's not like Ali can ever say she can't pronounce it. It doesn't have -ko on the end of it so Ali can't exercise her veto, and the twist is that Jukka is a dude's name. I don't think Finns have those names what both genders use like Hindi or something. Either way: Jukka for a boy or Yuka for a girl.

Nope. Sorry, this ain't a post about the movie 300, instead it's a wee rant about baby names with a piece on a documentary sandwiched in. The documentary is opening locally Friday and is called Air Guitar Nation. Technically, this film isn't starring anybody, but it centres around an actor named David Jung aka C-Diddy, and another guy who just won't take no for an answer. Dan Crane's stage name is Björn Töuroque and the story basically takes off from there.

Sensing a lack of American representation in a, well let's call it a competition, documentary film maker Kriston Rucker decides to promote the Air Guitar World Championships and find someone decent enough to represent the US. As it happens, the winning American was chosen at the first set of tryouts, but another person seems to think that he is the real talent and shadows the American winner to Oulu, Finland for the competition. Essentially, Rucker had no better reason to promote (send someone to) this competition other than the fact that no American had been officially entered into the contest. There are attempts in the film to play up the anti-American sentiment that was prevalent in much of Europe at the time, but there were also reminders of why the contest was ever conceived. The event organizers wanted everyone to play air guitar so that they wouldn't hold a gun. After a lame attempt to cause some friction between one of the Americans and some Austrian contestants, it's pretty clear that no one is a hater.

Of course, in a Cinderella-type story Jung is the overall winner in Oulu and unfortunately for Crane, the three-time loser is not able to make an impression the following year. It's a nice kind of film - the story of an actor who's always had to prove himself to his traditional Korean family who wanted him to go into medicine vs. a guy who, if nothing else, lives for air guitar. The viewers are introduced to a group of people who take the hobby very seriously. Some sort of division apparently exists between American air guitarists who only think it's fun and their international counterparts who really take the thing to a whole new level. Boot camps, zen philosophies, entourages - it's not just a hobby for some people.

When I won the preview passes to this film, I knew it would be a little like The Aristocrats, and there was only one person I could think of to watch the movie with. I didn't find too many funny moments in the film, but my buddy could hardly drink his coffee without coughing because of all the jokes. Of course, being Scandinavian maybe there were more jokes for him than for most. There was however, that unfortunate phenomenon at many preview screenings: the drunk prize winner. In our case, the guy was having entirely too much fun for one person and probably felt like he was right there amongst the reindeer, cheering on the contestants. Maybe he wasn't drunk, maybe he just doesn't get out often - it's hard to tell, but he ruined it for at least a few viewers.

In a way, I'd like to see Ali in the tryouts next year. She plays a mean air guitar, and has the head banging down pat when it comes to Black Sabbath. And she's got the vertical leap too. Really, I just want a reason to go to Finland and practice the language/accent. There's just not enough of it in Formula One anymore. Actually, there's more than usual but I haven't got cable.

If Ali had her way the choices of a baby name would be limited to one of those dreadful boy bands what aren't around anymore. And if it's a girl (which I hope it is) then Ali's screwed. There's only one girl band she knows of and I'm not naming my kid Scary or Sporty or whatever.

Some Interesting Developments

What a month! I really should be studying for an exam right now, but I’m not – it’s like the least important thing on my list. My biggest problem is the lack of a DVD burner on my computer. My wedding photographer put all the photos on DVD discs and I have no way to make copies for Ali. I’m not complaining, the guy did me a big solid – flying out from LA on Oscars’ weekend with his crew (free of charge) because he felt that my little wedding was more important than shooting stars on the red carpet. Or maybe it was a chance to see Sissy again. I just learned how to turn the flash off on my camera yesterday, so learning to use the DVD burner should be loads of fun.

The engagement officially lasted a whole three days, and the actual time spent with the in-laws was maximized on purpose. Kohei turned out to be not so scary. Genya is much more menacing, but I think physical stature has a lot to do with that. Kohei turned out to be quite a joker. It’s easy to see where Ali gets her sense of humour from. The day they arrived, I went round to their hotel in my beautifully maintained Jeep and took them out for sushi so that they could meet Bob and the rest of my immediate family. It was a little crowded. Enzo and Kohei got along pretty well. He actually talked Enzo into eating raw fish. I took note of his cunning negotiating tactics. Of course, Bob had earlier invoked the “either/or” rule and somehow got himself uninvited to the wedding. Undaunted, he showed everyone he was still a big macher and handed my fiancée an envelope. Politely, we declined to open it but the next day I nearly fainted. The week before at Chinese New Year, I had received my first and only ang pow, and was quite surprised at the content of that envelope. It had nothing on Bob’s envelope. I took it to the bank immediately, and it will cover the cost of the wedding with lots of room to spare. We could have taken a honeymoon with the residual – oh wait. No we couldn’t. Ali made that clear from the very start. No honeymoon.

The next day I took the inlaws out for Malaysian food. A new restaurant with “the best Hokkien mee outside of KL”. The owner is very gung-ho about his new shop. “No place else has this dish, at least not this good”. That’s a challenge if I ever heard one. Ali and her mum had laksa, Kohei had the beef rendang and I had the char kway teow. We shared a plate of Hokkien mee, and a couple roti canai. Pretty good – my wedding diet was now dead – but there might have been a place or two in Singapore where I might have had better Hokkien mee. Can’t say really, quality is so subjective. Back to the hotel for sake, oysters and salsa. You can take Kohei out of Mexico, but you can’t take Mexico out of Kohei. Friday was a more casual day. I left Baby at home for this one, and got a hold of a sweet Chrysler 300. Orange Peel planned a get together with my mum’s side of the family and my niece gave us some spare rings in case I was stupid enough to lose the other rings. She heard I was stupid. My aunt carefully listened as I clarified a few things with the kinfolk, jotting down little details which she would later use in a speech at the wedding. She basically stole half my speech, but I acquitted myself quite well when the time came.

The day of the wedding, I did everything Sissy had written on the schedule. I drove to the hotel in the Chrysler to meet with the photographer. Sissy warned me and she was right. As soon as we got in the hotel room door it was a free for all. Flashes going off everywhere, and Ali wasn’t even back from the hair salon yet. We were a bit late getting from the hotel to the wedding. There was no way I was going to become a bad cliché – I was getting to my wedding on time. Completely forgetting that Kohei had never seen the surroundings, I drove like a bat out of hell to get to the venue. Perhaps I was trying to show off my wheelman skills as a potential job interview, but I was mostly pissed at the tourists stopping in the middle of the parkway to take snaps. The moment had come to unleash the full eight cylinders. Mrs. Kobayashi managed to maintain composure in the back seat chatting up a storm with Ali, but I noticed in the rear view that Kohei was looking a little sick and hanging on for dear life, silently. That was the tell, he wasn't talking, so when we made it through the tourist traffic, I slowed down. We ended up getting there early, but Ali wasn't very happy. Her disappointment was brief.

Sissy, Orange Peel and my cousin Cece made sure everything went off perfectly. A small wedding and reception for thirty people was on order and it's exactly as Ali and I had imagined. My only regret was that it was over a lot sooner than I probably would have wanted. I didn't feel I was the best host (technically, I wasn't the host) because I was trying to entertain the guests and at the same time trying to give the photogs everything they wanted. After the reception we shlepped around downtown getting MORE photos - 1500 in total.

After the wedding, some of the family went out for a relaxing dinner. And the in-laws left the next day. We eventually figured out how to use the sunroof, about a half hour before I had to return the 300. I got a day off work so that Ali and I could sort out her koseki and then she left a few days later.

I haven’t been doing a lot of movie watching lately, but did happen to catch A Touch of Pink starring Suleka Mathew and Jimi Mistry. I won’t spend too much time on this except to say that I was a little upset that Suleka was cast to portray the mother. When I learned of this movie, I thought she’d portray the girlfriend or something closer to her real age. There was, for some reason, an actor portraying Cary Grant in the film. I didn’t understand this at first and thought perhaps the filmmaker, Ian Iqbal Rashid was trying to suggest something about Grant’s personal life. It all became clear in the end that Grant is how Mistry’s character imagines his father, a man he doesn’t truly remember. Linguistically, I have to say well done to all the actors, especially to Kyle MacLachlan, the guy who played Grant. Apparently, all the american actors used false English/Indian accents while Mistry faked an American one. Mistry was probably the weakest actually, his accent would stray now and then. Lastly, this film is not unlike Hsi yen, a film made more than ten years earlier starring Winston Chao, and pretty much like every other film about interracial relationships. I guess we could always use one more.

Work is moving along, evil Tintin is now just inexplicably irritated Tintin. My contract could wind up any day now, but that’s okay because I’ve got other plans. Married life is pretty much the same as usual right now. Ali’s back in Japan, and Kohei eagerly awaits my arrival. I just need my passport for that and I’m set. The question of exactly how long I’ll be in Japan still has to be resolved, but it’ll probably be longer than most of my trips. I’m toying with the idea of going for three months, but then I thought about leaving everything here alone for three months and decided that maybe two months or one month would be better.

Finally, a Wedding Reception Where I Won't be Serving

So ummm, yeah. It's been quite awhile since I've posted an entry about movies, or about anything for that matter. I was hoping to bring a review of Old Boy by Park Chan-uk, but I haven't really had time for that lately. Things are going better at work, slightly. I was asked to interview for a posting in a different part of the company which would have moved me away from evil Tintin, but he's not so evil anymore. I get him, and he gets me so we kind of feed off of each other in good way. It's still shite, but at least we're working together.

I saw The Departed again last night with Orange Peel and her boyfriend. If I needed any further proof that nobody reads this blog, OP's boyfriend asked me if I had seen this movie. Of course I had man, I reviewed it like 3 months ago. I left about halfway through the movie though because I wanted to get home to watch a Texas Hold'em tournament which happened not to air, but also because I was holding precious and semi-precious stones and I didn't want to get mugged in late night Newark.

Security is out the window now. Which is one very good reason not to let your girlfriend leave the country with your backup set of door keys. I came home one particularly shitty afternoon only to find a hard-looking Asian dude sitting very comfortably on the settee. He looked at me with a goofy grin and said "Irashai-i!", but before I could figure out what was going on, he swooped around me and blocked the door.

"Relax, Dax. Sit down... You know me, don't you? I'm a friend of Ali's, I'm Genya. As you know, your life is undergoing big changes right now and Kohei-san has sent me here to give you good encouragement".

"Huh?"

"Kohei-san and his wife want some assurances. We know you are a good guy and that you want to do the right thing, but even good guys get scared sometimes".

I was stunned. Mostly because Genya's English was a lot better than I had ever imagined, but also partly because I was still trying to figure out how he ever got into my flat.

"How did you bloody....?"

He dangled Ali's key fob in front of me and giggled a little like a girl for a second, and then tossed the fob onto the kitchen marble. I scanned the flat quickly, the safe was untouched, and did some mental calculations to decide if I could make it down the hall to my night stand in time. I decided not to try.

He could see that I was trying to figure out what to do so he grabbed my shoulders and turned me away from the door.

"Calm down. We're not in Japan, my options are limited here. You're part of the family now! We should be celebrating. I just want to talk to you for a little bit so I can report good news back to Kohei-san". And then he smacked me, patted my shoulder, and hopped into the kitchen.

"Where is the sake? I know you've got some in this place".

"I don't keep it in the kitchen. It's in the bar, next to the dining table".

"Sit down man! I'll pour - you don't take it heated do you?"

"No. Are you going to hit me again?"

"I don't think so, as long as we work toward the common goal".

"Huh?"

"You know, reading the same book", as he unfolded his hands into the shape of an open book.

"Oh, you mean the same page!"

"Ah, yes! Sorry for my English. Sometimes your idioms are very strange. Sit! Sit! Cheers, old boy!"

We sipped sake for a few moments, saying nothing, just sizing the other one up. Genya was a little hesitant at first, I could tell he didn't really like this part. He put down his sake and cautiously began.

"Dax, I like you. Ali likes you. Kohei-san likes you, and he doesn't even know you. You should be grateful that Ali's mother said such good things about you".

"More sake, please".

He poured me a wee dram.

"I know you're nervous Dax, but I keep telling you that you have no reason to be. I'm just here to let you know that Kohei-san is watching. As you know, in Japan, Kohei has some notoriety. You don't need to concern yourself with that however, you are gaijin. Kohei-san and his wife just want what's best for Ali. We want you to come to Japan for a little while. When can you manage it?"

"I want to come to Japan, but it's not so easy. For starters, I haven't got a passport, so that will take a few weeks. Then I've got my contract - I can't just break it - and then there's school..."

"Already done. I've looked into it and apparently your college does not care if you take the summer semester off-"

"But that's in May! Right now it's February."

"In May, your contract will be over and you will have a new passport. So where's the problem? You can't just get married and leave your wife in Japan. Work with me Dax."

"I am. I am, but these things take time. If Kohei-san is worried about Ali, then he shouldn't worry. Everything is in place, the church, the reception, the photographer, the car service... He's bloody coming for the ceremony! So, there is no problem."

"Good. But we are still concerned about you coming to Japan. You could be a teacher."

"I'd be more successful as a bartender, believe me. In any event, I am coming to Japan but only on a short term basis. Ali's cool with that, and so am I. Kohei-san doesn't need to worry".

"Good". And then he hit me again. When I woke up, the spare set was gone again.

I'm like Enzo's cat. We forget to drink water, but instead of ending up in the vet's office with a $500 bill for fluids, I end up in the hospital with kidney stones. And I get super drunk super fast. I've been training for the wedding. Seriously, I've been spending enough time in the gym to actually break a sweat - but I've sorta been cheating too. The quickest way to lose weight temporarily is to stop drinking fluids. This is an old boxing trick that has worked for me a few times before, but I'm not really trying to do it this time. It's actually quite dangerous. In my case, it can aggravate kidney stones, causing them to shift and put me in the hospital. This has never actually been a result of forced dehydration for me, but it's something I worry about now. I'm getting my old form back, and I'm trying to add a little mass but that probably won't happen before the wedding. I've got two weeks to tone up, and it sounds easy enough, but I ache like hell. I just keep telling myself pain is the cleanser - Off to the gym!

Zero Sum Game

Recently, I watched Boksuneun naui geot or Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, the first of the Vengeance Trilogy by director Park Chan-uk, and although it shared some characteristics to Chinjeolhan geumjassi, this film was not so clear cut. In fact, I didn't like it or at least I had a very hard time watching it and sympathizing with the main character. Maybe it's because I'm a father, but couple that with the fact that the little girl character has the same name as a very fetching violinist I used to know, and the fact that violin music plays at points during the film, it's like one big fat trigger whipping me across the face repeatedly like Yu-sun's bow did.

The film is about a deaf guy who finds himself taking care of his older sister who needs a new kidney. Interesting though that kidneys are also later symbolic in Chinjeolhan geumjassi. Ryu, played by Shin Ha-kyun slogs in a factory to pay the hospital bills. He gets laid off from the job, and ends up bringing his sister played by Kim Ji-eun to his flat for care. Ryu is determined to find a kidney for his sister, but unfortunately carries type A blood. He hooks up with a dodgy couple of guys who are willing to sell him a kidney. They throw the old bait and switch, and their mummy tells him he doesn't have enough dosh to buy a kidney but she so nice that she can find one if he gives his kidney in exchange. Naively maybe, Ryu gives up a kidney and the next thing he knows he's lying naked in a vacant tower of flats, broke.

Ryu's girlfriend, Yeong-mi played by Bae Du-na, is an anarchist and hatches a plot to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy family, more precisely from the man who laid Ryu off in the first place. A bit of surveillance and the pair easily snatch Yu-sun, played by Han Bo-bae. She's so cute! A ransom exchange is planned and the pair of kidnappers have every intention of returning the girl, but then Ryu's sister figures out what is going on, and kills herself because she is ashamed of what her brother has done.

Ryu can't believe what has happened, and takes the body to the place where he promised to bury his sister. While placing his sister under a grave of stones, a peculiar character arrives. The character is credited as being retarded, but clearly the young man simply suffers from a rather serious case of cerebral palsy. A little bit of understanding goes a long way, people. He takes a fancy to the tchochki necklace that the little girl wears. He tries to nick it, but ends up just creeping the shit out of the girl. She tries to run across a rickety bridge to Ryu, whom she considers a friend, but dives in the river. Flailing, her cries are ignored by the deaf kidnapper and she drowns. My last ounce of sympathy for Ryu just floated down the river.

The story now focuses on the story of Park Dong-jin, Yu-sun's father, who has vowed a little revenge of his own. He works with a police inspector to track down the kidnappers and eventually comes across the body of his daughter. The scene in the medical examiner's room is quite telling. Park attends the autopsy, and is being torn apart emotionally as we hear the bone saws and stuff cutting up Yu-sun. He goes back to the scene of the crime and discovers the body of Ryu's sister buried on the opposite shore. He attends her autopsy and shows no hint of repulsion as the bone saws go to work on her. Tracing the steps of the kidnappers and using a series of photographs, Park discovers Ryu's identity. He goes after Yeong-mi, who devised the kidnapping to begin with and tortures her for information. During that time, he takes out a delivery man who may have seen something he shouldn't have, and the viewer begins to see that this humble electrician isn't the bootlack he has been portrayed as so far. He continues to torture Yeong-mi, who confesses that she is truly sorry for what has happened and warns him that if she disappears, her anarchist friends will get Park. The dude's basically got nothing to lose, so he amps up the electricity and that's the end of Yeong-mi.

Meanwhile, Ryu is getting a little payback on the brothers who scammed him in the first place and their drug-addicted mummy. He doesn't come out unscathed and discovers that Yeong-mi has been murdered. He now must take vengeance on Park, and goes to his house. Ryu is promptly knocked out in his weakened state by electricity the moment he tries to open the basement door. Park takes him back to the river and explains that he understands that Ryu is a good guy, but that's why he must be killed. Park cuts the lashings, and then in a gesture of poetic justice, cuts his hamstrings so that Ryu is forced to slump into the water and drown like Yu-sun.

Park drags the body from the river and cuts it into smaller pieces so that it's easier to bury. He finds a nice quiet location down a country road and is in the middle of digging a decent pit when a group of four anarchists show up and stab the guy to death, pinning a note to his chest detailing the death sentence that Yeong-mi had written earlier in the film. So it ends up being a zero sum game. Everybody involved in the kidnapping is dead and I hate that. Somebody has to survive, even if it's the bad guy, somebody has to be left standing.

The viewer is led to sympathize from the beginning with Ryu, who does everything he can to care for his sister. But by the end of it, I was cheering for Park, Yu-sun's father. I was actually surprised at how differently I saw this film. Before, I may have sided with Ryu, but I guess I see things differently now.

She Ate the Layer Cake

I suppose it was only a matter of time, but Layer Cake is now my second favourite film. About a year ago, perhaps longer I read an article in the New York Times about a Korean director who was apparently making waves in the violent-film genre. I scoffed ignorantly thinking that nobody could top Takashi Miike.

A sudden re-interest in Korean culture made me think of this director, and after a particularly stressful Friday at work (you know, the kind of stress that makes your head feel 15 pounds heavier), I went up to the video shop and rented the last of the "vengeance" trilogy by Park Chan-uk, entitled Chinjeolhan geumjassi or Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. I couldn't remember the director's name exactly, so the clerk had to ask the shop's walking dictionary and he knew right away who I was looking for:

Me: I can't remember the name exactly, it's something Korean. He makes violent movies.

Dictionary: You mean Park Chan-uk?

Me: Chan-uk - that's the one. I've heard he's more violent than Takashi Miike.

Dictionary: Ummm, I don't think so. Miike's violence is pretty sick, but Park's violence is more beautiful. He leaves a little more to the imagination...

My Korean is fairly limited, consisting of a few phrases such as hello, goodbye, and you play violin very well, but I mustered a "kam sa ham nida" and rushed out the door. For good measure, I grabbed six Corona and a beef rendang on the way home. I was set. I remembered what the Dictionary told me, and I have to say he was very right.

I was looking forward to something parallel to Sasori and this had some overlap, and would have been a great place for Sasori to pick up, but it soon outgrew the Japanese film and revealed itself to be something so much better. The music is solemn and orchestral, triggering fond memories of a very fetching Korean girl playing violin in my flat several summers past. The music lends itself very well to the tone of the movie. Very well. One thing that really helped move the story along is that the lead actress has a strong resemblance to my hair dressor, a woman quietly plotting some revenge of her own.

It begins as the story of a young woman, played by the very captivating Li Yeong-ae, who went to prison for the man she loved. I thought Li was the same woman who starred in Bin-jip or Three Iron, but I was wrong. That lead actress is Lee Seung-yeon. Totally different actress. During her time in prison, Geum-ja formulates a plan to take revenge on the guy. She spends thirteen years in prison, acting as a selfless, model inmate who does everything she can to win the trust of others and get what she wants. She tallies several favours, and manages to kill the cell block bully with a smile on her face. She wins fans across Korea, one of them being a creepy minister who, it turns out was sent to keep an eye on Geum-ja. Promptly after getting out of prison, the new Geum-ja tells the preacher to fuck himself and she begins collecting favours. She pays a visit to one of her fellow inmates who has been released and picks out some nice clothes and takes a flat. Next, she approaches the family of the boy she allegedly killed and asks for forgiveness. They tell her to go away so she cuts off a finger and threatens to cut off more until they forgive. The bandaged finger is used as a nice little time marker by the director, a little obvious, but novel all the same.

Back and forth between a series of flashbacks and present day, the story unfolds. The next step Geum-ja takes is to acquire a gun, made for her by the husband of one of her former cell mates. This is a big favour - for this Geum-ja had to give a kidney. At least I think that's the one she gave her kidney for. Geum-ja reports to a bakery where she is given a job by the former prison dessert teacher. She works a few days and then asks for a 3 month advance. She seduces the son of the baker, and tells him she will kill him if he touches anything in her apartment. Geum-ja has discovered that her daughter had been given up for adoption and was living in Australia.

Jenny, played by Kwon Yea-young uses a fairly convincing accent, though one completely unsuited to Australia and is very eager to travel to Korea with her mother. She threatens to cut her throat if her adoptive parents don't allow her to go with Geum-ja. They relent and off she goes to Seoul. She meets the son of the baker and learns a little Korean. She chooses a puppy and takes it on a picnic to the country where she takes Korean lessons with the son while Geum-ja shoots the puppy in the head. Sissy was completely confused by the whole movie, beginning with the flashbacks, and then with the dead puppy. I guessed that Geum-ja was only practicing and making sure she could do the deed when the time came. During the lessons, Jenny writes a letter to her mother explaining that she is angry with her mother and wants her mother to apologize. Back in Seoul, the Australians arrive at the bakery and find Jenny.

The plan is not quite complete. Geum-ja takes one more favour from an inmate who has been keeping an eye on the real child killer by posing as his girlfriend or whatever. She carefully waits for Geum-ja, and unfortunately is uncovered by the creepy preacher. He reveals the connection between the two women, and Mr. Baek hires two goons to do her over. He ties her to a chair in his apartment and patiently eats his dinner while the two goons wait for Geum-ja and Jenny to arrive. The guys ambush Geum-ja and her daughter in the snow covered street, chloroforming the girl and trying to shove Geum-ja in a car. Of course, Geum-ja wants revenge so she's not going to take it lightly. She shoots one guy in the face - the camera shot is from behind his head and the viewer is treated to a rather unconvincing blowout. She then chases down the guy holding Jenny and waits until she is in close range to pull the trigger. She carries Jenny back to Mr. Baek's apartment, where the fat fuck is lying unconscious on the floor. See, his girlfriend or whatever was a master poisoner and went to prison for poisoning someone in the first place.

The flashbacks are over now, and the movie is about half over. The vengeance begins, and this is done very well. The director admits in an interview that his intention all along was to ask "When is violence ever justified?", and he keeps the message true. He turns the question inward - the viewer is forced to contemplate an appropriate answer. With the help of the original case inspector, who knew that Geum-ja was innocent all along but needed to close his case, she holds a congress with the families of the victims - turns out there are five families - in a schoolhouse where Mr. Baek is being held.

Cunningly, the meeting is wired, and Baek can hear everything being discussed, everything being agreed and all the hatred and sadness harboured by the families. One by one, the families are treated to a videotaping of their child's death. Baek made tapes for souvenirs, and Geum-ja found them. After all the violence and gore, I found this scene to be the hardest to watch. Though, you don't see the crux of the footage, you do witness the reactions of the families. This is how I know the director is good - maybe also due to my hair dressor's personal story, but Park made me feel like I was sitting there in the schoolhouse. Geum-ja asks the families what they want to do, and each person agrees to secrecy. Some want to hand him over to the police, where others want their pound of flesh. It is agreed that the families will take care of the matter themselves and that the ransom monies they had delivered to Baek would be returned. The first people to have a go are the parents of the first boy - each has agreed to leave a little something for everyone else - and so forth. Geum-ja herself has already beaten, poisoned, and shot Baek and leaves it at that. Her vengeance will be satisfaction. Satisfaction knowing that others were able to dispense rough justice along with her. They clean up the crime scene and pose together for a photo so that nobody will ever rat on another, and they go their separate ways. Back in Seoul, Geum-ja apologizes to Jenny and buries her face in a tofu cake. Closure.