I'm Only Available on a Specially-Priced Maxi-Single (Japanese Import Only)

I watched "Rent" last night and bawled my fucking eyes out. This movie is incredible, and I hear the play is even better. I dare anyone to watch the final number and not lose about 10 lbs. of saline and snot. Of course, Caren has to go all gooey on me and say how I'm sensitive, and that's so rare for a man, and how sad the movie is.

So I kicked the cat. Gary, I noticed, fled upsatirs before he got sucked in...Coward.

Well, at last estimate, I am about three weeks behind in my writing. Lovely. I'll try to cover everything, bear with me.

I went to Scott Sonnen & Mushtaq Ali's knife seminar, and it was great although brief. This kind of stuff warrants a weekend of it's own, and although they covered a good amount of material in a few hours, I was left wishing for more. However, if we're talking quality over quantity, the seminar rocked.

Todd & Tiel were great to see again, and Terry Trahan came out with his beautiful wife Jenna. No shit, she's actually MARRIED to him...Gotta wonder what sins she committed to earn that little slice of hell. Probably stepped on a duck, or something.

So Terry and I found ourselves in the middle of a three-way debate between Steve Perry, Steven Barnes and Mushtaq Ali. At one point we went into the kitchen and said "Can you believe we're sitting here with these guys?!?!" When you spend a large portion of your time admiring certian people from afar, the moment of revelation can be a shock. Steve Perry is actually pretty cool. I have no idea how I managed to get on his radar, let alone insert myself in his life, but there it is. Two years ago he was somebody I liked reading, and now he's pissing on what he knows in his heart is probably the finest beer that God ever saw fit to grace his taste buds. He's not remotely as crotchety as he likes to portray himself, but he's a bulldog when he has a point. Must be awful having to drink Coors Light all your life, tho...

I also brought my good friend Todd Erven out, and we all ended up back at T & T's doing Jurus on the final night. The Weasel and I spent a little time going over some flow basics...I gotta hook back up with him soon. We have so many things on the stove right now, we should just open up the ass-whoop kitchen & be done with it.

Todd just sent me a pic of the weekend...From left, that's Todd Ellner, Mushtaq, Myself, Terry Trahan and Todd Erven.



Mushtaq came over a week before my birthday, and I'll tell you that there are some people you feel truly blessed to know in life. Mushtaq is one of those people. I've always maintained that he wasn't my "Teacher" in the classical sense of the word, but that's really a load of hooey. Every damn time he calls, I pull out a pen and start scribbling furiously. In three days with me he managed to correct my grammar twice, beat me down on several historical points, enlightened me on two points I was confused about Islam, start my Cape Knife education and make me eat eggplant. And like it. He did mention that my students moved well, but most of them are naturally gifted so I really can't take credit for that either. From the class in my school:



We actually dedicated a few hours & several yards of skin to working Cape Knife and Piper material. This is very cool stuff, concentrated and effective. I fully appreciate the fact that it's not a cookie-cutter art, and changes from person to person. Look for more posts once I actually KNOW something about it!

Also, there is a knife Mushtaq made and I asked him to hold for me until I could pay for it. So the sneaky bastard shows up with it, in cahoots with my wife, and she hides it until my birthday a week later. Great surprise, but I hate that I didn't suspect something. Check out the pick below! (I scammed it from Moosh's blog, I'll post my own later).



It's pretty sweet, I've been playing with it for a few days now...Time to find a victim.

Master Chris Petrilli was in town last week, and we had a pretty good seminar. It was mostly for a Kung Fu school that didn't do much Kali & Silat, but Chris is always amazing to train with, and my guys kept up pretty well.

Wow, I'm over 100 posts now! This one is actually 104. When I started this, it was at the urging of a few friends, mostly Mushtaq, and I resisted it fiercly for a few months. I vaguely remember Steve Perry doing something similar. Now we both have our little happy spaces of the web, and I see lots more sprouting up. I hope all of you have enjoyed the past year, and if I have written anything that inspired, upset, annoyed, insulted, tickled, instigated, uplifted or at the very least entertained any of you, GREAT! I promise not to sell out to the man at the sacrafice of my journalistic integrity. (However, I'm willing to entertain ANY reasonable offer, know what I mean?) One thing I just can't seem to get into, though, is MySpace. I have a MySpace place, but I really don't care about "Meeting new people on the web". I mean, I have my website, which I have no time to update, and this blog, which is pretty much my pundit/soapbox/alter ego. MYSpace is just one more thing to waste my time on when I could be...Getting drunk, or something. Also, I'm so antisocial even Tom won't be my friend.