New Fedor song/video for upcoming Nov. 7th fight with Brett Rogers

New song, new highlight.  Enjoy.

Future Cat

I just got a new cat.  By new, I mean a very young cat.  By very young cat, I mean a kitten.  I look upon this new cat as I would my future son.  I have very high expectations of this cat, and I can only hope my future son lives up to my expectations of my new cat.   

Looking over my past notes (during a cat-deprived period of my life), I am forced to reevaluate my cat standards in this new city-dwelling era of my life, based on the best cat I’ve ever owned…

 

“I want to get a Maine Coon cat and raise it from infancy to be the coolest, calmest cat imaginable.  It will be modeled after Max, the old Russian Blue.  Max had lived a tough 9 years before she came into my possession.  If you tried to pet her she would arch her back submissively almost all the way to the ground as if expecting the violent downward slash of a broomstick (as if all cat abuse played out in the classic Disney manner, with a nondescript hand reaching out of a doorway, shooing the always unwanted feline nuisance away with the business end of a broom).   Max always did it with a smile and would not run away as if scared.  It was simply in the process of shedding its expectations from its last, more abusive owner/cat relationship.  I could tell it had faith in humanity and eventually learned that it, because of the deprivation of affection or its own sole desires, desperately craved physical attention.  If you scratched its chin, belly, or the base of its back, it visibly melted with waves of orgasmic purring.  Throw in a soft comforter that it could kneed and exaltations of “good kitty,” and it was in heaven, losing all lower brain functions and essentially becoming a malleable ball of living fur and bone that you could do whatever you wanted with.  Simply seeing someone like me who it knew I loved, put it in a good mood and that is the kind of cat I’d like to mold once again: a cat that will put its trust in me, follow me on my treks into the woods, and back and defend me from other cats, to the death like it knows it must.  My future cat, in its peaceful old age, will have years of violent experience, numerous scars, and will have suffered and triumphed over many broken bones, quite possibly even the loss of one eye.  A cat with laser-like focus that will stalk and hunt without mercy and without a wavering thought-the tunnel-vision of murder.  A cat succumbing in every way to its evil tendencies.”

I remember vividly that cat, Max, a unique being among many species, eternally happy till its last stench-of-death-filled breath in my hallway one winter evening.  Now that I look down at this kitten sleepily drooping off my thigh, whom I named Loki last night, I think the shades of Max will emerge again.  I maintain that cats are evil, always, and are always in a state of preparing for “going for the throat when you least expect it,” but I see myself ushering in a new era of Catual enjoyment, albeit in a city setting.  He won’t be wandering the neighborhoods marking his territory with blood-soaked warnings to potential feline foes, like the NH-dwelling me once fantasized about, but ideally, we’ll forge an apartment-based, Cato-Closeauesque relationship, packing visceral excitement into a 25 x 20 ft space.  Loki, you are no longer my future cat, but my present kitty.

Spooning

Spooning is good.  Spooning is a great thing.  Everyone loves spooning.  It’s so innocent that just about anyone can spoon without it being awkward.  It is impossible to get in trouble for spooning.  Forking is different.  Not everyone can fork.  I, personally, think forking is better than spooning.  Most people would probably agree, but I suspect more people are out there spooning than forking.  It would make sense to bookend forking with a bit of spooning. Spoon, fork, spoon, sweet dreams.  Some people find it hard to transition from spooning to forking though.  It’s easy to read too much into forking.  You’ld have to be insane to read too much into spooning.  But spooning is so close to forking.  And Everybody loves a good fork.  Anyone who doesn’t can get forked.  You can easily mistake forking for spooning and vice versa.  You can pretend to be spooning, but in reality be forking.  Concealing a fork with a spoon, great on the couch at parties.  Sporking, you might call it.  Knifing is a completely different story.  Knifing shouldn’t be happening anywhere near spooning or forking.  Spooning is good.  Forking, messy, but definitely good.  Knifing, bad.  And messy.  Some people like knifing after forking.  These people go to jail, usually for more forking.  Others like forking after knifing, but that’s just wrong.  It would be really dramatic and Shakespearean to spoon, then fork, then knife, and then spoon someone.  Throw in one last fork and it’s not really Shakespearean anymore, just weird.  Ultimately, there is a time and a place for spooning, forking, and knifing; one can certainly not go around spooning, forking, and knifing whatever one wants.  Especially knifing.  It’s probably best to put knifing out of your mind.  As for salad forking, hey, I’m not one to judge.  As for spooning, the less soupy, the better. 

Ninja Fall From Grace!

Ninjas: the cannon fodder of martial arts films. With wide ranging skills like flipping around aimlessly and piling up in bloody heaps under the slashes and blows of the film’s hero, these anonymously-clothed foes have always served an important purpose. To die, and quickly.

Some have the power to use really akward and inefficient weapons like duel bo staffs, ancient Chinese smoking boomerangs, and nets. The net being my personal favorite as a weapon, as no one ever expects that during a life-or-death kitana duel, their oponent will throw a shit load of knotted rope at them. I’ve also never seen two people fighting eachother with nets only, which would be the epic final scene in any movie, regardless of genre.

My point is this: Ninja are awesome, but they’re always in the background, never the hero. Sure they practice assassination, espionage, and generally sneaky and dishonorable ways of fighting. They’re like the CIA of the Orient. But they need to given a chance as the hero in a movie. I was actually considering holding onto that thought until someone with much better knowlege of martial arts films proved me wrong in about 5 seconds, until I saw this garbage.

With movie titles such as Ninja Destroyer, Ninja Masters of Death, Ninja Warriors of Fire, Ninja Extreme Weapons, Ninja Death Squad, Ninja Powerforce, Ninja Apocalypse, Frauenlager der Ninja, Ninja Commandments, and Ninja Terminator, they really set themselves up for failure.

Just in case you were confused, the costume designers make sure you know what these guys are:

Whatever weapon this guy uses at the end is terrifying:

For a brief period, ninja movies were just a bunch of white guys spazzing out (the reaction at the end is very unninja-like):

Some people say fighting is 10% physical and 90% mental. Being a ninja is 50% doing a lame presentation to your opponent and 50% dying:

Only true ninjas can harness the true power of editing:

After all this, I like ninjas less, but still, look at Asia’s worst compared to our worst:

Then again, think about the people who failed ninja tryouts…

The Art of Ruining Art

There are many important things that go into making a bad movie. Having horrible actors, atrocious editing/cinematography/scoring/sets/costumes, a crippled storyline, non-human dialogue, and a director that has never bothered watching his completed works are fairly significant, sure, but there are certain moments in film that are just so perfectly bad that you cannot help but wonder if there was some divine hand involved. Moments that, despite knowing they will end your career as a respected artist, you still keep them in. Scenes that are so bad, but you find it impossible to look away. And finally some entire movies, like Undefeatable, that are like a diamond with a rat in it. Flawed, scorned by Zales and Jared, and yet one of a kind. 

Its hard enough to command a scene as an actor, some people are better known for their stoic contennance and ability to simply react subtly to events around them.

Being a supervillian as cool and crafty as this guy is difficult.

But dying gracefully after a nailbitingly tense pile of epicness, is equally as…something.

A script can only get you so far, at some point you need to let the palpable improv acting abilities of your thesbians fill the room like a glorious fart.

Training montages can be found in just about every “Best Picture” nominated film. That being said, this cannot in good conscience be called a training montage, or a film.

Finally, this movie might just have what it takes to dethrone Undefeatable as the best movie ever made. Unfortunately, just about every known copy of the movie has been destroyed, assumedly by people who couldn’t handle the palpable terror, or people who like “movies”. Luckily, I stole a copy from Netflix, so please if you’d like to bear witness to its greatness, just ask, I can help you out. The director’s commentary alone is worth it, he can’t even help but laugh and groan at what he put to screen in 1982.

Dissecting the Perfect Action Movie

At first I thought no one would ever top the relentless, mind-shattering action of the Snake Eater films. I believed deep in the ventricles of my heart that no villian would ever top the sheer charisma and pained expressions of madness as that guy in the blue sweater in Silent Night Deadly Night 2. But then came the dual attack of Don Niam and John Miller, stars, nay LEGENDS, that graced the bloodsoaked battlefield that was Undefeatable, the greatest action movie to date. Witness the rapier-sharp whit of Jon Miller when confronting two downright brutal and unstoppable convenience store robbers…

Enter: Don Niam, the ultimate self-described badass. After an hour of visously clearing tables, eye gouging, screaming to the point of massive stroke, and having convulsive fever dreams of ass kicking WHILE eating raw steak AND raping/beating his wife on the dining room table, he finally meets the suave, REALLY good actor John Miller in the heavy machinery-filled hospital basement that he broke into and passed as a respected surgeon, by wearing surgeon clothes. Watch as he gains strength from the blood of his nemesis, and yet more strength by yelling very loudly…

And that’s it…I can hardly wait for the return of Don Niam in his next role as Stingray. See, I think they called it Undefeatable to throw us off so we wouldn’t suspect that he’d eventually be defeated…by a really oily man and a woman with one arm in a sling. One of the greatest things about this movie is it has all kinds of one-liners that anyone can use in the real world. If you find yourself about to hack someone with a machete, you should always yell “Suck my dick!” I am definitely on the lookout for Undefeatable 2: Except For That One Time. I can only hope it’ll have an action sequence as good as this in it: