I Can't Breathe

Tuesday night I took a break from work in order to have some fun with friends. We had dinner, played some City of Heroes, and then went to see Kung Fu Hustle. I know it's not a movie for everyone, but I don't want to know the people who wouldn't want to see it. And I really don't want to know the people who wouldn't enjoy it.

It was totally over-the-top martial arts action in the same vein as Steven Chow's (the writer/director/star) last movie, Shaolin Soccer. The story was pretty basic, but easily undstandable to Western audiences (as opposed to many Chinese films which can be a bit alien in some ways), and a heck of a lot of fun. The action was good and often hilarious due to Chow's sense of timing, comedy, and juxtapositioning. It's surprising to me how Chow manages to balance all of the different styles, plots, characters, and motivations, while still moving the story along quite briskly and managing to entertain with a good mix of drama, comedy, action, and love stories.

The title of this particular post comes from one scene that had my boss gasping for air because he was laughing so hard. I actually can't describe to you how hard he was laughing. It was like sitting next to a little kid having an uncontrollable laughing fit. (It was the knife-throwing scene that set him off.) We all had a great time.

I'm just over 200 pages into my editing, so I have about another 150 to go. This weekend will be full of editing for me. I'd like to have everything edited by next weekend so I can work on some of the math invovled in the document over the course of the following week. Wish me luck on that.

I came up with an idea for a novel -- or rather, I should say, I came up with some interesting characters for a novel, but I'm having a hard time developing a satisfactory plot for them. I mention it only because I fall asleep every night trying to think up ideas for the plot. Which is exactly what I'm going to do again tonight... probably very soon.