Synaesthesia

A new movie called The Foot Fist Way is coming out soon…. I’m really excited!

WARNING: FOLLOWING LINK IS FOR A RED BAND TRAILER. DON’T WATCH IT IF YOU’RE NOT MATURE ENOUGH.

Favorite quote:
(On Tae Kwon Do) “It’s the best of all martial arts.”
“I hear jiu jitsu’s really good for balance.”
“No. Jiu jitsu sucks.”

Hahahahaha…

(P.S. Before anyone mistakes my meaning, I am indeed aware of jiu jitsu’s amazingness.)

Time
Tom Waits

A beautiful, slow, quiet song. Not as oddball and clanging as some of his other songs.

One of the most essential things you can learn in a karate class, I think, is how to fall properly. I didn’t think I’d be able to remember all the rules in an actual falling situation, but last Saturday proved that with enough practice, you can save yourself some serious injury.

Some things to remember:
1. Don’t let your head hit the ground. If you’re falling backwards/onto your side, tuck your chin against your chest. Falling forward is different - turn your head sideways so you don’t smash your face onto the ground (and catch yourself on your forearms - hurts like hell but it’s better than catching yourself with your nose).

2. Don’t try to break your fall by putting just your hands out; you might break your wrist. If you fall sideways, you can hit the ground with your arm (straightened), palm down, to take the impact; use both arms to break your fall if you fall backward. This is all kinda hard to explain and you need to practice it; better learn it from your instructor rather than me, haha.

3. If you fall backwards, round your back. I don’t know if this is a steadfast rule, but it’s saved me some pain.

How learning how to fall saved me:
In the most embarrassing fall ever - honestly, I haven’t accidentally fallen in soooo long, not even when the sidewalks were coated in ice - I fell after doing an exaggerated roundhouse kick through a kicking pad (trying to build on advice my instructor was giving me) and just fell onto my side. I didn’t remember ALL the rules of falling - heck, I fell on instinct alone, and somehow, I landed on my side, chin tucked, with my arm out. One problem: I had my arm rotated so my elbow “hit” the ground, but my arm was straight so my forearm took the bruising. Now all I’ve got is a nasty bruise and a sore shoulder, but imagine what might have happened had I not been taught how to fall. A broken elbow, maybe (I had a LOT of momentum), or whiplash, or a concussion if I hadn’t tucked my chin.

So, the moral is, take it easy, and learn how to fall.

Watch the last half hour. That’s it. Otherwise, an extremely predictable movie. I could write pages and pages on why the main character doesn’t seem like she belongs there, why (as my friend noted) her speech at the Streets is ridiculous because it’s basically in defense of middle-class America… It’s really a terribly plotted movie, with some neat dances thrown in at the end. You don’t care about the characters much, except Moose, and I spent most of it wondering why there aren’t any movies about latinos/blacks that don’t up the whole racial thing. I mean, please. The white girl who definitely does NOT look like she knows what it’s like to live on the streets. Really, a terrible movie. Just watch the last twenty minutes.

A while ago I wrote about a shoulder injury I’d gotten (way back in November ‘07), and I got a few concerned comments, so I thought I’d update!

My shoulder is almost better. I re-injured it - obviously - during our karate promotion, though not to the extent that it was the first time. I basically have my full range of motion back. The bad thing is I spent all of January not doing ANYTHING with it, because even doing a couple weights made it hurt, or even going on an elliptical. Now that I’m back at karate, I’m trying to build up muscle there again (not like I had much to begin with anyway) so that push-ups don’t kill me so bad. But you know what’s worse? Jumping jacks. Getting my arm to go above my head was the hardest part of recovery. I should be going to see the school’s trainer soon to get advice on some rehab exercises, but I’m almost better! As in, I can actually sleep on my shoulder at night. Though when I stretch it (esp. rotate it) I can hear tons of popping noises; my doctor says it’s cause the muscles aren’t exactly balanced yet (overcompensating…not moving enough…something like that).

As for going back to jiu jitsu, I feel SO guilty because I haven’t gone back (but how dumb would I be to go back before I’m fully healed?). I’m hoping to go back after spring break, maybe once a week. I think I really want to take judo (although it hurts like hell to get thrown) to take advantage of my being so short (lower center of gravity, yo!). And jiu jitsu - well, I think I haven’t gotten as much as I could have out of that class, since I can’t do much during a fight. BUT the nice thing is that learning the moves teaches me at the same time how to get out of them and to expect them, even though it’s really frustrating to not be able to do stuff (esp. because, I think, brute strength might compensate for my shortness, but I haven’t got that).

In other news: We’re doing a lot of Muay Thai now, including the clinch, and knee and elbow strikes. We’re supposed to be balanced fighters, though we got ripped apart today for slacking off on our Isshinryu basics - because, that’s what we’re there to train for.

Chocolate

What looks like an amazing Thai movie with a kickass female fighter (actress “Jeeja” who apparently trained five years for this role). The trailer says “real injuries” - although it isn’t a requirement for it to be real for me to see a martial arts movie, it sure helps. The movie was already released in Thailand, to my knowledge, but has yet to reach my computer screen.

Mirageman

An amazing Chilean movie that I’ve been dying to see - when does this come out in Chile? I love how everyone gets kicked in the face during the commercial. I also love one of the taglines… Se acabó el hueveo.

Also, I have no idea what on earth is up with these two related Barney clips. Lol, Barney kills Chapulín Colorado. Lol, Mirageman beats the SHIT out of Barney.

And…

Translation: Fuck the panic button.

I know this DVD came out a while ago - heck, I bought it last year, but I just noticed it again sitting on the shelf above my computer, and I just had to comment on the brilliant way the cover was done. Not only can it be flipped upside down and viewed as reflections of the two lovers in either orientation, but the TITLE itself reads “The Princess Bride” no matter how you orient the DVD. Whoever designed the title is a genius and should be commended. This reminds me of that FedEx post I had a while ago about that hidden arrow in the logo. It’s just sooo cool!

See the New York Times article reporting it.

I’d rather not comment on the circumstances (strange as they seem), but I can say I will really miss Heath Ledger. I remember seeing him in A Knight’s Tale for the first time, and most recently in Brokeback Mountain and I was waiting on the edge of my seat to see him in The Dark Knight (which IMDB says is in post-production now). He was a great actor whom I thought was really on his way to the top, with amazing skills, and I’m really going to miss him.

I just realized something. In Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, one witch helps another, and makes a promise to another, because of their membership in some kind of sisterhood or something…and other characters help the main character because they’re members of a guild or something… Anyway, I don’t remember the names of their organizations, but I just realized what a strange kind of motivation that is for a character - to do something solely out of membership in an organization, not because they felt one way or another about the situation - or DESPITE how they actually felt about the situation. I can’t decide if that’s a cop-out or not, to have a character be motivated by organizational rather than personal ties, but it certainly opens up another world for character motivation, and it certainly could let you get more nuances in motivation.

So, earlier I was under the impression that Peeps didn’t have a sequel, but ah, it does: The Last Days.

To sum up my reaction, I read the book in two days, but I was ultimately kind of disappointed. It shares some similarities with Westerfeld’s other novels (I’m specifically referring to the Uglies series), but those similarities don’t serve this book as well as they did, say, Extras.

For example, The Last Days is basically about a band getting together and trying to make it big, except it’s set against a backdrop of a spreading epidemic that basically turns people into vampires. Similarly, Extras is about our fame-obsessed culture and one girl trying to make it big, except it has a futuristic backdrop and a possible plan to end the world woven into the story. Furthermore, like Extras, The Last Days sort of forgets about the previous main characters and starts afresh, with only a few appearances from Cal, Lace, and others.

This formula (the idea of looking at a teen wish through a new lens and starting with different characters) worked for me in Extras but did not appeal to me in The Last Days, for several reasons. The book switches the first-person narrator with every chapter, and we meet several band members - including Minerva, who’s obviously been infected. This is quite a departure from the engrossing format of Peeps, in which every other chapter talked about parasites; in The Last Days, that technique survives as only a single italicized page before each major section of the book, and they seem much more watered down than the detailed and surprising descriptions of Peeps. In any case, meeting so many characters just for this one book - none of whom are particularly exciting (the smart and rich one, the “fetching” one, the slow and large one…the only different one is a girl with a mental disorder, but even she ends up becoming predictable, neatly summed up as “logical” and “ethical”) - seems like a waste, especially when I as a reader had invested so much in Cal and Lace in Peeps. Furthermore, in the Uglies series, the main battle has been fought by the end of Specials, so it’s easier to let go of the main characters for Extras. The Last Days arrives at the final battle with very different characters, after an unexpected story about making a band during an impending apocalypse, and that final battle doesn’t come until the last chapters of the book, when the main characters don’t even have to fight in it (though they participate), and the so-called apocalypse is basically summarized during the epilogue.

Furthermore, because The Last Days has introduced us to new characters who function outside the Night Watch, we have to go through the whole process of watching them learn about the parasite and the underground enemy again. Maybe it’s just my preference, but though I liked the passages about band practice and band drama, I would have preferred to see the tension mounting among characters involved in the Night Watch as the “apocalypse” approaches, or to even have seen these newcomers worry more about how their city is falling apart.

I won’t say much more, besides that the way characters speak didn’t strike me as authentic as it did in other Westerfeld novels - with words like “fawesome” and “fool” instead of “awesome” and “cool,” I got the impression that either the characters or the author was trying too hard.

But I love Westerfeld, and I highly recommend Peeps and the Uglies series - but feel free to pass on The Last Days.

Also, on a separate note, the book cover is ridiculous. I can understand the image-oriented ones of the Uglies series featuring different phases of Tally’s life and all that, but this cover just doesn’t fit what the book is about.