Movies..

Saturday, Kept my "light" week rolling. BJJ technique: arm-bar from knee on belly, and rolled with Paul for about a half hour during open mat. No lifting.

Sunday went and saw Ironman. Phenomenal movie. Better in the theatre. Robert Downey Jr. does a fantastic job playing the charming, almost smarmy, wise cracking playboy Tony Stark. Everyone else does a good job of not screwing it up. The chemistry with "Pepper" Potts (aka Gwyneth Paltrow) is good. The effects are very smooth. It is a great example of someone not dicking around with the source material, and taking what made it great and bringing it to life.
I would venture that this is the best marvel adaptation yet.


Later watched American Hardcore this was pretty good. I love/ed a lot of the band in this movie (Black Flag, 7seconds, Bad Brains, Agnostic Front, SSD (before the metal years), and Minor Threat) There were performances by.. EVERYONE, which was very cool, however the movie was a bummer. The people in this movie, looked really old.. well I guess they/we are old. Mike Watt is bald and drives a Micro-bus, Mugger is a well-heeled accountant in SoCal, Greg Ginn is puffy and grey. It was like watching mortality on display. Talking corpses chatting about the good old days.

The other thing that bummed me out is they discount us; the hardcore kids that came after them. For them Hardcore ended in '86, ignoring bands like The Youth of today, Bold, Gorilla Biscuits, Slapshot, Chain of Strength, and Better than a Thousand, just to mention a few of my faves. To them Hardcore ended because they moved on, but the scene was still there. It was different, the kids that I came up with we wanted to make our mark. Our influences were those older guys. The Sex Pistols, and Ramones were cool, but how could they mean the same thing when you've already heard Black Flag? We were the middle children. Too close to the original be something new, but late enough to the party that we were totally discounted an ignored.
"You don't know how it was, you should have seen it in '82." To hell with '82, to hell with '92. I hope that in this Republican recession-ized age there is some kid practicing in his basement, and writing ticked off lyrics, playing music that no one who doesn't share his experience can possibly relate to. As long as that's happening, no matter what the music sounds like Hardcore will still exist. It's not dead, it's just passed us by. That's what the folks in the movie were too self centered to realize. The attitude still exists, we're just too old, too fat, and to comfortable to recognize it. It's not for us. If you liked these bands, it's worth watching to see the performances and hear the stories, but you can't go back.
Hope you had a good weekend.
Mahalo.