ACT 3/SCENE 203: LAMENTATIONS OF A SORE LOSER BIRTHDAY BOY

The thing I most enjoy about my birthday is the simple fact that it is during this week or two that the people I most enjoy spending time with make the most concerted effort to spend time with me. As was the case last weekend. Three of my close friends made the trip from San Francisco to participate - along with various members of my LA-based buddy list - in an experiment designed to prove that 30-plus year old livers could still withstand three straight nights of alcoholic haymakers. I should mention that this study in self-hatred included willingly subjecting myself to a vicious, Pacquiao-like, left hook to the dome in the form of an impromptu 15 hour trip to Vegas to conduct an investigation into the true limits of human stupidity.

Nonetheless, I am - and will, I’m sure, forever be - grateful to my friends for always coming up big on my behalf. Thanks to everyone - especially the most lovely little lady ever to be stamped with a “Made in Taiwan” sign - that took time out of their weekend schedules to remind me that while I may be short on fame, fortune, talent, looks, intelligence, athletic ability and critical adoration, I have the support and friendship of truly fantastic people in obnoxiously rich abundance.

Speaking of a lack of critical adoration...

I was notified, yesterday, that a script for a short film I wrote last summer narrowly missed out on winning a $5,000 grant. In other words, I came in second (second prize, by the way, is a nice, but much less production-friendly, $250). At the risk of sounding like a sore loser or - you know - a dick, I can’t help but recall the words of the immortal Tiger Woods when he so succinctly lamented that “second place sucks.” All second place really means is that I was the first loser. A harsh assessment, I realize, but my feelings nonetheless.

In fact I made the completely over-stated and mostly untrue comment to a friend last night that I’d rather have not placed at all than come in second. The comment, itself, is patently ridiculous but telling, I suppose, of my sometimes over-dismissive and competitive nature; my capacity for impetuous disregard. The irony here, of course, is that for all the internal grousing I’ve done in the last 24 hours, I actually don’t consider the script I wrote to be grand-prize worthy in the first place. I think I probably did immediately after writing and revising it; but such feelings are usually pretty ephemeral as - after re-reading it for the first time in a couple months yesterday - all I can see now are flaws... big, fat, glaring.

Ah well... as my Mom wisely told me yesterday, I should just be grateful. Perhaps I’d have reacted less snidely and been less ornery about all of this had I woken up the last few days with the ability to breathe through my nose. I’m hopped up on Vitamin C and Amoxicillin at the moment and it’s entirely possible I’m thinking at less than 100% rationality. This, of course, bears no evidence of causality to the above-mentioned attempt to drink my liver into oblivion. In any case, congratulations to Mr. Teddy Culver on winning the grand prize. I don’t know you and I haven’t read your script, but I’m sure it was terrific and well-deserving of first place. But I’ve got the better (and more recklessly foolhardy) friends, so there!

Ken Cheng

Los Angeles, CA

ACT 3/SCENE 202: GODARD & THE NBA

"The Film Critic" by Ruth Yu

There was this moment the other night while I was watching Jean Luc Godard’s “Masculin, Feminin” when it occurred to me that a drop of saliva had trickled down the corner of my mouth and I had somehow lost memory of the previous three minutes. At first, I wondered to myself whether it was the incline bench presses I had performed just before the movie that had induced this brief narcoleptic episode. Then I remembered I had experienced eerily similar bouts of hypnotic displacement the LAST time I watched “Masculin, Feminin” - not to mention “Pierrot Le Fou,” “Weekend,” and “Alphaville.” The realization that the sum of my Godardian viewing experiences resulted in a less than 100% awake rate naturally led me to question my own benighted cinematic palate. I pondered the consequences my reputation would endure if word of my repeated fits of lost time ever became known to the group of cineastes with whom I viewed the film. Five minutes of self-conscious panic later, I was reading a column on Chris Cohan’s disastrous tenure as the owner of the Golden State Warriors.

It was somewhere around the third paragraph of Tim Kawakami’s column that my mind began drifting back towards images of the lovely Catherine Duport and the ephiphany occurred. Godard was TRYING to put me to sleep. His whole filmmaking philosophy centered around shattering viewer expectations and expanding the vocabulary of filmmaking by using the tools of the cinema to twist the medium’s purpose into its mirror opposite. Is it so ludicrous, then, to believe that Monsieur Godard was purposefully trying to bore his audiences by presenting them with completely uninteresting, unformed characters posing and proselytizing their way through Paris in non-sensical and abstract narratives? This sudden awareness of Godard’s true intention washed over me like a hot shower. “He doesn’t want me to like his movies!” I suddenly felt completely and utterly vindicated in my years-old apathy for Godard’s filmography.

I wonder if my fellow film lovers realize this? I wonder if some of these hardcore cineastes going on and on about how great Godard’s films are realize their effusiveness only fuels this decades old prank he’s been playing on them. It’s as if their desire to become latter day devotees to the Cahiers du Cinema - and the subsequent tendency to over-intellectualize an inherently visceral medium in cinema - has led to a general amnesia regarding cinema’s first and most important metric of success: its ability to provoke an emotional reaction from the viewer. Man, I love it when my obsession with the NBA leads to greater cinematic understanding.

Ken Cheng

Los Angeles, CA

ACT 3/SCENE 201: THE LESSON OF STREET FIGHTER II

There are two memories I remember with distinction from the summer of 1992(1). The first revolves around the unprecedented level of awkwardness surrounding my first day of high school (more on that another time). The second involves my inability to sleep the night before the release of the “Street Fighter II” video game for the Super Nintendo.(2) Now for those of you who’ve either forgotten or purposefully repressed your memories of the early 90s, let me remind you that Street Fighter II was THE arcade game of that generation. Every day after school, clusters of middle school kids could be found engaging in pick-up SFII competitions at one of the two locations with the game in my town(3), which always led me to question where in the world they were getting so many quarters. When word hit that everyone’s favorite game of animated bloodsport was making its way to home video game consoles for the first time, a collective adolescent insanity broke out. Luckily, my brothers and I were among the first to put our names on the waiting list. The night before release day felt as long and torturous as a stay at Abu Ghraib. The only thoughts running through my mind, it seemed, were the strategies I would use to defeat my brothers using my go-to character Chun-Li. The next day finally arrived and with it, our prized copy of a video game that would provoke at least a thousand hours of gaming and a dozen near fist fights that summer.(4)

Thinking about the level of unbridled excitement I felt that night and would subsequently continue to feel throughout that summer, it dawns upon me that the number of times I’ve anticipated anything so eagerly can probably be counted on two hands. Is that sad? Are adults - which I grudingly accept that I am now - even capable of being thrilled in that way anymore? Will I lose an entire night’s rest the night before my wedding day?

I suppose I’m just getting nostalgic again, which is weird because I’m somewhere between 30 and 58 times happier now than I was at the miserable age of 13. So perhaps the answer is that consistent or continual happiness puts a ceiling on the extreme adrenaline rushes those less frequent bursts of joy provoke? Am I okay with that? I used to think that nothing could match the power of the short-lived and highly-intense flame. But perhaps that was a wrong-headed sentiment all along. Perhaps the medium-to-high simmer will always be more powerful simply because of its longevity.(5)  I may not lose sleep and I may not be knocked out by a Guile-produced sonic boom, but I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing.

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(1) For those of you slow with arithmetic, that’s 17 years ago; meaning a high school senior has lived his/her entire life in the time since that summer. I feel positively geriatric at the moment.
(2) People forget what an incredible upgrade the SuperNES was at the time over the original Nintendo. Of course, both seem prehistoric compared to today’s consoles. 

(3) That’d be the 7-11 in Charter Square and the Go Getters Pizza in Edgewater Plaza.
(4) My brothers and certain friends were notoriously sore losers. They considered my overuse of Chun-Li’s unstoppable jumping spike kick to be dirty pool.
(5) After all, doesn’t a braise always produce richer, tastier flavors than a flash fry?

Ken Cheng

Los Angeles, CA