Jackie Chan with an American Accent

There’s a small stack of movies on my DVD shelf set off from the others.  Loners, outcasts, many still in their plastic shrink wrap, these films sit, collecting dust, waiting for me to finally pop them in the DVD player. 

I often rummage through my DVDs, looking for ones I seldom watch, or have over-watched to go out with the next round of Amazon sales or Goodwill boxes.  But, I will not oust a film I have not seen.  And so, these lonely films continue to wait.

Then a moment comes, a moment like today.  A day for me to do me things.  So while sorting laundry, eating meals and straightening up my home, I popped in one of these lonely waiting movies, Jackie Chan’s The Young Master.

Pretty sure I picked this up from one of those $4.99 crazy bins in Walmart some years ago.  You know the big baskets in the middle of the store aisle where you rummage through has-been films, straight to DVD duds and classics no one appreciates any longer.  Piled willy-nilly on top of each other, it’s like a Chuck-E-Cheese ball pit of rectangular plastic cases.  I must have had The Young Master sitting around for awhile, “Chapter Stops” are listed as a special feature on the case.  That’s like listing the ability to rewind as a special feature on a cassette tape.

The movie’s pretty cute.  I suppose that’s not really an appropriate word for an action movie, “cute,”  but that’s what this movie is, cute.  At least, that’s what this American release DVD version is.  The whole audio-track is dubbed.  It’s funny to see Jackie Chan’s mouth move and hear some random American.  It’s even more amusing to see a cross-eyed cop that sounds like Yogi Bear.  Other characters have all sorts of random English accents from different parts of the world.  The music sounds like it’s also been replaced, being almost completely late-70s rock music.  I’m also still trying to figure out why the Master reminds me so much of Tim Curry.

Silliness created by odd dubbing aside, I quite enjoyed the film for its story and very well choreographed fight scenes.  One of the neatest things about the film is that it could be taking place at any time – or at least, I couldn’t put it in any specific period.  Maybe someone more familiar with China or the history of Kung Fu could date it.

Now I just have to decide, keep the film?  Or send it to Sir Barnabas, royal knight and protectorate of Queen Jackie Chan.

Let’s Go to the Movies

My sisters and I used to have these funny glasses things that we picked up at some hands-on science museum or another once upon a time.  They were shaped like a plastic headband, with two clear plastic rectangles through which to view a rainbow colored world.  We used to put them on and pretend to be Geordi.

We spent hours practicing pulling our fingers apart, arguing over whether it was better to put the hand straight up and down for “Live long and prosper,” or sideways for “nanu nanu.”  We pulled on our ears in attempts to make them pointy and put Tribbles in our hair.

I’m sure we were the same as many kids; Star Trek culture deeply intertwined with the mass amounts of pop-ness shaping our young lives.  But for me, there was a sharp line between welcoming that influence and barely going beyond tolerating it.  I was about sever years old. 

Actress Denise Crosby decided she didn’t want her part anymore, so she was written out – her character sucked into some black bubbling alien creature.  Seven-year-old me knew nothing of this of course.  I knew two simple things: (1) this yellow-wearing lady was sucked into a giant mess of tar and (2) there was lots of tar on the street outside, on the playgroup at school, and in many other places encountered by a common seven year old.  That was the end of my participation in the family’s Star Trek watching.

Alfred continued to stay involved, becoming quite the Trekkie.  She even tried learning Klingon once.  I think it was mostly her enthusiasm for the show that kept me at all informed about it.  At least with regards to the Next Generation and all subsequent generations. 

The stars all pretty much belong to Alfred: Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Starburst…  (Ok, maybe not the last one; she doesn’t eat a whole lot of candy.)  So, when I went to see the new Star Trek movie with Mommy and Daddy and Mr. Trizzle, I felt like I was stealing Alfred’s parents from her.  This was a movie that should have “belonged” to her, been hers to talk about with Daddy.  But here I was, standing in line an hour early with Mr. Trizzle, excited to see the show.

The “Old Generation,” as I call it, was always my favorite.  It was sillier, less scary than the yellow-person-eating-tar-pit generation.  Plus, I loved that the ladies had those cute skirt outfits and tall boots, instead of the ugly pants suits.  I think I was also amused that I had a cassette tape with Captain Kirk and Spock singing Bob Dylan songs.  (The cassette also had Mae West singing The Doors.)  The movie kept the skirts!!  That may have been my favorite part.  Ok. well that and several other things, including the old fashioned weapons and gear, but I don’t believe in spoilers.  You’ll just have to see it yourself. :D

Spring Break Day #8: Almost Like a Real Vacation (or Help, I'm Turning into Daddy!)

I wanted to go to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk for my last Saturday in the Yay. But, with a forecast of high of 58 and the boardwalk being on the ocean and stuff, that idea was vetoed. So, I told Mr. Trizzle he had to come up with something fun that he hadn't shown me yet. He did a great job! We went to the Tech Museum in San Jose and then to the Oakland Carnival. (Even Daddy would have had a tough time planning a better day.)

The Tech museum in San Jose was not at all what either of us expected. Based on the on-line information, we both expected a museum about tech. Here's an old computer, here's how technology has advanced, here's where we're headed - that sort of thing. Nope, it was basically a hands-on science museum, aka full of kids.

The line to get tickets was super long, and there was one person working the counter. The membership line was non-existent, but there were two people at that counter. Since the line was so long, I said to Mr. Trizzle, "can I just run into the gift shop really quick to look for something?"

"What?"

"A thimble for my mommy. She collects them, so every time we go somewhere, we get one for her."

"What's a thimble?"

"(suppressing giggle) A thimble is something you put on your finger when sewing so you don't prick yourself."

"Oh! The Monopoly piece."

"(failing to suppress giggle) Yes, like the Monopoly piece."

"Why would they have a thimble there?"

"Because people collect them. It's one of those random collectors items. Most museums have them."

Mr. Trizzle continued to assert that he thought it was ridiculous that I would look for a thimble in a tech museum and that he strongly believed I would not find one. I came back about two minutes later with this:

All he could say was "w-o-w." Hee hee. Point for goldenrail! Mommy, you'll get your thimble as soon as I mail it.

The museum itself was pretty cool. I would have had a lot of fun there with my sisters, especially in the giant Tinker Toys playroom. But Mr. Trizzle was some fun, too. He played a quiz game with me (and won) and he took a picture of me as a hockey goalie.

Museum admission also came with an Imax ticket. We saw a film narrated by Robert Redford about the saving the Colorado River. At one point in the film, they're touring these old Native American ruins and this lady says, "you have to admire the Anasazi for building their homes where there wasn't any water." And, true to what Daddy would do, I thought, "no you don't! That's stupid; that's why they all died when there was a drought and now it's just ruins!" The movie was a bit annoying because it's Berkeley-ness was a little over the top. I also found it kind of ironic in an amusing sort of way that this movie was being shown at the tech museum because it kept talking about how bad all these technological developments were for the river.

After finishing up the museum, Mr. Trizzle was given an opportunity to one of the things he likes best - jam sticks in The System's spokes. He was given this opportunity in the form of a parking ticket. The ticket was for an expired parking meter. But see, here's the thing: the meter wasn't expired, it was broken. They didn't ticket him for parking at a broken meter, or for being parked there too long (there was a two-hour time limit, but the ticket was given an hour and a half after we parked). So what did Mr. Trizzle do? He took my camera and took pictures of the area and the broken meter and he's going to send them with a letter in that little ticket envelope.

The freeway was gridlock at some point on the way back, so we got off and took a nice tour of Hayward and Oakland until we got to the Oakland Carnival. We had seen the carnival on the way out to San Jose, so Mr. Trizzle said we could go if the lights were on when we came back. They were!

It was the most ghetto carnival I've ever seen. The scariest people were the ones working there. (Who, incidentally, were also the only white people there.) They had messy hair, scrunched up faces and, for the women, too much bad make-up. The scariest was the guy with three teeth and a beer in his hand, he was running this one ride that flips upside-down.

We had a lot of fun. We both went on the Tilt-A-Whirl, the pendulum-thingy that they called 1001Nachts (there was this girl that sat next to us and kicked two little kids off - who had, in all fairness, just ridden - so that her boyfriend could get on the ride. He had some nice shiny grills in his mouth; I was a little jealous.), and that ride that flipped upside-down; it's called the Energy Storm. That ride was terrifying! I was slipping all over the seat, my head flew out sideways and I couldn't bring it back in. And to make it worse, being upside down that long made my head start to itch. Can't scratch it - still have cornrows! Mr. Trizzle also went on the Gravitron to use up the last four tickets, while I got a snow cone.

For dinner, we headed to one of Mr. Trizzle's fav Chinese places (one we hadn't been to yet), the Pink Place. I felt so awful that I could hardly eat anything. I had half a little dish of vegetable soup. Mr. Trizzle managed to eat the rest of it, but he wasn't feeling great either. I was so sad. When I was a little kid, we used to go on all the rides all day long, and spin around in the living room for fun. Now, like Daddy, everything makes me sick. It sucks! We paid for our very small dinner and headed back to the hotel. I was in bed by 8:30 on my last Saturday night in the Yay. :( At least the day had been a lot of fun.

Spring Break Day #7: The Lawyer, the Commodore, and the Pro-Wrestler

And they all sailed out to sea.  Ok, not really, except maybe the commodore, but they weren't in a tub anyway.

Today, I went into the City (that's SF for you non-yayers) to have lunch with one of my fav attorneys from City Hall that I worked with a lot last summer.  It was a nice lunch (very yummy veggie burgers) and great to catch-up.  I also got to stop in and say hi to my old supervisor and other attorneys with whom I worked.

After lunch, I headed out to Daly City to hang out with my uncle some more.  Several years ago my Aunt Cindy was supposed to be Commodore of their yacht club.  Sadly, she passed away before she had the chance to serve.  So, Uncle Stevie served as Commodore for her instead.  (He sent Daddy a card that was like a get-in-free-anytime card for any yacht club.  Daddy had no idea what to with it.)  During the past year, Uncle Stevie's live-in friend was the Commodore.  She passed away near the end of last year.  Now, Uncle Stevie's the Commodore again.

We spent the afternoon just chillin, catching up on family gossip.  He also made a yummy snack of tomatoes with basil and mozzarella cheese. :)  And I showed him how to email a file.  (He's still light years ahead of Daddy, who can't send an email at all unless he's hitting reply.)

I headed back to the East Bay on one of the longest BART rides I've taken, from almost one end of the line, to almost the other end.  By the time I got back into El Cerrito, the sun had completely set, so Mr. Trizzle picked me up from the BART station.  That was really nice of him.

Mr. Trizzle found something totally new and different to do in the evening.  We stopped at El Cerrito plaza for dinner (Chinese for him, not Chinese for me), and then headed into Oakland to a place called Parkway Speakeasy.  It's an old-schoolish movie theater with just two screens.  No rows of cramped-in folding seat , no $20 popcorn that you have to put your own butter on,  no getting lost trying to find the right screen. 

The concession stand is huge, and serves real food like sandwiches, salads and pizza.  And get this, the popcorn is regular popcorn, with real butter!  The seats inside are couches and comfy chairs  with little end tables next to them.  If you order food that needed to be cooked, the staff brings it to you and takes the giant letter they gave you at the concession stand.

Mr. Trizzle and I found a nice comfy couch and I curled up into a nice warm ball.  Once it seemed like almost everyone was in the theater, Mr. Trizzle went back out into the lobby to get concessions.  He came back with a metal bowl of popcorn and a bottle of white wine.  I felt like I should have been sewing instead of watching a movie!  We ate popcorn, sipped on wine, and watched the guys that run the theaters tell us about what's coming to the speakeasies.  Then the movie started, and that was pretty much the end of eating or drinking for me.

Mr. Trizzle has this thing about only going to see movies that have ranked really highly on Rotten Tomatoes.  Personally, I think this is a really stupid way to pick movies.  It doesn't matter what it is, if Rotten Tomatoes gives it like a 97%, he'll go.  Why should a bunch of critics know better about what kind of movies you like than you do?  Anyway, the movie was filmed partially in that hand-held home-video way that the Blair Witch Project was notorious for.  I was getting really bad headaches from not being able to focus on anything, and nauseous from all the jolting on screen.  I gave up on eating and eventually even on looking at the screen.

Besides not really being able to enjoy the movie because I couldn't physically watch about half of it, the plot was boring and depressing.  I don't like to waste my time filling myself with other people's bad emotions.  I have enough of my own.  If I'm going to spend two hours (or more) of my life in a fictional land, it better be happy or at least vampire funny (i.e. House of Yes). 

I was quite disappointed.  The movie sounded bizarre when Mr. Trizzle read the info, but I was willing to give it a shot.  After all, I wanted to see the speakeasy, but uck!  Ok, ok.  There were two good things about the movie:  The Music, it was a lot of 80s hair metal except for when younger strippers were on stage, then it was Stuntin Like My Daddy and other newer hip hop; and the fact that about half the movie takes place inside a strip club.

I may stop agreeing to movies Mr. Trizzle picks out because of their Rotten Tomatoes rating.  He did that once before with a DVD.  Michael Clayton.  NOT a feel good movie.  (But has sticking ability - I just found the actual title of the movie by googling a quote I remembered from it.)  Actually, maybe I can use this Rotten Tomato thing against him.  I just Rotten Tomatoed a slew of my favorite films and THE Pride and Prejudice, the one with Colin Firth, got 100%!  Boogie Nights and The Producers are also in his "will-view" range, possible Arsenic and Old Lace, too. Hee hee.