You Cheeky Chappy

These last few days have been a pretty Japanese few days. It all began on Tuesday when I went to see 13 Assassins with Ali and Kirky. It's the new Takashi Miike film about Samurai and killings. In fact it's mainly about killings. Loads and loads of killings. But coming from the director of Audition, The Happiness of the Katakuris and Ichi the Killer this was to be expected, since all those films have loads of killings in them. It doesn't have the highest body count of all time in a movie, but it's certainly full of loads of blood and snot and piss flying about. Especially as the last forty five minutes is given over to one continual battle scene. Two hundred and eleven dead people later we walked out of the cinema all wanting to be Samurai when we grew up. On the way for an after-cinema pint I even stabbed the doorman at the House of the Trembling Madness just to make my point.

KILL!!!!!!!

In the same theme I also watched Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress. I have Kurasawa's Samurai DVD box set and have been working my way through them slowly. So far I have to find one I don't like, Yojimbo being easily the best so far and probably one of the best films I've ever seen. But The Hidden Fortress is what George Lucas based Star Wars on. So there I was with bated breath, waiting to see the similarities. Boy, was I disappointed. For a start it wasn't even set in space. The closest we got to stars was the scene by the fire in the night. There were no gay robots, no Stormtroopers, no fucking explosions even. I waited two hours for Darth Vader to show up and even that never happened. They were all fighting with normal swords and not lightsabres. To top it all it was in fucking black and white as well. Forgive me if I'm wrong but Star Wars is in COLOUR. There wasn't even a Death Star or them Jawas. I was so angry by the end that I was mad with rage that I went out and stabbed the local garage attendant as he was the closest person I could find.

'We're wanted men, I have the death sentence on twelve star... no, wait...'

I spent the day also listening to the Ancient Japanese Black Metal band Sabbat. Rhys had recorded me some of their back catalogue and I thought now was the time to give it a good listening to. Fucking Hell are they good. I actually got to see them when I worked in Singapore. They were supported by Ironfist, the singer of whom I was in touch with through Myspace. The show was being held in the afternoon in a downtown bar and the crowd went fucking wild for the entire gig. The thing is, being into the Black Metal scene as I am, the chance to see a band play live is limited because they're either in jail or dead, or both in some cases. Most bands  are only one-man acts and misanthropes to boot and they never venture out of their local cave to tour. So the chance to see a band who I've respected for many years in a live venue is a very rare treat in this scene.

Brack Fire, Brack Fire, Brack Fire!!!

It's the last day on site tomorrow, it's come around quickly. I'm back to my normal job next week and straight into a shit picnic with a watching brief that Stanners rejected, deeming it beneath him. But I've obviously made some form of impression on the kiddydinks. I was checking CR's field notebook today and came across the following sentence: 'constant verbal abuse from our supervisor (c bomb count = 13)'. I'm surprised in equal amounts that she kept count and that the count was so low... As I said, tomorrow is the last day and I'll miss their stupid little faces, so I've decided to do the only thing that is right and proper in this situation. Taking a tip from Jim Jones, I've been putting rat poison in some cookies that I will hand out to them tomorrow. Then we can all go to Heaven and work together on exposing cobbled surfaces through eternity! Let's leave this on a happy note with my favourite part from Mozart's Requiem: