Jack Tomas never had a Chinese Star

My brother-in-law Matt was in New York last week and like any red blooded American 15 year old boy he made a b-line for Chinatown where he bought weird Japanese candies and a full ninja costume including some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fucking Leonardo Sais. Then we took pictures of him as ninja fighting me as luchador (see my picture page).
This made me reflect on one the most glorious movements in cinema in the last 50 years, which is the ninja film craze of the 1980's. When I was a lad, knee high to my father's sense of indifference toward me, I like most of my friends were obsessed with ninjas. Films like Enter the Ninja, Pray For Death, and Ninja 3: The domination came through the local WB affiliate like fuel for my prepubecent imagination. Ninja Gaiden was on everyone's Christmas/Channukah list because it was the most baddass game ever. But simply playing games and watching the movies was not enough. Oh no.
So we all got ninja outfits, the real ones from the back of martial arts magazines. The ones with separate lower and top hood and the proper gauntlets and tabi boots. So my mother paid the $39 for my ninja costume. We had a rich friend whose parents owned the Mamacitas restaurant chain, and they bought him the black ninja outfit and the white snow/ fucking stormshadow outfit. I hated him and still do.
We would change out of our sly Catholic school uniforms (red,white,and blue plaid shirt and tight crotched/flaired bellbottom polyester navy pants) and would put on our ninja costumes and fight. No teacher could stop us...only a ninja can defeat a ninja. Where they ninjas? fuck no! they were all unmmarried closet lesbos (at least at my school) and bored housewives with an education degree.
I begged my mom to buy me some real ninja weapons. Ninja stars, ninja swords, kamas, nunchuka, grappling gloves etc. anything would do. My mom refused because she is a pediatrician and was afraid I would "kill someone" "put out an eye" instead of my being "totally f'ing badass". In retrospect perhaps it was good parenting on her part that she didn't buy an 8 year old deadly sharp weapons and perhaps bad parenting that many of my friends parents not only bought them these weapons but let them take them to school for show and tell. It is also a testament to how things have changed that my friends would pull out bladed weapons and show the class the proper way to lob a razor sharp chinese star at someone's head without getting taken out by a SWAT sniper or being put in therapy.
Then one day I was playing chinese stars with my friend Derek (he once tried to cut his penis off with a pair of paper scissors). We were lobbing them at his fence in ways i was never allowed to because my mom "cared" about me. Then Derek stuck one accidently in the back of his brother's head as my mom pulled up in her car. She, you know, overreacted as she removed the star and held his head compressed as she rushed him to the hospital. I wasn't allowed to see Derek anymore.
The popularity of ninjas isn't what it used to be but it certainly is still around. With anime, the Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle comeback and many others it goes to show that somethings never change. Those things are the fact that stealthy assassins that kill people using magic powers and cool looking weapons NEVER stops being awesome. Never.