Insomniac Ramblings

Morphues was the Greek God of sleep, right? Yes. Yes, he is. Do you know how I know that? Because the computer hacker in the 1990 Jean-Claude Van Damme film Death Warrant told me so. I am not ashamed to admit this, although I realize that I should be. (And cue Van Damme/Death Warrant digression...now.) 

Death Warrant is one of the more underrated Van Damme movies from the 90's. In fact, no one even remembers it. It gets overshadowed by Kickboxer and the all-time J.C.V.D. classic, Bloodsport. But Death Warrant has all the ingredients of a late 80's/early 90's action flick: 

1) Mega-action star at the height of his popularity 

2) Hot-for-an-80's-chick female love interest with HUGE 80's hair (in this case, Cynthia Gibb, who was also the love interest in Bloodsport, and real-life sister of Donald Gibb, aka Ray Jackson from Bloodsport and Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds) 

3) Ridiculous plot premise that could potentially make sense but never really does (Van Damme goes undercover in a prison to investigate murders of inmates which end up being perpetrated by his girlfriend's boss who intended to harvest inmate organs to research a cure for his wife's terminal disease. Yes, I'm serious.) 

4) Villain with a cool nickname ("The Sandman")

5) The black sidekick - a specific staple for Van Damme flicks; see Kickboxer, Lionheart. In this case, we have Robert Guillaume, who starred next to Morgan Freeman in Lean on Me and had a recurring role on every black sit-com from Sanford and Son to A Different World. I'm not even kidding about that. 

6) A couple of  great "that guy's," including Art LaFleur (played Babe Ruth in The Sandlot), and Al Leong - possibly one of my Top 10 Favorite "That Guy's," whose credits include the Asian terrorist in Die Hard, Endo the torturer in Lethal Weapon, the leader of the Wing Cong in Big Trouble in Little China and about 75 films where he is credited as playing "Asian Looking Thug." Again, I'm not kidding. 

* I have another funny Al Leong moment to discuss, but believe it or not, I have other things to write about besides 80's action movie extras, so I'm going to hold off. If you want to read it, it will be at the very end of this post. 

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, yeah. Death Warrant. Great movie. (And, end Death Warrant digression... now.)

As I mentioned in my post about finding long lost notebooks, my sleep schedule is completely fucked up. I've effectively personified the only hit song by Slaughter. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, you were either born after 1989, or you're black. What? Find me a brother that has "Up All Night" by Slaughter on his ipod - besides the lead singer from Living Colour. Wait, you didn't get that one, either? I give up.) 

I was able to fall asleep on my newly-acquired spare bed for about 2 hrs - between 10:00 pm and midnight. I was exhausted, and in an extremely 'blah' mood all day. Because of this, I declined a mini-golf invitation from my best friend (a decision for which she is currently furious with me, by the way) and set up the possibility of actually getting a normal night's sleep. Clearly, that was not how things turned out. So, in the midst of my perpetual insomnia, here are some random commentaries, mostly about television, because all I did today was stare at one. Enjoy. 

- It's officially Shark Week on the Discovery channel. I cannot describe how much I enjoy Shark Week. I mean, so what if they've been running the same five documentaries for the past five years. I still watch, because maybe - just maybe - the great whites will jump a little higher out of the water this year. Maybe they will shuffle up the order of the Ten Deadliest Sharks list. I mean, maybe a couple more people got bitten by nurse sharks this year, causing it to edge out the blue shark in the number 9 spot. Maybe they'll find yet another new way to tell the story about the attacks in the fresh water stream in New Jersey in 1916. Honestly, I've been watching the same five people getting attacked for the past half decade. I'm getting bored. Discovery needs to step up their game. Here is my idea for Shark Week 2010: take a handful of prison inmates, and drop them off in the most shark infested waters all around the world (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, San Francisco, etc.) in bloody meat-suits and force them to swim their way to freedom. Tell me you wouldn't watch that. 

- I recently saw The Ugly Truth with Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler. Yes, I saw it with females. Yes, it was their choice. No, I have not slept with either of them. No, I have no chance at ever sleeping with either of them. Yes, I am kind of ashamed of myself. 

- I just took a minute and reflected on the morbid direction that my Shark Week paragraph went off in. I actually demanded that more people get mauled by sharks for my entertainment. You know what this means, right? I will be attacked by a shark now. There are no two ways about it. Staying out of the ocean won't help me, either. Somehow, I'll get bitten in a chlorinated swimming pool. And I still have hell to look forward to after that. 

- Back to The Ugly Truth. Guys, if your girlfriend is planning on forcing you to see a chick-flick, push for this movie. It's got some legitimately funny moments, and Butler is actually very funny. The rub? If there's any part of you that ever fantasized about fucking Heigl, that part of you will immediately go limp after seeing her in this movie. Her character is so unbelievably irritating that, if you are able to maintain any sort of sexual desire for her, it will undoubtedly shift in focus to the Shannon Hamilton school of sexual philosophy (see: Mallrats). Two other noteworthy points about this movie: 1) it doesn't get funny until Butler appears on-screen, and ceases to be funny when he isn't on-screen, and 2) Kevin Connelly makes a cameo, and cements my theory that not only is E (his character on Entourage) a terrible character, but he is also a terrible actor.

- Speaking of terrible acting, Anna Paquin is just God awful. She literally makes True Blood suck. Well, her and the rest of the crappy actors and the terrible plot. I didn't mind the first season of the show, but this season has been awful. Not only does Paquin get worse with every episode, but they have actually included music videos. They cut a capture the flag sequence to "God Bless Texas" (in a show about characters from Louisiana). Capture the flag? Really? I can literally sum up every episode of this show in the following lines: 

Sookie: I read this person's mind and got myself into lots of trouble. Bill, help!

Bill: I must help Sookie, but a stronger, more important vampire won't let me!

Sookie: I somehow managed to avoid death again, and though you did literally nothing to save me, I love you!

Bill: I...SWEAR...TO...You... blah blah blah

Shapeshifters. Gay, black, drag queens. Vampire orgies. New characters. Poorly choreographed fight scene. Another vampire orgy. Paquin's tits. Oh, we love this show!

On a Sunday night, every other Facebook headline has something to do with True Blood, yet I'm consistently met with dumbfounded faces when I mention The Wire.  Excuse me, I'm going to take about 26 Sudafed, drink a glass of bleach, headbutt my meat slicer and call it a night. (I'm just kidding. I don't own a meat slicer.) 

*I almost forgot to go back to my Al Leong story. I'm sure you would've been crushed. Anyway, when I was in high school I used to work at a movie theater. On Thursday nights, we used to wait until the last theater emptied, and then screen one or two of the movies that were opening the following Friday. Well, one night, "In the year two-thousaaaaaand" (see: Late Night with Conan O'Brien), we decided to screen Godzilla (the one with Matthew Broderick and P.Diddy covering Zeppelin for the soundtrack). In the very beginning of the film, Godzilla attacks a Japanese fishing boat. There are Asian men running and screaming all over the screen as their ship goes down. I lean over to one of my managers, and whisper, "How long until we get an Al Leong sighting?" Confused, he asks me who Al Leong is. I explain to him that he is basically the token Asian. If there is a movie where there are Asian gangs, terrorists, or any large gathering of Asian men, Leong will almost definitely be there. Well, the ship is going down, and still no Leong. I haven't given up hope. I know he's there. The boat is almost fully submerged now, and the camera cuts back inside the hull, to this long shot of a hallway. There are bodies scrambling all over the place, when suddenlly... BOOM! Al Leong pops up in an extreme close-up, looks around confusedly, gasps, and then disappears. I let out a gigantic "YES!" at which point everyone in the theater (8 or 9 people, max) look directly at me with looks that match the confusion that Leong brilliantly demonstrated in his 6 seconds of screen time, and then turned their attentions back to the screen. The best part? Those 6 seconds were literally the best part of that movie.