Getting to the Bottom of It All

by Sep 2, 20030 comments

Ahhhhhh, feels good to be back in the proverbial saddle again. Took a while to get back to the point of regular updates. Part of that had to do with the sheer number of pictures involved in the Kyoto update. Part of it had to do with my houseguests last week.

During Japanese class in Kyoto, I happened to mention the infamous Ilsa de Salsa here in Fukuoka. This is a two-day salsa festival on an island off the coast of Fukuoka, on the beach, for two days, with salsa, and scantily-clad women in bikinis, on two days, with beach, in scantily-clad salsa, in the…. I’m rambling, forgive me. 8 hours of non-stop skimpy bikinis on a palm tree lined beach will do that to you… with salsa.

Anyway, after mentioning this in class, the afore mentioned Girls From Paris™, Awa and Emilie (well, they go to school in Paris. I’m not going to go through the trouble of explaining where they’re actually from), decided they wanted to go. So as the kind ambassador of goodwill that I am, I offered my place to crash at after we boogied our butts off (nothing dodgy, just dancing and a place to stay. Come on, I expected more of you).

The festival itself, is on Nokonoshima Island (which is redundant, since the ‘shima’ in ‘Nokonoshima’ means ‘island’, but I digress) which is a short ferry ride from Fukuoka city. It’s amazing that it’s so close but feels so far away. I mean, standing on the beach, you’d swear you weren’t in Japan. There were cool stalls all over the place selling Mexican food, people swimming in the beach, bands playing all day, it was just great. If you get the chance, you NEED to come to Fukuoka next year and check this festival out. If I’m still in town then, you can stay at my place.

 

As promised, I watched Die Another Day the other night and I have this to say: I move that any scenes about the ‘Ice Palace’ be stricken from the record. The movie starts out all right, and I have to say that I really liked the opening credits going while James was being tortured. It set the tone for what was starting out as a gritty Bond film.

There was some neat globe-hopping with great scenery and cool sets but then it got to that damnable Ice Palace and came to a screeching halt. It picked up again near the end, but by that point it felt like too little, too late as far as the pacing was concerned.

I’m probably taking this next point personally because I’m such a 007 fan, but I cannot remember the last time that I felt like the makers of a film were actually accusing me of being stupid. An invisible car??? Give me a fucking break!! Does anyone else remember the classic Bond films when the gadgets were works of clever ingenuity and not science fiction? I mean, I don’t even have room on my server to go into, not only how stupid the idea is, but also how many flaws would be manifest if it ‘worked’ as Q explained it to do. <sigh>

Anyway, it had potential, but came out maa maa. Not all that bad of a Friday evening, turn-off-your-brain-and-relax movie, but not a great 007 outing by any means.

I’d like to take this opportunity to offer a belated birthday greeting to Big Matt who turned 25 this past week. I met up with him at a restaurant last Saturday where he was drinking with some of his other friends from a shochu (the equivalent of Japanese whiskey, I often hear it referred to as) bottle decorated with his likeness. Dead ringer, eh?

He’s also earned today’s Recently Heard, which I will leave you with…….. NOW!!

Recently Heard in Fukuma (via MSN Messenger)

Me: what do you mean?

Me: what’s an ‘intervention’?

BigMatt: when someone is drinking too much or doing too much drugs, and their life is spiraling out of control, and all of that person’s friends and family hold this intervention meeting, kind of like a surprise party, except it’s not a party, and they all confront him or her and try to get them to stop

BigMatt: it’s only happened to me like 3 or 4 times

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Pin It on Pinterest