Author Archives: Dennis

Junior Fundie Camp

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Jesus Camp [2006]

Director: Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady

I was looking forward to seeing this documentary, after I saw a bit of it on Real Time with Bill Maher, but I must admit that I’m a little disappointed. While I was as disgusted at the content of the documentary (more on that in a sec), I was disappointed at the form in which they presented it.

The documentary is about a summer-camp organised by the fundamentalist Christians in the United States, where children learn how to be better “soldiers of God.” The camp was introduced by the organiser, a woman who specialises in preaching to children, as the Christian alternative to Muslim fundamentalism, a society in which, according to the woman, children are being groomed to be martyrs and soldiers of faith. She, too, believes she should put her effort into “educating” the children on the word of God.

Of course, anyone who doesn’t believe that this is correct, or any non-fundamentalist (Christian or otherwise), will consider that education as indoctrination and brain-washing. The kids who are followed certainly do posses all the qualities of little brain-washed munchkins. They talk about things like “wanting more out of life” and “giving up [their] life to God” at a time in their life where I don’t think anyone is capable of having made up their mind about things like spirituality.

There is no narrator, and context has to be generated by the words and images of the documentary itself, which can be a bit annoying. Nowhere near as good as Michael Moore’s documentaries, but it does have a more sober feel to it, and it feels less of a pre-masticated cup of broth than most of Michael Moore’s sensationalistic documentaries feel like.

Kung Fu

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I just wrote an entire post about my frustrating evening yesterday, and I switched to another tab to download the Fallout 3 trailer, and my browser fucking crasht, so I lost the post. Let me see if I can recreate it…

I had a very frustrating evening yesterday, since I badly wanted to go to Kung Fu, since I haven’t been there with everything that’s been happening lately. I couldn’t reach my step-father, and therefore kind of took a gamble that he had left his car for me to use. He hasn’t been using it a lot lately, so I took the train to Hoorn, walked over to his house, only to find that his car wasn’t there. I ended up taking a taxi from my mother’s house to Kung Fu, and after Kung Fu one from there to my father’s house to pick up some things that had to be returned to the doctor (mophine pump, etc.) and then drove on to my mother for some food and a shower. It cost me 35 euro, which ticked me off, but I wasn’t going to let anything stand in my way of going to Kung Fu again.

At Kung Fu everyone was really glad to see me, which warmed my heart, and I got to train in the new gym we share with a kickboxing school. The space was a bit smaller than what we had before, but the mat was perfect, and it has a dedicated boxing ring, which was great, too. It also has very neatly attached hooks all along the wall, with a full-length kickboxing bag hung from them, which you can slide forward, away from the wall and lock in place; a really nice way of storing the kickboxing bags. The area is high, which is good so that it doesn’t run out of oxygen quickly, and it has windows and a door to the outside. It’s abit more spartan than what we had before, which I like, but good ventilation in the summer is a luxury you get used to really quickly.

The training went well. The push-ups I’ve been doing every morning have really helped out, because I didn’t get too winded when we did them during training, which normally does happen. My legs had become quite a bit weaker, though, but that’s just a matter of time. I was really happy when my sifu told me that we’d knock off the extra weight I had put on over the last few weeks in no time. :)

Karel, my Kung Fu brother, immediately challenged me to a sparring match in the ring, and when we started I immediate shot for a double-leg take-down, tried to put him in a kimura but pinning his arm instead and I went for a full-mount. It was all over from there. I got applause. Not really Kung Fu…but fun nonetheless. :)

I’ve decided that if I can find a BJJ school in Amsterdam I’m going to go and have a look at it. Kung Fu is really cool to do, but it’s a sport, not really combat.