Shark-Bite Movie Review: Balls of Fury -- Paddle Power

For those of us who grew up in the West, ping-pong occupies a place somewhere below darts and above foosball and seems fit mostly for suburban basements and the rec-rooms of rehab centers. It is the kind of sport that causes us to use our hands to make air quotation marks when we use the term “sport” to refer to it.

But, of course, these perceptions are cultural. Soccer, or football, which people across huge parts of the world follow like a religion (the kind where attendance is not falling off and you can gamble on the outcome of the service) barely registers a blip on the radar in North America compared to other major league sports and is most enthusiastically enjoyed by pubescent teens, most likely because all of that endless running back and forth over a mile-long field is a needed distraction from the raging hormones that would otherwise win the day. Baseball, referred to as America’s national past-time, likewise is called rounders (or a form close enough to it is) in Britain and it really isn't taken seriously outside the schoolyard.

And so it is with ping-pong. While we in the West might think little of the game, with a ping-pong table serving as a convenient shelf for a pack-rat’s junk in a cluttered basement, it is the national sport in China and is popular throughout much of East Asia (though this popularity doesn't seem to have spread to Bangkok, where “ping-pong” carries an entirely different connotation altogether). So, “Balls of Fury” is not absurd because it treats ping-pong as a sport of consequence. In almost every other respect, however, “Balls of Fury” is completely absurd.

The central character is Randy Dayton (Dan Fogler), a table-tennis prodigy at the age of 12, who loses a showdown in the ’88 Olympics, which were actually the first games to feature ping-pong as an official sport – one nod to reality from the film-makers. He loses to Karl Wolfschtagg who, as you can no doubt ascertain from the name, is a crazed East German stereotype. (Incidentally, this character is played by the film’s co-writer Tom Lennon, making “Balls of Fury” the first movie to my knowledge to be co-written by someone playing an ethnic stereotype.)

Randy’s loss is bad news for his degenerate gambler of a father (Robert Patrick of “Terminator 2”) who bet heavily on the game with the Chinese triad, is unable to make good on the debt and is killed so quickly that neither the audience nor his own son really seems to give too much of a hoot about him after that; when Randy delivers the line “You killed my father” later in the movie, those words could have been replaced by “I was saving that doughnut” and have had the same emotional impact. The man who did the dirty on his father, a criminal mastermind called "Feng" played by Christopher Walken, is the film’s main villain and this no-expense-outlaid setup “makes it personal”.

Knowing Randy’s history with Feng, an FBI agent looking to break into a secret ping-pong tournament that Feng is holding, and also somehow disband an illegal gun-running ring, (or was it a panda-smuggling operation, or a gigolo circuit? This is the kind of movie where such details fade from memory as soon as you learn them) and of course he wants Randy to serve as his ticket into this criminal underworld by playing ping-pong till he’s so good that no underground ping-pong championship would be worth the price of the paddles without him.

When digesting this utterly ludicrous plot, it helps if you've seen “Enter the Dragon”, and recognize that all major plot points derive from that film (the title of course is a play on another Bruce Lee film “Fists of Fury”). Robert Ben Garant who wrote and directed the film, admitted as much to KungFuMagazine.com, saying film-makers “took all the kung fu out of a kung fu movie and replaced it with ping-pong”.

And whether or not “The Karate Kid” is considered by anyone to be a classic or even a part of the Kung Fu genre, it too is parodied here, with James Hong (an accomplished character actor, though I recognized him immediately as the unhelpful host in the classic “Seinfeld” Chinese restaurant episode. Cartwright! Cartwright!) in the Mister Miyagi role as “Blind Master Wong”, passing on the secrets of ping pong and acting as the foil for about five more gags involving blindness than would have been advisable.

The makers of this one seemed to have been operating on a few basics. They liked kung fu movies, rock and roll and attractive Asian women (they would, no doubt, feel at home among the ex-pat population of Bangkok). The plot and a couple of rocking interludes involving ‘80s rock band, and suspected “This is Spinal Tap” inspiration, Def Leppard, take care of the first two. Maggie Q, who plays Wong’s niece and Randy’s romantic interest in an unbelievable development that comes out of the clear blue sky, takes care of the third. She provides the movie’s main Kung Fu scene and also makes the best use out of ping-pong’s infamous short-shorts, last seen on the big screen in the opening scenes of the "Borat" movie.

And there’s a conclusion to all of this that involves a ping-pong tournament, male sex slaves, a panda and Christopher Walken in what might have been an offensive portrayal of a Chinese man, had it not been placed in this absurd context. It is the film’s sheer absurdity, and general good natured feel that puts it in the company of movies like “Death Race 2000” (thought that was a better “B”), where to critique it too heavily for its shortcomings seems to miss the entire point and spoil the fun.

Noel, Bangkok

Tossed Beer Can KOs Loud-Dressing Country Star Pat Green

From where we sit, Nascar seems like it’s all about drinking beer while screaming your head off, while agreeing during more somber moments that Dale Earnhardt was a saint who walked the earth and we’ll never see his likes again on this terrestrial sphere. It seems like good fun – apart from that last bit – and preferable to Indy Racing with its loud noise and endless confusing laps of cars whipping by while you struggle to steady your drink from the vibrations.

We’ve never attended a Nascar event, but we’re guessing that if you were to look for a beer at one, you wouldn’t have too much difficulty tracking one down. This is doubly true if you’re performing in front of a Nascar audience. Presumably you’d get a cooler full.

In a case of idiocy instantly corrected, singer Pat Green asked the crowd at a Michigan International Speedway Nascar event: “Anybody got a beer?”

Inviting projectiles from the audience at any concert ever could be suicidal – indeed, if he regularly dresses like he does in the attached photo, one can picture attending his concerts with a basket brimming with tomatoes at the ready – but to ask for beer from an audience chock full of people drinking so much that piles of tins collect at their feet, well that’s just a step beyond.

Green got his wish. One audience member tossed him a beer – the one he saw coming – and another was fired in immediately after, beaning the new country singer right between the eyes and knocking him out cold. The concert was concluded, the beer, presumably, unopened.

Olympic Boozing: Would someone shut up that drunk? Oh, hello Mr. Sports Minister.

The Olympic Games have thus far yet to provide any really satisfying doping scandals. The major one thus far had to do with a North Korean shooter recently found to have used a banned substance. And it wasn't as if he was taking anything that would give him superhuman eyesight or the aim of Rambo in the bush -- just some drug that helped him chill out. Yawn. Next most exciting doping scandal? A Vietnamese artistic gymnast, who didn’t even make it into the top three, took something of some sort to help with whatever it is an artistic gymnastic does.

It’s as if people are no longer making the effort in the shadow of Ben Johnson, who humiliated our country by taking anabolic steroids (read: didn’t cycle the drugs out of his system in time) prior to setting a world record in the 100-metre dash in 1988.

In lieu of that and since we would rather not walk down the easily-misconstrued-comment-laden road of the age scandal surrounding female gymnasts (an over-40 part-time athlete only gymnast competition -- now that would be entertaining), and because we believe that Bob Costas was one of only about 16 people who saw the original lip-synched child folksong performance, we were pleased that amid all of this a minor scandal broke that is more up our alley (story here).

The incident occurred while Argentina and Belgium were playing a doubles tennis match. Tennis is not typically given to the type of abusive bellowing that is considered a matter of form in sports like baseball and football. But one fan was hollering for the Belgian players so loudly that at one point an Argentine player lost it and told the guy to shut the hell up.

The raucous fan turned out to be our new favorite politician, Belgian Sports Minister Michel Daerden. Holding the government sports portfolio usually means with being faced with tasks about as challenging as cutting the ribbon at the local YMCA or deciding whether or not the part of the local stadium's ceiling that fell onto the heads of spectators last weekend could stand some fixing. In a post like that you might as well enjoy yourself, and Daerden apparently has been doing just that. Not only was he also spotted drunk cheering on the Belgian hockey team, but he has reached the point of having such a rep as a drunkard, that his antics have made it onto YouTube.

Here then is the minister speaking shortly after an election of some sort or other in Belgium. Language barriers are not a problem here, as he is clearly speaking the international language of drunk:

Scientists Prove Beer-Goggles Effect is Real -- Efficacy of Spitting in the Wind Currently Under Review

In the latest revelation to come out of science’s unending quest to prove the utterly obvious, a recent UK study has shown that being drunk makes the people around you appear more attractive. This is following on from shocking research conducted in France that determined that loud music is often played in places serving alcoholic beverages. A look into whether drinking in the winter increases the likelihood that one will attempt to urinate one’s initials in a snowbank is set for the first snowfall.

The beer-goggles effect is of course commonly known to all drinkers and the sober ugly people hanging around them looking to get laid. Lowering inhibitions and standards right along with them is what alcohol is for. However, it was never proven in a controlled, scientific setting, and for some reason, some academic types at Bristol University in the UK thought it should be.

The researchers gave both a lime-flavored alcoholic drink and a similarly flavored non-alcoholic drink to 84 university students, who may or may not have shown up solely because they heard word that an egghead was giving out free booze. They were told to drink what was given to them and then shown pictures of people their own age once they were finished. The slightly tipsy students found the students in the pictures more attractive than the control group did. Hence: the beer-goggles theory formerly bandied about ignorantly is now established in fact. Interestingly, the heterosexual group of students with a drink in them also found members of their own sex more attractive, which might result in an unexpected conclusion to the evening the next time Billy and Bo Dog go out for a Friday debauch.

The study’s lead researcher said that ethical constraints prevented him from giving his subjects more than the equivalent of a few glasses of wine, something he regretted. "We can look at smaller doses and we can look at slightly higher doses," he said. What people would be rating others on HotOrNot.com after having, say, fallen down the stairs in a puke-stained drunken stupor is thus a matter of pure conjecture. In the meantime, alcohol, will continue with its sacred mission of giving hope to those battered mercilessly by the ugly stick.

Google Street Views: Big Brother is Watching You (Get Drunk and Pass out on Mom's Lawn)

We live in a confessional world, at least that is what some complete stranger whispered in our ear before the threat of a macing moved him to another seat on the bus.

And what good's a confession if there is nobody there to hear it? [Guest Editor Christopher Hitchen's aside: If God is omniscient, isn't confessing redundant?]

A confessional world could not have developed without its twin evil, the Mary-Kate Olsen to its Ashley--voyeurism.

It's one thing to read accounts of someone's seedy life on a blog, it's another thing entirely to watch it unfold, and it's probably best where the twain meet.

Google Aerial Maps, initially showed us the promise of being able to zoom in on your neighbor's hot polka dot bikini-clad wine-drunk mistress, before privacy advocates put the kibosh on it. Similar concerns however, have not been directed toward the increasingly popular Google Street Views.

We are guessing that a line is drawn, and one that is rendered quite blurry squinting at it through Aerial View, between the clearly private and the public sphere. However the following near-encroachment onto a person's private property has called this distinction into question, with some of those same privacy concerns raised.

Australia, much like it was in our book, The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery is again at the center of drunken shenanigans, with the resigning of two Qantas flight attendants (reporters were unclear if they were on board during the recent ill-fated hole in the fuselage flight) for drunkenly pulling the fire alarm at a 5-star hotel.

However, it is a drunken Aussie fisherman who passed out on his mother's lawn and was captured on Google Street Views who has raised the ire of their Privacy Foundation.

Some make the claim that if sans Google, someone had happened by, (and rather than asking the man if he needed help, though the Samaritan issue is a different one entirely), drew lines (or put something else) on his face and taken an embarrassing photo, this would be no different, however others question how every public action, no matter how 'public', is scrutinized either by some indifferent corporation, or in the case of many downtown intersections, by more snapping pictures than backstage at the AVN Awards.

Whatever happened to the good old days of balconies and telescopes?

At the risk of betraying an editorial bias in our headline, we do side with the privacy advocates in this case but only marginally so, as without public shaming our tome of drunken exploits could not have come about (and we are equally aware of the irony of holding this position when we've decided to disseminate the poor bastard's photo all over the blogosphere). Hey, it's a gray issue.