About Turning Sixty
Overcast this morning, but the sun was out by the time I stumbled forth and made my way down the street to breakfast. Where would we be without breakfast? I met with friends last night to say goodbye to a fellow employee who's taken employment elsewhere, consuming two large Guinness Stouts and a shot of whiskey, nothing to make this morning less than wonderful, I thought, but you never know until the morning; so I was home in time to see another chapter of the five nights a week Chinese Kung Fu series I've been following on television.
MSV, who gives me an overview of the story line from time to time - I'm not able to follow the Mandarin, you understand; perhaps your situation is similar - says it's best I don't understand the dialogue in this particular series because it's weird. Now, does that mean weird as in "dumb" weird or weird as in "funky far out" weird of a kind I often prefer? An interesting question.
No, I don't know why I watch without understanding the language either. Who are these people? Why is this one couple who seemed to be getting along so well yesterday apparently having a falling out for no discernible reason today and are now getting back together as if nothing had happened? I know little of Kung Fu movies. I saw the recent one that won the academy award where they ran through the trees and thought, well, fuck this running through the trees.
Nice movie otherwise, it touched some of my buttons, but running up the walls and skipping through branches seemed overly precious. I haven't followed Jackie Chan in English, for example, let alone Chinese, Cantonese or Mandarin. The make pretend Kung Fu stuff in the series I've been watching is spectacular, lots of whirling dervish jumping twenty feet up in the air smacking their opponents special effects and interesting camera angles. Mostly nobody gets killed except sometimes when somebody gets killed, so it keeps you from becoming complacent.
A couple touching hands, a lady resting her head on a fellow's chest it seems is the Kung Fu equivalent of unbridled passion, but then again the women hold their own with the men. These are not shrinking violets: you act out and they'll chop you up and serve you for dinner. All of the actors are out of thirties and forties Hollywood in the sense they're knock 'em dead attractive without a hair out of place or a lipstick smear though they're five days on the road in some mystical feudal China participating in Kung Fu shenanigans. Sounds like a teenage affectation, doesn't it, this watching of foreign language television without subtitles on your nine inch bedroom television? Either that or I'm learning something else I hadn't known about turning sixty.
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