just got back from a night spent in beverly, massachusetts with my old art school chums. i haven't been there in ages, but i always feel great when i spend time with them... we just pick up where we left off and its like no time has ever gone by, we live, locked in a stasis field where we're always on the same page with one another. i hung out with peter (cofounder of the term busey), nick, brian, mark and lucas last night. peter, brian and i all lived together freshman year at montserrat college of art, then i quit after my first year and moved back to pennsylvania for two years, i moved back up this way during their senior year and i moved into an apartment that brian and peter were sharing.
i ended up catching a ride back into boston with brian (he currently lives in somerville) so i didn't have to ride the commuter rail (which i enjoy doing, its just cool that brian was able to save me five bucks). whenever i drive through beverly i like to look at all of the different houses that i slept in. i knew a lot of people in that town (small college town that it is) and they moved a lot, so i have slept on floors, couches and in beds of something like six or seven houses in that small area.
they all graduated, but they never moved away. i'm really glad i get to see them from time to time still. i think that even though i quit art school, going for that first year will always be worth it for meeting them (and for being able to learn from three of the teachers i had that year).
the night before i went to beverly i just got tired early and ended up watching a martial arts flick called ONLY THE STRONG. i loved the shit out of this movie when i was about 12 or 13 but, unfortunately, it does not stand the test of time.
its about a former green beret who goes back to his hometown of miami and ends up trying to teach the most troubled students in a highschool self-discipline by teaching them capoeira. capoera is a brazillian martial art that is set to a dance.
the fight scenes are great, for the most part, but the director speeds up the film unnecessarily, so it looks really fake. but, the actors all know their shit, so the fact that he is doing that makes them seem fake. i really hate when they do that. the other two places where i've seen that and it pisses me off is in certain steven seagal movies and certain jet li movies.
it pisses me off because both steven seagal and jet li really know their shit and they are both really fast.
my first instructor (my one true instructor who i will always acknowledge as such for the rest of my life) cross-trained me in tang soo do, aikido and jiu-jitsu. steven seagal (at the time of his early films) was one of the leading aikido practioners in the world and one of the first to open a dojo in japan (i think, don't quote me). when i used to watch his movies, i was able to tell, from my own training, that he was doing everything right, you could totally see when he was blending or parrying, when he was applying joint locks or employing takedowns, but then, in his later movies, they started speeding up the film to make it look faster... but it was unnecessary.
another thing i didn't like about ONLY THE STRONG is that in the first sequence, mark dacascos (the star) hits this jamaican drug-dealer guy with about sixteen wheel kicks to the head. that would kill somebody. one fast wheel kick would knock someone out, no doubt about it. if they were able to stand after two of them, the third one might take their head off of their shoulders.
this summer i trained with the competition team at a local taekwondo school. my background, of course, is in full-contact sparring, so whenever we did point-sparring, i had to watch myself so i didn't hurt anybody on accident (this sentence alone was reason enough for me to quit taekwondo). one day, i was fighting with my training partner dennis. it was a point sparring match. all of the peope who train there had a bad habit of carrying their hands low (because punching to the head was not allowed and they also wore helmets, so WHY BOTHER PROTECTING YOUR FACE?). well, like i said, i was trained in tang soo do, which is a similar korean martial art with a big focus on high, fast, snapping kicks. early in the match, i saw his hand go down and i planted a left-spinning crescent kick into the side of his helmet.
dennis is over six feet tall, he had no idea that i could hit him like that without him seeing it coming. he was a little shaken, but after the match, we took our gear off and sat down and he said...
dennis: so, if you didn't pull that kick... and if i wasn't wearing a helmet, that would've knocked me out, wouldn't it?
me: oh god yeah.
dennis: nice kick.
me: thanks.
a few weeks later, i went to take a "full-contact" class and the instructor wouldn't let me fight. another instructor told me he may not have thought i was ready. so that was all bullshit. i had been fighting men larger and tougher than me since i was 13 years old (not always winning, mostly getting the hell knocked out of me). we never wore the sissy gear those guys wore, no helmet, no chest protector, no cup, no elbow pads or forearm guards... we fought with boxing gloves, shin pads and a mouthpiece. do you know what my instructor would say if somebody complained about getting hit in the face?
"you should've had your hands up."
another dumb thing the taekwondo people yelled at me to do was to kee-ap (yell) whenever i threw a strike. not only does this unnecessarily telegraph my moves, but it forces you to open your mouth and if you're not wearing a helmet (like you wouldn't be if you were in a real fight) you'd be in trouble, to quote my one true instructor:
"keep your mouth closed or your gonna get your teeth knocked-out."
taekwondo is the mcdonalds of the martial arts.
when i lived in beverly i had an opportunity to train briefly in krav maga. now THAT was a good time. krav maga is a really brutal israeli self-defense system. the guy i trained under was great. its all based on instinctual maneuvers and speed, with no wasted effort (krav maga is the BLACK FLAG of the martial arts), so it uses a lot of knees and elbows which i like. i ran out of money when i was training there and the instructor liked me so much (i think because i took the class seriously and rallied the other students) that he offered to train me for free. unfortunately, i didn't have the time either because i had just started my first design business.
since i can't train in pennsylvania with my old instructor and since i don't have all of the ambition needed to start teaching on my own (i have a black belt in tang soo do and have been given permission to teach students by my instructor) i have pretty much decided that i want to study muay thai kickboxing. feeling like i can take care of myself is very important to me so deep down, i knew that i couldn't stay at the taekwondo school, because i knew i was learning techniques and building bad fighting habits that would get me hurt bad if i ever got into a fight. muay thai is a pretty bad-ass style and i am greatly intimidated by its practitioners (so obviously i want to jump on THAT train!).
now, i also don't fight much either, i'm a really mellow, laid-back guy and on top of that, i'm really tall and dress in dark clothes, so almost everytime i've ever been in a situation, its diffused because the other person got intimidated and backed-down. there have been a couple of occassions where i've gotten into little scraps, but these were usually with stupid punk kids who aren't smart enough to know who they should and should not be fucking with.
i got into a fight with some kid at a show a few years ago. he grabbed me by the neck and started punching me in the face and i couldn't help it, but i started laughing, really hard. because this kid didn't know what he had gotten himself into. if he had seen the size of some of the men that have kicked me in the face... jeebus, my instructor kicked me in the face so hard at my black-belt test that i got chronic nosebleeds for the better part of a year! so, i figured i'd settle this kid and tried to just take him to the ground where i could tie him up until he calmed down, well, i went to take us down, slipped and ended up going down by myself.... but, since i had been thoroughly trained in how to fight a standing opponent with my back to the floor, i instinctually took him down the very second i landed by using my bottom foot to hook his ankle and my top foot to push on his femur taking him right off his feet. this was all in a matter of seconds, all intstinct. finally this kid eric who i used to wrestle with broke the whole affair up. it was silly.
i don't like fighting because i hit really hard. i can't imagine hitting some dumb kid in the head when i've seen the kind of damage my hands and elbows have done to cinder and wood. at that same club, i broke-up a fight that my friend (the promoter -- a little, pacifistic dude) was trying to break-up and three of one of the fighter's friends jumped me. i didn't know it at the time, but apparently i had three kids beating me about the back of the head for about five or six seconds, i got hit maybe fifteen times and i didn't realize it, because i was still carrying the kid who started the fight to the other side of the room (when i saw the fight, i just picked the kid up and walked away with him, ended that shit pretty fast). but the point was, these kids were hitting me and maybe i should've dropped the kid and gave them a smack, but they weren't hitting me hard enough to justify what i could've done to them.
i think one of the things that made the heartbreaker leave is that i don't act like a tough guy... she was into that macho bullshit posturing nonsense. whatever. i don't need to walk around all tough trying to prove myself. i don't need to start fights to feel like a man. i just want to keep training. the thing i loved most about my instructor was that for the first three years i trained with him, all i wanted to do WAS QUIT. but i wasn't allowed to. he never said it. my mom never said it. i just knew, being around him, training with him, that quitting was just an option that was not considered at Fighting Chance (my school in pennsylvania). when i train, i want to find people tougher than me. i want to get hurt. i want to feel like i can't go on any further. its a masochistic drive, not for the joy of pain (although that is sorta part of it) but to see what i am made of. how far can i push myself? how long can i go before my body collapses? is my willpower stronger than my musclepower? these are important things. this is why i train.
i was never into competition. when i was about fifteen or sixteen one of the better fighters i trained with took me aside and told me that i could be a good fighter if i trained for it (kickboxing). i thanked him, but said that i knew my focus was on the visual arts and i could never fight like i could draw...
but still, i always wonder, what would happen if i ever had to defend myself seriously? losing a fight is not such a big deal, getting the hell beaten out of me, also not such a big deal, hell, i could take a worse beating in a slam pit at a GOOD punk show... i just always wonder about that one situation where someone might come in between me and the people i care about or just me by myself and its ever so slightly unnerving to know that my body acts purely on instinct after ten years of training and there is the very real possibility that i could hurt them badly before they even realize that i've decided to fight.
its like when you go into a dark room and see a shape out of the corner of your eye, your body goes on the defensive... but with me, its more intense, my hands go up to my jaw, my body tenses, my toes and heels shift my legs so i can chamber a kick...
instinct is a dangerous thing.
i think i'm only fifteen or sixteen years old in this picture. i was really fucking big for my age and weighed about thirty pounds more than i do now.
***
enough of that stuff, tonight is a night for tight-pants, make-up and dancing!!!
and tomorrow night: monsters and martial arts movies with a cute-as-awesome girl who seems (so far) to be just as excited as i am for this cinematic rendezvous!
i ended up catching a ride back into boston with brian (he currently lives in somerville) so i didn't have to ride the commuter rail (which i enjoy doing, its just cool that brian was able to save me five bucks). whenever i drive through beverly i like to look at all of the different houses that i slept in. i knew a lot of people in that town (small college town that it is) and they moved a lot, so i have slept on floors, couches and in beds of something like six or seven houses in that small area.
they all graduated, but they never moved away. i'm really glad i get to see them from time to time still. i think that even though i quit art school, going for that first year will always be worth it for meeting them (and for being able to learn from three of the teachers i had that year).
the night before i went to beverly i just got tired early and ended up watching a martial arts flick called ONLY THE STRONG. i loved the shit out of this movie when i was about 12 or 13 but, unfortunately, it does not stand the test of time.
its about a former green beret who goes back to his hometown of miami and ends up trying to teach the most troubled students in a highschool self-discipline by teaching them capoeira. capoera is a brazillian martial art that is set to a dance.
the fight scenes are great, for the most part, but the director speeds up the film unnecessarily, so it looks really fake. but, the actors all know their shit, so the fact that he is doing that makes them seem fake. i really hate when they do that. the other two places where i've seen that and it pisses me off is in certain steven seagal movies and certain jet li movies.
it pisses me off because both steven seagal and jet li really know their shit and they are both really fast.
my first instructor (my one true instructor who i will always acknowledge as such for the rest of my life) cross-trained me in tang soo do, aikido and jiu-jitsu. steven seagal (at the time of his early films) was one of the leading aikido practioners in the world and one of the first to open a dojo in japan (i think, don't quote me). when i used to watch his movies, i was able to tell, from my own training, that he was doing everything right, you could totally see when he was blending or parrying, when he was applying joint locks or employing takedowns, but then, in his later movies, they started speeding up the film to make it look faster... but it was unnecessary.
another thing i didn't like about ONLY THE STRONG is that in the first sequence, mark dacascos (the star) hits this jamaican drug-dealer guy with about sixteen wheel kicks to the head. that would kill somebody. one fast wheel kick would knock someone out, no doubt about it. if they were able to stand after two of them, the third one might take their head off of their shoulders.
this summer i trained with the competition team at a local taekwondo school. my background, of course, is in full-contact sparring, so whenever we did point-sparring, i had to watch myself so i didn't hurt anybody on accident (this sentence alone was reason enough for me to quit taekwondo). one day, i was fighting with my training partner dennis. it was a point sparring match. all of the peope who train there had a bad habit of carrying their hands low (because punching to the head was not allowed and they also wore helmets, so WHY BOTHER PROTECTING YOUR FACE?). well, like i said, i was trained in tang soo do, which is a similar korean martial art with a big focus on high, fast, snapping kicks. early in the match, i saw his hand go down and i planted a left-spinning crescent kick into the side of his helmet.
dennis is over six feet tall, he had no idea that i could hit him like that without him seeing it coming. he was a little shaken, but after the match, we took our gear off and sat down and he said...
dennis: so, if you didn't pull that kick... and if i wasn't wearing a helmet, that would've knocked me out, wouldn't it?
me: oh god yeah.
dennis: nice kick.
me: thanks.
a few weeks later, i went to take a "full-contact" class and the instructor wouldn't let me fight. another instructor told me he may not have thought i was ready. so that was all bullshit. i had been fighting men larger and tougher than me since i was 13 years old (not always winning, mostly getting the hell knocked out of me). we never wore the sissy gear those guys wore, no helmet, no chest protector, no cup, no elbow pads or forearm guards... we fought with boxing gloves, shin pads and a mouthpiece. do you know what my instructor would say if somebody complained about getting hit in the face?
"you should've had your hands up."
another dumb thing the taekwondo people yelled at me to do was to kee-ap (yell) whenever i threw a strike. not only does this unnecessarily telegraph my moves, but it forces you to open your mouth and if you're not wearing a helmet (like you wouldn't be if you were in a real fight) you'd be in trouble, to quote my one true instructor:
"keep your mouth closed or your gonna get your teeth knocked-out."
taekwondo is the mcdonalds of the martial arts.
when i lived in beverly i had an opportunity to train briefly in krav maga. now THAT was a good time. krav maga is a really brutal israeli self-defense system. the guy i trained under was great. its all based on instinctual maneuvers and speed, with no wasted effort (krav maga is the BLACK FLAG of the martial arts), so it uses a lot of knees and elbows which i like. i ran out of money when i was training there and the instructor liked me so much (i think because i took the class seriously and rallied the other students) that he offered to train me for free. unfortunately, i didn't have the time either because i had just started my first design business.
since i can't train in pennsylvania with my old instructor and since i don't have all of the ambition needed to start teaching on my own (i have a black belt in tang soo do and have been given permission to teach students by my instructor) i have pretty much decided that i want to study muay thai kickboxing. feeling like i can take care of myself is very important to me so deep down, i knew that i couldn't stay at the taekwondo school, because i knew i was learning techniques and building bad fighting habits that would get me hurt bad if i ever got into a fight. muay thai is a pretty bad-ass style and i am greatly intimidated by its practitioners (so obviously i want to jump on THAT train!).
now, i also don't fight much either, i'm a really mellow, laid-back guy and on top of that, i'm really tall and dress in dark clothes, so almost everytime i've ever been in a situation, its diffused because the other person got intimidated and backed-down. there have been a couple of occassions where i've gotten into little scraps, but these were usually with stupid punk kids who aren't smart enough to know who they should and should not be fucking with.
i got into a fight with some kid at a show a few years ago. he grabbed me by the neck and started punching me in the face and i couldn't help it, but i started laughing, really hard. because this kid didn't know what he had gotten himself into. if he had seen the size of some of the men that have kicked me in the face... jeebus, my instructor kicked me in the face so hard at my black-belt test that i got chronic nosebleeds for the better part of a year! so, i figured i'd settle this kid and tried to just take him to the ground where i could tie him up until he calmed down, well, i went to take us down, slipped and ended up going down by myself.... but, since i had been thoroughly trained in how to fight a standing opponent with my back to the floor, i instinctually took him down the very second i landed by using my bottom foot to hook his ankle and my top foot to push on his femur taking him right off his feet. this was all in a matter of seconds, all intstinct. finally this kid eric who i used to wrestle with broke the whole affair up. it was silly.
i don't like fighting because i hit really hard. i can't imagine hitting some dumb kid in the head when i've seen the kind of damage my hands and elbows have done to cinder and wood. at that same club, i broke-up a fight that my friend (the promoter -- a little, pacifistic dude) was trying to break-up and three of one of the fighter's friends jumped me. i didn't know it at the time, but apparently i had three kids beating me about the back of the head for about five or six seconds, i got hit maybe fifteen times and i didn't realize it, because i was still carrying the kid who started the fight to the other side of the room (when i saw the fight, i just picked the kid up and walked away with him, ended that shit pretty fast). but the point was, these kids were hitting me and maybe i should've dropped the kid and gave them a smack, but they weren't hitting me hard enough to justify what i could've done to them.
i think one of the things that made the heartbreaker leave is that i don't act like a tough guy... she was into that macho bullshit posturing nonsense. whatever. i don't need to walk around all tough trying to prove myself. i don't need to start fights to feel like a man. i just want to keep training. the thing i loved most about my instructor was that for the first three years i trained with him, all i wanted to do WAS QUIT. but i wasn't allowed to. he never said it. my mom never said it. i just knew, being around him, training with him, that quitting was just an option that was not considered at Fighting Chance (my school in pennsylvania). when i train, i want to find people tougher than me. i want to get hurt. i want to feel like i can't go on any further. its a masochistic drive, not for the joy of pain (although that is sorta part of it) but to see what i am made of. how far can i push myself? how long can i go before my body collapses? is my willpower stronger than my musclepower? these are important things. this is why i train.
i was never into competition. when i was about fifteen or sixteen one of the better fighters i trained with took me aside and told me that i could be a good fighter if i trained for it (kickboxing). i thanked him, but said that i knew my focus was on the visual arts and i could never fight like i could draw...
but still, i always wonder, what would happen if i ever had to defend myself seriously? losing a fight is not such a big deal, getting the hell beaten out of me, also not such a big deal, hell, i could take a worse beating in a slam pit at a GOOD punk show... i just always wonder about that one situation where someone might come in between me and the people i care about or just me by myself and its ever so slightly unnerving to know that my body acts purely on instinct after ten years of training and there is the very real possibility that i could hurt them badly before they even realize that i've decided to fight.
its like when you go into a dark room and see a shape out of the corner of your eye, your body goes on the defensive... but with me, its more intense, my hands go up to my jaw, my body tenses, my toes and heels shift my legs so i can chamber a kick...
instinct is a dangerous thing.
i think i'm only fifteen or sixteen years old in this picture. i was really fucking big for my age and weighed about thirty pounds more than i do now.
***
enough of that stuff, tonight is a night for tight-pants, make-up and dancing!!!
and tomorrow night: monsters and martial arts movies with a cute-as-awesome girl who seems (so far) to be just as excited as i am for this cinematic rendezvous!
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my proverbial bad.