Here’s a movie for you: Bone Tomahawk. People are dismissively calling this a “Horror Western.” It is a Western and it is Horror, but it has zero in common with something like the abysmal Jonah Hex. This haunting period piece, complete with appropriate attire and spot-on dialogue, is touching, funny, eerie, and downright shocking. Kurt Russell, Matthew Fox, Patrick Wilson, and a very endearing performance by Richard Jenkins. IMDB gives it 7.1 stars, I say 7.5.
Right now I’m reading The Phenomenon of Man by Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. It has been called both “the greatest spiritual book of the century” as well as “the quintessence of bad poetic science.” Which is it? Too soon to tell. But so far it’s a little dry, and I suspect that is the fault of the translator rather than the author (Chardin wrote it in French). I really wish my French was a bit stronger so I could read it in the language it was written. Anyway, I’m hoping it will widen my perspective the same way that this next book did.
Haven’t read William Irwin Thompson’s incredible book The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture? Get it and read it immediately. I’ll give you one quote, probably the most popular:
“Because we have separated humanity from nature, subject from object, values from analysis, knowledge from myth, and universities from the universe, it is enormously difficult for anyone but a poet or a mystic to understand what is going on in the holistic and mythopoetic thought of Ice Age humanity. The very language we use to discuss the past speaks of tools, hunters, and men, when every statue and painting we discover cries out to us that this Ice Age humanity was a culture of art, the love of animals, and women.”
It will make you see the Universe, and humanity’s place within it, in an entirely different light. Pure genius.
And here’s today’s CABAL FANG WOD — it’s the workout we did this past Saturday at the martial arts club. Try to get this done in under 30 mins — we did, but just barely.
- 240 Kicks. Complete 20 with each leg of Coup de Pied Bas, Knee, Coup Italien, Side Kick, Roundhouse, Stamping Kick.
- Constitutional. Front Lunge (100), Diamond Push-ups (25), Legs up Crunches (50), Left Planks (60 secs), Right Plank (60 secs), Burpees (25), Pikes (25), Squats (100).
Why did I title this post the way I titled it? As a reference to what was, in my opinion, the funniest commercial of Super Bowl 50 (looks like they gave up on using Roman numerals, or else it would have been Super Bowl L).
Robert Mitchell Jr. 