Lost Weight, Won Bet

"We are the pretty people
You wanna look like us
We are the pretty people
Give it up, give it up, give it up
We are the pretty people
Best of humankind
We are the pretty people
Flawless by design"

Pretty People (2004) by Dexter Freebish

This prodigal son returneth from Butterworth yesterday morning after a grueling 7 hours of unaccompanied, monotonous driving (though the scenery on the highway just south of Ipoh was real grand, I must mention). If you think that's hard, try upping the ante by starting the journey at 4:00 am after skipping an entire night's sleep. For those who were worried about my safety, fret no more. For those that have been hoping for news of my demise, sorry to disappoint.

Now, remember this post I wrote about a month ago? In that, I mentioned in passing that I wanted to lose 5.0 kilograms of hunk meat off my manly girth while I was half-vacationing in the de facto food capital of Malaysia - that is to say, I was taking on a task most Herculean. Overconfident much?

Nope.

I actually did it! I lost not 5 but 6 kilos in 5 weeks - dropping from 76 to 70. To put it into perspective, that's about 8% of my total body weight. It's quite a feat, even if it did not compare to that other time when I shed 9 kilos over 3 weeks through semi-starvation. Now, in case anyone starts shouting "ANOREXIC!" in my face, I want to point out that I have no body image problems whatsoever. In fact, anytime my weight goes above 74 kg, my body mass index falls squarely into 'overweight' territory. I am merely trying to maintain a healthy average, is all.

The story actually started at the beginning of this year when I discover that I am circling 77 kg after an impromptu weighing in at an ENT clinic where I was posted. In March, I told my grandmother that I'm turning vegan for a month and told her to adjust the dinner menu thus - though I still devour with gusto the flesh of many small and large animals outside of home throughout that period. I figured that turning the biggest meal of my day into rabbit feed would would be a big blow to my caloric intake, and at the same time, I also intensified my daily routine of crunches and push-ups which I started sometime at the end of last year (this, I'll explain why later).

All that only managed to lose me one measly kilo.

I was crushed.

Now in Penang, I revised my strategy and... no, I did not resort to dodgy weight loss supplements, but I did follow this regime;

• Order only the smallest possible portion whenever I eat out, and finishing only about three-fourths of it. If a serving is big, I split it with Phoebs. Strictly only 2 meals a day, and no snacks - or rather, I've replaced snacking with swigging fruit juices. Calorie-wise, I actually ate less than Phoebs on most days.
  
• Swim till exhaustion 4-5 times a week. And by 'swim' I mean 'flail about helplessly like I'm drowning' since I've never actually taken lessons.
  
• Crunches and push-ups every other day.
• Always choose the stairs when going up. My parking spot in Phoebs' condo building is on the 4th floor while her unit is on the 12th floor - so that's 2 to 3 times a day of massive stair-climbing because we both enjoy going out a lot. Moreover, the pool is on the 5th floor so after every dip, I have to drag my battered, limp body up seven entire floors as well.

When I return from yesterday to Malacca, my grandmother said that I look thinner. Would you believe that it had been 3 long years since the last time I hear anyone say that to me? Hold on, I think I got something in my eyes...

Somewhat related to this is a wager I made with Phoebe last year and the condition of that wager is; whoever manage to have visible semilunar lines first, he or she wins an iPod Touch (or another gadget of comparable value). Essentially, we're betting half of our very first paychecks here and I only did it because I needed a strong motivation to work out. As for Phoebs - well, she just wanted an iPod Touch very, very much.

For those that did not have the benefit of a whole year of human anatomy classes, the semilunar line is a curved groove running along the lateral border of each rectus abdominis muscle - and the two abdominal recti form what is colloquially known as the "six pack".

Meh, close enough.

I won that bet, naturally.

And no, I won't post up any pictures of my abs here because I swore never to bare my body to get ahead in life on the internet. You never know where those photographs might show up, you know.

Of course, being the awesomely magnanimous boyfriend that I am, I allowed to Phoebe to extend the conditions of the bet (after I have won) to whoever gets a six-pack first so she would have a chance to win it back. I never seem to have been able to collect my winnings from all the bets I have made in the past. A friend said that he would cut his penis off if I manage to get a girl to be my girlfriend while another friend said that he would eat 10 kg of his own shit. That girl would later become the Ex-Grrrfriend™ that I mention occasionally in this journal (and just in case anyone reading this is a star Olympic Conclusion-jumper; I was already going after her at the time, and yeah, my high school friends were dicks).

Now, that I think of it, the Ex-Grrrfriend™ also lost a bet to me once, and my prize was that I can ask her to do anything - anything at all - and she would have to comply. The main reason why I didn't feel like holding her up to her end of the bargain was because I lost a bet to her in turn - and that one says that I have to dress in drag in a maternity dress (complete with a faux-womb) and allow her to take photographs of me.

Over my dead, now-sexy body. Oh yeah.



One of the pretty people,
k0k s3n w4i

Our Month Living Together

"Oh, oh, starry eyed
Hit, hit, hit, hit, hit me with lightning."

Starry Eyed (2010) by Ellie Goulding

I am a difficult person at the best of times, and so much more difficult to live with - I understand this. I am not a man with illusions about his failings. I am arrogant, irreverent, obsessive, disrespectful of authority and conventions, and on top of it all, kind of a slob and a know-it-all. So understandably, I am apprehensive of the prospect of living together with anyone for an extended length of time. Scrape apprehensive - the whole concept scares my pants into low Earth orbit.

"I can't imagine having a boyfriend like me," I've told Phoebs many, many times. "I can't even be friends with someone like myself. I'm precisely the sort of person I despise socialising with."

But I did it. I lived together with my girlfriend for more than a month, and we managed it without any bloodshed serious altercations. Except that incident with the mop. The floor was obviously clean after I was through with it, Miss Phoebe. When you insisted on mopping it again, you're clearly smearing faeces all over my handiwork (note: I don't mean this literally). What if I take the Maggi mee you already cooked, huh, and cook it for an extra 2 more minutes? You will have to eat soft, sodden, overcooked instant noodle, that's what. And that's so not delicious.

Now, it seems foolish to be so worried about being stuck together for this short period of time - and it appears so much shorter to me right now looking at it from the last night I'll be spending with her (note: this I mean literally). As I go tap-tap on the keyboard this instance, Phoebe lies in sweet repose, dreaming whatever dreams it is that Phoebes dream. And because she insulted my honour by mopping over the floor I've already mopped, I am going to take revenge by rudely waking her up at 4:00 am on a school night by whispering in her ear,

"I love you."

She stirred. Success! My honour has been avenged!

"I heard that," she breathed lazily, and ruffled my hair in that way I adore so much. It makes me feel like a puppy. If I have a tail I would wag it right there and then.

"Go back to sleep," I told her. "I'm not sleeping tonight. There's something that I want to do."

"What is it?" she asked.

"Manly stuff," I told her, and returned here to continue this little letter.

Aside from my numerous and colourful foibles, Phoebs and I also have to contend with our diametrically opposing worldviews; I am an atheist, flaming and shrill, and she is a good Christian girl. This, I do not have to tell you, is one of the top entries in The Great Whopping Recipe Book of Disaster. I have had friends asking me how we managed to make it work for the last... how long has it been since the Boxing Day of '07? Gosh, we're halfway through our third year already and it didn't feel as if we have to work at it at all. We've fought all of 3 or 4 times in total with any seriousness all this while, and it has not once ever been about our very differing positions on faith and god. If miracles exist, this is one for the canon.

Truth is, we didn't make it work. At least, the "we" part of it is untrue. Phoebs made it work, and she did it pretty much single-handedly. It's hard to explain but it's just impossible to start a quarrel with her. Maybe I can furnish an example,

In one recent instance (one of many), I spent hours pulling apart Biblical scriptures verse by verse in an incredibly dull damn engaging monologue to her. Then, I launched into a rant about the latest lies committed by yet another American evangelical preacher on the public to discredit legitimate science while telling her about a report I read the other day on cetacean evolution. Right after that, I burst into a passionate soliloquy about human morality in general and how religion... oh, you get the picture, right?

Anyhow, when I finally (finally!) stopped talking, I noticed that Phoebe appeared to be deep in thought. There was a short, solemn pause before she turned and looked me in the eyes and asked me,

"Can we go for ice-cream tonight?!"

She had that childlike earnestness in her eyes which tells you that ice-creams are a very serious business indeed.

"Wha- were you even paying attention to me at all?" I sulked in mock-indignation.

"Of course I did! You were talking about the Bible, like usual! And something about a creature, or preacher, or something like that. Wait, wait... you mentioned whales too! See, I was paying attention! Hey, that dress is sooo cute! Let's go into that shop!"

I'm mostly paraphrasing here since I do not have an eidetic memory (but the ice-cream line is totally true, I swear). Sometimes, the only logical response to Phoebe's absurdities is to laugh - and she makes me laugh very often. I have never met a girl who can be so unintentionally hilarious so much of the time.

She has started snoring softly now. Haha, can't wait to laugh at her about it when she wakes up at seven. Speaking of waking up, her alarm will raise hell in less than hour. I better finish writing this.

While waiting for the elevator to take us up to her place after we returned from a dinner date with her cousin, I nudged her and said,

"Don't cry when I leave, okay?"

"Cannot," she said, wrapping her arms around my waist and burying her face in my sweater. "Must cry."

And I didn't say anything after that. Felt oddly unfinished, won't you agree? So right here and now, I would like to finish what I have started.

Phoebe, don't cry when I leave, okay? You cried every time we have to part and to tell you the truth, it breaks my heart to see you so sad. I don't want to be the reason you do something so unlike yourself. I want to thank you yet again for loving me so completely, flaws and all - and till today, two-and-a-half years down our road, I am still incredulous that I managed to win your heart. I dislike making promises I have no way of knowing I can keep like "I will love you for eternity" or "I will never leave you" - I think they are just sweet nothings and empty calories that goes down easy, but never nourish.

What I can honestly say instead is; Right this moment here, I feel like I can love you for all of time, I want to be with you till the day I die and I wish you feel the same way too.

And I laid these words out in writing in case they need to last forever.

This half of us,
k0k s3n w4i

The Caveman in Us All

"To be human: To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape."

Hogfather (1997) by Terry Pratchett

BBC reported yet another incidence of science marching on yesterday as the majority of humanity still cling on to the literal interpretation of a bunch of doggerels started by a tribe of superstitious shepherds in the fucking Bronze Age, and was added to by four followers (who, by the way, can't seem to get their stories straight) of a Jewish Magic Man in Pontius Pilate's Judea who was his own father, born of a virgin, went dead for a weekend and is devoured every Sunday ever since by his believers in the form of little holy crackers. I usually say all of this in a ridiculous sing-song falsetto.

No, I don't think I'm being too offensive or disrespectful here. After all, I'm talking about a belief system which clearly insists people like me should be tortured in hellfire for all eternity. Feel the Christian love, yo.

No time to argue about the contradictions in said books. This will save everyone a lot of time.

Anyway, the short of the newsflash is this; a team from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany - over a 4-year period - discovered that up to 4% of our genome were contributed by the Neanderthals. For the chronically unschooled, the Neanderthals were a separate species of hominids from ours (or a subspecies, depending on who you ask) and we started to part ways with them on the evolutionary tree about 600,000 to 350,000 years ago but according to Christian and Jewish Young Earth creationists, our planet is at most 10,000 years old only. I'm not saying that all Christians and Jews are as batshit as these kooks, but those that are make a sizable team indeed.

Now, our ancestral story started in Africa when a small number of anatomically modern Homo sapiens (us!) migrated out of Africa and went on to populate the rest of the world, replacing other more "archaic" species of humankind like the H. erectus and H. neanderthalensis - there's debate on how this happened exactly. Did our great, great, great... great, great grandparents simply out-hunted and out-bred the competition? Were they assimilated into our family through some hot interspecies homo-on-homo action? Or did we simply eat them with some fava beans and a nice Chianti? *hissss*

Prof. Svante Paabo et al. now have definite proof that, yes, most of us have some amount of H. neanderthalensis within us. Search your feelings, Luke, you know it to be true.

Let's take a gander at the lineage tree, shall we?

I, uh, improved upon it.

I find it interesting that the Han Chinese people (yours truly included) descended from the original progeny of H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis cross-sub-species love and can't wait to see if the Neanderthal Genome Project will uncover any Neanderthal-specific traits that my genealogical tree inherited from those unions. I'd like to look at some of the published papers that inspired this BBC news piece, but I haven't had much luck with Google Scholar so far.

Today, scientists are battling conservative Christians in the United States who seek to sideline (and eventually eliminate) the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection from their high school biology curriculum by replacing it with some scriptural-derived bullshit called Creationism - a hypothesis that essentially says "Godidit". Here in Malaysia, Muslim conservatives ensured that even the merest idea of evolution is suppressed from our high school biology textbooks and my very first exposure to the most important theory in biology occurred late in college. This is ludicrous because nothing in biology makes sense outside the light of evolution.

Even in college, I've met extensively brainwashed godbots that still reject evolution in spite of all the evidences presented to them. There was an intelligent Christian girl I knew in my A-levels biology class who remained adamant that evolution is bunk. I asked her, "If you don't think it's true, why study it?"

Her reply went something like this; "To get a degree, to be successful in life and to glorify God."

The same girl has parents who forbid her from reading the Harry Potter series because they think it's the work of Satan. Funnily enough, she disobeyed them behind their backs.

Likewise, a great number of my Muslim and Christian colleagues in med school stubbornly dismiss evolution while being bombarded daily with proofs that evolution had occurred in the human body - proofs like the inside-out configuration of the human eye necessitating a blind spot; the tendency for humans to suffer from lower back pain due to our upright bipedal posture; the difficulty women experience while trying to give birth through a very narrow birth canal (another downside to being bipeds); the pain and trouble we often experience at the eruption of our wisdom teeth because our jaws have shrunk; our primate inability to synthesise vitamin C unlike other mammals; the neotenous capacity to digest milk which some of us retained into adulthood (while others are lactose intolerant); the long long list of vestigial organs we still possess like the third eyelid, the vermiform appendix, the tailbone, Darwin's tubercle, the small external ear muscles, the terminal nerve or cranial nerve zero, Jacobson's organ, the plantaris muscle, the male nipple... and I can go on for a long time on all the etceteras I remember from the top of my head but I advise you, intrepid reader, to go look them up for yourself. After 4 years in med school, I realise that if God really designed us... let's just say that he shouldn't have taken that day off after all.

And the way most bacteria and viruses develop resistance to antibiotics and antivirals? That's one of the biggest challenges the medical fraternity faces today, and it has basis in the Theory of Fucking Evolution by Natural Fucking Selection. The way these people ignore the obvious makes me want to scream through a megaphone at the top floor of a skyscraper while dressed entirely in traffic orange. Or something.

Christians have a long history of fighting science and progress because some of the things scientists uncover went contrary to Biblical "facts". Remember when Christians placed Galileo under house arrest for heresy because he supported Copernicus' theory that the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way round in the early 17th century? The verses they used were Joshua 10:12-13, Habakkuk 3:11, Psalms 19:4-6, Ecclesiastes 1:5 and many, many more. Giordano Bruno was burned alive and screaming at the stake by Christians for daring to discover that, gosh, stars are suns just like ours! And that there are planets revolving round those suns too! The list of vindicated scientists who were wrongly persecuted by Christians in their times included big names such as Rene Descartes, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Edmond Halley, William Buckland, Charles Lyell, Adam Sedgewick, Louis Agassiz... and dear ol' Charles Darwin. That list reads like a Who's Who of science, doesn't it? The Christians' feud against science spanned centuries, and every single time, it's the Christians who have to suck it and admit that yes, they fucked up. Why, after being wrong for so fucking long, Christians still have the gall to oppose human advancement? How dare they?

I was invited to a church sponsored Christmas party in 2007 where a pastor denounced evolution and FUCKING LIED to his congregation that Darwin recanted his ideas and converted to Christianity on his deathbed - while all the stupid sheeps in the room just nodded smugly in agreement, drinking it all up. Similarly a year ago, I was at a church dinner as a guest of a Christian paediatrician where some guest superstar pastor from Singapore FUCKING LIED that his prayers helped a child grow a brand new kidney - something which would be heavily publicised in the medical and scientific community if true - just to win his Lord Gourd more new, stupid, unquestioning zombie converts.

A Muslim girl in my class simply explained, "Well, I'm a Muslim so I can't believe in evolution."

Well, I like to see how far Malaysia can go in the field of biology and biomedical science with its fingers in its ears going "La la la, I can't hear you!"



P.S. HERE's a useful beginner's read to evolution for anyone who's interested in learning more. While I strongly studying it sequentially, I find Part 2: Past History to be the most accessible section for even people with a rudimentary understanding of biology.

P.P.S. I am not against anyone practicing their own religion but when religion encroaches upon the territory of science and progress, I go marching on the warpath. I welcome anyone to comment and to argue with me, but be warned: I don't play nice.

P.P.P.S. Note that the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection does not explain the origin of life; only the diversity of life. I find that opponents of evolution frequently confuse it with the Theory of Abiogenesis. If I'm a charitable person, I'd say that it's an easy mistake to make - but I'm not, so quit confusing the two, you twits.



Achieved the Age of Reason,
k0k s3n w4i

Ingolf's Kneipe of Tanjung Bungah

"You can tell German wine from vinegar by the label."

Mark Twain

Welcome to Penang's own little slice of Germany.

I'm really not very good at this food reviewing lark, so here I am with another practice run.

After two seperate dinner visits to Ingolf's Kneipe (kneipe being a German word for a pub or bar) I think I'm ready to deliver my word on the place; and that word is a good one. Now, I can't tell you how authentically German the place really is - my little deficiency of never having visited the Vaterland totally threw a wrench in that. What I can do instead is tell you that the food there is very, er, yummy to my unschooled native Malaysian palate.

After all, Chef Ingolf's been cooking a very long time.

The first time Phoebs and I went to Ingolf's Kneipe, we each ordered a dish of our own and that proved to be a very imprudent (but delicious!) move. Let me first warn you that the helpings here aren't exactly designed for ladies - or for guys on a diet-of-reasonable-portions.

Phoebs took on a plate of crumbed chicken schnitzel, Julian's style (whoever the heck Julian is) because schnitzel happened to be our favourite funny word of the week,

For a size comparison, part of Phoeb's elbow can be seen there in the background.

Schnitzel basically means that a thin, boneless slab of meat was covered with breadcrumbs and fried. This one here is smothered with a mushroom sauce - as you can probably tell - and was served with a side of fried vegetables and a pair of hashed browns (or hash browns; writing it in either way is correct). As far as dishes like this one goes, it's pretty good. However, it did come with a price tag of RM 24.80.

She also had a bowl of soup as her starter,

Southern German-style Bread Soup or brotsuppe

Just to clarify, the word "bread" in the name does not refer to the bun - that came with all their soupy stuff. It's a blended mix of rye bread with cream, onions and a dash of white wine (or possibly vinegar, according to Mark Twain) and garnished with thin slices of sausages and crispy bacon bits. It goes for RM 8.80 a pop.

And the result was one helluva soup indeed. Phoebs had a lot of love for it. It was hearty and even, and chewy meat bits are always welcomed in any soup (who doesn't like bacon anyway?). Go for it if you're there but you might not find it on the menu. In our 2nd trip, it was no longer an item on it. I think there was either a revision or that they changes their menu slightly on a daily basis.

My order was a measure of sherry on the rocks as an apéritif and this,

Gefuellte rindsrouladen nach Braunschweiger art. "Looks like poop," said Phoebs.

So what manner of animal is it? Well, it's a beef roll stuffed with bacon, mustard and onions braised in a red wine sauce. The moment I read its description on the menu, I knew that I must eat it. As a good friend of mine once said, "Meat wrapped with more meat - what a concept!"

As expected, the franken-steak was freaking delicious. What I did not expect was that it was only freaking delicious for the first 3-4 bites or so. After that, I went into acute meat toxicity. Maybe it's me; maybe it's because I haven't actually eaten anything really substantial in a while (what with my new diet and exercise regime and all) but everything about this dish served to overwhelm me. The consistency of the meat log is soft and mushy, and we all know how filling those kind of food can be. Now, throw in a massive dollop of mashed potato and boiled red cabbage as sides. Imagine forcing the lot down. My bet is you'd feel like a sack of wet cement afterwards too.

Apparently, the menu said "a pair of beef rolls" but only one came on my plate. I didn't feel like enquiring about the missing roll at all. Anyhow, just so you'd know, the mash and cabbage were nice too - it's just that I was in no shape to enjoy them. If you must try the rindsrouladen, do so with a friend (or two). It's RM 25.80, by the way.

We returned to Ingolf's a couple of weeks later and this time, we shared a single dish,

Bratwurst mit sauerkraut.

It's a couple of foot-long pork sausages on a bed of sauerkraut served with a generous scoop of mash (with a decidedly un-German sprinkling of crispy fried onions) and some mustard - and like most people who can't speak German, Phoebs and I have corrupted the pronunciation of sauerkraut into "sour crotch".

At RM 23.80, it's totally worth it, especially since two of us were sharing it. The sausages were fried very thoroughly. That's something I noted on my first bite, mainly because I've had a bad experience a while back with another foot-long sausage that had an icky, cold centre in another restaurant. It's like they just pulled it out of the fridge and then slide it about on a pan of hot oil for a few seconds. The ones we had at Ingolf's were real treats. They were firm, flavourful and... how can one describe a sausage anyway? They taste like really good sausages, is all I can say. Now fuck off.

This was also my first encounter with sauerkraut and I found that I love the stuff to bits! Far from having anything to do with crotches, it's actually fermented finely-shredded cabbage. The process of making it is similar to the way they make kimchi (Phoebs thought that sauerkraut tasted very much like a less sour, non-spicy version of kimchi). I wonder if I can order it as a stand alone appetiser the next time I'm there.

I wanted to try their Hungarian goulash this time around, but their soup menu have changed - so Phoebs ordered some onion soup instead,

Some onion soup.

Her verdict: Not as good as the brotsuppe but just as priced alike at RM 8.80. A lot of other food bloggers think that Ingolf's Kneipe's mushroom soup is extraordinarily good - so maybe you guys can take that cue.

And I washed it all down with this,

A tall, cold, perspiring half-litre glass of Paulaner draught beer.

A classmate of mine from Penang's mainland told me that the owner of Ingolf's Kneipe (which is Ingolf, natch) specially imports German beers to serve at his bar, and told me that I must try some when I'm there - so I did. It cost RM 18.80 for a 300 ml glass, and my 0.5 litre glass set me back at RM 28.80. Now, I'm no great judge or lover of beers; I prefer mixed drinks. The most charitable thing I can say about any beer is that it didn't make me gag or hurl, so that's what I'll say for Paulaner here. I'll also say that it's very smooth, not too bitter and goes down well with my dinner. Still, no beer can ever worth 30 bucks to me, so yeah, I'm biased from the get go.

Phoebs who usually doesn't drink at all had a few sips and thought it was nice. Take of that what you will.

Phoebs savouring some sour crotch.

It's pretty easy to get there if you don't mind driving a bit. Just take that coastal road connecting Georgetown to Batu Ferringhi and drive till you see the Penang Chinese Swimming Club on your right. It's your cue to slow down. Almost immediately after, you'll pass a Caltex petrol station on your left - the next left turn is the one you want. Here you'll see a row of shophouses on an elevated plateau right in front of you; that's where Ingolf's Kneipe is at. It's right between the Vintage Bulgaria Restaurant and Bar (huge wooden signboard with Bulgaria's colours - white, green and red - on it) and a Guardians outlet.

Its GPS coordinates are 5°27'51.74"N, 100°17'32.91"E which should be close enough for anyone. I don't own a GPS device. I just find the place on Google Earth, pin it and then read the lats and longs. Their address is;

1-F, Jalan Sg Kelian
11200 Tanjung Bungah
Penang, Malaysia
10150 Penang, Malaysia

You know, in case you want to send them fan mail or a letter bomb or whatever. To call for reservations, dial +604-8995796. Even though we managed to get a table both times we went there, the place always host a good number of customers so there's a real possibility of encountering a full house. As I understand it, they used to be open for lunch as well as for dinnertime but due to a lack of staff, they are only open in the evening these days - and I found out the hard way that they were closed on Sundays.

I'm craving for a glass of Paulaner now for some strange reason.



Guten appetit,
k0k s3n w4i

I Met a Real Life Comic Book Guy

"Last night's 'Itchy and Scratchy' was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever! Rest assured I was on the internet within minutes voicing my disgust throughout the world."

The Comic Book Guy

This post contains very minor spoilers for Ip Man 2 and Iron Man 2.

Now, I don't have photographic proof so you'll just have to take my word for it on this anecdote. I was at Queensbay Mall yesterday afternoon - and evening - catching Ip Man 2 and Iron Man 2 back to back at the theatre there with Phoebs. After the credits started rolling at the end of Iron Man 2, I made Phoebs stay back with me to catch the a scene which I knew was going to play. It's like a sort of tradition now for Marvel comic flicks to have a post-credits scene. It was there in the first Iron Man flick, putting Ultimate Nick Fury on the big screen for the very first time. It was there in The Incredible Hulk (Ed Norton's one). And there's like 2 different ones in the appalling X-Men Origins: Wolverine in a dirty 20th Century Fox ploy to make viewers go watch the film in cinemas more than once.

Most of the audience in my theatre left right after peoples' names started scrolling upwards on the screen. The only ones who stayed behind and waited were only Phoebs and I, a trio of three girls, miscellaneous people stopped at the exit by a nice usher... and The Comic Book Guy,

In the flesh!

It's like he walked right out of an episode of the Simpsons! It was a large Chinese guy - I'd guesstimate between 40 and 50 years of age - standing on the aisle and he proclaimed quite loudly and excitedly, to no particular person, "That's next year's movie!"

And when Mjolnir came into focus in that scene, he went "Go Kenneth Branagh!" while looking straight at us. Phoebs insisted that he didn't make eye-contact with her at all and that he really had eyes on me only. Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Norse mythology and Marvel comic books, Mjolnir is Thor's hammer, and Thor will be 2011's big Marvel tent-pole film with Kenneth Branagh helming the project as director.

Phoebs thinks that he somehow intuitively recognised me as a fellow geek and was trying to engage me in conversation.

Tell me honestly, everybody - do I really look like a geek? Here's a very recent picture of mine (seeing as I've not shown my face here for awhile now),

I'm the one on the left, by the way.

Not at all, right? RIGHT?

Now that guy - everything about him just screamed "GEEK!" and even though he did not have any facial hair or a ponytail, he looks eerily like an Asian clone of the Comic Book Guy. He was overweight and balding, wore a worn-out T-shirt and a shabby pair of shorts and was totally geeking out over the upcoming Thor film in public. The only thing that he and I had in common is that we were both carrying messenger bags, and that proves absolutely nothing, Phoebe. Nothing! I wasn't even wearing my Joker T-shirt yesterday!

Well, I do occasionally feel the urge to educate the average (read: ignorant) cinema-goer about the accuracy of certain films based on comic books and fantasy/sci-fi novels, but never have I did it in such a ham-fisted and potentially embarrassing manner. I don't publicly show off my vast knowledge of pop-culture trivia on a soapbox. I, uh, have a blog for that. Some of you might also point out that I often go to the cinema alone to catch a film, but I have excellent reasons for that. It's just hard for me to fight the urge to see a film I've been anticipating for a long time when I know that it's playing RIGHT NOW.

Watching a film with friends can be swell and all but I find it to be a real hassle sometimes. I'd have to wait till everyone actually wants to watch that film, and a convenient time and date has to be decided upon to make it happen. And in a herd, some philistines folks with tastes differing from mine would usually vote to watch some shit movie other picture playing at the same time. That's so totally uncool. If you ask me, people should defer to my opinions on everything at all times.

Phoebs said, "I really hope you don't look like that guy when you're forty."

Anyway, let me just wrap up this post with a couple of short impressions from the films I saw,

Ip Man 2.

It's another blatant nationalistic celebration of the Chinese identity. We get another cartoonishly arrogant and evil foreigner insulting the raw awesomeness that is Chinese kung fu. Then, as expected, Baron von Moustache-twirler gets his ass handed to him by whichever kung fu master the film's about.

Ip Man 2 is basically Jet Li's Fearless set in Hong Kong instead of Shanghai, featuring Wing Chun instead of whatever the hell it was that Jet Li was doing in Fearless. A less charitable description of Ip Man 2 is that it's a clumsy attempt at shoehorning Ip Man's life story into the plot of Fearless.

And it's utterly kick-ass. I've said it before and I will say it again; Donnie Yen is much more charismatic leading man than Jet Li ever was.

The reason anyone goes to see Ip Man 2 is to see Donnie Yen take a whole lot of people apart in a series of fights cobbled together into a semi-coherent narrative. Go read a biography or something if you really want an accurate retelling of the real Yip Man's life - you ain't getting any here. In this sequel to the 2008 martial arts hit, see Ip Man take the Brits by the balls and chain punch them into a stain on the floor. It's slightly better than the first film when it came to depicting Ip Man's vulnerability. In the first film, he was practically invincible. Even in the final fight with the Japanese guy, he didn't even break a sweat. This time around, the British boxer (played like a WWE wrestler by Darren Shahlavi) actually seemed to pose a bit of a threat to our bantamweight hero. Just a bit. Then, after a flashback of himself giving someone else advice on how to defeat the white guy, he made a total comeback and destroyed Shahlavi's character in seconds. I mean, there was literally no one awesome enough to be Ip Man's mentor figure in this movie so he had to be his own mentor. Notable also is Donnie Yen's table-sparring scene with sumo-weight Sammo Hung - which is arguably a more satisfying fight compared to the finale one.

By the way, Donnie Yen also makes cigarette smoking look like a damn cool pastime.

My main gripe about Ip Man 2 is that the emotional payback weren't as satisfying as that one versus 10 Japanese karatekas scene in the first movie. I know it's racist but hey, the least the Japanese people can do to make amends for the Rape of Nanking is to let Donnie Yen punch some of them around for a bit in a movie. Sammo Hung's choreography is just as tight in this film as it was in the first one, and I actually lost count of how many times I said "Holy shit!" at some of the moves I saw.

Iron Man 2.

Best. Movie. Ever.

Just kidding but it's everything you'd expect in a sequel after seeing the first Iron Man. Robert Downey, Jr. is still utterly perfect as Tony Stark. Don Cheadle eased very comfortably into the shoes left behind by Terrence Howard as Lt. Colonel James "Rhodey" Rhodes (the War Machine) - they even hung a hilarious lampshade about it in his entrance in the courtroom scene. Mickey Rourke, proving that The Wrestler was not a fluke, was positively electrifying as Ivan Vanko, the film's primary villain. I love me my husky rumbling Russki baddie. And my girlfriend said that she'd totally marry Scarlett Johansson if she has the chance. I asked her if she's bisexual and what she pretty much said was, "For Scarlett Johansson? I can be anything."

The short of it is this; Iron Man 2 is a thoroughly fun ride. They tried injecting a little angst into the story but it didn't work at all - this ain't a Batman movie. The best bits in the first film were those Tony Stark was inventing in, and as most comic book fans have pointed out, Tony Stark's superpower is really his ability to invent any damn thing. I totally got a kick out of him building a mini particle accelerator in his lab to synthesise a fucking new element. IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!!!

The action bits were a bit frantic and have that been-done-before feel to them. With all the clanging metal parts, I thought I was watching Transformers 3. But it's an Iron Man movie, so it's okay. We all watch it for Tony Stark anyway. The biggest problem most superhero franchises eventually run into is the erosion of their rogues gallery. Take Raimi's Spiderman run for example - after the Green Goblin and Doc Ock went kaput, they had to up the ante somehow and threw in 3 villains in the third flick, none of which had nearly enough screen-time to justify their presence. I shudder to even think of a 4th Spidey flick. It's good that they are taking the franchise through a reboot now.

So verdict on Iron Man 2? Go see.

And I'm kinda amped up now for the 2011 Thor film after seeing the post-credit scene. I'm not a fan of Marvel's Thor, but hey, Anthony Hopkins is playing Odin! This, I got to see.



P.S. This post is in no way aimed at denigrating geeks. I love the geek culture and is a proud member of the community. I just don't want to end up looking like a cartoon caricature of one.



Part-time geek,
k0k s3n w4i