I'm an avid football ("soccer") fan. My favorite sports team is Arsenal. My
favorite player in the whole world is Thierry
Henry. I am getting into footgolf. It is governed by FIFG. The only
(public?) footgolf course in Milwaukee Country is at Zablock
Park.
I've studied several martial arts. Most recently, I studied Nami Ryu Aiki Heiho.
Mike Mack operates the only dojo
for this martial art of which I'm aware in Milwaukee. It is the only
Japanese traditional martial art (TMA) that has ever been taught to
the US military, and it's only taught there to Special Forces. I want
to study Hontai Hakkei Ryu Aikijujutsu, but there's only
one dojo of
which I'm aware in the US, and it's in PA (It used to be in MA).
This is Hontai Hakkei Ryu Aikijujutsu. It is literally the most sublime
melee martial art I have ever seen in my life (although it likely has a
ranged component).
This is Nami Ryu Aikijujutsu. It is quite possibly the most
efficient martial art I have ever seen in my life. I sometimes try to
think of myself as a proponent of other martial arts, but, as soon as
the chips are down, this is the martial art to which I go under
pressure when "it's just got to work". #WeNeverContestThePointOfConnection
#InterestingGameProfessor
#TheOnlyWinningMoveIsNotToAttemptToConnect(ToYourOpponentsCenter)
#SilverDollarGroupings
This is my favorite martial arts technique in the whole world: "The fight's over, son."
Rokushaku bos (six-foot long bo staffs) are as non-deadly or as deadly
as you want them to be;
they're
never more deadly than you want them to be. Bojutsu is a great martial
art.
This is another great bojutusu video (although it's technically
a part of historical European martial arts [HEMA] not TMA). I'll take
a solid (not hollow)
graphite-laced-with-graphene competition bo staff over a katana any day
of the week (and twice on Sunday, as the idiom goes). #ByRidersLance! #ByRollandsBo! #TheDArtagnanOfTheBo#AllMyLifeAllIEverWantedToBeWasHim#AllMyLifeAllIEverWantedToBeWasHim
#TheIsaoMachiiOfTheBo
The Isao Machii of the Bo:
"You haven't looked under this [gi top] to
see the big, red 'S' yet, have you, my man?" - Alexander
Scott, "I
Spy": "So Long, Patrick Henry" #FasterThanASpeedingBullet
This is yet another great bojutsu video. (They're competition bos, but
I bet they're aluminum and hollow.)
Michelle
C. Smith is one of the greatest bojutsu masters in the world.
(So, the samurai were basically mounted
archers, until gunpowder reached the islands, at which point they
became basically mounted riflemen. When they were out of ammo, they
switched to the yari, which was basically a stylized lance [although it
maybe more resembled a spear, physically] MOUNTED [in fact, taekwando
originated as an unarmed style by Korean peasants intented to dismount
armed Japanese samurai during ride-by attacks, hence taekwondo's high, flying kicks], THEN used the katana
MOUNTED, then used the wakizashi/tanto [whichever was the part of their
daisho set], then the iron fan 😀, then used (Japanese) jujutsu, their
form of
unarmed combat, with the intention of re-arming themselves with their
first defeated opponent's melee weapon(s), guerilla warfare-style. They
kept score and were paid by the severed head. #OneRiotOneRanger#OneFrenchRiotOneSamurai#OneFrenchRiotOneSamurai#OneFrenchRiotOneSamurai#OneFrenchRiotOneSamurai#OfficiallyInterpolHasNoOpinion#MeIThinkItsClint#MeIThinkItsClint#MeIThinkItsClint#MeIThinkItsClint#HeyClintWheresNat?
#ThereIsNoMacGuffinThatCouldMakeThemDoThat#TheyreBothShieldAgents
#TheresNoMacGuffinThatCouldEvenGetThemToFightEachOther
#HoldMyBeer #OneFrenchRiotOneSamurai)
I'm not sure how randoris got the reputation of being square dances. At
my dojos, after, say, 4th kyu, the rules were there were no rules.
There was a brown belt (1st kyu) John at one of my dojos who
specialized in bullrushes
in your "6" (directly from behind you): the other attackers would
distract you, he would circle behind you, and then he would basically
lay down the NFL linebacker tackle. One
time, he tagged Belter-Sensei with one, and I thought she was going to
expel him from the dojo! It really sucked the first few times you got
tagged by one, but I never let my 6 be unguarded in public to this day.
Sometimes, the higher-ranking students would smuggle
bo-tantos
(wooden knives) inside their gis and pull them on you on the
mat 10 seconds or so after sensei had said
"Hajimae!" (lit. "Go!" or "Begin!"). #HajimaeMotherf***er...! Sometimes, the
sempai would display the toolbox to maximize the fear response in the
victim #IAssumeAllenAndMarkHaventBeenToCountyOnAccountOfTheToolboxYet?
#JustABitPrelaw!#WellThatsTheBuyInHere#Bazinga,
and, other times, the first you would know about it was when you felt
it pressed into your ribs in mêlée accompanied by the whisper, "You're
dead". #YoureWorryingGilbert
(So, "kyu"s are pre-black belt ranks, and "dan"s are black belt ranks.
Kyus work like negative numbers or golf scores: lower is better. Dans
work like positive numbers or basketball game scores: higher is better.
In [one of] my dojo's systems, everyone in the world is kind-of an
honorary 7th kyu. When you pass your first belt test, you become a 6th
kyu. All kyu ranks wear a white belt [except that females may wear a
hakama, or black gi-overpants {originally riding chaps for the
samurai}, as soon as they attain 6th kyu], except 1st kyus, who wear a
brown belt. Shodan, or 1st degree black belt, comes after 1st kyu
[There is no 0th kyu/0th dan]. At 1st dan, males may begin wearing a
hakama. Rankings proceed through the higher dan ranks. 2nd dan is
required to teach. There is only one 10th dan, The
Doshu,
at any point in time. Steven Seagal is a 9th dan. If a student ranks
higher than you, they are your sempai [higher ranking student] and you
are their kopai [lower ranking student]. #WeAreAllBeginners)
Another randori video.
Here is some real(istic?) yoroi kumiuchi (鎧組討 lit: "armored striking
and
grappling"). I'm not sure how much the samurai used the yari instead of
the katana as their primary mêlée weapon when they were unmounted, but,
other than that, this looks pretty legit to me. The wakizashi (脇差 lit.
"short sword") or tanto (短刀 lit.
"knife") (a katana and a wakizashi/tanto combination worn together by a
samurai constituted a daisho [大小 lit. "the long {sword} and the short
{sword}"] set) evidently
saw a lot of action in ground fighting as the "finishing
weapon".
#WhatIsThisOctagonOfWhichYouSpeak? #Bazinga
Here is some yoroi kyujutsu (鎧弓術 lit: "armored martial art of the bow
and arrow [archery]").
I
adore hustlers in all
their forms (#NoGoshNoNo). I would love, on some level, to be
an 8x8x8 Strato Chess hustler at Washington Square in NYC IRL (#NoGoshNoNo#NoGoshNoNo).
I'd love to be a pilot-hustler in an action-adventure group like James
"Howlin' Mad" Murdock
on "The A-Team" in my fantasy life ("Did you
see how he turned the helicopter?!") ("'One step ahead of the game'
isn't
a plan, kid: [15-20] steps ahead -- beating your opponents's move [5
moves from now before HE knows
what move he's going to make 5 moves from now] -- that's a plan. [...] And I LOVE it when a plan comes together!"
#IMovedAPawnYeah "Excuse me, I just hit
my golf ball through your window; do you mind if I just - play right
through?" #PlayRightThrough#PlayRightThrough).
I've always thought of Kelly
Robinson and Alexander Scott as hustlers on some level. Before I knew
what "I Spy" was, I had a Twitter 'blog about a football hustler of
sorts (really, a then-MLS player) named Easy Worthy, with
actor-in-concert Alex Sanders (TFC's all-star goalkeeper) https://twitter.com/EasyWorthy14.
Update: I have
partially resurrected Easy's X account https://x.com/EasyWorthy12.
On December 4th, 1975, my best friend's dad
murdered my best friend's mon on a neighbor's front porch.
It was the day their divorce was to become final. It is an event that
shook my world to its core from which I still have
never quite recovered. I had never even had a goldfish die up to that
point in my life, so I didn't quite understand what people meant when
they said, "Alice is dead." All I knew is I was woken up at what seemed
like 4:00 AM CST, ushered into the basement, where there were all these
uniformed police officer and investigators in their black trenchcoats
(not tan trenchcoats like "Columbo"; black trenchcoats like "The
X-Files") with their walkie-talkie squawking, told to say goodbye to
Stevie Tooie - he hugged me, which he had never done before, for
reasons I didn't understand at the time - and, then, to this day, I
have never seen him again. If anyone know his or the twins (his older
brothers, Jim and John) whereabouts, please tell me at your ealiest
convenience AirAdventurer194@gmail.com.
#AllMyLifeAllIEverWantedToBeWasHim! #AllMyLifeAllIEverWantedToBeWasHim! #AllMyLifeAllIEverWantedToBeWasHim!
Newton single-handedly dragged mankind (well, at
least Western
civilization) out of The Dark Ages, essentially invented STEM as we
know it, and, should we eventually colonize every habitable planet to
the limit of out light-cone from some event, he would be IMHO
personally responsible for it..
(No offense is intended by any misattribution in the above; I
shall do my best to correct any misattributions as I become aware of
them. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.)
