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I went to the family picnic yesterday. My family, which I suppose kindly inclusive liberal sorts would call "blended", reminds me of a cuisinart accident, only with rather more blood and screaming.

Now, I don't drink much at all in my day-to-day life, but for family functions, booze is anaesthetic, social lubricant, and the duck's back for those comments that I need to be able to pretend I didn't hear. It works reasonably well. Yit seems happier than I've seen her in years, which I expect is a good thing. She looks less brittle, anyway. Amy (Larry's wife) was delightful, and her kids were adorable. I lost at arm-wrestling to Christian, three falls out of three. (He's five.) Roy said the amount of hamming that took place during those losses was WWF-worthy. *sigh*

In the department of truly petty, cold-hearted victories, I was distinctly pleased to note that I am more successful at quitting smoking than my dad's wife. So go me! (Am I really this petty? Yes. Oh, yes.)

(no subject)

I should have mentioned that this week, the employees are on vacation. As a result, I'll be pulling very long days. Sucks to be me.

I'm still trying to decide if Ichi the Killer is a comedy or not. I'm leaning toward 'comedy' despite (or perhaps because of) the bodycount, arterial spray, and entrail-draped abattoirs in the thing.

Ichi is filmed in glorious living color... not just the blood, though there is a lot of that and it's shot lovingly. But that's not all there is. Note also the entire wardrobe of Kakihara... from the purple pimp-daddy coat to the lime-green bib he uses when he cuts off his tongue. This is a colorful movie, a movie of lush eyefucks.

Much as I like it, though, this is not a top-notch film. It's a fairly low-budget, uneven yakuza film with a muddy, wandering plot. But... it has occasional flashes of brilliance AND it's linguistically interesting because the actors playing yakuza talk like yakuza. Isn't that nifty?

I think it's a comedy because it's funny, the same way that gross jokes were funny when I was fourteen. Gross jokes, you know. Like these: What's the difference between a truck full of dead babies and a truck full of bowling balls? You can't unload a truck full of bowling balls with a pitchfork. What's black and white and red all over and can't go through revolving doors? A nun with a spear through her head. If you can get that level of humor working for you, you are probably in the appropriate mindset to enjoy this film.