Whatta Fiasco

The third film in Masaki Kobayashi’s trilogy presenting a Japanese pacifist’s view of the end of World War II. In this film, Kaji, who was ousted from serving in a prison camp for his Communist sympathies, ends up in a Russian POW camp in Manchuria. There he faces cruel treatment from the communists who decide he is a fascist. It’s a powerful set of movies.

For an interesting exercise in contrast and comparison, set this film alongside Satoshi Kon’s Tokyo Godfathers.

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Now that I’ve seen the whole thing, I not only understand all the hoopla about Firefly, but I’m also absolutely convinced that the only way to see a good TV series is on DVD. The series isn’t perfect. There were a number of missteps along the way, but the number of things they got amazingly right so far outnumbers the slips that they hardly matter. (But just who was in charge of deciding how to create the cow pies? Maybe they were some sort of weird, alien, carnivorous cows. Ugh.) I liked this series enough that I could become a Joss Whedon fan in spite of myself.

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The mother of one of our historical style (and sometime epee) fencers died unexpectedly this week and the attendance was light Friday night because of the visitation. But I went ahead to practice to handle any kids that showed up, and we had some. (I’m not a coach, but I can play one in very limited ways when needed.) But I also had time for some very good bouting. There were only three of us doing epee, so we did longer bouts and didn’t bother to keep score. (Hooking and unhooking for five touch bouts with only three people gets a bit crazy.) Lots of planned actions and some of them were working. I really was about a week away from being ready last weekend. Just not feeling sick isn’t the same as being fully recovered. I’m just glad to see things coming back together.

And then the kids got bored enough to want to play with the jump rope, I tried some of that too. Last year that level of jump roping as enough to trigger some tendinitis in my foot, so I didn’t keep it up too long. (I’ll be working into it slowly.) But last year that amount of jump roping was also enough to leave my heart rate elevated as if I’d just finished a competition bout. Now? It’s just a bit of rope skipping. So I really will be working on it more.

Using a second pair of socks really is working well, but I need to get some less slippery ankle socks. If they’re too slick/thin, my back foot ends up jammed into the toe of my shoe.

Driving to practice, there was just the barest wisp of a snow flurry started. By the time we got done, I had to sweep off my car and then try to slip my way down the side street to get some dinner.

I picked this one up specifically because I had enjoyed Weiner’s The Beak of the Finch, the story of Darwin’s finches. This history of Seymour Benzer and his fruit flies and the birth of molecular biology, stands up well to the previous Pulitzer Prize winning book. If you’re looking for some entertaining but edifying science reading, this is a good one. I’ll be tracking down the rest of Weiner’s books eventually, and probably other books about the fly labs.

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Driving across town this morning to get to the interstate, I spotted a helicopter flying low over the east side of the city. Normally the only helicopters we see around here are military reserve jobs and this was far off their normal range.(No traffic helicopters around here.) Then I turn a corner heading up toward the softball park and toward a crowd of flashing lights. An ambulance, two fire trucks and a passel of various police and emergency vehicles. However, they’re all packing up to go, the ambulance isn’t in a hurry, and there’s no sign of whatever it was that brought them there.

But as I turned the corner on the other side of the stadium, I notice odd looking tracks–vehicle of some sort–messing up the softball field. Weirdness. A couple of blocks later I turn toward the edge of downtown to find yet another clump of flashing lights. Even more police cars, but these are surrounding a taped off crime scene. (I always thought that tax preparer’s office looked shady.) Maybe there was a crime scene and a chase to the softball park where the alleged perpetrator drove his car onto the softball field and did donuts in the soft dirt?

Instead it was a man found in the alley by the tax preparer’s shop this morning with a head wound. The ambulance took him to the softball field which had enough space for the life flight helicopter. When I saw the helicopter, it was just taking off to head to Kansas City. No donuts. I hope the guy is ok. (It turns out he fell from somewhere.)

We heard a little more from Max. He’s now realized that he’s effectively mute and illiterate in his chosen city until his Spanish gets up to speed, and it has a long way to go. He’s also figuring out that putting things off until the last minute (and then some) gets considerably more complicated to sort out when you’re a continent away. He still needs to get a work permit, and not only will it not be free, but he’s not sure how long it will take to get processed. But to get the work permit he needs a certified police report from Kansas, a step he carefully put off to the last minute until there were no more minutes and it’s still not done. And it can’t be done over the internet. Now he and Mariposa are actively looking for an apartment big enough for the both of them and are facing the start up costs of this move while Max still doesn’t have (and can’t yet get) a job. So, yes, less than a week into this ill-prepared fiasco, he’s already asking for chunk of change. No surprise there, but I am seriously not thrilled that he expects lack of prior planning on his part to be rectified quickly and easily by raiding our pocketbooks. And this is just the beginning, I’m sure.

And if you’re looking for a different sort of side salad, try peeling and julienning a jicama with some optional young pea shoots. The pea shoots add a nice bit of color and earthiness, but what really makes it is a few dashes of toasted sesame oil. Really. It was mostly an after thought when I added it, but it made all the difference. Some toasted sesame oil and a tiny dash of black vinegar to dress. Yum.

We had just ordered our dinner last night when I reached up to my glasses and the left lens fell out in my hand. Further inspection revealed that one of the tiny screws was no longer anywhere in the vicinity. My first feeling when this happens (luckily this isn’t often) is mild panic and helplessness. You know how people exaggerate and claim they can’t see more than six inches in front of their faces? Without my glasses, I literally can’t focus more than about six inches in front of my face. It’s an interesting way to eat eggplant Parmesan. I could have worn the glasses with one lens, but that’s a recipe for either a killer headache, or at least some eye strain from trying to keep the other eye closed all the time. Mostly I was sitting there being glad that it hadn’t happened while I was at work, an hour’s drive from home. Then I remembered that I still have a pair of prescription sunglasses in my car. Whew.

So I chased dark blurry blobs around on my plate with an equally blurry fork, remembering eating breakfast in a hotel restaurant with a blind friend. Would it have been easier if I had been truly blind instead of just inhabiting a world in extreme lack of focus? I think that if I were blind I’d want a lot more steak than pasta. The trick to functioning without glasses is to just relax. If you stop stressing out over the detail you can’t see, there’s a heck of a lot you can make out (or at least infer) anyhow. It’s also much easier to relax when you’re just walking around instead of trying to engage in anything involving manual dexterity at arm’s length. The drive home was more surreal. Sitting in darkness punctuated by a multitude of equal-sized, equally blurry lights differentiated only by their color. But as the car moves, the lights wink in and out as they slide behind trees or lamp posts. It feels as if you’re sitting still and the rest of the world is moving around you. It felt like a hallucination and the experience was very distracting, making it difficult to converse, knowing that the world is still normal for the person next to you. It’s just  a profoundly weird experience to be reminded of how mediated our view of the world can be. How mediated mine always is. And how different my face feels to the touch without glasses on it.

We got home and hubby dug up an old pair of glasses from which he stole a screw to repair mine. All is right with the world again.

Had another good practice on Monday night. I took a very intense lesson that pushed me hard both mentally and physically. Sweaty and sore. Then had two very nice touches in bouting. Came on guard and was instructed from the sideline that I needed two small takes. Call to fence, and I did it. No fuss, no muss. Just a touch. Cool. Later, fencing the advice giver, I decided to try a feint in four, guessing that as a foilist he’d respond. Feint four with an immediate attack to the arm. It worked beautifully.

One of these days I’m going to convince even my lazy lizard brain that planned actions are the way to go. Period. How many times have I said that now? Still working on it.

Bamboo groves are just amazingly cool spaces, and they get used well in this film along with several other gorgeous locations. Very pretty, but I would have rather seen it before Hero, which was a superficially similar, but much better movie. Which doesn’t make this a bad film. If you want a viewing experience that’s more than just look at the pretty pictures, try tracing the themes of echo, reflection and deflection through the layers and twists of this film. Nicely done.

In case you were wondering, Max appears to have made it safely to B.A.after solving a minor bobble. Maybe you think it’s a reasonable thing, but many countries that require a visitor’s visa don’t approve of pairing up said visa with a one-way ticket. If you’ve obtained permission to enter a country on the condition that said visit is temporary in nature, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that you prove at least the appearance of intent (and ability) to leave once the allotted time is up. And that’s why Max bought a one way ticket to Uruguay. With that item in hand, they let him on the plane and he’s now in the (presumably) sunny south.

Saturday evening we packed our bags and drove north to Lincoln, Nebraska. Good heavens, does Mapquest ever have a burning preference for interstate highways! I had to lie to it several times before it would admit there was a route from my town to Lincoln that didn’t involve a long detour through Kansas City and Omaha. But a little prevarication led us to a two-lane highway that would have been even prettier if it had been light outside.

The tournament itself was fun, as well as physically and emotionally draining. It was good getting to talk to friends I don’t see very often, and the fencing itself was hard work. The level of competition was high enough that they gave out multiple new ratings in the women’s event. I got to fence the gold, silver, and one of the bronze medalists in the women’s event, and the gold, and one of the bronze medalists in the men’s event. On the other hand, I finished dead last in both events. Which doesn’t mean I was the worst fencer there that day or that I fenced terribly. Neither is true, but it’s still difficult to view that sort of result with perfect equanimity. But I keep working and I keep enjoying the process.

What a tough tournament, but very good, so long as I don’t think about my results.

The women’s event was a C1. Amazing! I didn’t take notes this time so I”m a little hazy on the details. In pools I fenced Jann Ream (0-5), Lisa Franz (1-5), Katie Dumas (3-5?) and Tina Hollowell (2-5?)(foilist recruited to fill out the event for quality purposes. she took fifth!) I fenced Jann first and found it a bit demoralizing. It’s the first time I’ve fenced her and she’s very good. She made a good object lesson in why you can’t just wait for your opponent to make a mistake. She doesn’t. And she took me apart with little effort or fuss, although I came close a few times. If I’d seen her fencing anyone else first, I would have been less unhappy about how I fenced her. Live and learn. But it wasn’t until I fenced Katie that I really started fencing. I only got three touches on her, but it was good fencing.

My DE was against Elizabeth Cox who went on to win the event. I got six touches on her after coming back from being down 2-7 at the first break. Again, I could have done better, but it wasn’t bad fencing.

In Men’s pools I faced Herman Bonner (0-5)(who won the event), Everett Smith (0-5) (tied for third), ? Rapier (3-5), Doug Jauer (1-5, darn!), and David Funk (1-5). In spite of the scores, my fencing in the men’s event was better than in the women’s event. And before DE’s I warmed up a little with Everett and fenced much better against him for those five or so touches. I both defended better and also landed a few on him. Not that it helped much with my DE which was against Laura Young. (5-15). One of these days I’m going to beat her in competition but I’ll have to be on my toes to do it.

Over all, considering where I was in my training, It wasn’t a horrible day of fencing for me. My stamina was not bad. I was tired in both DE’s but not excessively so for me. And my foot work and blade work weren’t bad. Nothing sloppy, but I still have plenty to work on. And one of the biggest mistakes I made for this tournament was not going in to it with an explicit goal in mind.

1. No more up and down arm invitations. Try side to side. Try presenting a bent arm as invitation (but don’t advance that way!)

2. Stop fiddling around so much trying to set up an attack. Make decision and do.

3. Double retreat is working well. Now back it up with a quick change of direction and an attack.

4. Work for more point precision.

Next tournament I’m planning on fencing is probably the Minnesota Open in early March with the Div II/II NAC in Denver mid-March. But we were also talking to the Lincoln folks about us coming up some Saturday to work out with them.
We’ll see.