Hello and good morning/day/evening to you all!  I'm sure you all have been dying to hear what I have to rant about for some time now.  To be quite honest, I couldn't make up my mind.  There are so many issues I would like to address, from those horrible little Bratz dolls to anti-war radicals who don't know what the hell they're talking about to people who won't shut up about how "Peter Jackson izz a fUgg3r and shud d13 coz h3 t0Talee mezzd uP the Lrd of teh r1ngz!!!@!11!#@@!!"  And, while all these issues do need to be addressed, there is another, more dire subject that has come to my attention that needs ranting about immediately:  Kung-fu in the media.  Now, before you jump to conclusions, I'm not one of those Christian soccer-parents who think that all violence is wrong and kung-fu is a form of athiest devil-worshipping.  No no, quite the contrary.  I myself take kung-fu, have watched classic kung-fu movies since before I could talk, and absolutely love the form or martial arts.  No, good sirs and madames, my problem is this:  kung-fu has sold its soul.  I mean, have you SEEN some of the carp some advertisers try to pass off as the ancient art??  Seriously, c'mon. 
     Every day I watch two to three hours worth of television, and every day I see a minimum of eighty commercials.  Of those eighty, at least fourty of them try to use kung-fu or some other martial art to reel in the sales!  Take, for instance, this:  there's a laundry detergent that is supposed to keep black clothes, well, black, instead of fading it like other detergents.  The opening "scene" of the commercial is two black-clad women busting out of two different doors and striking what they must be sure is a sexy-kung-fu pose.  Unfortunately, what they're really doing is sticking their leg out so it kind of looks like they just kicked the door open and bending their arms and legs so it sort of looks like they're in "fighting position."  It honestly makes me cringe whenever I see that commercial.  I have to change the channel whenever I see it.  There's another commercial that makes me want to gouge my eyes out as well.  This one is for Pantene Pro V (I honestly don't give a flying Farore's fuck how it's spelled)and features women with shiny hair trouncing about in what appears to be a bamboo thicket.  Then you see two women swinging bamboo sticks around and dancing around with each other.  It took me a while to realize that what they were doing was sparring, or some floozie wuss cheap ass imitation of it.  Apparently the message was that "your hair can be as strong as you are!"  Pfft, puh-lease.  If their hair were as strong as they were (assuming their skills in "martial arts" are a measure of their strength) they ought to be bald.  O yes, and don't even get me started on those gym commercials.  Get a clue, people, the best way to advertise your martial arts and kick-boxing classes is NOT to get the worst possible actors/fighters you find off the street and tell them to stick their arms and legs out in the general direction of their punching bag. 
     It's not the fact that producers get inexperienced people to do their commercials or shows.  Well, not entirely anyway.  It's the fact that they know what's wrong, they know that these people can't tell a punch from a pirouette, and yet they give them absolutely no training whatsoever!  I mean, the LEAST they could do is hire somebody who actually has a little experience in the area to tell these morons what they're doing horribly and painfully wrong.  But then again, I'm not sure these people would get the hint if it were shoved up their noses.  ANY dip shit with a quarter of a brain could tell you that the "technique" (or lack thereof) utilized by the actors is shamefully wrong.  I mean, if you know anything about fighting, or even inflicting minimal pain on something with slightly more intelligence than a sea slug, you would know that you don't bend your wrist when you punch, and you definitely don't lock every joint in your body back.  But, then again, these ARE people who envy our little sea slug's IQ rating.
     However, even with all these horrible commercials and shows that bring unbearable shame to the martial arts world, I have to say that one show really takes the cake:  Black Sash.  It's a show that airs on the WB, so honestly, what can you expect from the network that brought you trash like Dawson's Creek and Gilmore Girls?  But even those bile-flavored wastes of film are more palatable than Black Sash (hereafter referred to BS, and I think you already know what I think it SHOULD stand for) because at least these shows are MEANT to be sappy and ill-choreographed.  Do you honestly want to know how blasphemous it is to call this new form of torture is to the ancient arts?  Ok, you asked for it, but don't blame me if you end up squirming on the floor and foaming from every orifice of your body because of the sheer horror that is BS.  I'm not exactly sure what the show is about, but I know it has to do with some kung-fu guy who is apparently the rank of Black Sash (quite undeservingly, to say the bare minimum) who teaches a small class of students by day, and fights crime with his kung-fu buddies by night.  Or, something stupid like that.  Anyway, the basic premise of the show is enough to avoid the show at all costs.  But evidently, WB was TRYING to drive all its viewers into seizures and convulsions.  The level of ineptitude displayed by the actors/producers/directors/watchers of the show does not border on the imbecillic, it lies smack dab in the middle and eminates fumes of sheer stupidity that could kill instantly.  It's estimated that the total braincell casualties that has resulted from people across the country tuning in to this show amounts to somewhere in the tens of trillions.  Back to explaining WHY the show is so carppy, in a nutshell, the script is horrible, the choreography is physically painful to watch, and the cinematography could have been done better by a quadripalegic chimpanzee with Parkinson's Disease.  Everybody either carries on conversations that are horridly predictable and generic ("What do you think it is, Bobby?"  "I don't know, Larry, but let's go check it out!"  "Right!") or have less than memorable one-liners.  Well, they're memorable, but not in a very positive way.  Then there's the element that the show is based around but ultimately made it impossible to watch more that two seconds of without vomiting everything you have ever eaten.  The fight scenes...well, to say that they suck would be exceptionally worse than the understatement of the history of human kind.  They punches that these people almost attempt to sort of do might kind of vaguely resemble something that might be an arm movement that could be distantly related to a punch if you were slightly blind, squinting, and wearing sunglasses in a half-lit room.  Their "kicks" are by far much worse, if that's at all possible.  The special attacks and cool moves that they attempt are, well, an excruciatingly mind warping tangle of misdirected limbs in what appears to be a melee of people flailing around in a cloud of bees. 
     As you all know, I have a love for hyperbole and a way with words that tends to blow things completely out of proportion.  But from these fingertips mine, these next few lines are complete and utter truth, no exaggeration whatsoever.  These people suck.  BIG time.  The seven- and eight-year-old children in my kung-fu class who never practice and probably couldn't defend themselves against an asthmatic five-year-old could beat these suckas into the ground while standing on their head and juggling three chickens.  O, wait, no hyperbole, right?  Umm, yea, the seven- and eight-year-old kids in my kung-fu class are a LOT better than the fools who are in BS.  I warned my father about it, I told him the absolute dire truth about it.  But, he thought that it was a kung-fu show and therefore was good.  O how wrong he was.  He came back from watching the show in tears, wondering why the God above would defile kung-fu in such a humiliating way.  It truly is dishonorable and blasphemous that the show claims to have anything to do with kung-fu, and I'm actually ashamed that I do kung-fu because of this show.  O, what a dark day it is to be a martial artist.  I would say that I hope to the great gods above that everybody that has anything in the least to do with BS weeps themselves to sleep each and every night, but off course they're obviously heartless money-greedy bastards who don't give half a shit about whether they're defiling anything or not.  *Hangs head in shame*
     I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if all our heroes were there to look up to for support, but alas 'tis not so.  The hearty days of old kung-fu movies are no more, the classics all done and mere knock-offs all that we now have.  What about Jackie Chan, and Jet Li, you say?  Tch, they've sold their souls.  Just like all great actors, they've become sellouts!!  Jet Li sold out to the playas, and Jackie Chan signed a contract entitling the preppie yuppies to his soul.  I thought that all we could do now was turn back to oldies-but-goodies, like the original Drunken Master, Legend of Wing-Chun, Shao-Lin Temple, and Fists of Fury.
     But then I went to go see The Matrix Reloaded, and my faith in martial arts was restored.  Keanu Reeves, though you may be one of the worst dramatic actors this Earth has ever seen, thankyou.  Thankyou for not sucking at martial arts (and actually being pretty good at it!), thankyou Jada Pinkett Smith for being kickass, and thankyou, THANKYOU Wachowski Brothers for creating a masterpiece that is worthy of the title "Sci-Fi Martial Arts Action Cinematic."  Remember kiddies, even in the face of such infidelity that we see on the big screen and the little screen, there are some things to look forward to yet.

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