Had my first trick-or-treating run since age twelve on Friday. I think Little Red Riding Hood is looking pretty good. Hmm. Guess that makes me the Big Bad Wolf.
Author: Writer guy
Scorcese
“But for those of us who lived and died in them furious days, it was like everything we knew, was mildly swept away. And no matter what they did to build this city up again, for the rest of time, would be like no one ever knew we were here .” – Amsterdam Vallon, Gangs of New York
Like a lot of people, I have a strong affection for Martin Scorcese’s work. Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Departed and Gangs of New York are some of the greatest films in cinematic history. So I was curious to read about Scorcese’s battles with anxiety, addiction, and a utter lack of confidence with women. Funny to think how a person can look so practiced on the outside, yet contain such a fiery a maelstrom beneath the surface.
Gonna take a lot of beer
During a training exercise today, my Krav instructor and I played around with a new club disarm move that nearly sent a two foot stick through my throat. Surprisingly, my first response: “Am I still breathing?”
His answer was, I think, affirmative, but at that point the adrenaline was running my body and large sections of my brain. So he might have said something more like, “Are you OK?”
Basically, it was my turn to swing a fighting stick at his head, holding it like a bat, with a two hand grip. Matching my velocity, he trapped my hands and then locked my wrist while stepping around me. Add a little nudge of the shoulder, it could have sent me downwards in an embarrassing heap, along the same trajectory as the motion of the bat.
As I crumpled, the wrist lock softened my grip on the stick. While the instructor could have stripped the “bat” then–we had done so a dozen times before–he missed the weapon grab.
So the cylinder went tumbling, answerable only to the whims of gravity. By some quirk of physics, one tip of the fighting stick found the ground at the same time as my body–most of it still in freefall–found the opposite end. My momentum drove the stick at a steep angle into the soil. Since the dense wood refused to bend, it slid across my chest as I rolled off in the opposite direction.
The net result: a nifty scrape and bruise a foot long and an inch wide, three inches below my collarbone and about five beneath my throat.
Shazam. Near impalement. And just before Halloween, too.
Elected
Random thought: Perhaps there might be something wrong with a process where people are more relieved at its conclusion rather than the actual outcome.
A friend recently said, “I can’t wait for the elections to be over, because I’m sick of the fucking television and radio ads.” I may disagree with their diction, but their sentiment resonates with a lot of people lately. After months of relentless advertisements, many just want them to stop. It’s as if the ordeal is a burden, and there’s a lot better things people could do with their time, so please let voting day come so Gossip Girl runs without interruption.
Which may not–or may be–exactly the reaction the politicos crave.
NOTE: The above entry is political as this blog gets.