Kick Ass (2010)

Sickening violence: just the way you like it! Fuck yeah Mark Millar, I concur. From the hot sweaty feverish union of Mark Millar's graphic novel, Matthew Vaughn's direction, and the Internet, comes Kick-Ass; a movie that could only work in a world where geeks are the dominant species. But really this movie should be called Hit Girl and Friends. Because Hit Girl makes this movie.

Super dork Dave Lizewski, who isn't Hit Girl btw, goes through the typical high school hell displaying talent for nothing except being invisible to girls. Why he hasn't tested this ability in say the girl's locker room when he's a nerdy virgin loser is beyond me but I digress. Dave loves comics, Dave wants to make the world a better place. Problem is, Dave is Dave and not a superhero. So one day he gets it in his head that all he needs to be a superhero is a suit and a cool name. So after buying a svelte scuba suit, because all superheros might need to scuba on the streets of New York, Dave goes out to bust crime. Problem is he's less Spider Man and more like one of the Mystery Men from that Ben Stiller movie.

Dave goes out, Dave gets stabbed, Dave doesn't learn from the whole being stabbed ordeal and goes out again, only this time he learns he can take a beating because his nerves are fried. So now Dave goes from being Dave the supernerd to Kick Ass the supernerd who can be a human punching bag. But it works, he saves a dude, starts a myspace account, and gets the attention of the Internet and the attention of two real super heroes.

Which brings us to Hit Girl and Big Daddy. Hit Girl is well bad ass. To get an idea of how bad ass she is, imagine if a dinosaur crapped out lightning which struck a robotic unicorn that exploded in a shower of magic which rained upon a Journey concert attended by the cast of Firefly. Then imagine if a 11 year old girl was more awesome than that image. That's Hit Girl. She's like every gun toting sword swinging bad ass chick cliche crammed into a carry on sized package. She swears, she stabs, she can catch ammo clips with her gun and reload in mid air. She also resembles that chick from Lazy Town, except she doesn't bake pretty cakes. Hit Girl and her father, Big Daddy, played by a less annoying than usual Nic "my kid's named Kal El" Cage go around putting the ante in vigilante justice as they waste an increasingly large number of mobsters around town. Big Daddy is not only a bad ass in his own right, he imparts his bad-assery to his child, to a point where her chores include learning to take a bullet and knowing the origins of assault rifles. It's pretty much the childhood I wish I had.

So does the movie work? Fuck yeah it works. Will fan boys get annoyed that the movie is less about Kick Ass, like the graphic novel was, and more about Hit Girl? Probably, but Hit Girl would probably say they could suck her non existent left testicle because she's such a darling. There's explosions, there's shoot outs, there's dismemberment, Mclovin's in it, and there's swearing, good god there's swearing. This is not a movie to bring kids to, and as a society everyone should throw rotten fruit at anyone who does for fear of child endangerment. But this movie definitely lives up to it's name.

A Practical Guide To Racism

First off I am asian, my senior thesis class in college was on celebrated black author James Baldwin, and my best friends are jewish, white, asian, pirate, and robot. Second off, my favorite authors are Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut, which has influenced me to say whatever the hell I want when I want. Third off, if you're sensitive to race or humor in general, I highly suggest you listen to the song Everyone's A Little Bit Racist from the broadway hit Avenue Q here. Fourthly and this is the most important thing, this is my site and if you don't like it, blow me <3.


So when I was a young man, I was traveling through Spain with some friends. In one city, an old gypsy woman tried to grift me by putting sage leaf in my hand and telling my fortune in spanish. I of course had no money, so she in turn spat at me and cursed me with impotence, madness, and whatever the hell gypsies like to curse people with. So since then, I've disliked gypsies as shifty untrustworthy carnie folk. You might even say I'm a little bit...racist.

But racist, in the 21st century? Haven't we moved onto Star Trek-ish ideals where we can all tolerate one another in peace and harmony? Beautiful as that may sound, we're all human, and humans are stupid. It takes human stupidity to look at another human and dislike them for having a darker tan than you. Dave Chappelle had the right idea, race is an absurd perception, and stereotypes are funny because they're exaggerated truths. It's a quaint notion to think that we can move from hating people for what they look like to hating people for just being assholes but I digress.

So here comes A Practical Guide to Racism by C.H. Dalton. It is as the title; a practical guide. But racist? Not really. Sure there's a section on every ethnicity in the world as well as subgenres of every ethnicity, but racist, hardly. Sure it points out stereotypes, but stereotypes while racial in nature are rarely more mean spirited than any other complaints. Is it offensive? Yes, but like I said, it's only offensive to people who can't take a joke or can't see subtext; in other words it's offensive only to stupid people, which should be considered a race and have it's own chapter in this book. But reading this book, I learned so much about how awful Merpeople (people who live under the sea) are, and how the black man's greatest natural foe are ravenous sexually predatorial white women, also known as succubae. I also learned that you can even poke fun at dead races like the Babylonians and the Phoenicians too.

So is the Practical Guide to Racism Practical? Sort of. Does it inspire hate crimes? Hell no. Is there any real racism in it? Well there's a glossary of racial epithats, but you can find the same terms on urbandictionary.com so the final verdict is no. Worth reading? Yes it's worth reading. If anything it'd be great to leave on your coffee table to see people's reactions.