I am going to keep watching these things and keep babbling my babbles and the only thing that is going to stop me is the Ultimate 100 being reduced to nothing in my Netflix queue, although I got to admit, both East Bound and Down Season 2 and Sons of Anarchy Season 3 came out this week, so there'll probably be a lapse in programming. But this site is all about lapses - in motivation, in focus, in attention, in judgment, in execution, in reason. I am nothing if not a cluster of lapses. So let's watch the people fights...
#80: RICH FRANKLIN vs. EVAN TANNER - Hey, I've seen both of these guys. Evan Tanner is the weird looking fucker who I think won against some dude a few fights ago, and Rich Franklin is the guy they push as "so smart he used to teach school and has a degree from a for-real university, not like online college." But before I could even think of more stupid shit to say, I checked into my Netflix queue, and then this was over as Rich Franklin knocked the dude out. They are really setting up some Franklin vs. somebody else fight further along, showing all these first round ass-kickings by the dude.
#79: GEORGES ST. PIERRE vs. MATT SERRA - Oh snap, a pair of secret gays, instead of the normal secret gay vs. guy who openly hates gays battle. This should be interesting. I like Serra here, because although both are foreigners to me - a yankee American gay fighter dude and a French Canadian gay fighter dude, at least Serra and me share a citizenry.
Oh man, St. Pierre has one of those French Canadian symbols tattooed on the back of his calf, but just as I was trying to figure out what it was called, Matt Serra got St. Pierre off his feet, and then just punched the dude in the gay French Canadian face until the ref stopped the fight. That's two quick knockout fights, which means they are probably about to drop like a painfully slow 30 minute long "chess match" on me here in a minute. Serra won the title off this, and the belt was as tall as him.
#78: CHUCK LIDDELL vs. KEITH JARDINE - They are laying out these fights like a wrestling promotion, as both these guys have only won in previously viewed fights in this Ultimate 100 fights, meaning in my mind as I watch this in order, I am thinking, as the casual fan, "Oh shit, who's going to win?" I could be wrong but anybody who has lost a fight on this list has not resurfaced in a later fight. Jardine, like I said before, looks like he'd play drums in a metal band, so I have to like him more than the stupid Iceman, who is not really the Iceman, because he is not named King Parsons.
Jardine is trying to nail kicks, and Liddell is doing his stalk and punch thing he always does. Jardine does have a creepy looking hematoma on the left side of his face. Hematoma and cauliflower ears - pure sexy. And when Liddell does snake in for the pummel, Jardine actually flurries back, which is impressive, because usually these UFC dudes just run from Liddell's fists. Jardine is worse for wear after one round, with that hematoma looking like a big ass bee sting with a black spot right in the middle, just waiting to get popped open and evil baby hornets fly out and start assaulting the crowd. Jardine has cuts on his forehead, under his eye, but clocked leg kicks on Liddell, who's game plan will probably continue to consist of laying back and then trying to knock a motherfucker out. Jardine actually knocked Liddell loopy enough to hit the mat, and Jardine almost got him on the ground, which I honestly don't know if I've ever seen Liddell really do for any serious length of time in a fight. (It should be noted, I do not claim to be an expert, but any fringe sport like this desires nothing more than what I am - the average passerby fan who can be blossomed into a full-blown loyal supporter who will waste my limited discretionary income on their pay-per-views and associated products and on the related products of their advertising partners. That's how this all works.) The side of Jardine's head is a blood flow now, on his bald head, making him look like a horror movie character, just in really stupid clothes. Liddell did a spinning back fist, which is the stupidest fighting maneuver ever, but is really funny looking when it actually knocks somebody else. That's MMA posterizing when that happens, although I don't think they actually sell MMA posters. I'll check next time at the county fair trying to win a new cocaine mirror. Second round ends, and Liddell is a little lost, going to the wrong corner and not even realizing it.
Third round, the final one, and even though he was a bloody mess just a minute ago, I'd give this thing to Jardine at this point. Liddell's just throwing haymakers, and getting kicked, and there's only two and a half minutes left. I wonder what Chuck Liddell does now that his fighting career is over? Being he's Dana's boy, he's probably an ambassador for the sport. Every sport should have a mohawked fu manchu retard with Japanese character tattoos on his head as their ambassador. Fuck man, Jardine is just like punching the dude right in the middle of his face. Crowd is getting loud at the end, Liddell is swinging for the fences, Jardine is fighting it off with leg kicks, and they go to the end. Liddell throws his arms up, knowing you have to pretend for the judges you have won, even if you didn't win. Jardine certainly doesn't look like he won, balded and bloodied. Commentators are thinking Jardine won a decision, but the judges will make the call... Keith Jardine. But it's one of those wins where Liddell didn't really outright lose, with a split decision, and it was a non-title fight so Jardine didn't win whatever title Liddell holds, which means this was probably an elaborate set-up to sell the rematch to the public. It's fucking weird how much of UFC, when laid out in a 100 match compilation like this, is exactly like wrestling. Champion takes on the hungry challenger, but not for the title, champion seems like he might not take it completely seriously, challenger is tough and upsets champion, but champion is still champion and they will now have an actual title fight, for more money, and you pay more to see, in a few months, and it will be for real this time. Shit should've been for real the first time. Fuck this bait and switch, it doesn't count until the rematch, which if Liddell wins, means they have to have a third match since it's 1 to 1 at that point. Fucking bullshit man.
#77: ANDERSON SILVA vs. JAMES IRVIN - Silva is the superstar of UFC right now as we speak, and an allegedly unstoppable fighting machine, so I am guessing this is going to be a blowout that shows the awesomeness of Silva. You don't want to be fucking with no black Brazilians, bro.
Oh man, James Irvin has some really bad tattoos, and Anderson Silva is pretty much hyped up by the commentators from the start of the fight as the probable winner of this shit, and Irvin is a longshot at best. Silva is quick and big and like watching a dude two levels beyond his opponent. Yep. Irvin gets kicked to the ground, then punched into oblivion, less than two minutes into this thing. Silva dances a black man from Brazil dance, and Irvin's eyeball is drooling blood all over the place. Game over.
#76: MATT HUGHES vs. SEAN SHERK - A lot of bad metal and long video hype jobs precede this here fight, which being they are showing me ten minutes of hype leads me to believe I'm about to watch about 20 minutes of fight. Not sure how stoked I am about all that. Hughes is a wrestling machine, while Sherk has your normal bad tattoos. They are on the ground right away, and Hughes is grapple-boxing him. Not sure if grapple-boxing is a real style, but it seems like it should be. Not as good as other made-up styles like pitfighting or kempo, but still. I didn't really pay attention much but every time I looked up in the first round, Hughes was on top, and when the air horn went off to end the round, I looked, and Sean Sherk looked like an IED had gone off inside his left eyeball.
Man, I'm totally zoning out on this whole fight, and Sherk got on top somewhere (I'm now in round 3) and Hughes is bleeding from his ear, or has blood dripped all over his ear, or something. The fact they are showing a full-on long ass five-round championship fight at the end of a five-block of matches shows me they knew people would break these things apart in such ways in their minds, like I am reviewing/responding/ranting off of. But I really don't care about this fight. It may or may not be a great fight, but there's a lot I just don't care about going on - two vanilla midget white dudes pretending they are ultimate fighters because they eat ridiculous nutritions and practice punching steel weights with old guys from ancient boxing gyms... I need more than this to remain entertained. I mean, if this was two vanilla midget white dudes fighting in a barn somewhere in some small town in Iowa or Nebraska and I had to drive out there and stay in a cheap hotel and soak in the small midwestern town culture, including the sad cute young women and lost white boys of the American nightmare, where I make friends with sad souls and we enjoy sad times in a terrible environment watching two well-trained athletes bludgeon each other for our amusement, to take our minds off the depressing overwhelming unending sadness - that I could enjoy. This is just spectacle - a long and boring spectacle, with commentators trying to explain to me how wonderful what I'm watching is, contradicting my gut intuition about the whole thing.
And finally it is over, five rounds of forever, and Matt Hughes is wiped down by his seconds and has a sponsor's visor and tank top on and looks like he hasn't done shit. Finally. UNTIL NEXT TIME FAKE FIGHT FAN TALKING ON THE INTERWEBS READING ABOUT IT SHIT FAN, TAKE IT LIGHT, AND KEEP IT LIGHT, AND LIGHT ANOTHER, OR YOUR FIRST, OR WHATEVER!
Wednesday, August 31
J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '11 #11: "Whiskey River" by Willie Nelson
I don't know what to say in regards to Willie Nelson and this drunkard anthem what which he starts every show for a thousand years. I am overwhelmed by feeling stifled and wanting my hair to shoot out my head again and to end the senseless shuck and jive and ride shitty motorcycles over the edges of horizons that dance just out of reach like solar flares for eternity, but always chasing, with tools wrapped up because all my shit is broken or cobbled or pieced together and I'm sure I'll either have to tighten up something that life has loosened or learn to fix something that's beyond my frame of reference from yesterdays but always expanding. And how would a song about alcoholic over-indulgence to escape thinking about emotional entanglements in the here and now make me want to drink again? But it does. It's been ten months, and I don't exactly wrestle with it because I'm better off, but without the bullshit trust in Jesus route, I am left to fend for myself. And honestly, sometimes my self needs crazy and needs chaos and needs reckless mistakes. Or maybe I don't and I'm just enabling myself. Who the fuck knows?
Anyways, I quit drinking liquor long ago, long before I quit drinking completely, because I did not know how to not go full-speed (still don't) so cutting liquor out of my life meant I maintained more of my knuckles and received less chances of misdemeanor assault charges on the strange streets of late night Richmond. Man, I don't fucking know. Something is amiss right now and I can't put my finger on it and usually giant reckless binge indulgences allowed me to make a giant mess to occupy myself internally and externally long enough to ignore whatever it is that was missing. So right now I'm just like, "???" without an escape clause written into my routine. No whiskey river to take my mind. Just me and my goddamned always on brain.
STEAL "Whiskey River"
NEXT: Old folks boogie music!
J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '11 #12: "The Deadbeat Heartbeat of a Hobo" by 1000 Feathers
Not much to speak on this song because it is my own song, done in pitch shifted Ancient Hobo style out in the camper a couple summers ago. I had started writing a hobo left his family song in the truck while riding around, playing this Edie Brickell loop constantly, and was getting tired of it, but my daughter Gypsy was riding and enjoying hearing me work these concepts out loud while riding to and from ballet or soccer practice or whatever, and she actually asked me to finish the song to hear how the story ended. That's the only reason I finished it, because I was starting to hate the song. That's why there's a dedication "to all the gypsies out there" in the beginning. And I really love the first pair of lines: "It's so hard to get lost along roads you've already been; I'm so tired of gathering moss with these so-called friends." That's a real ass lyric right there, and I've always been proud of how those two flow, and what they say, and how they flip metaphors around, and I've always wanted the world to know what the fuck I'm doing. Except I don't know what the fuck I'm even doing, so how can the world know?
I've been writing song lyrics lately a lot, with people other than myself in mind to ultimately perform them. Also been playing a lot of Boogie Brown's more twangy beats from the 39 Blue Globe Beats CDs I've gotten over the years. I've not done hardly any music recording in the past year, which on one hand sucks, but on the other hand makes sense because I haven't had the music wanting to explode out of me like some of these other word demons have been fighting to get out my brain. But I've been feeling the songs welling up inside me. And plus, our youngest - River - tends to sing really loudly about whatever is on her mind. Last night she freestyle-sang some crazy song about "You're not a teenager! You're not a teenager! You're not a human! You're not a human!" and it was hilarious to see this little sassy toddling 3-year-old make up words to a song she was creating in her young little mind, and she sang it as loud as she called, with feeling and the appropriate body movements, and I'm stoked I am the father of a household where that is what happens, and what is appreciated, and encouraged, and even expected. So I guess I'm not so tired of gathering moss along these roads I've already been.
STEAL "The Deadbeat Heartbeat of a Hobo"
NEXT: No thanks, Willie; brown liquor makes me fight people!
J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '11 #13: "World of Mine (screwed & chopped)" by Big Mike
Some rappers just sound better screwed and chopped. Fat Pat for example. Big Mike is another example as well. Even though he was the replacement for Willie D in The Geto Boys back in the day, he's sort of obscure outside of the south. Down south though, he's known to have a fairly decent cavalcade of player anthems from his solo catalog. Rap-A-Lot Records was always the best for releasing like 9 albums a month, so every member of every group had a solo project and side project and Scarface would appear on everything at least once, and it was all so low budget with pre-pen-and-pixel era covers that looked like somebody used a caveman photoshop program on a Commodore 64 at Kinko's the night before the album was gonna get pressed. And yet it was beautifully perfect, and if I were to pick my favorite all-time rap specific record label, it'd probably be Rap-A-Lot. So many classics in their history, and a funk sound that few movements have ever come close to recreating. The in-house production team for Rap-A-Lot is seriously underrated in this world that rates everything blogospherically.
It really is perfect, and more than coincidence that such a soulfully funky and weird DIY record label would be the elder figures in a city where a guy like DJ Screw would grass roots grow his own legend. Rap-A-Lot made it seem like anybody could do it, and do it well, and gain national respect, so why shouldn't Screw have people lining up around the block to buy his mixtapes every Wednesday afternoon? Why wouldn't screwed music take over the world? Why motherfucker? I'm asking you a question.
And while screwed music has gained notoriety over the years since Screw's death, actual Screw tapes are not quite so well-known. My ol' lady, for my birthday one year, bought me some actual Screw tapes from the Screw shop, and they sent them and there was a poorly written handwritten note about how they were out of one of the tapes but sent a different one because it had an awesome Fat Pat freestyle I ain't ever heard. They were right too, about it being awesome and about me not having ever heard it.
Beyond that, I've internet accumulated quite a large amount of Screw tapes, all the regular ones you see hyped, as well as others that show up on this or that southern blogspot bootleg spots full of tags for 7000 rappers I've never heard of before. This track comes off the Screw tape entitled Syrup & Soda, which along with the standard pick of June 27th, comprises my list of "Best Two Screw Tapes to Acquire". In fact, this is the third track off of Syrup & Soda to make a monthly J.J. Krupert list, and it's a mix where you can tell Screw was in the zone. The cuts break naturally just like you feel they should, the chops match what your innards want them to do, it's just right. I remember one time being high with a friend watching The Allman Brothers play, and we got in some long ass Jack Kerouac/Gary Snyder in Dharma Bums ridiculous conversation about how amazing Dickey Betts was, plucking the same note over and over but it made sense and he knew exactly when to stop and move on to something else. That's how this Screw tape flows, and how this Big Mike song flows, which is standard player talk, but also some serious testifying about the various good and bad people swirling around us all, as well as the good and bad swirling within us. It's a constant battle, for ourselves and against ourselves, and just as Screw is dialed in on this mixtape, Big Mike was dialed into those absolute truths of life when he wrote this song, and was in that zone when he recorded, every perfect slur made even more perfect by the warbled effects of Screw's two turntables. It is street testifying pitch shifted for the proper punctuation and delivery to permeate your insides with that simple and pure truths, about the nature of men, about life itself, about chasing material objects and what's truly important. It's a player song, so it makes no judgments nor preaches to you about how to live; it just lays it all out and says that's how it is, and yeah, that is how it is. No doubt. Sometimes we don't need to be told what's wrong or right; we just need to know we're not the only motherfucker on this crooked ass planet thinking about it.
STEAL "World of Mine"
NEXT: A song of mine's!
J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '11 Intro
One summer when I was in college I had a May December romance with a French girl named Juliet, which meant she was July, and so fly. She wore airbrushed tank tops with fringe edges that had the Puerto Rican flag except it was the French one but they all look the same to me when they are red and white and blue and un-American. We would go the river and google eye each other and it was nice in the summer, but then when it started getting colder, her pale skin freaked me out, plus she had freckles which is a sign of bedevilment according to the three weeks of Bible study my dad gave me when I was 7 years old. So after about 7 months I started to get that 7 month itch, which it turns out was a yeast infection, at least that's what an old dreadlocked black dude at a herbal store/incense shop place on Grace Street told me, and I had to soak my penis in a mayonnaise jar with 8 drops of grapefruit seed extract in it for three weeks. I mean, I had to do it like once a day for a few minutes for 21 days straight, not that I strapped a jar full of water spiked with grapefruit seed extract onto my groin for three weeks. That would be weird. Anyways, it was fun to watch my penis inside the jar, and eventually the itch went away, and I never saw Juliet again except one time I was riding my bike down Broad Street headed towards downtown the wrong way on the sidewalk, and I saw her at a bus stop half a block away stepping onto a bus, and she looked pregnant. I did that standing coast thing on my bike, which was an old school 10-speed because I'm an old school type, and she plopped down in a seat as the bus was passing and looked out the window and we made eye contact and there was sad recognition in her eyes, and I wondered why she was pregnant, why she was riding the bus downtown, what had gone on with her in our time apart, and where was she going. Not like on the bus going but in her life, where was she going, what was her soul's trajectory? But I never saw her again, and didn't really think about it too much because the mushrooms kicked in. Back then I liked to ride my bike on the sidewalks downtown while on mushrooms; that was kinda my thing to do, because the old Sixth Street Marketplace had this cosmic reflection of the bass bump from passing vehicles when you'd sit under it. That marketplace is gone, cleared out for newer, shinier progress, and nobody even drives a Samurai Suzuki anymore, and I guess some people still drive Jeep Cherokees but usually just white people and not wacky little dreadlocked scary black dudes in Richmond with the bass up 19th degree.
Anyways, these songs made me think of Juliet because it was July when I listened to them, and that was her name, and I bet she's on Facebook but nobody can find me on Facebook because I don't use my real name, much less the name she knew me by.
FIRST UP: Rap-a-Lot empowerment, thickened with syrup!
Tuesday, August 30
Monday, August 29
Ultimate 100: 90 thru 86
Sigh... I have to admit I already hit my limit for this and I'm just a tenth of the way through these things, but I guess if they do it in true ascending order it will only get more awesome. I don't know... MMA certainly tries to portray itself as awesome combat and the Best Shit Ever and Real Badass Fighting, but it's really kind of a stupid spectacle that's not nearly as great as it thinks itself to be. Of course the fact most of these guys are pretty tough and could kick a guy's ass who is all like, "You suck, you closeted homo asshole," but that doesn't make him not suck. You can't beat the truth out of my mind once I realized it, hardcore cagefighting bro. So let's jump back into this bullshit being foisted upon us all by Dana White and his penis head and his high school buddies' billions of dollars...
#90: CAOL UNO vs. B.J. PENN - So they are sort of engineering a story here at times, as we saw Penn fight some dude, and then we saw him beat Matt Serra to fight Caol Uno, which they are now showing me, and I can only assume this is the resulting title fight from that match I had just seen. If this was truly scientific you would think it might not play out this way, although the announcer is saying it's a rematch so maybe not. Caol Uno is a little Asian dude with highlighted hair, which means to me he probably smokes blunts and has a spoiler on his car. B.J. Penn is still Hawaiian, still betraying his possible destiny as leader of an international islander uprising to try and get rich off the scraps Dana White pays his minions of brutality, and hopefully get himself a rehabbed porn starlet wife like Tito Ortiz did. I like Uno because he just looks chill. Part of that might be one of my favorite rappers is Jackie Chain, who is an Asian-American ass stoner rapper dude from Alabama, who has long hair and pretty much stays high, like a telephone pole.
First round is already over and Penn's people are talking to him... I love the way islander people who speak in English talk, so lackadaisically gangsta. And then I was looking at weird pictures of my former step-brothers on Facebook, and realize how close to hopeless I really am. Not sure how I denied self-destruction full access considering my DNA make-up, but I am thankful. But in that time, I zoned out completely and didn't watch any of this match, with stuff happening, now it's third round, and Ken Shamrock is doing commentary, which is lulling me to sleep. "This is 21st Century martial arts. This is The Combat Sport," said other announcer dude, pushing the Best Shit Ever company talking point. Personally, I'd rather just have some DJ Screw tapes playing in the background and then DJ Screw breaks through with a warbled voice when something notable is happening, like, "Oh shit, the Jap dude is about to choke that Samoan ass dude out yall," and then it happens and Big Moe jumps on the mic and starts singing about people tapping out and celebrating with some drank and then Fat Pat starts rhyming about what color he's painted his Cutlass this week. See, that would be some next level entertainment.
Unfortunately, this is a five-round match, so we are now in the fourth round and I have to keep trying to find a way to not pay attention. My ol' lady will be coming home from being gone for five days, and I'm sure she'll come in the house and be like, "Why are you watching gay dudes fight each other?" when she comes in. I'm also freaking out a little because late last week I got stung by a Japanese hornet and it swolled my foot up and I thought I was gonna die, but I didn't, but I've been keeping an eye for those fuckers because they've got a nest somewhere around here. But one of them is buzzing in the window behind my head, stuck between the window inside and the storm window, so I'm waiting for him to find the crack by where the air conditioner is, and squeeze his little evil monster bug ass through because he sees the lights inside and is like, "Oh shit, a light. Let's go to that light. Look motherfuckers, there's a light. I love lights." And that's all he really wants, but when he gets here, I'll be here and then he'll just flutter against the light bulb and scorch himself and fall on the floor and then I'll step on him accidentally and get stung again and this time I'll die probably, with gay fighting on the TV, and my wife will come home and I'll be dead, in camouflage cargo shorts, watching ultimate fighting, and that's fucking sad. We should all check ourselves at times with our actions and think about how we would feel if we died right then and there and that's how we were remembered, or at least talked about in death.
Ideally, I would like this match commentary to end with that point, but this fucking thing won't end. They just blew the air horn to end the 4th round, which means one more stupid slow-paced pseudo-sport round to go, with no DJ Screw in the background, and the fear of a swollen foot in my mind. Caol Uno is all bloodied up, but then the Cut Man puts magic grease on his cuts, so it's like bloody but gunky, and he looks like he might be Manny Pacquiao before he grew facial hair. I know fighting to the death would be barbaric and end times Roman style, but it probably would be interesting to watch guys fight to the death, because there'd be no easy tap-outs to preserve your arm or not to choke, dudes would be fighting for their literal life to escape. I mean that's what they're building up to so they might as well go all-in and do it. I'm sure Mexican drug lords have to the death cagefighting clubs, it being the land of cockfight appreciation it is. It does sort of feel like they are fighting to my death here though, as this is the longest... fight... ever.
Finally it's over, and announcers and B.J. Penn's corner thought they had won, but the judges' scorecards went to draw, and Penn was all like "What?" as they read the scores, so I'm sure there's another Uno/Penn fight coming up, and that's why you can't trust judged sports right there.
#89: FORREST GRIFFIN vs. KEITH JARDINE - See, I'm actually stoked for this because Griffin is like a goofy Georgia boy who likes to fight, and Jardine looks and talks and acts like he'd be a drummer for a new school metal band. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've seen two guys just like this fight at different parties like two or three times in my life, usually with the Forrest Griffin guy winning, but the Keith Jardine dude carrying the post-fight activities better, by doing gravity bong hits with an empty 2-liter of Mountain Dew in the kitchen sink. To his discredit though, Jardine's trunks look like a Mountain Dew advertisement, which is weird because they are an advertisement, but not for Mountain Dew. They are talking about how Griffin is precise and tactical and has grown as an ultimate fighter since his first big breakout fight on one of the Ultimate Fighter finales, where he was a straight brutarian. I don't dig the learning to be smarter about bludgeoning people; it is far more stylish to just be crazy. Intelligent fighting is too slow. They should make both guys in every fight fall in love with the same woman, and then she cold shoulders them both until they fight to win her yoni's love.
Jardine just kind of started hamboning Forrest Griffin the face, and he got wobbly, and Jardine jumped on top of him and just let loose, and that was that. Game over, so now Griffin is crying. That was the best fight I've seen in this whole collection so far, because it was quick, it was brutal, and it had a pair of dudes who didn't look like total douchebags. I HOPE YOU ARE READING THIS DANA WHITE (although I doubt you are because I don't have hashtags and it's got too many characters for you to follow). Haha, as they announce the winner, Forrest Griffin is wearing a Mickey's Malt Liquor hat. I know they're a sponsor and all, but still, that makes me laugh.
#88: TYSON GRIFFIN vs. FRANK EDGAR - Oh man, Tyson Griffin is that annoying ass Mario Lopez-looking asshole I saw before. Frankie Edgar has worst more obvious tribal tattoos, but Griffin has the weird dragon blotch on his back that I'm not sure actually qualifies as a tribal design. I do like how Griffin still has a pudge belly. I went to see ultimate fighting of the local variety in my local area last year (actually it was the last night I ever drank alcohol, perhaps because I felt like I was in the happy halls of Hell a couple of times, under the red lights, watching dudes pummel each other while drinking $4 beers, ogling ugly women) and there was a local guy from Louisa County with mad belly, fighting another fat dude, and it was actually an awesome fight because neither of them were conditioned to go multiple rounds, so they just kind of started wailing away to get it over with once they got through the first round. It's like they both thought out loud at each other, "Look, we're both just gonna look stupid if we go three full rounds doing this shit, so let's just start throwing blows and let the fat dudes fall where they may, like the proverbial chips." And that's what they did. It was nice. I cheered, and drank more beer, and then wandered Charlottesville with two of my homies, and we ended up at some hipster bar's basement, and then there was a train, and I put an empty beer can in a mannequin's hand, and then I quit drinking beer, and now I drink herbal smoothies and fight pine trees on other people's properties because my pine trees are actually pretty chill, and the red maple in the field that I listen to sitting under, he told me they were cool pine trees so to not fuck with them.
I wish they could combine lucha libre's fliptasticality with MMA, because that would be the ultimately mixed martial artistry if dudes were like doing circus flips around each other's torso and then one KOs the other with a kick from like a double flip off the side of the cage. Color commentator fuckhead says, "I would hate to be an uneducated judge trying to score this fight." Why are they always acting like you have to be so educated about how awesome certain ways of brain fighting. And then, as if almost on cue, the Edgar dude kicks the asshole dude in the dick, and then starts pummeling him into the cage. But the dork commentators are going on and on about how they should've let the dude have a break for the low blow, and the other guy got some valuable points, and it's an injustice blah blah blah. Then they talk about one guy trying to mount the other, and how they are pushing it "all the way to the limit." Gross. But then the Griffin dudes catches the other guy's leg and bends it the wrong way for half a minute and the Edgar dude doesn't quit, even though he probably tore all his tendons and has to be carried around. Nothing like having your pain threshold overrule your common sense and self-preservation. They show it slow motion replay and like the dude's leg is bent the wrong way, and he's just laying there like, "Yeah, this sucks, but I think I can tolerate it for thirty second and elbow the dude in the thigh until the clock goes." And because of that stubbornness, Frankie Edgar wobbles his way to victory. Congrats bro, your leg is fucked. Honor hugs, they're out.
#87: CHUCK LIDDELL vs. JEREMY HORN - Look, Liddell was the face of UFC for a long time, which made him great friends with Dana White. Hard to say which came first in that, the chicken or the egg, meaning Liddell being the most hyped dude and him being White's real life homeboy. But Jeremy Horn is a real ass dude, the type of guy you'd probably still see fighting in one of those local XTREME CAGEFIGHTING 19 at the Augustaland Expo Center where they usually have chicken shows and tractor pulls. And I never really liked Liddell anyways because the close-cropped mohawk is such a tool hairstyle, no matter how awesome you might think you are. Unless you are a drunken British kickboxer from 1987, you can't really rock that hairstyle and not look stupid. Liddell has that same serious business but I grew up with hip hop in the background look that all major sports-related douchebags like Dana White and Jim Rome have nowadays. Meanwhile, Jeremy Horn looks like a roofer. He looks like he talks all day about how great it would be to drift a Lotus, but actually drives a small Nissan truck with weird modifications done to it that look like he kind of knew what to do, but not really.
First round's first half is slow, normal for a five-round five-minute per round fight, where the two dudes sort of feel each other out. Crowd is chanting "Chuck! Chuck!" and then Horn gets rocked with a punch and then pummeled until he finally regains himself after taking a serious ass beating. There's like a minute and a half and I would be surprised if Horn finishes this first round, as he is 100% wobble-minded. His face is red welts, but he's on his feet and looks like he'll survive this first round. Actually, somehow he's recovered and it's not over, but Liddell loops him with another loper, but it doesn't get ended by the end of the round.
The slow motion replay of the pummel part is amazing, because basically you, as Jeremy Horn, are getting concussed, lose control of your legs, and have to fight through the haze and black-and-white blur vision to regain composure and keep this thing going, for maybe a six figure paycheck if you're one of Dana White's friends. I'm not seeing the math in this lifestyle.
Second round has Horn trying to bring Liddell to the ground, but Liddell resists. His Iceman trunks are the stupidest shit ever though. And the announcer fills into my mind that this was Liddell's first ever title defense, so I'm going to assume he wins this, which I already assumed being he's Dana's boy, so even if he lost he would've won. It is respectable that he has a little bit of beer belly, and again he knocks Horn down and pummels him, but once Jeremy Horn regains his self enough to guard, Liddell backs off to get it on their feet and make it a straight punchfest. Crowd is booing because Horn keeps wanting to take it to the ground, but what the fuck would you do? But he made it through two rounds of getting outright whooped.
Third round, Horn starts mixing in some kicks, and I feel stupid watching this shit and writing about it. So I'm just gonna vibe to the human cockfights, which aren't as beautiful as real cockfights, because roosters are way more aesthetically perfect when they fluff out their neck feathers and fly at each other, turning at the last second to leg whip each other. Two dudes with bad tattoos holding fists up just ain't the same. Third round was boring as fuck anyways, crowd chasing the clock with boos.
Fourth round starts and Horn is just outlasting him, not beating him in any one round yet. More pacing around each other, and I hope this wasn't the main event... oh announcer just said, "This is our main event for the evening," and what a slow and painful main event it is. That's the problem with ultimate fighting sometimes - besides the momentary flurries of physical mayhem, it can be outright painful to watch. And it is. Then Horn gets whomped one more time and doesn't get knocked out but tells that Big John dude he can't see anymore so he has to stop. Apparently, he was having double vision, and the color commentator is like, "Well, Jeremy's very intelligent," which I doubt very highly. Forgive me if I'm being stereotypical about these dudes though.
#86: PHIL BARONI vs. EVAN TANNER - Tanner is the most unhappy looking dude ever, and Baroni has on those tight gay white shorts which looks stupider because they're not covered with 39 sponsors. You see how social conditioning works? I would never in my right mind endorse dudes having a bunch of stupid sponsors on their trunks, but then I get so used to it when it's not there, I'm all like, "Wow, that's weird looking." Tanner gets his eye busted open and is bloody right from the beginning, and Baroni looks like your normal New York/New Jersey/Connecticut white nightmare, the type of dude I mouth off to after too many Gennesee Cream Ales and he kicks my ass in a piss-stained alley while a Puerto Rican girl I was flirting with is like, "Stop it, Papi, you done beat his ass!" and I look up through my own blood and see her hoop earrings and those Lisa Bonet lips and I think that I love her. But I don't.
I'm not sure if anybody would actually be reading this far into a stupid stream of conscious thing about MMA, so I could probably write anything at this point and nobody would know. Except it would be inside the internet so computer programs would swift swoop troll through it and grab snippets of context for their algorithmic madness. So I will babble for those algorithm hunters, being I am bored with writing about actual stupid fights. My sexual fetish is mathematical, specifically right angles. There is something so sexy about that square root sign.
Haha, actually the Tanner dude was on top of Baroni, elbowing his face, and the ref stopped the fight, which Baroni didn't want, so he punched the ref. I'm not sure if this fight is actually over or they'll restart it or what. Wow, that's weird though, a questionable referee decision to stop a fight in a cagefighting match in Las Vegas. You'd never really expect that, would you? I mean, all those things are so honorable and trustworthy.
Man, I'm only up to #86? This is going to be fucking painful.
#90: CAOL UNO vs. B.J. PENN - So they are sort of engineering a story here at times, as we saw Penn fight some dude, and then we saw him beat Matt Serra to fight Caol Uno, which they are now showing me, and I can only assume this is the resulting title fight from that match I had just seen. If this was truly scientific you would think it might not play out this way, although the announcer is saying it's a rematch so maybe not. Caol Uno is a little Asian dude with highlighted hair, which means to me he probably smokes blunts and has a spoiler on his car. B.J. Penn is still Hawaiian, still betraying his possible destiny as leader of an international islander uprising to try and get rich off the scraps Dana White pays his minions of brutality, and hopefully get himself a rehabbed porn starlet wife like Tito Ortiz did. I like Uno because he just looks chill. Part of that might be one of my favorite rappers is Jackie Chain, who is an Asian-American ass stoner rapper dude from Alabama, who has long hair and pretty much stays high, like a telephone pole.
First round is already over and Penn's people are talking to him... I love the way islander people who speak in English talk, so lackadaisically gangsta. And then I was looking at weird pictures of my former step-brothers on Facebook, and realize how close to hopeless I really am. Not sure how I denied self-destruction full access considering my DNA make-up, but I am thankful. But in that time, I zoned out completely and didn't watch any of this match, with stuff happening, now it's third round, and Ken Shamrock is doing commentary, which is lulling me to sleep. "This is 21st Century martial arts. This is The Combat Sport," said other announcer dude, pushing the Best Shit Ever company talking point. Personally, I'd rather just have some DJ Screw tapes playing in the background and then DJ Screw breaks through with a warbled voice when something notable is happening, like, "Oh shit, the Jap dude is about to choke that Samoan ass dude out yall," and then it happens and Big Moe jumps on the mic and starts singing about people tapping out and celebrating with some drank and then Fat Pat starts rhyming about what color he's painted his Cutlass this week. See, that would be some next level entertainment.
Unfortunately, this is a five-round match, so we are now in the fourth round and I have to keep trying to find a way to not pay attention. My ol' lady will be coming home from being gone for five days, and I'm sure she'll come in the house and be like, "Why are you watching gay dudes fight each other?" when she comes in. I'm also freaking out a little because late last week I got stung by a Japanese hornet and it swolled my foot up and I thought I was gonna die, but I didn't, but I've been keeping an eye for those fuckers because they've got a nest somewhere around here. But one of them is buzzing in the window behind my head, stuck between the window inside and the storm window, so I'm waiting for him to find the crack by where the air conditioner is, and squeeze his little evil monster bug ass through because he sees the lights inside and is like, "Oh shit, a light. Let's go to that light. Look motherfuckers, there's a light. I love lights." And that's all he really wants, but when he gets here, I'll be here and then he'll just flutter against the light bulb and scorch himself and fall on the floor and then I'll step on him accidentally and get stung again and this time I'll die probably, with gay fighting on the TV, and my wife will come home and I'll be dead, in camouflage cargo shorts, watching ultimate fighting, and that's fucking sad. We should all check ourselves at times with our actions and think about how we would feel if we died right then and there and that's how we were remembered, or at least talked about in death.
Ideally, I would like this match commentary to end with that point, but this fucking thing won't end. They just blew the air horn to end the 4th round, which means one more stupid slow-paced pseudo-sport round to go, with no DJ Screw in the background, and the fear of a swollen foot in my mind. Caol Uno is all bloodied up, but then the Cut Man puts magic grease on his cuts, so it's like bloody but gunky, and he looks like he might be Manny Pacquiao before he grew facial hair. I know fighting to the death would be barbaric and end times Roman style, but it probably would be interesting to watch guys fight to the death, because there'd be no easy tap-outs to preserve your arm or not to choke, dudes would be fighting for their literal life to escape. I mean that's what they're building up to so they might as well go all-in and do it. I'm sure Mexican drug lords have to the death cagefighting clubs, it being the land of cockfight appreciation it is. It does sort of feel like they are fighting to my death here though, as this is the longest... fight... ever.
Finally it's over, and announcers and B.J. Penn's corner thought they had won, but the judges' scorecards went to draw, and Penn was all like "What?" as they read the scores, so I'm sure there's another Uno/Penn fight coming up, and that's why you can't trust judged sports right there.
#89: FORREST GRIFFIN vs. KEITH JARDINE - See, I'm actually stoked for this because Griffin is like a goofy Georgia boy who likes to fight, and Jardine looks and talks and acts like he'd be a drummer for a new school metal band. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've seen two guys just like this fight at different parties like two or three times in my life, usually with the Forrest Griffin guy winning, but the Keith Jardine dude carrying the post-fight activities better, by doing gravity bong hits with an empty 2-liter of Mountain Dew in the kitchen sink. To his discredit though, Jardine's trunks look like a Mountain Dew advertisement, which is weird because they are an advertisement, but not for Mountain Dew. They are talking about how Griffin is precise and tactical and has grown as an ultimate fighter since his first big breakout fight on one of the Ultimate Fighter finales, where he was a straight brutarian. I don't dig the learning to be smarter about bludgeoning people; it is far more stylish to just be crazy. Intelligent fighting is too slow. They should make both guys in every fight fall in love with the same woman, and then she cold shoulders them both until they fight to win her yoni's love.
Jardine just kind of started hamboning Forrest Griffin the face, and he got wobbly, and Jardine jumped on top of him and just let loose, and that was that. Game over, so now Griffin is crying. That was the best fight I've seen in this whole collection so far, because it was quick, it was brutal, and it had a pair of dudes who didn't look like total douchebags. I HOPE YOU ARE READING THIS DANA WHITE (although I doubt you are because I don't have hashtags and it's got too many characters for you to follow). Haha, as they announce the winner, Forrest Griffin is wearing a Mickey's Malt Liquor hat. I know they're a sponsor and all, but still, that makes me laugh.
#88: TYSON GRIFFIN vs. FRANK EDGAR - Oh man, Tyson Griffin is that annoying ass Mario Lopez-looking asshole I saw before. Frankie Edgar has worst more obvious tribal tattoos, but Griffin has the weird dragon blotch on his back that I'm not sure actually qualifies as a tribal design. I do like how Griffin still has a pudge belly. I went to see ultimate fighting of the local variety in my local area last year (actually it was the last night I ever drank alcohol, perhaps because I felt like I was in the happy halls of Hell a couple of times, under the red lights, watching dudes pummel each other while drinking $4 beers, ogling ugly women) and there was a local guy from Louisa County with mad belly, fighting another fat dude, and it was actually an awesome fight because neither of them were conditioned to go multiple rounds, so they just kind of started wailing away to get it over with once they got through the first round. It's like they both thought out loud at each other, "Look, we're both just gonna look stupid if we go three full rounds doing this shit, so let's just start throwing blows and let the fat dudes fall where they may, like the proverbial chips." And that's what they did. It was nice. I cheered, and drank more beer, and then wandered Charlottesville with two of my homies, and we ended up at some hipster bar's basement, and then there was a train, and I put an empty beer can in a mannequin's hand, and then I quit drinking beer, and now I drink herbal smoothies and fight pine trees on other people's properties because my pine trees are actually pretty chill, and the red maple in the field that I listen to sitting under, he told me they were cool pine trees so to not fuck with them.
I wish they could combine lucha libre's fliptasticality with MMA, because that would be the ultimately mixed martial artistry if dudes were like doing circus flips around each other's torso and then one KOs the other with a kick from like a double flip off the side of the cage. Color commentator fuckhead says, "I would hate to be an uneducated judge trying to score this fight." Why are they always acting like you have to be so educated about how awesome certain ways of brain fighting. And then, as if almost on cue, the Edgar dude kicks the asshole dude in the dick, and then starts pummeling him into the cage. But the dork commentators are going on and on about how they should've let the dude have a break for the low blow, and the other guy got some valuable points, and it's an injustice blah blah blah. Then they talk about one guy trying to mount the other, and how they are pushing it "all the way to the limit." Gross. But then the Griffin dudes catches the other guy's leg and bends it the wrong way for half a minute and the Edgar dude doesn't quit, even though he probably tore all his tendons and has to be carried around. Nothing like having your pain threshold overrule your common sense and self-preservation. They show it slow motion replay and like the dude's leg is bent the wrong way, and he's just laying there like, "Yeah, this sucks, but I think I can tolerate it for thirty second and elbow the dude in the thigh until the clock goes." And because of that stubbornness, Frankie Edgar wobbles his way to victory. Congrats bro, your leg is fucked. Honor hugs, they're out.
#87: CHUCK LIDDELL vs. JEREMY HORN - Look, Liddell was the face of UFC for a long time, which made him great friends with Dana White. Hard to say which came first in that, the chicken or the egg, meaning Liddell being the most hyped dude and him being White's real life homeboy. But Jeremy Horn is a real ass dude, the type of guy you'd probably still see fighting in one of those local XTREME CAGEFIGHTING 19 at the Augustaland Expo Center where they usually have chicken shows and tractor pulls. And I never really liked Liddell anyways because the close-cropped mohawk is such a tool hairstyle, no matter how awesome you might think you are. Unless you are a drunken British kickboxer from 1987, you can't really rock that hairstyle and not look stupid. Liddell has that same serious business but I grew up with hip hop in the background look that all major sports-related douchebags like Dana White and Jim Rome have nowadays. Meanwhile, Jeremy Horn looks like a roofer. He looks like he talks all day about how great it would be to drift a Lotus, but actually drives a small Nissan truck with weird modifications done to it that look like he kind of knew what to do, but not really.
First round's first half is slow, normal for a five-round five-minute per round fight, where the two dudes sort of feel each other out. Crowd is chanting "Chuck! Chuck!" and then Horn gets rocked with a punch and then pummeled until he finally regains himself after taking a serious ass beating. There's like a minute and a half and I would be surprised if Horn finishes this first round, as he is 100% wobble-minded. His face is red welts, but he's on his feet and looks like he'll survive this first round. Actually, somehow he's recovered and it's not over, but Liddell loops him with another loper, but it doesn't get ended by the end of the round.
The slow motion replay of the pummel part is amazing, because basically you, as Jeremy Horn, are getting concussed, lose control of your legs, and have to fight through the haze and black-and-white blur vision to regain composure and keep this thing going, for maybe a six figure paycheck if you're one of Dana White's friends. I'm not seeing the math in this lifestyle.
Second round has Horn trying to bring Liddell to the ground, but Liddell resists. His Iceman trunks are the stupidest shit ever though. And the announcer fills into my mind that this was Liddell's first ever title defense, so I'm going to assume he wins this, which I already assumed being he's Dana's boy, so even if he lost he would've won. It is respectable that he has a little bit of beer belly, and again he knocks Horn down and pummels him, but once Jeremy Horn regains his self enough to guard, Liddell backs off to get it on their feet and make it a straight punchfest. Crowd is booing because Horn keeps wanting to take it to the ground, but what the fuck would you do? But he made it through two rounds of getting outright whooped.
Third round, Horn starts mixing in some kicks, and I feel stupid watching this shit and writing about it. So I'm just gonna vibe to the human cockfights, which aren't as beautiful as real cockfights, because roosters are way more aesthetically perfect when they fluff out their neck feathers and fly at each other, turning at the last second to leg whip each other. Two dudes with bad tattoos holding fists up just ain't the same. Third round was boring as fuck anyways, crowd chasing the clock with boos.
Fourth round starts and Horn is just outlasting him, not beating him in any one round yet. More pacing around each other, and I hope this wasn't the main event... oh announcer just said, "This is our main event for the evening," and what a slow and painful main event it is. That's the problem with ultimate fighting sometimes - besides the momentary flurries of physical mayhem, it can be outright painful to watch. And it is. Then Horn gets whomped one more time and doesn't get knocked out but tells that Big John dude he can't see anymore so he has to stop. Apparently, he was having double vision, and the color commentator is like, "Well, Jeremy's very intelligent," which I doubt very highly. Forgive me if I'm being stereotypical about these dudes though.
#86: PHIL BARONI vs. EVAN TANNER - Tanner is the most unhappy looking dude ever, and Baroni has on those tight gay white shorts which looks stupider because they're not covered with 39 sponsors. You see how social conditioning works? I would never in my right mind endorse dudes having a bunch of stupid sponsors on their trunks, but then I get so used to it when it's not there, I'm all like, "Wow, that's weird looking." Tanner gets his eye busted open and is bloody right from the beginning, and Baroni looks like your normal New York/New Jersey/Connecticut white nightmare, the type of dude I mouth off to after too many Gennesee Cream Ales and he kicks my ass in a piss-stained alley while a Puerto Rican girl I was flirting with is like, "Stop it, Papi, you done beat his ass!" and I look up through my own blood and see her hoop earrings and those Lisa Bonet lips and I think that I love her. But I don't.
I'm not sure if anybody would actually be reading this far into a stupid stream of conscious thing about MMA, so I could probably write anything at this point and nobody would know. Except it would be inside the internet so computer programs would swift swoop troll through it and grab snippets of context for their algorithmic madness. So I will babble for those algorithm hunters, being I am bored with writing about actual stupid fights. My sexual fetish is mathematical, specifically right angles. There is something so sexy about that square root sign.
Haha, actually the Tanner dude was on top of Baroni, elbowing his face, and the ref stopped the fight, which Baroni didn't want, so he punched the ref. I'm not sure if this fight is actually over or they'll restart it or what. Wow, that's weird though, a questionable referee decision to stop a fight in a cagefighting match in Las Vegas. You'd never really expect that, would you? I mean, all those things are so honorable and trustworthy.
Man, I'm only up to #86? This is going to be fucking painful.
J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 #1: "Ritual Of The Nile" by J-Boogie's Dubtronic Science
My eldest daughter's name is Gypsy and she is flowering into an insanely artistic and obsessive little young adult. She often asks questions about the methodical madness that is her father, like why do I have notecards with strange little phrases scribbled on them all over the place. Why can't they throw magazines in this one pile of recycling until I look through them for pictures? How come nobody but me can rate songs on the Itunes and why do I only allow for one star to be added at a time? She understands, and is as obsessive as me, because she's pretty much been working exclusively on knitting projects for the past 200 hours of her life, talking about knitting crazy things, piecing it together. But she understands the J.J. Krupert process of songs being played the most and getting on the list, and sometimes plays songs pretty much constantly in the hopes of making me write about them. Then I explained to her that it can only be songs on my gaypod, meaning a lot of the things she forces into the mix won't make it. So what we did was put a batch of songs on there at one point, and she forced her way into my Krupert dorkness. This was that song that made the final list, that she played for like three days straight in her every waking hour, to get on the list. She has been pretty deeply into Egyptian culture the past half a year or so, making paintings and clay structures in honor of it, talking about mummifying a roadkill animal if I'd bring one home if I hit it, wanting me to find Egyptian meditation music, being stoked when I made homemade falafel and told her this was an Egyptian street food. Her most amazing development is being about 87 pages into a composition book, handwriting a full novel based on Egypitan mythology, which is even more insane and ridiculous than I was at age 12, but hey, this is what we have been fermenting on our Bird Tribe compound. But this "Ritual of the Nile" song was her favorite ever at one point and she made me put on this list after understanding my madness and it's methods and using that to place J. Boogie's Dubtronic Science on the list.
This song came from one of the Deep Concentration mixes which I think was on Ohm Records, and my daughter really digs that ambient/electronic with a slight twinge of funk thing. Not really my cup of tea, though I dig this song well enough (hence it's survival on my little stupid Ipod), and enough so that I dug into getting full-length J. Boogie stuff, which entailed me signing up for their email list and getting a free download, which was not very good at all. But I still get a stupid email from J. Boogie's Dubtronic Science every now and then, and I often wonder if J. Boogie has any other possessive bands, or just the Dubtronic Science one, and who the fuck is J. Boogie anyways? Nonetheless, this song is an enjoyable electronic romp down the river, watching snake charmers and belly dancers and little TVs plugged into bicycle-powered batteries with a McDonalds commercial where a terrorist jumps out chasing a cartoon Hunger monster with one of those swashbuckling Arab swords, yelling "FALALALALALALALALA" and as he catches up to hunger and is about to chop it with the sword, or so you think, he finishes yelling "LALALALALAlafel" and whips out a McDonalds falafel sandwich in nutritionless pita and that is all what I imagine floating down the Nile through Egypt to be like, just with more hot, and sand in my glasses, which is so fucking frustrating because I forget and clean them on my shirt, which scuffs them up and makes me see even less, but I never go get new ones because I hate finding an eye doctor that takes my stupid eye insurance, which isn't much of an insurance, and usually just end up going to the guy beside Wal-Mart (which means like three times in my life) and the last time I swear the guy was drunk and didn't pay attention to me so my glasses were kinda fucked when I got them, like didn't seem clear, but eventually my eyes deteriorated to where it made sense or I at least got used to it, and that's still the glasses I have, because I break everything and because of that when something isn't broke - like in three pieces broke, not just scuffed and dirty blemished but not quite broke - I won't replace it. That's just how I am.
STEAL "Ritual Of The Nile"
NEXT MONTH: we will celebrate our American freedom in the rear view mirror of my mind!
J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 #2: "How Long" by Charles Bradley
Charles Bradley is straight up baby-making music, and if you are broke and can't afford things like satellite TV or internet that can be the internet at a modern pace, then what is there to do but lay around on lambskins at night and make babies? When you are broke, and from the underclass of America, but upwardly mobile with your spirit and soul, you should be making babies as much as possible, every twelve months at the worst, preferably with a couple ol' ladies. Homebirthing is always the way to go, and how we've had all three of our chilluns, making each experience an amazing memory even beyond a new human popping all up in our faces after standard belly incubation periods. The great thing I discovered about homebirths, after our second kid, is you can be really adamant about not taking your kid into the health department when they are born and you need to get shit set up to prove you have a kid born. I used the "You are a health department, administering flu shots to the sickly... I am not bringing my newborn into this place," and brought a signed letter from the midwife to prove that I had actually had a kid. That's usually enough for the low level government drones who work in a rural county health department. So I've done this six times since then, when we've only had one actual child. I usually used to ramble about The Creator and the lessons of Samson in the Bible and shit like that when I still had long dreadlocks, and when we actually had our third real kid, my dreadlocked wife sat outside in the car with the baby so I could point them out and give visual proof to the religious kook anti-hospital anti-everything crazed dude story I would hint at when getting these rural birth certificates set up. What this means is we have 8 children in the eyes of the government, but only 3 actual kids. This bodes well for us during tax time, especially in regards to maxing out our Earned Income Credit, and also allows us some nice food stamp benefits as well. We don't have the bodies to prove they exist, but we have the birth certificates straight from the Virginia Department of Record Bullshit, and we have SS#s, and those two things count for more than being an actual human.
This caused me to test out a neighboring county as well, using a friend's address, to get three additional birth certificates and social security numbers, with a fake woman, so that the kids have a different last name. I did this to have aliases to give my own three children when they turn 21, as a present. It could be used to start a new life of credit at some point, or to travel anonymously to foreign countries, or really for whatever they deem it necessary at that point in their life. We are raising them right, so I trust they'll make the best decisions they can for themselves by that point. No one really should be stifled by one single alias in this cyber-optically complicated 2011 world. And though the government has tried to make it more complicated, especially after 9/11, it's important to remember our government is still entirely incompetent, and where competent it is outright corrupt, so you there's plenty of cracks to sneak between. If you only have one social security number in 2011, then you just are even trying to be free anymore, and deserve whatever bullshit predatory credit bankruptcy laws they burden you with.
But back to the baby-making music... I may come off as preachy, but it seems to me one reason there are so many fatherless children being raised in this world is because R&B music got so computerized and soulless. That is considered baby-making music nowadays, but the blip bloop synthesized backbeat is nothing like the actual live bass and drums of older soul. I'm not getting all old and crazy, saying this isn't music because of blah blah blah, because I love the collage nature of sampled music. But for baby-making, something is amiss (unless of course DJ Quik produced it, but that's a whole 'nother story). Because of this, there is less attachment to the baby-making involved in the baby-making music, because it's actually just electronic workout music and people are mistakenly using sexual intercourse at a cardiovascular stimulant. Procreation is not simple exercise of the body (though it is a great workout if done well and regularly, which I hope it is, for all of us, even you ugly people) but a connection of molecules to hopefully smash together into a new DNA machine that will be not only you combined with another but also hopefully a superior physical child, losing the weak genes and keeping the strong. The human is a highly emotional creature as well though, so both parents ideally should have a good amount of involvement in emotionally shaping the offspring as well. Without that, we have physically stronger children who are emotionally stifled, and I think if you look around you for the rest of the day, there's certainly a lot of that going on, ain't it?
STEAL "How Long"
NEXT: my daughter's enthusiastic influence in the J.J. Krupert process!
Sunday, August 28
J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 #3: "Too Early" by Son Volt
I've been drinking herbal smoothies lately, sporadically, and going into a store like Whole Foods really just is a completely painful process. In Charlottesville, they had a Whole Foods over in an old strip mall with a budget shoe place and auto parts store and Chinese buffet, so even though it was a Whole Foods, the fact there was a McDonalds like right beside it sort of made it feel like a part of a larger world. However, they just finished building a new shiny one in its own location where you have to backwards down a side road to enter the parking lot from the back end because they jumble the building up against the road on the back end in that pseudo-urban fashion a lot of high end sprawly developments do now, to pretend they are sustainable and geared towards controlled growth of humanity's alleged civilization.
I already hated going into the Whole Foods, but the new one is complete molecular pain for me. The people and the consumer psychologist layout and the exorbitant prices, it really pains me on a spiritual level, as spiritual as I get. The costs are not justified either because the type of shit you get there that is available at other grocery stores - exact same brand and item and packaging size - is usually almost double the price at Whole Foods. So you are paying a tax on overhead and feeling good about yourself and just straight up exclusion of the lower classes. And I think when I see that, that's what gets me.
I am always struggling with money, from the day I was born, and job-wise I'm clocking a better grip now than I have most of the adult times in my life, but it's still a goddamned weekly struggle to even try and pay half our bills. Seriously. And we try to eat better and not poison ourselves with conventional food poisons, but when it comes down to real butter quarters regular is like $3 and real butter quarters organic is $5.50, and you multiply that by everything across the board, or even just the basics you want to make a change with, it equals unsustainable financially. Seriously. Not just difficult but it would mean I can't fucking live in a house anymore. But other people do it, including people who are our friends who seem to be on financially equal footing (or lack thereof), and they pump up the pantry with the Whole Foods items (meaning from the store, not actual minimum ingredients style "whole" foods). I have a line in a song I did a couple years back that says "how'd y'all get all them damn things, I don't understand the math." Because I don't. It doesn't make sense with a limited income to keep up those paces. Only thing I can think is most people are operating on something more than the limited income and have access to additional sources that me and my ol' lady don't. There's only so much sacrificing and simplifying we can do and it still won't free up enough money to do this or that. But when you walk through the new Whole Foods, you can definitely see a lot of folks there who are at a different class of dollar bills than I am or probably ever will be. It is not only in their clothes but the lines of their face - they were born in a position I will probably be lucky to scratch and claw my way up to.
All this is in my mind as this economic downturn continues to trifle with us all, and the Republicrats kick this whole, "No more taxes on the wealthy" because it would stifle business development, falling back to that "trickle down economics" fallacy, that the wealthy, when allowed to use their money, are smart and forward thinking and great and magnanimous and they develop new business ventures and then create totally awesome jobs for the rest of us to do and benefit from. Ultimately, the thinking is instead of the wealthy being taxed by government and being a benefactor for the rest of society, they will build businesses and become a benefactor for the rest of society that also furthers their own wealth and makes America a more vibrant economy, instead of a socialist state. The problem with this is the wealthy have never exactly followed through on that end of this myth's bargain, and usually just horde shit, or when they create something new, they are not exactly magnanimous in hiring up the rest of us, instead going for the cheapest, crudest labor possible that does not empower the rest of society at all but instead treats them as a cogwheel in the entire process to be considered overhead, constantly adjusted and replaced when a more cost effective source comes along. But the wealthy, during this slow demise of the American Empire, can't just straight up be like, "Yo, we're not going to bankroll our society with higher taxes because we'd like to hold onto our shit so that we can be set for the next go-round, whatever that may be," and they can invest in China or Africa or whatever the fuck.
A lot of liberal types get pretty upset by this, and do the whole "Republicans are evil devils but I don't believe in God" schtick, especially now that Rick Perry has jumped in the 2012 campaign. But I have no problem with the wealthy deciding to not fund the rest of us maintaining basic standards of shelter, food, and health. I mean, I can't make someone do right, and ultimately neither can government (although government is rarely an enforcer of right & wrong so much as an engineer of its own self-fulfilling end goals).
Here's the thing though, shit is real right now, and getting more real, and will get far more real by the end of this slow decline. And a lot of people - not the Whole Foods shopping type or those who would pay higher taxes if taxes did get raised - are going to be hit pretty damn hard. And even a lot of those barely sheltered by middle class status are going to feel some hunger pangs and uncomfortability they've not felt before. And all these "entitlements" are going to be dropped because of whatever tax refusals and bad spending habits by our engineered leaders over the past couple decades, and shit is going to be ugly when a lot of folks look in the mirror in the morning.
Which brings me to my warning with this whole line of thinking - calling providing basic human support to all members of a society an "entitlement", as if they shouldn't necessarily feel privileged enough to have food and shelter, that's not as true to the dictionary definition of that word "entitlement" as is hording your wealth to yourself, your neighbors be damned. And I'm not denying these wealthy people may have made that money themselves, although the way our laws and systems are set up certainly help enable them to do so, which makes sense since it is that level of financial American who gets in the position to make the laws. But the true false sense of "entitlement" is that part of a country's human make-up should be allowed to keep everything to themselves while a large number of others outside the gated communities struggle, suffer, wither, and die. If you enter into a social contract where everyone says, even if only by birth, "We are all part of this place and will work mutually to make this place The Best Fucking Place Ever," then you are tied to that, and should ultimately either support or mindfuck everybody involved to be down with it. But when you straight up just say, "We're not paying more to help fund this entire operation anymore," you are breaking that social contract, in an obvious manner. And although there's massive brainwashing operations under way to keep all the lower castes thinking this is the red, white, and blue thing to do, there's plenty of us who see through the bullshit. And once you break that social contract from above, there's absolutely no need to expect those from below to follow it as well. Which means if you the upper doesn't want to support the lower through financial taxes or economic benevolence - which they're failing on both right now and only promise worse input - then the lower shouldn't support the upper by obeying and behaving and using their washed brains to override the hunger pangs in their soul to keep them from slitting the throats of those at the top. It's a basic two-party transaction being broken, and a very basic response system to be expected. And I'm good with that, if that's the way those at the top want to go. I can live with this new deal bargain being established.
STEAL "Too Early"
NEXT: modern soul music by a Bernie Mac looking-ass dude!
J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 #4: "It Probably Always Will" by Ozark Mountain Daredevils
The Ozark Mountain Daredevils album this song comes from - It'll Shine When It Shines - is the true pinnacle of redneck hippiedom albums, and a lifelong classic in my brain as my folks used to pump this up back in the day, and when my folks separated after a drunken violent incident I had to step in between when I was 16, only about 20 records from the collection made it up the road to the trailer my dad and me lived in, and this was one. My dad loved that "E.E. Lawson" song to death, man, and this whole album always reminds me of my dad, but also my youth, as the blue willow china pattern (or whatever the fuck it's called) is mimicked on the cover. Me and the ol' lady actually saw some of that china at the antique store today and I wanted to get some even though they only had two plates, just for memory value, thinking about how I was mesmerized by the pattern as a kid, living in a shitty cinderblock house full of field rats on the edge of a farm in Rice, Virginia, staring at the design with my little ass yet to be growed up and mind warped and the whole deal. Very formative times for me, but then again, all times are formative for all minds, which is why you gotta be careful in the age of the cyberwebs, because once you see something, you can't unsee it ever again. The electrosmog also clogs up your psychic abilities.
Hadn't dreamt of my dad in years, not that I can remember since my dream where he was doing crank in hell, happily, with a bunch of dudes underneath the house in Victoria he shared with his second wife. Got to hang with my sister the other weekend though, and there was an incident with my dad where he was putting some mind fuck on me, claiming I had passed on accepting my rightful hereditary ownership of The Power, or familial psychic abilities, and that my sister would get them. Shit was hurtful, in our country fucked sort of way, and I knew he was just drunk and pushing my buttons, and I think those types of "lessons" by him have fucked her far more than they fucked me. But she had seen my dad in dreams in recent years, and he was doing better than when I last saw him, even was gaining some weight for the first time ever. And I realize talking about seeing family members in dreams and knowing it's real and feeling all these planes are connected and not blinking an eye about it might seem crazy to the scientifically inclined or those grounded in what is conventionally considered reality, but it's truth. I feel bad for my dad and the internal struggles he had, and I do not think I would be where I am without him walking the path in front of me, which has allowed me to chop through shit he never got around to chopping at, and I'm still ten years to go before equaling the age he was when he died. And I can look at my oldest and see she's already walking a path I didn't get to for another five or six years at that age, and hopefully that'll mean she can chop through even more shit than me, and we will be doing work as a psychic lineage, for both my side and my ol' lady's side of the family tree. That's all you can hope for. Just like there ain't get rich quick schemes that pan out, and your numbers never hit when they draw the MegaMillions, there ain't no easy path towards psychic salvation. It might not even happen in your lifetime. But you've got to set the overall effect of your DNA on the best path possible instead of garbling it up with self-destruction and endless wrecks into the same guiard rails you done wrecked into sixteen times before.
STEAL "It Probably Always Will"
NEXT: a dude who by name you'd think was from 1938 Mississippi, but he's not!
Saturday, August 27
Wednesday, August 24
Ultimate 100: 95 thru 91
Back up in it to win it, if by winning it I mean watching fucking grown men pretend to make a sport out of bludgeoning each other with "hammerfists" as the commentator dude has been saying a lot. There's that report that one hour of TV watching takes 22 minutes off your life. I guess that means by the end of this thing, if I complete it, I will have shaved like a third of a day off the end of my life. Suck city...
#95: SEAN SHERK vs. TYSON GRIFFIN - I remember reading about Sean Sherk somewhere, so I guess he did something notable at some point. The Tyson Griffin dude looks like he'd be part of the extended Bruce Jenner family and part of that whole Spencer/Heidi/Kardashian/Lohan Illuminati cult of reality celebrities thing that's sprung into our collective brains like idiot wildfire in the past decade. Because of that, I automatically am rooting for Sean Sherk, also because his name sounds like some sort of result of an island of Dr. Moreau style experiment. Fuck though, Sherk has worse tribal tattoos, though not much, so I guess he's going to lose. Wait, no Tyson Griffin has something huge on his right shoulder, so let me see what that is. I think it might be... yeah, it looks like some oversized gargoyle dragon thing, which is some next level tribalism tattooing, but still pretty bad. That means Sherk will win.
Sherk Dog bleeding from the nose, but dominating the dominance thus far. I wonder if there's a famous juggalo ultimate fighter yet? I wish there was. Or at least ultimate mushrooms fights at a juggalo function, preferably under black lights.
End of first round, and the old black Cut Man who looks like a more physically fit Grady from Sanford & Son is doing his thing.
Second round has Griffin getting a little cocky, waving his arms, waving in some action, but then like a minute later he's all wore out and breathing heavy. Basically, they're just punching at each other. Griffin looks slightly ethnic as well, and no ethnically non-total white dude has lost thus far in my watching, except Royce Gracie, who is outright foreigner. So being Tyson Griffin looks Americanized non-white, perhaps that trumps his bad tribalish tattoo shortcomings. We will see in this third round. This is basically a really good kickboxing match, as they've hardly gone to that guard/ground shit. Your center of the ring major sponsor is Bud Light for this match. I've meant to note that at times but always forget. HA! The announcer douchebag just said, "This is like a kickboxing bout now." I am ahead of the curve already. There's only a minute left so something crazy must happen because this shit is unnotable right about now. Like a last second knockout or something? Nope, nothing. Winner by judges decision, and Sherk wins, even though Griffin had more pizazz, everyone recognized his tattoos.
#94: DIN THOMAS vs. B.J. PENN - We have a black guy against another of those ethnically questionable dudes who look sort of Hawaiian but maybe Brazilian but maybe Latino but probably from like Toronto for whatever reason. Din Thomas - the black guy - was on one of the Ultimate Fighter shows I watched. he seemed like a likeable enough guy, at least compared to everybody else. Penn is a jiu-jitsu specialist though, which is generally considered the most honorable of fighting art styles worldwide. Being his trunks said "www.BJPENN.com" I thought I would go look at it to see if still exists. It does, and some dude Chael Sonnen, who I think is a real estate con artist and fighter, has a Facebook group set up for Brazilians who want to lynch him when he comes to Brazil later this year. Nice. And then the black dude got wobbled by a kick then eye-rolled by a punch. Game over.
#93: THIAGO ALVES vs. CHRIS LYTLE - I'm sort of starting to zone out on this shit. Think I might've hit my daily recommended intake. Alves is a Brazilian or Hawaiian or something, and Lytle looks like a skinhead. Some sort of cran-razz energy drink is the center ring sponsor for this fight. Lytle is a former firefighter the announcer just said, which means he is probably a skinhead, although his ass ad on his fighting trunks says serious pimp dotcom. I'm gonna check that out now... It exists, they have declared Snoop Dogg President, and you can buy Dogg Pound sunglasses, as well as a Bishop Don Magic Juan lime green sunglasses/bandanna combo. Looks like basically it's a sunglasses hut, but online, and for people who think they can buy their way into pimping. They have a blog too so I'm gonna read that while I don't pay attention to this fight. There's something called a "digital painting" which looks to me like somebody just shared every step of a photoshopping process, and some skinny ass Euro dude getting the serious pimp logo tatted on his arm. Yeah, that's a good move, literally branding yourself, like literally.
Oh shit, I looked up at the end of the first round horn and the skinhead firefighter dude's eye is all busted open and bloody. And on the blog it says, "Serious Pimp is Serious about Protecting its Intellectual Property Rights" and they are apparently patenting their OG Bandanna style sunglasses. Like, hell yeah, bros; shoulda done been done that. I am assuming Brazil beats Skinhead usually in ultimate fighting, but I guess I'll wait for visual verification. Man, I'm bored with this shit but I'm gonna make myself get through #91 before I quit tonight. Maybe.
Aww... they're hugging along the fence right now. It's really sweet. The Brazilian dude is doing that thing they do where he kicks you in the thigh all the time so that the skinhead guy is kinda gimpy and limping. Eventually he's just going to fall over like a tree, although we just ended the second round. But his one leg is not working as well as his other, very obviously even by his casual walk to the corner, although I guess technically an octagon doesn't have a corner.
And then suddenly and anti-climactically the ringside Dr. Nick stopped the fight during the break because of the skinhead dude's cut. It's really weird to think of these guys getting cuts from the pressure of punches squeezing flesh too suddenly that it rips. Shit wasn't even bleeding that much, so the crowd is chanting "Bullshit! Bullshit!" but they are probably skinheads too and all racist drunks who would be soccer fans if they weren't born in America.
I think in their honor hug at the end, they almost kissed. And Alves says, "It was beautiful... I was having fun... He was having fun," in a soft and sweet voice from the back alleys - pun intended - of Brazil. They are interviewing the skinhead firefighter guy now, and he sounds like a New Jersey guy with a southern accent, but from New Jersey, and he's playing up to the racist drunkard crowd.
#92: B.J. PENN vs. MATT SERRA - Serra is this little hilarious midget fighter guy who was my favorite from the Ultimate Fighters I watched when I was watching that. His involvement actually caused me to give it about half a season longer than I would've otherwise. Penn is native Hawaiian, which is always an untrustable mix of Polynesian and colonial blood, with a little mix of Hindi from Fiji probably hiding in there as well. Such a tough tribal group of peoples down in Polynesia, and now all that Fukushima radiation just fucking them. There's that one island where the sea level has noticeably raised in the past ten years already from global warming, and now they're probably getting radioactive rain. Not to mention nuclear testing and the trash swirls of the Pacific and America dumping their electronic trash out there on those islands... guys like B.J. Penn should be forming a cyborg army of island warriors to overthrow the government, not human cockfighting for the attention of a women with fake breasts. Where are our priorities?
I've paid attention to very little of this. Was this on TV all at once, like a marathon? Because I couldn't imagine just sitting around and watching this whole thing for like a whole day. There's just not enough distinguishable type of activities to make this as exciting in a full-on overload like say, NFL Films, or even retro baseball games or something. I think that's ultimately will stifle Dana White's dreams that this will be the number one sport in the world, that it's just not diverse enough in what goes on to keep people's attention. And if you really want to get skeeved out, go googling around for MMA websites and look at the people writing or commenting about this shit. Not exactly the cream of the societal crop, though they analyze things and perpetrate real sports journalism with their dumb shit.
Matt Serra is a little pit bull of a human being, and they are going to their third round. Apparently, according to the announcers, probably each dude one a round each, so this will decide things. THE NEXT FOUR MINUTES WILL DECIDE THE 92ND MOST BESTEST ULTIMATE FIGHTING FIGHT EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE SPORT UP TO THE POINT THEY DID THIS LIST! I CAN BARELY CONTAIN MY EXCITEMENT! I THINK I'M GOING TO GET A GLASS OF COW MILK! (We call milk "cow milk" because our youngest loved nursing, and it was always called "mama's milk" so the other shit was called cow milk. So to this day, when she wants some milk, she's like, "Daddy... can I have some cow milk?" It's really funny when we are at the store and she's all like, "Let's get some cow milk! Can we get some cow milk?" Similar to when our oldest was about three and I was teaching her about animals, and told her that humans were an animal as we were counting animals on the way home from town one day. Like three days later, we're at the soccer field for music in the park or something in Scottsville, and some little kid is hassling our daughter, and she comes over to me while I'm talking to a couple we just met and goes, "Daddy, that human girl over there is not being nice." It was awesome. I just acted nonchalant like I was from Witch Mountain.
Oh yeah, the fight... There's like a minute left and nobody has died or gotten piledrived. Matt Serra should throw a fireball at the other dude, or break him through a flaming table. But they don't. And B.J. Penn gives a very creepy, leaning in honor hug. Such honorable, questionably gay combatants. B.J. Penn wins, and the racist, drunkard crowd boos because they wanted the little white dude from New England to win.
#91: KEN SHAMROCK vs. RICH FRANKLIN - Shamrock is a delirious crazy man from the beginning of the UFC, from back in the very beginning. Rich Franklin is a newer school bad ass dude, very smart (considering he gets punched in the brain). But it's also the end of five matches, much like the Gracie/Matt Hughes fight from #96... thus I figure Rich Franklin will win this easily. Shamrock was already delirious from years of wrestling, and he's babbling about some bullshit in the pre-fight hype clips. And the announcers are hyping up how this would be, by far, the biggest win for the former high school math teacher Rich Franklin. So fixed. More of Dana White exorcising the auras of the originators. I think the real question in my mind is whether this even lasts one round. And I vaguely think I saw this on one of the Ultimate Fighter finales, because I remember those ugly ass camo shorts Rich Franklin is wearing.
Some sort of supplement is your center of the ring advertiser. I've been drinking smoothies/protein shakes lately, full of different herbs to hype me up, although I've been wanting for my goddamned eleuthero powder for like two weeks from the herb people, which used to be called Siberian ginseng, but then American ginseng of the panax variety got it so you couldn't call Siberian ginseng an actual ginseng. Shit is complicated. I've been experimenting with protein powders too, trying to avoid soy because soy is such an unhealthy protein, and the plant is the most genetically modified plant there is, and plus it's full of plant estrogen, which is why some vegetarian men are so effeminate. I also use frozen bananas, which my wife hates, but the bananas/blueberries with the herbs and yogurt and green tea and coconut oil, that shit is the goodness. Still though, I want my goddamn eleuthero to hopefully start hyping me up since I don't drink the evil coffee false stimulant anymore.
So yeah, Rich Franklin won by punching holmes out in the first round. Not a very good fight at all, more included for historical purposes it seems, though like I said, there seems to be a setting up of storylines, ending with every five matches. There's still two more fights on this first DVD, but I'm tapped out for the night, which does not mean I'm going to wear a t-shirt that looks like a retarded piece of lightning got stuck in a screenprint, but it means I'm going to go to bed. My ol' lady and oldest are at an herbal conference, and the toddler already woke up, so she's in our bed, and whenever I go lay in there with her, she cuddles up right next to me, and it makes me feel like a solid dude. For all my faults, all my failures, all my wrong turns and dead ends still to follow, the way my kids love on me, I know I'm solid. More solid than a goddamned warped focus "ultimate" fighter. Fuck you Dana White, and your scrawny assed ring girls, pretending to be sexy but looking like they got 9-year-old boy asses, while men wearing just as little pummel each other then give honor hugs. The whole thing seems like an elaborate plot to take the emotional love felt between a man and a women and pervert it. Once you do that, to the world, there's no more children like my toddler, and there's no more cuddling up with love in a big ass bed that needs a new mattress because it's hard on my back but I sleep towards the middle for the most part and who the fuck can afford a new mattress anyways? You pervert that, and we don't make little kids to be the true warriors. It's like I was saying about B.J. Penn and his islander heritage... where's your fucking priorities? There's a war for our future being fought, inside our minds, and we don't even care. This shit is massive distraction and also making dudes thinking the wrong things are warrior mentality. It's not like the decline of the Roman civilization, though I wasn't there so maybe it's exactly like that and the bad thing about the Coliseum fights and gladiators and all was not the brutality but how it was a cultural plot to desensitize the Roman people to being grounded in reality, so that they cave din on themselves. And actually when I think about it like that, I guess it's great people like the UFC, because I'd like society to cave in on itself. Fuck this world. It's a scam and a scheme and a sham and needs to be wiped clean so we can start over. Or start something else. Or whatever. I'm going to bed to cuddle with my toddler and dream apocalyptic dreams about the most wonderful and beautiful end times you could ever imagine. And when we wake up tomorrow, I'm going to go out to the chicken coop and get some eggs and make us some omelettes and tell the two young ones about this wonderful Apocalypse, and how we all have our calling, our destiny in life. And that they need to listen to their souls, go out in the yard and find their sit-spot and let the cyberwaves calm down in their mind and focus internally and let it all go quiet until they can hear themselves, deep down inside there, behind the intestinal walls, underneath the heart, and listen for their calling, because they are warriors. vikings of right in a world gone wrong.
#95: SEAN SHERK vs. TYSON GRIFFIN - I remember reading about Sean Sherk somewhere, so I guess he did something notable at some point. The Tyson Griffin dude looks like he'd be part of the extended Bruce Jenner family and part of that whole Spencer/Heidi/Kardashian/Lohan Illuminati cult of reality celebrities thing that's sprung into our collective brains like idiot wildfire in the past decade. Because of that, I automatically am rooting for Sean Sherk, also because his name sounds like some sort of result of an island of Dr. Moreau style experiment. Fuck though, Sherk has worse tribal tattoos, though not much, so I guess he's going to lose. Wait, no Tyson Griffin has something huge on his right shoulder, so let me see what that is. I think it might be... yeah, it looks like some oversized gargoyle dragon thing, which is some next level tribalism tattooing, but still pretty bad. That means Sherk will win.
Sherk Dog bleeding from the nose, but dominating the dominance thus far. I wonder if there's a famous juggalo ultimate fighter yet? I wish there was. Or at least ultimate mushrooms fights at a juggalo function, preferably under black lights.
End of first round, and the old black Cut Man who looks like a more physically fit Grady from Sanford & Son is doing his thing.
Second round has Griffin getting a little cocky, waving his arms, waving in some action, but then like a minute later he's all wore out and breathing heavy. Basically, they're just punching at each other. Griffin looks slightly ethnic as well, and no ethnically non-total white dude has lost thus far in my watching, except Royce Gracie, who is outright foreigner. So being Tyson Griffin looks Americanized non-white, perhaps that trumps his bad tribalish tattoo shortcomings. We will see in this third round. This is basically a really good kickboxing match, as they've hardly gone to that guard/ground shit. Your center of the ring major sponsor is Bud Light for this match. I've meant to note that at times but always forget. HA! The announcer douchebag just said, "This is like a kickboxing bout now." I am ahead of the curve already. There's only a minute left so something crazy must happen because this shit is unnotable right about now. Like a last second knockout or something? Nope, nothing. Winner by judges decision, and Sherk wins, even though Griffin had more pizazz, everyone recognized his tattoos.
#94: DIN THOMAS vs. B.J. PENN - We have a black guy against another of those ethnically questionable dudes who look sort of Hawaiian but maybe Brazilian but maybe Latino but probably from like Toronto for whatever reason. Din Thomas - the black guy - was on one of the Ultimate Fighter shows I watched. he seemed like a likeable enough guy, at least compared to everybody else. Penn is a jiu-jitsu specialist though, which is generally considered the most honorable of fighting art styles worldwide. Being his trunks said "www.BJPENN.com" I thought I would go look at it to see if still exists. It does, and some dude Chael Sonnen, who I think is a real estate con artist and fighter, has a Facebook group set up for Brazilians who want to lynch him when he comes to Brazil later this year. Nice. And then the black dude got wobbled by a kick then eye-rolled by a punch. Game over.
#93: THIAGO ALVES vs. CHRIS LYTLE - I'm sort of starting to zone out on this shit. Think I might've hit my daily recommended intake. Alves is a Brazilian or Hawaiian or something, and Lytle looks like a skinhead. Some sort of cran-razz energy drink is the center ring sponsor for this fight. Lytle is a former firefighter the announcer just said, which means he is probably a skinhead, although his ass ad on his fighting trunks says serious pimp dotcom. I'm gonna check that out now... It exists, they have declared Snoop Dogg President, and you can buy Dogg Pound sunglasses, as well as a Bishop Don Magic Juan lime green sunglasses/bandanna combo. Looks like basically it's a sunglasses hut, but online, and for people who think they can buy their way into pimping. They have a blog too so I'm gonna read that while I don't pay attention to this fight. There's something called a "digital painting" which looks to me like somebody just shared every step of a photoshopping process, and some skinny ass Euro dude getting the serious pimp logo tatted on his arm. Yeah, that's a good move, literally branding yourself, like literally.
Oh shit, I looked up at the end of the first round horn and the skinhead firefighter dude's eye is all busted open and bloody. And on the blog it says, "Serious Pimp is Serious about Protecting its Intellectual Property Rights" and they are apparently patenting their OG Bandanna style sunglasses. Like, hell yeah, bros; shoulda done been done that. I am assuming Brazil beats Skinhead usually in ultimate fighting, but I guess I'll wait for visual verification. Man, I'm bored with this shit but I'm gonna make myself get through #91 before I quit tonight. Maybe.
Aww... they're hugging along the fence right now. It's really sweet. The Brazilian dude is doing that thing they do where he kicks you in the thigh all the time so that the skinhead guy is kinda gimpy and limping. Eventually he's just going to fall over like a tree, although we just ended the second round. But his one leg is not working as well as his other, very obviously even by his casual walk to the corner, although I guess technically an octagon doesn't have a corner.
And then suddenly and anti-climactically the ringside Dr. Nick stopped the fight during the break because of the skinhead dude's cut. It's really weird to think of these guys getting cuts from the pressure of punches squeezing flesh too suddenly that it rips. Shit wasn't even bleeding that much, so the crowd is chanting "Bullshit! Bullshit!" but they are probably skinheads too and all racist drunks who would be soccer fans if they weren't born in America.
I think in their honor hug at the end, they almost kissed. And Alves says, "It was beautiful... I was having fun... He was having fun," in a soft and sweet voice from the back alleys - pun intended - of Brazil. They are interviewing the skinhead firefighter guy now, and he sounds like a New Jersey guy with a southern accent, but from New Jersey, and he's playing up to the racist drunkard crowd.
#92: B.J. PENN vs. MATT SERRA - Serra is this little hilarious midget fighter guy who was my favorite from the Ultimate Fighters I watched when I was watching that. His involvement actually caused me to give it about half a season longer than I would've otherwise. Penn is native Hawaiian, which is always an untrustable mix of Polynesian and colonial blood, with a little mix of Hindi from Fiji probably hiding in there as well. Such a tough tribal group of peoples down in Polynesia, and now all that Fukushima radiation just fucking them. There's that one island where the sea level has noticeably raised in the past ten years already from global warming, and now they're probably getting radioactive rain. Not to mention nuclear testing and the trash swirls of the Pacific and America dumping their electronic trash out there on those islands... guys like B.J. Penn should be forming a cyborg army of island warriors to overthrow the government, not human cockfighting for the attention of a women with fake breasts. Where are our priorities?
I've paid attention to very little of this. Was this on TV all at once, like a marathon? Because I couldn't imagine just sitting around and watching this whole thing for like a whole day. There's just not enough distinguishable type of activities to make this as exciting in a full-on overload like say, NFL Films, or even retro baseball games or something. I think that's ultimately will stifle Dana White's dreams that this will be the number one sport in the world, that it's just not diverse enough in what goes on to keep people's attention. And if you really want to get skeeved out, go googling around for MMA websites and look at the people writing or commenting about this shit. Not exactly the cream of the societal crop, though they analyze things and perpetrate real sports journalism with their dumb shit.
Matt Serra is a little pit bull of a human being, and they are going to their third round. Apparently, according to the announcers, probably each dude one a round each, so this will decide things. THE NEXT FOUR MINUTES WILL DECIDE THE 92ND MOST BESTEST ULTIMATE FIGHTING FIGHT EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE SPORT UP TO THE POINT THEY DID THIS LIST! I CAN BARELY CONTAIN MY EXCITEMENT! I THINK I'M GOING TO GET A GLASS OF COW MILK! (We call milk "cow milk" because our youngest loved nursing, and it was always called "mama's milk" so the other shit was called cow milk. So to this day, when she wants some milk, she's like, "Daddy... can I have some cow milk?" It's really funny when we are at the store and she's all like, "Let's get some cow milk! Can we get some cow milk?" Similar to when our oldest was about three and I was teaching her about animals, and told her that humans were an animal as we were counting animals on the way home from town one day. Like three days later, we're at the soccer field for music in the park or something in Scottsville, and some little kid is hassling our daughter, and she comes over to me while I'm talking to a couple we just met and goes, "Daddy, that human girl over there is not being nice." It was awesome. I just acted nonchalant like I was from Witch Mountain.
Oh yeah, the fight... There's like a minute left and nobody has died or gotten piledrived. Matt Serra should throw a fireball at the other dude, or break him through a flaming table. But they don't. And B.J. Penn gives a very creepy, leaning in honor hug. Such honorable, questionably gay combatants. B.J. Penn wins, and the racist, drunkard crowd boos because they wanted the little white dude from New England to win.
#91: KEN SHAMROCK vs. RICH FRANKLIN - Shamrock is a delirious crazy man from the beginning of the UFC, from back in the very beginning. Rich Franklin is a newer school bad ass dude, very smart (considering he gets punched in the brain). But it's also the end of five matches, much like the Gracie/Matt Hughes fight from #96... thus I figure Rich Franklin will win this easily. Shamrock was already delirious from years of wrestling, and he's babbling about some bullshit in the pre-fight hype clips. And the announcers are hyping up how this would be, by far, the biggest win for the former high school math teacher Rich Franklin. So fixed. More of Dana White exorcising the auras of the originators. I think the real question in my mind is whether this even lasts one round. And I vaguely think I saw this on one of the Ultimate Fighter finales, because I remember those ugly ass camo shorts Rich Franklin is wearing.
Some sort of supplement is your center of the ring advertiser. I've been drinking smoothies/protein shakes lately, full of different herbs to hype me up, although I've been wanting for my goddamned eleuthero powder for like two weeks from the herb people, which used to be called Siberian ginseng, but then American ginseng of the panax variety got it so you couldn't call Siberian ginseng an actual ginseng. Shit is complicated. I've been experimenting with protein powders too, trying to avoid soy because soy is such an unhealthy protein, and the plant is the most genetically modified plant there is, and plus it's full of plant estrogen, which is why some vegetarian men are so effeminate. I also use frozen bananas, which my wife hates, but the bananas/blueberries with the herbs and yogurt and green tea and coconut oil, that shit is the goodness. Still though, I want my goddamn eleuthero to hopefully start hyping me up since I don't drink the evil coffee false stimulant anymore.
So yeah, Rich Franklin won by punching holmes out in the first round. Not a very good fight at all, more included for historical purposes it seems, though like I said, there seems to be a setting up of storylines, ending with every five matches. There's still two more fights on this first DVD, but I'm tapped out for the night, which does not mean I'm going to wear a t-shirt that looks like a retarded piece of lightning got stuck in a screenprint, but it means I'm going to go to bed. My ol' lady and oldest are at an herbal conference, and the toddler already woke up, so she's in our bed, and whenever I go lay in there with her, she cuddles up right next to me, and it makes me feel like a solid dude. For all my faults, all my failures, all my wrong turns and dead ends still to follow, the way my kids love on me, I know I'm solid. More solid than a goddamned warped focus "ultimate" fighter. Fuck you Dana White, and your scrawny assed ring girls, pretending to be sexy but looking like they got 9-year-old boy asses, while men wearing just as little pummel each other then give honor hugs. The whole thing seems like an elaborate plot to take the emotional love felt between a man and a women and pervert it. Once you do that, to the world, there's no more children like my toddler, and there's no more cuddling up with love in a big ass bed that needs a new mattress because it's hard on my back but I sleep towards the middle for the most part and who the fuck can afford a new mattress anyways? You pervert that, and we don't make little kids to be the true warriors. It's like I was saying about B.J. Penn and his islander heritage... where's your fucking priorities? There's a war for our future being fought, inside our minds, and we don't even care. This shit is massive distraction and also making dudes thinking the wrong things are warrior mentality. It's not like the decline of the Roman civilization, though I wasn't there so maybe it's exactly like that and the bad thing about the Coliseum fights and gladiators and all was not the brutality but how it was a cultural plot to desensitize the Roman people to being grounded in reality, so that they cave din on themselves. And actually when I think about it like that, I guess it's great people like the UFC, because I'd like society to cave in on itself. Fuck this world. It's a scam and a scheme and a sham and needs to be wiped clean so we can start over. Or start something else. Or whatever. I'm going to bed to cuddle with my toddler and dream apocalyptic dreams about the most wonderful and beautiful end times you could ever imagine. And when we wake up tomorrow, I'm going to go out to the chicken coop and get some eggs and make us some omelettes and tell the two young ones about this wonderful Apocalypse, and how we all have our calling, our destiny in life. And that they need to listen to their souls, go out in the yard and find their sit-spot and let the cyberwaves calm down in their mind and focus internally and let it all go quiet until they can hear themselves, deep down inside there, behind the intestinal walls, underneath the heart, and listen for their calling, because they are warriors. vikings of right in a world gone wrong.
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