Open Buddha

R and I went "camping" this weekend for one night though it was a bit posh for it to really be considered camping. We rented a cabin up in Snohomish county. The place turns out to only be about 30 minutes from home without traffic (which makes it closer than work). It’s in a nice park by a lake. It had lights and heat and was a fairly new building, which was great because it started really pouring Friday night. I felt sorry for the people in tents the next day but it was nice to get away.

On Saturday, R and I went down to the University District and she found me a used (but pristine) copy of The Dalai Lama’s Secret Temple, so I was able to take my library copy back. While we were out, I took R to Thai Tom’s, the best Thai food in Seattle, since she’d never been there before. We wound up not having to wait outside more than five minutes though it did take something like 35 minutes to get our food once we ordered… I remember going to Thai Tom’s with Fire_faery and having the whole thing take two hours with all of the waiting. The food was excellent though and not to be forgotten. While we were
there, we stopped by Scarecrow Video and picked up the import DVD versions of the Beat Takeshi version of Zatoichi, Battle Royale II, and Hero with Jet Li. The first and last are at the Seattle International Film Festival this year.

BRII was a bit of a disappointment. It was stylistically similar to the first one but the whole theme of children against adults as a revolutionary movement just became innane. Zatoichi was great though. I loved it a lot more than some of Takeshi's movies and it had a lot of good moments throughout along with being well put-together overall.

We finished watching Hero just a couple of hours ago. You can get a synopsis here and the trailer is viewable here. It had similar themes to The Emperor and the Assassin, which I own, to do with the first Emperor and the unification of China (and the conquest of the Zhao Kingdom and assassins…). The latter was a more dramatic movie overall and more touching in many ways but I quite enjoyed Hero. It's somewhere betweenCrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and some of the better Hong Kong action movies. Lots of good martial action, some wirework, but also thoughtful, to some degree, and not always having a simple answer to whether someone's actions are evil if the ends justify the means. I don't like Jet Li that much but I don't dislike him either. He isn't the actor that I prefer though. Cinematically, it was a beautifully filmed movie with a lot of great shots. For different versions of past events, costumes and shots changed from very bright reds to blues to whites to greens. It was an interesting effect.

Last night, because of the holiday, R and I met up with Ashley, Oniyeh, and a few others at the Vogue for "Fetish Night." Apparently, the club had some more organized activities planned (which we, thankfully, missed most of) so, along with the Monday holiday, the place was packed and a lot more people were geared up than I've normally seen on the supposed "Fetish" night there. Purple Mark was there in good form and a number of us seemed entranced at various points with a particular woman's love affair with the giant brass pole on the raised stage. It was good to get out of the house, hear some music, mix with friends and drink a bit. R and I don't go clubbing very often though we talk about doing more. It's
hard to get a lot of excitement about just the two of us going a lot of the time though.

Tomorrow, it's back to work…