Discover Top Posts Tagged with #jcvd

No Retreat, No Surrender (Corey Yuen, 1986)

#jean claude van damme #jcvd #80s #action movie #mean mug

“That's why they call this thing bloodsport, my damie.”

🎶Kumite! Pootie Tang!🎶

#pootie tang #bloodsport #jcvd #jean claude van damme #Chris rock #Louis ck #movie #film #mashup

JCVD (Mabrouk El Mechri, 2008).

#jcvd #Mabrouk El Mechri #Jean-Claude Van Damme #van damme

Father's Day

I don’t remember where we were exactly, but I know I was supposed to be outside, enjoying the sunshine by the water. My parents and their friends were out on boats, getting burnt, emptying coolers, blaring Jimmy Buffett. I was in the dark hotel room, enjoying its cave-like conditions while the balcony glass door boiled with a wavy glare, making a day of outdoor activities seem as inviting as an immolation-off. Plus, a movie was coming on.

My comfort be damned, things were picking up outdoors, so my dad was sent to fetch me. We weren’t here to enjoy the inside after all. A bit, let’s say, flustered that I was snugly in bed as opposed to up on waterskis, I prepared for my day of ease to end. But then, the heavenly sounds of vaguely Asian strings filled the room and changed my life.

The music stopped my father’s lecture like a Dim Mak could end the life of a bottom brick- such is the power of the soundtrack of 1988’s Bloodsport. For not even my dad, more of a John Wayne guy at heart, could resist the charms of Jean-Claude Van Damme and his anatomy-defying kicking adventures. Nor could he defy a simple story told brilliantly, especially one featuring a rough, lovable biker type named Jackson, a babe journalist named ?????, an “OK USA” line reading that would make the Bard blush, and, of course, the (nearly) indomitable Chung Li, one of cinema’s most imposing villains.

Dim Mak Reference Explained

We cheered when JCVD finally triumphed in his insane training. We winced when a crazed-eye’d Chung Li broke that dude’s shin with his heel. We were dazzled as the “stats” displayed at the end of the film (such as “.12 second: Fastest Punch with a Knockout” that would later not only be exposed as a lie, but physically impossible, but I digress). We sat and we watched and we laughed and we high fived a lot. It all lead to my dad getting read the riot act two hours later by the group outside for “missing” all the fun they’d been having.

But even with paradise outside, my dad decided he’d rather spend the time with his socially awkward son and watch the travails of a Belgian martial artist pretending to be an American in his quest to win a fake karate contest on a shitty tv. And that means something. He would later take me to see the masterpieces of Europe, fund all sorts of fancies, and put up with an unspeakable amount of bullshit in the process, but few, if any, of these “big” things meant as much as that day in the hotel room.

My dad’s been gone for 20 years now. Our relationship had its ups and downs, as most do I suppose. It’s easy to fixate on the bad, often unfairly. Father’s Day attracts this kind of ambivalence for many. Dads die everyday. Sons too. It sucks. But don’t let life’s messiness dull the joy Dads (biological or not) bring us- some of it silly, some of it Belgian, a lot of it unplanned, some of It not Belgian (or so I am told). For it’s in the sneaked fast food combo, the car sing-a-long to Bob Seger, and the event skipped together where life shines. I share this all not to recommend watching Bloodsport (although [checks watch] you absolutely should) but to encourage you to share and embrace the “mundane” moments that are truly magical.

Happy Father’s Day

(56 Knockouts in a Single Tournament would mean, assuming typical tournament rules, that there were 56 rounds, which means there were 2^56, or 720,000,000,000,000,000,000, combatants)

#bloodsport #Father's Day #Chung Li #jcvd #Youtube