My battle with running, another reminder of how long this is going to take and SAMURAI III - DUEL AT GANRYU ISLAND (16)

For a while now I've been telling people I'm a "runner". To most I believe this entails the fact that I run places, that I put on nice running shoes, and running clothes and join running groups and reading Running Magazine. To me, it means that I purchase nice running shoes and nice running clothes and then leave them in a dusty pile by my door as a permanent way to ridicule my inability to motivate my lazy ass to get out and go running. I mean, there's many reasons why I'm often times unable to go running, many of them very taxing. Oh wait, what's this? A numbered list of this reasons ... for your enjoyment? :

1. It's winter now, thus it's cold and dark. I'm a sensitive person, the cold will crack my smooth smooth skin, and make my wavy locks brittle like glass. Also, by the time I get off work (at 4:30 in the afternoon) it's already slipping in to the darkness of night. Terrible things happen at night, and I wouldn't want to push myself to go running in the murky eve and have something terrible happen to me. Then who's blog would you read? I'm not running for you people.

2. When I could go running it's very early. As previously documented on Criterion Quest I'm very bad at waking up when I'm supposed to. Take today, I wanted to wake up at 7, but my room was very cold, and I couldn't push myself from beneath my cheap sheets in to the icy clime of the house. Also, waking up and going running is a proposition that sounds great in my mind at 7 the previous night, but when there's still sleep goobs sticking my eyelids together, I'm less inclined to get out and break a sweet.

3. I'm lazy. I blame the newly Mac-released Netflix Instant for this. Do you know how many episodes of 30 Rock: Season 1 I have left? And I don't have wait for the "mail man" to bring them to me, I can just plump my steadily heavier body down on our nasty red couch and blammo, it's 30 Rock time. I mean, seriously, why would I step out in the to the rainy, cold Seattle night, when I could be whisking myself away to New York City? You tell me that, and then call me lazy.

Yeah, so, well, running is hard and even though I love it (did I mention I have shiny new shoes AND a running jacket? that's love.) sometimes I need to give myself a little rest ... like all of winter. I'll keep you updated.

You might be surprised as to the fact that I haven't started watching a new Criterion film yet. Yeah me too. But shittily enough, I just haven't had the time to START watching a new one. It's here, it's arrived, I'm more than excited about the almost contemporary Taste of Cherry, but I've just been unable to find a second (again I blame 30 Rock) to turn it on. I'll get at least a half an hour in to tonight. I promise ... sort of.


Samurai III - Duel at Ganryu Island (16) is the final piece in this awesome little trilogy. It's where we learn just how dedicated Musashi Miyamoto is to the wandering life of the ronin samurai (the "hot" girl who's been chasing him for the last three movies, yeah she finds him, and he tells her to back the eff off - that's a samurai for you). He faces off against the girly-looking assassin who's been chasing him for so many years (that's the beach duel the title discusses). The last image in this movie is the Musashi and the bad guy having this long, poetic (read: slow) battle on a beach as the sun sets. You have to realize this about these movies, and I've said this before, but these aren't your typical shlocky samurai flicks, they're about growth and honor and what it takes to be a human being and they're festooned with the slow sort of build that a Japanese trilogy is sure to be filled with.

Friday: Hopefully Taste of Cherry (45) and why I haven't watched Salo (17) yet.