Fighters have become people to me

Matt’s hands were up, yet the punched slipped through, you could tell he felt it, up until now he was winning the fight, could this be the turning point? Matt Mitrione took some big shots from Joey Beltran in their prelim fight Saturday night. He looked really good in the fight and went on to win, but there were a few punches that got through and could have been the end of his night. When those punches landed I had a gut reaction, the same reaction you would have if one of your friends got punched in the face. The strange thing is, I‘ve never met Matt, and in all reality he is a stranger to me. As some of you may know I spend a lot of time following the sport of MMA and its fighters. By continually following the fighters online, watching interviews and videos of their training, you develop a fondness for them, almost as if you know them. Then you see the look of confusion on their face as they come to and look at the corner man and ask, “what happened”, after that big right hand, Thai knee, or head kick has ended their night. It is hard to see that look because you know about the weeks and weeks they spent preparing, the time they spent away from their families and kids while in training camp. You know how much was put into this moment and now they are looking up, as the lights come back into focus, and they don’t even know they have lost. I had this feeling when I watched Randy Couture being hammer-fisted by Brock Lesnar, Roxanne Modafferi being slammed into unconsciousness by Sarah Kaufman, and when Wanderlei KO’ed Keith Jardine, it was like watching a friend being beaten up. It is no longer just watching fights to me, it is watching people that I have followed and gotten to know, through my computer screen of course, but nonetheless, I get nervous for them. At it’s core, watching people fight is a surreal experience, and when you find yourself becoming invested in the fighters as people, not just entertainers, it might be time to take a step back.

I’m just getting started

I walked in the door and dropped my bag after another day of work and it hit me, I’m just getting started, I have another thirty-five years of this. Thirty-five years of getting up, sitting in traffic, putting in my hours, then sitting in traffic to get home. That is a harsh realization when the years of work you still have ahead of you is greater than the number of years you’ve been alive. I already don’t want to get up and go to the office, there are a million things I would rather do, what’s it going to be like five, ten, fifteen years from now? You always hear that you need to do what you love so it doesn’t feel like work; well the reality for most of us is that isn’t an option. Everyone can’t do what he or she loves for a living, so if you have to do something you don’t enjoy, is there a secret to getting through it without being miserable? Kanye was close when he said, “18 years, 18 years, got you for 18 years”, I think it should be more like, “65 years, 65 years, they got me for 65 years”, and that's if I’m lucky enough to retire at 65.

The thought of you makes me physically cringe

My blackberry is buzzing, the red light is flashing, this is its subtle way of letting me know some new information is awaiting my attention. As I click the roller ball to open my inbox I see the name of the e-mail sender and my body physically shudders! The mere sight of this person’s name causes a physical reaction. From day one of meeting this individual I had a gut reaction that screamed, “you don’t mesh well with this person!” I tried to ignore my biological senses and play nice. As time has passed and events have transpired, I have found that I can no longer fight biology, my body has made up its mind, whether I want to fight it or not, I don’t like this person. The physical reactions have escalated to the point where the sight of this person makes me roll my eyes or glare, and the sound of their voice makes me want to shove my fingers into my ears, knuckle deep, and scream la-la-la-la-la-la-la like a 5 year old. I feel physically uncomfortable in their presence. Their name emanating from my blackberry screen; polluting my field of vision makes my entire body react. How can another human being induce reactions like these?

If you say you hate all races you can get out of it

When I told people that I had jury duty coming up every comment I received was how I could get out of it. I was given things to say to get excused all together, things to say to get the judge to excuse me, and of course a dozen people told me I should have just thrown the notice in the trash and pretended I never go it, the funny thing is I wasn’t trying to get out of it. Why is it that everyone’s reaction is to try and get out of jury duty? I have served on a jury and it was an interesting experience, seeing how the judicial process works first hand, seeing how the D.A. and the defense attorney pick their questions to weed out the jury. This time around I was called to a courtroom for selection and was put in the jury box for questioning. I was eventually excused, but it was intriguing to see the questions we were asked due to the nature of the case. The biggest problem I had was the people that were saying things that were obviously for the sole purpose of getting excused. You could tell by the tone in their voices that they didn’t believe what they were saying. Why is everyone trying so hard to get out of jury duty? While I was sitting in the jury box I thought to myself, “knock on wood, god forbid, I find myself in a courtroom, preparing to face a jury, I want that jury to be paying attention and willing to be there, I don’t want a bunch of people who are pissed off and wanting nothing more than to get out of there. Next time you get a jury duty summons put yourself on the other side of the jury box and give the defendant the trial they deserve.

Aren’t there enough empty walls in LA?

I make the drive from Los Angeles to Norwalk and Orange County and a regular basis. In the years I have been making the drive I noticed that the great murals that adorn the concrete walls of the freeway have slowly been covered with graffiti. These murals have been on these freeways for many, many, years, and I am sure have had some graffiti on them from time to time, but now it has gotten to the point that some of the murals are almost invisible, now under a layer of gang names and terrible tagger graffiti. I am all for graffiti art, but a graffiti artist has the respect not to go over someone else’s artwork. Taggers on the other hand are not artists, have no artistic integrity, and will put their tagger name on anything, no matter how wrong it is. This point became more evident than ever when I was driving through Echo Park a few nights ago and passed by the Elliot Smith wall. For those of you not familiar with the Elliot Smith wall, it is a wall in Echo Park that he posed in front of for his album Figure 8. Since his death in 2003 the wall has become a tribute to him, with fans writing messages, music quotes, etc. As I made the drive late at night and passed the wall, I almost didn’t see it because the iconic red, white, and black art work that makes up the wall is covered close to entirely in graffiti. This is a wall that is a tribute to an artist that means a lot to many people, they have put personal messages to him on the wall to show their respect, and some kid with a spray can erased those messages, for what? Is nothing sacred any more?

Ghost Stories

Yesterday I spent the afternoon at the Mounds Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota. From the outside the Mounds Theater looks like a strip club or adult theater, but on the inside it looks like an old time movie theater. The Mounds Theater is said to be haunted by 3 spirits, a 10-year-old girl, an usher, and a projectionist named Red. As many of you know I believe that there is a ghost, spirit, energy, entity, or whatever you want to call it that co-inhabits my apartment, so I am open to the idea that there are forces in this world. The guide did some demonstrations for the large group and most of it was easily dismissed or at least explainable. Then we went to the basement in a small group, the basement was separated into two rooms with a large opening between then. When we were down there nothing really happened, as we got ready to leave one of the kids that was with me was taking pictures in the second room, everyone was going up the stairs and myself and the guide were the last two at the bottom, I looked back at her and I saw something go from where the kid had been taking pictures into the part of the room you couldn’t see. I said to the guide, “we have to wait for him he is still in their taking pictures”, she responded, “I’m the last one down here”, I said “but I just saw something go back into that room”, I looked up the stairs and saw the kid who was taking pictures at the top of the stairs leaving the basement, myself and the guide were in fact the last two in the basement, needless to say I hauled some major ass getting out of that basement.

When the large group moved on to its next stop there were only 5 of us and the guides left in the theater, the guide asked if “we wanted to do a blackout tour”, which meant all the lights in the theater were turned out and all we had were flashlights. The response from all of us was “absolutely!” We went through the theater, back into the basement, and up to Red’s projection room, many times with flashlights off in total blackness. Again in the basement, the same basement where I had seen something, things got intense. We were in total darkness, you could not see your hand in front of your face, and you could hear a pin drop in the silence. All of sudden my friend Kelly started to freak out and said she couldn’t take it anymore and we needed to get out of there, nothing had happened and we couldn’t figure out what was freaking her out. We all agreed to leave, before we did however, the guide said wait one second. He hit play on the audio recorder that had been recording during the silence and there in the white noise you could clearly hear a voice say, “don’t leave yet”. Needless to say we didn’t heed that request and we got out of there. When we made it back up to the theater we asked Kelly what had freaked her out and she turned to Eric, who was standing to her left in the basement, and made him swear on his kids that he had not been messing with her. He swore, and she said that she felt breathing on her neck and a small tug on the hair on her left side. Eric responded by making her swear on her daughter’s life that she hadn’t messed with him either, she swore, and he told us that he had felt something touching his right arm. The space between them was the corner of the room that I saw something move into when I was in the basement earlier.

This didn’t deter us, we wanted more, so we made our way up to Red’s projection room. Now this one may be even harder for you to believe without being there but I will tell you, I was there and I believed. We went into the projection room and some of us had dowsing rods, which is no more the a wire coat hanger cut and bent into and “L” shape, you hold the short end and point the long end, the theory is that if you ask the entity a question, that they will move the rod and point to things. Rick had been holding one tight in his hand the whole time when had been in the blackout, so tight that he said it was stuck to his skin and didn’t think it could even move. As soon as we walked into the projection room and stopped, his dowsing rod immediately twisted in his hand and pointed to the right hand projector.... Red’s projector. Rick handed me the dowsing rod and the hair on my hand stood up slightly and the dowsing rod again pointed to Red’s projector. A few minutes later Kelly was holding two dowsing rods, one in each hand, we told Red if he wanted us to leave to make them cross, nothing happened, when we said if it was OK if we stayed they slowly crossed each other. Red is known to not be a fan of women, a man scorned, so Kelly asked if he wanted her to leave, she was the only female in the room, the dowsing rod in her right hand started to pivot back and forth as if Red was shaking his head no.

Lastly we moved from the projection room to balcony in front of it. This is where Red, who was a prankster, is said to have jumped off the balcony in an attempt to scare the people in the back row, resulting in him breaking his leg. As we stood at the railing, Rick’s dowsing rod kept pivoting to the right and pointing to the same place on the railing. Rick had been quiet and we asked, what he had been thinking about, and he said, that he just kept asking Red were he jumped. Shortly after that Kelly was standing on the far left and she started to again get uncomfortable and said that she felt as if there was someone next to her and then the dowsing rod turned left as if Red was saying I’m the one next to you, she moved several times and it kept pointing back to that same spot, now next to me, it was time to call it a day.
I know it may be hard for you to believe these stories because you weren’t there, but I am telling you, four of the five of us had experiences in that theater, experiences that can’t be explained.

Unsung heroes

I sat down to watch Happy Go Lucky last week and before the movie there was a montage of Miramax films celebrating their 30 years of filmmaking. The montage was amazing, beautifully done, and edited perfectly to a great soundtrack. There were scenes from Gangs of New York cut together with Good Will Hunting, as well as Kevin Smith movies. The montage ended with the music swelling, the drumbeat got more intense, and the scenes were cut on the drumbeats. As I sat there mesmerized I thought, “what an amazing job the editor did cutting this package”, it was only two or three minutes long but the way it was edited I got sucked in. Then it came to the end and there was no credit given, it just ended and the DVD menu came up. This package must have taken an editor hours and hours to get it perfect, the way it flashed through scenes with the beat, and yet no one will ever know who he is. There are so many talented people in this world that create amazing works that never receive the credit they deserve.

I want all the books

When I see a book, I want it. I want to know what's inside, good or bad, I am curious to see what someone else has created. Writing a book is a huge undertaking, I want to know what that person found enough passion in to dedicate a large chunk of their life to put it on paper.