some­thing to ponder

Authors note to read­ers: This blog will ruin one of the jokes from the pre­vi­ous blog (pos­si­bly the fun­ni­est). If you haven’t read Bat­tered and bruised yet, you might want to check that out first and come back to read this.

I think every­one does some of his or her best think­ing in the shower. I know I do. Typ­i­cally it’s because I’m think­ing of noth­ing and due to that I’m open to new thoughts. This morn­ing my blog from yes­ter­day sud­denly came to mind while I “shampooed, rinsed and repeated” (I’m aware this is a good sign that I’m an addict. How­ever I refuse to accept that idea). A lot of pos­i­tive responses had come in about that blog. I was bask­ing, for the moment, in the glow of my own wit­ti­ness. I had nailed the old comedy for­mula:

   Naked women hold­ing body parts

+ Over the top shock

+ Obser­va­tional humor

—————————————-

   pure comic gold

Every­one loved it (not that everyone’s a lot, but I like to imag­ine that the entire world cares about my neu­rotic ram­blings). But moments later, as I care­fully waited for the 60 sec­onds to be up so I could rinse out the con­di­tioner, a far less funny thought occurred to me: how screwed up our media is.

Check out that pic­ture again. I’ll wait. Ok, we have lower-​tier celeb (sorry Aly, I love you but it’s true) and pale god­dess Alyson Han­ni­gan in tribal dress posing next to a native woman. Said indige­nous woman is cup­ping her naked chest. Why? Because show­ing breasts, regard­less of the con­text and cir­cum­stance, in main­stream media is taboo. This woman isn’t top­less for any sexual reason; it’s simply the way she dresses. It’s part of her cul­ture. It could be argued, that Alyson’s deep blue shirt is far more out of place for the set­ting (please note: this is not some excuse for trying to get a naked pic­ture of Alyson…)… (though now that I men­tion that…). Bottom line: to make this pic­ture pub­lish­able for the main­stream, the pho­tog­ra­pher instructed the native woman to cover her­self. Why? It’s the Amer­i­can moral­is­tic view that naked breasts in just about any form are inher­ently inde­cent and immoral (sorry ladies). The sight of them is enough to cause unrest and pos­si­ble riot­ing (espe­cially among teenagers… well, that part actu­ally is true).

I’m not writ­ing this to make an impas­sioned pleas for either more boobs on TV or wide accep­tance of public nudity. In the long run nei­ther are very impor­tant to my world­view. I’ve passed my early teens, so the goal of naked breasts on TV is far less of a press­ing social/political cause for me. And from my brief expo­sures to public nudity (Wood­stock as an exam­ple), I have come to the con­clu­sion that the for­mula for public nudity is one of inverse pro­por­tions: the more likely you are to engage in public nudity, the less likely people actu­ally want to see you naked.

Here’s the real issue, the thing that gets me: the over­all moral hypocrisy of our media. On Sep­tem­ber 11th and the days that fol­lowed, we were all repeat­edly sub­jected to the image of a plane slam­ming into the already dam­aged Twin Towers and their even­tual col­lapse. Once, twice, even three times and I might have let it pass as news. But it was a con­stant bar­rage for days, from mul­ti­ple angles, often in slow motion. When you break that ter­ri­ble image down to it’s core, you real­ize we were watch­ing and re-​watching over 150 inno­cent people mur­dered in an instant. With each replay of the towers col­laps­ing we saw hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, die. Each of us wit­nessed a mass murder com­mit­ted dozens of times (if not more) that week.

Doesn’t it strike you as odd that net­works that refuse to show naked breasts dis­played in a non sexual way, like the woman in the pic­ture, have no issues with repeat broad­casts of mass murder. With that cheery thought I turned off the water, grabbed a towel, dried off, decided I was to lazy to shave today and started to wonder about what I was going to wear..

Bat­tered and bruised

“So… Aaron came over last night with a split lip….” said Jenny as she approached me for lunch. *Uh oh*… *try to look innocent*…

Last night was a great night at Kung Fu and Shoot­fight­ing. It was the first time I’ve ever put boxing gloves on and ran com­bi­na­tion drills. And once the gloves went on they stayed on for most of the night. Sifu used them in a series of drills where we got hit and then counter hit. None of us unloaded on each other, but it doesn’t take much to learn to respect a blow to the face (or any­where for that matter). The worst part, by far, was the final drill of the night. Basi­cally we each took turns get­ting our ribs pounded with hooks from our part­ners while we kept our hands over our heads. Aaron was my part­ner for that drill. Even though he was only hit­ting at about 50% I wanted him to stop, oh, after the third hit. All and all it was a very sober­ing expe­ri­ence (and a reminder that in gen­eral I much prefer to be the hitter not the hitee)….

(btw. The split lip came from a punch that slipped through Aaron’s block during an ear­lier drill. I wasn’t the per­pe­tra­tor of that one. Unfor­tu­nately I did catch Aaron with an acci­den­tal hit later in the night. While it was a glanc­ing blow it def­i­nitely loaded the Karma Wheel against me. Sorry again Aaron).

My back is killing me. I have a curve in my spine and on damp days I often end up with a kink at the base of it. It’s been rainy here for the last day or so. Try as I might I can’t pop it into align­ment. Usu­ally I can run up the Kodak gym and throw a quick form and that will do the trick (funny how most mar­tial arts forms have move­ments geared towards spinal alignment… and people say it’s just for fight­ing). Today how­ever, the Gym is being used for a pre­sen­ta­tion *grrr* So, I keep stretch­ing as best I can and hope that it will even­tu­ally resent. But it’s a knaw­ing dis­trac­tion and con­cen­trat­ing on work has been dif­fi­cult. Plus it’s a bad hair day on top of that.

wow they man­aged to make Alyson even whiter… and GAH! that woman’s hold­ing her­self!

In other news… Tina informed me that *sigh* Alyson Han­ni­gan *flut­ter*, pale god­dess and my “lust girl” (see ear­lier, kinda strange blog from August), is going to be on E!-TV’s Celebrity Adven­ture. Appar­ently they take a celeb out to a remote place and have them inter­act with the indig­i­nous people and wildlife. Here’s part of what she does on the show from the E web­site:

Han­ni­gan hung out with a tribe of natives who were can­ni­bals until 50 years ago. She attended the body-​painting ritual, hiked up to some beau­ti­ful water­falls and swam with dolphins.

Also along for the ride is Alexis Denisof, Alyson’s *grum­ble grum­ble grum­ble* boyfriend (and Wesley from Angel). I’m sure wacky hijinks ensue. Per­on­sally, I’m not a huge fan of the entire Survivor/Road Rules thing. In fact I really don’t go in for just about any­thing on E! (I’m not big into the Celeb wor­ship­ing thing), but this has got Alyson in it so it gets my seal of approval. ;-P

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

note to self: take care of Alexis…

The view from the bridge

The sketch to the left is one I did as we drove toward Toronto last Thurs­day. We, Aaron (not Jenny’s Aaron) and myself, had been in Canada for less than twenty min­utes when he came into view. A lone man stood on an over­pass above the QEW. Stand­ing motion­less, star­ing for­ward above the oncom­ing traf­fic, he grasped an Amer­i­can Flag. I wished that we had stopped so I could take a pic­ture of him. But the image stayed with me and I had to take a moment to sketch it. I don’t know if he was a US national living in Canada. Or simply some­one so com­pelled by the events that he chose to spend his Thurs­day morn­ing show­ing sup­port above the major high­way. Either way I felt that it was a pow­er­ful image that I had to share.

Per­son­ally, more than a week after the event, I feel extremely divided about the cor­rect response. 6,000 people were mur­dered. In fact when­ever anyone refers to it as an “accident” I become infu­ri­ated. This was no acci­dent and any ref­er­ence to it as such is an insult to those affected by it. In the short term there is a need for jus­tice. And that may need to be achieved by mil­i­tary means. But the mar­tial artist in me won­ders about the longer-​term hopes of a non-​violent solu­tion to pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing in the future. With that in mind I present a short essay from Noam Chom­sky which rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent voice than is rep­re­sented in most of the cov­er­age of the event. Read with an open mind. Accept what make sense, ques­tion and based on that ques­tion­ing reject what doesn’t apply to your views.

In other news

This has been a pro­duc­tive week­end. I got to go to a Japan­ese Steak House for the first time (thanks Tonya) and took in that show. I saw Han­ni­bal. I enjoyed the film. Thank­fully, I knew just when to look away (brains… yummy). I can handle gore when it’s done over the top. But when its even semi real­is­tic and treated as such… brrrr.

I also took the oppor­tu­nity to ask my friends to help me update my records. They’re all really out of date. (Note: of you’re vis­it­ing here for the first time, I’m typ­i­cally no where near this polit­i­cal and a lot more funny. Check it out at least one more time before you cross me off the hol­i­day card list). I also got a lot of apart­ment stuff done. It’s a big improve­ment (and yes for those from GET, the fridge is stocked).

Lots ‘n lots o’ stuff

It’s been a little while since I did a big update and this seems as good a time as any. There’s been a ton of stuff I’ve wanted to blog about, but with every­thing hap­pen­ing it’s fallen to the way­side. So for the moment at least I’m going to ignore the goings on around me in the world to catch people up to date on what’s new with me…

dance Matt dance… aka Capoeira

For quite a while Jenny, Jo, Tina & Abby have taken Belly Danc­ing lessons. And they’ve gotten pretty good (heck they even taught Tony a thing or two about hip shak­ing). The cool thing is that not only did the girls get to learn all these funky moves, but its also great exer­cise! And that’s all cool. But there was noth­ing for us guys who wanted to dance our ways into shape with­out risk­ing our mas­culin­ity. I mean I could have tried to get into belly danc­ing. But as stated in pre­vi­ous blogs, I’m already well in touch with my fem­i­nine side. No need for the help of veils & skirts.

Well I’ve finally found a solu­tion: Capoeira. It’s an African/Brazilian Mar­tial Art/Dance. The cool thing is we have a great teacher here in Rochester. The class is intense and laid back at the same time. Best of all it’s cov­ered under my YMCA mem­ber­ship. Last night was the first class I attended. It was one hell of a work out. We were moving for over an hour with­out any breaks. And this wasn’t mamby pamby move­ment. We’re talk­ing kicks, spins, and major knee bends all set to boomin’ Brazil­ian music. After about 45 min­utes I even began to think that I had rhythm… at least a bit.

But there was some­thing else that made it dif­fer­ent. Not only were there a large number of women in the class, but that they all were hot­ties! This is a new thing for me when it comes to a mar­tial art. This is not to say that women don’t prac­tice mar­tial arts (they do). And that’s also not to say that the women who prac­tice mar­tial arts aren’t easy on the eyes (a lot are). But I’m not used to having more women then men in the class. As I men­tioned before Capoeira is con­sid­ered a dance form as well as a mar­tial art. That’s because the Brazil­ian Slaves who devel­oped it needed to hide what they were prac­tic­ing. So they dis­guised it as a dance (a pretty common thing with mar­tial arts, actu­ally). Stephan, the instruc­tor, is pretty well known in the dance com­mu­nity. So a number of dance majors from schools like Brock­port take the class. These girls (and guys too) were in incred­i­ble shape (far better than me). It’s a little intim­i­dat­ing, but I’ll suffer through it :-).

The class does have one down­side right now: my legs are killing me. It was a killer work­out and even after taking steps to pre­vent stiff­ness I’m really feel­ing yes­ter­days work­out. But I’m going to keep with it. One day I might even be like the guys in the Capoeira video on

this page.

big willy style

Will Weaton of ST:TNG (that’s Star Trek: The Next Generation… he was the kid) has a blog. And I say more power to him. This guy, at one time, was one of the most hated people on the Net (people, it’s not his fault that his part on the show was writ­ten as the know-​it-​all kid). Now he’s online, pubish­ing his life.

Per­son­ally his site fas­ci­nates me. Not nec­es­sar­ily in a good way… more like a car crash way. I just can’t look away. Wil has of late perused sketch comedy as a outlet for his tal­ents. He pep­pers a lot of his comic stylings into his blog. The results often come out… well… creepy. Take this pas­sage, talk­ing about his expe­ri­ence as a guest at a recent Star Trek Con­ven­tion:

You know the cool thing? There are these fans who came over from Germany,

and some of them are girls, and they are HOT. And they tell me, in broken

Eng­lish, how much they love me. Oh yeah, tell me some more baby. Tell daddy

how you love him.

Is it me or is hear­ing any celebrity (or kinda celebrity), or anyone, refer to them­selves as “daddy” a little off­set­ting? In any case, I give Wil credit. He lays his soul pretty bare on the blog. More so than most, includ­ing myself, of us do. I wonder if that is a result of his brush with rabid fans. Trekkies have been known to be some of the most fanat­i­cal and inva­sive people on the planet (see the movie Trekkies for more on that). After living under that type of scrutiny I imag­ine that your views on pri­vacy change. In any case, give his blog a look. You can find it here (I just wish he’d avoid refer­ring to him­self with terms like “Big Wil”…).

$#%@! Lotus Notes!!!!

Ok my orig­i­nal plan was to share some pic­tures from this past week­end in Toronto. But Lotus Notes decided to kill them. Grrrrr! I wouldn’t use the darn system if the Man didn’t force me to. *sigh*

Toronto was great, and much needed. Over two and a half days we saw 12 films! Here’s the quick run down:

• Who is Clement Tout
• Pri­va­cay
• Okie Noodling
• Fiasco
• Eat
• The Amer­i­can Astronaut
• Mag­o­nia
• Nos­fo­ratu (w/full orches­tral accomaniment)
• Ichi The Killer
• Treed Murphy
• Hell­house
• The Bunker

More on this will be coming very soon…

There’s no cute title and no attempt at humor; just a pro­found feel­ing of help­less­ness. And the knowl­edge that no mater what, life will always go on and move for­ward. For the moment, all we can do is sup­port each other. We don’t know what the days ahead hold. But we, as a nation, as a people, and as a world have had many defin­ing moments like these through thes years. We have shoul­dered seem­ingly insur­mount­able weights before and only grown stronger. I know that this time will be no different.

The inno­cence of three gen­er­a­tions was shat­tered today. It’s clearly a new age, and that brings many events, both joyful and ter­ri­ble. We have to be pre­pared for both. I can’t claim respon­si­bil­ity for the fol­low­ing words. But at times like this they’ve served as a reminder to me of the bigger picture.

There are moments in your life that make you, that set the course of who you’re gonna be. Some­times they’re little, subtle moments, some­times they’re not. Bottom line is, even if you see em coming, you’re not ready for the big moments. Nobody asked for their life to change, but it does. So what are we? Help­less pup­pets? No. The big moments are gonna come, you can’t help that, it’s what you do after­wards that counts. That’s when you find out who you really are.”

Give to the Red Cross Dis­as­ter Relief Fund. And if you can donate blood (I wish I could but I need to wait another month). I pray all of your friends and love ones are safe.

Birth­day Bash Part 1 – Dinner.

Last night Tina, Jenny, Abby, Aaron, Chuck and Kenn all helped me cel­e­brate my birth­day in style… Mini Golf Style! The night began at a local fast/greasy food estab­lish­ment called Schaellers. Actu­ally, let me back the train up just a bit for a little back­ground first. My birth­day was Monday, but that day was spent dri­ving back from Long Island O.D.ing on Henry Rollins’ Spoken Word discs (that’s a sub­ject for another blog). Thurs­day was chosen because it was the only day for the next few weeks we were all avail­able. When asked if I had any requests I simply said, “Surprise me…”

So the night started at Schaellers. Most of us opted to try the Trash Plate. What’s a trash plate you ask? <time for a side track…> Here in Rochester, there is this thing known as The Garbage Plate (pic­tured here). Make that a “legendary thing”. I refer to it as a “Thing” because “Food” doesn’t quite cover it. The Garbage Plate, wor­shiped as a minor deity by count­less fra­ter­nity mem­bers and col­lege stu­dents in the Rochester area, comes in many con­fig­u­ra­tions. The most pop­u­lar is the “Cheeseburger Plate” fea­tur­ing:

• a base of mac­a­roni salad and home fries (baked beans or french fries can be substituted)
• 2 grade “Z” beef cheese­burg­ers on top of that
• 2 slices of bread on top of that
• finally a lib­eral top­ping of the “Hot Sauce”. …Ok, I need to side track here in the midst of a side track. For those of you out­side of the West­ern NY area Hot Suace isn’t what you assume it to be (Tabasco or Red Hot). This stuff ain’t even remotely close, in fact, it really isn’t spicy hot at all. A better name would be “Magical Mys­tery Meat Sauce.” The Rochester Hot Sauce is basi­cally a gravy of sorts; an uniden­ti­fied ground meat with some spices and a whole lot of grease (I’m told that this is a vari­a­tion on a Greek Meat Sauce).

Basi­cally the com­po­nents com­bine, like Voltron’s Lions, to form a pile of grease on a paper plate (some­times blaz­ing grease on the grill). Accord­ing, to this researcher, there is at least 93 grams of fat in one serv­ing (note: that he doesn’t factor in the Hot Sauce, which easily tips the scales past the big One-​Oh-​Oh). When you finish one of these suck­ers your paper plate can be used as a makeshift window thanks to the grease’s translu­cent effects. So why would anyone eat this you ask? Youth and Alco­hol (lots of Alco­hol) I respond. Nick Tahoe’s, the restau­rant that cre­ated the Garbage Plate, is a right of pas­sage for Teens and Col­lege Stu­dents here in Rochester. It’s become so pop­u­lar that many greasy spoons around town, like Schaellers, have cre­ated their own ver­sions. This process involves throw­ing the same stuff on a plate, then using a the­saurus to find word/phrase to sub­sti­tute for garbage (trash, rub­bish, any N*Sync album, Kenn’s Mini golf game…). Com­bine, shake, and *presto* a Trash Plate.</end side track>

After our dinner (and our arter­ies recov­ered), out came the cake. During this time I learned three things:

• from Tina: appar­ently the birth­day person gets another wish when they cut the first peice of cake. I sud­denly felt cheated out of 26 wishes.
• from Aaron: “gouge” can be used as a slang replace­ment for infor­ma­tion. Every­one around the table found this rather sketchy. Per­haps he had gotten some bad “gouge”

bootie..er... booty]"/>

Check out my haul! What great friends!

After the cake came, of course, the presents. Abby gave me a bag of awe­some relax­ation aids! Body Mas­sagers & heat pads, facial masks and exfo­li­ates, choco­late, and a copy of YM! fea­tur­ing the cast of Amer­i­can Pie 2 and Allyson… (hmm maybe that last one was a poor choice to men­tion as a relax­ation aid). Very cool, very useful (though didn’t really help in the let’s make Matt feel more manly cat­e­gory). Tina & Chuck gave me this Awe­some Chi­nese Bowl, a sushi mat and some “Blue Balls Nat­ural Soap” (I swear that was the name). The Soap smells really good and kicked off the theme of blue spher­i­cal objects for the rest of the night (and this has noth­ing to do with my cur­rent rela­tion­ship sit­u­a­tion!). I tried see if the Balls’ Soap Com­pany had a web­site but gave up search after I got the results back from typing “Blue Balls Soap” into google (*shud­der*). The last gift included a cool Wok Cook­book, 2 sets of good chop­sticks, and some beau­ti­ful serving/soy dishes from Aaron and Jenny (I love to cook, and I already started to plan an Asian themed com­mu­nity meal). The photo to the above right doesn’t really do jus­tice to any of the gifts, but it gives you an idea. After that we departed for the evening’s activity.

coming soon, part 2: Mini Golf