The Ned and Daron Report: Frankie Goes To Club Confetti

Bladeii is a new movie starring Wesley Snipes. I have to assume that it's also a word in the vampirese language that's spoken on and off by some of the vampire characters in the film (and real life vampires as well). I don't know exactly what bladeii means, but you might want to know that I did find out it's not pronounced "Blood EE-EE" like Hawaii. If you say it like that, the kid will go "what?" and refuse to sell you a ticket. vampires mostly aren't Polynesians, and vampirese isn't a Polynesian language. The pronunciation that worked for me was sort of like "Blahdy eye".

Anyway, I thought the key to figuring out what in the hell Bladeii the movie was all about would be to figure out what in the hell the word bladeii means to a vampire. So when I went to the show I brought a pen and paper so that I could write down everything the vampires said, along with the subtitled English translation. I worked really hard, and I did figure out some useful vampire expressions—like for instance "ouah chi chah" means "fuck this shit" and "wah la chock" means "what the fuck?"—but I never once heard them say anything that sounded quite like "blahdy eye" or "bloody eye" or "blad eye ee." So I was stumped.

By the way, this might come as a surprise, but I do know bladeii doesn't mean "kill me now." That's pronounced "coma tu fose."

It wasn't until 1989 that I started noticing that vampires and even the vamposeurs were starting to change. They started bringing weapons to Club Confetti, and would spend more time practicing their sword fighting than improving their dance moves. They started wearing thick leather outfits instead of their previous, daintier attire, and started to talk more about early techno groups like Cybotron and Dominatrix instead of discussing important things like the best place to locate Freur's "Doot Doot" 12." Some vamps strayed from goth and techno so far that they became punk rock. But worst of all, I noticed a slow but steady corruption of their language, spreading like a disease within their community.

Why would creatures so charismatic and pure befoul their own language by incorporating slang and swears into it? Throughout the whole transformation, I had really tried to tolerate it, accepting my friends how they were and wished to be, but when they started using the "CH" words...that was just the last straw. Why couldn't they just say "Let's stinky up this doodle," or "Human, I am going to donkey you up the boondoggle," instead of lowering their standards to such an alarming degree? I don't know really how else to explain it, but I guess I was just so disappointed that they didn't have more pride in themselves. For years I had devoted my time and my life to them, but now I was just uncomfortable hanging out with them, and dissatisfied with the time we spent together at my parent's house watching TV and huffing white out.

I got my spookiest voice ready and practiced saying "I vant to suck your blahd" a bunch of times. Then I phoned her up. When she answered I groaned "blahdy eye" very slowly and clearly and spookily, and I swear to you, this is exactly what she said: "Wah la chock? Who the chock are you? Are you chahing with me?" That's how I figured out two important things about vampirese slang. First, the reason they have two different words for the F bomb (chock and chah) is obviously because the first is the noun, the second is the verb. Second, the vampire language problem is really widespread, much more so than we had estimated. A dozen years ago Cinnamon would have never sailor cussed like that.

Anyway, I told her who I was and we talked for a while and reminisced about Bandaloops and stuff, then I got down to business. "Cinnamon, wah la chock does the word bladeii mean?" I asked. There was silence at the end of the line for what seemed like minutes but was probably only like .25 seconds.

"You know, Ned, I don't know," she whispered. "But I've heard it said before, and all I've figured out is that you don't ask about it. People only say that word when they're talking about something that you really don't want to get involved with." Scary!

The central character in Bladeii is Corey Feldman (expertly played by character actor and former model Norman Reedus), and the film is the true-life story of how Feldman, I assume after making Lost Boys, went camping with some hot girl vampires who tried to kill him. Luckily, he was rescued by a mysterious half-man-half-vampire (played by Wesley Snipes) named "B". B gives Feldman the nickname Scud (you know, like Stud), and they form a vampire hunting partnership. I'm not sure what real-life celebrity the B character is based on—when I saw his super tough looking, super well groomed moustache, his super pointy shaved sides haircut, and his super well tailored long trench coat, I assumed he must have been based on that guy from Frankie Goes to Hollywood. But further research suggests that that guy's name was Paul Rutherford and neither Paul nor Rutherford begin with the letter B. So, even though he and B look a lot alike, I have to assume that the resemblance is either coincidental, or has some more complex significance than that they're just the same guy.

I listened to my Frankie record and didn't get any new ideas. Then I listened to my Frankie record backwards, and, whoa! I was blown away as an entire universe of vampire language was opened up before my eyes. I counted at least forty sounds that could easily have been "chock" or "chah", seventy five that could have been "ouah" (the vampire "S" word), eight that could have been "duik" (the vampirese word for sword), one that could have been "porda nor duik" (the vampirese phrase for "put your sword away"), and two that might have been "daburine" (the vampirese word for daywalker which is the vampire term for a half breed that has all of a vampire's powers and none of its weaknesses). One of the most interesting instances of backmasked vampire language is in the song "Relax" when he says "relax, don't do it, when you wanna sock-a-chew-what" or something like that. If you listen to that last phrase backwards, you'll find out that he's saying "tu wah chahk us" which would traslate directly into English as "me what fuck us" which I interpret to mean "I kill my own people". To me it sounds like Paul Rutherford might have actually been a daywalker vampire slayer just like B.

While watching Bladeii I was really impressed with it's accuracy. While the movie still laughably showed the everyday vampire as a bloodthirsty killer, caring only for his or her own bloodlust, there were a lot of elements in the movie that were so close to actual vampire reality that I got a little nervous. I started to wonder if the other elements of the movie had any basis in reality, and if my old friends were in some real danger, not from daywalkers, who are actually the most popular kids in vampire circles, but from Reapers, this new hybrid form of vampire that Bladeii tells us about.

If my friends were in danger from these Reapers (who are basically vampires who cannot be killed by silver or stakes, and that have no control of their bloodlust and kill not only humans but also regular vampires), then that would explain the change from fey dainty outfits to leather protective wear and the sword fighting and weapon carrying.

As I started to research the film, I was convinced my theory was right when I noticed that the screenwriter for Bladeii was Marvin Wolfman. Obviously using a fake name, this unknown writer (who is most likely a friend of a vampire if not a real vampire) must have felt comfortable enough with writing the truth knowing that he or she wouldn't be exposed to the Reapers.

I know it was rude to trick you guys like that, but I was trying to make a point about life, which is this: sometimes when you pay too much attention to making things (like logos or movies or outfits) look awesome, you'll end up making something that's not just a cooler version of what it originally was, but something that's perceived by the masses as something that is a completely different thing, altogether hands down a new level of, you know, thingness (logoness, movieness or outfitness).

Sometimes this will happen with your own personal outfits. Me, I'll put on really the coolest stuff in my closet, then make it just a little bit cooler with the right accessories—maybe a bolo tie, a shawl, a flower behind my ear, or a fedora—and when I go out on the town people will come right up to me and say "what are you wearing? Is that even a shirt? I don't know how to interpret."

It's like, with fashion I was trying to say something quite simple, but I did it with such novel stylishness that what I was trying to communicate became completely, mind bogglingly difficult to figure out. And so it transcends. My outfit is still an outfit, but it is no longer made up of what we think of as clothes.

The fact that the Blade II logo looks kind of like it says bladeii is just the first sign of the film's ability to transform the generic into the transcendent. This same kind of thing is going on in Blade II on many different levels: the surface story, the subtext, and our real world's relationship to the film. I could probably go on for hours about different aspects of it, but I don't have time for that, so I'd like to focus on one specific, particularly notable aspect of the film: the sword fighting.

Sword fighting and, in particular, gratuitous sword spinning are common in the movies, in fact they're almost as common in good movies as clothes are on people. Blade II is full to the brim with gratuitous sword spinning, but the sword spinning is so cool and so gratuitous that it reaches an entire new level. It's like, in most movies, when the guy spins a sword he's saying "hey villain, I'm prepping my sword for the right angle to insert it into your sternum." Some movies use the sword spin to communicate a little bit more, namely "look how awesome I am at sword stuff, you better be really afraid and run off now." B is different, though. He spins his sword for so long, and at such unnecessary times, that it's impossible to assume that he's trying to say either of those things, or really communicate with anybody at all. He's still spinning his sword, but he's no longer "sword spinning" per se, he's doing some sort of interpretive sword dancing.

And it works. I'm talking both in the story and in the context of real life. The reapers are all destroyed, and the audience practically explodes in their seats. If there really are any vampire slaughtering reapers in real life, and if they're making my real life vampire friends scared and making them say "chock" a lot, I can only hope that a real life Corey Feldman and Paul Rutherford come out of nowhere, interpretive sword dancing like crazy, to chase them all away and make the world safe again. Blade II is a movie filled with mystique, charm, coolness, awesomeness; it was brilliantly made and taught me secret truths about my own life. I give it a 3 out of 12.