Chinese Vampire Primer

Nothing at all happened yesterday or today; all I did after work was play video games and watch TV, and all today I worked real hard, so I haven't even read the news or anything. So instead, I'm going to tell you about the Chinese vampire movie I saw this week (Tsui Hark's Vampire Hunters) about these vampire hunters that pretend to be caterers for some reason and then wait for this vampire to come. I am going to talk to you about it by teaching you what it taught me about Chinese vampire mythology:

Chinese vampires start out as zombies because they are unlucky. They rise from the grave or are resurrected by a necromancer and then hop around with their arms straight out in front of them like hopping mummies. Zombies are mindless hopping killing machines, and the only way to stop them is by putting a piece of paper on their face. Once they kill someone, they get promoted to vampire (with extra responsibilities, but a hefty raise to go with it.)

Chinese vampires are made out of still-wet paper maché. They are very powerful. Their superpowers are flying, evil halitosis, super-strength, and Go Go Gadget Arm with fingernail guns and kung-fu action grip. Do not get close to a Chinese vampire because the evil halitosis is deadly and will set you on fire. If it does not set you on fire, it will paralyze you and then you will start to jiggle and your blood will come out of your eyeballs and mouth in a fine, refreshing mist that will float into the vampire's face through his mouth and eyeballs. Then it will set you on fire. It's pretty cool to watch, but not to experience.

All Chinese vampires are pregnant, and if you cut off the head with your flying-zen samurai moves, the fetus will be very angry. He will come out of the vampire's stomach and become a new vampire with Super Scary Slime coating. It probably smells pretty bad too.

Oh, I forgot to say that Chinese vampires have Gopher Powers and can burrow underground very fast. Prepare to dodge the moving mound of dirt. Sometimes the vampire will put his special metal hands in your body and move them around real fast until you turn into a pile of skin. Try to avoid that too.

The only way to kill a vampire is to be a zen master. Teamwork is also a good strategy. Grenades and dynamite are the weapon of choice, but don't stand too close.

That is all there is to know about Chinese vampires. This movie also teaches you valuable lessons about snakes, consummating your marriage when you have the chance, the value of friendship, and why to avoid covering your dead relatives in wax and putting them in a room together to have dinner (because they can come to life and hop around and even kung-fu can't stop all 25 of them--that part was pretty funny... put them in bunny suits, and it would look like Revenge of the Mall Easter Bunnies!!!!!)

Anyway, the movie was awesome even if it was in Chinese and the subtitler sometimes made up English words that don't exist. Let's calculate the score:

Evil hopping zombies : +10
Plot like an episode of Three's Company : -5
Snakes (+1 ea.) : +1
Confusion factor because all the characters look the same (this is NOT a racist thing) : -20
Paper maché vampire : +50
Engrish subtitles : -2
No hot actors: -5
Tilt for awesomeness : +700

All in all this movie gets 729 stars. Rent it for your niece or the girl you babysit for. She'll love the bunnies.

等我搞破壞!, or, I wish I could but I just Cantonese

Yesterday evening, I took my second trip to Chinatown since I moved here (my first being a date back in April or May). Oh, and I caught a bus there once. I never go because I have no business there, but as it happens, I know some Chinese people. Well, one. And yesterday, the one and I met some of his friends at a new karaoke bar that opened up.

Don't ask me what it's called, there was no sign. To enter, you had to walk down this creepy staircase that looked like it led to the lair of some psycho killer. Y'know, dirty concrete stairs. It was like a dark alleyway except tucked snuggly underground so nobody can hear you scream.

The place itself was well-lit and kinda trendy-looking, though, so whatever. I remain un-axe-murdered to blog another day.

It was one of those Asian-style places like in Lost in Translation, so we got a private room with a karaoke machine and unlimited drinks. Really a great deal, though everyone insisted it was better at another place they know. But for $23, I got a milkshake, 2 beers, a healthy-sized snack and 4 hours of entertainment, so I ain't mad.

I was the only loser singing songs in English. Songs, I might add, that were horribly cataloged, most with no artist data. And they were organized first by number of words in the title and then alphabetically. Very bizarre, I dunno if it's some Chinese thing. All the controls were in Chinese, too, so I needed extra-special help using the little remote control--help that I got from everyone else in the room who could read what it said. I felt like a 90 year-old at a technology convention trying to set the clock on my VCR.

So the 5 people I was with were all singing songs only they knew in a language I couldn't possibly begin to approach. I learned the sounds of a couple characters, notably a pretty one that looked like an L with three marks around it. (It sounded like "sa", looked like the Japanese for "fu", and often came at the end of a line. Anyone?)

So here's my advice: If you ever go to Hong Kong, bring your own iPod. You have never experienced 4 straight hours of Cantonese power ballads. Yes, every song that was played (except for my country and 80's favorites) was a power ballad. I think it's their only genre or something. It was like the early 90's on Mars. But the videos were pretty cool, so don't get me wrong, I was highly entertained and got to make up my own meanings for what the songs were about. One was about a princess who followed her demon teddy bear into a mystical wonderland. Another was about gay mechanics and the women who love them. Yet another was about a little Inuit girl whose entire tribe was eaten by polar bears, so all she could do was sit in her igloo and cry. One was Cirque du Soleil on acid, and another was Cirque du Soleil on anti-depressants. Each song was a dream, and each dream was an adventure.

I felt real self-conscious being the only person singing in English, so one of the first songs I picked was The Ketchup Song, a personal favorite of mine. I picked it because it has Spanish in it, and I felt like I was getting revenge. Nobody cared. Anyway, then I got over it because the girl next to me said she liked my voice. I also sang: Friends in Low Places, Total Eclipse of the Heart, Earl Had to Die, All My Exes Live in Texas, Under the Sea, Colors of the Wind (my personal tribute to the Cantonese power ballad), Strawberry Wine, and Leavin' on a Jet Plane, and I was awesome and won a Grammy.

I had a great time, but I think I'm gonna stick to the American style of karaoke, the way it was meant to be... where I can stand on a stage and have everyone look at me for reasons that do not involve my being a minority.