I’m glad that Mickey Rourke won a Golden Globe for his performance in The Wrestler, because although the movie tends to be fairly predictable overall, this was one of the most honest performances I’ve seen in a while. Now everyone is talking about the Mickey Rourke comeback tour, which made me curious enough about the actor (I haven’t seen his other films) to get 9 1/2 weeks when i came across it at the DVD store. I don’t have anything particularly new or interesting to add to what’s been said about The Wrestler, but i think there are some interesting tidbits about how the movie has been received in other quarters: the Iranian government considers it insulting, after a fictional wrestler in the movie named The Ayatollah gets his Iranian flag smashed by Rourke’s character, while the folks at the WWE, a professional wrestling organization, aren’t too happy with what they considered the stereotyped and negative portrayals of certain wrestling circuits.

Director Aronofsky thinks that professional wrestlers do get shafted when it comes to their working conditions: he considers them actors and entertainers — and believes that they ought to be unionized and eligible for the same types of benefits that SAG members receive. Yet in reality, many wrestlers exist in some kind of legal limbo, not quite athletes, and not quite actors — and when things go awry, or when they simply exhaust their youth, bodies, and 15 minutes of fame, they are left, like Randy the Ram Robinson, out in the cold — oftentimes in desolate places, like New Jersey, the setting for this film.

Anyhow, that’s quite an interesting issue that i would not have ever been aware of otherwise. But good on Mickey Rourke – I’m glad that his career is picking up and that he is being given a second chance to share his talents with the world.

A final note: Marisa Tomei — yowzer, does that woman just get hotter with age?

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What is amazing about Yao is that someone that tall and goofy can even play basketball at all. I was watching
some basketball highlights at Windows Scoreboard tonight, and at the end they go through the top 5 moves
of the last few games from around the NBA. And there are, as you’d expect, some stellar moves. Vince Carter spinning in the air, twisting from one side
of the basket to the other. Steve Nash dishing it to his teammates for windmill jams. That kind of thing. Of course, the number one
move was Yao Ming: he gets the ball low in the post, near the baseline, gets fouled and throws it up with his back facing the basket,
and miracle of miracles, it goes in. So the basket counts and one.

Of course it wasn’t at all spectacular. If you’ve watched Michael Jordan play you know that this is a special genre of Jordan moves:
the ones where he get fouled and just puts it up so that the foul is made in the act of shooting. But the difference is that those moves
are elegant, beautiful and involve that masterful agility for which he is known. So this Yao “move” is nothing special, and I doubt it
even deserves to be called a highlight. And compared to the other moves, where you see people flying high above the rim, dunking rebounds and
getting some major hang time, Yao’s move seems positively pedestrian.

But he is Yao Ming. And this is China.

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I was watching the Australia-China women’s basketball last night and listening to the commentary, I finally snapped: I’ve just become to sick of hearing them say the same things over and over. Most of the time it’s stuff along the lines of:

我们在跟世界一流的队的对抗中可以发现自己的不足。
我们跟世界一流的篮球对还是有一定的差距。
亚洲人不能光靠速度取胜，外国队也很灵活的。
经过跟世界一流的队的对抗我们可以不断提升我们各方面的素质、水平。

yadda yadda yadda. It’s like they barely talk about the game. They don’t try to be funny. Some commentators do, and I appreciate that, but that sure was not the case last night with the Australia-China game. Whenever China is really far behind—Australia had a twenty point lead most of the game—they have to talk about why this is, they have to take on this developmental perspective which is fine and valid in itself but really detracts from the viewer’s (or should i just say MY) appreciation and enjoyment of the spectacle (game+commentary) as a whole.

And it’s been repeated throughout the Games, and forms the standard interpretation of events at any sporting event where China loses or gets its ass kicked by another team. In that sense, it’s nothing new and why I’m yammering on about it is beyond me, and perhaps beyond you as well. It just irks me.

While I’m in the mood for getting things off my chest, I might as well add that I hate the whole “1.3 billion” (十三亿）business, which usually modifies something like “dreams of”, as in “the dreams of 1.3 billion people” (十三亿人的梦想）or in “the Olympics of 1.3 billion people.”

I’ve been traveling to China throughout my whole life, starting in 1980 at the tender age of three. I’ve been around Chinese people my whole life, though not necessarily mainland Chinese. And yet, because I grew up in America, where the individualist ethos is so strong and ingrained (the pioneers and explorers are part of our cultural-historical narrative), I simply just cannot fathom this collective ethos, this insistence on the unity–indeed, homogeneity—of the group. Everyone is their own person, their own individual, but somehow when you get to these public announcements, like ads on TV or the speeches of China’s leaders, you have to adopt this “1.3 billion” rhetoric, snap your fingers and somehow they all fall into line into some intellectual phalanx formation. I just think it completely laughable for anyone to speak of the entire nation as one. I would find it insulting. Even in the aftermath of 9-11, when we were all New Yorkers, this kind of rhetoric was not present. There was a kind of national unity and solidarity, but that was in response to attack and tragedy. You could never imagine anything like “the dreams of 300 million people” intoned the same way it is over here.

As I write these last sentences, I am watching a Toyota commercial where the audience is told: “You are no like no one else. But you have to have your own style.”

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According to an article on netease, Chinese insurance company Ping An of China offered Olympic hurdler Liu Xiang a 100 million RMB insurance policy on accidental injury to his body; now Chinese netizens are talking and voting on whether or not Liu Xiang ought to get his 100 million RMB check or not. The company states that injuries of this sort are not covered because they only cover accidental injuries, and one could argue that Liu’s current injuries are the result of shit luck and/or over-training. However, most netizens (58%) believe that Ping An ought to pay up. The article points out another interesting fact: Ping An has worked Liu and other athletes in a variety of ways before, and most of the athletes have some kind of insurance with them, but for most of them it’s only worth one million RMB whereas Liu Xiang got the VIP one-year, 100 million package, which is good until October 31, 2008. The article then mentions that insuring body parts (eg Beckham’s legs, J-Lo’s booty) is a more common practice in the west, but not many people do that in China. However, in the spirit of promoting Chinese athletics, Ping An hopes to develop this kind of service.

Liu Xiang’s policy is an accident-type policy and doesn’t cover his Achilles tendon or any other body part in particular. For his part, Liu has decided to not pursue the money.

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This guy had it all going for him: the Cat in the Hat hat and the Sichuan earthquake relief T-shirt…but could not, for the life of him, get 500rmb tickets. Last night, talking to scalpers, it seemed the going price for most events is 1000+ for most tickets, regardless of what the face value is. My friend managed to get a track and field ticket for 500rmb, which is a minor miracle. They wanted over a 1000 but there was only one (most people are selling in groups of two or three, adjacent seats) so let it go for 500. The ease with which we got it this one after spending a fruitless half hour going through the scalpers market made me somewhat suspicious. I guess tomorrow we will know if it all worked out or not.

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奥运首席医疗官:刘翔伤愈需1年 复发率几乎100%_网易奥运 via kwout

Chen Shiyi, Head of Huashan hospital division of sports medicine, says that Liu Xiang’s injury has been on-going and is quite serious. The interview with the coaches right after Liu Xiang dropped out hinted at what was wrong with him, how his bone structure etc. led to these particularly thorny achilles tendon issues. Chen says that an injury like Liu Xiang’s will take a whole year to heal and is almost guaranteed to happen again—that is, there is no proven way of making sure it doesn’t come back. In other words, Liu Xiang is going to going to be plagued with this kind of injury throughout the rest of his athletic career.

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Netease has a bunch of spoof movie posters featuring Chinese Olympic athletes. You can vote for the ones that you like. Here are some of the ones that I liked or thought were nominally interesting, featuring Yao Ming, Liu Xiang and the usual suspects:

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伊拉克女队员穿二手跑鞋参加奥运(图)_网易奥运 via kwout

Pictures of the old shoes and T-shirts that the Iraqi team are using have been circulating around the internet. Here are some supposed pictures of the pair of shoes that Dana Hussein is going to use. Chinese netizens were also moved by the Iraqi rowers that are using second-hand shirts and equipment from China, some of which doesn’t even match (as in the two people in the boat might be wearing clothes of different brands or designs).

Iraqi athletes, a shameful waste of madhouse time salutes you!

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网友制作奥运大片讽刺国奥：臭脚总动员(图)_网易奥运 via kwout

Not surprising, really. The e’gao crowd has made a bunch of take the piss mock movie posters featuring various players from team China.

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曹磊泪撒新闻发布会 “把金牌献给去世的母亲”_网易奥运 via kwout

Her family refused requests by reporters and media for interviews and kept everything on the DL to ensure that the news wouldn’t upset Cao Lei and ruin her chances for getting Gold.

曹磊的父亲瞒女儿两个月，这期间曹磊家人谢绝了所有媒体的采访，就是不想让任何一个人去了解到这件事情，从而破坏曹磊备战的心情。今天的比赛中，曹磊爸爸也关掉了手机，就是希望此刻的他能够安安静静的等着女儿举出一块金牌。

I have to say, I can understand it in a way, but on the other hand, it’s extremely fucked up.

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