I'm probably the only person in the entire world, other than the author himself, to have actually read every single page of Sylvester Stallone's first and last novel, Paradise Alley. (Or the only person to even know that he wrote a novel. Or care.)
Yes, I said 'author' and 'Sylvester Stallone' in the same sentence. And I meant it, too.
How do I know that he wrote the book, and not some ghostwriter?
Because there's a line in Rocky V where Paulie, Adrian's brother, sick of her stubbornness, tells offs his sister by saying: " You live in this fairy tale world, where the air don't move! You're like a season that don't change."
Rocky V came out in 1990; Paradise Alley came out in 1978. (Paradise Alley was a script Stallone wrote before Rocky, actually, which he then turned into a book and a movie after Rocky's success.) I read the novel and noticed the line 'you're like a season that don't change' because I remembered that line from the final Rocky flick; it was a line I'd always liked. Had a touch of poetry to it. Then I read the book, and noticed it again; Stallone stole his own line from his own book to use in the Rocky V screenplay twelve years later.
(Scott, you may ask, why the hell do you know this stuff? To which I can only answer: Well, I notice things like that, because, um, those are the kinds of things I notice.)
I read it when I was working at the downtown library in St.Catharines back in high school. (Tori, if you're reading this, that copy is probably still lurking somewhere in the shelves.) It was a hardcover, with a photo on the back of Stallone sitting in front of a dressing-room mirror, hands clasped over his face. I even remember the dedication, to his first wife: To Sasha, who takes away the rain.
(I told you I remember and notice strange stuff.)
I was interested in writing. Always had been. Tried to read everything out there that seemed interesting. I was getting more and more interested in movies, too, and I had always loved the Rocky movies as a kid, and when I was fourteen, fifteen, I watched them again and again and again. (I was racing cross-country then, and I used to watch the training montages to pump me up the night before a race.)
I realized that the first Rocky, especially, had a pretty damn good script. And Stallone had wrote it, and had been nominated for an Academy Award for it. And he wrote all the Rocky movies, and he directed II through IV, and he wrote and directed Paradise Alley, and he wrote and directed the Saturday Night Fever sequel Staying Alive, too.
In the early nineties, when I was in high school, Stallone was making junk like Stop!Or My Mom Will Shoot and Cliffhanger and Demolition Man. (Actually, I have a soft spot for Cliffhanger because it was the first 'R' rated movie I saw in the theater as a legitimate 'adult'. Saw it three times in the theatre, actually, because it was very cinematic and kind of cool, truth be told, which freaked out my Canadian Literature and Drama teacher Mr.Dimartle. "You saw Cliffhanger three times? In the theatre?" I don't think he'd seen any movie in the theatre since probably Bonnie and Clyde. Let alone three times. Let alone the fact that it was a Stallone movie. But he's a good guy, so I forgive him his trespasses, as he forgives mine.)
Stallone's cinematic legacy was that of a pumped-up, monosyallabic, pretty-damn-bad actor.
Which he was.
But...
He'd wrote Rocky, see. And Rocky II. Good scripts. Human scripts. And he was a good actor in those, too. A real and honest one. And I was interested in writing. And if the image of a writer was a nerdy guy in a room smoking cigarettes, well, Stallone didn't fit the image.
It taught me a good lesson, is what I'm saying. To look beyond the surface of things. To delve deep into a person. To not rely on stereotypes. To not take things at face value. To not necessarily believe what the media and everyone else around you is saying. To look past exteriors. All the stuff we're supposed to learn in kindergarten but never really do.
I was thrilled to see Copland back in '97, the last good movie Stallone made, perhaps the last good movie he'll ever make. The director, James Mangold, knew he could act, knew he could get a good performance out of Stallone in a movie that included such heavyweights as Robert
DeNiro (the best American film actor ever), Ray Liotta and Harvey Keitel. There's not much Stallone can do well, as an actor, but what he does do well, he does very well -- two or three things only, mostly facial expressions, vocal expressions, that accenuate his droopy eyes and give him a tender, sympathic look. But Mangold knew what to look for and ask for, and he exploited Stallone's strengths to good effect.
Ah, the strange obessions I have...
Most of you don't care, nor should you. We all have our own quirks. We all have these eccentric cultural, societal likes and dislikes we don't talk about with people. This is one of mine: defending Sylvester Stallone to the world. Why? Because it's a strange and goofy thing to do. Because I'm a contrarian by nature and choice. Because when you're a teenager you still don't know how the world works, and you rely on what you're told, and I was learning that most people thought Stallone was a loser while I was learning that he wrote scripts and novels and offered something others neglected, and ignored. It was my own secret and my own theory, and it's important to remember who we used to be and what we used to love.
I always try to look for the full story of someone, and Stallone had a hell of a story -- kicked out of multiple schools, a struggling actor, writer, Academy Award nominee, biggest movie star in the world, now a somewhat sad, fading has-been. In the first Rocky, everyone's watching Apollo Creed on the TV, and the bartender says a disparaging remark, to which Stallone says: "This guy went out and took his best shot and became champion of the world. What kind of a shot did you ever take?" And some director was once accused of only having one or two good ideas, to which he responded: "Yeah, but most people don't have any good ideas, so one or two ain't bad, really." That's my take on Stallone: he latched onto a hell of a concept, and he rode it, and he took a shot. Almost everything else he made is garbage, true, but he took a shot. (Although I could defend his comedy Oscar, if you want me to, because it's actually not that bad. But you probably don't want me to, do you...)
I still maintain that Rocky is a great movie with a great script. (We have to stay true to our adolescent selves, after all.) I've realized that Stallone, as a director, evolved into the Michael Bay of the mid-eighties (which is a good thing or bad thing, depending on how you look at it); that Rocky IV is better than you think if you accept it as it is, which is a comic-book style allegory of Cold War tensions, not the gritty realism of the first film in the series; that First Blood is a tight, taught thriller; that most of his work his complete garbage; and that he really, really shouldn't have sung the title song to his directorial debut Paradise Alley. (Yes, Stallone himself sang the title song. Honest to god.)
We have to stay true to our adolescent selves. We have to remember what we used to love, and why. We have to defend the people and times that nudged us forward.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
RUN, CONDI, RUN
A canidate for the presidency of the United States of America is worried about the effect his religion will have on the popular vote, and the people are worried, too. Will his religion affect his decision-making process? Is his religion suitable for America's highest office?
Am I talking about George 'Dubya' Bush?
No, I'm talking about John F.Kennedy.
I just finished reading the new biography of him, the one subtitled An Unfinished Life. An interesting read, if only because I discovered a) Kennedy was really, really, really sick for most of his life and all of his presidency, constantly pumped full of steroids and painkillers for his horrible back, ulcers, etc; and b) 'womanizer' does not really do justice to Kennedy's accomplishment's in that department. If bedding women was analagous to playing hockey, Kennedy would be Wayne Gretzky and Clinton would be Russel Crowe in Mystery, Alaska. (An obscure reference, but I'm in an obscure country, so what the hell.)
The author of the book makes a pretty convincing case that Kennedy was the right man at the right time. Unbelievable, what Kennedy had to deal with -- Cuba, Vietnam, the Soviet Union. He basically pulled the world back from the brink of nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was internationally focused and forward thinking.
And he was a Catholic.
Big deal?
Actually, yeah, it was a big deal. A huge deal, especially in the run-up to the election. I hadn't realized what an earth-shattering effect his run for the presidency was at that time. The whole debate centred around: Is America ready for a Catholic presidency?
The question of today is: How about a black female president?
It's possible.
After all, Canada had a female prime minister for a little while. (Okay, okay, nobody really liked Kim Campbell that much -- a nice lady and all, but following Brian Mulroney is not exactly going to win you any prizes. And the world didn't exactly pay too much notice at the time.)
Condoleeza Rice is wowing the world with her European tour right now, showing poise, grace, and ice-cold, rock solid firmness. She is one tough cookie. She is also disciplined, refined, elegant, intellectual and driven.
Dick Morris, Clinton's old campaign consultant, has a column today debating the likelihood and merits of a possible Condi run.
(See it here: www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/DickMorris/020905.html)
She would be a shrewd, more than capable coutnerpoint to Hillary's inevitable run in 2008.
Can you imagine that? These two vying for the world's top prize?
I don't know if Condi will run; a lot can happen in the next four years. (And boy does it look like the U.S. is gunning for Iran.) I think she could run, though, I think it's possible, maybe even likely, and I think she would do very, very well.
I like her. I like her stamina and resilience and singlemindedness. I may not necessarily agree with all of her boss's policies, but I appreciate and admire her very human struggle, the fact that she has risen from the very centre of racial segregation to the centre of her nation's government. It's kind of sad, though, that most of black America (with good reason) resents the administration she represents; kind of sad that her success can't be shared by the masses the way it should be.
Was America ready for a Catholic president in 1960? They were. It was a slim win, yes, but they were.
Is America ready for a black female president?
The world waits.
Am I talking about George 'Dubya' Bush?
No, I'm talking about John F.Kennedy.
I just finished reading the new biography of him, the one subtitled An Unfinished Life. An interesting read, if only because I discovered a) Kennedy was really, really, really sick for most of his life and all of his presidency, constantly pumped full of steroids and painkillers for his horrible back, ulcers, etc; and b) 'womanizer' does not really do justice to Kennedy's accomplishment's in that department. If bedding women was analagous to playing hockey, Kennedy would be Wayne Gretzky and Clinton would be Russel Crowe in Mystery, Alaska. (An obscure reference, but I'm in an obscure country, so what the hell.)
The author of the book makes a pretty convincing case that Kennedy was the right man at the right time. Unbelievable, what Kennedy had to deal with -- Cuba, Vietnam, the Soviet Union. He basically pulled the world back from the brink of nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was internationally focused and forward thinking.
And he was a Catholic.
Big deal?
Actually, yeah, it was a big deal. A huge deal, especially in the run-up to the election. I hadn't realized what an earth-shattering effect his run for the presidency was at that time. The whole debate centred around: Is America ready for a Catholic presidency?
The question of today is: How about a black female president?
It's possible.
After all, Canada had a female prime minister for a little while. (Okay, okay, nobody really liked Kim Campbell that much -- a nice lady and all, but following Brian Mulroney is not exactly going to win you any prizes. And the world didn't exactly pay too much notice at the time.)
Condoleeza Rice is wowing the world with her European tour right now, showing poise, grace, and ice-cold, rock solid firmness. She is one tough cookie. She is also disciplined, refined, elegant, intellectual and driven.
Dick Morris, Clinton's old campaign consultant, has a column today debating the likelihood and merits of a possible Condi run.
(See it here: www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/DickMorris/020905.html)
She would be a shrewd, more than capable coutnerpoint to Hillary's inevitable run in 2008.
Can you imagine that? These two vying for the world's top prize?
I don't know if Condi will run; a lot can happen in the next four years. (And boy does it look like the U.S. is gunning for Iran.) I think she could run, though, I think it's possible, maybe even likely, and I think she would do very, very well.
I like her. I like her stamina and resilience and singlemindedness. I may not necessarily agree with all of her boss's policies, but I appreciate and admire her very human struggle, the fact that she has risen from the very centre of racial segregation to the centre of her nation's government. It's kind of sad, though, that most of black America (with good reason) resents the administration she represents; kind of sad that her success can't be shared by the masses the way it should be.
Was America ready for a Catholic president in 1960? They were. It was a slim win, yes, but they were.
Is America ready for a black female president?
The world waits.
DO YOU GO BACK TO THE VOLLEYBALL GAME OR NOT? IF YES, WHEN?
While I sit here typing this and you sit there reading this, someone, somewhere, is reaching out their hand, begging, asking for more.
An obvious statement, I know -- but you're always confronted by it here in Cambodia, and the moment it doesn't make me stop, pause, think, is the moment that I have officially become one of those robotic things that completely took over the second half of The Matrix Revolutions. (Which, incidentally, I still haven't quite figured out -- the movies, I mean. Loved the second, liked the third one, but not sure what happened. Then again, The Great Muppet Caper left me puzzled, too, as did Ocean's Twelve, so...)
It's scary. How you can get so damn used to seeing homeless people waiting outside of supermarkets, or dirty, scrawny kids hanging around convenience stores, waiting for whatever you feel like giving them. (There are a couple of western style shops called STAR MART here in Phnom Penh, where you can buy Coke and KitKats and Time and Cosmopolitan, the Australian edition, or sometimes the UK one.) You start to resent their presence; you start to resent yourself for resenting their presence. The cycle continues.
It's natural, I guess; we don't like looking at unpleasant stuff. It sticks in our craw. You ever see that movie The Beach? Leonardo DiCaprio settles down in this idyllic Thai island unspoiled by the rest of humanity and culture's crass influences. (The real island where they filmed the flick was wiped out by the tsunami, I think; turns out 'humanity' wasn't the problem, just nature.) At one point one of the characters gets really, really sick, so they put him up in a tent on the other side of the island, partly for his own safety and comfort, mostly so that they can play volleyball and lounge on the beach and make-out without being confronted by the daily unpleasantness of someone dying.
When I first watched that scene, I thought: What jerks. What losers. What unfeeling, heartless, bastards.
Then I realized that the whole movie works on a whole metaphorical level too, and if I choose to approach it from that viewpoint, then you could argue that the dying man in the tent simply represents society's invalids, and the people on the beach represent, well, us, basically, those healthy, active, living citizens who just want to enjoy our days on this planet.
Isn't that what we do, after all? We put our sick people safely in hospitals, where we don't have to deal with them. We put our old people in 'retirement homes', so they can spend their final months and years playing pinochle and watching the clock. (The hours pass by so slowly!) We see the commercials for the starving and Africa and mock Sally Struthers' hair and career and physique. It's what we do. It's how we survive.
Here, well, most people don't go to hospitals. There's no retirement homes. You can see the wretchedness on a daily basis. I'm not saying it's like Dachau or Auschwitz here; Phnom Penh is, in some respects, a thriving little town, getting bigger and better due to the spending habits of the corrupt government elite. (It's the countryside that's really getting worse and worse and worse.)
The point is, it's all mixed together. You see homeless kids every day transporting garbage around. You see the mothers and children hanging out in front of the stores, always with the same nervous smiles and wounded eyes. You see little boys and girls leading by hand blind musicians around town as they play their pipe or stroke their mandolin, hoping for spare change. Occasionally, you'll see two very old women clutching hands and slowly making their way down the road, stopping when they see someone more prosperous than them, holding out their hands, hoping, hoping for anything.
Stephen King gave a great commencement speech to Vassar College a few years back that was posted on his website for awhile. Why was it great? He didn't try and give a funny speech full of ten or fifteen humorous pieces of advice. He picked a theme (giving back) and he chose one or two ways to illustrate that theme. He asked the graduates and guests to imagine a simple image: a traditional American barbeque, the father wearing an apron saying KISS THE COOK, the mother and kids waiting at the picnic table for their burgers and hot dogs. Behind them lies a fence, and behind the fence is a group of hungry, homeless people, asking for food. They aren't hostile; they aren't angry. They just want what the rest of us have: health and security. We are the people at the table, he said, and most of the rest of the world are the people behind the fence.
He wanted to make the graduates feel guilty, I think, because when you feel guilty, you give back. (Guilt is an unfair, wonderful motivator.)
So living here you always are reminded of the people behind the fence, to swipe King's metaphor, because here there is no fence. You can taste and sample a fairly authentic
proportion of the world's misery; you have no choice but to do so, and no real barrier exists between you and them, chainlink or otherwise.
But how much do you give? How do you choose who to acknowlege, respond to, help? When do you turn around and go back to the volleyball game and leave the poor and the sick to their dying days in the tents?
An obvious statement, I know -- but you're always confronted by it here in Cambodia, and the moment it doesn't make me stop, pause, think, is the moment that I have officially become one of those robotic things that completely took over the second half of The Matrix Revolutions. (Which, incidentally, I still haven't quite figured out -- the movies, I mean. Loved the second, liked the third one, but not sure what happened. Then again, The Great Muppet Caper left me puzzled, too, as did Ocean's Twelve, so...)
It's scary. How you can get so damn used to seeing homeless people waiting outside of supermarkets, or dirty, scrawny kids hanging around convenience stores, waiting for whatever you feel like giving them. (There are a couple of western style shops called STAR MART here in Phnom Penh, where you can buy Coke and KitKats and Time and Cosmopolitan, the Australian edition, or sometimes the UK one.) You start to resent their presence; you start to resent yourself for resenting their presence. The cycle continues.
It's natural, I guess; we don't like looking at unpleasant stuff. It sticks in our craw. You ever see that movie The Beach? Leonardo DiCaprio settles down in this idyllic Thai island unspoiled by the rest of humanity and culture's crass influences. (The real island where they filmed the flick was wiped out by the tsunami, I think; turns out 'humanity' wasn't the problem, just nature.) At one point one of the characters gets really, really sick, so they put him up in a tent on the other side of the island, partly for his own safety and comfort, mostly so that they can play volleyball and lounge on the beach and make-out without being confronted by the daily unpleasantness of someone dying.
When I first watched that scene, I thought: What jerks. What losers. What unfeeling, heartless, bastards.
Then I realized that the whole movie works on a whole metaphorical level too, and if I choose to approach it from that viewpoint, then you could argue that the dying man in the tent simply represents society's invalids, and the people on the beach represent, well, us, basically, those healthy, active, living citizens who just want to enjoy our days on this planet.
Isn't that what we do, after all? We put our sick people safely in hospitals, where we don't have to deal with them. We put our old people in 'retirement homes', so they can spend their final months and years playing pinochle and watching the clock. (The hours pass by so slowly!) We see the commercials for the starving and Africa and mock Sally Struthers' hair and career and physique. It's what we do. It's how we survive.
Here, well, most people don't go to hospitals. There's no retirement homes. You can see the wretchedness on a daily basis. I'm not saying it's like Dachau or Auschwitz here; Phnom Penh is, in some respects, a thriving little town, getting bigger and better due to the spending habits of the corrupt government elite. (It's the countryside that's really getting worse and worse and worse.)
The point is, it's all mixed together. You see homeless kids every day transporting garbage around. You see the mothers and children hanging out in front of the stores, always with the same nervous smiles and wounded eyes. You see little boys and girls leading by hand blind musicians around town as they play their pipe or stroke their mandolin, hoping for spare change. Occasionally, you'll see two very old women clutching hands and slowly making their way down the road, stopping when they see someone more prosperous than them, holding out their hands, hoping, hoping for anything.
Stephen King gave a great commencement speech to Vassar College a few years back that was posted on his website for awhile. Why was it great? He didn't try and give a funny speech full of ten or fifteen humorous pieces of advice. He picked a theme (giving back) and he chose one or two ways to illustrate that theme. He asked the graduates and guests to imagine a simple image: a traditional American barbeque, the father wearing an apron saying KISS THE COOK, the mother and kids waiting at the picnic table for their burgers and hot dogs. Behind them lies a fence, and behind the fence is a group of hungry, homeless people, asking for food. They aren't hostile; they aren't angry. They just want what the rest of us have: health and security. We are the people at the table, he said, and most of the rest of the world are the people behind the fence.
He wanted to make the graduates feel guilty, I think, because when you feel guilty, you give back. (Guilt is an unfair, wonderful motivator.)
So living here you always are reminded of the people behind the fence, to swipe King's metaphor, because here there is no fence. You can taste and sample a fairly authentic
proportion of the world's misery; you have no choice but to do so, and no real barrier exists between you and them, chainlink or otherwise.
But how much do you give? How do you choose who to acknowlege, respond to, help? When do you turn around and go back to the volleyball game and leave the poor and the sick to their dying days in the tents?
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
COINCIDENTAL COINS, CONNECTING THE UNIVERSE'S DOTS, AND THE CONTINUING GALACTIC SUPREMACY OF RALPH MACCHIO
Why does the universe and all its minions so often to conspire to unleash harmless, weird, freaky-deaky coincidences on us? We wail (with justification) at the senseless fury of volcanoes and earthquakes and tsunamis; we shake our heads (in perplexion) at the galactical equivalent of Grade 6 practical jokes. Are they flip sides of the same coincidental coin?
For instance:
1) Last week, I got an e-mail from the Khmer dude who teaches at the orphanage I used to teach at. He wants me to help him out, see if I can get him a job, that sort of thing. He called my housemate (as I don't have a phone -- long story), and I was reminded of the call Sunday night. Monday morning, I'm running down by the river in the crisp and total darkness that 5:30 a.m. provides, and what do I hear?
"Scott? Scott Spencer?"
I stop, turn around, and there he is, Petro, just the guy I had been thinking about the night before. Hadn't seen him in over a year. And then bang, there he is.
2) The actress Rosario Dawson seems to have been in every movie I've seen in the last few months. Just as I was telling somebody this, I slipped the movie Shattered Glass into the DVD player, and the credits roll, and, guess what, there's her name.
3) The Karate Kid III was on TV the other week. I watched the first Karate Kid back in that long-ago summer of 1984, the summer of the Los Angeles Olympics, in a theater in Niagara Falls (about fifteen minutes from my hometown of St.Catharines.)
I remember that weekend very clearly, because my family moved from the house I grew up in all the way, get ready for it, to the new house we were building on the edge of Lake Ontario, at the end of Geneva Street, on Evangelista Court. (Supermodel Linda Evangelista is from St.Catharines, and some of her relatives were the first ones to build on this court. True story. I'm sure you're thrilled.) I was devastated. Distraught. You see, this house was, literally, a five minute walk from my old house. Do you know how long a five minute walk is when you're eight years old? I've moved from St.Catharines to Toronto and St.Catharines to Ottawa and from Canada to Japan and from Japan to Cambodia, but those distances absolutely pale in comparison to the distance I tread back then. I was leaving everything -- my buddies, my home, my world. My parents, being rational, decided that Scotty wasn't quite ready to handle the move. So they shipped me off to our friends in Fort Erie, and I happily missed all of the heavy lifting. Instead, I was introduced to that wonderful world of Daniel LaRusso and Mr.Miyagi.
I saw the first sequel at the Town Cinemas two years later. I saw The Karate Kid III at that same theatre in 1989, and if you wonder how I can remember all of these minute details, I can only ask: How could you ever forget? This is the Karate Kid movies we're talking, here. I loved the second film and I loved the third film, too, even though, in retrospect, it's clear that the first one is the best. (And it's clear that they're all derivative of Rocky, even sharing the same director, John Avildsen, but so be it; we're all derivative of something or someone, right? If the worth and value of something were judged based only on originality, we'd all be on sale at Wal-Mart. Or, for you St.Catharines readers, Bargain Harold's. Or Bi-Way. Take your pick.)
The sequels are forced and strained (as all sequels, by definition, are) but there's a wonderful continuity at work; there's a marvellous steadiness that I responded to, latched on to. When you're a child, everything is changing, shifting, growing. Every year a new grade, notebook, friends. Your voice lowers. Hair starts to sprout in unlikely places. (I'm still going though that, actually.) Nothing is certain. But three years can pass and I can step into a theatre and lo and behold, there's Daneil LaRusso, and he's still seventeen, and he's still facing and fighting the same old demons, and though I've grown five whole years since the first film he's aged not at all, and his world still exists, and I can be a part of it, and when you're a kid, it's wonderful to have that all-access pass. More than that -- it's rejuvenating.
But I digress...
The point is, I was just talking to someone via e-mail the other day about the wretchedness of The Next Karate Kid, the fourth film in the series, the one starring current Academy Award Nominee Hilary Swank. It had (the great) Noriyuki 'Pat' Morita, yes, but no Macchio, and I jokingly said that a 'Karate Kid' world without Ralph Macchio is not a world that I want to be a part of.
And then today, on www.cnn.com, there it is, an interview with Macchio about the new DVD box set of the films that's recently been released.
Weird.
That's all I'm saying.
It's weird.
You can go weeks, months, even years without talking to someone or even thinking of someone and then bam, for two, three days in a row they are brought back into your life for some reason or another. I hadn't really thought about The Karate Kid much at all in the past few years, and then, over the course of a week, it suddenly returns full-force into my life.
We always look for the presence of the divine in large-scale, world-changing events, but what about the smaller stuff, the inconsequential stuff, the stuff that forms our lives? Is there a pattern to all these trivial coincidences?
Einstein said that God doesn't play dice with the universe, true, but maybe He's playing another game with us, a sillier one made up of chance encounters and long-forgotten loves. Maybe it's a game we'll someday, if not win, at least get to know the rules of.
Until then, all we can do is sit back and try to connect the dots.
For instance:
1) Last week, I got an e-mail from the Khmer dude who teaches at the orphanage I used to teach at. He wants me to help him out, see if I can get him a job, that sort of thing. He called my housemate (as I don't have a phone -- long story), and I was reminded of the call Sunday night. Monday morning, I'm running down by the river in the crisp and total darkness that 5:30 a.m. provides, and what do I hear?
"Scott? Scott Spencer?"
I stop, turn around, and there he is, Petro, just the guy I had been thinking about the night before. Hadn't seen him in over a year. And then bang, there he is.
2) The actress Rosario Dawson seems to have been in every movie I've seen in the last few months. Just as I was telling somebody this, I slipped the movie Shattered Glass into the DVD player, and the credits roll, and, guess what, there's her name.
3) The Karate Kid III was on TV the other week. I watched the first Karate Kid back in that long-ago summer of 1984, the summer of the Los Angeles Olympics, in a theater in Niagara Falls (about fifteen minutes from my hometown of St.Catharines.)
I remember that weekend very clearly, because my family moved from the house I grew up in all the way, get ready for it, to the new house we were building on the edge of Lake Ontario, at the end of Geneva Street, on Evangelista Court. (Supermodel Linda Evangelista is from St.Catharines, and some of her relatives were the first ones to build on this court. True story. I'm sure you're thrilled.) I was devastated. Distraught. You see, this house was, literally, a five minute walk from my old house. Do you know how long a five minute walk is when you're eight years old? I've moved from St.Catharines to Toronto and St.Catharines to Ottawa and from Canada to Japan and from Japan to Cambodia, but those distances absolutely pale in comparison to the distance I tread back then. I was leaving everything -- my buddies, my home, my world. My parents, being rational, decided that Scotty wasn't quite ready to handle the move. So they shipped me off to our friends in Fort Erie, and I happily missed all of the heavy lifting. Instead, I was introduced to that wonderful world of Daniel LaRusso and Mr.Miyagi.
I saw the first sequel at the Town Cinemas two years later. I saw The Karate Kid III at that same theatre in 1989, and if you wonder how I can remember all of these minute details, I can only ask: How could you ever forget? This is the Karate Kid movies we're talking, here. I loved the second film and I loved the third film, too, even though, in retrospect, it's clear that the first one is the best. (And it's clear that they're all derivative of Rocky, even sharing the same director, John Avildsen, but so be it; we're all derivative of something or someone, right? If the worth and value of something were judged based only on originality, we'd all be on sale at Wal-Mart. Or, for you St.Catharines readers, Bargain Harold's. Or Bi-Way. Take your pick.)
The sequels are forced and strained (as all sequels, by definition, are) but there's a wonderful continuity at work; there's a marvellous steadiness that I responded to, latched on to. When you're a child, everything is changing, shifting, growing. Every year a new grade, notebook, friends. Your voice lowers. Hair starts to sprout in unlikely places. (I'm still going though that, actually.) Nothing is certain. But three years can pass and I can step into a theatre and lo and behold, there's Daneil LaRusso, and he's still seventeen, and he's still facing and fighting the same old demons, and though I've grown five whole years since the first film he's aged not at all, and his world still exists, and I can be a part of it, and when you're a kid, it's wonderful to have that all-access pass. More than that -- it's rejuvenating.
But I digress...
The point is, I was just talking to someone via e-mail the other day about the wretchedness of The Next Karate Kid, the fourth film in the series, the one starring current Academy Award Nominee Hilary Swank. It had (the great) Noriyuki 'Pat' Morita, yes, but no Macchio, and I jokingly said that a 'Karate Kid' world without Ralph Macchio is not a world that I want to be a part of.
And then today, on www.cnn.com, there it is, an interview with Macchio about the new DVD box set of the films that's recently been released.
Weird.
That's all I'm saying.
It's weird.
You can go weeks, months, even years without talking to someone or even thinking of someone and then bam, for two, three days in a row they are brought back into your life for some reason or another. I hadn't really thought about The Karate Kid much at all in the past few years, and then, over the course of a week, it suddenly returns full-force into my life.
We always look for the presence of the divine in large-scale, world-changing events, but what about the smaller stuff, the inconsequential stuff, the stuff that forms our lives? Is there a pattern to all these trivial coincidences?
Einstein said that God doesn't play dice with the universe, true, but maybe He's playing another game with us, a sillier one made up of chance encounters and long-forgotten loves. Maybe it's a game we'll someday, if not win, at least get to know the rules of.
Until then, all we can do is sit back and try to connect the dots.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
CAMBODIAN POLITICS: THE PLOT THICKENS...
It's still a bit weird, living in a wildly erratic political environment like the one that exists in lovely, scenic Cambodia.
Case in point: A few days ago, Sam Rainsy, leader of Cambodia's only real opposition party, high-tailed it out of the country. Why? Because he and another member of his party had their immunity stripped for making allegations against the government that the present leadership didn't find particularly pleasant.
There's three main political parties in Cambodia: The Cambodia People's Party (CPP), the party in power, as brutal and corrupt and incompetent as a party can possibly be; FUNCINPEC, which has recently become quite interested in merging with CPP; and the Sam Rainsy Party, which is basically the only voice of dissent in the country.
This is the thing: FUNCINPEC wants to merge with the dominant party, the CPP. Why? Because Cambodian political power is all about diluting foreign aid money and putting it into one's own pockets, and if you're on the outside, not only can you not make any real, lasting decisions, but, more significantly, you can't get a cut of the loot, either. So FUNCINPEC wants in on the coin, in other words.
A merger such as this would not be a good thing; it would leave the Sam Rainsy party as the only true opposition party in the country.
The goverment doesn't like this possibility. They really don't like this possibility. So they're doing whatever they can to get rid of the Sam Rainsy party. Now they've gone and stripped him of his immunity, which basically means they can charge him with anything they want.
It's fascinating and complex and scary. Yes, it is scary, to live in a place that has such a mean-spirited, ruthless, fundamentally indifferent government in power. They are clueless and reckless, and they do not seem to care that their country remains desperately poor and underdeveloped.
Their leader, Hun Sen, is a former Khmer Rouge soldier who defected to Vietnam early on. He's been the prime minister for years and years. He ain't going to give up his power easily, if ever.
But there's signs of hope. There's signals of dissent. A few weeks ago, Hun Sen announced that if he died there would be chaos, that no one else would be able to become Prime Minister.
The next day, one of the leaders in his own party said no, no, that's not the case at all. If something happens to him, well, there are mechanisms in place to choose a successor.
A statement such as this is significant here; it has weight. It's a rare but intriguing example of Prime Minister Hun Sen being openly, publicly contradicted by his own party. What does that show? That shows his own people are turning against him, perhaps. That they want the media and the outside world to know this.
And the plot thickens...
(Not that I'm a political expert, or anything. I'm just trying to piece things together from what I hear, read, observe. But I do know that most of the people do not like the Prime Minister at all, which, in a democracy, would usually mean his days are numbered. Cambodia, though, is a 'democracy' in name only, the same way that 'Dairy Queen' is a 'queen' in name only. )
Okay, okay -- a lame comparison. Been a long day. But it's true. When was the last time you saw anything royal-like in a Dairy Queen? And who would want to be queen of something as bland as a dairy, anyways? Just asking.
For now, things are reasonably stable, as stable as Cambodia can get, if only because the ones with the true power are in power; they control the military, and whoever controls the military controls the land, I think.
Still.
My passport's ready, just in case.
I live not far from the Canadian Embassy.
If worse comes to worse comes to worse, I can always get out, fly away, exit.
There's twelve million others, though, that can't.
Case in point: A few days ago, Sam Rainsy, leader of Cambodia's only real opposition party, high-tailed it out of the country. Why? Because he and another member of his party had their immunity stripped for making allegations against the government that the present leadership didn't find particularly pleasant.
There's three main political parties in Cambodia: The Cambodia People's Party (CPP), the party in power, as brutal and corrupt and incompetent as a party can possibly be; FUNCINPEC, which has recently become quite interested in merging with CPP; and the Sam Rainsy Party, which is basically the only voice of dissent in the country.
This is the thing: FUNCINPEC wants to merge with the dominant party, the CPP. Why? Because Cambodian political power is all about diluting foreign aid money and putting it into one's own pockets, and if you're on the outside, not only can you not make any real, lasting decisions, but, more significantly, you can't get a cut of the loot, either. So FUNCINPEC wants in on the coin, in other words.
A merger such as this would not be a good thing; it would leave the Sam Rainsy party as the only true opposition party in the country.
The goverment doesn't like this possibility. They really don't like this possibility. So they're doing whatever they can to get rid of the Sam Rainsy party. Now they've gone and stripped him of his immunity, which basically means they can charge him with anything they want.
It's fascinating and complex and scary. Yes, it is scary, to live in a place that has such a mean-spirited, ruthless, fundamentally indifferent government in power. They are clueless and reckless, and they do not seem to care that their country remains desperately poor and underdeveloped.
Their leader, Hun Sen, is a former Khmer Rouge soldier who defected to Vietnam early on. He's been the prime minister for years and years. He ain't going to give up his power easily, if ever.
But there's signs of hope. There's signals of dissent. A few weeks ago, Hun Sen announced that if he died there would be chaos, that no one else would be able to become Prime Minister.
The next day, one of the leaders in his own party said no, no, that's not the case at all. If something happens to him, well, there are mechanisms in place to choose a successor.
A statement such as this is significant here; it has weight. It's a rare but intriguing example of Prime Minister Hun Sen being openly, publicly contradicted by his own party. What does that show? That shows his own people are turning against him, perhaps. That they want the media and the outside world to know this.
And the plot thickens...
(Not that I'm a political expert, or anything. I'm just trying to piece things together from what I hear, read, observe. But I do know that most of the people do not like the Prime Minister at all, which, in a democracy, would usually mean his days are numbered. Cambodia, though, is a 'democracy' in name only, the same way that 'Dairy Queen' is a 'queen' in name only. )
Okay, okay -- a lame comparison. Been a long day. But it's true. When was the last time you saw anything royal-like in a Dairy Queen? And who would want to be queen of something as bland as a dairy, anyways? Just asking.
For now, things are reasonably stable, as stable as Cambodia can get, if only because the ones with the true power are in power; they control the military, and whoever controls the military controls the land, I think.
Still.
My passport's ready, just in case.
I live not far from the Canadian Embassy.
If worse comes to worse comes to worse, I can always get out, fly away, exit.
There's twelve million others, though, that can't.
STEVEN WRIGHT QUOTE OF THE DAY
If you're driving your car at the speed of light and turn your headlights on, what happens?
ON YOUR OWN
The Super Bowl. The soon-to-be-cancelled NHL hockey season. Steroids in baseball.
Are you interested? Do you care?
Guess what? Millions don't. Scratch that -- billions don't. All popular sports, true, all obsessions that can lay claim to legions of militant followers. Millions of people follow these pasttimes carefully, debating the issues, posting on websites, proclaiming their indifference or allegiance to this, that or the other cause. It takes up time and space and money in all of the major media outlets.
Over here?
Um, not interested. Never heard of the Super Bowl. Ditto for the NHL. Baseball, well, people know of the game (some of them do, anyway -- okay, a few; alright, one guy, who lives down by the river, he's heard of it, I think), but nobody plays it.
What we become interested in. What we invest our hopes, dreams and passions in. What we consider essential to our character, our national yearnings, our fulfillment as people, living breathing organisms separate from our dull, workday lives. All of this means nothing to others. Absolutely nothing.
A little shocking, actually.
You live in a foreign land and you realize that the cultural touchstones you've grown up with are non-existent pretty much everywhere else on the entire planet. The sports that people live and breathe barely even exist. The entertainers are not mere has-beens, but never-beens, unknowns. (You think many Cambodians or Japanese or Hungarians or Russians or Swedes were mourning the death of Johnny Carson a few weeks back?)
What connects us to others and ourselves (however superficial our choices may be) is, voila, gone.
(What does voila mean, anyway? Is it French?)
You can't turn on the radio and hear that familiar DJ's voice. You can't flip on the TV and get comforted by your favorite newscaster soothingly laying out the world's travesties, twenty-two minutes at a time. You can't open up a newspaper and expect to see familiar faces, places, people.
All you can do is step outside and walk the streets and listen to the people and figure out what sports they do play and try to make sense of this world, one day at a time, on your own.
Are you interested? Do you care?
Guess what? Millions don't. Scratch that -- billions don't. All popular sports, true, all obsessions that can lay claim to legions of militant followers. Millions of people follow these pasttimes carefully, debating the issues, posting on websites, proclaiming their indifference or allegiance to this, that or the other cause. It takes up time and space and money in all of the major media outlets.
Over here?
Um, not interested. Never heard of the Super Bowl. Ditto for the NHL. Baseball, well, people know of the game (some of them do, anyway -- okay, a few; alright, one guy, who lives down by the river, he's heard of it, I think), but nobody plays it.
What we become interested in. What we invest our hopes, dreams and passions in. What we consider essential to our character, our national yearnings, our fulfillment as people, living breathing organisms separate from our dull, workday lives. All of this means nothing to others. Absolutely nothing.
A little shocking, actually.
You live in a foreign land and you realize that the cultural touchstones you've grown up with are non-existent pretty much everywhere else on the entire planet. The sports that people live and breathe barely even exist. The entertainers are not mere has-beens, but never-beens, unknowns. (You think many Cambodians or Japanese or Hungarians or Russians or Swedes were mourning the death of Johnny Carson a few weeks back?)
What connects us to others and ourselves (however superficial our choices may be) is, voila, gone.
(What does voila mean, anyway? Is it French?)
You can't turn on the radio and hear that familiar DJ's voice. You can't flip on the TV and get comforted by your favorite newscaster soothingly laying out the world's travesties, twenty-two minutes at a time. You can't open up a newspaper and expect to see familiar faces, places, people.
All you can do is step outside and walk the streets and listen to the people and figure out what sports they do play and try to make sense of this world, one day at a time, on your own.
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