Houndstooth junket, serving the Hiccup Barrier...

So a number of years ago, when we all thought that Chow Yun-Fat's American superstardom was assured and my brother and I were snatching up all the Hong Kong action movies we could get our hands on, I purchased a movie called "Killers Two." This movie advertised itself as a sequel to John Woo's classic, "The Killer" The sequel had the same stars, Mr. Fat and Danny Lee, Even though Chow had both eyes shot out and died in the end. But, reality never really had a place in the great Hong Kong Action movie scheme of life, so we can look past that. He can always have a twin, like in "A Better tomorrow 2," and that movie is almost better then its predecessor. Almost.

Anyways, our infatuation with this genre of film waned when my brother moved away and he began to have an almost insatiable desire for the cinema of strange German men. I never found them as fun to watch without him after that, and while my friends generally enjoyed watching them, they never quite developed the taste that we had. Which is okay, you gotta move on, right?

Well, I watched "Killers 2" yesterday. I was looking forward to it. After all, the box said "definitely in the John Woo tradition" and the front has a picture of Fat and Lee looking like badasses with the caption: "2 Men, 50,000 bullets" how could I go wrong?

Well, everything could go wrong, in the best way. The video quality was horrible, the subtitles, tiny, blurry, unreadable. I gathered the plot was a rewash of the "Bullitt, protect-the-witness" kind of story. I fast forwarded through the middle third.
What was really great about the movie, what really sold me, was that John Williams did the soundtrack! Interspersed throughout the movie were snippets of music snatched straight from Star Wars and Indiana Jones. That's right, when Fat is giving this dude the beatdown of his life, it's music from when Yoda is telling Luke about the force! I loved this movie! You should see it.

The only real disapointment came with the advertised "50,000 bullets." It was about 49,995 bullets short. Fat just choked everyone he killed.



(note: this is my last truck stop post. Got a new job. It has to do with power tools.)











this is what blogs are about:
My Nothingness: Ah.. The Endurance..

Cloning the Vampire-busters

God knows I love our President, and these will tell you why:

"It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber" -Washington D.C., April 10, 2002

and,

"One of the interesting iniatives we've taken in Washington D.C., is we've got these vampire-busting devices. A vampire is a- cell deal you can plug in the wall to charge your cell phone" -Denver, Aug. 14 2001

I'll sell you one of those vampire-busters for $24.99, no questions asked.

My Kingdom for a Camera and the Persistence of the Other

Driving to the truckstop this evening (Saturday mind you-this fucking sucks!) and on the entrance to the highway is always one of those begging- sign holders guys. He always sits huddling on a bucket and limply holding his sign. Sometimes I imagine he's dead.

Well, tonight he was there as usual, but I could barely see him cause next to him standing was this middle aged Hispanic couple, looking equally as distraught, weather worn and destitute, but they weren't holding any sighing. The man was looking at nothing, smoking a cigarette, the woman was smiling. As I passed them, the woman held her two fingers up to me, in a peace sign. I smiled back, wishing I had a camera, for one of those "only-in-America" snapshots of human existence.

I spent part of the rest of the drive wondering whether or not that photo should have been in black and white or color.

An hour later an old timer truck driver and I were talking about how long the bolts of a truck antenna mounting bracket should be. The quit (real Freudian slip kept there on purpose) er...kit comes with inch and a quarter bolts and he tells me that there is no way that they would ever work. They had to be an inch and half, at least...

Today I was wondering what I was going to do for dinner. My girlfriend and I are broke, she put together all our change this morning, it came to ten bucks and we walked to Albertson's and bought milk, eggs and blueberry muffin mix. We ate all the muffins and watched the last part of the fellowship of the ring and the first part of the two towers. I hope she's not finishing it while I'm working tonight. Anyways, dinner. Suddenly our buzzer rang. We immediately thought it was going to be our friend who usually shows up unannounced. But it wasn't. It was her father, who came down from Ft. Collins to buy a car. He was hungry. So the three us walked down to the Chipotle and he bought us Burritos.

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Kinda a lame blog story I realize, but it has perhaps a good point. That being poor sucks, I mean it has really no redeeming qualities, except for perhaps to the fact that it brings out the best in the ones you love and care about. Because it seems to me that the support and encouragement that they have given us is more valuable than the money itself. So, thanks to both our Moms and Dads, bros' and sis's, and Anthony.


Last night I learned that a guy I hung out with maybe twice two years ago killed himself a couple of weeks ago. It's the second suicide I had to deal with in the past year. And I have come to the following conclusion: Suicide is the worst. Worse than any other kind of death. This guy, he was real quiet and one of the times we hung out we went to one of the most loud, horrible, fratty bars in Denver, Croc's. And we were not fit for this place, but I remember having fun, dancing to horrible music, trying to get him and the others to dance, to no avail. That was the night that I got yelled at by a construction guy cause I reached into his car for no reason other than his window was open. He was driving a bulldozer at the time. I think I ran. I remember throwing up, "micro-bursting" on the light rail station.
The second time, we went to Casa Bonita. 'nuff said...

Rest Easy, Brother.

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My Truckstop Bravery

There is a constant shift of smells here at the truckstop. Mostly its exhaust, which gives me a slight headache. Sometimes its basement-cats piss smell. Whatever, it's bad. But that's okay. I'm allowed to do this, there's a satellite radio, indie rock calms my nerves, I can catch up on the new bands I forgot about. A shriveled-up driver, lots of gray beard, comes by and we talk about his car charger, it still works good for him. I tell him that's what I like to hear. I'm hungry, but all there is here is fried chicken. Can't eat that all the time. There are a lot of obese people here. Really obese men whose rolls of fat fall out freely from their already huge t-shirts. They make jokes as they walk past, they complain about how the new trucks aren't built for them. They like to talk to me because they haven't talked to anyone for awhile. They carry laptops.

I gotta tell you, William Shatner's new album sounds really good, and poignant, if you can believe that.

Cigarettes are a way of life. They tap their ashes on the floor as I tell them about plan prices. My boss who talks like Harvey Keitel and has lived a more exciting life than him, smokes and sells like a ex-con with something to prove to the real world, which he does. He's got two boys and he can't get a driver's license. But he knows more about cell phones than anyone I have ever met. He wants to have sex with every young girl that comes through here. He makes me feel desperate, but my life is so much more together than his, and that seems wrong, somehow.

These men, they yell at each other, complain about their trucks, laugh, and drink gallons of liquid in giant sip cups. Their women rub their backs lightly as they wait in line at the counter, getting tickets for showers, laundry, oil changes. Doughnuts, doritos, mountain dew, black trucker coffee. Staples of road-life. No one talks and jokes with the middle-eastern drivers.

Descriptions of vistas on cape cod, in arizona mesas. One trucker to another, in front of me:
"who else could see things like that, working some 9 to 5 job." Mocking me...

There's a cardboard cutout of Apmela Anderson, wearing a skimpy outfit, hawking Sirius Satellite radios on her breasts. I hate it, she's always starring at me, truckers want to take her, make jokes, the next one who wants it I'm gonna sell it to him, after I get off, for whatever cash he's got on hand...

Everything's interesting and boring at the same time.