You're going to TAM? Cool. I can't justify it, so just enjoy the various podcasts who go there (Skeptics Guide to the Universe is doing another live show). My only conventions nowadays are an occasional Sci Fi Worldcon.

On another note, Michelle Yeoh ain't Malaysian! She might be born there but she's of Chinese ethnicity.

What the fuck.

I think Harrell's accounts have been hacked. He's talking straight-up insanity lately.

SYNECDOCHE is a pile of self-indulgent shit with no redeeming qualities. I became physically angry after watching that series of images and sounds.

Synechdoche reminded me too much of my own life. When I saw it, I had just cast myself as the director of a play within the play I had adapted from a Twilight Zone episode. I happen to think it's a brilliant film. While Kaufman may not be a great director yet, it was the first time he's been free to interpret his own script, and it ranks along with the best of his work.

Bonus round: Listen to the commentary again and replace "Kung Fu" with "porn" and "fight" with "sex".

0:43:30

Dorkman: This is good, like if you watch this from a choreography perspective, this is how you keep a lot of people involved in a scene. Especially once this guy gets involved, there's a lot of personality to the fighting. It's not just moves, but they're kicking him like trying to get him out of the way and fighting each other simultaneously once he gets in there.

Eddie: For my money that's what Kung Fu movies and the genre does really well is really the character comes out in the fight. That's when the characters really come alive is in the fight scenes. And you learn so much just by her expressions and you know so much about her just by how she fights.

Dorkman: Yeah, just watch this, this exchange right here, the three of them moving together is amazing.

The gliding power as seen in Wu Xia films is known as ching gung. As mentioned in the commentary it essentially consists of using qi to lighten the body. As such a person can leap extraordinary distances, run across water, walk along a spider's web, or step upon tea cups without them breaking. The power is popular in Chinese adventure novels, particularly those involving Robin Hood like roguish characters.

Some believe ching gung to be an actual power lost to posterity. Many such mystical powers are claimed lost as masters were known to keep their best powers secret. In this sense the martial arts decline over the generations. Still others claim to have gained this power if just temporarily. B.K. Frantzis speaks of the Dragon Out of the Cave scenario, when martial artists experience a major breakthrough wherein the Dao speaks through them, in which he was able to achieve lightness power for a brief period.

My teacher of Eastern Philosophy at university claimed to have experienced seeing a Buddhist monk levitate.

Of course it could all be bullshit. Experience is the best proof. Most of us have not had the experience. Still, it makes for fascinating fight sequences.

We have cookies and booze?

They're in the dick room. Seriously guys, it's crazy in there.