“I know kung fu.” No, I definitely don’t but maybe I will soon!
From Friday night through Saturday night (with an obvious sleep break), Matt and I got on a martial arts film kick. Dissatisfied with the dismal selection of current moves on Netflix streaming, we branched out into foreign films. They have a surprisingly good selection, although, as we found out, a bunch of them are dubbed. I have ADD so things get a bit muddled every once in a while while the words zoom on by, but come on, America, stop being so lazy. Read a little. So there were movies that didn’t make it past the first minute which was disappointing BUT we did watch a bunch of excellent films.
We started off with 13 Assassins.
OH is this a GREAT movie!! It’s about Samurai warriors (um, 13 of them) who go after the most sadistic man I’ve ever seen. SO SO SO GOOD. I recommend not even watching the trailer so that nothing is given away. Watch this film!
And then we discovered Donnie Yen. This man fights kung fu with such a calmness that he looks like he’s barely making an effort. And he takes everyone down. He has the most bad ass moves I’ve ever seen. We watched him in Ip Man and Ip Man 2 (with a brief interlude of Battle Royale which SUCKED. I know that people say that Suzanne Collins based The Hunger Games on this book and I can see that she might have gotten ideas from it, but it’s different and the kids have guns. We both regretted watching this movie, so back to Donnie Yen.)
The stories are semi-biographical about Ip Man, who among many other astonishing feats, trained Bruce Lee. But that is seriously low on the list as you’ll see when you watch the movie. (Here’s the Wiki page on Ip Man if you want to know more about him.) The first movie is definitely superior to Ip Man 2, but that’s usually the case and this one is far better than most sequels I’ve seen. I could watch that man fight every single day.
We moved onto Jet Li’s Fearless. We were trying to stay away from mainstream actors, but the rest of the Donnie Yen movies were either dubbed or modern and we wanted history, not machine guns. This was another great movie, exploring an overly egotistical Wushu fighter who reforms his life. That’s not really what you’ll see in the trailer, but it’s definitely the theme of the movie.
Breathtaking fight scenes. Great film.
After reading all sorts of “best of” martial arts movies lists, On-Bak: The Thai Warrior kept showing up, so we decided to give kickboxing a try. Although the star is an impressive fighter and can jump over/through/under things like no one I’ve ever seen, we turned the movie off halfway through. It just wasn’t doing it for us. By this time, it was almost 10pm. This is a normal hour for most people to be up, but Matt gets up super early and I could pretty much sleep all the time, so we’re usually passed out by 9pm. Discouraged at ending our spectacular day of fight movie epics on this note, we decided to watch one more. We settled on Shaolin. And boy, were we happy that we did.
Shaolin monks are AWESOME. This movie is filled with epic fight scenes, redemption, betrayal. It has it all. And wow, can those monks fights. Such a good choice.
Our two favorites were definitely 13 Assassins and Ip Man, but we enjoyed watching all of these movies (ignoring the fact that we watched Battle Royale and half of Ong-Bak). So, if you’re looking for a Saturday filled with martial arts, you can’t go wrong with any of these.
Obviously, I ran around the house at midnight expelling all sorts of energy acting as though I knew the first thing about kung fu. And Matt made me promise not to perform any death blows on him in my sleep. Somehow, I made it through the night.
Also? I so want to sign up at a local dojo and actually learn real things about kung fu and not just look like an idiot flailing around my living room. So, that might happen!
Somebody at Shutterfly thinks we’re super weird
Matt loves coffee, so making mugs for him is the obvious next step, right? For the last few years, I’ve been using Shutterfly to make them and I can only imagine the face on the person that inspects the mugs for quality assurance. Oh, these are quality, all right!
Family portrait!
This one looks (sort of) normal, right?
Well then, turn it sideways…
Uh, huh.
Yep, “butts.” Aaand for the finale!
Yup, these are totally the mugs of normal people.
Not sure what I’ll do this year since I’m still collecting points from Coke products for my free one. I didn’t mention that part earlier, but it’s a great way to get free products from Shutterfly. So, Matt’s mug will be late this year. But it’ll be awesome! Guaranteed.
Just a few months more and then I can cut it off
My hair is long right now. Like really, really, really, really long. And my head seems to shed even more than the cats do and we have four of them. I’d like to cut it off, like, to-my-head-gone-right-this-instant-immediately but I’m donating it. I recently discovered that Pantene has a program similar to Locks of Love (who I donated to last time). The difference is that Pantene requests that the donated ponytail is at least 8″ in length as opposed to the 10″ that LOL requires. My “extra” hair is 16″ long right now (I told you it was long!). I figure that I need 2 inches more to get the required length in the cutting process, so I’m looking at another few months before I can cut it off. I really have absolutely nothing to complain about here as I recognize that my hair is going to those who are battling cancer and therefore don’t have any, so I’ll just shut my mouth about it. I am really excited about donating two ponytails though as it takes six to make a wig. So instead of contributing 1/6th to a really long hair wig, I can donate two shorter ponytails and get a wig even closer to making someone happy.
Quinny thinks that he should win the memes contest…(shh, there’s no contest. don’t tell him.)
Matt has XM Radio and has introduced me to some new music. Actually, now that I think of it, we discovered some of these songs through commercials. Which is kind of embarrassing. Also, I really want to work at Sam Adams. Anyway, new music is great, right? Totally. Except that I have a somewhat obsessive personality and you probably wouldn’t want to be here right now because I have listened to the same seven songs about 30 times in a row. If Matt were here, I wouldn’t be listening in such a manner, but he’s not so only the cats can complain and Tabitha is busy hopping around the room while mewling at the top of her lungs, so she’s too busy to notice (or perhaps she’s singing and dancing along??).
I downloaded them off of Amazon so that I could put them on both of my iTunes accounts (yes, I have two and it’s really confusing) and my kindle so that I can maximize my listening options. And right when I get to the end of the really short playlist, I’ll think, “Play them again? Why, yes I will.” And away I go…
The songs, in no particular order are:
Forest Whitaker by Bad Books
Get Away With It by Animal Kingdom
We’re Far Enough From Heaven Now by Deep Cotton
1 by Joy Zipper
“45” by The Gaslight Anthem
Overwhelmed by Tim McMorris
Not Your Fault by AWOLNATION
Fitzpleasure by alt-J
And if you think listening to a bunch of songs over and over is bad, it’s a good thing you didn’t live across the hall from me sophomore year of college when I listened to Creep by Radiohead on repeat. At top volume. For WEEKS.
(Oh, wait, you did? Sorry, Rachel!)
Clothing the cats continues…
Matt and I went on a search for a fan last night that took us to nine stores. That’s not an exaggeration. No one sells fans in January. Some of the stores we went to, like the pawn shop, probably never sell them but we were curious. Amidst all the stolen tools and stereo equipment, we found a piece of wood with taxidermied deer feet bent so that, I’m assuming, you can hang stuff on them. Eventually, we ended up at a dollar store and came home with this winner!
“I will ho-ho-hurt you.”
“You still smell the same.”
[Plotting his revenge.]
“Seriously? WTF, you guys?”
We decided that Tabitha wanted to join in. She decided that she wouldn’t give us the satisfaction of a photo-op.
So, I made an executive decision.
Well…
…that escalated quickly.
We got the sweater on Quinny without getting his arms in and he shot upstairs like a bullet. When I got there, he was sitting next to it staring defiantly at me. Milo actually kind of liked it, though.
So, he headed upstairs…
…leaving a bewildered (and somewhat murderous) Quinny behind.
Piper takes on memes…and totally wins
