Friday, March 19, 2004

Instead of a real update today, I’ll summarize a few things that happened to me yesterday. Which, now that I think about it, is a real update.

Yesterday I had a post-post-post-post-post-op appointment at the Lasik Vision Institute, where they checked on my azure blue orbs (thank you, Jim Theis). But not until they’d made me wait for an hour. Oh well; the Highlander series was on the waiting room TV, and that’s always an entertaining way to wile (sp?) away an hour. Highlander is like surprisingly good generic brand chips; they don’t take the place of truly great stuff like Doritos or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but before you know it you’ve eaten the whole bag, and darn it if they didn’t taste pretty good.

My eyes are fine; I just have “the slowest-healing epithelial layer in the universe,” according to the surgeon. As a result, I have to keep the eye extremely well-lubricated with lots of drops and even a gel I get to smear onto my inner eyelid every night. But I am healing, and my eyesight is improving. I can drive at night now, for example, without the headlights looking like marine flares.

I had to work late to make up for the long doctor visit, plus getting in an extra hour so I could take off early on Friday, so when I got home I was exhausted. I ended up popping DVDs into my DVD player and watching ’em all night.

I finished watching the first five episodes of Tenchi GXP, the new spin-off series in the Tenchi universe. It’s genuinely new and entertaining, and it’s clearly steeped in the Tenchi universe, with multiple references to previous Tenchi works in every episode (the female head of the GP Academy casually mentions that she’s Yosho’s wife). It’s directed by the director of Excel Saga, and it shows; GXP is tilted more towards comedy than previous Tenchi works.

I then popped in a DVD of Snake and Eagle’s Shadow, one of Jackie Chan’s first starring films. And discovered that I’d been boondoggled. While the packaging suggested that this was Jackie’s film, it’s actually a sequel that contains a few scenes of Jackie Chan fighting from the previous film. No Jackie Chan to be found anywhere in the main film. I was irate.

So I popped in Jackie Chan’s Gorgeous, which immediately soothed my rage. It starts out like a Studio Ghibli film; a young dreamy girl finds a romantic message in a bottle and on impulse follows it to Hong Kong. After discovering that the message was intended for a guy instead of a girl, she rescues a dashing businessman (Chan), and begins to pursue him. It’s a much less zany film than most of Chan’s adventures, partly because his character is suave and sophisticated, so there’s very little bumbling tomfoolery. Also, Chan’s primary antagonist is an incredibly fast-moving American kickboxer, so the two big fights contain less acrobatics and more straight punching and kicking than usual. I liked it, as a pleasant (and very pleasantly filmed) change from typical Jackie Chan fare.

And that’s all for today. Toodles!

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