The Voice of Reason: A V.I.P. Pass to Enlightenment Page 13

  Savate

  Since we’re on the subject of kicking arts, I have to mention savate. Indulge me for a moment and consider the consequences of this scenario: You live in early-nineteenth-century France. You are gainfully employed as a boot-shining apprentice working under a man who cleans horse manure from the filthy streets of Paris, and out of nowhere the king of England comes into your personal space and starts shoving you around. You’ve got on your big ass-kicker boots (shined to perfection). This guy is in your grille, giving you a hard time. And, most important, a closed fist is considered a deadly weapon in early-nineteenth-century France (yeah—I didn’t make that up). What are you gonna do? The answer is obvious. Develop the lamest fighting style in the history of Europe, centered around kicking your opponent exclusively with your cool boots, occasionally releasing a quick flurry of slaps, and pretending you invented a martial art. News flash: kicking with your foot isn’t a new martial art. It already has a name. It’s called incorrect technique.

  Muay Thai

  If one nation of people knows how to a kick correctly, it’s the Thais. They’ve practiced their trauma-inducing shin-bone-on-thigh-centric martial art for a millenium now. Legend has it that muay thai arose when the Burmese army kidnapped a Thai warrior. Khanom Tom, as he was known, fought his way to freedom by defeating ten straight Burmese opponents. The queen of Burma was impressed by his manliness, released him and gifted him with two beautiful Burmese wives—because that’s what always happens in national genocides. If you win a few kickboxing matches, they let you go free. It’s not like they would drag you through the streets with a rope tied around your neck for having the audacity to win one match against their soldiers, let alone ten. Anyway, from this obviously true story about some obviously true character in an obviously true war, the national sport of muay thai was born. A martial art in which two men stand in front of each other and trade kicks to the thighs/body until somebody drops. If any sport were a candidate for Mensa athletic competitions, this would be the one. Having a game plan is frowned upon. Moving sideways or disengaging garners negative scoring. Blocking punches (with anything other than your face) is outright illegal. The only legal/traditional way to fight in muay thai is to stand in front of your opponent like a moron, bomb kicks into his midsection, and occasionally (probably randomly), check a kick or two thrown by him. So thank goodness the practitioners (aka human punching bags) of this sport know correct kicking technique. Because, lord knows, if you take up muay thai, you’ll certainly be absorbing a lot of kicks.

  Boxing

  At least in boxing you are allowed to properly avoid and block a strike. Boxing is a true thinking man’s sporting contest. Not content with the no-holds-barred brawls dominating the streets of Scotland at the time, John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, endorsed a new set of rules governing fights. “Fair play,” as it was termed, dominated the landscape. No longer were men concerned with winning at all costs. Suddenly, winning as a gentleman was thought the highest honor. The rules encouraged gloves, a “fair” chance to get back up if you fell down from exhaustion, and short rounds to allow the men adequate rest for their weary bodies. Fast-forward a hundred years, and the gloves are now little more than decoration for punches so hard they can break through cement, standing eight counts give a concussed opponent a chance to wake up and take another beating, and the short rounds encourage all-out action for short time periods, subsidizing the knockout punch. Boxing, designed to be noble and sophisticated, became the surest way to develop traumatic brain injury. If you’ve ever had aspirations of dying in the ring, you need to do only two things. Take up boxing, and wait.

  Capoeira

  Perhaps the most logical thing to do then is create a martial art with the sole intent of hurting your opponent as little as possible. It seems that the Brazilians, in their infinite wisdom, have managed to do this with the creation of capoeira. Capoeira was a martial art developed by African slaves in Brazil during the 1700s. With fighting expressly prohibited, the slaves needed some way to resolve conflicts (that didn’t necessitate an online grudge match via Battlefield III and an Xbox LIVE account). To keep their fights under the radar of the slave drivers, the slaves invented a time machine that would allow them to look three hundred years into the future at awful twenty-first-century teen movies. Drawing inspiration from great works of art like Bring It On, Bring It On Again, and Bring It On: Fight to the Finish, they developed their own dance-focused style of fighting to both beat one another to a pulp and annoy/confuse their masters. They expanded upon their dance-fight system until it became the well-rounded, intricately choreographed dance of death that exists today. No other fighting style (except for possibly every other fighting style) encompasses the depth of technique, the efficiency of motion, and the range of possible fight-ending attacks as capoiera’s ritual of spinning continuously in the same direction while extending an arm or leg in a vain attempt to slap your opponent in the thigh.

  If it’s now obvious to you that striking is a ridiculous, futile endeavor (and it should be, because I’m laying it on pretty thick), then maybe you’re thinking, “Uncle Chael, what about the other grappling arts? Are they awful too?”

  Judo

  The answer is yes. Judo is among the first attempts in history (but certainly not the last) for liberal-arts majors to develop a fighting style soft enough for their delicate hands but tough enough to earn them some street cred from their hipster friends down at the coffee shop. A Japanese hypochondriac by the name of Jigoro Kano watched some videos of the NCAA finals (wrestling, not basketball), and thought to himself, “How can I make this worse?” Kano succeeded in his mission by putting gi’s on otherwise straight athletes, convincing them to go “easier,” and babbling on about mutual welfare and benefit. He called this new art judo, and when the world rightly recognized that it was just a passive style of Greco-Roman wrestling with a jacket, he quickly and haphazardly allowed two types of submissions, as if that made any difference at all. This new art of judo even found support among the international community, gaining acceptance as an Olympic sport in 1964. This sport revolves around sloppily throwing your opponent while grabbing his shirtsleeves and, as far as I can tell, not much else. Some Olympic sport.

  Sambo

  Not wanting to be left out in the cold in terms of embezzling Japanese martial arts (all the cool kids were doing it), Russia decided to get in on the act as well. In the 1950s the USSR traded the Japanese government one year’s supply of food for 5,000 Judo gi’s. The Soviet geniuses then dropped the gi’s out of helicopters over St. Peter’s Square and watched with glee as mass hysteria ensued. Those who garnered a gi, and didn’t die of starvation, became the first crop of Russian judoka. These autodidacts tried to master the intricacies of the Japanese art through osmosis. Unfortunately, because all the literate Russians were sent to Siberian work camps, the Russian practitioners had no clue what the actual judo rules were. Taking their best guess, they emphasized leg locks and disallowed strangleholds. Unfortunately, they guessed totally wrong. However, to save face, the Russians pretended that was their plan all along, and called their new leg-lock focused art form sambo. This small lineage of original sambo practitioners has spawned literally hundreds of thousands of sambokas who have gone on to accomplish absolutely nothing in the modern MMA scene.

  Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

  But at least the Russians changed something. They paid homage to their foundational roots, acknowledging judo as their art’s ideological forefather, switched some trivial points around, and tried to create something new and better. That’s more than I can say for Brazilian jiu jitsu. The long, boring history involves a few members of the original Gracie clan learning judo from a legitimate Japanese judo teacher and, in the span of time it took him to go number two in the bathroom, renaming it Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Without changing a single technique, creating a single new rule, or inventing any new premise, the art was born magically out of thin air. A quick press release, a new marketing pl
an, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu was off to the races to dominate the martial arts world. To do this, the Gracie family (the original thieves of judo) developed a no-holds-barred fighting challenge to prove the superiority of “their” art. Royce Gracie’s father (or cousin or something) created UFC 1 and filled up the tournament brackets with a bunch of washed-up, broken-down, stand-up fighters. Royce was then given the easiest route to the title as he tied up, choked, and tickled his way to UFC gold. The rest, as they say, is history.

  The history of the decline of humanity, that is. Do these fools honestly believe they invented a new martial art? A new system of mutually beneficial, holistic combat? Bollocks. Mud-eating cave dwellers in the mountains of Kazakhstan were doing keylocks and lapel chokes a billion years ago. In short, wrestlers were doing it first, and they’re still doing it better.

  And it shows. In the character of the men who wrestle. In the hardwork and determination they put into everything they do. In their reverence for their teachers and in their refusal to take credit for what they had no hand in creating. Mostly, it shows in the men that wrestling creates. Everyone from Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf to Gen. George Patton to Maynard James Keenan. And almost every US president worth a hoot has had a strong wrestling pedigree. (Aside from Richard Nixon, of course, thanks to a misdiagnosis of tuberculosis and subsequent family boycott of all sporting activities. Had he not been affected by this unfortunate circumstance, he almost certainly would have won four Greco-Roman world championships and still become leader of the free world in his spare time.)

  Here is a list of some great men:

  George Washington (Independent)

  John Tyler (Whig)

  Zachary Taylor (Whig)

  Abraham Lincoln (Republican)

  Ulysses S. Grant (Republican)

  Chester A. Arthur (Republican)

  Theodore Roosevelt (Republican)

  William Howard Taft (Republican)

  Calvin Coolidge (Republican)

  Dwight D. Eisenhower (Republican)

  What do all these presidents have in common? Aside from their universal refusal to join that other political party full of crybabies and weaklings? That’s right, all of these outstanding specimens of manhood were wrestlers. Maybe not world champions, but the hard work, full-bore training, and mental strengthening paid off by instilling in them the courage and tenacity needed to take on the highest political office, and win.

  You can even take a look at the ranks of the UFC today and find that wrestling dominates the top of every single weight class. Nearly every UFC champion has a foundation in wrestling.

  Heavyweight: Junior dos Santos (not a wrestler, but wishes he were)

  Light Heavyweight: Jon Jones (wrestler)

  Middleweight: Chael P. Sonnen (the wrestler)

  Welterweight: Georges St. Pierre (wrestler)

  Lightweight: Benson Henderson (wrestler)

  Featherweight: Jose Aldo (soccer player: can’t win ’em all)

  Bantamweight: Dominick Cruz (wrestler)

  Flyweight: Will soon be Demetrious Johnson, Ian McCall, or Joseph Benavidez (all wrestlers)

  It doesn’t matter if you want to become the champion of the UFC [fill-in-the-blank] weight division or champion and ruler of the free world, history has made one thing abundantly clear. You’d better know some wrestlin’ if you wanna do it well.

  A Moment to Laugh at Me

  am going to take a momentary break from telling you how things should be and share with you an embarrassing story about myself.

  When I was twelve years old, I went to my cousin Lowell’s wedding. Lowell has a twin brother, Sid, and with the two of them being very close, Lowell asked Sid to be his best man and give a speech. When the time came, Sid turned to his new sister-in-law and said,

  “My brother and I have been very close our whole life, and we have shared everything. We look forward to sharing you, too.”

  It was all very sweet, and the assembled guests immediately erupted into applause.

  Fast-forward twelve years. My buddy Terrance was getting married, and he asked me to be his best man and give a speech of my own. Well, Chael P. hasn’t always been the smooth-talking, quick-witted girl magnet he is today, so instead of coming up with an original speech, I decided to steal my cousin Sid’s. When it came time, I turned to Terrance’s bride and said,

  “My buddy Terrance and I have been like brothers for as long as I can remember, and we have shared everything, so we are going to share you, too. See you tomorrow night.”

  I immediately realized the implication of what I had said. It wasn’t sweet and innocent like my cousin’s speech. I had basically said that within twenty-four hours I would be climbing into bed with her. Not to mention that my buddy Terrance, her husband, would be present. I didn’t say he would be videotaping the whole escapade, but I might as well have. I hoped the crowd was too drunk to catch my unintended drift, but unfortunately they did. I heard a plethora of gasps, and even heard a glass break, as if the person holding that glass had just been struck with a fatal blow. I didn’t bother to look to see if it was the bride’s father.

  When I got back to my seat, everyone was staring at me. My girlfriend asked me how I could say such a thing, and then turned away in disgust. I’d rehearsed the speech several times, and for reasons I couldn’t fathom I had ad-libbed that last line. It was, without a doubt, the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me. I’m still mortified by it, to this very day. I can’t even think about it without cringing.

  victimhood and Other Nonsense

  ’m sure all you folks remember when an audio clip surfaced a few years back of moody actor Christian Bale lambasting a crew member on the set of Terminator Salvation. (If you haven’t heard it, it’s worth a listen.) The clip went “viral,” which is what I believe all you lil’ geeks with your Interwebs and whatnot call it, and the consensus opinion assigned victimhood to the target of Bale’s fury, director of photography Shane Hurlbut. After reading numerous comments and having discussions with my friends and cronies, all of whom love movies, it became apparent to me that Bale had been cast as a bully. He was generally regarded as a pampered lout of an actor who cruelly lashed out at a subordinate, a crew member who was “just doing his job.”

  Having been on a movie set or two, allow me to give you a slightly different perspective on the nature of the circumstances that created that particular incident and its resultant behaviors and impact. First, let’s dispense with the notion that the subject of Bale’s wrath was some poor workin’ stiff schlumping across the set clad in a pair of Carhartt overalls and construction boots who just happened to have wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time in front of the wrong actor. No. He was the director of photography. He was the head of a department, a high-ranking member of the creative team; more “talent” than “crew”; more “management” than “labor.” He hires guys to work for him, and he collaborates with the director (in this case, a hack and a complete fraud who calls himself “McG,” whatever the heck that is supposed to mean) to envision, design, and create shots.

  Prior to Bale’s appearance on set, in wardrobe and makeup, the DP and his entire crew had full, unrestricted access to the set and all the equipment (in this case, lights), with the added assistance of a stand-in for Bale—an individual of similar size and approximate physical architecture whose one and only job on set was to sit where Bale would sit and stand where he would stand. All these luxuries were offered so that any “fine-tuning” and “tweaking,” code words for “fixing my screwups, could be performed without disturbing Bale, so that when he showed up on set he could do his job, which is acting.

  I can assure you that the DP was given as much time as he needed to accomplish his tasks. Rest assured, my fine friends and fellow film-fanatics, had the DP (or any of his mindless minions) been rushed or inconvenienced in any way, he would have howled to the AD (essentially the quarterback on set), the producer, his agent, his manager, etc. And he would have howled longer, l
ouder, and with a lot less decorum than Bale howled at him.

  Second, and this is vitally important—if you listen to what Bale says with the same degree of enraptured attention you give to how he says it, you will realize that this is not the first time this had been an issue. Bale makes it clear that the DP has already behaved unprofessionally and inappropriately, and someone, in all probability Bale, has already told the DP to stop walking around and adjusting the lights, which as we have already discussed, should not have required adjustment during a scene if the DP had done his job properly.