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More books fell under the relentless onslaught to overcome my lack of knowledge. I also saw movies to help fill in the blanks in my cinematography knowledge. Basically, the library needed a bunch of the books back or they were going to fine me. In one, case they did just that.

I was going to return “Instant Health: The Qigong Workout” by Shifu Yan Lei. Shifu Yan is an actual Shaolin monk now living in England. What’s Shaolin got to do with Qigong? Well, everything. Shaolin is the fount of many things, including Qigong, Chan Buddhism, and of course Kung Fu. I was originally just going to send this book back unread because it was overdue and I still had plenty of books to plow through. Since I had it, I decided to leaf through it. I am sure glad I did.

It was one of those nice books written for westerners who are in over their heads. Hey, that sounds like me. It will probably be the motto under my picture. It had pictures and everything. I learned about the eight treasures which are movements you need to do to practice QiGong. I learned the stances. I learned about special breathing from the abdomen. It reminded me of breathing for Choir practice. If I had the book here, I could whip out some of the names for your edification. Fortunately, my good friends at Amazon will be sending me that book early this week.

The book was good because it went over a lot of the basics and it didn’t have lot of Qi talk. I’m still having a hard time with the concept of Qi. Me and my stupid western upbringing. Although, if I can get Master Tu to pull off the big stunt using his Qi, I will be swayed.

The second book was “The Multi Orgasmic Man” by Mantak Chia & Douglas Abrams. I believe Mr. Ching recommended this opus. This book came at the practice of Iron Crotch from a sexual angle. There was a lot of talk about Sexual Kung Fu. On the one hand they did talk about the exercises you need to do to strengthen your crotch. On the other hand they talked a lot about self-play to help better focus your practice. I guess you do need to practice a little Onanism to strengthen those muscles, but I was unprepared for such a frank discussion. They also referred to the practitioners as the Multi-Orgasmic Man as if it was some badge of honor you could win. Again, I did learn a lot. I learned things I didn’t think I was going to learn. There were also detailed drawings of the male and female reproductive organs that I hadn’t seen since ninth grade Sex Ed class.

I might be getting exposed to more than I anticipated with this movie. The MOM book opened my eyes to the fact that Iron Crotch practice is more than just lifting weights with your testicles. I think they have been discussing this aspect of the practice to me, I’ve just been filtering it out. Thanks to MOM, that will no longer occur. I’m also looking at an NC-17 rating for my documentary.

The videos I saw were about Cinematography. One I had spotted at Film Tools over in Burbank called Cinematographer’s Style. It was done by Kodak and Arri. They had over a hundred well respected cinematographers speak in sound bites about how they got started, what they do and what is style. They had everyone from Gordon Willis to a hundred guys I didn’t know. It was inspiring to hear people talk about their craft and what they do. But my hope was to get a little more practical advice. If you put the light here and set your aperture 2.8, you can never go wrong.

The film had a couple instances of people offering advice. Bernardo Bertolucci’s DP talked about lighting for different moods for Last Tango in Paris. An other mentioned different feels you can get with different lenses but the same framing. Gordon Willis mentioned he didn’t like lights at all. See? I knew Bertolucci. I can’t name his DP.

When I was looking for reviews of Cinematographer’s Style, I kept getting mentions about another film called “Visions of Light” The reviewers said this film was much more practical than the first. Since, Netflix had both films, I got both films. I’m sure Cindi would have preferred to watch something a little less techie for the evening. Which is why I started watching the films when she was out with the dogs.

“Visions” was exactly the same as “Style”. More Cinematographer’s theorizing about what they do without actually showing you what they do. Only “Visions” actually had clips of the movies. It was more of a history lesson about cinematography in films. Again, inspirational. Again, looking for where to put the lights. Maybe I’ll just put them where I want them and start a revolution with a new original half-assed lighting style. “Visions” even had the same Cinematographers as talking heads. Although they all looked much better since “Visions” was done fifteen years ago. Gordon Willis has not aged well.

Gordon Willis, for those who don’t know, was the cinematographer on “The Godfather” films and did a lot of work with Woody Allen. At one point, they referred to him as the Prince of Darkness because he doesn’t use a lot of lights in his films. Which is funny because I worked with another DP on “Angels and Demons” who had the same moniker for the same reasons.

The Tu’s return from their Texas jaunt today. I am so happy. I want to go to their Iron Crotch class and either put my fears to rest or start getting used to a lot of graphic depictions of mens’ privates. It’s time to start moving forward by taking pictures.

Why a picture of Jackie Chan for this post? Why not? I need new pictures for every post and this is what I had. Plan on seeing more dog pictures in the future.