A NEIGHBORHOOD STORY

A fun memory:

I moved into Park Slope in the summer of 1997, during the ass end of when the area was still kind of sketchy. There were loads of dodgy elements at the time, but the memory that's bringing a smile to my face comes from when I was still drinking way too much beer on a daily basis (which led to me weighing around 270 pounds; these days I am about sixty pounds lighter).

There was one afternoon where I realized my fridge had no beer, so I went to a now-defunct bodega to stock up. I was a regular at the place and the owner/shopkeeper knew me on sight. I went to the cooler and picked up a case of Budweiser (not great, but cheap and it got me where I wanted to go), but when I went to the counter to pay, the owner was nowhere to be found. Instead the counter was manned by his adorable daughter, who was all of maybe six years old. I waited for her dad to return but something held him up, so, being quite aware of exactly how much a case of bud cost, I gave the little girl exact change, which she put away into the cash register like a pro, and then I departed. Yes, I bought a case of beer from a six-year-old girl. That was how it was back then. Today, in modern boujee Park Slope, one of the most desired neighborhoods to live in in NYC, that would be unthinkable.

Side note: Though I swilled Bud with abandon from high school through age 42, I bet if I tried to drink one now I would spit it out in disgust. Back then I had no palate. I simply wanted to numb myself with what was decent enough to afford in bulk, and Budweiser was my cheap stuff of choice. That said, if I could have afforded sixers or cases of it in bulk, my beer of choice would have been either Grolsch or Bass ale.

JACKPOT! (2024)

A winning lottery ticket unleashes complete and utter greed-fueled homicidal madness against the winner in a dystopian near-future Los Angeles.

I just watched JACKPOT! (2024) on Amazon Prime. Think IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD set in a dystopian near-future Los Angeles, with Awkwafina as Latie Kim, a wannabe actress who's the winner of a ten-billion dollar lottery, and the wrinkle in the rules of the game is that she has to make it to sundown to win the loot, but it's open season on her until then, as the person who kills her before sundown wins the lottery prize. Thus, the entire city loses its collective mind and literally every adult person is out to kill her. Pursued by hordes of greed-crazed maniacs, armed with pretty much anything they can grab, our heroine tries to survive a citywide relentless gauntlet of homicide with a mile-wide target on her back and her location tracked and broadcast by a drone. Her only chance of survival is the aid of Noel (John Cena), a hulking badass whose profession is keeping lottery winners alive so they collect on the prize.

It's a ridiculous movie, punctuated with endless mayhem and chases, and as such it's a fun enough live-action cartoon. I usually cannot stand Awkwafina, but I really enjoyed her in this, and the same can be said of Simu Liu as Louis Lewis, a rival professional protector of lottery winners who has a history of bad blood with nice guy Noel. John Cena is as lovably goofy as ever, and he solidly delivers with both the comedy and the ass-kicking.

 

Not a classic, but definitely worth a watch.

 

Promo image for the Amazing streaming release.

FOUR YEARS

 Today marks the fourth anniversary of my ongoing dialysis journey kicking off with a visit to the ER for difficulty breathing. While there, my nephrologist's predictions came true and I had to begin emergency dialysis via a catheter installed in my carotid artery. I had to have dialysis performed via the catheter until the fistula in my left forearm matured enough for the regular treatment via needles in my arm, and let me assure you that having one of these goddamned things sticking out of my neck for a few months was quite uncomfortable, but I eventually got used to it. And once I graduated to the fistula, the worst was yet to come...

Hours after the emergency surgery that installed a catheter into my carotid artery.

KYOSHIRO NEMURI: IN THE SPIDER'S LAIR (1968)

 

Anti-hero ronin Kyoshiro Nemuri (Raizo Ichikawa) confronts one of the most vile bitches in samurai cinema history. (I would call her the "hard C-word" and she would deserve it, but I am too much of a gentleman.)

After decades of hearing it touted as an all-time classic, I finally saw KYOSHIRO NEMURI: IN THE THE SPIDER'S LAIR, and maybe it was due to all the hype, but I have to admit that I was underwhelmed.

Also known as THE HUMAN TARANTULA, this 11th in the "Sleepy Eyes of Death" samurai series pits titular wandering anti-hero Kyoshiro Nemuri (Raizo Ichikawa), the red-haired son of a black mass conducted by Portuguese priests who raped his mother as part of the ritual, against a brother and sister pair of unspeakably sadistic sociopaths who keep a dungeon full of innocent villagers whom they haul out and murder in cruel ways for their amusement. Nemuri is a particularly nihilistic take on the samurai protagonist, as he owes allegiance to no one and basically doesn't give a shit about anyone or anything, so little that he does is noble or heroic. He's a rather unlikable sort, but even he recognizes that the evil siblings need killing, and the path to that ultimate resolution features a very high body count indeed, though not punctuated with spewing gallons of arterial spray like in the LONE WOLF AND CUB or HANZO THE RAZOR flicks. 

The film is well-crafted and acted, but somehow I just could not connect with Nemuri or really care about anything in the narrative, other than seeing the bad guys get what was coming to them, and when they finally do meet their well-earned fates, it was nowhere near as cathartic as their deaths deserved to be. The brother and sister are two of the worst villains in a genre that's packed with utter scumbags for antagonists, so them being as nasty as they are and standing out as exemplars of soulless cruelty as much as they do is really saying something and may be a key element to why this entry is so revered. And make no mistake, Nemuri is a slayer who litters the landscape with bodies, so there's certainly no skimping on the sword-slashing action. It may just be that between the time I first heard about this film and its lofty rep and the present, I have seen perhaps 200 samurai films of wildly varying quality, several of which are all-time favorites that I will eagerly revisit, even the ones that concentrate more on drama than sword fights and gory violence (1960's BENTEN KOZO being a prime example) involved me way more than this one did. For me, it was worth sitting through once, just to see it. 

I have previously seen the first entry in the series, but it was a long time ago and its details have faded from memory, though I do recall finding Nemuri's inaugural adventure to be an interesting character study of a protagonist who is pretty much the antithesis of the heroic ronin ideal. My lukewarm response to IN THE SPIDER’S LAIR notwithstanding, I am quite willing to give the rest of the Kyoshiro Nemuri outings a chance. In fact, I welcome the opportunity.

 

Poster from the original Japanese theatrical release.