Redbelt.

A martial arts flick with a great cast [Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tim Allen, Joe Mantegna, Ricky Jay] and an outstanding director [David Mamet]?

S-O-L-D.

The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue? Eh, not so much.

But this rocks.

They should make all models box. You know, in my humble opinion.

Marisa Miller [SI Cover Girl '08] Boxing Training.

Oh, they're real.

Deadly with a ruler, too.

Decent, Churchgoing Wednesday One-Liners

Black dude: Nigga, nuns ain't real.

--Union Square

Overheard by: Gabriel

via Overheard in New York, Feb 13, 2008

Hitler Rap - from the sketch comedy stylings of The Whitest Kids U' Know.

You'd think Hitler couldn't be funny.

You'd be wrong.

[But shoot, Mel Brooks taught us that years ago.]

Apartment in a Box = Awesome.

Ridiculously cool.

Casulo: Complete Furniture in a Crate - Boing Boing Gadgets:

"when I saw 'Casulo'—a small crate filled with all the furniture one needs to live a modest life—unfolded by its designers in the video below. While it's an admirable bit of prototype engineering, like a thesis project for a Doctorate of Ikea, it's the clear tone its connotive portent sends ringing in my head that makes it most laudable. To be able to cast out all one's things, step into a pregnant room, and unfold a new home in a few minutes? That's a seductive fantasy."

Truth.

Fightlinker » Blog Archive » Jews go to Hell:

"...it’s always nice when someone wishes you to have eternal happiness. But it’s not so fucking nice when it’s a conditional eternal happiness, and if you don’t meet that condition you don’t get salvation. And hey … if you’re not saved, where do you go? Fucking hell. And you burn forever like the goddamn heathen Jew sinner you are.

That’s always been a big rub for me and religion … how can anyone support something that condemns so many people to something as horrific as hell? I’d like to think that any God out there isn’t going to give a shit if I’m a Jew or a Christian or a Muslim or a Pastafarian for that matter. I figure when I die I’m gonna meet him up at the gates of wherever and he’s gonna say “Well Ryan, you were a good guy and you did a lot of good things. Since I’m not an egotistical asshole, I don’t mind that you didn’t believe in me, because you followed the tenets of what I was all about. Actually the fact that you did this on your own and not because of the whole bullshit heaven/hell reward/punishment thing makes you even better than everyone else.”

And then we’d high-five, drink some beers, and hit the strip club."

Accepting Reality.

Counterfeit Wednesday One-Liners

Restaurant manager to two underage chicks drinking wine: Can I see your fake IDs?

--Parigot, Grand & Lafayette

Overheard by: yoni

via Overheard in New York, Feb 13, 2008

john.he.is

The John McCain response to the "Obama - Yes, We Can" viral video.

[Okay, not really, but this is damn funny.]

YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES.

A million times, yes.



Via xkcd.

Bruce Lee now, almost officially, a myth.

The "Legend" of Bruce Lee, indeed. Complete with wirefu [the antithesis of a Lee flick] and totally made up for TV fictional events.

But the production values look high, and the cast is pretty high caliber - Mark Dacascos, Chan Kwok Kwan, Ray Park, Michael Jai White - for a kung fu flick.

They make a subtitled DVD set, I'd totally buy it.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Forty-part TV show remembers Lee:

"A 40-part series is being made by Chinese state television about the life of late martial arts star Bruce Lee.

The Legend of Bruce Lee is being filmed in southern China and stars actor Chan Kwok-kwan, who said he was "nervous and also excited" about the role.



...The production is being interpreted as a way for authorities to promote Chinese culture internationally in the run-up to next year's Olympics in Beijing.

The Xinhua News Agency said that the 50 million yuan (£3.3 million) series would also be filmed partially in Hong Kong and the US."

I wonder if Japan's obsession with Food TV is the vestige of some kind of cultural memory of food shortages and starvation after WWII?

See, this is what happens when you're reading a history of the post WWII occupation in Japan, are channel surfing on a lazy Sunday morning, and have read entirely too many Jungian psych books.

Of the 5 national channels this AM, 3 have food related programs. Consider, if at any one time, in the US, if CBS, FOX, and the CW were running Food Network style shows...

For the record, we've got a ramen making contest on one station, a review of Hawaiian restaurants on another, and the final channel has the standard "let's watch as B-list celebrities sit around and evaluate a multi-course meal. Course by course."

Japan just loves it's Food TV. It is the nation that brought you the Iron Chef. Tip of the iceberg, that.

Things to bear in mind. For the future. Yeah, that's it. The future.

Meet my hot new stripper wife / Turns out the mid-life crisis is a cruel global phenomenon. Can it be stopped?:

"...researchers compiled data from a couple million people across 80 nations and every income level and social status and gender and demographic and hairstyle, and the conclusion was pretty much irrefutable: The famed mid-life crisis, that feeling of depression and angst and what-the-hell-happened-to-my-dreams, is universal.

It's true. No matter where you live or how much money you make or how much of your mortgage payment you spend on lap dances in Las Vegas, somewhere between ages 40 and 50 (closer to 40 for women, 50 for men) feelings of futility and spiritual barrenness peak, and you feel like it's all been for naught because you're suddenly on the slippery slope toward cold, beckoning death and you never got around to writing that novel or opening that combo porn shop/laundromat/tattoo parlor or having 2.1 perfect kids or hang-gliding naked over the Swiss Alps.

And now, well, now it's just too damn late, because you're all paunchy and sagging and hair is growing where it shouldn't be and you have mysterious shooting pains in your colon and an inexplicable fondness for televised gardening shows, and no one under 30 wants to have sex with you ever again. You know?

...The angst, the heavy sighing, the overwhelming need to accomplish, to Get More Done, to reclaim some vigor and maybe rush out and buy a ridiculous Corvette or a giant silly Harley and couple it with very bad taste in leather jackets and an expensive membership at Sports Club/LA, and top it all off with a gum-snapping semi-hottie 22-year-old girlfriend who loves her some Red Bull and who gets icked-out by sashimi and who says "like" a lot and doesn't get a single one of my references to Spinal Tap or single-malt scotch or rec.arts.erotica, but who has an ass like Mary Magdalene's banana creme pie and makes cute little purring sounds in bed and makes me Viagra smoothies while dancing pornographically in skimpy boy shorts to Justin Timberlake remixes. What, too much? Sorry.

...Alas, there is no talk of prevention. Amid all the research and evidence, no one says what might alleviate or even eliminate the fear and the vague sense of doom, what might help you cruise over the mid-life hump with something resembling wisdom and gratitude and insight.

My guess is it starts with the usual combination, a personally customized admixture of regular, vigorous exercise, conscious food habits and minimal reality TV and great heaping doses of travel and nature and mental stimulation and truly excellent bedsheets, combined with absolute refusal to be fixed in time and place, to shrivel and hunker down and cling, as so many do, to one set of rules, one ideology, one notion of How It's All Supposed To Be. It is the knowledge that real ecstasy has nothing to do with external accomplishment, and everything to do with internal awareness.

...Isn't that the real secret? The simplest truth? Isn't that what the gurus and wise ones have been saying since before Jesus was a tingle in the loins of God? To be so present, so hotly, divinely connected to the moment you are in that time loses all relevance and age means nothing and opportunity shows up exactly as it should, and the real accomplishment, the real sense of achievement comes from celebrating each and every breath like it was a shot glass of molten meaning?

Yes. I'm going with that. What a lovely, Zen-licked, tantra-soaked perspective. I hope to suck down great heaping gallons of it, before it's too late."

...and I approve this sake-bomb.

I Wanna Talk about the Girl in My Building

Guy #1: Dude, you know what I realized? I really miss Allison*.
Guy #2: Yeah?
Guy #1: Yeah. Like, we talk on IM, but I haven't seen her since the summer, and I was just such a dick at the end, y'know?
Guy #2: Yeah...
Guy #1: I told her we should hang out over break.
Guy #2: Yeah... You wanna get a beer?
Guy #1: Are you even listening?
Guy #2: Yeah. Hey, you want Thai?
Guy #1: Unbelievable. Next time you come crying to me about how the girl in your building has a boyfriend, I'm gonna hang up on you.
Guy #1: This might be the gayest conversation we've ever had.
Guy #2: Agreed. Can we go Saki-bombing?

--49th St

via Overheard in New York, Feb 7, 2008

Ha. Ha.

Judge drops sex case as 'outrageous' -- themorningcall.com:

"A Lehigh County judge has dismissed the case against a woman who was charged with promoting prostitution at a North Whitehall Township spa, ruling that state police engaged in ''outrageous'' conduct when they paid an informant to have sex four times with employees."

Religion notwithstanding, this is a cool little optical illusion.

George Carlin - The Real Owners

Lest you think I'm becoming too optimistic.

Preach on, Carlin.

"It's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it."

You know, the first election I could vote in was the '92 Clinton/Bush election. I remember watching the debate, thinking "You know, this Clinton guy... he's different... he's going to change all this nonsense..." and sending in my absentee ballot from college.

Same bullshit, different election.

The tournament begins!

Street Fighter: The Later Years, Part 8.

He just loves the cock.

Well, you know, probably.

[Not that there's anything wrong with that.]

Background on Haggard here.

Headlines: SUNRISE: Haggard exits restoration process early | haggard, life, new - Gazette.com:

"New Life Church said Tuesday that former pastor Ted Haggard has prematurely ended a "spiritual restoration" process begun when he was fired for sexual misconduct.

Haggard was fired from New Life Church and resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals in November 2006 after a former male prostitute alleged they had a cash-for-sex relationship. The man also said he saw Haggard use methamphetamine.

Haggard confessed to undisclosed "sexual immorality" and said he bought meth but didn't use it.

New Life said in a written statement that "the process of restoring Ted Haggard is incomplete and (New Life) maintains its original stance that he should not return to vocational ministry..."

"The Mormon Bigfoot Genesis Theory"

Oh my god, it's just too awesome. The title alone might make it my most favorite thing ever.

The Mormon Bigfoot Genesis Theory - 10 Zen Monkeys:

"The Journal of Mormon History recently published a new investigation into stories suggesting that the giant Sasquatch monster is really Cain, the murderous second son of Adam and Eve.

It may not be the first controversy tackled by new Mormon President, Thomas S. Monson. But the article's author, Matthew Bowman cites a 1919 manuscript describing Hawaiian missionary E. Wesley Smith "being attacked by a huge, hairy creature, whom Smith drives off in the name of Christ" the night before the mission was dedicated. His brother tells him the attacker must've been Cain. ("Now therefore cursed shalt thou be upon the earth, which hath opened her mouth and received the blood of thy brother at thy hand...a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be upon the earth.") And then he refers him to a story by a celebrated Mormon martyr who was one of Joseph Smith's original twelve apostles.

...There's already been a controversy about the Mormon church's teachings on Cain. Brigham Young believed that God punished Cain's ancestors, and that "the mark of Cain" was: black skin. The same belief continued through a 1966 edition of the church reference book Mormon Doctrine, and black Mormons were banned from the church's priesthood. .."

Oddly enticing, vaguely disturbing.

Via the always interesting riotclitshave