No, Thanks 31 July 1998

I'm at work, there's loud Russian folk music in the background, and a slowly diminishing clump of people over in the corner drinking vodka shots and beer, and having what I think is termed a heck of a time. And while it's true that it is the middle of my day, and that I wouldn't be likely to get much done if I started drinking now, that's only part of why I'm not over there.

The bigger part is that there is something about scenes like this that make me want to just crawl away and hide. It's not that anything about the party bothers me - just as long as it stays over there. But I have this constant fear that it won't be so well-behaved, and I just. Do. Not. Want. To. Be. Involved.

Because I know that if I walked over there, I would not talk to anyone. And if someone talked to me, I would not have much to say. And then they would walk away, and I would walk away, and eat something, and drink a beer, and I would just be standing there. And I would rather be run over by a bus, I swear this to you in no exaggerated way.

It's this sort of reaction that led me to realize that I probably had no future in politics. Or singles bars (a fine distinction, I grant you).

Ack! Suddenly my arm has gone to sleep. Something is leaning on something the wrong way, or else my veins just spontaneously collapsed. I'd buy either explanation. It's that sort of day, and I'm that kind of fellow.

Now that the UC Theater (in Berkeley) has sadly cancelled its Hong Kong Festival series on Thursday nights, the 4 Star here in San Francisco proper has taken up the task (for a while) of giving us our weekly dose. Last night was a Michelle Khan double feature, swoon: Project S, a kind of sequel to Supercop that I've seen before, and Holy Weapon, an I don't know what kind of movie.

Let's see: a Japanese martial arts master and swordsman is always coming over and beating up the Chinese. They tell him to stop. He laughs, and so about 10,000 of them attack him. He cuts them all up into pieces. Meanwhile, a Chinese martial arts master and swordsman is about to get married, but first he has to go defeat the Japanese master, because otherwise nobody will come to his wedding. His wife doesn't know he's agreed to the duel, but she finds out when another swordsman shows up and asks them to kill him so he can become a green-hair vampire. They decline. The Chinese swordmaster has to get some kind of extra edge, so he goes to see the Ghost Doctor, who has huge white hair sticking up out of his head like those troll dolls, and who laughs a lot. The Ghost Doctor sticks a big green snake-like thing, named The Greatest Drugs, into the Chinese swordmaster in this reverse-Alien kind of scene. But, the doctor warns him, everyone who takes The Greatest Drugs first has delusions and then becomes a vegetable. But the Chinese swordmaster doesn't care.

Now the Chinese and Japanese swordmaster fight. The Japanese swordmaster has been hanging out on the battlefield with the dead 10,000 people, and he and his two friends who fly around in crow costumes have built a gigantic cross of logs there. Everyone does a lot of flying through the air, heaving and destroying of large objects like boulders, a large wooden wheel and the aforementioned cross, and finally the Chinese swordmaster shoves a burning log right through the chest of the Japanese swordmaster. The Japanese swordmaster admits that this has put him at something of a disadvantage, and concedes the fight. But, he promises, he will return in three years, and just you wait.

The Chinese swordmaster returns home a hero, and his wedding party is initially a big success. But The Greatest Drugs have driven him crazy. He chases his wife-to-be out of the house so he can have sex with the servant girls, and then mistakenly kills all of his guests, thinking that they are the Japanese swordmaster come back for revenge. (This sets up an oft-quoted English subtitle: "I am damned dissatisfied to be killed in this way!")

We are now about ... 20 minutes into the film, if that. We haven't even gotten to the main story, which is about how seven virgin women have to band together to become the only weapon that can defeat the Japanese swordmaster when he comes back. Not to mention that most of the time in the film is really about women chasing men, men chasing women, and women chasing women. But you get the idea.

I love these movies. They are perfect therapy for an overly linear mind. "Oh, well of course - they threw him into the water and he turned into a woman!"

Later: Ha! The girl sitting behind me, a student intern here, was the only other person who was working all through the party/drinking-bout tonight. Around 9:30 PM, as she was coming back to her desk, she said, "So, I guess this is officially the pathetic part of the room!" Absolutely. I think we need a flag.

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

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