digitalbugsy

Jay organised for a bunch of us to go to see the Shaolin Monks perform their Wheel of Life show. It wasn’t what I expected… it was actually a story, rather than just a Kung Fu demonstration (though that did come later). The basic story is this. A long time ago, in a province far far away, traditional martial arts training was outlawed, so the Shaolin Monks created their own form mimicing the animals around them with stances taking on animal forms (e.g. Crouching Tiger or Hidden Dragon ).

The Story:
The monks offer their services to their emporer, and he enlists them to protect him from a local warlord. They defeat him and the emporer wants them to remain as his protectors. The monks decline and the emporer seeks revenge. The emporer poisons the monks and very nearly wipes them out forever, however 5 survive and the rebuilding of the temple begins…

The story was fairly simple and while the fight scenes were impressive it looked very choreographed and I was about to write them off as just being actors (albiet highly trained), when the martial arts display at the end began…

The Demonstration
The demonstration was very impressive, and removed any doubt in my mind of their abilities. Notable bits…

• The 6-7 year old monks doing flips from foot-head-foot-head.
• The monk who took two spears, anchors them at two other monks’ feet, and proceeded to bend the spears by pushing on the points with his neck.
• The monk who had two wooden poles snapped over his back at full force.

All in all very impressive…

This is a stage production of the Ken Kesey novel of the same name, starring Christian Slater… who I must say looks a LOT like Jack Nicholson from the screen version, well same balding pattern anyway…

Our seats were in the very back row of the upper circle, with a perfect view of Slater’s bald spot, but that didn’t detract from what was a most excellent piece of entertainment. I’ve never actually read the story or seen the whole movie, so the story line was entirely new to me and had me hooked from the outset…

The interaction between Christian Slater’s McMurphy and Nurse Ratched is a fantastic power-play, both with very strong personalities. Each has their own strong card to play - McMurphy’s being his ability to get his fellow patients to open up and rise up against Ratched’s authority; and Nurse Ratched with her threats of ‘treatment’, which McMurphy doesn’t understand the extent of until much furthur down the path, at which point it is almost too late to turn back.

The first half was very much controlled by McMurphy, his antics giving Nurse Ratched a run for her money. It looks like she is going to snap at any point… The second half is very much controlled by Nurse Ratched, her authority and threats start to become reality, McMurphy is subjected to electric shock treatments, and he becomes very much more aware of the strength Ratched has but continues in his quest to make her snap, organising a party and for one of the inmates to lose his virginity. This becomes the last straw for Ratched and she goads McMurphy into attacking her… The result of the attack is the most extreme of ‘treatments’, McMurphy is lobotomised…

The entire story is dig at Mental Institutions of the time the story was writen. McMurphy is completely sane (in the broadest sense) with his institutionalisation a way of a not going to jail, and Ratched seeing insanity in everything he does, resulting in the most dire of situations…

Anyway,

Thanks Mark for organising this…

Ok, this has to be one of the most hard-hitting movies(imdb.com) I’ve ever seen…

The basic premise is,
Morgan Spurlock decides to discover some of the reasons why Americans are getting so fat by going on a 30 day McDonalds binge. The rules are, he can only eat or drink what is on the McDonalds menu - that includes water, which is available - and he must super-size the meal if he is asked. In addition to the food, there is an exercise restriction based on the national average amount of exercise, he can only take 5000 steps per day.

Without giving too much away, the scariest thing about the movie is not just the way his body is affected, but also the investigation into how the mind is affected by the food we eat; the amount of sugar, caffiene, fat and how it changes the way we feel…

I urge you to see it - you will never look at a Big Mac the same way again…

For the laughable come-back from McDonalds check out
this.

After months of deliberation - the ‘Do I Really Need It?’ type - I decided to buy myself a bike. After a few days of test-riding and internet searching I settled on a Scott Yecora, without disc brakes.

I’m loving it! I rode it home from Waterloo which is basically the complete other side of the city from where I am, got home buggered but psyched to go out and do some more. I must say its much more enjoyable than the tube, and makes things seem much closer that before. Mark’s house is probably only 10 minutes away, Jay’s the same… The only thing that might put me off is the rain, but I reckon all i need is a good jacket and some mud guards to stop the dreaded back spray…

I know it’s cliche, but what are you going to do?

Cast:
Mark, Dave, Jay, Bugsy

Location:
Amsterdam

When most people think of Amsterdam, it’s normally one of two distinct paths - Grass and Sex or Canals and Bikes.

Grass and Sex
I won’t dwell on this because everyone knows you can go into a coffeeshop, buy grass over the counter and smoke it without worry. One thing that struck me though, you can take your own grass along and smoke it, and all you have to do is buy a drink. It makes me wonder how these places actually make money. The thing about most people when they smoke grass is, they will sit around for a long time without doing much, let alone buying loads and loads of drinks, and if they have their own stash… well I’m just saying there probably won’t be a huge turnover of clientele…

The red light district is quite surreal, the girls on display like in a shop window, well I guess it is a shop window. There was a lot of stag nights milling around trying to bargain with the girls for a bulk-discount. It was a bit of a strange sight to see two or three guys queued up outside a curtained window waiting for their mates to come out.

Canals and Bikes
I would say one of my favourite things was riding around. We all hired bikes and circled around the streets just taking it all in. They have these fantastic bike lanes where you are totally cut off from the road, so you don’t have to worry about cars too much, and if a pedestrian strays across, just ring your bell and plow on through… We rode down to Vondel Park and sat in the sun for a little bit, had a spliff and then rode around some more.

Photos here.