UFC Highlights - better late than never...

It's a little late to be topical, but I just have to put some thoughts down about the Ulitmate Fighter show and the UFC matches this past Saturday.

How happy was I (and thousands of other viewers) that Forrest kicked the crap out of Sam and made it to the light heavyweight final against Bonnar? Man, that was just about the best goddamn fight I've ever seen. Bonnar and Griffin went at for three long ass five minute rounds at a pace that matched Hagler vs Hearns with both taking and dishing wicked shots. Personally, I would have given the fight to Bonnar with him taking the 2nd round and a split between the 1st and 3rd. For one of those guys to go home without a contract for the UFC, to say that one was worthy of it but the other was not would have been a real mistake. My opinion is they both have a good future in the UFC and of course there is the possible drama of one or both of them fighting Liddell or Couture at some time.

I think Diego Chavez has a good future - but he better cut some fat and bulk up a bit if he wants to roll with Matt Hughes and or St. Pierre. I just can't see him at middleweight and competing. Of course, I could be wrong - the kid has a ton of heart. Speaking of which, how sick is Matt Hughes? In the UFC welterweight championship match against Frank Trigg, he showed tremendous grit and skill. About midway through the first round, Hughes has his back to the cage and is clinched up with Trigg, who then knees Hughes right in his groin. Hughes manages to break out of the clinch and moves to his left along the cage and looks at the referee for some help with the low blow, but none comes and Trigg follows up on Hughes and smokes him a few good ones and winds up taking his back sinking a rear naked choke. Hughes defends, gets out of it and winds up picking up Trigg and carrying him across the octagon like a bag of peat-moss and then does an WWE-riffic body slam, takes Trigg's back and sinks a rear-naked on Trigg to end it in the first round. Fucking great.

I give the best quote of the night to Renato "Babalu" Sobral, when asked by Joe Rogan to describe how he finished off Travis Wiuff with an armbar:

Gracie Jiu Jitsu

How great is that?

All in all it was a great night of fights with a good number of submissions. As for the big match of Couture vs. Liddell, well it ended too fast when Liddell just smoked Couture with a right a little over two minutes into the first round. Kudos to Liddell, but so much for the great fight I was looking forward to.

Back in the Day...

In a little while I am going to tool up the Taconic to see my good friend and buddy, Mr. Dennis of http://www.d2stuff.com, for some beers, some barbecue and to watch the UFC PPV matches tonight.

What a great way to spend an evening.

Of course, the big highlight match is Liddell vs Couture. It seems Den is routing for Couture because of his age and his demeanor. Me -- I have no idea who I'd like to see win, in fact I'm pretty sure it does not matter to me. I know both guys are great fighters -- I just want to see a great fight. Its pretty disappointing to see someone just get taken down and get beat on till the ref stops it, especially when you are paying cash on the barrel for your blood sport.

Anyhow, Den's gotten all into MMA since I've started BJJ. He's actually probably into it a bit more than I am. If his schedule ever allows it, I think he just might wind up at the NYMAG in Poughkeepsie and getting his roll on. That'd be cool. That would mean that I'd finally have someone to Mountain Bike and BJJ train with.

We met about 6 years ago whilst working as contractors for Texaco. I'd originally been hired as an Admin Asst. and managed to transition to doing some intranet web stuff for a few departments there. I really had no idea what I was doing, but welcomed the opportunity to learn some skills create some sort of a career path. A month or so into treading water and trying to figure out what the department wanted and how the hell I was supposed to do it, they brought on Dennis to help out.

Of course, at first I ignored him. It just seemed the Texaco way. Plus he was inching in on my turf and that pissed me off. I guess he got tired of lonely office life because one day he just came over and said "Let's get some lunch". I have to mention that they gave him an office. But, the powers that be made it clear that it was not his office. He was just in it. The staff would go out of their way to reference / reinforce the relationship between Den and the office. If there was a meeting they would say: "I'll be in a meeting with Dennis in the office that he is in." It was freaking odd. But hey, that odd bunch paid him and me a ton of cash just to do exactly what they wanted for their website, no matter how fucked the requests were. We were contractors, and as such were kind of like guns. They'd just point us and fire and we'd execute the disaster they had designed.

Suffice to say that we did not get a whole lot done, but what we did do we did a whole lot of. Towards the end, when Texaco had been bought by Chevron and we knew our days were numbered, we'd just take off for a hours at a time and walk the huge campus. There was an apple tree with apples to make a stop at, a beaver pond to sit and stare at along with, and I shit you not, the occasional Coyote. Ostensibly we were in the "server room" which was far far away from our department in the first place, and a place our boss did not have access to, so it was a perfect place to "be".

Ahh, those were the days. The people there were great, we had every other Friday off and for the most part, we could do what we wanted. Plus, I cut my teeth in tech there and learned all important workplace rules of thumb like the 3x rule - that is a person needs to ask you three times to do something before you do it. Otherwise, its just a bullshit pipedream request they are not serious about and you should not waste your time. The other all important rule is Perceived Work + Actual Work = Real Work. In other words, yeah you know that you can do what's needed in about 5 minutes, but they don't know that. Why fuck yourself into increased expectations?

Of course these were lessons Mr. Den helped me learn. Oh the looks of consternation I’d get when our boss would ask for something and I’d turn it around in no time like a good Boy Scout. I learned though.

Amazingly, though, it seems I've perfected things too far because this latest job is a purgatory of productivity. I’m still dying for stuff to do. Not the worst of job fates and waaay better than having to wash a car outside in the summer in a suit. Well, nothings forever and I'm sure that at some point I'll be chalking this all up to a transitional period.

Alrighty then -- its off to beers, bbq and choke outs.

Ramblings from a fevered mind...

I'm sick and on top of that I'm hurt.

Being that I ride the train to work everyday and work with people that do not stay home when they are sick, its no surprise that I'm nursing another head cold. Stay home people! On the other hand, whatever the hell went wrong with my left hip flexor is beyond me. I was fine all day yesterday but when I got up to leave at around 6PM my left hip felt stiff and when I walked my leg felt locked up and a little numb. Once I got home, it got worse and gave me a hell of a time getting to sleep. It still hurts right now, but at least my fever, sore throat and runny nose seem to be in check and I don't feel as drained as I did earlier.

So, I stayed home today and just slept and blew my nose and slept. Of course this happens just when I'm feeling a bit better about things and came up with a weekly diet and exercise plan. I get a little bit of a rhythm going and boom, something always seems to happen. Its not our problems that are so important as how we respond to them, right? Well, right now I'm having one hell of a time, and though I really try to respond positively to challenges like this little bit of discomfort among other things, there is a part of me that wants curl up and take a bath in my frustration, pain and self pity. If you read Death of Salesman or Notes from Underground you'll note its not an uncommon condition in the author's eyes. Like the characters in those works, you play it safe, you observe, you bide your time thinking that there is always tomorrow, or maybe you get hung up on something you can't let go or maybe theres always some excuse not to act. Ultimately, you paralyze yourself.

What a shitty way to go through life.

Fuck Willy Lohman and fuck Dostoevsky's Underground Man. I have things to do and people that count on me.

Choked Out

Last week, a six-foot tall, one-hundred-ninety pound purple belt taught me what a cross collar choke is really all about. I waited too long to tap and passed out for a second or two after he’d let go. What a very strange experience. My vision went all white and I went deaf and I went out. Poof! It was very “floaty” and I think my mind was still working but the outside world had just, for a moment, ceased to exist. A “release” is another way of putting it I guess. I came to on my own and the guy was asking me if I was ok and I just had to lay there face down on the mat and grasp for a second where the hell I was. I got up, rested a bit, we shook hands and went at it again. About 30 seconds later he took my back and gave me a rear naked choke.

I thought to myself, “This is ‘Make James Your Bitch Day'.” I also thought, “You’re learning from this, so its good.”

The next day in no gi I arm barred an experienced blue belt. I’ll take it.

Herald Square Hilarity

Its finally nice here in NYC today, so I took the opportunity to have a quick bit of nosh in Herald Square Park and do some people watching. I wound up on a little chair on the outside of the park facing north near 6th with, of all things, a very computerized pay to use public toilet directly ahead of me. So I’m sitting and noshing on my overpriced Roman Lemon Chicken when a commotion of embarrassed shrieking and laughter kick in from near the toilet. The door is open and the woman inside is hiking up her skirt and a friend / brother / cousin (not boyfriend, no sane boyfriend would laugh at this) is laughing his ass off while being lightly shushed by a girlfriend / sister /cousin. He puts fifty cents in again, the door closes…and about 5 seconds later, for whatever reason, opens up again and the woman is jumping up again and now the guy is just howling. He steps inside to check out the scene and comes out a few seconds later but with a 4 foot strand of toilet paper stuck to his shoe, so now girlfriend is laughing, but the lady inside thinks she’s laughing at her…

And so it went for about three minutes while they tried to get the HAL the toilet to work and HAL turning on every light but “occupied” and opening the door just when you thought it would stay closed. Finally they gave up and I alerted the guy to the toilet paper streamer attached to his right shoe. Last I saw they were wandering toward Macy’s. Man, Jay Leno should get crew down here to film all the bladder challenged folk struggling with this contraption.

Anyhoo, I took a moment to look up the manufacturer of this toilet and by the press and the design of these things, you would really thing that the future is here now! These toilets play you music, self clean after every use, cleaned 3 times a day and are supposedly monitored via a central server. Now if the door would just stay closed. Oh yeah, there is also a 15 minute time-limit to how long the door will stay closed with someone inside, ostensibly to deter people from doing drugs in it, having sex in it, moving in et cetera. Come on now, not that I’m bragging here but 15 minutes is plenty of time to do some drugs AND have some wild sex if you just focus!

Harper's Classified Weirdness

I picked up Harper's on a lark at Hudson's newsstand in Grand Central last night and casually flipped through it on the train, managing an article or two before hitting White Plains. Nothing great. Basically I'm finding it a bit boring. Not willing to just trash my $5.95, I gave it a second chance this morning. Right away I found myself at the classifieds, since I tend to flip through magazines backwards looking for items of interest. Now I know any news or lit rag with classifieds always attracts a few racy odds and ends and my attention span is short short first thing in the morning, so I stop to take a look. Harper's classifieds do not disappoint, though they are missing that sex position foam pad ad that's everywhere these days. First, I notice:

FEMINIST PIN UPS: Powerwomen, Soldier, Policewomen etc.

Not bad. Somehow fitting for Harper's. I catch myself wondering if the Army's mud wrestling enlisted women are featured... Then I get to the education section to find this little ad with a Yahoo email as the only contact information:

DEPT OF EDUC. GESTAPO TACTICS: Scaring elderly, low income citizens into paying on bogus, non-verifiable loans.

Wow. That's pretty ballzy. Either its recruiting people to scare elderly people or this guy thinks that the Dept. of Education is like the Gestapo and scaring the elderly into paying on loans. Who knows, maybe Harper's classified is a sordid underbelly of recruitment for grifters? Then we slip into the truly oddly disturbing an inch or so over in the next column. This ditty appears under the heading of Human Rights:

RACISM-GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA! Strange Fruit hanging from the Gainesville Poplar Trees. Contact (same guy as the preceding ad!)

My knee jerk reaction is that a white supremacist org is recruiting in Harper's of all things and looking to fund itself by ripping off old people! What the hell?! On the other hand, maybe someone knows about racist attacks in Gainesville and heavy handed tactics by the Dept. of Ed.? Either way, though a bit disturbing, those classifieds proved way more intriguing so far than the sleep inducing abstract trippiness of Daniel Mason's story entitled "A Registry of My Passage Upon The Earth" which has a kind of a The Sound and The Fury point of view thing going in on it. I'm too tired to figure it out.

The same classifieds are not on Harper's online. Perhaps they removed them and the intern that missed them the first time around has been properly disciplined and relegated to loading the stapler for the on-staff post modernist deconstructionist critic?

Oh yeah, one more ad, this one right after someone pimping a philosophically slanted baseball rag and before another selling remote viewing tips:

PROVACTIVE SPANKING EROTICA: Our "Prep-School Punishments" feature both a rebellious co-ed and a sophisticated female teacher being spanked by handsome faculty members

Imagine that! A rebellious co-ed AND a sophisticated female teacher! How the hell does that work? You finish up some articles about strip mining in West Virginia, Social Security and peruse a few Readings and then...well you must just feel like getting your spank on? That has to be it or the ads wouldn't be there. Luv it.