Rocking out with Tomoyasu Hotei vis-a-vis Tarantino's latest flick. Kill Bill, which I saw on Sunday with my old High School buddy Chris, is quite a good film. Quinten has the sense not to put himself in play and leans heavily on his strengths: mining past pop culture for its most suculent morsels and sewing together his pomo orgy of style with a deft and revealing skill for dialogue and timing. The result is succulent manga.

Critics made a great deal about the violence, but I would call it far less violent than Resavor Dogs. It's less about what blood means in and of itself -- the hard realities and consequences of living and dying -- and more about telling stories through combat; hemogloben is illustration. By abstracting the gore to an absurd level, it becomes a medium of connection rather than a bludgeoning tool, one more thing to choreograph. Much more so than any "real" action film, it made me want to have that razors edge of skill and the will to put it in action, to slice through the soft spongy guts of the cheeseburger day to day, through the fat and the blood and the shit and the mucus, to emerge in some kind of God-like arc of purpose. The Mission, yes, and a theme song too. I've a weakness for most things epic.

Tonight having a little conversation with Molly, this gem of language springs forth from her in jest, a parody of all the self-styled cynics out there who get by on meaningless work and various addictions. "I'm jaded, dammit! I've thought it through and it sucks!" A keeper.

But seriously thinking some about where I want to end up in relation to the comic book possibilities set forth in this film I saw. I'm no assasin -- a lover/creator by trade, thanks -- but might I not one day be similarly skilled? Dangerous? A professional? A man of some craft, of honor, a samauri in my own right? It's a popular fantasy, this notion of slipping outside the regular rules that people seem to have to play by -- job, singles bars, monday night football -- jumping off the squirrel-cage running wheel, becoming ubermench, awake. It would indeed be something, but would it be good?