Since I was mortified of anything loud, running the vacuum was something of an ordeal at the Coons house, my dad tried to solve the problem by talking to me in a calm and concerned manner.

“Why are you afraid of the sweeper?” he asked.

“It’s so loud!”

“…but why is it loud?” he asked.

Rather than addressing my emotions, like an ineffectual pussy, my dad wisely chose to address the thing which caused the emotion, actually fixing the problem rather than merely painting over it.

“Because it sucks things into it and chops them to bits its fan blades!” I told my dad, and presented a number of mauled Transformer guns that I had left on the floor in evidence of my viewpoint.

The sweeper may or may not have also played a role in Crane loosing his other arm, causing him to become the wonky, crippled, “Hey, wait up you guys!” Constructicon. The other Constructicons only kept him around because A) they needed him to form the upper-torso of Devastator, and B) my parents adamantly refused to replace him, no matter how good I was.

My dad chuckled to himself, and led me to the hall where he was sweeping.

“See? It’s not doing a thing…” he said as he stroked and fawned the sweeper, as a misdirection. “…it can’t hurt you at all! It just…”

At that moment, he turned the sweeper on, and began shrieking.

“Oh God!” he shouted. “Oh God, no! It’s got my foot! Help!”

I vapor-locked. My dad threw himself to the ground, and clawed at the carpet in an unsuccessful bid to escape his untimely demise.

“Run!” he shouted as he lay on the floor, shimming toward the sweeper to create the illusion of being sucked in. “Run! Save yourself!”

I ran back in to my room and slammed the door, panting frantically as I braced myself against the door frame, to prevent the sweeper from entering from when it inevitably comes to life. I realized that this all had to be some sort of elaborate prank, like on those “TV Bloopers and Practical Jokes” specials we would watch on NBC. I threw open the door, and the sweeper was still running, but my dad was gone. Surely, he didn’t run down the hall and watched me from around the corner. No! Clearly, he had to have been consumed by the damnable machination in the hall.

I went from wide-eyed horror to a squint and ran back into my room. I didn’t know what the sweeper’s deal was, but I knew one thing — that it had to die. I dashed to the toy chest, because it had enough toy guns to overthrow imaginary Central American governments… and I did.

See, unlike 50% of my readership, I grew up in the 1980’s (I’m looking at you, Purdue), The Children on the 90’s grew up watching Pokémon, Barney & Friends, and The Effeminate Rainbow Pals; however, in the 80’s childhood looked a little something like this:

I rummaged through my toy box for the largest gun I could find. I don’t exactly remember what it was supposed to be a replica of; I just remember that I eventually broke the trigger off from shooting too much.

A great number of red headbands littered my toybox, as one was bundled with most Rambo playsets. So i grabbed one of them, and dramatically tied it on with a mighty pull. I would like to take this time to inform my younger readers that at the time, this was considered a normal thing for children to do. At any given time, half of my first grade class would be wearing camouflage t-shirts and redhead bands like Corey Feldman from the fuckin’ Lost Boys.

I threw open the door with my gun rhythmically clicking, screaming at the top of my lungs as I broke down into tears, and then screamed and cried at once, shooting and shooting.

After a minute or so, my dad quit laughing and came out from the corner, and picked me up. It didn’t help at all. I kept shooting, screaming, and crying. I always kind of wondered why my Dad did that to me, until the answer came to me one day — because that was the most badass awesome thing you could ever do with a little kid.

Man, I am so glad that August and Joe will have kids soon, so that Uncle Coons can pull shit like this on them…

Strangely enough, I am the new version’s most skeptical enemy and also it’s biggest supporter. It doesn’t succeed on a few of the levels that the original did, but it made some small improvements to a couple of my complaints after many viewings over the years.

The success of the new film lies with its purpose, cinematography and influence. It honors the original enough, while being its own film. It was tastefully done, and didn’t succumb to most of the Hollywood stupidity of today’s films for young people. One of The Karate Kid’s strongest themes was having a father-figure in our lives. As a middle-school teacher, I see many of my students without fathers or students who SHOULD be without their fathers. In his book, Wild At Heart, John Eldridge talks about the necessity of caring for the “father-wound” we all have from birth, and how our fathers are to be loving stewards of our personhood prior to adulthood. Too often, we see the negligence of that guidance in our children. I really connected with both Daniel (from the original) and Dre, who both lost their fathers and became vulnerable after moving to a strange place. The relationship between Dre/Daniel and Mr. Han/Miyagi was crucial, and I believe that this film will show young people the importance of having those relationships, and to foster them…same as it did 26 years ago. The movie “Up” also had a similar message, telling young people that even if our parents don’t/can’t care about us, we can find strength in those who would teach us and care for us.

The other success of this film is its influence on modern martial arts. If you ask most people about the arts, you’ll hear about either the UFC or a violent revenge film. I enjoy both of these, because I enjoy watching others get hurt (that’s besides the point). While entertaining, these fights and films can take away from the underlying purpose of where it all comes…because they are, too often, the spokesmen of the arts in our culture. This film shows kung-fu as a defensive art, not an offensive sport. Jackie Chan does a good job as Mr. Han, and provides a relevant line that “Kung-Fu lives in your whole person, and shows up in how you treat other people.” I really liked the direction of how he used teaching Dre respect for his mother and for others as the “wax-on/wax-off” training catalyst. Dre never picked his jacket up off the floor for his mother, so Mr. Han used the movements of hanging the coat, putting it on, taking it off, and laying it on the floor as the movement training. It was creative, and it took the concept of the original further. My favorite improvement was in Dre’s abilities during and after training. In the original, let’s be honest, Daniel was kind of a sissy…and had no business beating those Cobra Kai students. The whole tournament was Daniel getting his ass kicked, then getting lucky and pulling out a win. The tournament in the remake was very satisfying, and the choreography was very entertaining to watch. Dre felt like a worthy opponent the whole time, and Jaden Smith’s athletic ability was evident.

My complaints lie in the relationship between Dre and Mr. Han…..i kinda didn’t buy it at times. Not to say it wasn’t effective, but it was nowhere near the rapport between the two of the original. Also, I think they cast a little too young for the main role. While Jaden Smith did a great job, it’s difficult to have coming-of-age themes and love interests for an 11-year old. Blame it on the “tween” marketing America is caught up in. The movie was 2 and a half hours long….and took awhile to build up steam. I think it could have been edited down to a more enjoyable 2 hrs.

Overall, I think the film is worth seeing. It will give casual fans of the original a nostalgic trip, while adding some creative spins on some plot points of the original. Young, aspiring martial artists will take away some important messages, and hopefully be pointed in the direction of a good dojo….hopefully mine. The flaws are outweighed by a tastefully done remake that tries to honor the greatness of the original, which can be obviously remade…..but never REPLACED.

I went to work and plotted some points, and managed to leave work such that the rain started right when I opened the door to my building, and made dinner such that I was done right when the tornadoes started. After that, I read some journals, and washed the dishes, and read more journals. And then, right around midnight, Mike Brownstein left a post on my Facebook. A link to a one-line news article that said that “Touchdown Jesus” off of I-75, was on fire.

Then, like that, I grabbed the ol’ SuperFunAdventureCodex, and crossed one more item off my list.

A transcript of the list is given below.  (The items are listed in order of importance.)

Things I’d Like to See:

• Christopher Walken performing a spoken-word version of David Bowie’s “Heroes”
• Ally Sheedy naked
• Jesus Christ on fire
• solid room-temperature superconductors
• Nuclear power renaissance
• identity of “Deep Throat” revealed
• functioning and economical EUV lithography system
• destruction of the Roman Catholic Church
• a cure for diabetes
• Labyrinth II
• electric cars gaining widespread popularity
• the Kurzweilian Singularity
• the domestication of the Komodo Dragon
• old-school breakdancing making a comeback
• the identity of who killed Laura Palmer
• Sarah Palin running for office again, so we can continue to make fun of her.
• Dolph Lundgren fighting Jet Li
• Reliable jetpacks
• Gene Hackman in drag
• Concise, coherent, and preferably closed-form solution to the Problem of Evil
• Collapse of the Kim Family Regime
• Passage of the ERA
• Passage of a amendment to legalize same-sex marriage
• Men everywhere wearing fedoras and flat caps at all times, like they did in the 1920’s
• Freddy Kruger fighting Jason Voorhees
• all my friends living happy and fulfilling lives
• repeal of fireworks laws
• to see BP go under

For those of who have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, a little backstory.

Shortly after I moved to Ohio to start grad school, right around the time the neo-cons and Christo-fascists went mad with power, the Solid Rock Church spent $500,000 to build “King of Kings,” a 62 foot bust of Jesus Christ facing I-75. The statue was ostensibly to help people by serving as “a beacon of hope and salvation,” but in practice, the colossal eyesore merely served as a navigational marker to lead people to the flea market. Within minutes of its dedication, the people of the greater Cincinnati area rechristened the statue “Touchdown Jesus,” for obvious reasons.

Well, last night, Touchdown Jesus was struck by lightning by the same thunderstorm that not-killed me with tornadoes, cloud-to-ground lightning, and baseball-sized hail, proving once again that Yahweh is some linear combination of retarded, incompetent, and/or drunk.

Also, their was apparently the Hustler Hollywood sign for the adult store across the street was completely undamaged, signifying that Larry Flynt is truly favored by the Lord.

Also, apparently statues can catch fire.

That kinda threw me for a loop, for we tried to set literally everything in the universe on fire back in Boy Scouts. Then I found out Touchdown Jesus was made of styrofoam, and everything made sense. It was a giant metal frame, next to pond, covered in styrofoam with a fiberglass skin. Apparently it had a lightning rod, but it didn’t work. I’d like to take this time to point out that lightning rods are a proven technology and have no moving parts.

The comments for that YouTube video are priceless, by the way. I could say more about this, but I’m going to let Percy Shelley take over from here:

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Several of my students recently competed in a karate tournament and in getting ready for the  competition, we decided to watch one of the best karate movies ever, The Karate Kid.  With the  re-release of this movie looming, I wanted to add my opinions here in Kungfu-topia.  Having  spoken with August (possibly the biggest Karate Kid fan I know) about this release and I have  mixed feelings.  First, the original Karate Kid was not broken.  They got it right.  If you want to  see how wrong a remake can go, just check out Hilary Swank in The Next Karate Kid.

Second, the kid in this rerelease doesn’t learn karate.  Taking the name just to make money from the Karate Kid loyal seems terribly wrong.

Still, there is hope.  I always loved the way the original presents the art of karate.  It is more than fighting.  Those who train for understanding, for the art, emerge victorious over those focusing only on the martial.  August told me he is excited to see a movie released to do this again for a new generation.  The previews look promising in this regard.

The jury is still out.  I will report back after I have seen the film.  Nothing can replace the original.  It will remain required reading for my karate school where I quote the movie at least once per class.  This brings up my final point, The Karate Kid is one of the most quotable movies of all time.  Be it Kreese or Miyagi, there are dozens of quotable quotes that echo through the decades.

-Wax on, right hand. Wax off, left hand. Wax on, wax off. Breathe in through nose, out the mouth. Wax on, wax off. Don’t forget to breathe, very important.

-STRIKE FIRST, STRIKE HARD, NO MERCY SIR!

-We do not train to be merciful here. Mercy is for the weak. Here, in the streets, in competition: A man confronts you, he is the enemy. An enemy deserves no mercy.

-Get him a body bag! Yeah!

On that note, what are your favorite Karate Kid quotes?  Everytime I watch it, I hear a new one.  I am excited to hear from you kungfu-topians.  Also, once you have seen the new release, let me know what you think.

No more for today.  Come back soon.  Start early.

Yeah, it is. But I wanted to keep tabs on New Madrid before I spoke up.

See, I’m more qualified to report on this than some of the proper media outlets, because I actually know what was going on, because I’m friends with Jennifer McCreight. I joined her Non-Theist Society about three years back, and in that time she lead me on some wacky adventures, which really helped me grow as a person. I also learned a lot about her that isn’t reported elsewhere, such as her inability to ride a bicycle.

Jen only ever invited 50 people, whom I was one of. I didn’t invite people, because I can’t go around asking chicks to show me their cleavage without looking like I was Creepy O’Creeperson or something. In the meantime, the intertubes caught fire and all hell broke loose. By the time the day in question came about, about a million people were invited. As in 10^6. Granted, [at the time of writing] only 213,918 participated, and an unknown (but presumably significant) portion of which were dudes, but that’s still larger than all but 94 cities in the US.

I did go to the meeting by the bell tower, which Jen setup after several media requests to have something film-able. Girls in low-cut tops milled about as geology majors set up seismographs to monitor the Boobquake epicenter. Fun was had by all. Still, before going out, I used my Facebook status to inform my friends of my final wishes, in the event of death by misadventure, as that shifty Yahweh has been after me for some time.

For the record, if I were to die:

1) All of my worldly goods are to be sold on eBay, with the revenue generated to be used to commission Jan Hammer to compose a requiem for me — so that I may live forever wherever synthesizers and moderately-priced causal dining meet; and

2) I don’t want to be buried in a Pet Sematary; I don’t want to live my life again. Oh no. Oooooooh noooo…..

The Purdue Exponent managed to succinctly capture the zeitgeist of the moment in a single headline. Jen managed to summarize it even better at the bar a week later:

“The media is retarded. I knew this before, but this only reinforces the belief.”

No seriously, look at this shit:

The problem with twenty-four hour news channels is that news doesn’t really doesn’t happen twenty-four hours a day. There’s maybe twenty-four hours of news in a week. Granted, that’s how Jen & Co. managed to get on, but Jeanne Moos interviewed Jen for two hours, and the finished product consisted of random annoying people on YouTube, YouTube footage of the event itself, a camera being held up to a monitor that had YouTube clips playing on it, and part of a Skype interview. Even TV realizes there’s nothing good on TV, and plays on the computer instead.

I refuse to comment on Jeanne Moos’ Chroma Key boobs, because I wish to maintain my willing suspension of disbelief, and pretend that shit never happened.

Also, old media camera guys are dicks. Did you know that? Yeah. They just walk up to chicks and say: “Show us your cleavage. C’mon, show us your cleavage.”

Hey now! I happen to know those cleavages, as well as they women they’re attached too — and that’s no way to treat women. Hell, the camera guys didn’t even give them beads, like in those Girls Gone Wild videos. Hell, they didn’t even politely goad them for twenty minutes, like in those shitty knock-off Girls Going Crazy videos.

In the end though, Boobquake was a good thing. In the Soviet Union, the intelligentsia enjoyed broad creative freedoms that the remainder of society did not. The reason is that the intelligentsia posed no threat. Churches and countries come and go, but many of them can endure the most profound of philosophical treatises, but the legitimacy of any regime is easily eroded by a joke that catches on. For this reason, atheists, agnostics, pastafarians, et.al. everywhere can only profit from making fun of people.

“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions…” -Thomas Jefferson; excerpted from a letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp, July 30, 1816

My friend Brian made chili seriously amazing chili. I couldn’t stop eating it. Now I feel like something’s going to burst out of my chest like in Alien. So, I’m going to take a break from studying for the quals to curl up with a bottle of Pepto-Bismol until this all blows over. Still, there is the very real chance, given my genetic make-up and family history, that I am currently having a heart attack.

So, with what may or may not be my dying breaths, I want to tell the world that I hate Christianity, because they keep doing shit like this:

That cost $3.01 million. That guy in there was Tim Tebow, who’s made something of  a name for himself by being pretty and using makeup, effectively making him the Taylor Hanson of collegiate football. The ad was paid for by Focus on the Family, a non-profit, tax-exempt hate group which runs the gambit of all the common causes with which Christians poison our society. They are devoted to the suppression of individual liberties through a staunch anti-choice agenda, compounded with a decided anti-science philosophy via their alliance with the Discovery Institute.

Most heinous of all, Focus on the Family opposes the rights of people of all orientations to marry the ones they love. Read that again. They oppose people being in love, and anyone who opposes love is the enemy of Yellow Hat Man.

Focus on the Family begged for change to scare up $3.01 million, to tell people that abortion is bad. I beg to differ, case and point:

I wondered how many people starved tonight, because the Religious Right was neither: opting to keep Haitian food banks empty to keep the cable networks laden with their precious propaganda. I made a few calculations to see what exactly $3,010,000 can buy in this day in age:

At this point, August has already sent an angry letter out to be proofread before sending it to me. This is about when other Christians approach me and say: “You complain about how these ‘Christians’ act…but that’s not the ‘real Christianity’…” Everyone claims to have the real Christianity. Well, I offer a challenge to the “real Christians”. If you really love your neighbor, you’ll find a way to stop these people. Have your God use his magic if you need too. I thought I was a real Christian for a while. Then I remember that Jesus was a long-haired construction worker who shot his mouth off at every opportunity. If Christ were here today, he’d walk into your churches, break all your shit, and somehow weasel out of doing any jail time. He did it before, and allegedly, he’ll do it again.

Don’t try to save me. Save yourselves from yourselves.

I’m doing the Christians a favor by going to Hell. By going to Hell first, I’ll have the keg tapped by the time they all get there, so I’ll have worked out those first few cups of foam.

The note was an elaborate rap written by a boy from whom you’d never expect an ounce of vulgarity. His behavior record is exemplary. The note went on to say things about a classmate’s mother that….well, it warmed my heart. The kid had talent. I had no idea that there were so many words that rhymed with “boner.” The pwned classmate in question was 85lbs, glasses, 4 foot 8, and on the wrong side of quite possibly the greatest mom-joke humiliation in my school’s history. The writer of this rap will speak of this event when he’s 45. 22 children looked in horror and awe at the evisceration of this child’s mother on the note. I left it on the projector for about 10 seconds….but it was all the time needed for everyone to witness the destruction of another child’s will, self-esteem…..and their very soul.

“Daaaaaaaaamn, he came at your throat, that shit was WRONG!” was all i could hear as i tore the note from the projector and immediately filed it for the principal. I went on to learn that these two had been writing raps about each others’ mothers for awhile now, and were finally caught by me. They both will serve 2-hr detentions, with this story in their hearts forever. I wrote all this because it reminds me of a tender story from 1994, when I took it to another level:

Kevin Nolan, of course, was my best friend through all of grade school, and through the first couple years of high school. From 2nd through 8th grade, we were forbidden to be in the same class. Both of our 8th grade language arts journals were dedicated to defecation. I’m not joking. 177 entries, all dealing with how cool poop was. We both attended an all-boys preparatory high school, and were incessantly bored with the tedium of academia. We decided it would be funny to write fake hate letters/death threats to each other, and try to be as creative as possible. I had typing class 2nd period, and he had it 5th. I would drop these notes in his locker after my typing class and he would do the same. Note: I was watching 80’s horror movies on a regular basis at this point, and most of my notes read like John Carpenter’s The Thing. ‘Nuff said.

My notes were of legend. Classmates would approach me, praising my many uses of curse words and wishing for Kevin’s untimely death (of course, i was joking) through the most horrid of means. The coup de gras came when I was having nose bleeds one day from the cold weather. I came up with the idea of writing something absolutely dreadful in my own blood, since it was available at the time. I know what you’re thinking, I need psychological help. You have NO idea. Anyway, Kevin LOVED the note, and his face turned red from laughing so hard as I told him how the blood got there. It literally couldn’t get any worse, so the notes stopped.

guess what? KEVIN WAS AN IDIOT.

He left ALL my notes out on his desk one day, and his mom and dad found them. Yeah, my day sucked. All I remember was Kevin coming over with his parents that evening. It was a set-up. I was completely oblivious since my parents and his were also close friends, so i figured this was a social call. We all sat at the dinner table….. and just as i took a sip from my coca-cola, the blood-soaked hate notes fell on the hardwood table. My face turned white, and I almost passed out. I tried to explain that we were just kidding around, but the evidence was overwhelming that shit just WASN’T RIGHT. Kevin and I couldn’t stop laughing about it, and both sets of parents immediately considered changing their positions on abortion.

At that age, you realize that farting is hilarious, mom jokes are priceless, and inappropriateness is a gift.

It seems that the Japanese, being from Japan, had managed to one-up the Snuggie by creating a footie sleeping bag. With this, kids at slumber parties can just  pass out anywhere and be golden, and Jake and Lenny would not have almost been mauled to death by that bear at camp that one time, a funny story I should tell you sometime.

That’s not why I’m writing this.

No, because I saw something bewildering on the side of the page.  I clicked it, somehow forgetting my last fifteen years of Internet experience, telling me that something should not be clicked. Apparently they a make vagina-scented perfume now.

Once again to reiterate, you can buy a vial of human cooterstink. As perfume.

You should be revolted. I however, could not be revolted. I, being an engineer, instead immediately asked: “Whose cooterstink are they bottling?” and “By what process does one extract and refine human cooterstink?”

This persistent analytic worldview is a blessing, and as shown, a curse sometimes.

It was a cold Saturday afternoon. I arrived at Mike’s house, as it was the de facto assembling point at the time. Joe was there, so was Mindy, the chick he was dating at the time, along with Tim ‘n’ Rick, and maybe Jered and Ken. As we were loading up out cars to head over to Behrend for sledding, Mike walks out with the inflato-chair.

“Are you throwing inflato-chair out?” I ask.

“Yeah, but I’m going to ride it down the sledding hill first,” said Mike.

“Oh, so you’re going to deflate it and sit on it, like one of those roll-up toboggans?” I ask.

“No, I was just going to keep it as it is, and ride down the hill on an easy chair,” said Mike.

I collapsed with laughter, because the movie in my head was just that great. So we all drive to Behrend, and trudge up the hill. There were about thirty people there, all of whom smiled at the prospect for fun upon seeing the inflato-chair. Mike mounts the inflato-chair, and we push it down the hill, except that we just wound up pushing Mike off the chair.  We repeated this another six or seven times to collect enough data to conclude what was going on. Apparently inflato-chair had a coefficient of friction large enough to render it unusable as a sled. We also found that to keep from being pushed off, you had to recline almost, by leaning back. Even then, the chair’s bottom would remain in place, and the rest of it would just ooze over that point, kind of like a Caterpillar drive, eventually ejecting the passenger. WD-40 could not correct this. In anger of the massive disappointment that was inflato-chair, we kick it into the wooded thicket atop the hill.

“Stupid inflato-chair,” mutters Mike.

“I hate inflato-chair,” declares Joe.

So we sled for a while, I had some pretty neat jumps and wipe-outs on the Saucer of Doom, but nothing as epic as last time. Little kids kept coming up for a hit of WD-40, and their parents would pull them away, fearing for their safety. Eventually, I discovered the solution to our problems.

“Dude!” I shout. “We need to put inflato-chair on the saucer!”

Everyone’s eyes light up, then fade away as Joe points out:

“You’ll just be pushed off of it.”

“No, I wont, because you’re pushing the saucer, and not the chair,” I tell him.

Without speaking, we all run into the thicket to retrieve inflato-chair from the woods. I WD-40 the saucer and set the chair on top of it. Everyone backs the fuck up, I align the chair with the jump in the middle of the hill, lean back, and give a thumbs up. Joe and Mike pushed me down the hill. It worked flawlessly. I was about halfway to the jump, when a little kid, maybe about six or seven — old enough to know better — was standing in the middle of the hill. No one saw him before because the jump had obstructed him from our view. It was a really sweet jump. I started shouting at the kid:

“Dude! Move dude! Get out of the way dude! Dude! Move!”

The kid didn’t move. He just stood there for what seems like a minute. I want to think that his brief life was flashing before his eyes, but that couldn’t have been it. He hadn’t accrued nearly enough life experience to cause him to seize for that long. He stood there because he was too damn confused, because a twenty year-old man with a beard and a silly hat was hollering all kinds of sentence fragments at him, while barreling towards him in a bright yellow Barcalounger at thirty miles per hour. I drew closer and closer, and screamed louder and louder.

“Dude! Get the hell out of the way dude! Run, man! Run! Move dude! Dude!”

I want to say that everything was ok.  I want to say that kid was… well, fuck, sentient. He wasn’t.

I totally crushed that kid. Bad.

I should be in jail, that’s how bad it was.

Imagine a hovercraft running over a speed bump. That’s an accurate portrayal of events. He didn’t even have time to scream as he got sucked under.

“Oooooh!” shouted the thirty people atop the hill in unison.

A second later, I hit the jump, and became a projectile. I flew in a parabolic path, similar to an Olympic ski jumper, but without skis or training. As the ground rapidly approached, I tucked my chin and did a proper ukemi, and log rolled about 300 feet down the hill. I laid there for a second, testing each joint to make sure my spinal cord was still intact. When it was, I walked in a sine wave back up the hill, picking up my saucer and inflato-chair, breathing deeply to get the stars to stop. Towards the top of the hill, sitting next to the jump, was the crying child who I completely and totally destroyed, and his dad. He was angry.

“Why did you do that?” asked the dad.

“I tried to tell him to move,” I explain.

“You could’ve done something,” snaps the dad.

“No, I was stuck in that that thing. I couldn’t move, he could,” I explain.

The dad wants to be angry, but can’t.

“C’mon,” he says to his brutally crushed and p0wn’d son. “Let’s go!”

I want to feel bad, but I can’t because it’s not my fault that his kid was too dumb to move. At least that’s how I think the conversation went; my razor-sharp memory fails me in this instance. I likely suffered a minor concussion, so I get a by for that.

Best of the Best is the tale of the US karate team as they prepare to compete against the Korean tae kwon do team, who “enjoy complete government support and funding” and whom they have never beaten.  If you ever wanted to create a compelling argument for not using untrained actors to play martial artists, this would be all you would need.  There are however plenty of notable names.  Eric Roberts is the incessantly crying main character, Alex Grady, James Earl Jones is coach Clouzo, the worst coach of any kind ever, and Christopher Penn is the profane cowboy Travis Brikley.  Phillip Rhee (by far the best martial artist of the bunch) plays Tommy Lee, not the drummer but the tae kwon do instructor with the troubled past.

This is by no means a good movie, but it is fun and it is possibly the most quoted kung fu Friday movie ever.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Alex: Tommy! No! Coach! Coach! He’s gonna kill him!

Tommy: I wanna kill that son of a bitch.

Alex: Then kill that son of a bitch.

Tommy: Alex! I’m afraid!

Travis: You shouldn’t block with your face

Best of the Best also features the best bar fight scene ever!

Best of the Best is worth the watch. While the fight scenes featuring the “actors” aren’t very good, the rest are pretty descent.  There is plenty of 80’s cheese, a training montage, and a climatic final battle.  I give it a rating of 7 roundhouse kicks to the face.