I'm A Little Airpot 12 November 1998

6:15 PM: Mooooooo! I hate having to explain things. Especially when the explanations are so ... complicated.

"Well, yes, I know that for any other part of the site, you could fix an error by editing the HTML files, but see, it doesn't work like that here, because we started to use that system, and then we did, but now we aren't, so it's not clear exactly where it would come from again, and if you go make those changes there, then we might end up rewriting the files from over here, and then we'd lose all those changes, you see? So it's kind of complicated."

"You're lying, aren't you?"

"No! Not as such. Sort of."

Anyway. I have to decide very very soon if I am going to ditch work (!!!) and go see these two "Beat" Takeshi films at the UC or not. You know a director is cool when he has a nickname in quotes, right? Like Martin "The Weasel" Scorsese. Bad cultural dubbing there, I guess. It's not that I don't Love My Job and all. It'd just be nice to get out. I dunno. There's a buttload to do here.

Isn't that a wonderful word? "Buttload." Not only does it have the right sound, but it carries the correct implication about what it is that one has a load of, and where it is a pain. I have been thinking about curse and curse-like words today. I wonder if I'm the only person I know who honestly says "heck" and "dang" sometimes?

Coming up: the dramatic answer to today's musical question, "Should I Stay or Should I Go?"

2:21 AM: I went. And my gosh, talk about grim. I have no idea if this is reflective of Japanese cinema versus Hong Kong, but for gangster movies, these were definitely not action melodramas. No questions of honor, nothing about brother versus brother, fighting for their own personal code of justice in a corrupt milieu. No, Takeshi's films are just about gangsters shooting each other, and killing time in between killing each other.

The first film, Sonatine, did have its lighter moments, when they're all hiding out on the beach and being very silly. But when it came time for the gunplay, there was nothing ballet-like about the choreography. Everyone just took out their guns and started blasting away. Amazingly poor shots, too. And the second film, Gonin, didn't even have that comic edge. Its plot was about a group of gentlemen trying to rip off the Yakuza, and a more bizarre, inept, doomed-from-the-start collection of nutballs you couldn't imagine.

The overall effect was very creepy. It was often hard to be sure whether or not what was happening was real or not. At any time, in any place, it was possible that someone was going to get shot. Part of that non-melodrama aspect - it didn't follow standard rules, where you could say, Oh, now this will be the shootout, and this will be the romantic interlude. It might start out as the romantic interlude, and then the completely unemotional and uninvolved hit men would show up and kill the character. No dawdling about to explain their evil plots, or their motivations. They didn't have motivations, apart from their salaries I suppose. Just, there they are, blam, oh whoops, he's dead now.

None of this helped make the BART ride home any less spooky, I can tell you. I'm hoping the semi-terrified frown will have worn off my face by tomorrow. Yikes.

Willfully blind self-indulgent nebbish or amusingly quirky old coot? And how bout that local sports team? Discuss among yourselves.

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