About Last Night.

I was very disappointed in last night’s outcome. But I can’t say I was surprised. Frankly, I’ve been expecting the Panthers to get blown out eventually. They’re just not as good as they seem.

It comes from being one-dimensional on offense. The only consistent playmaker is Steve Smith, who is also the only Panther (besides, perhaps, Ken Lucas) who is not overrated. If anything, Steve is still underrated.

I used to think the reason Smith always got so many yards was because Jake Delhomme simply had tunnel vision for Smith, but that’s not the case. Last night’s debacle wasn’t Jake’s fault; he tried to get the other receivers involved. On the first series, from third and six, he threw the ball to tight end Kris Mangum. Sure, the pass was a little behind him, and Kris had to stretch back, but the ball hit him in the hands, and then continued right through them. Fourth down. Punt.

Next series: third down again. Jake fires a wide receiver screen to Drew Carter, who starts running before he has the ball. Incomplete. Punt.

Third series. Third and nine. Jake finds the normally reliable Ricky Proehl for a nice gain. Ricky drops it. Punt.

It was inevitable at that point that Jake would start forcing passes to the quadruple-covered Smith. Result: two quick interceptions leading to ten points and, combined with the touchdown that Seattle had actually earned, a 17 point deficit that sealed the game in the second quarter.

Again, I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I’m not sure how Carolina made it as far as they did. The offense (aside from Smith) has been underwhelming the entire year. Stephen Davis ended up on IR. Again. Deshaun Foster had a crappy year up until the end when, just as he seemed ready to become the star he has always been purported to be, he broke his ankle and went on IR. Again. Keary Colbert was a no-show for the second season in a row.

There are some bright spots for the future. Drew Carter has shown flashes of potential – certainly more than Colbert has shown up to this point is his career – but he was injury prone in college and has continued to be so in the pros. The defense, after years of being overrated, finally seems to be almost as good as the press always thinks they are. That has a lot to do with the fact that middle linebacker Dan Morgan almost managed to stay healthy this year. He only missed a third of the season this time.

The window is not closed on this team, not for a few more years. But they are missing some integral parts. I only hope they find those parts before age and free agency forces another long period of “rebuilding”. God knows I don’t want to go through that again.

The End

With fortuitous timing, the movie was on again last night, so I recorded it again and watched the end. There wasn’t much more to see.

With the hatchet deeply embedded in his chest, TFG realizes he only has a few moments of life left, so he gets desperate and starts swinging away. TOAB dodges and blocks until he finds his opportunity and slams TFG so hard, he actually does fly, right through the roof. TOAB kicks an empty casket out the front door and TFG’s body lands in it. TOAB drops a ceremonial burial trinket into the casket and walks away, and then the credits roll.

That’s it. No explanation as to why all of these people are so antagonistic toward the One-Armed Boxer. I mean, obviously TFG was out for revenge, but that doesn’t explain Hat or Indian. Gotta love those 70’s kung-fu flicks.

Master of Flying Guillotine part...whichever part we're on

The Final Chapter!! Sort Of!!

TOAB decides to set up a trap for TFG. First he purchases several odd-looking metal stands, each about three feet high, from the local blacksmith. Then he rents out the undertaker’s building and places the stands at strategic spots around the building. Finally he goes back to the house.

All of this setup, incidentally, actually happens before the battle with Jap; I just didn’t have time to go into it yesterday.

So after Jap and Hat are killed, TFG shows up. TOAB tells the girl to wait in the house, even though it is presumably still hot, and moves into a stand of bamboo poles. TFG attacks, but the guillotine keeps landing on the poles instead of on TOAB. Eventually TOAB runs out of poles and sprints away, with TFG hot in pursuit.

TOAB first hides in a bird-seller’s building, and the noise from all the birds confuses TFG (as you’ll recall, he’s blind, so he relies on hearing). But TFG is not a master for no reason, and eventually lands a blow on TOAB that sends him through the wall and into the undertaker’s place.

The battle ranges throughout the building and, just as TFG seems to be getting the upper hand, TOAB reveals his plan; the odd stands are springboards that hold hatchets; every time TOAB steps on one, it impales TFG in the chest. TFG is a tough MF, though, and he continues the battle with one sticking out of him. TOAB finally manages to break the guillotine in half with a hatchet, and they are reduced to battling hand-to-hand. TOAB lands a hard blow to TFG’s chest that shoves the hatchet further in and then…

The movie ends. For some reason my cable or Showtime screwed up the time and the recording ended before the movie did. I have it set to record again, but it doesn’t come back on for a few days. I’ll let you know the conclusion when I find out.

Master of Flying Guillotine Part 3

Today’s Episode: The Chase!

At TOAB’s school, TOAB sadly informs his students that he will be closing down the school because of the danger posed to his students by TFG. They beg him to stay open, and as they are discussing the issue, Jap appears in the doorway. But my assumptions from the previous day were wrong; Jap turns out to be a bad guy, and is busy fighting with TOAB’s brother when TFG shows up and everyone scatters. TFG and TOAB fight a little, but TFG has too much advantage with his weapon. At one point the guillotine gets stuck in a post and TOAB tries to break its chain, but he is unable to do so. TOAB finally flees out of a back door.

In the meantime, the governor’s daughter wakes up and discovers she has been taken by the tournament fighter with the black lampshade hat. He claims to have rescued her, although I don’t recall her being in mortal danger at the time he took her (this could be because he is lying or because the poor camerawork didn’t show something about to fall on her). Hat tells her he is going to take her away to train her in his style of fighting; she is uncertain of his real motives and at the moment he leaves, she slips out. While sneaking away, she comes across TOAB, who helps her escape.

They go back to the school and are met there by the Indian with the long arms who, for unexplained reasons, wants to fight TOAB. TOAB has some trouble with the Indian, but eventually wins. He and the girl leave to go to TOAB’s house, where they meet TOAB’s brother. TOAB watches his brother try unsuccessfully to chop some bamboo with a dull and chipped hatchet and comes up with a lousy metaphor and a plan to defeat TFG. But first, he says, they need to get rid of “that foreign killer”.

They lure Jap (who never wears shoes) inside the house, within which they have installed a metal floor with straw stuck underneath it and, while Jap and TOAB fight, his students light fire to the straw, making the metal floor very hot and scalding poor Jap with every step and fall. The fight doesn’t take long, and I’m glad you can’t smell movies, ‘cause all that burning flesh would have made an unpleasant aroma.

As they dispose of Jap’s body, Hat shows up and demands the girl. TOAB refuses and they fight; TOAB eventually wins, but not without some injury.

Tune in next time for the final chapter!!

The Flying Guillotine, part 2

Today’s episode: The Tournament Begins! And Ends!

This segment begins with the governor, who looks like your stereotypical Chinese kung-fu governor, making the final arrangements for his tournament. He watches a demonstration of a group of stick-and-shield warriors go through their routing, then is introduced to “a foreigner”, by which I understood them to mean a Japanese guy. The Jap is pissed because the governor won’t let him enter the tourney, so the governor tells him he can be in it if he can defeat the stick-and-shield warriors, which, of course, it doesn’t take him long to do. Then the governor’s daughter wants a piece of the Jap and they fight for a little while but, just when Jap is getting the upper hand, the governor stops the fight and lets the Jap in the tourney.

In the meantime, a guy with one arm (not, incidentally, TOAB) is having a meal at a restaurant (stop me if you’ve heard this before). As he is eating, he sees some flies on the table and slaps them, then astounds himself by discovering that he has killed all seven with one blow (which is what I suspected was the root of his boast when Steve told me about this scene). After he finishes eating, he realizes that he has forgotten to bring his money and tries to sneak out. This, of course, leads to the infamous Steve scene which was pleasantly similar to how he described it. After he tells the waiter that he killed “seven with one blow”, he admits that they were seven flies, and everyone laughs until TFG appears and chops off his head.

Cut back to the governor’s tournament, where things are getting under way. I really enjoyed this part of the movie because it didn’t cut away to other scenes or do some sort of kung-fu medley, showing just the finishes of some of the meaningless bouts, or any other stupid thing. It started at the first fight, kept going until it ended, then moved on to the next. Some of the fights had people crucial to the plot; some didn’t. They all got equal time. It was also cool because the opponents were all pretty much evenly matched and used a variety of styles.

Now that I’ve said all that, I’m afraid I’m going to have to do the medley thing to you, because I don’t remember every fight. Some winners of consequence: a guy with a black Chinese-style hat (looks like a straw sombrero, or perhaps more like an extremely wide lampshade) who fought with a pair of those nightsticks that today’s police carry, except his had retractable blades in the tips; the governor’s daughter, who used her sharpened nails as her weapons and won when her opponent ran away when his clothes got ripped off; Jap, who killed his guy after kicking dirt in his eyes; an Indian (that is, a guy from India) who had the ability to extend his arms to about three times their normal length; and, last, a one-armed fighter (not TOAB) who won but then got decapitated by TFG as described yesterday. Speaking of TOAB, he was there for awhile, and every now and then it would show him making comments about the bouts (“He lost his balance when his eyes got poked out. That’s why he lost.”), but he left after the governor spotted him and sent him a note inviting him to join. Therefore he was not around to witness TFG in action.

Back to present tense: The governor gets mad at having his tournament interrupted so rudely and confronts TFG, who kills him, injures his daughter, and sets fire to the entire area before leaving. Someone (I assumed it was TFG, but I found out later it wasn’t) picks up the daughter and carries her away.

I could see where the movie was going: the winners of the duels would band together with TOAB to fight and defeat TFG.

Just so you know, this all took longer than twenty minutes; I snuck in some viewing during the day when no one else was around.

Tune in next time for more exciting Flying Guillotine action!!

And In This Corner...

It started several months ago. Steve, one of my co-workers, was telling me about a snippet of a movie one of his friends had shown him. It was one of those old poorly-dubbed kung-fu movies, called “The Flying Guillotine or something like that.”

“It was hilarious,” he said. “This guy is in a restaurant and gets up to leave without paying. The waiter stops him and the guy says, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ The waiter says, ‘No.’ And the guy says, ‘God damn it! I’m the One-Armed Boxer! I killed seven with one blow!’”

I know, when you read it, it doesn’t seem particularly amusing. But the way he told it, with much laughing and a heavy emphasis on the “God damn it” part made it funny. So, naturally, every time Steve and I saw each other over the next few weeks, one of us would say, “Don’t you know who I am?” And the other would respond, “God damn it! I’m the One-Armed Boxer!”

As always happens with things like this, we did it less and less over time, until it was maybe once a week at most that one of us would reference it. The last time it got brought up was last Wednesday. Steve mentioned at the time how rare the movie was and what a difficult time he was having finding a copy of it.

The very next morning, as I was perusing the Showtime listings (I’m always seeing what’s new to record) while I ate breakfast, there it was: “Legend of the Flying Guillotine”. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I flipped to it and sure enough, there was a one-armed man fighting with someone else in what appeared to be some sort of kung-fu tournament. The one-armed man won but, before he could celebrate his victory, a guy in red appeared and chopped the one-armed man’s head off with his “flying guillotine”, which looks like a large bee-keepers bonnet with blades on the fringes. This caused some commotion, but I had to leave for work, so I looked up the next time it would be on and set it to record.

A word, now, about how I watch TV. I rarely get to watch programs that I care about, besides the occasional sporting event. The kids always want to watch their shows and the wife likes Dr. Phil and Oprah and such. So the only time I can watch something like Legend is at 5:45 in the morning, before work, while eating breakfast. I have about 20 minutes each morning dedicated to eating on the couch with remote in hand. That means when there is a movie a want to watch, I have to watch it in 20 minute segments. Since I want to make an attempt to blog more often, I am going to summarize each segment of this movie over the next few days. Lucky you.

The movie begins showing the Flying Guillotine (TFG) in front of his hovel doing his morning kung-fu forms. Each movement, no matter how slight, is accompanied by a crack, like a piece of wood being hit by a mallet (which, presumably, is exactly what the Chinese FX guys were using to make the sound. The movie was made in 1975). TFG has long hair and a long beard. I mean really long, so long that it drags the ground. This creates amusement for me since his hair is constantly getting in his way as he moves thorough the forms, but turns out to be no hindrance to him, since he is blind.

The voice-over explains that the government is living in fear of rebellion and has chartered a group of assassins to seek out rebels and kill them. The assassins’ weapon: the new and deadly Flying Guillotine (pronounced “gill-o-teen”. The translators apparently were not French). This pronouncement is demonstrated as TFG produces the bee-keeper hat and proceeds to behead man-shaped dummies with it.

Then TFG gets a message via homing pigeon telling him that his two disciples have been killed by the One-Armed Boxer (TOAB). He immediately sets fire to his hovel (for whatever reason) and sets off to avenge them.

In the meantime, TOAB demonstrates how to walk along the edge of an empty basket and walk up walls and on ceilings to the students at his kung-fu school. For those of you who would like to try this at home, the trick, apparently, is in breathing properly. Give it a shot. TOAB’s brother then tells him about a kung-fu tournament being staged by the governor of the province. TOAB is persuaded to go, just to watch, not to fight, because his students might learn something.

Tune in tomorrow for the next exciting episode of “The Flying Guillotine”!!

Steady Your Resolve

Every new beginning is some other beginning’s end. – Some band, I can’t remember which one.

First of all, hope everyone had a happy holiday season. As you can see, I finished 2005 in fine form, having blogged all of once in the month of December. I am very glad that 2005 is done; it was one of the worst overall years in my adult life. Good riddance to you!

I make basically the same resolutions every year: Lose weight. Write more often. Read my Bible more often. Etc. Last year I sputtered along on all of them. I lost 15 or so pounds, only to put them back on again over the holidays. I re-started my already completed book, then decided I didn’t want to re-start, then decided I’d be better off with a different book, and eventually just dropped the whole thing. I’m at a relatively low point in my spiritual life.

As I said, 2005 sucked.

It’s never too late to change, of course, but even as I try to change things, a small voice in the back of my mind wonders why? Why bother trying to change? History tells me that I’m going to fail, at least in the long term. Wouldn’t it just be easier to admit to myself, once and for all, that I’m a lazy, procrastinating underachiever and I’m just never going to be anything different without some huge outside motive force? Am I so full of pride that I can’t see the simple truth?

Yes. And yes. Besides, my pants are beginning to feel tight again. Hate that.

The fact is that I can’t help comparing my 35-year old body to how it used to look. I used to be in fantastic shape; I had the six-pack abs and everything. I sometimes think life would be easier if I had never wrestled in high school, and therefore never been in great shape. Then I wouldn’t know what it was like; I wouldn’t have a basis for comparison. I wouldn’t know that it was possible for me, personally, to achieve a great body. But I’m full of self-deceit. I keep thinking that I could have it all back again, if I really wanted to, even though I’m ten years past my prime age.

And perhaps I could, or could to a decent enough degree. But when it comes down to it, I just don’t want to work that hard. Staying in great shape is painful, especially at the beginning. And it’s really time consuming. I’d much rather be playing video games or reading or playing with the 3-year olds. This is why I keep going on Atkins and other diets; strict eating doesn’t invade your lifestyle. It’s the lazy man’s way to lose weight without exercise. And it works. For awhile. Till you stop doing it.

Anyway, I’m trying once again. It’s been eight days since the first, and I’ve already seen results: I’ve gained three pounds. In my defense, there has been a lot of football on, and football requires pizza. I’ve been eating salads at lunch and unsweetened cereal for breakfast. I just need to work on that healthy dinner. 14 is going to be in high school next year, and he still wants to play football, so I’m going to start working out with him in the basement. We’ll see how long that lasts. I keep meaning to open the Bible in the morning before work, but I always end up watching Sportscenter instead.

The more things change, the less time it takes to return to the status quo.