It's not gay if you don't make eye contact.

Trying to adapt the Star Trek Academy project to 'Space Camp'. I didn't like the cute robot plot device in the first movie, nor the unraised stakes in the face of other child space adventure movies like Explorers, Flight of the Navigator, or Last Starfighter.

The seed question is simple: who remembers who went to Space Camp? No one, right? (Except Wikipedia that is.) What if 'they' don't want you to remember?

Right now, It's kind of Breakfast Club meets Heroes with a little Goonies thrown in. Set in 1987 in between the Space Race and the X-Files. Think Challenger.

The character portraits are the angry chubby girl - think Jennifer Grey from 'Ferris Bueller' - and the nerdy black kid (who actually does remember who went to Space Camp.) Plan on 3 others.

I want one theme to be that our personalities - even the parts considered 'weak' - are the source of our strength.

"Truth is dreams that don't come true and nobody prints your name in the papers 'til you die."

I can only see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof once a year because of how many raw nerves it touches.

And because I have to nut-punch myself before watching the younger, flyer, Elizabeth Taylor, or risk having to explain my sarong woody to fellow audience members.

Factual error: If Maggie (Taylor) was rubbing herself on me like she did Paul Newman it would be on in 60 seconds. I would not be throwing her sarky put downs. I'd be smacking that 1950s housewife like Akon. Thus Brick (Newman) had to be gay.

In any case, it's worth the pain.

For four days in November, Shizuoka becomes street performer heaven courtesy of Daidogei.

The best performer was the skinny eastern european boy who could juggle eight balls at a time. But I didn't take any photos of him because his slinky black costume made him look, well, Daido-gay.

Tokyo Game Show 2006: I play Naruto, see sexy girls demo Bleach on the Wii, and jam on the PS3 months before its release. I am like Moses coming down the mountain bringing truth and light. You will worship me now!

 

(Kinda means you have to worship Fuz, Anoth, and Mags too because they also went.)

 

Game overload, but. On the train back I see specular-reflecting/transparent ripples on the waterways around Chiba and wonder how much it's hitting my fps.

"After bitch slapping each other, let's make rice cakes* for hungry kids."

"Capital idea, dude. Capital."

 

*Abekawa mochi.

'Reloaded' put me in a bad mood. Following it with 'Revolutions' (because I ALWAYS finish what I start) cheesed me off even more.

 

This time I watched with subtitles but it all still seems like beating around the bush and posing.

 

"What do you want?"

"I want what you want."

"What do I want?"

"You KNOW what you want."

(Insert Kung Fu violence - CGI, because Yuen Wo-Ping can't speak Keanu)

"How do you know that I know what I want?"

"Because I know that you know that I want what you want."

 

I bet you the script was written by fat comic shop owners and 'Magic' card traders. I.e. geeks who even other geeks want to beat up.

(Sigh) How to explain?

 

Most Jidaigeki center on a noble hero who settles violent squabbles between his people, often disguised as a commoner himself.

 

Not the Hissatsu Shigotonin (Deadly Businessmen!)

 

Five tradesmen, artisans, and minor civil servants by day become five steely assassins by night. They avenge ordinary citizens who have been killed by Yakuza wiseguys or corrupt Samurai. The victim's family scrape together some cash for our heroes and the wheels start turning. The melodramatic theme starts. Strap yourself in!

 

The Shigotonin stash their payment by candlelight, and the bad guys get dispatched to some excited flamenco music.

 

There's the tailor who looks like David Bowie. Or at least like David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust. He strangles his victims from afar with a red rope. A bell at the end of the rope tinkles at the moment of death. Classy.

 

There's the florist who runs really fast. He has to because his deadly technique is to drop in on people, flip them over, and stick a flower stem into the back of their necks.

 

There's the mother and son catapult team. Don't know what the mother does but this being Japan it's safe to assume she's a housewife. The son is obviously a scholar and also a magnet for the local town homosexual.

 

Finally, the coldest badass of all is a middle-aged low-ranking official. He works with a bunch of effeminate upstarts all day, kills efficiently and relatively normally with a katana - easier said than done when practically everyone carries two - and no sooner has he flicked the blood off his blade than he goes home to be browbeaten by his wife and mother-in-law.

 

It's people! Hissatsu Shigotonin is people! Not superheroes.

 

Following this 1981 show is like having a Quentin Tarantino movie every day without the dialogue that tries too hard, or the patronising tributes to 'asian cinema'. Hissatsu Shigotonin can leave all that dross out because it's the real deal!

 

But... uh... I guess it's just one of those things you gotta be here for.