Trying Not To Hurt Myself

Day off #1

Today (Sunday) is a day off. The first of two that we get here. In celebration of that, last night was Olive Garden night (which quickly proceeded into getting hammered night). I got a bit tipsy quickly, but soon recovered and by the time I got back from a bar around 12:30, I was completely fine.

This morning's free breakfast told me that I may have been the only one. I went down at 8:45 (breakfast ends at 9), and it was as though NO ONE had been down there. Seizing a nice opportunity, I claimed a few pastries and a banana.

The bruises on my arms, while still painful, are starting to go away already (I think -- its dark in my room without the curtains open....my roommate is still sleeping).

Today is the last day of Bumbershoot, a giant music festival (think Summerfest). If I'm remembering correctly, the headliner for tonight is REM, which is reason enough to go. Now all that's left is to arrange a ride after doing laundry (something else that requires a ride, because the laundry-mat near here closed earlier this year). If I can, later I'm also going to import the martial arts fight so that I can tease those who want to see it with still frames. Sorry, but there's NO WAY I'm going to upload that over my modem connection, which is struggling to get 21000 kbps.

Lots of pain done with, really hard stuff on the way

Today was the martial arts (mostly chinese) fight on film. I boffed it a bit, but pulled off some of the other parts nicely. Overall, all I see is the boff, all others see is the rest. That's the way things are. Phooey. I was pleased to hear that I pleased an instructor about how high I got when I did a jumping spinning back kick. If I can get someone's tape of the whole thing, there was also a great moment when David (head instructor) called for a stand-in with bigger legs beforehand :) That was a great tension relieving moment.

I have a couple pictures that I'm posting from this week, mainly from today. There's one of Keith (guy from Palatine) and Vicki (girl from London), one of all the instructors (so far), one of myself and the wu shu teacher, and one of my arm bruises from banging them so much (and I was padded ALMOST ALL OF THE TIME).

Pictures

I feel a lot like that moment in Men In Black, where Tommy Lee Jones tells Will Smith, "As of now, you're stills means absolutely dick." Today was hardcore wu shu martial arts training, and everything that I knew before now was roughly 100% useless to me. We're doing a 2 on 1 fight for the camera tomorrow that we learned today (I'm the one), and its REALLY REALLY hard. That's where I'm at.

People are going to a Mariners game tonight, but I'm going to stick around here, get a nice meal, and sleep.

The shootings in chicago were about two blocks from where the chicago girl, Lisa, lives. That was kinda freaky.

Yesterday was the first day that we got on film with the fight that we learned two days ago. It was an interesting experience to see myself from an outside view. Overall, the fight went well, though. I was pleasantly surprised about how on target certain hits were and how my reactions were on time. There were a few punches that during the fight, I had thought that I missed, and I was right. Most importantly, though, I KNEW that I missed them during the fight, so I was thinking properly. That's always a good sign for me.

With a few exceptions, the instructors seemed to like it, which relieved a lot of tension that I (and everyone else) had.

News for my dad that I kept forgetting to say before... My roommate is from Long Beach State (he lives in Huntington Beach). Maybe this will inspire him to write an email :)

I saw Pirates Of The Caribbean last night, and it was GREAT.

Today, we started out with contact crotch kicks. The point (obviously) was NOT to be on the twig and berries, but rather inches away and kicking the butt cheek. Needless to say, when people are practicing a few got kicked high (in the junk) and a few got kicked low (on the leg -- on the tendon). I had far too many of the low ones and now have a softball sized bruise right below my ass.

We did hip throws (using muscle instead of the judo way -- which is easier for me, but would take a much longer time to teach than 1 minute for those without knowledge of it already).

The choreography that we learned will be used on camera on thursday (for critique purposes). My roommate, Ryan, has a really awesome DV cam, and not much knowledge about importing it into the computer. I'm going to help him with that, and get a copy of my fight later. Come to think of it, I have a feeling that I'm going to have a copy of a bunch of the fights on here (for my other Chicagoans at the school). 25.5 Gig available currently, so I should be fine for space (I don't think that this is the only fight / stunt that's going to be filmed).

This was my first time ever using a body wrap. That was the sweatiest workout I've ever had (especially around the stomach).

There's an arcade around the corner where we played DDR (Dance Dance Revolution for those not "in the know"). The coolest game that they had was a japanese first person boxing game with heavy handles that were used to throw the punches -- needless to say, my shoulders were REALLY hurting after that and everything else we did).

BTW, due to obvious issues with speed here, I doubt that I'll be posting the movie online

As I thought before I got here, I am sore!!

Today was more unarmed fighting. Tons of punches -- contact and no-contact, kicks -- contact and no contact, knees, and lots and lots of taking those and falling to the unpadded gymnasium floor.

My bones that are used a lot are absolutely gone...tons of hitting the floor and rolling on it has absolutely knocked the crap out of them. On the upside, taking kicks to the midsection (which I was doing with a 100lb british girl) were fine. I must've been kicked about 50-100 times, and HARD. I was kicking back hard too, so its all cool. Most importantly, both of us were cool with it.

At lunch, we went to a restaurant and weren't served in time to sit and eat, so we ate while walking on the way back (that was no good at all).

Towards the end of the day, I was unable to lift to actually lift my head of the floor without assistance from my hands. We started to do choreography, which was cool.

If anyone wants me to email when I update this thing, let me know.

First day's done. That was some hard stuff. We did falls and rolls for about 6.5 hours. Ouch. We ended up doing punches and we have that to look forward to again tomorrow, I'm sure.

One thing that was cool was when the class was stopped to watch my "crinkled up cricket face" after a fall (I was supposed to look that way). That actually made my headache go away for about 10 minutes. The rest of the time, I'm still being corrected and adjusted from the ways that I've been taught many times before (but isn't quite what they want here).

I must shower and head to the grocery store and get gatorade....this water crap just isn't doing it for me.

There are a ton of people here, around 50 or so. They all seem very nice so far (of course, it IS the first day), but I think that the general acceptance feeling will last thoughout. I just woke up (its about 7am) and snuck down to the lobby to write this. There's a breakfast down here that looks pretty standard (cereal, pastries, muffines, etc). Today is supposed to be all unarmed contact (lots of neck injuries are bound to happen).

For those wondering, I'm staying at the Traveler's Inn in Edmond,WA in room 207. For those of you wondering how to get in touch with me, my cell phone is still the best way (isn't technology wonderful).

I installed AOL last night. Dialup sucks so much balls. Oh well, I'm gonna get something to eat and get cracking on this stuff. Wish me luck.

Oh, and last night I hung out with a girl chicagoan, dude from palatine, a girl from wales, dude from des moines, and a girl from AZ. Good times were had by all.

9:25am
I just got on the plane, and we're up in the air. The check-in procedures aren't nearly what people claim they are. I just swiped my credit card at a kiosk that gave me a boarding pass, and gave my luggage to Xray machine people, and was done. It was about 2 minutes overall (and most of that was me marveling at the ease of the touch screen that I was using).

the guy in front of me has a much nicer laptop than me (I'm jealous) -- its a powerbook g4, for those who are wondering. Much nicer.

According to the flight attendant, its 50 degrees in seattle. That's a LOT colder than I thought it would be, this should be interesting as I wear umbros and a tshirt and everyone else has pants and sweatshirts on.

--I need to pee-- Did I mention that we JUST took off?

The guy in front of me is using his fancy ass computer to watch Donny Brasco (my computer doesn't have a DVD player). Again, much nicer. I'm using iTunes to listen to Chris Rock. Yeah, fancy computer guy...my content's better. <Sigh>

-20 minutes later-
In the terminal, there was a good looking girl. I did the only thing I knew to do, asked her about her book. Luckily, it was the DaVinci Code, which used to have those late-night commercials, so I knew the general idea of it, and didn't seem like the illiterate chump that I am. (the word illiterate took me 5 attempts to spell correctly). She's back by the plane's engines, so I really don't want to make any attempts to talk to her on the plane (its loud back there) with the exception of going to the bathroom. I know this because I finally got to go. Phew.

2:02 pm
After a fairly lengthy medical emergency stop in Spokane (pronounced as though the "e" wasn't there), we're back up in the air. I talked with the DaVinci girl again. She's an interior design student with a THICK Minnesota accent. Going to school in North Dakota means no good for me :) 59 minutes until my computer battery goes dead (according to it), I wonder if it'll last the rest of the flight. There's probably someway of slowing the system events loop so that my keyboard and mouse movements are monitored at a slower rate.

When I get to my hotel, I'll see what I can do to post this.

Countdown has begun

I'm starting to do the countdown thing. I have 8 days left. Tomorrow (and the rest of the weekend), I need to get off my lazy ass and get some clothes for this thing (plain white shirt, simple pants, large coat made from natural fibers, etc). David (the person who runs the school) called me back today and confirmed that they got my airplane time and my "accomodations" will be ready. In an odd way, I'm looking forward to the complimentary breakfasts...I almost never get to eat that during the week when I'm working. Maybe they'll have cranberry nut muffins. That would kick all kinds of ass!

J. out

--I just had a HUGE post here, but F*'d up and erased it :() -- this is what I can remember from it--

Only two weeks left until I head off to school :) I'm starting to talk more about it, and seriously think that I might want to do this as a career -- working my way towards feature roles, not just doubling for folks. I think it would be that cool "what I wanted to do as a kid" thing. For most guys, it would be the equivalent of being a firefighter or something of that nature. Heat's never appealed to me --which is one reason I don't cook much :D

My last Second City class performed yesterday and did a wonderful job. This term was my first time taking on three performance level classes at a single time (I've taught three classes at a time before, but not all had an 'end of term' show). I'm happy (and a bit gloating) to say that ALL three of my classes had good shows this term.

This site just moved from blogspot.com to tripod so that I can post pictures, like these from yesterday:
Emily and I
Mark and I

Hopefully, more will be coming soon, as I just purchased a Nikon Coolpix 2500. Which means that I've just started using iPhoto, as well. Maybe I'm jaded by understanding computers and such, but that app is TOO simplified for me (and the red-eye reduction is HORRID). I need my GIMP.

The links section on this page is going to be updated soon (today - maybe)!