turned the tv on for a few minutes & watched for the umpteenth time big trouble in little china [1986] directed by john carpenter & stars kurt russell as a devil-may-care truck driver, victor wong [a longtime denizen of my hometown], kim cattrall, dennis dun & james hong et al.  black magic kinda shit goes down in chinatown, san francisco.  a girl is kidnapped by an evil entity.  russell & crew go to her rescue & fight black magic with good sorcery.  i fucking love this movie.  tho i understand this is the flick that broke the bank for carpenter.  after the movie flopped the venerable filmmaker said fuck you to hollywood & returned to indie filmmaking.  but i loved this movie at first boo.  but what struck me tonight at the start of this movie when russell drives his rig into a wet market in chinatown, unloads his cargo, finds dinner from a stall that sells steamed buns, then settles in to the rainy night to gamble with the locals.  russell wins big.  he's among friends.  he's the only white dude at the table.  in the morning everyone packs up their shit & goes home.  russell is still raring to go.  his long time friend, wang chi, played by dennis dun, is pissed off that he lost all his money to russell.  his anger gets the better of him.  russell looks at dun with a worrying expression.  oh shit, says russell.  is this gonna get ugly cuz i thought what we were here, racial differences notwithstanding, is a couple of old friends, both of us californians, russell opined.  say what you want about that dialogue.  it is clear in the script & the film that russell is a gringo but a man who is comfortable amongst all peoples.  that is how i interpret 'both of us californians'.  for my beloved california is a state of a great many peoples & cultures.  in any urban area you find yourself in california you will see many different peoples & hear a great variety of languages.  there are places in my own stamp of earth that the primary spoken language is spanish.  every californian knows a little spanglish.  it's part of the land & air.  we are a hybrid state.  i am proud to be such a hybrid.  i am part native american [just found that out by a dna analysis], norwegian mix named lopez.  i am an international citizen of the republic of poetry.  i am californian, a citizen of the world.  i am, just like you, a human being.  but back to this flick.  it may not be your cup of tea.  you may not like russell being the hero in a narrative with predominantly chinese-americans.  you may not dig how carpenter goes all out bat-shit crazy regarding the plot.  still, all that considered, i dig how the scriptwriters brought both of the protagonists, one gringo american, one chinese-american, & called them both californians.  which underscores my own way of thinking about myself.  i am a racial & cultural hybrid.  california is a place of so many varieties of peoples.  it's not the only place in the u.s. or the world to find so many wonderful peoples but it is my place.  my home.  my own california.  a place where you will find all the world's various beauty.