I read this.

Which lead me to this series of tweets:

• "Has the world become so blind to the basics of commerce that it needs reminding of such a basic tenet?" Yes! http://is.gd/iW7t
• I can hear it now. "No, Rob teh twitterz is worth $500 million!" "Rob, you so crazy! Facebook is worth Billions!"
• No and no. I went through this already in the late 90s, early 00s. Businesses need to make money. PERIOD. Everything else is a hobby.
• Twitter? A hobby.

I then read this quote in the latest issue of The Economist:
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This spring, I'm going to be a teaching an after school class on graffiti/public art at the Rogers Middle School in Hyde Park. The program is run by Citizen Schools and my first day was today. The program is broken out into a period of homework help and then an "apprenticeship," where a volunteer (that's me) comes in and shares expert knowledge of a subject with the kids. The focus is on specific life skills and is meant to be a really hands-on experience. Should be rewarding.

Today I pitched my apprenticeship to the kids. There are several apprenticeships going on simultaneously and there are limited spaces so the kids have to hear the pitch from each Citizen Teacher and then indicate their placement preference. The kids seemed really excited by what I was looking to do, so hopefully I'll see some eager faces come Tuesday.

I'll be updating throughout the process.

That is all.

via skate and annoy

Simply, Ip Man is a great pure martial arts movie. Everything that's right about the genre is present here and, for my money, that makes this one a keeper.

Directed by Wilson Yip (SPL) and starring Donnie Yen, one of the greatest screen fighters of all time, The film tells the story of the Wing Chun master (and teacher to Bruce Lee) and does so in a wildly appealing style.

Appealing? Why, you ask? Fights, baby. Fights. Intricate, bone-crunching and impeccably filmed, the fights in this film are as good as screen fights can be. For someone like me who got into this stuff because of the incredible fight and stunt work done in the 1980s and early 1990s, seeing the tight choreography on display here was a real joy. While the wuxia flavored, art-house favorites like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, and House of Flying Daggers and the effects heavy, comic book stories like The Storm Riders and Seven Swords are absolutely adored here at DrunkenFist manor, they don't really produce the same visceral impact that a film like this does. With the recent exception of Jet Li's Fearless, that impact has really been missing since 1994, the end of the last great martial arts movie boom.

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I went to the Brattle Monday and checked out Ashes of Time Redux, Wong Kar Wai's "definitive" version of his 1994 wuxia pian. Fifteen years and three distinct versions of the movie later, Ashes of Time is still a baffling, yet strangely beautiful film.
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