rockin’ my world or the topography of pain

last night at Martial Arts I learned the hard way to keep my guard up. By the hard way, I mean that I got caught by a great cross/hook combination. We were working on our boxing in preparation for our Shootfighting test. I was lucky enough to get to spar with our teacher, Coach James. Coach has been working on this for years and is a very competent boxer. He also hits like a ton of bricks. Things were going well at first (mainly ’cause he wasn’t throwing punches). But after the first minute or two my hands started to get real heavy and began to drop. Suddenly he was on top of me with a flurry of punches. Uggg… A rising cross slipped through and popped me up. And just as I started to trip over my back leg (I think my body was trying to take me into a defensive roll… which also ain’t kosher in boxing but is ok in Kung Fu) *BANG* the lead cross connects with the right side of my head on the cheek bone. That reset me like a nintendo. It didn’t knock me out, but it took me half a sec to get myself back together. Suddenly it hit me “hey… I’m not standing up… wind is rushing by me… oh, I’m falling… that’s not good.” Thankfully I was in mid fall and managed to keep my head tucked (so I didn’t brain myself on the floor). Even more thankfully, Coach stopped me from getting up. I would have kept sparring, but I had no problem lying there, counting ceiling tiles, for a minute or three. Basically the entire experience reminded me that I don’t like getting hit (especially when it’s hard) and to keep my guard up.

I still made it through Kung Fu. Man, I was pulling 101 monkey moves outta my butt while sparring my classmates. Then it was time to work with Sifu. And once again I got schooled, which is all good and extremely frustrating at the same time. Mainly because I was focusing on one aspect of what I was doing so intently that it blinded me to other options. I had good root and intention, but not creativity or multiple attack angles in what I did. Grrrrrr. On the plus side the fact that he’s been upping the ante the last few times we sparred is a good sign. Now what I really need to do is carve out more time to practice outside of class.

Otherwise, I’m off to see another play tonight and continue to work out our plays. We had a good meeting yesterday with the Rochester Arts Council, including learning that they may be able to help us with getting funding while we wait for our non-profit status to come through. And that’s all good.

as promised…

here’s a higher res pictureof the new hair and glasses. I think it’s a big improvement. Tell me what you think (there’s a new insta poll to your left)! This was taken yesterday in the kodak.com lunch room. Speaking of lunch…

ljc: see, I saw no good would come of this…

…today at lunch, Andy decided to braid Tony’s hair. All was going well until Andy noticed something in Tony’s hair. Here’s what happened next…

That’s about it for today. I was going to rant and rave about the sorry state of the American news media, but I just don’t have the time or energy. Consider yourself lucky (for the moment). Oh, new MP3: Reel Big Fish covering the Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry. Check it out….:

The picture above is of a Billboard up on Hollywood Blvd for the next month courtesy of the Guerrilla Girls. Not that it should be a surprise to anyone, but: Did you know that no woman has ever won the Oscar for Best Director? That 94% of the writing awards have gone to men? Or that only 3% of all the acting awards-lead and supporting-have ever gone to people of color. Read more about it here.

as promised

It’s not a great picture, but here’s my complete new ‘do put into historical perspective. Behold the evolutionary process of my hair & glasses.

it’s gotta be the hair

while I was out Saturday night I ended up talking to lots of purdy girls (go hair!). So far the comments have been really positive (yea Vivian, sooper hairdresser!). All and all I think the right decision was made. I’m happy to annouce that people who suggested short hair in December and Novemeber were right! However, Joel, who suggested the short shorts look is still very, very, wrong!

The weekend was eventfully uneventful. I worked on getting my apartment in to better shape, getting a lot of the program work done on the play, and even got out to see two plays. Following the usual pattern, one of them was pretty good and the other was two hours of my life I’m not getting back. That second play was Playhouse Creatures and the acting wasn’t too bad. But the directing, art direction and tech sucked. The tech especially; either they had a surge problem or there was an epileptic controlling the light board. Oh well (geez with all these comments about local companies I’m building up a lot of “bad theatre karma.” Hopefully that won’t come back to bite me when our shows are on). After both plays it was off to the East Ave “nightlife area” and chattin’ it up wit da ladies (I’m bad, I’m bad, I know it…)… or something like that.

Gorillaz Day pt2Di sent me a website that is hosting the Gorillaz animations that were shown at the concert The Game of Death one is especially good (ahh Noodlz, I love that little guy). Check them out here. (It’s in French, but scroll down and you’ll see them)

I didn’t have a good subject line for this morning. I’m still getting used to my hair (or lack there of). I got it cut yesterday (and I mean CUT!). I blogged about it last night, but it’s at the end of an already long post and I’m not sure if anyone read that. I’ll get a picture up by Monday.

In other news, you’ve heard of sneaking into movies. I snuck into a play yesterday. Don and I went to see Below the Belt again at Geva. Or at least that was the plan. Before the show I decided to go ice skating at a nearby park. And I totally flaked out on when the play started. I was sure it was at 8.00pm (it was actually 7.30pm). By the time I got to the theatre the show had already started. So, being the devious thinker I am, I went out for a cup of coffee, read the first act (we had gotten a copy of an earlier version of the script) and then went back to the theatre and walked in while everyone was milling around during intermission, acting like I’d been there the entire time. Once intermission was over I found open seat and enjoyed the second act. What can I say? I’m a smooth criminal :-P

On to my long list of “to-do” items for today… fun fun fun