Man, that was one of my favorite lines from previous productions (’96 and ‘04). Well, at least the ‘08 Hello, Hamlet show gives a lot of songs the old heave-ho — the show was starting to look a little long in the tooth. I think Grease and a bunch of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s tired recyclings of Barbara Streisand are getting the collegiate spoof treatment.
[OMG (and I say that non-ironically) — that dig at ALW was a completely random stab in a dark room with a new moon. And I squarely skewered the grand poobah’s liver. Google it for yourself.]
Trivial goings on further below. First, some soul-scourging and rokking out.
The nutshell:
I rock!
Everything rocks!
Wait, no. Backyard fu sucks hairy, unwashed monkey nuts. But everything else still rocks. (the Three Stooges, cheese, concealed handgun licenses, and sunsets among all other things — but only one of these mentioned items actually bears on this month’s mega-post. See if you guess right.)
(So I lied; no soul-scourging today. Whaddya do? :P)
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Well, someone’s lower body isn’t up to the challenge.
Thursday had 2 focused hours of ba gua / taiji / shaolin kung fu. Low intensity, but very productive.
Saturday saw seven hours of constant, mid-intensity workout (half with longsword body mechanics, half with running (gack!) and various conditioning things inc. broad jumps, inverted crab walks, bear crawls, and some random yoga). It had my legs in constant cramps. I guess priming my system with three bananas early on Saturday was possibly too little too late.
Sunday saw another 4 hours of longsword and kung fu.
Probably the best workout week *ever*. Tuesday or Wednesday, I’ll round it out with a focus on upper body and core. It was going to be Monday, but I don’t think I’ll have recovered by then. Exercise totally beats out getting drunk to forget things.
For now, stretching poses an interesting problem. Any major group I try to stretch requires contracting or at the very least compressing another group, which often revolts and cramps.
Re: longsword, thanks to training with Scott, I’m rediscovering some vital basics I’ve neglected for … nigh on 5 years now. It’s not that I never worked them in that time, but I certainly never focused on them for more than a few idle minutes here and there.
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On Saturday afternoon, we gradually collected at Rice’s front sally port. Directions (mine) were apparently a little difficult, but everyone interested managed to get there. Ultimately, we had 9 people participating. The cool / warm afternoon was gorgeously clear, with that special teatime lighting — golden on green grass, clear air, long and sharply slanting rays of sunlight.
We stretched for a good 20 minutes or so, using a mixture of methods from running, kung fu, theater, and yoga. From an early point, we established a comfortable peer dynamic, with knowledgeable people chiming in and easily trading in and out of the practice leader role.
Then we went into shoulder rolls, both forward and backward. The quad is a great place to do it — with large, open grassy spaces. We went back and forth along one of the four main stretches. I think we easily averaged 80-100 rolls. unggoy was a huge help here — he made reference to Dr. Masaaki Hatsumi, describing the roll position as a comfortably bouncing ball. Personally, I started to learn how to bring my knees in to my chest. This allowed me to more safely land on my feet and flow up / forward into a run (you don’t want to land with your rear leg flat in a typical martial art fashion, b/c from 6+ feet up, the extra shock of the landing can potentially break / injure the ankle if you fail to land on at least the edge of the foot).
I also found that throwing oneself into a nonstop series of rolls either forward or backward results in entertainingly incapacitating doses of dizziness after about 5-8 repetitions.
unggoy took the lead a lot, from this point on, but Aardvark also contributed a lot. I just occasionally prodded people to keep them in constant motion, which didn’t take much effort. People were really good about pausing only to catch their breath, drink water, or wait their turn to vault whatever the current obstacle(s) were.
And that’s something I really appreciate about the Texas parkour community I’ve encountered. Like Johnny Depp says, “Are you a Mexi-*can*, or a Mexi-*can’t*?”
unggoy was recuperating from a sprained ankle, while Aardvark was still nursing an incompletely recovered sprained wrist. In both cases, they carefully and intelligently worked with and around their injuries as much as they could. I joked that Aardvark was going to end up like a male crab, with an overdeveloped right arm from all the one-sided vaults.
They didn’t allow one marginally injured part to sideline them completely. Sort of a zero-tolerance attitude toward excuses. It’s so easy to say, “Oh, my left wrist is killing me. I guess I’ll stay home and read a book.” But as Blane suggests, there is always a way to practice some aspect of PK (or any other activity) — even something as simple as walking can exercise mental and physical aspects of planning out efficiency and responsiveness. So I’m sure unggoy and Aardvark would have found a way to safely practice, even if they’d had two broken limbs.
But at the same time, they were both very careful to only do as much as they felt they could handle. Traceurs understand better than most people that pain is the body’s way of saying, “Stop that, you dumb sonofabitch.” But at the same time, pushing to the limit (and not beyond) is good, because exercise for hale or healing body parts is really just putting near-maximum-tolerance levels of stress on them. Doing so expands those limits over time. Exceeding those limits *will* irrevocably damage your body and diminish the capacity for stress in the long run. Intelligent athletes understand that, and it seems that these traceurs have an uncommonly good grasp of the concept, for having only been at it for 3-15 months.
The contradiction is so simple yet fascinating:
The more you work out, the more fit and able yet damaged you become. For a while, throughout most of an adult lifetime, the upside outraces the downside. But eventually, the body’s natural and exercise-induced rate of decline accelerates past the ability to increase at first, then past even that of merely maintaining fitness. And sometimes (not always!) working an injured part in exactly the same way that caused injury, albeit in a controlled and metered fashion, is exactly what’s needed to preserve and promote flexibility and strength — first recovering, then protecting against further injury.
unggoy then showed us how to do basic monkey and speed vaults on a low bench. After a while, we moved to the Will Rice quad, where we got to use the benches, low walls, and picnic table for higher or longer jumps / vaults. Along the way to WRC, we threw in some simple hops, inverted press-ups, and whatever else seemed to fit the objects found along the way.
unggoy and Chester had a couple goes at diving kong vaults (or saut de chat) over the length of the picnic table. Really impressive. The terminology is a bit awkward, since monkeys and kongs are both types of saut de chat vaults, but in English usage, the saut de chat has become confused / conflated with the saut de bras.
Will and unggoy also scrambled up onto the WRC rooftops and down again, for the heck of it.
All in all, I think I must have performed at least 50 jumps and vaults of various kinds all afternoon. My glutes and a whole bunch of other muscles that I can’t quite identify (mostly inside and underside thigh) are still really sore this morning.
In the end, five of us finished up at Sid Richardson’s ramp for people with handicaps (I think that’s the current term en vogue). It has 2.5 switchbacks and awesome metal rails plus wooden rails on both sides. Several of us crabwalked in prone and supine positions up and down the rails.
unggoy and Chester tried a couple of different approaches to flow. We were all pretty beat by then. As twilight fell, we ended practice and walked over to the RMC (student center) to hit the restrooms and water fountains.
Patrick and unggoy talked a little bit about applications of parkour in evading pursuit and its role in a martial art / self-defense context. Since parkour is still new to me and initially had no martial connotations as I discovered it, it feels peculiar to talk about our harmless leaps and vaults in such a way. But it’s really no stranger than talking about using many martial art techniques in vanishingly unlikely circumstances. I doubt I will ever have the chance to use White Ape Offers Fruit in either its purported function as a headlock or my hypothesized root function as a neck break. And I’d like to keep it that way.
We all had a blast, and we plan to meet again this coming Saturday at Tranquility Park downtown (opposite the Hobby Performing Arts Center). Sugarland and Spring are potentially in the pipeline.
If you want to end on a good note, preserve the positive vibe, stop here. If you want to know my latest frame of mind (which is both good and grim), well, you’ve been warned.
Not sure where else to put this latest iteration of my recent soapbox on my personal unfitness:
So I was recently told at a dinner that a friend of mine looked a lot better ever since he “filled out” — that he used to be too skinny. Me, I estimate that he’s probably 15 lbs heavier than me (mostly not muscle), and I know I’m 60th percentile BMI. I’ve gotten similar comments as well. Such a comment coming from someone considerably heavier than either my friend or me could be construed as an attempt to paint over a personal insecurity.
What I cynically suspect such people are really saying is, “He looks good b/c he’s skinnier than me, but I feel better now that he’s not as lean as he used to be.” That sliding scale rationalization is very insidious — by those lights, an unfit 250-lb man could be favorably regarded from an unfit 325-lb man’s POV. It’s true, but it’s utterly relative and fails to acknowledge that both people would probably be healthier, happier, and marginally richer if they were 200 lbs. Bear in mind the incident I relate above was at a non-SCA gathering — I am not SCA-bashing. But Tristan and I do get it a fair bit at SCA practices as well. He’s made it clear that he’s not as lean as he’d like to be. Ditto for me.
I know this sounds brutal. I am not in any way criticizing other people’s weight b/c we are all behaviorally and genetically wired differently. I *am* criticizing the ways in which I suspect we, as an overweight society, are hiding our heads in the sand with such comments. What I *am* saying is that I’m overweight. Some other people are more so. Whether or not they are, my friends are still my friends. It’s good to be happy with who you are, but that does not preclude wanting to significantly improve yourself. And as I often try to emphasize (and somehow it gets lost in all my hectoring), I only expect to drive myself hard. (Though I am not an example of the ideal case. In many meaningful ways, I *am* happy with who I am, and I want to truly and positively change. But I am also fundamentally unhappy in a couple ways, and I tend to project that deep dissatisfaction in superficial ways — like desiring dynamic patterns in my life.)
Since fencing in various WMA styles (and kung fu, and sorta PK) can really use partners, I have been frustrated and have frustrated other people with my agitation for more constant physical activity. So to lessen the social tension and disjunction, I’m finding like-minded people who don’t find my attitude grating and in fact agree and welcome it — specifically for those activities.
Most SCA events and people are not geared for what I want. When I’m in SCA full fig, *I* am not geared for what I want. After all, who wants to put some hardcore wear and tear on an attractive and historically accurate wardrobe? Not me.
I’ve danced around this idea before, but I hadn’t fully formed the thought or explicitly said it, so: I am very sorry that I’ve ever upset or annoyed others with my attitudes. I’ve only occasionally been called on it, but I can tell I sometimes (often?) offend people. Maybe it’s my overdeveloped sense of guilt, but I hope the relevant (and sometimes overweight) parts of the world accept my apology, and that we can more merrily continue upon our course henceforth. :D We can only hope I’ll become pleasant company in social circles once again.
<Club!>
Oh, wait. That’s seals.
The SCA isn’t dead, it’s just resting.
This is SSG / SCA / WMA:
http://www.scholasaintgeorge.org/coppermine/displayimage.php?album=random&cat=0&pos=-123
An SCA practice that ended up being all SSG? :D
Scott’s a chiv fighter with a real commitment to SSG. Awesome guy. Kinda wicked with I.33, too.
He (and others) are proof that not only can the SCA merge with WMA, but that the two together can make magic (like love bunnies in a nylon city).
[Stop reading if you don’t give a crap or are too cynical to tolerate my glass-is-half-full POV.]
Note that I am *not* talking about supplanting anyone with anything else.
I’ve recently added 6 new members to my WMA group’s roster. Added time spent beyond the normally allotted 3-4 hrs / wk of WMA was… 30-45 mins / wk? Initially, I just posted a few flyers in the student centers at UH and Rice. The big winner was walking through campus with a waster on my shoulder. That one gets a lot of interest and questions.
And when people asked me questions, I treated it seriously but briefly. Get the 10-second intro down, then deliver a tight 30-60 second overview if they continue indicating interest. *Back* *off* if the eyes start glazing or attention wanders. Keep it light and positive.
And *then* start getting into the 10-min, 60-min, 7-year discussions. :)
Make sure to portray the hobby as a serious pursuit, backed up by research and diligent study, with a well-established network and community.
Which is what the SCA is, after all. Too often, I hear members of the us joke about the game we play, or how it’s a good opportunity to wear silly costumes and hit each other with sticks and swords. I don’t do that around new prospectives. They can’t tell how serious our self-deprecating jokes are.
I make the same jokes at times, so I’m not suggesting we stop being relaxed and fun. But it’s all about first impressions in those first 5-10 mins. Within 30 mins of meeting Will and Charles, I was ribbing them about smacking wooden heads with wooden implements. But in the first 5 mins, I used professional shock and awe on Jesse Chan, which is what got him to introduce me within 10 hrs by e-mail to Will and Charles. And I impressed upon W & C the awareness of a deep and thorough history / structure in the first 10 mins.
Then I left the big, weighty picture alone and I spent my usual 90 min workout time showing them 3 basic ways to hold and attack with a sword. I managed to keep us moving and swinging at least 2/3 of the time. At our second practice Tuesday night at 10 p.m. (I get out of job training at 9 p.m.), the 4 students spent easily 80% of our time swinging in drills. I was odd man out, so had to spend most of my time coaching instead. But we’ll get to where they’re sufficiently grounded to drill with me as peers on an increasingly expanded repertoire of techniques. I’m patient.
Charles (another Charles) and Donna have also been very interested, and Donna has actually repeatedly asked me for notes, pics, and anything else she can get.
So where’s the SCA tie-in? Non-Rice Charles is *made* for the SCA. He and Donna are ripe for the pageantry, the costumery (meant from a non-SCA POV, not to be derogatory), and the immersion of it. They’re constantly letting slip little “wouldn’t it be cool if” comments that would be fulfilled in the SCA.
So with them and the Rice folks, I’m pushing the SCA as a good destination once they’ve gotten their sea legs. Within a few months, they’ll know enough to not get swamped by the barrage of well-intentioned but often contradictory (and sometimes flat-out bad) advice that ended up driving me *away* from the SCA for 2 years, back in 2002.
Plus, those couple months will give me time to reinforce their inclinations to *do* and *drill* rather than to yak.
I can’t stop the yakking (b/c I enjoy it, and it’s a good thing after all, in small doses), but I can help to keep it under control. Whacking and smacking are what ultimately build the fencing skills, and seeing real personal growth is what will keep the valuable ones coming back. Yakking shares experience and stories, builds cameraderie, and is just fun, but that can be done during water breaks and afterwards at the local late night diner.
If this sounds like a typical martial arts school environment, should we be surprised? No, b/c I think the wide-eyed “Oh, I get it!” thrill is much more valuable than any long-winded stories (especially mine!). Will’s pretty level-headed (for a crane-climbing, sword-swinging, building-jumping traceur / rock-climber), and I 2x-checked with him afterwards — he said things never got long-winded, and practice was always in action.
And when Will and the two Charleses have asked about competitions and places to take this show on the road, I’ve briefly and enthusiastically driven home the best points of chiv, rapier, and C&T fighting — the large community, the frequency of events, the chance to mix it up constantly with lots of different people. Rules issues like no grappling, no punching, and etc. would just kill the excitement right now. They can learn to deal with that in a few months. Besides, it’s not like I’m allowing them to do any of that anyway.
And by the time they *can* do the zhogo stretto / Handarbeit stuff, they’ll also know how to achieve SCA-legal results with or without it. We don’t *have* to break the SCA rules of play to use it.
I *am* a little newly excited at the past few weeks’ turnout. But I see now that I am more right than I ever realized. We don’t need complicated or bothersome demos. We don’t need to make it difficult work. We just need to raise our exposure and make sure it’s positive and professional.
So, without going out of my way unduly, I will continue to responsibly wander in public with my gear. (Originally, I was headed to do some solo drills and practice in a quiet courtyard on campus, which I still do every other week or so.)
Oh, an important consideration:
Yesterday afternoon, while waiting to get into the machine shop, I was doing some slow and deliberate sequences with my aluminum waster on campus. After about ten minutes, an armed security guard came up to me. He asked to see the weapon, and I politely handed it over, saying very briefly that it was for stage combat (unspoken: and many other things! Muahahahaha!).
He immediately said, “Oh, it’s a prop. It’s not sharp.”
Using verbal fuhlen / sentimento di ferro, I matched my tone, tried to identify his concern, agreed with him and expanded just a hair, “Yes, that’s right. I’m the fight choreographer for the Wiess spring musical.”
He said, “That’s OK, then. I just wanted to make sure.” (that it was safe? That I wasn’t a loose cannon? That I had some legit reason to be on campus? Well, semi-legit anyway.)
People just want reassurance, is all.
If he’d been a bit more cagey, like the HPD cop at Hermann Park over Labor Day, I’d have politely agreed to stop swinging it around, emphasized that I was waiting to work with Will in the machine shop (citing the shop building’s name and etc. to let him know I had an insider student’s understanding of campus) to cut out our needfuls for the Wiess play, and reassured him I would discretely take the whole lot home.
And I suspect the HPD cop wouldn’t have batted an eye at us if we’d stuck to deliberate and slow technique drills. We’d been doing that all afternoon and were only stopped and lightly interrogated when Christian, Adam, and I started our round robin rapier free fencing. It was too dark to continue (we’d been thinking about stopping), but if we’d kept going, I would’ve wanted us to switch back to the more passable fare of slow drill.
And it’s another 20 years of people like me slowly rocking the boat in considerate and positive ways, that’ll eventually familiarize mainstream culture enough that one day they’ll see gambesons, doublets, rapiers, and longswords as normal martial arts gear.
It was only thirty years ago that people thought white pajamas were pretty weird.
| November 25, 2007 |
| 1:00 pm | to | 4:00 pm |
Ernesto’s in town for Thanksgiving, and we plan to meet up, fence, etc. He might do a run-through of his KWAR class, or we might poison pigeons in the park. Who knows?
Ξ March 20th, 2007 | → Comments Off | ∇ Fitness / HEMA, SCA |
Whuff, has it been 2 days since GW ended?
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Ξ February 9th, 2007 | → Comments Off | ∇ Current Events, SCA |
…Yes, yes they are.
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Ξ November 16th, 2006 | → Comments Off | ∇ Fitness / HEMA, History, SCA |
In the SCA, people create alternate personae, roles to act out favorite time periods. Some get into it more than others…
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Ξ November 11th, 2006 | → Comments Off | ∇ Fitness / HEMA, SCA |
Friday night, got up to A&M in time for about 1.5 hrs of fencing practice with some folks.
Did a dinner thing, half-watched Lucky Number Slevin, which is awesome. Made arrangements for going to TRF and watching Alan’s fight choreography on Sunday.
4 hours of sleep later, I drove my ass about 26 miles past the site of the Roses tournament. When I was about an hour out from DFW, I figured I’d gone astray.
The morning drive was pretty decent. Pink sunrise, long shadows, empty stretches of roads and gentle hills. The one-lane stretches of Hwy 6 weren’t too bad — I was able to easily pass the occasional cars, and half of them were decent enough to half-pull over onto the shoulder. This being my first time on those roads, I took my time setting up a pass and didn’t crowd the slower car.
Not sure if that’s a driver etiquette / rules of the road thing or not.
I do know that the afternoon traffic did *not* do that, and drove like assclowns to boot — 55 mph in a 70?
Even with the rather unscenic detour, I got to site by 9 — just in time to change clothes and sign in for the tournament.
Got knocked out in round 3. I spectacularly tripped at one point while advancing on Matteo. I’d started out well, pressing him back a couple times, but I just couldn’t find my groove again after the faceplant. Plus I’d chosen to fight him single against sword and dagger; not too great a surprise that I got stuck in the ribs with the dagger. I try to make it a point to ask my opponent what their choice of offhand weapon is (so long as it’s heavy rapiers as primaries). Then I take single against them. Most of them (including Matteo) try to even it up when they find out I’m taking single, but I insist on their bringing their best game to the field.
Got in a little marshalling experience, to start laying groundwork for becoming a cut’n'thrust marshal someday.
Stephanie’s burgonet was too long in the neck, so I gotta cut that down and rework it.
The real fun for me started after I got knocked out of the tournament. I managed to track down 3 White Scarves to fence — Antonia, Matteo, and Edward Mercer. I tried my gosh-darn best to give them quality fights, and considering that I was scoring at a rate of roughly 1 to 2 or 3, I suppose I was holding my own. I continue to strive for achieving parity, though.
I think I’m better now about taking my time to draw out an opponent, to find ways to cause them to break their guard. Definitely not great — if I stop focusing on it, I still allow myself to be suckered in (thereby breaking my own guard instead of theirs) with disturbing regularity.
I also give up touches to my hands entirely too much.
Point control is all over the map, and I need to work on it.
I need to snipe arms / hands. Going for only the torso / head kill shot is getting me killed.
Every so often, I achieved a moment of clarity in which I got all my ducks lined up, though. Opponent starts committing, I cover the line, I successfully press and maintain my cover, and land a thrust or (more often) a cut as I move and stay inside the range of the opponent’s point.
Matteo and I gave each other plenty of what-for — he and I seem to be very similar in actively striving to take the line of the fight. So we fight the same game, within our similar comfort zones. It makes for some entertaining, sustained exchanges. OTOH, Antonia stuck me like a pig repeatedly — she’s fast and direct, and doesn’t mess about like Matteo and I do. Edward took my time and measure every time I came within measure or paused too long while at striking measure — largely on my hands. I elicited a “Dadgummit!” once from him, though, and landed (or nearly so) a couple of touches that were well-covered, well-placed, and otherwise commendable. :)
All in all, vastly educating. Now if I can only retain these lessons long enough to properly learn and apply them…
Talked briefly with Ingvay (sp?) about classes in Dallas. I’m looking forward to arranging more classes for sidesword and rapier.
Got out of there by quarter past 2, and made it home by quarter ’til 5. 90 mph and a radar detector will get you there. Didn’t crowd or rush anyone — just waited until I saw a nice, safe opening, then I passed them nice and easy.
(11/12)
An afterword: Fell asleep in the kitchen Saturday night, totally didn’t make it to anything except WMA practice Sunday night.
Ξ September 17th, 2006 | → Comments Off | ∇ SCA |
Went to Ravensfort with Steph and Paul (first local event in ages). Kevin came up afterwards.
Fenced lots — good practice for the first time in ages. Had fun hanging out with folks. Kevin got majorly injured.
The A&M folks gave me all sorts of good-natured flack all day.
Got all the school reading done that I’d brought. Little behind still, and the natives are getting restless. It’s like when I’m juggling, and I can sense when I get slightly off and the rhythm of the tosses becomes uncertain, long before it becomes visibly ragged. The usual progression from there is for the rhythm to fall further and further out of sequence until I can’t compensate anymore, and the whole comes down.
Hopefully, I can rebalance my classes after 10/15 and keep the act going through the end of the semester. 7372 service diary and executive interview must happen soon. Markstrat plan as well.
Met Kalen (sp?), who’s been with Alexis, Ulstead, and Krag on the armor research trips that Alexis puts together. He’s listened to Alan Williams lecture, and has had lunch with the man! Arrrgh.
Imagine me a bright, virulent shade of green.
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