Category: Martial Arts

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Arkham Origins is gonna be sick!!!

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After months of waiting Batman: Arkham Origins dropped tonight. The new Arkham is the followup to the wildly popular Batman inspired video games Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. I just picked up my copy from GameStop. There was a surprisingly small line for the game. It was nothing as crazy as the launch for Grand Theft Auto V, which made me happy and a little sad. I snagged the collector’s edition, and the season pass that has all of the character skins and downloadable content. I never usually get all the extras but this game is gonna be sick.  I thought about

Continue reading “Arkham Origins is gonna be sick!!!”

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I do crazy stuff when I get bored.

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The fourth of July is kind of boring this year with the wife and kids away at summer camp. Still, I shouldn’t complain too much since I am a married man at home without the family for a couple of days. The little things like having the TV and bathroom all to myself are pure bliss. However the house is too quiet and I am trying to keep from going stir crazy.

Right now I am deciding on whether to go to the movies or wait around for my boy Adesola to come over and hang out like we used to do back in high school. Or at least I am hoping he rolls through and brings a brother something to eat. HE KNOWS I CAN’T COOK AND AIN’T GOT NO DAMN FOOD IN ‘DA HOUSE!

I spent the morning sleeping late and watching cartoons. I spent the afternoon at the dojo, sweating profusely and getting punched in the head. The early evening was spent putting together this killer Batman costume I have been making for Comic Con this year. I have some of the main pieces such as the utility belt, the gauntlets, and the boots. However I am still searching for a good cowl.

As always with making one of these suits you have to decide to either go with the old school skintight spandex or the more modern armored batsuit. Unless I am in much better shape by the time Comic Con and Halloween roll around I am leaning towards the modern look. It is more forgiving than the spandex. I don’t want to go out and get called “Fatman”.

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Straight out of a comic book!

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When I was a young child growing up in Harlem there were very few people that looked like me in the media. And when they were people that looked like me presented in the movies, or on the small screen, they were almost always portrayed as unintelligent or docile. This is the rare exceptions to these rules made a seismic impact on me and many other impressionable black children. Yesterday I saw that one of my earliest heroes as a child, James Milton Kelly, had passed away at the age of 67. He was better known to the world as Jim “The Dragon” Kelly and was one of the prominent stars of the 1970s martials arts and Blaxploitation film era.

Jim Kelly was a martial arts legend to many of the brothers that I grew up around. He inspired many of us to start training in the martial arts just as much as Bruce Lee, and maybe more in certain ways. Being a young Continue reading “Straight out of a comic book!”

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Prepare for the Smackdown!

A few months back I was interviewed on the occupational activities of former LaGuardia Media Studies student and Cannes filmfest participant, Girard Tecson of Dayside Productions. The interview appeared in a new documentary on Girard’s unusual decision to make a career shift from independent Filmmaking to professional Wrestling. I wish him luck in his new endeavors. At 5’5″ and 150 lbs, I think he is gonna need it.

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RIP Aaron Banks

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This is sad news for the martial arts community. Master Banks was a very popular figure in the NYC martial arts scene during the seventies. He helped to pioneer the dissemination of the martial arts by helping to promote the “Oriental World of Self-defense” shows that packed Madison Square Garden during that time. I remember meeting Aaron Banks back in 1973 as my father was signing me up for my first martial arts class. This must have been only a few weeks after Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon” premiered in the US. I don’t know about the rest of the country, but in NYC, that movie had kids dragging their fathers to any establishment that offered instruction in the martial arts. Unfortunately for my father, he was no different.

Aaron Banks was sitting at the front desk as my father and I walked in to Continue reading “RIP Aaron Banks”

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Archery Night: Zombie Apocalypse training

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In light of the “Avengers”, the “Hunger Games”, and the new Green Arrow TV series, both of my kids have been interested in trying the sport of archery. So when I came across a Groupon deal for the Queens Archery Range I decided to take the whole family. We had an amazing time. My wife even enjoyed it, and I didn’t figure her for the archery type. We shot recurve bows that first night and I was shocked at how much fun I had getting my inner Hawkeye on! While the girls enjoyed themselves, they didn’t think that archery was going to be something that they would want to do on a regular basis. My boy on the other hand was hooked.

A few weeks later I took my boy back Continue reading “Archery Night: Zombie Apocalypse training”

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Here we go again

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It is a damn shame that we are having this discussion yet again today. The murder of 27 people in Connecticut, 20 of them small children between the ages of 5 and 10, once again highlights a unique problem with American society. I have been watching the television coverage for most of the day with a mixture of sadness and calm acceptance of the reality of the world we live in today. I wasn’t sure of whether or not to add my two cents since I have recently become NRA certified with a pistol and have taken up range shooting as a hobby. As a child of the 70’s and a a resident of NYC, where we have some of the most strict gun laws in the country, I would be a Continue reading “Here we go again”

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Throw ‘ya guns in ‘da air!

It appears that my Groupon and Livingsocial addiction continues onward. My wife and I spent the day at the New Jersey Firearms Academy taking the NRA sponsored Basic Pistol certification course. We had the opportunity to work with some great instructors. I hadn’t been to a gun range in nearly 20 years but the instructors at NJ Firearms made me feel very safe and comfortable. They introduced us to 9mms, 357s, 45s, 40 Calibires, 38s, and 22s (revolvers and semi automatics).

So overall it was a good day and I confirmed a couple of things that I always suspected. One, Chow Yun Fat and John Woo are absolutely full of crap. Two, shooting ranges are radically different than the paintball competitions that the family and I use from time to time. And three, my wife is a much better shot than me and definitely not the person I want to piss off. However, while my wife  once again showed me up, I did much better at the range than I did on the motorcycle training course from a few weeks back. Plus I had a really great time and met a bunch of really cool people.

Midlife crisis – 1, James – 1.

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If I can’t be famous, I’ll be infamous!

The martial artist in me is conflicted by the recent turn of events in Colorado, and the anniversary the mass murder in Oslo, Norway. The Norwegian gunman had more than an hour to hunt down and attack his victims. More than an hour, which means that he had to stop and reload at multiple points. As a person that trains in self defense based arts, I can’t help but think about what I would do if faced by such a threat. Would my training make a difference? Would I freeze or rise to the challenge? Are the arts that I am studying really effective in real combat situation? In truth, I don’t have any answers. I would hope that be able to protect myself and my loved ones. Or at the very least make the son of a bitch regret picking me or mine as a target.

My father was gunned down when I was fourteen as he was closing down his candy shop for the evening. The murderer was never found. Even as a young man I often Continue reading “If I can’t be famous, I’ll be infamous!”

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Everybody have fun tonight…. everybody Wing Chun tonight!

City Wing TsunLately I have been eager to get back into the flow of training regularly in the martial arts.  Due to the ongoing physical therapy my knees have been feeling better. So yesterday I decided to visit the headquarters of City Wing Tsun to take a look at their curriculum. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Wing Chun, it is a highly dynamic fighting style that makes use of unconventional hand and foot strikes that are excellent for close quarter combat. It was originally designed by a woman and stresses speed and precision over pure brute force. The unorthodox hand and foot techniques, when applied properly, tend to cause fits for opponents during fights. I had trained in Wing Chun many years back under Sifu Rick and had been eager to try the style again. I have incorporated some of the basics of the system into my own fighting style with some limited success, but I always felt that I was missing some important components and wanted to expand my knowledge of Wing Chun further.

I had been looking for a decent school ever since Sifu Rick moved away and stopped teaching Continue reading “Everybody have fun tonight…. everybody Wing Chun tonight!”