Antakya: Holding pattern; movies

We're still in Antakya, in the holding pattern until we get to Trabzon and then the Kackar Mountains.

I'm in a bit of a mid-trip slump.

I just finished reading the Poisonwood Bible. It was intense and absorbing, especially the description of the unrelenting struggle for survival in the Belgian Congo, and the family dynamics of a mother and four daughters held hostage by their raving lunatic of a patriarch, a Baptist preacher. A beautiful, tragic, moving story.

Now I have "My Antonia" and "The Sound and the Fury" lined up. I had no idea Faulkner wrote in stream-of-consciousness, which makes reading feel like work. Well, at least it's shorter than James Joyce's Ulysses.

We watched a movie on TV last night that was in Cantonese with Turkish subtitles. It was kung-fu slapstick and spaghetti western called "Kung-Fu Hustler." Absolutely hilarious. It's set in a village whose leader is a sturdy, no-nonsense matron who periodically goes out into the square to chew everybody out, clad in a billowy white peignoir and hair rollers, with a cigarette dangling from her mouth, and a permanent scowl. She also has amazing kung-fu and her specialty is the lion roar, which blasts everything in sight. Due to a trivial provocation, the village comes under attack by a group of fedora-wearing, hatchet-swinging bad guys. The villagers would cringe and hide until they are pushed to the brink, then one of them would finally step up and reveal his or her kick-ass moves and crush the opposition. This happens several times, with the mafia types hiring increasingly lethal assasins, including a pair of blind zither-players and a guy in underwear and slippers from the insane asylum. Meanwhile, the lead bad guy gets over a humiliating childhood episode, finds the goodness in his soul, fights for the village, gets the girl, and opens a candy store.

Great movie, but now I wonder how many of these movies the Turks have been watching and if that's their primary mental association when they gawk at me walking in the park. I just might have to startle someone by breaking into a flamingo stance with a Bruce Lee chicken-squawk.

The TV selection consists of Turkish programs (news and drama), plus two channels of American movies and dramas (TNT and NBC), an Arabic channel (MBC), and random movies in German and last night, Cantonese. There's a channel that shows nature programs with no sound. And of course, all UEFA futbol matches are faithfully broadcast live with pre- and post-game analyses.

Last night, I also caught the latest episode of Desperate Housewives, which made me *very* happy. It was the first time Jim's watched it, and his summary is "a show with multiple, very easy to follow, obvious storylines." Also I watched Smallville for the first time.

Jim has never seen the original Christopher Reeves Superman movie! By golly, it's like he grew up on Mars!