Discord

Finally got on Discord and joined a server today. I know everyone else has been using them for years but I’ve only just found a reason to - or thought I did.

Back in the day we had newsgroups, then chat rooms, then all that went away as social media giants like Facebook took hold. What was the point of a private chat room when people could put their opinions and dis/likes on Facebook and everyone who knew them (and then everyone that didn’t) could just jump in anyway?

Now it’s come full circle, with invitation-only chat rooms - with added voice, video and jukebox functions - making a big comeback. Share your screen to show you gaming, working, watch-alongs. Chat and video-chat. Type messages and add gifs, images and links. Whatever you want is now in your private chat room once again - and it’s only who you invite.

So today I got an invitation to one and I joined Discord just so I could get in. A 5-minute process that led me down a rabbit hole of fun, frolics and camaraderie the likes of which I haven’t experienced since the Supernatural fandom Hell Bus years, or the Farscape Wormhole Watch years.

Totally worth it. An early bleak, freezing Saturday afternoon became a laugh riot and adrenaline rush as we exchanged our best screenshots, got in our best jokes, welcomed all the fellow noobs and established personalities. A brilliant time was had by all, I think.

The only downside to this is the time zone clash, but obviously that was always going to be a problem and there’s nothing you can do about it. But it means that when I wake up at 6am because I’m bored, now I’ll have a reason to log in and see what everyone else is up to. I’m not saying I need a reason to get out of bed these days (even for work) but I pretty much need a reason to get out of bed these days.

But hey, today was a highlight and I’m so glad I accepted that invitation to the server. Sometimes exploring is more than you’d hoped for.

Soopytwist.

2020

Presented without comment (except that one).

Stranger (비밀의 숲) - seasons 1 and 2

Lockdown 2.0 has us all confined to places we probably don’t want to be, at least for some of the time. Netflix has provided a plethora of stuff to watch, not least of all the stellar Kingdom (킹덤), the Korean imperial zombie horror / thriller that was a solid 9/10 for me. Great ideas, plot twists and proper full-on zombies, the whole two seasons were a blast that I couldn’t stop watching.

On the back of that Netflix recommended another Korean drama to me; Stranger (비밀의 숲) from 2017. Full of award-winning power houses from South Korea’s acting best of the best, and written by someone who enjoys torturing viewers with proper mysteries, I was hooked by the end of the first episode. The characters are new to me, fun to guess at, brilliant to get to know. The budget, the production, the whole thing is a different flavour of thriller than the sometimes plodding or predictable American and British fare that I’m used to. It differs again from the Hong Kong dramas of the day, and even from the Taiwan crime dramas I’ve seen.

You know that old adage, “you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all”? I feel like that with a lot of American stuff; there’s only so many times you can watch the straight white dude win in the end just because he’s the ‘good guy’. I needed something different, and Kingdom was my second foray into Korean drama. (Full disclosure; my first was Suspicious Partners [수상한 파트너], which was all love story all the time and that’s not my thing. I gave up on it after a few episodes.) It turned out to be a gateway to twisty-turny mysteries, where they don’t waste time building up to something only to find that there’s one mild twist at the end. Instead you get logical paths answered in one or two episodes instead of five or six, and then you get a twist that sets you off on a different path. It’s fun, it’s new - and while everyone in South Korea or the rest of the K-drama world will think this particular series is nothing new, it’s new to me, and I’m having fun discovering a whole new genre.

Kingdom was my primer. Stranger has been, for me, the ultimate game of Cluedo - after you determine what the root crime is about that kicks off everything to follow. It’s clever, it’s full-on, it’s fascinating. We have political intrigue where people are trying to one-up each other, jockeying for positions they covet in police and prosecutors’ offices. We have personal dilemmas, where employees have to think very carefully about what they are doing by opening up cans of worms. We have chains of events kept in motion by people unknown, until it all finally comes out. Strap yourselves in for a long, slow burn of many twists and satisfying discoveries: keeping all these plates in the air at all times is the amazing cast of characters.

It would be remiss of me not to mention how big the stars are behind this series. While they are heavyweights in the movie world they also appear in TV dramas, mostly to keep themselves paid, like every actor. We have big names here, totally unknown to me except that they bring so much life to the characters I found myself picking favourites within the first ten minutes of air time. The way the characters come over, bit by bit, layer by layer, revealed only by their interactions with everyone else serving their own ulterior motives, kept me glued to the subtitles. So who are these people?

We are presented with two main characters, who I attached to very quickly. The first is Lieutenant Han Yeo-Jin, a police officer with the tenacity of a ratting terrier but the heart of someone who knows what it’s like to be on the outside due to the cruelty of others outside your control. Played with brilliant flair by Bae Doona, she is a stark contrast to the prosecutors we meet. Her police colleagues are half with her and half against, not really understanding her. Her one true friend, Jang Geon, is a great detective but needs her guidance in navigating the structure of the police force. She doesn’t seem to care for all that on the surface, although she sees it going on. She dresses in brighter colours than everyone else, she draws little cartoons of people or things she thinks about, she is lively, animated, fun and probably too much sunshine for her colleagues on some days.

Her counterpart in being devoted to truth and tracking it down works in the prosecutor’s office, not historically a place where alliances with police are welcome. Prosecutor Hwang Si-Mok is diligent, effective, sharp as a knife and equally as dangerous as he refuses to take part in office politics, agendas or camps. Partly the reason for this, and the wrinkle that keeps this whole drama ticking toward its conclusion to well, is the surgery he had to go through as a teen. A problem with some part of his brain caused incalculable pain as he got older, something to do with loud noises or certain frequencies (I guess like a severe attack of super-concentrated tinnitus). In order for him to live something like a normal life, he undergoes a partial lobotomy. This causes him to lose empathy and other most emotions. He is now a model prosecutor, just as intended - he has no sentiment, no pesky emotions getting in the way of his duty to finding the truth and bringing it to court with winning cases. He appears dour, uninterested in small talk or social niceties other than what protocol demands, and is totally aloof from life in general. He should be a boring character - but a wonderful portrayal by Cho Seung-Woo makes him fascinating to watch, where every micro-expression carries more weight than anyone else’s emotion.

Enter Lieutenant Han. Over the next 16 episodes she will bully Hwang into acknowledging that he has sporadic attacks and it’s physically painful enough to render him unconscious. She will bully him into accepting her little sketches of him, of how his brain should be slowly filling back up with emotional control since the surgery, how there is hope of him not turning out totally alone for the rest of his life. And she does all this by smiling at him, speaking to him like a human being, treating him carefully rather than being harsh with him and using the clenched jaws and dirty scowls the men in his office direct at him for being different.

Between them they will uncover everything that’s going down, sharing things on the quiet, working out theories and reasons and motives over ramen, text messages, shared looks. By the time we get to the conclusion, their very quiet, understated teamwork will be legend. And for good reason - they are a force to be reckoned with, one with the determination to see it through because you uncover the truth to prevent further harm, to stop people being hurt, and the other determined to get to the truth because it’s the right thing to do and who cares about privilege and people thinking they can get away with anything because they’re your senior?

I’m not going to lie, this was epic for me. Two people getting to the resolution through different means and being Team Awesome despite everyone’s complete disdain and disapproval? Totally platonic BFFs who don’t even know they’re BFFs, taking down anyone who’s connected to the whole sordid case? I’m in.

And let’s not forget the supporting cast - we have magnificent cockroach Seo Dong-Jae, who is doing his best to kiss the right arse at the right time in order to secure promotion. He is a focal point and so important to everything that goes down, and I enjoy watching him attempting to insert himself into the lives of strategically important people. The way he gets himself into scrapes and then manages to get out again by falling into a bigger one is epic and is a fascinating juxtaposition to what everyone else is up to. He could not be any more opposite to Hwang Si-Mok in every way; he’s loud, he’s brash, he’s immaculately dressed and perfectly coiffed at all times. He’s confident in his ability to come out on top at everything… until he doesn’t. Lee Joon-Hyuk is so good in this role it’s like he was born for it.

With season one done, I had to find more stuff to occupy me - and then it turns out there’s a season two.

Ok, if I thought season one was good with the plot twists and the fun friends shenanigans, then ai-yah I was naïve. Season two is like season one on steroids. Honestly, it’s great stuff and it covers so much more than season one. The writer has said that she has enough for five seasons, and I for one hope that’s a promise. Season two gave us separation, personal discovery, deep dives into office politics and best of all, the most epic Hwang/Han shipping we could ask for. Still Team Awesome once they hit their stride, him letting her help in times of dire vulnerability when he spends his life covering it up, him going over everyone’s heads to step in for her without her knowledge but only when she needed it - everything I could have asked for, and especially as it’s without all that boring romance shit.

The final scene made me grin uncontrollably at the way certain characters were coming to terms with things, and although it ended in a frustrating way, I have heard there may be a season three some time in the next two years.

Just about time for me to move onto new dramas, miss these two seasons, and then go back and watch them all again.

Perfect.

With Friends Like These

Done some writing. I blame this on Covid nights and having Green Hornet (2011) on repeat due to its feel-good factor, cheap vodka and equally cheap pork scratchings.

Ladies, gentlemen, boths and neithers, I give you:

Title: With Friends Like These

Rated T for injury details, naughty words, fights and semi-nudity (not my fault).

Summary:

Dealing with the aftermath of the movie, new drug dealers, trust issues, new District Attorneys, undercover work, phobias and weaknesses, dating co-workers, how to be friends; it would all be so much easier if Britt and Kato could just get along. Even oil and water can mix temporarily, right?

Disclaimer: 

I do not own any Green Hornet characters, names, likenesses or the suggestion thereof. This is all for fun, not for profit. Unless you add me to any favourites lists or leave reviews/comments - then I get to smile. Linky-link-link: here at An Archive of Our Own under my name TozaBoma (which is where we collectively won a Hugo Award last year) and here at Fanfiction dot net under my name Mardy Lass.

If you even visit the page, I thank you.

ST: DIS 3x02: I-Yensch, You-Yensch

Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!

Here be SPOILERS for Star Trek Discovery series 3 episode 2!

Last week we had what I felt was a TNG mixed with ST: Beyond episode. It was brilliant, and since I’ve watched it again I still like everything that went down. Now we get to the follow-up - last week was all Michael and what she was up to; this week is the crew of the Discovery’s turn.

We pick up where we left off; they made it through the wormhole but in a Farscape moment they’ve lost control and end up ploughing headlong through a couple of miniature moon-type bodies. Eventually they meet the planet below much faster and rougher than they’d like, and to all intents and purposes are dead in the water. They need tech stuff they don’t have to get their comms and pretty much everything back up and running - so here we go, let’s take an away team out to the nearby settlement and barter for what we need.

Saru is awesome the whole episode. He’s a real brick in this and I think a much better Captain than he ever thought possible. He’s commanding, confident, and downright fantastic. I’d vote for him.

Poor Detmer is somewhat shell-shocked. Or is it something deeper? She brought the ship in, she guided them down and her piloting skills are celebrated. But she’s not feeling it - or much of anything, it seems, apart from maybe horror at seeing how many people are currently in sickbay and either dead or nearly there due to what she must assume is a result of her flying.

Saru and Tilly’s bartering aside (some fantastic aliens new to me and Ensign Tilly being a good choice as a member of the First Contact team), shit hits the fan in a Farscape way when all you want is to do a trade so you can get the hell out of there. Again Saru is brilliant as a leader of people, and the locals on the planet realise he is the Starfleet that they thought extinct. Again we hear that “we knew you’d come back” - it seems since The Burn at least 120 years before, some people have harboured hope that the Federation wasn’t completely destroyed. Paul and Hugh seem to be working things out, and although Georgiou is aggressively attempting to get everything she needs personally and screw everyone else bar maybe Michael, at the moment her needs are aligning with that of the rest of the crew. Jett Reno is still a favourite with me due to her wit and deadpan delivery, even when she is giving people a pep talk that cuts through the grease. Even poor Ensign Gene HAZMAT who was left to shovel up what was left of Leland made me smile.

Slowly but surely, Saru and Tilly realise how far ahead some of the tech is around them, and the barter situation that was going so well turns into a newcomers-at-gunpoint situation. It seems our friend Book from episode 1 is not a typical courier at all (maybe he was pretending to be a courier at the Mercantile to cover his species-rescuing ways), as every other one we’ve met so far including this new Zareh is a complete arsehole. He’s also a smart one, who figures out they’ve travelled in time and are also basically helpless. Zareh proves just how much of a dick he is, and it looks like everything is about to go incredibly Pete Tong.

In other news, it seems the Tellerites are thriving as they control an exchange, which means along with the Orions and Andorians, we have an uneasy balance of power. And then Zareh calls Saru something interesting - a “V’draysh” Captain. Apparently this was the same word used in Short Treks (“Calypso”) - a word shortened from its original for ease, like “going to” ending up “gonna”. In this case it’s short for “Federation”.

Enter Georgiou with typical intent to throw a spanner in the works, and you have your action and adventure that ends up freeing the V’draysh types and emancipating the locals. All that remains is to get their newly fixed tech back to the ship before its eaten by the planet’s ravenous parasitic ice - and be totally shocked as they finally meet up with Michael.

I enjoyed this episode - a lot. It was a massive crew effort and it’s set up such possibilities that I can’t wait to see what’s coming next. We have new worlds, capacity for new or evolved alien races, new situations and what is beginning to feel like a sprawling universe of adventures to fall into.

At times it felt like a good old-fashioned Farscape episode, and that’s a complete surprise to me as Farscape was always the anti-Star Trek. However it works well here, and with a true Star Trek ending we know we’re in good hands.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print, I think.

Soopytwist, everyone.

Interaction-starved?

At time of writing, Boris Johnson has placed the area I live in a Tier 3 lockdown. This means… well, whatever they say it means, which changes from minute to minute. The upshot is I work from home and visit the office to pick up paperwork maybe once a month. The rest of the time our department works with an MS Teams video call going - we mute ourselves when we don’t need anyone, and only turn the mic on to ask colleagues about something or to let them know what’s happening. This has worked really well despite my concerns, and we as a team have adapted to this whole working from home thing quite easily.

What it’s also done is inserted us into the home lives of our colleagues. Now luckily for us, we like all the members of our team and there’s no awkwardness with this. Instead of us now arriving in the office, talking about whatever TV show or weather is current as we work, we’re now party to everything that goes on in people’s houses. We see the grandma arrive to pick up the young daughter to childcare. We see the husband or wife come into the room behind people to pick up something or provide a fresh brew. We see the dogs and cats trying to get attention from their loved one who seems to be ignoring them to stare at a laptop screen all day. We see the young kids rushing up to show their parents their work from school, or to complain they’re hungry, or ask if they can turn on the TV. And all of these people, because they’re functioning members of society, wave to the camera and say hello, say that they hope we’re well where we are, etc. It’s nice. It’s a break from the work routine.

It’s also made us more friends than just colleagues, I think. Now when we come on in the morning we don’t dive straight into the “right, who’s doing this task this morning so I crack on with this other one?” Instead it’s “how’s Grandma today - is she still picking up your daughter?” or “any news on your brother-in-law in hospital?” and “did you get that toy for your dog?” And it’s made my colleagues realise something.

I used to live abroad. I was there for eleven years. And when I came back, I had to adjust to 90% of my friends being still there whilst I was not. Time zones may have tried to stop us, but wi-fi enabled communications apps made it easy to video chat to them, to have a simple phone call, to constantly text and send memes. Before the outbreak of Covid, my colleagues thought my life was a lonely one, with no-one in my flat but me, no pets or children or partners in the place, no friends around the corner. What they didn’t understand is that I felt like my friends were all here, just out of sight - because they were a Whatsapp message or a FaceTime call away. It’s been like that for me since 2002, when I moved to Hong Kong and used the primitive comms apps of the time to text for free and video call family in the UK.

Now we’re all at home and they’re using the same comms apps to keep in contact with friends and family who don’t live with them, they’re starting to understand why my life is not lonely. Now they get that you’re never truly alone when you have a smartphone - for better or for worse. Right now I think it’s for the better of course. I normally do. In fact, when I think it’s not a good thing I simply turn it off. Problem solved.

I think this prolonged lockdown is having an affect on not just how you behave at home, but how you react now to people in general. For example: I went out today to get a haircut. I got to a pedestrian crossing, waited for the traffic to stop, and then me and the people on the other side of the road started to cross. The car to my right had its windows shut as they were calling someone on a hands-free phone. We could all clearly hear the phone ringing. And then someone picked up and called “HELLO?” Without thinking (I believe), me and three other pedestrians raised our hands and joyfully called out “HELLO” like we were shouting to a ship out at sea. We all realised what we’d done, then laughed about it behind our face masks and carried on walking.

Why did we respond like this? Because it’s polite to reply to people saying hello to you? Because it’s a knee-jerk reaction to greet someone if you think you’re being spoken to? Who can say. But I know I wouldn’t have done that before all this Covid kicked off.

Perhaps we’re all getting interaction-starved. Yes, we have video chats and constant contact with people, but it’s all in controlled environments. When you put us back into a situation that could throw up weird events like the HELLO incident, maybe we all fall back on instincts. Maybe we still need to be in those situations every now and again to keep our horizons where they should be, otherwise how do you know up from down?

In any case, we all got a giggle out of it and we all went on our way. It was enough to amuse me on a wet and windy Manchester morning, when it was eight degrees C and feeling very much like October. Where has the time gone?

And on that note, that’s me done. Three posts in one month? What’s that about?

Soopytwist, everyone.

Image by Thomas Ulrich from Pixabay

ST: DIS 3x01: The more things change, the more they stay the same

Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!

Here be SPOILERS for Star Trek Discovery series 3 episode 1!

I sat down the other night and rewatched the two-parter of Star Trek Discovery that ended season two, just so I would remember where we were all up to.

And do you know what? It made me miss ST: DIS all over again. The way they played the long game - again - to bring us everything we needed for the actual finale was just as impressive this time around as it was the first time I watched it. Season one had its own long game - the story of Lorca that we didn’t know we needed. Season two gave us a new mystery and its resolution. I liked how it ended up and where it left everyone, because now everything can be new again. Let me explain:

One gripe I had about the concept of ST: DIS was that it was set before Kirk’s time. As with the other most recent series up to that point, Enterprise, we were looking back rather than looking forward. I wasn’t overly thrilled with this, as they would have to observe certain canon and established events. I would have been happier if it happened some time after Voyager and DS9 ended, as that would put us the furthest into the future. Also, looking back is not what Star Trek is about - it’s supposed to be about moving forward. Forward motion, after all, is all there really is at the end of the day.

Now here we are with season three, and it looks like my gripe has been addressed: we’re now in the year 3188, which I believe makes it the furthest Star Trek has ever gone forward.

In short? I liked this episode - liked it a lot. It felt like a TNG plot inside a Star Trek Beyond story. Again, let me explain:

We start off with a very Beyond scenario - Burnham and the crew have been successful, but now she is cut off from not just everyone she has ever known, but everything that was ever familiar. She is 930 years in the future where things must have changed (think for example about the difference between the the place now called the UK in 2020 and how it was in 1090). She’s trying to find her ship and her crew - she has no clue if they’re in her time, or if they even survived the wormhole that brought her 930 years into the future. She “meets” Book, and gives him a pretty good Captain James T Chris Pine Kirk speech about intention and needing help. She gradually finds herself and her determination, gets back to what makes her her, and so her adventure becomes trying to not only find herself and her ship, but the Federation itself.

Book, meanwhile, is having his own TNG episode. He appears to be a courier who is not at all fazed by having to “steal” cargo from other couriers. This random woman who falls out of a wormhole breaks his ship, forcing him to work with her to get what he needs to fix it. We find out he has a rather expensive, much sought after cargo, and yet he doesn’t want anyone calling it “cargo”, because it doesn’t belong to anyone. At this point anyone who’s ever seen a Star Trek episode knows that the cargo is probably alive, presumably sentient, and Book might not be what he appears. We are rewarded by seeing that he stole the cargo to deliver it to a different place entirely - in actuality he’s rescued a member of an endangered sentient species from becoming dinner, repatriating it to a sanctuary planet which seems to be a massive wildlife preserve bent on letting them just live free and unencumbered.

After a lot of shenanigans including drugs, fights, tech and some great set pieces, Burnham finds one Starfleet contact that she can ask for help in finding the Discovery. But all is not what it seems, and again she is left to try to cling to what she believes Starfleet and the Federation are, in the face of everyone and everything telling her that there is nothing left to cling to.

She finds people to reach out to, she finds solace in the familiar, comfort in knowing there are others who believe as she does, and to borrow a line from Beyond, she finds she still believes in “strength in unity”.

Big fan of this episode. Book is set up to be an interesting mystery, and the possibilities for his story are endless. Burnham is alone but she’s more determined than ever, and we’ve already seen a new side of her during this episode. Shout out to Aditya Sahil, who was the quiet, resolute figure of a Starfleet officer - without actually being a Starfleet officer. Interesting to note that Twitter has already decided he’s the cinnamon roll in all this and must be protected at all costs. I cannot disagree.

The editing was fantastic, especially when Burnham is drugged, and the cinematography (is that Iceland?) was stark, beautiful, peaceful - and very well shot. The FX shots were not lacking, and the scenes in the Mercantile reminded me of a bazaar you might find in Farscape. We had a return to interesting Star Trek races - Andorians, Orions - even a Lurian who looked like Morn! Cosmo, the other courier, used a language that reminded me of Danny Pudi’s character from Beyond. It would be interesting to find out if in fact it was the same language.

All in all, this was a brilliant start that filled me with the same love for Star Trek as many other episodes - it had the optimism, the drive, the characters, the tech. - all the parts I love in a good Star Trek episode. I for one really hope it continues in the same vein. I want to see more of this 32nd century and how everyone in it is surviving, what The Burn is all about and how Burnham can (hopefully) do something about it. I also think we need the ship back, but I'm sure (mostly because I've seen the trailers) that everything will get sorted in the end. You know what? I’m more than happy to watch that unfold week by week.

Peach and lube, everyone. Peach and frelling lube.

HK dramedies for the win

As we’re still in a semi-lockdown where I am, I’ve left the flat once in three weeks, and I think it was… twice in the six weeks before that. Oh hang on - I had to go into the office to pick up paperwork (paper? What is this, 2010?) once as well.

Only having to commute twelve feet to work every day has made such a huge change to my day. I can get up half an hour later. I have time to make a cooked breakfast every morning. I close my laptop at 5pm and have an extra 45 minutes to arse about in, where I used to have to contribute to the road traffic. This means I can catch up on a show or get Doom Eternal out on the PS4.

As you may know if you’ve seen any other my posts, I do still like HK dramedies. Yes they’re simplistic and yes they’re trying to do big things on a Coronation Street level of shooting schedule and budget, but they also bring out the best of actors just trying to put their backs into it and make the most of everything. And if there was ever a time to record how life is and how it can be in HK, it’s right now.

I’ve just finished a cautionary tale about scams, from online dating to stocks to scalped concert tickets. On-Lie Game (a pun on lying whilst you’re online) ran for the typical 25 episodes from July to August 2020 on TVB, that bastion of superficial entertainment. The usual faces are all here: Matt Yeung (揚明), Samantha Ko Hoi-Ning (高海寧), Helen Ma, and David Chiang. (Is it me or do they keep matching up Matt Yeung and Samantha Ko in comedy dramas?) While it was a little dry, they did manage to shoe-horn in Public Service Announcements whenever they could, it had an ok conclusion. It didn’t really do much for drama and the comedy fell a little flat for me.

Then I went back to a series I dropped a few months ago whilst I was moving. Airport Strikers A.K.A Airport Security Unit is basically what airport security should be in HK right now. A convoluted tale of young police officers trying to pass the entry training to get into the ASU, it goes on to mix in ASU officers who have been there for years, others that have been there only a few, and of course who gets into the ASU and what happens to them. Love lives, tragedies, work conflicts, family problems - it’s all in there. To be honest it’s much of a muchness except for the pleasantly surprising on-screen chemistry between actors. Matt Yeung, oft used for straight by-the-book characters who are quite dull in their single-minded pursuit of a mission, is allowed here to be a happy-go-lucky harmless prankster, who is only really serious when he’s on duty. He sasses everyone at every opportunity, usually getting away with it, and certainly lives up to his nick-name ‘Easy’. When a friend gets into the ASU and becomes a first-year recruit the comedy and shenanigans ramp up. Owen Cheung (張振朗) is excellent as the cocky yet determined rookie ‘Hill’ Cheung who has his reasons to be the complete arsehole people take him for, but actually isn’t that at all. When you get Owen and Matt in the same scene playing people who grew up together you get witty comebacks, hilarious interactions and some brilliant chemistry that actually puts me in mind of Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki from Supernatural. I can only hope that they get to do a lot more TVB productions together, as they really were the highlight of the series.

Another highlight was Sisley Choi (蔡思貝) as Sanjay. For a change, the smallest woman there wasn’t given any extra help or special attention just for being female; she was tougher than most of the men and just kept going no matter what. The actress was perfect for this (even though every time I see her I think she reminds me of Anita Mui Yim-Fong (梅艷芳) and there was never a time I didn’t want her character to be involved in something. I hear the actress was a bit upset at having her long hair chopped off for the fantastic pixie cut she sported for the series, but don’t worry love - it’ll grow back.

Most of the plots were ok although I felt they did rush through them, often resolving them over just two episodes instead of making something of them. To be honest though I would be happy to sit through a spin-off with just Owen Cheung and Matt Yeung’s characters and the shenanigans they get up to.

And that’s pretty much it for me. I’m going to continue doing next to nothing as at time of writing I’m not allowed to mix with other households and am not supposed to be using public transport or in fact going anywhere. Getting a little tired of this whole semi-lockdown bollocks, to be honest.

Anyway. Chin up, eh? I have entertainment and you’re never really disconnected from the world when you have a smartphone, right?

Take care, everyone.

Sisko was right about baseball

Ben Sisko - Commander and then Captain in Starfleet during the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine years, in an effort to explain liner time to an alien race, compared it to a baseball game. His reasoning was that you never know what can happen next in life - humans are resigned to being stuck on a timeline that only ever moves forward, where the future is inaccessible.

Why is this relevant? During this lockdown of 2020 I’ve been finding things to do. I’ve been writing more - I’ve finished a fic that I started two years ago, and now that’s been let out into the world I’ve 90% completed another one, in that it’s written but now I’m doing the post production on it (continuity, filling in those missing street names, realising I’ve missed a plot hole, etc.). But I needed a Third Place - everyone needs work, then a hobby or pastime, and then a third something. A while ago someone explained this to me and I realised for me they were right - I did need something that wasn’t connected to the other two, just for a change of pace and skill set.

I’ve never been much of a sports person - I prefer to do rather than watch. I find football interminably boring. Ice hockey is more my pace when watching live in the stadium (even though you can’t actually follow the puck), but when I am reduced to watching it on the telly? That’s hard. I was chatting online with a friend on the other side of the planet about political stuff - Hong Kong, China, that kind of thing - and she mentioned the President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-Wen (蔡英文), tweeting about the opening of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (the CPBL). As the game is not played in China the country (because it’s a game played by dirty anti-communists, perhaps?), this refers to the Taiwan baseball league exclusively.

I’d always liked the idea of baseball but found MLB hard to watch - it was like test cricket, where it seemed to take years to finish a single game. Lots of time-outs, chatting, swapping, farting about - not for me. So when my mate suggested I try one of the free streams to watch a Taiwanese game, I thought, well, what do I have to lose? A quick DuckDuckGo of the internet (I don’t use that search engine beginning with G) produced an excellent website: The CPBL Stats site. As someone who doesn’t actually know the rules to baseball or any history, this site has been invaluable. (Honestly, the only players I could name were Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, and Willie Mays - and the only reason I know Willie Mays is because of the eponymous trading card that was the MacGuffin of the DS9 episode ‘In the Cards’).

So using this website and its links to free streams (in English), I did catch a game. And it was amazing fun. I don’t know how American baseball games work, but ones in Taiwan are stadium parties with live entertainment. You have AA+ players (something MLB people understand but I don’t) doing their best as trained, fit, athletes (honestly, a lot of the outfielders’ efforts to catch fly balls border on Fancy Dan manoeuvres). You have stadiums full of spectators as Taiwan have already managed to control the whole pandemic quite quickly - and fans have drums, super soakers, player shirts / towels / boards, a ‘never give up, never surrender’ party-or-die attitude. There are cheerleaders who go through easy routines for the crowds to follow in their seats. There are mascots who go round chucking out soft toys, prizes - they have the cameras that go over the spectators with different filters, so you have a ‘wash cam’ (if the camera lands on you then you need to pretend to be washing your hands), a ‘water cam’ (take a drink), a ‘muscle cam’ (show us your arm muscles - especially the kids), a ‘love cam’ (make a heart with your arms and top of your head) - the fun goes on. Major players have their own theme songs and chants that the entire stadium sings with the beat of that guy who brings the drum. There’s one older guy who turns up to every game and sits near the front who I’ve elected to refer to as Fubon Grandad. After the 5th inning there’s a ten-fifteen minute break while they rake the pitch and check the bases etc., so they fill this with the MC of the evening picking people from the crowd to take part in simple games versus cheerleaders to win prizes. There are family groups, friends groups, serious sports addicts, casual fans and everything in between. It’s a fun, fierce few hours - because they rarely go over three and a half hours for a game (when they’re not stopped for rain).

And do you know what all this has taught me? During lockdown I was fine with the constant staying in, the living alone, the being able to work from home and get stuff done - been loving it, actually (not a fan of humans really). But I’ve been doing this since March 2020 and it’s now the end of August. At weekends when I don’t work, I ponder if I actually get out of bed at all. It’s all much of a muchness - there’s nothing to do, nothing to look forward to except a break from being at my work laptop in the corner of the flat. But these baseball games - at weekends they start at 5pm Taiwan time, so for BST that’s 10am. Now I HAVE to get out of bed because the English commentary has already started, showing the pre-game shenanigans such as the opening pitch by a local celebrity, the team run-downs, the whole shebang. And here’s the important bit - the games are so unpredictable, so dramatic in the way they can turn from a comfortable 4-0 lead into a 5-9 defeat, that it’s broken my feeling of lethargy.

Ben Sisko was right - baseball is the epitome of how linear time works. You never know what’s going to happen to the next pitch; will it be a ball or a strike, will it be a bunt, a base hit, fly or a home run? That feeling of a fly ball heading for the stands and an outfielder desperately trying to grab it from the air - will he make it? Will it miss his glove? It’s like only the next few seconds matter. Once we have the outcome of the hit then the game has been irrevocably set on a path. All I can do is watch to see how it unfolds.

I don’t get this feeling with any other sport. Football for me is just a bunch of blokes running around passing things - there’s no urgency in it. American Football is painful - it’s like someone took rugby and made it all about smacking into people, not using skill to get the ball, and they keep stopping for a chat. Basketball should excite me as it’s the same kind of urgency as baseball - but somehow it just doesn’t. MMA irritates me as it seems to devolve quite a lot into wrestling moves that are a few minutes of people squirming around to either keep or break a hold and for me that’s boring to watch. Women’s kickboxing is more my pace but where can I see it (hopefully free or cheap)? Please let me know if you can.

In summary - Ben Sisko was right. And I’m enjoying Taiwan baseball in a way I have not enjoyed a live sport in many years. I ended up purchasing a subscription to the CPBL TV official stream for the friendly price of NT$1,099 (£30 at time of purchase!) for the entire April - October season, plus the winter league. This gives me perfect HD footage with the local Mandarin commentary. I know about twenty words in Mandarin so I play the HD footage on one browser tab with the sound off and run the English commentary on another tab with the sound up. Sorted. While the free streams are excellent for English, the footage quality can be quite poor at times to the point where I can’t read the stats box, so the HD footage is a must for me. The official site does also have the complete schedule of games, but this is free to everyone.

So which team do I support? That also came out of the chat I had with my mate online - there are four teams in the major league this season (should be five next season), so after a joke about how me and my mate both live in the north of our respective countries, and remembering of course that lots of planets have a north, I thought it was only fitting to start looking into which team was furthest north. That is easily Fubon Guardians, whose home is Xinzhuang Baseball Stadium in New Taipei City. It wasn’t until I’d seen a few months of the season and then managed to get hold of a jersey that my mate observed their strip this year is blue, which just happens to be my favourite colour. Yes, they’re kind of the underdogs as they’ve not done particularly well this season (until August), but that’s the excitement. If you support a team that normally wins everything, then who cares? The Guardians seem to have sorted out their issues from the middle of August 2020 and are currently winning games again - not all, but it’s getting better.

And now I can name another four professional baseball players: Lee Tsung-Hsien, Chiang Chih-Hsien, Shen Hao-Wei, and Kao Kuo-Lin. Not bad, even if I do say so myself.

I guess this means everyone should find a new distraction during this pandemic. Obviously we need to ‘keep alert’ and all that, but at the same time, don’t obsess over it. Find something else to think about so that this pandemic isn’t all there is.

And that’s it. Soopytwist, everyone.

Playlist alert

I’m in the middle of a Greent Hornet fanfic just now (based on the movie, not the series so much). Why the movie, you ask? Well I’ve done a whole thing about the difference between the show and the film, and I have to say I’m still a big fan of both, for different reasons.

Back in the day, I had a dedicated writing desk (actually a repurposed Mahjong table) and a comfy chair (called Michael) and I would get through a 50,000 word fanfic in a few weeks, spend the next two polishing and fixing it, and then the next month or so releasing it like curated salmon on a few fanfic repositories. When I moved back to the UK all that went away, and I struggled to do much writing at all. However, now I’m in a new flat things just feel different. Maybe it’s the apartment atmosphere, the small, controllable environment, the solo living or the extra time not spent commuting to and from work. Hey, maybe it’s all of those things. The important thing is, I’ve finished a fic I started over 2 years ago, and right now I’m pleased - nay, EXCITED - to be working on a new one. And I haven’t been excited about writing in a long time.

As usual I have required a playlist as quiet background music - choons to subconsciously align me with subject matter, with the chosen style, with the themes. However when I had this one going round and round, the volume would creep up and I found my head was bobbing along to the music as I typed - totally oblivious, of course.

Full disclosure; I had to wait 2 weeks for BT OpenReach to actually do their job and give me wi-fi at home, so during that time I was careful with my data usage. Basically, I moved from Spotify back to my iTunes library and in doing so found that I had billions of Jay Chou albums. Well, alright, it wasn’t billions - but it was over 160 tracks from him over the years. Putting that on shuffle for a week made me miss a lot of his earlier stuff (and the frivolous Sailor songs) so by the time this fic started forming in my head, it was always going to be about those albums on constant shuffle. Of course it doesn’t hurt that he was also Kato in the movie.

Here we go then - without further ado (because considering this post was supposed to be a playlist dump, there’s a lot of ado up to this point), here is the playlist, all by Jay Chou (周杰倫):

1. 雙載棍 (Nunchucks) from the album 范特西 (Fantasy), 2001 - also the second end credits song on the movie version of Green Hornet (at least where I saw it in Hong Kong)

2. 印地安老斑鳩 (Ancient Indian Turtledove) from the album 杰倫 (Jay), 2000 

3. 忍者 (Ninja) from the album 范特西 (Fantasy), 2001

4. 龍拳 (Dragon Fist) from the album 八度空間 (The Eight Dimensions), 2002

5. 半獸人 (Half Beast Half Human) from the album 八度空間 (The Eight Dimensions), 2002

6. 雙刀 (Double Blade) from the album 葉惠美 (Yeh Hui-Mei), 2003

7. 同一種調調 (Same Tone) from the album 葉惠美 (Yeh Hui-Mei), 2003 

8. 將軍 (Checkmate) from the album 七里香 (Common Jasmine Orange), 2004 

9. 霍元甲 (Fearless) from the EP 霍元甲 (Fearless), 2006

10. 陽光宅男 (Sunshine Nerd) from the album 我很忙 (On the Run!), 2007

11. 周大俠 (Master Chou) from the movie ‘Kung Fu Dunk’ (功夫灌籃) available as an extra track on the album 2007 世界巡迴演唱會 (2007 World Tour Concert) 

12. 魔術先生 (Magician) from the album 魔杰座 (Capricorn), 2008

13. 龍戰騎士 (Dragon Rider) from the album 魔杰座 (Capricorn), 2008

14. 免費教學錄影帶 (Free Tutorial Video) from the album 跨時代 (The Era), 2010

15. 公主病 (Princess Syndrome) from the album 驚嘆號 (Wow!), 2011

16. 驚嘆號 (Wow!) from the album 驚嘆號 (Wow!), 2011

17. 比較大的大提琴 (A Larger Cello) from the album 12新作 (Opus 12), 2012

18. 公公偏頭痛 (Eunuch With a Headache) from the album 12新作 (Opus 12), 2012

19. 水手怕水 (Sailor Afraid of Water) from the album 驚嘆號 (Wow!), 2011

20. 烏克麗麗 (Ukulele) from the album 12新作 (Opus 12), 2012

21. 大笨鐘 (Big Ben) from the album 12新作 (Opus 12), 2012

22. 陽眀山 (Yang Ming Mountain) from the album 哎呦，不錯哦 (Hey, Not Bad), 2014

23. 我要夏天 (I Want Summer) from the album 哎呦，不錯哦 (Hey, Not Bad), 2014

24. 說走就走 (Let’s Go) from the album 周杰倫的床邊故事 (Jay Chou’s Bedtime Stories), 2016

25. 英雄 (Hero) from the album 周杰倫的床邊故事 (Jay Chou’s Bedtime Stories), 2016

26. 土耳其冰𣾁淋 (Turkish Ice Cream) from the album 周杰倫的床邊故事 (Jay Chou’s Bedtime Stories), 2016

27. Now You See Me from the album 周杰倫的床邊故事 (Jay Chou’s Bedtime Stories), 2016

There we go. Seeing these written down makes me want to go listen to them all over again.

You know what? I think I will. That’s the beauty of being an adult; no-one can stop me.

Soopytwist.

Moving On, 2020

Yep, I’ve moved again. Yesterday, in fact. From an end-of-terrace house to a second-floor flat.

It’s ace. It’s a long, wide studio flat with two massive skylights and three large windows which means you get sun all day from varying angles - and sun means WARM. Honestly, the carpet is trying to radiate its own heat from the sun patches that move across the floor. It’s fantastic. I know it’s June but when it’s only 15 degrees outside you need all the direct sunshine you can get. On top of the heat there’s that fact that the bathroom as big as my old bedroom (which was big, by the way).

I don’t know the neighbourhood other than ‘it’s good’ (my work colleagues were happy with the location, and they’ve lived locally for over twenty years). However, what I have noticed is the high, nay excessive, number of carry-outs and off-licences. Add to that a very large famous supermarket brand being five minutes’ walk away and I’m pretty happy with it. Oh, and did I mention, it’s a five-minute drive from work. Yes, I know that means I can walk it. I haven’t got round to checking a walking route yet, give me chance.

Sunday was a slog, I’m not going to lie. Half the day packing up my life was torture - I hate packing anyway, and this was pretty much 90% of what I own. The other 10% is about to go to a charity shop, so more than one good thing has come of it all. The removals people turned up on time Monday, they were fast, friendly and cheerful, and my stuff was loaded up in less than half an hour. We hit the road and barely three hours after they’d first arrived, they were off again. I was left staring round at a mish-mash of boxes and disassembled furniture, wondering where to start.

As with all moves, I went with priorities. The bed was assembled first, then the bookcases. The rest of it was literally unpacking stuff and emptying the total of nine boxes (yes, I fitted my entire life apart from furniture into nine cardboard boxes).

And so here we are, having moved in yesterday. Pictures have been hung, TVs and all things entertainment have been set back up, temporary work-from-home stations are sorted again and all kitchen items stored or ready to use.

Now the easy part is done, it’s time for the difficult bits. As soon as I got the keys on Friday I went about changing my address with every company that needed it. Seeing as I’m about 90% paperless, this was a formality. However it has to be done. Then I went to the BBC TV licensing page and declared I do not have the ability to watch live BBC shows on telly and therefore will not be paying a licence fee. Done.

Broadband is ordered, but due to BT being arseholes, their OpenReach will not be performing my installation on behalf of my provider for another fourteen days, because they prioritise their own BT customers first. Fair enough, you might say - but wait. The only people who can physically do installations to any lines is BT OpenReach, so not at all fair, and in fact the definition of ‘monopoly’. Someone should really complain about that. Oh wait - EE, Virgin, and everyone else already have. We’ll wait and see if that means that OpenReach is forced to splinter from BT and become independent in the installation stakes, I suppose. Don’t hold your breath.

Utilities. Fighting to get my name on the utilities bills has been really draining. Sent round and round websites because they can’t man the phones due to coronavirus, trying apps that demand a customer or account number (which I don’t have), trying to open an account and being told there’s no-one to answer the phone and to use the app which tells you to cal - it’s doing my head in. Finally I realised that all I had to do was use the contact form and use the option ‘cannot pay my bill’. It didn’t ask why, after all, it was just an option. Well I can’t physically pay my bill because they don’t know to send me one, so yeah, I can’t pay my bill. I’ve already had an acknowledgement email from each utility asking me to bear with them and they’ll get in touch shortly, so I guess I got their attention.

Been to the Chinese supermarket and done a Big Shop (including a new wok that I’ll be seasoning this very afternoon) and even got a supermarket delivery booked for tomorrow night. I guess they want more deliveries than they do people in store, so hey, it’s all good.

May take a walk around the neighbourhood later just to see what’s what, and also check out where the nearest bottle shops are. It pays to know their opening times for when the supermarket has a queue due to social distancing.

And that’s pretty much all there is. One day when I look back at June 2020, this post will be in the list, and that’s a good thing.

Soopytwist.

Image by Bob Hopley from Pixabay

Lockdown

Not, unfortunately, the stellar (sorry) Guy Pierce 2012 film Lockout, which is just a fantastic old-fashioned 1980s survival in a prison (a space prison) flick with guns, violence, snarky one-liners and brilliantly acted stereotypes all round. No, sadly not that Lockout.

Instead it’s now been seven weeks since I’ve worked from my actual work desk, and three weeks since I’ve left the house. And by that I mean I have not crossed the threshold of any doors to be away from the touch of indoor flooring.

Everyone keeps asking - “how are you holding up?”. And my reply is always the same: “has anything changed?”


I mean yes, obviously some things have changed. I don’t go to the pictures on Saturday and then meet up with mates afterwards to talk about it. I don’t go to the Chinese supermarket one Sunday a month to stock up on food. I don’t go to the archery range. I don’t drive to work. Other than that…? Nah, nothing’s changed.

I don’t have kids, pets, or anything that distracts me. What I do have is Doom Eternal on PS4, along with other games I’m still battling through. I have Netflix and Amazon Prime, I have Kodi and Hong Kong dramas (The Exorcist’s 2nd Meter is on - finally we have the sequel to The Exorcist’s Meter!). I have a Lethal Weapon fanfiction story that I’m halfway through posting, and I’ve embarked on a 21 day yoga shred class online. And did I forget to mention, I’m still working, just from the kitchen table. So yeah, I’m pretty busy and I don’t need to go out. My housemate is also still working, but their essential worker status means that they can stop off at a supermarket on the way home and pick up bits and pieces.

Also, I work in payroll (for the NHS, no less), so what with April being a perfect storm of all the statutory and contractual changes no-one in ops wants, it’s been a full-on, fifty-hour week for four weeks for pretty much the entire team. We’ve been given time off in lieu, so it’s not really a big deal for me, but for others with dependents it’s been “a nightmare”.

The only problem I’m going to have is going back to the office when we’re finally cleared by our bosses to do so (i.e. when our healthcare professionals have assessed it and made the requisite changes, not when Boris waffles his way through saying… whatever it was he was saying on Sunday 10th March). I know a lot of people will be glad of the return - to be in a place where they feel like a professional, like they’re away from all the home distractions, out of the ‘home’ environment and into a work headspace. I get it - in words. I don’t feel it, but I understand what they mean. And then there are those who don’t work in office jobs and will have been itching to get back to work for the last month anyway.

Everyone seems uptight and upset that they’re being told to stay home. Everyone else seems to be getting cabin fever. I’ve just woken up one day, been told to collect my kit from work and then go home until further notice, get on MS Teams when I’m working and that’s that. I just kind of went “so this is how it is now” and got on with it. There wasn’t any drama to be had - it just happened and we dealt with it like grown-ups. Others in the team had some IT hiccups and others have been trying to balance kids and dinner-time and all kinds of trials and tribulations. I don’t have those. I sit down, open up all the apps and emails and everything else, look at the list of stuff I didn’t finish yesterday, and get to work. I don’t see the difference between doing that at work and doing that at my kitchen table.

I’m happy that I don’t have to mix with humans, that I can get on and do my job without being interrupted by co-workers asking if I want to go for a brew, or having to put shoes on (I find it hard to sit on chairs ‘properly’ and often end up folding my legs under the table, which is hard to do with Doc Martens on).

Going back to an office environment is going to be very hard.

But then, what with major companies now wondering why they’re paying rent or a bank loan for sprawling offices in the real world when they could just let their office staff keep a laptop and stay away, I wonder what changes are coming.

Was it not Captain Jack Harkness who said that “the 21st century is when everything changes”? Is this what he meant? Where leaders of large, influential countries have gone off the rails (some would argue that they were never really on them in the first place) and caused nearly 80,000 deaths at this point? Where still others are trying to impose their brand of order on a territory handed back to them twenty-odd years ago, despite the entire population being against it and willing to stand in tear gas and water cannon to prove it? With this new pandemic hitting the globe and reminding everyone how everyone really is connected whether they like it or not, is this when everything finally starts to shift? Pollution from fossil-fuel traffic in a lot of cities has started to ease up - because of people not using those vehicles. One retired army captain (now a colonel) in the UK has raised more for NHS Charities in a few weeks than most people will ever raise in their lifetime - in a team. People are reaching out over social media, children are receiving tweets and replying by old-fashioned letter-writing. Others are holding street parties from behind their fences. Still more are coming out onto their doorsteps to celebrate the NHS on a Thursday night with songs, clapping, and banging pots and pans. Caremongering is becoming a thing - people helping others to get their grocery shopping, to post a letter, to connect and keep their sanity. All signs are pointing toward a feeling of unity, of wanting to help.

And yet.

And yet.

We have brainless, self-obsessed presidents telling the masses the most baseless, misinformed and dangerous things - and nearly half the country are still listening to him. We have others over-buying and stocking up on household items so that they can sell those items for a profit. People think they can get away with behaving like Nazis again. There are people deliberately scamming others using miracle cures and snake oil replacements for this virus. There are news outlets deliberately spreading lies and paranoia, to widen the gap between classes, between minorities, between neighbours, between humans. The top ten multi-billionaires just keep getting richer, earning more per day than they could spend in a month, and apparently happy to keep it that way despite the people all around them living on food stamps, foods banks, charity hand-outs and poverty.

This is what we are as a species. We are opposite ends of the spectrum, in all things. The only thing wrong with that is how far apart those ends actually are. It’s ok that everyone believes different things, it’s ok that everyone feels differently, acts differently, has a different perspective. This is essential for humans to survive. What’s not ok is how some seek to stop others from being allowed to be the difference. Some leaders need to be impeached (or just removed forcibly with a blunt object), some leaders need to realise the way their country has been run for the past few generations just isn’t going to work any more - times have changed and not changing with them is not how evolution or progress works. Some people need to get a heart, or at least hire someone who has one and then take their advice. I am the last person to say they know anything about empathy or feelings, but even I can stand back and work out what is beneficial and what isn’t to a society as a whole. When you work toward controlling a population instead of serving them, you’ve already lost the game.

Anyway.

Some good news to lighten the mood: NASA is going back to the Moon. To date, one person has definitely been cured of HIV, and while science is struggling to replicate the how, they’re getting closer every day. Volvo is looking to get into the Tesla bracket of electric cars - meaning the battle is now on (properly) for better, longer-ranging batteries and smaller price tags. And on that note, the production of energy from renewable sources is literally terawatts ahead of anything it’s ever been before. Wind farms alone are making an impact on the amount of energy we have to import, including Russian coal and Norwegian oil.

When all this covid thing is over, and everyone goes back to work in stages, it’s not the lockdown or the whinging or the team spirit I’m going to remember. It’s the good movies I’ve seen, the comic books I’ve read, the stories I’ve written and the courses I’ve done. I’ve let myself watch more on Netflix and it’s resulted in me seeing some very good series I wouldn’t normally have tried out. I’ve gone for that yoga course even though I don’t understand yoga (you can still go through the motions like you mean it, though). I’ve had a whale of a time in the rip and tear moments of Doom Eternal and I’ve got my highest scores ever on the arcade levels of Doom 2016.

I know all around me people have been losing their shit and things have been going off the rails, but for me life’s been pretty good. As an INTJ who really isn’t here for Human Drama, I have to say I’ve been enjoying this lockdown as a chance to stay away from people. If there was a way for it to continue, without the horrific deaths or riots or protests (against people trying to keep them alive? Fine. Let them die) then I’m all for it. We just need to beat this virus and make something new out of what comes next. And if a majority doesn’t get rid of the orange-faced buffoon spewing arse-gravy on the daily when next they vote, then we may just have to call on the SAS to do everyone a huge fucking favour.

You’ll be glad to know that that’s it for today, folks. Rant over - time for more good telly.

Soopytwist.

Final image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

The 39th Hong Kong Film Awards (2020) - the winners

Well the Hong Kong Film Awards has come and gone this morning (8am in the UK, 3pm in HK) - a staggering 12 minutes of screentime, compared to the grand affairs of 2 hours plus, in previous years.

Even with the current pandemic keeping everything online (and streaming their awards ceremonies on Facebook), I still expected something longer and grander than a seemingly quick reading of the envelopes one by one by chairman Mr Derek Yee Tung-Sing. Still, we got the results and some of us were very happy. Me? A little disappointed, but hey, I’m not on the voting committee.

So who won what then? Here we go - a full run-down. Winners are in yellow.

最佳電影 
Best Film

1. 少年的你 Better Days

2. 叔‧叔 Suk Suk

3. 花椒之味 Fagara

4. 麥路人 i’m livin’ it

5. 新喜劇之王 The New King of Comedy




最佳導演
 Best Director

1. 曾國祥（少年的你）Derek Tsang Kwok-Cheung (Better Days)

2. 周冠威（幻愛）Kiwi Chow (Beyond the Dream)

3. 楊曜愷（叔‧叔）Ray Yeung (Suk Suk)

4. 麥曦茵（花椒之味）Heiward Mak (Fagara)

5. 葉偉信（葉問4完結篇）Yip Wai Shun (Ip Man 4 The Finale)

最佳編劇
 Best Screenplay

1. 林詠琛、李媛、許伊萌（少年的你）Lam Wing Sum, Li Yuan, Xu Yimeng (Better Days)

2. 曾俊榮、周冠威（幻愛）Felix Tsang, Kiwi Chow (Beyond the Dream)

3. 楊曜愷（叔‧叔）
Ray Yeung (Suk Suk)

4. 麥曦茵（花椒之味）Heiward Mak (Fagara)

5. 黃綺琳（金都）Norris Wong Yee Lam (My Prince Edward)


最佳男主角 
Best Actor

1. 易烊千璽（少年的你）Jackson Yee (Better Days)

2. 古天樂（犯罪現場）Louis Koo (A Witness Out of the Blue)

3. 太保（叔‧叔）Tai Bo (Suk Suk)

4. 朱栢康（金都）Chu Pak Hong (My Prince Edward)

5. 郭富城（麥路人）Aaron Kwok (i’m livin’ it)

最佳女主角
Best Actress

1. 周冬雨（少年的你）Zhou Dongyu (Better Days)

2. 蔡思韵（幻愛）Cecilia Choi (Beyond the Dream)

3. 鄭秀文（花椒之味）Sammi Cheng (Fagara)

4. 鄧麗欣（金都）Stephy Tang (My Prince Edward)

5. 鄭秀文（聖荷西謀殺案）Sammi Cheng (Fatal Visit) 


最佳男配角 
Best Supporting Actor

1. 姜皓文（犯罪現場）Philip Keung (A Witness Out of the Blue)

2. 盧鎮業（叔‧叔）Lo Chun Yip (Suk Suk)

3. 張達明（麥路人）Cheung Tat Ming (i’m livin’ it)

4. 萬梓良（麥路人）Alex Man (i’m livin’ it)

5. 張琪（新喜劇之王）Zhang Qi (The New King of Comedy)
 


最佳女配角 
Best Supporting Actress

1. 區嘉雯（叔‧叔）Patra Au Ga Man (Suk Suk)

2. 賴雅妍（花椒之味）Megan Lai (Fagara)

3. 鮑起靜（金都）Paw Hee Ching (My Prince Edward)

4. 劉雅瑟（麥路人）Cya Liu (i’m livin’ it)

5. 蔡卓妍（聖荷西謀殺案）Charlene Choi (Fatal Visit)

最佳新演員 
Best New Performer

1. 易烊千璽（少年的你）Jackson Yee (Better Days)

2. 劉俊謙（幻愛）Lau Chun Him (Beyond the Dream)

3. 區嘉雯（叔‧叔）Patra Au Ga Man (Suk Suk)

4. 鄂靖文（新喜劇之王）E Jingwen (The New King of Comedy)

5. 李宛妲（葉問4完結篇）Vanda Margraf (Ip Man 4 The Finale)

最佳攝影
 Best Cinematography

1. 余靜萍（少年的你）Yu Jing Pin (Better Days)

2. 司徒一雷（幻愛）Szeto Yat Lui (Beyond the Dream)

3. 謝忠道（犯罪現場）Kenny Tse Chung-To (A Witness Out of the Blue)

4. 葉紹麒（花椒之味）S.K. Yip (Fagara)

5. 鄭兆強（葉問4完結篇）Cheng Siu Keung (Ip Man 4 The Finale)

最佳剪接
 Best Film Editing

1. 張一博（少年的你）Zhang Yibo (Better Days)

2. 羅永昌、鄒耀衡（犯罪現場）
Law Wing Cheong, Kelvin Chau (A Witness Out of the Blue)

3. 張叔平、陳序慶（叔‧叔）
William Chang Suk Ping, Nose Chan Chui Hing (Suk Suk)

4. 張叔平、鍾家駿（金都）
William Chang Suk Ping, Peter Chung (My Prince Edward)

5. 張嘉輝（葉問4完結篇）Cheung Ka Fai (Ip Man 4 The Finale) 


最佳美術指導
 Best Art Direction

1. 梁鴻鵠（少年的你）Liang Honghu (Better Days)

2. 陳七（犯罪現場）Chet Chan (A Witness Out of the Blue)

3. 張兆康（花椒之味）Cheung Siu Hong (Fagara)

4. 文念中、利國林（麥路人）Man Lim Chung, Billy Li Kwok Lam (i’m livin’ it)

5. 麥國強（葉問4完結篇）Mak Kwok Keung (Ip Man 4 The Finale)

最佳服裝造型設計
 Best Costume & 
Makeup Design

1. 吳里璐（少年的你）Dora Ng (Better Days)

2. 潘燚森（叔‧叔）Albert Poon Yick Sum (Suk Suk)

3. 張兆康（花椒之味）Cheung Siu Hong (Fagara)

4. 文念中、陳寶欣（麥路人）Man Lim Chung, Polly Chan Po Yan (i’m livin’ it)

5. 利碧君（葉問4完結篇）Lee Pik Kwan (Ip Man 4 The Finale) 


最佳動作設計 
Best Action 
Choreography

1. 黃偉亮（犯罪現場）Jack Wong (A Witness Out of the Blue)

2. 錢嘉樂、錢家班、黃偉輝、鄧瑞華、吳海堂（使徒行者2諜影行動）
Chin Ka Lok, Ka Lok Stunt Team, Wong Wai Fai, Tang Sui Wa, Thomson Ng (Line Walker 2)

3. 董瑋（征途）Stephen Tung (Double World)

4. 韓平、吳海堂（掃毒2天地對決）
Hon Ping, Gobi Ng (The White Storm 2 Drug Lords)

5. 袁和平（葉問4完結篇）Yuen Wo Ping (Ip Man 4 The Finale)

最佳原創電影音樂
 Best Original Film Score

1. 貝爾（少年的你）Varqa Buehrer (Better Days)

2. 波多野裕介（花椒之味）Yusuke Hatano (Fagara)

3. 林二汶（金都）Eman Lam (My Prince Edward)

4. 金培達（麥路人）Peter Kam (i’m livin’ it)

5. 川井憲次（葉問4完結篇）Kenji Kawai (Ip Man 4 The Finale)

最佳原創電影歌曲
 Best Original Film Song

1. Fly（少年的你）(Better Days)


作曲：盧凱彤 Composer：Ellen Joyce Loo

填詞：盧凱彤、吳青峰 Lyricist：Ellen Joyce Loo, Wu Qing Feng

主唱：岑寧兒 Vocal Artist：Yoyo Sham 



2. 好好說（花椒之味）Say It Properly (Fagara)


作曲、填詞：伍棟賢 Composer, Lyricist：Tonyi Ng


主唱：鄭秀文 Vocal Artist：Sammi Cheng 



3. 金都（金都）My Prince Edward (My Prince Edward)


作曲：林二汶 Composer：Eman Lam


填詞：黃綺琳 Lyricist：Norris Wong Yee Lam


主唱：鄧麗欣 Vocal Artist：Stephy Tang



4. 兄弟不懷疑（掃毒2天地對決） Brotherhood (The White Storm 2 Drug Lords)


作曲：蔡曉恩 Composer：Jacky Cai


填詞：劉德華 Lyricist：Andy Lau


主唱：劉德華、古天樂 Vocal Artist：Andy Lau, Louis Koo 



5. 灰色星塵（麥路人）(i’m livin’ it)


作曲：金培達 Composer：Peter Kam


填詞：小美 Lyricist：Siu May


主唱：郭富城 Vocal Artist：Aaron Kwok 


最佳音響效果 
Best Sound Design

1. Victor Ray Ennis（中國機長）(The Captain)

2. 杜篤之、吳書瑤（幻愛）Tu Dou-Chih, Wu Shu-Yao (Beyond the Dream)

3. 杜篤之、江宜真（花椒之味）Tu Dou-Chih, Chiang Yi Chen (Fagara)

4. 聶基榮、葉兆基（掃毒2天地對決）Nip Kei Wing, Ip Siu Kei (The White Storm 2 Drug Lords)

5. 李耀強、姚俊軒（葉問4完結篇）Lee Yiu Keung George, Yiu Chun Hin (Ip Man 4 The Finale)

最佳視覺效果
 Best Visual Effects

1. 潘國瑜（中國機長）Ellen Poon (The Captain)

2. 譚啟昆、吳家龍、鍾家豪、楊起超（使徒行者2諜影行動）Tam Kai Kwan, Ng Ka Lung, Chung Kar Hau, Yeung Hey Chiu (Line Walker 2)

3. 徐建、魏明、李帥（征途）Eric Xu, Allen Wei, Li Shuai (Double World)

4. 黃宏達（烈火英雄）Victor Wong (The Bravest)

5. 余國亮、馬肇富、梁偉民、何文洛（掃毒2天地對決） Yee Kwok Leung, Ma Siu Fu, Leung Wai Man, Ho Man Lok (The White Storm 2 Drug Lords)

新晉導演
 Best New Director

1. 文偉鴻（使徒行者2諜影行動）Jazz Boon (Line Walker 2)

2. 黃綺琳（金都）Norris Wong Yee Lam (My Prince Edward)

3. 黃慶勳（麥路人）Wong Hing Fan (i’m livin’ it)

4. 梁國斌（獅子山上）Leung Kwok Pun Nick (Lion Rock)

5. 卓翔（戲棚）Cheuk Cheung (Bamboo Theatre)

最佳亞洲華語電影
 Best Asian Chinese
Language Film

1. 大象席地而坐 An Elephant Sitting Still

2. 返校 Detention

3. 影 Shadow

So there we have it. I didn’t see a win for Aaron Kwok and not nearly enough for Ip Man 4, but I’m shallow like that.

A fantastic 8 wins for Better Days（少年的你）from 11 nominations. I was trying to find a copy of it before the awards - now I think I should try harder.

That’s it from me. Have fun in lockdown, and I’ll be back soon.

Peach and lube, everyone, peach and lube.

Brothers and Bandages and Bad Guys, Oh My

With this whole COVID-19 thing going on, I’ve had time to review aaaaaall those Works In Progress in my writing folder, and decide that I really should finish one or two. I’ve at least finished one - and this one’s for Lethal Weapon (the TV show THAT ENDED AFTER 2 SEASONS).

Ladies, gentlemen, boths and neithers, I give you:

Title: Brothers and Bandages and Bad Guys, Oh My

Rated T for injury details and naughty words.

Summary:

A random encounter with a stolen truck kicks off an entire joint DEA investigation. Murtaugh’s blood pressure and Riggs’ vulnerability will be tested; how do you look out for a brother who isn’t even yours? Contains hurt/comfort and found family.

Disclaimer: 

I do not own any Lethal Weapon characters, names, likenesses or the suggestion thereof. (If I did they wouldn’t have been able to screw over Clayne Crawford and essentially end the show after 2 seasons). This is all for fun, not for profit. Unless you add me to any favourites lists or leave reviews/comments - then I get to smile.

Linky-link-link: HERE at An Archive of Our Own under my name TozaBoma (which is where we collectively won a Hugo Award last year) and HERE at Fanfiction dot net under my name Mardy Lass.

If you even visit the page, I thank you.

Nostalgia vs NOTstalgia part II: Oil Changes and Cappuccinos

A little while ago I mentioned that I had started watching the 1966 TV series The Green Hornet, after a chain of events I’ve already explained. At the end of said post, I promised I would back up part 1 (the homework) with part 2 - the actual commentary.

What happened to that? Well not a lot - due to a very lot of other stuff happening (holidays abroad, coronavirus, etc.) it kind of got put on the back burner. It wasn’t until I was watching a fresh episode just last night that I realised I hadn’t come up with the goods.

Here we are then - is the 1966 version of The Green Hornet anywhere near as good as people remember? Will it live up the its hype? Will I find it entertaining, or will it turn out to be one of those shows that doesn’t age well at all?

Let’s find out today, as we play Nostalgia vs NOTstalgia part 2 - the Green Hornet 1966 edition.

As with most of my reviews, I’ll keep this to three headings:

Limited

Clocking in at barely 26 minutes an episode (no doubt billed as 45 minutes so the networks it was syndicated to could shoe-horn in a tonne of commercials), the show makes the most of what it has. Gone are clunky expositions, long wind-ups that you need to remember later, overly elaborate build-ups and teasers. Instead we have action right from the outset - you know when you watch a show today, and you get plonked right in the middle of the action as a teaser? Then you get a title card or even intro music if they think people have the attention span? Straight after that you’re told something along the lines of ‘TWO DAYS EARLIER’ and they show you 10 minutes of lead-up? Yeah, none of that. This show drops you in the action, and the whole flashback to the explanation is jettisoned for a few throw-away lines between Britt and Kato, to the effect of ‘it’s a good job [main guest star’s character] gave us the right address’, ‘yeah, who knew after ten years of working for the mob he’d want to turn them all in to the police?’. Simple, easy - and most importantly, quick. It makes me appreciate just how much you can get done in a short space of time. The scriptwriters were no slouches here, folks, and while they were writing for an audience very different from me, I like the style. It’s all killer, no filler - they don’t waste a second of screen-time, so if they focus on Britt’s face for longer than necessary it’s to prove a point or show you something, not just for shiggles (or ratings. Let’s face it, Van Williams circa 1966 is a very attractive man). However, sometimes you do think an extra few lines or seconds of screen-time about the guest star of the week’s character would have been beneficial. But hey, it’s all seconds ticking away, and having someone speak for an extra 30 seconds means you have to cut that expensive shot of the Black Beauty taking out a fence with its rockets.

The pace is a welcome change from shows I’ve seen recently, where it’s taken forever to build up to something (sometimes only to let you down). Oh, and you can watch about 5 or 6 episodes of this show in the same time it would taken to watch Interstellar, and I would consider those episodes time better spent, to be honest.

But if it’s over so quick, what can it have achieved?

Lego PS4 Games

Ok, so they don’t actually have Lego PlayStation games in The Green Hornet. But they do have something in common - playability. You have a long day at work, struggling with frustration at inoperative tech. or missing paperwork, and when you get home there’s Call of Duty or Batman Arkham Whatever waiting for you. But it’s all so much effort - you just want something relatively easy, something to help you unwind and be happy, not something that will twist your brain in (more) knots and frustrate you. So instead you go for that Lego game. Yes, it’s simplistic. Yes, there’s no real danger because when you die, you just respawn where you were and all is forgiven. No-one really dies (except the bad guys) and you can actually achieve the end without tearing your hair out or throwing things across the room.

That’s what this series is like. Yes, you can get into something like Altered Carbon or Black Mirror, but it may leave you unsettled or with questions that will bug you for the next week. The Green Hornet is eye-friendly, brain-friendly, and it wraps up all of its threads. There’s no ‘wait a minute - how did the bad guy know about the warehouse?’ or ‘how did they get there so fast when the other dude said no-one knew the location?’. And in every situation when they bust through a door with the Hornet Sting and the bad guy inevitably tries to jump them, Kato has them all floored without breaking a sweat, and the Hornet dives straight in and punches guys in the face left right and centre. Why people still try to take them down, one has to wonder.

However there are sometimes moments where it’s a little too easy - sometimes their plans just work, when you're expecting them not to. Sometimes the plan doesn't work, but then inadvertantly fixes something else with the plot. Although they did do a few two-parters during the only season, they did try to wrap things up pretty quickly, so a sudden swing in their direction was met with surprise but acceptance by the characters more than one. One thing though: no-one recognises the bad guy under a disguise no more amazing than the Green Hornet’s - but then, it has the same rules for everyone. People who know Britt Reid don’t recognise the Green Hornet’s voice or face when they’re in the same room with him, so that’s why Britt Reid doesn’t recognise the guest star of the week’s voice when they’re the bad guy all along. I like it; it’s continuity.

Stars

We have to talk about Britt Reid. He’s charming, well-spoken and although sometimes his eye is caught by a good-looking woman who knows her own mind, he doesn’t fall for any feminine wiles. He appears to run his late father’s newspaper and TV news empire with consideration and forethought - although we don’t see much of what he does, other than appearing on high impact news broadcasts and using the Daily Sentinel as a way through closed doors, his staff appear to appreciate what he does, and it’s mentioned a few times that the DS is a proper newspaper, not a ‘gossip sheet’ or ‘toady rag’. When he’s the Hornet, he’s mean and when he says things like ‘you don’t want to cut me out of this - it wouldn’t go well for you’, you think, uh… actually? Let’s not chance that, bad guys; just do as he says.

Also, he’s played by Van Williams. He had a superhero jaw before there were superhero jaws, a friendly face but also the ability to smack you upside yours without too much effort, and he certainly looked the part of a cunning strategist. And, let’s be honest, I wouldn’t have kicked him out. He could read me the phonebook and I’d enjoy it.

Which brings us to Kato. This show would arguably have been much bleaker in its one run of 26 episodes if Bruce Lee had not graced it with his much-restrained but effective flair. At the beginning of the series he barely gets a word in - he might get an ‘ok’ or a ‘right away’, but mostly he’s there to stand still, fold his arms menacingly, stand too close to a target so he bricks it and tells the Hornet everything, and sometimes nod. It must have been demoralising for Lee. However, Van Williams decided this wasn’t very fair and started to ask the showrunners - shouldn’t the ‘sidekick’ get more lines? Shouldn’t people see what he did between wearing the black chauffeur’s outfit? If we don’t know anything about Kato, why would we care? How do we even know if he’s loyal to Britt? Just because he doesn’t get the chance to speak?

Some of this probably came out of the offscreen friendship they appeared to share. Some of this probably came out of Williams not being a complete narcissistic arsehole. Whatever the real reason, he did mither The Powers That Be until Lee began to get more and more words per episode. He went from a silent nod at the wheel of the Black Beauty to lines like ‘Are you sure? You know this is a trap, right?’ Getting a word in is one thing, but to get lines that make the main character think, to question what he’s doing - that’s a big step up, scriptwise. This continued until we even got an episode based in Chinatown, where Kato ends up settling a personal vendetta against a thug who got one over on him earlier in the episode. When he says to Britt ‘When we get there, the dude is mine’, Britt’s only response is the very correct ‘you’re on’. Friends indeed.

Let’s not forget the guest stars. From Mako to Star Trek’s own Jeffrey Hunter, people today may not recognise any of the stars who trot across the screen, but back then it was a veritable cavalcade of Who’s Who of the character actor’s world. From growing up watching things like Remington Steele, I recognise a few of the faces, albeit much younger than they were by the time I saw them in the 80s, but that also gave me a feeling of already being part of the series. Whether or not that’s the goal of getting in guest stars in the first place, it certainly adds to things when you’re messaging your sisters with ‘Captain Pike is alive and well, living in America running a construction site close to the Green Hornet’s backyard’. Good times.

And so to the conclusion; what do we make of all this? Does it hold your attention? Is the acting good enough? How has it aged?

For me personally: it’s ace. I could watch seasons and seasons of this stuff. It’s accessible, it adds up, and while it’s not at all any kind of challenge, it’s very welcome after a long day at work. The stars are fun (and nice to look at), the cases are different enough that you don’t get episodes confused, and all in all it’s a fun little show that runs so short, you don’t have time to look at your phone or get bored. By contrast, I tried rewatching season 1 of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., but it was long, a little padded, and not so much fun at all. (Granted, season 2 was when there was much more Illya Kuryakin, but that’s a post for another day.)

How does the series match up against the 2011 film?

While the movie dumbed-down Britt to give Lenore Case (the ‘secretary’) a pivotal role, it also provided Kato with an actual back story and a relatively huge role. It also felt like a double episode of the show, with more budget and more time to flesh things out. It was also an origin movie, obviously with people in charge hoping it would spawn a few sequels but it never did. Sometimes I wonder what a sequel would have been like, and if they could still do one. And then sometimes I think they should instead use it as a springboard for a Netflix show instead, with someone like Jensen Ackles as Britt Reid / the Green Hornet and Jay Chou (again) or Daniel Wu as Kato. They could go Gotham ‘fun’ or Daredevil dark - it would be up to them. Maybe even - and this would be interesting if they could pull it off - Gotham fun when it’s Britt and his gadgets whizz and Daredevil dark when it’s the Hornet and Kato. Flip from Technicolor to washed out contrast, from humour to intimidating / grimdark.

I digress.

Yes, the series is still good to watch and still more fun that some other modern series are now. Yes, the movie is also fun, with some welcome modern tweaking to certain characters. For me personally the only drawback to the movie was Seth Rogen; he’s funny and he fits this version, but I don’t think there’s anything to explore for a sequel.

In conclusion? On balance it hasn’t aged badly. There are a few moments where it’s implied the women are only ‘women’ and can’t be expected to do much, but then Lenore Case thinks ahead and takes a tracker with her, then when she’s kidnapped (which wasn’t really much of an outside chance considering the situation) she has it in her bag the whole time, furiously pressing on it for help. Hitting two dudes with a tall lamp, making her getaway and stealing their car to do it was nice to see - and this was 1966. Kudos to Wende Wagner for making it look so easy. What did make me laugh was the Hornet climbing up the conveyor belt she was roped to (about to get her head chopped off at the top) and panicking because he can’t get her ropes undone. And there’s Kato at the bottom, just pressing the ‘stop’ button. It’s the simple things that make me chuckle.

So there we have it. 1966 series: good times. 2011 movie: good times. Neither of these productions is supposed to set the world on fire or change the way we look at entertainment. But both of them are just plain fun without too many strings, and for that they both land in the ‘rewatchable’ category for me. (Maybe the series a little more.)

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print. While the world is losing its collective shit over this COVID-19 debacle, I’ll now return to staying home and watching more media. Heavy is the burden of being me.

Peach and lube, people. Peach and lube.