johnnyhongkong says…

As I wait for my Amazon order of The New World and the Criterion Collection’s Days of Heaven DVDs to arrive in the next few days, there is news of Terrence Malick’s next movie Tree of Life with Heath Ledger and Sean Penn.

Depending on which incarnation of the script he is working from, it could be:

• A multi-character drama about the Middle East during World War I, sort of like Magnolia meets Lawrence of Arabia.
• AÂ movie about prehistoric times featuring a minotaur.
• Both – as the script was originally intended as Q back in the 70′s before Malick bounced.
• Or none because as we know, a script in Malick’s case usually has little to nothing to do with the finished project.

Since PT Anderson seems to be doing his best impression of Malick with There Will be Blood, I’m hoping that Malick returns the favor and weaves a complex tapestry of life in the Mid-East circa 1915.

So my x-rays have come back and they think they know what’s wrong with me –

There is no fracture or dislocation in my wrist.  It only took them four working days to get back to me.  Apparently, they couldn’t find my results…

Anyway, since there is no structural trauma, they say rest it for a month.

Blah.

But acupuncture was a trip.  The acupuncturist stuck needles in my neck, arm, forearm, pinky and ankle and then sent an electrical current through the needles.  Other than hitting trigger points when she inserted the needles into my neck and forearm, it was painless.  The neck and forearm insertions, however, hurt.  A lot.  I yelped.  I’m told that this is supposed to be good, getting a needle into a tight muscle.  It was so tight that she had to yank on it to get it out.

The electrical current felt totally weird, like buzzing. 

True to all the studies that say acupuncture works for pain management, after the treatment, my wrist hurt less.

So first there was the denim wedding dress and now, Mary Milan, my betrothed and incurable cheesehead, wants to change our classy and elegant city meets country wedding into a Green Bay Packers themed affair such as the nuptials of this Fond du Lac couple.

All through the Packers’ victory tonight on Monday Night Football, she kept trying to convince me to change our colors from wine and chocolate to green and yellow. I know that the wedding day is all about the bride but Mary Milan must be stopped.

Postea: That’s not Mary Milan nor me in the photo taken a few weeks back at the Bears-Packers game. That is, however, Justin Timberlake in the background, not wanting James Vanderbeek’s life, and shotgunning a Miller Lite. As the man who already broughten sexy back, J.T. is obviously a lifetime member of the More Taste League. Jessica Biel was at the game too.

I was recently asked to write a little ditty about all the films that prominently feature Los Angeles as a character in this year’s AFI Los Angeles Film Festival (11/1-11/11). One of the films I covered was Lynch, a documentary about – you guessed it – David Lynch.

It begins and ends with references to Bastille Day. In the beginning, Lynch tells the readers of his website that Bastille Day is still months away and at the end of the film, he proudly announces that it is, in fact Bastille Day. The last images of the film are of Lynch building a shrine to the French with pastries, a bottle of wine and a French flag.

When I submitted my interview questions to the filmmakers, even though it had nothing to do with my article, I couldn’t help not asking about the significance of Bastille Day for David Lynch. And since I couldn’t use the quote in my article, here it is:

…Bastille Day is a day for David in which he gets to eat croissants with chocolate and jam in a very special way. David loves the French people and their country.

It’s like a birthday for him where “he gets to eat croissants with chocolate and jam in a very special way.”

It just melts my heart.

Went to the doctor to get my wrist checked out on Monday. This is how it went down:

Called my primary to see if I could come in but he had no appointments. To see someone, I would have to go to a different medical office to see his covering physician.

Fine, I thought. All I needed was an X-Ray. Any doctors’ office has an X-Ray. I’d get my films, they’d splint or cast me and I’d be on my way.

But no…

Unfortunately, the “other” medical office – in Beverly Hills, mind you – ran a JV operation. The nurse was one of the most inept people I’ve ever met, the doctor was weird and had dirty finger nails, and seemed to not want to have anything to do with me. She did a quick examination, looked at me in horror and ran out of the exam room saying, “We’re going to do a bunch of things.”

Uh…

When she returned, she told me that they were going to take some pictures of my wrist. I began to get up from the exam table to follow her to the X-Ray room when she stopped me. “We don’t have one here. In the meantime, wear a splint and take some Advil.”

Seriously? “Wear a splint and take some Advil?” That’s the best you got? I was doing that before I came in to see the doctor.

Inept Nurse came back with a referral to the Imaging Department at Cedars Sinai but gave no indication as to how I would get my results or a cast if I should need one.

After a two hour wait, I finally got in for my X-Ray.

Two days later, nobody has returned my calls about my results, so I’m just wearing a splint and taking advil.

In the event that it’s a sprain, Mary Milan is taking a more proactive approach and taking me to acupuncture. I told her that I was the mystical Asian one in our relationship. It must have angered her because she dropped some smoke bombs and disappeared like a ninja.

On Saturday, I went out for a little 5K run on my normal route from our apartment in WeHo to La Cienega and back.

As I was nearing the last 3/4 mile, I noticed a guy walking ahead of me having just left a garage sale.  He was carrying a VCR, talking on his cell phone, and was wearing a shirt that said, “Hawaii starts here” on the back.  As I contemplated what this could have meant, I suddenly found myself in the air, horizontal to the concrete.

The thoughts came really quickly:

“Hawaii starts hhh…you can save yourself…Naw, dude, you’re going to scrub…fucking old running shoes…whee, flying!  Shit – face plant.”

JHK meet concrete.

My right leg had swung out to the side and was wedged in between the wheel of a parked Jeep Cherokee and the curb.  This prevented me from quickly getting up and running away.  Precious seconds were being wasted as I could not get up and run away, which would have saved myself from the indignity of having to acknowledge that I had totally, without question or malicious provocation, scrubbed.

The guy wearing the T-shirt spun around and said, “HOLY SMOKES.  ARE YOU OKAY?”

I finally got my ankle free, stood up, nodded at him and started running.  He looked at me incredulously, “MAN, ARE YOU OKAY???!!”  His concern gave me pause because it suddenly occurred to me that I might have a bone sticking out of my leg and that I just didn’t notice from the endorphins.  I did a quick self check, saw that I was fine and continued my run, finishing in the neighborhood of my normal time, about 26 minutes.

Once home and the endorphins (and embarassment) wore off, it became clear that I broke my fall with my left knee (scrapped) and right wrist which I had sprained about five weeks ago and had only recently started healing.  While Mary Milan has been applying Neosporin to the scrape, the wrist is probably re-sprained at best and cracked at worst.  After a day of rest, ice and eating Advil like candy, I’m going to the doctor to get it checked out.  Keep your fingers crossed because I can hardly do it without pain.

Ugh…

Taking a break from all the gratuitous wedding blogging, we return to one of my favorite characters – Jean Claude Van Damme. It was his birthday yesterday and Grady Hendrix at Slate did God’s work for the day and put together a retrospective of Van Dammage. A few choice cuts:

You’d think [Cyborg] was the perfect showcase for Jean-Claude Van Damme, but watching him pit his acting ability against Lundgren’s is like watching one of Jerry’s Kids get in the ring with Mike Tyson. Even as a zombified killing machine, Jean-Claude is clearly out of his depth.

But he’s managed to do a lot with a little. Jean-Claude has three expressions: worried, charming, and doing a split. Of the three, doing a split is the most convincing. Getting crucified in Cyborg? Worried. Disposing of a bomb that could blow up a sacred Muslim shrine and start a jihad in The Order? Really worried. Meeting a spunky lady reporter in any number of movies? Charming. Confronting the hitmen who killed his wife? Do a split.

For a lot of actors, not being able to act would be an obstacle, but Jean-Claude has transformed it into his trademark. Acting? Acting is for weirdos like Forest Whitaker (Bloodsport), Kylie Minogue (Street Fighter), or Kieran Culkin (Nowhere to Run). Jean-Claude is just a normal, average guy, you know? When he fights, he likes to head-butt his opponents and kick them in the nuts, the way normal people fight.

And of course Hendrix reports on the biggest news of all – that Jean Claude Van Damme will be playing himself in a movie called J.C.V.D in J.C.V.D.

Can we just stop and take a moment to reflect on how monumental this is? It’s like Jesus Christ playing himself in The Passion of the Christ.