Man About Town

Star Wars AT-AT walker model that can walk

2011-10-23T17:27:00.000-07:00

It's a Youtube video by a Brazilian scale model maker. It looks like he took a Star Wars scale plastic model kit and motorized it so it can walk in a realistic fashion reminiscent of the awesome Empire Strikes Back scene when the AT-T walker and its two-legged counterpart, AT-ST, starts to attack the Rebel stronghold on the icy planet of Hoth.

http://youtu.be/ti6OQO0SqTc

Enjoy!

Steve Jobs RIP 2011

2011-10-05T18:34:00.000-07:00

(credit: Apple)

First Image of Henry Cavill as Superman in ‘Man of Steel’

2011-08-06T06:48:00.001-07:00

Looks cool. Click the picture to see a larger version. Nice detail. I still like Brandon Routh. He was the spitting image of Christopher Reeves. Henry looks a bit more stocky and his face is a bit too squarish. Where's the famous hair swirl? The cape looks really long in the photo.

This is Zack Snyder's reboot. He did "300" which was based on Frank Miller's comic book about the Spartan defense against the Persians. Snyder also directed "Watchmen," which is a classic graphic novel written by Alan Moore. It was very faithful to the comic book in the visuals and the characters' look. "Sucker Punch" was a horrible movie. Very odd it was that bad.

Here's another shot from Warner Bros. website for Dark Knight Rises

2011-08-06T05:20:00.001-07:00

Total Recall Remake? Yes, Indeed

2011-08-06T05:11:00.000-07:00

JESSICA BIEL und COLIN FARRELL drehen "Total Racall" in Toronto - July 25, 2011: Jessica Biel on the set of the new movie "Total Recall". Credit: O'Neill/White/INFphoto.com Ref: infcato-05/06|sp|NO CANADA.

Check out the photo set of Jessica Biel and Colin Farrell in a futuristic vehicle.
It has some sort of nozzles for thrust.

Anne Hathaway, as Catwoman, rides the Bat cycle

2011-08-06T05:06:00.000-07:00

August 5, 2011: Anne Hathaway, as Catwoman, rides a futuristic motorcycle on the set of the new Batman movie "The Dark Knight Rises" in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Credit: Chris Watts/INFphoto.com Ref: infuspa-06.

Check out the photo set. I don't see any wires so I can't figure out how the bat cycle is moving. Another website says it's a stunt double on the bat bike:

http://www.superherohype.com/news/articles/168125-catwoman-stunt-double-on-the-dark-knight-rises-set

Dark Knight Rises - the new Catwoman

2011-08-06T05:03:00.001-07:00

Anne Hathaway in Dark Knight Rises

Cosmonaut Crashed Into Earth 'Crying In Rage'

2011-03-21T18:20:00.000-07:00

It's a tragic story of loyalty, friendship, and fatalism. It's a true story of a Russian Cosmonaut who flew a doomed mission and died while his spaceship crashed back to earth. Read it for yourself. It's an amazing story. There's even a sound clip of his last words as his spaceship starts to burn up.

by Robert Krulwich

So there's a cosmonaut up in space, circling the globe, convinced he will never make it back to Earth; he's on the phone with Alexei Kosygin — then a high official of the Soviet Union — who is crying because he, too, thinks the cosmonaut will die.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/03/21/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage

3D Street Artist - Kurt Wenner

2011-03-10T16:01:00.000-08:00

Kurt Wenner is an amazing artist with a speciality in 3D street art.
Kurt has figured out the mathematics so if you stand at a specific vantage point, his street art appears as three dimensional. In the photo above, he's working on the artwork to the left, and there's a lovely model posing on a 2D "sofa." Pretty amazing. Click on the picture to enlarge.

For more pictures and info, go over to Kurt's website:
http://www.kurtwenner.com/

Captain America movie poster

2011-02-04T22:00:00.001-08:00

Chris Evans plays the iconic Captain America in Captain America: The First Avenger.
There's a blog with some pictures and on-set video clips:

http://captain-america--trailer.blogspot.com/

Guess All The Gracies In This Photo

2010-09-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

Rose Gracie named all the members of the Gracie clan in this family photo.

1. charles( robson's son)

2. robson

3. raulci( robson's deceased wife )

4. jj machado

5. reyson

6. my grandma margarita ( rickson, relson and my dad's mom)

7. johnnie machado

8. my grandpa helio

9. rigan machado

10. grandpa carlos

11. ryan

12. rilion

13. grandma lair (carlinho's , rilian , reila etc' s mom and machado's aunt )

14. caroline (carlinho's daughter )

15. carlinhos

16. rickson

17. kim

18. roger machado

19. royler

20. renzo

21. kenya (renzo's sister daughter of robson and raulci)

22. Kyra

23. giovanna ( daniel's sister)

24. paula (crolin's ex wife )

25. franc (robson's daughter , charle's and renzo's sister)

26. karina (daniel's sister)

27. crolin

28. flavia( renzo's sister, kyra's mom)

29. reila

30. Carlinhos (reyson's son)

31. Lyra

32. Kyvia

33. I think its roger but i am not 100% sure

34. Ronis (carla's son)

35. Carla (carlinhos sister, crolin's sister )

Amazing 3D pictures using an old 3D camera

2010-08-18T20:18:00.000-07:00

NIMSLO 3D camera took this picture (too bad it's static here but it's an animated gif probably) and more at this site. Check out the site and watch a number of amazing 3D pictures.

Stop Doing Sit-Ups: Why Crunches Don't Work

2010-07-31T19:53:00.000-07:00

What? I recall my gym teachers and fitness magazines claiming that the traditional sit-ups are not as efficient as crunches. Now, we're getting another take on exercising the abs. An interesting point is from the article is that crunches and similar movements actually wear out the discs in the spine. They only have a certain lifespan and the more repetitive stress they are placed under, the more damage will add up.

From Newsweek magazine:
http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/the-human-condition/2009/06/03/stop-doing-sit-ups-why-crunches-don-t-work.html

by Kate Dailey June 03, 2009

Everyone knows that the road to flat, tight abs is paved with crunches. Lots and lots and lots of excruciating crunches. Or is it?As it turns out, the exercises synonymous with strong, attractive abs may not be the best way to train your core—and may be doing damage to your back. “We stopped teaching people to do crunches a long, long time ago,” says Dr. Richard Guyer, president of the Texas Back Institute. That’s because the “full flex” movement—the actual “crunch” part of crunches – puts an unhealthy strain on your back at its weakest point. The section with the most nerves (and most potential for nerve damage) is in the back of the spine, which is the very part that bends and strains during a sit-up.“There are only so many bends or a ‘fatigue life’,” in your spinal disks,” says Stuart M. McGill, a professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo. Inside each disk is a mucus-like nucleus, he says, and “if you keep flexing your spine and bending the disk over and over again, that nucleus slowly breaches the layers and causes a disk bulge, or a disk herniation.” A herniated disk won’t show through your swimsuit, but it’s no fun, and can cause persistent back and leg pain, weakness, and tingling.Think of the oft-repeated advice for movers: bend at the hips and lift with your legs, not your back. And what is a sit-up but a back bend done in a lying position? “When people are doing curl up over gym balls and sit-ups, and this kind of thing, they are replicating a very potent injury mechanism on their back,” says McGill. “Every time they bend it they are one repetition closer to damaging the disk.”And of course, when people do crunches, they rarely stop at one or two: in the quest for flat abs, they’ll churn out dozens at a time, bringing them ever closer to “flex intolerance”—so much pain and stiffness that it’s difficult to tie one’s shoes or bend down to pick a penny off the ground.But who cares about back health as bathing suit season approaches? Turns out, crunches might not be the best solution for a flat stomach, either. That’s because doing too many sit-ups at the expense of other, more comprehensive movements can lead to the dreaded “aerobic abs.” That’s the term celebrity trainer Steve Maresca coined to describe the distended stomachs of those who focus only on the rectus abdominus muscles targeted by sit-ups and crunches. “They look great from the front, but when they turn to the side, their stomachs are extended,” he says. To get the long, lean look, one needs to work transverse abdominius, a large muscle that holds in those rectus abs, and is mainly unchallenged by traditional ab work (aka, the sit-up and crunches).Doing a sit-up doesn’t train your ab muscles to do the job for which they were designed – keeping your spine straight and secure and providing power for your movements. In everyday life, “the abdominals are braces,” says McGill, author of "Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance" (Stuart McGill, 2004). When doing any athletic movement—even opening a door—“the spine is in a neutral posture, not flexed, and the abdominal muscles are contracted to brace the spine.” The best way—for both your back and your beach body—to work your midsection is to do movements that challenge the muscles to perform the way they're designed and expected to work in real life, and not to train muscles in isolation. “It’s important to have strong abs, but strong abdominals are not the only thing,” says Dr. Guyer. “You have your back extenders, your flexors, which are belly muscles, you have your oblique muscles.” Working all of these muscle groups—the anatomical association known as “the core”—is essential to both back health and general athleticism.As a result, only training for good-looking abs won’t add to your athleticism or overall strength. On the other hand, moves not traditionally designed for good-looking abs can in fact help strengthen and tone those muscles.Consider the pushup. Not usually thought of as a great ab move, the pushup forces you to work several muscles at once: it forces your core muscles to stabilize your trunk as your arms and back work to move the body up and down. “Do you see how a pushup is a full body challenge?” says McGill. “It challenges abdominals, front of your legs, your arms and your back. That is how you use those muscles in real life.”Like the pushup, the best exercises for back health and a firmer stomach are ones that work your abs while holding your spine straight, like planks or leg drops (done when you lie flat on your back, with your hands at the base of your spine for added support. Raise your legs up at a 90 degree angle, then slowly lower until they’re only inches from the ground. Repeat until your stomach burns and you want to throw up). And because your core is the center of power for most other exercises, a long workout full of dynamic movements targeting legs, arms and back also translates to a good core workout. (For more examples of effective ab exercises, visit McGill’s site, backfitpro.com.) Of course, it won’t matter how muscular your torso is if your body fat is too high. The best way to build strong, visible abs isn’t through repeated sit-ups, but by engaging in circuit training that has you working your entire core while you’re burning calories – and to keep yourself disciplined during meals. “If you want to burn your fat mass, make sure you have a combination of weight training and cardiovascular, but 90 percent of good abs is your nutrition,” says Maresca. However, he does offer a quick tip for those of us with a weakness for caloric food: standing up straight and pulling back your shoulders will instantly tighten your transverse abdominal muscle, making you look a little leaner. It’s not quite as impressive as showcasing a well-developed core via 10 percent body fat, but it does leave a lot more time and flexibility for hitting up happy hour.

Fedor Emelianenko vs. Fabricio Werdum

2010-06-27T09:01:00.000-07:00

Fedor, the MMA fighter nicknamed as the "Greatest MMA fighter" was defeated by Fabricio Werdum last night on the fighting event Strikeforce on Showtime on Staurday June 26th, 2010.

It was classic Fedor with his striking style of relying on flurries to overwhelm his opponent. Fedor appeared to have gained the upperhand and everything was going according to plan when Werdum appeared to have been knocked down. Fedor pounced on Werdum except he dropped right into Werdum's guard. Fedor tried to pass the guard but Werdum pivoted on his back to regain the guard. Werdum took the opening and slapped on the triangle and eventually was able to trap Fedor in the triangle while applying an armbar. Fedor eventually gave up his struggle to escape and wound up tapping on Werdum's hip with his free hand.

It was a huge upset. Dana White of the Ultimate Fighting Championship had been negotiating with Fedor and his camp with no luck. With Fedor's loss, his stock will definitely take a hit and Dana White is probably walking around with a huge grin on his face with Fedor's defeat.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/news?slug=dm-fedorfallout062710 has an article about
the fight and Fedor's comments about the fight.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/blog/cagewriter/post/Werdum-pulls-shocker-of-all-shockers-on-Fedor?urn=mma,251613 has another article and take on the fight.

Iron Man Suit - CGI or wearable?

2010-05-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

From Iron Man 2

Is Robert Downey Jr. wearing a real prop suit or was the suit digitally added?

Interesting article from Wired.com including the dimensions of Iron Man:

"Secrets of Iron Man’s New Suits"

I saw Iron Man and Iron Man 2 movies. There were shots which appeared to have been actual suits pieces worn by the actors depending on the shot. But I was surprised according to the special effects designers that they were pleasantly surprised that they could actually create wearable armored suits for the movies.

It looks like the red spandex had digitally armor added.

Here's an article by one of the creators Clark Schaffer.

Here's a video clip from G4:

Making Iron Man's Suits: Stan Winston Studios

Alex Chilton of Box Top and Big Star fame passes away

2010-03-21T16:50:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia:

Chilton was taken to the hospital in New Orleans on March 17, 2010, complaining of health problems, and died the same day of a heart attack.[3] He is survived by his wife, Laura, son, Timothy, and sister, Cynthia.[1][4] He had been scheduled to play a concert with Big Star at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas on March 20; the show will now take place as a tribute to Chilton, with guests joining the surviving members of the band.[

Here's a great tribute song by The Replacements entitled "Alex Chilton." RIP.

It's a nice live version by Paul Westerburg of The Replacements. He doesn't sing the original lyrics or all of it.

Humans Are Built For Distance

2009-10-28T18:11:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting article about something rather interesting.
Did you know the human buttocks primarily comes into play during
running?

From NYT.com:

Well
The Human Body Is Built for Distance
Luis Escobar

Running Voices The conventional wisdom is that distance running leads to debilitating wear and tear, especially on the joints. But that hasn’t stopped runners from flocking to starting lines in record numbers.

Last year in the United States, 425,000 marathoners crossed the finish line, an increase of 20 percent from the beginning of the decade, Running USA says. Next week about 40,000 people will take part in the New York City Marathon. Injury rates have also climbed, with some studies reporting that 90 percent of those who train for the 26.2-mile race sustain injuries in the process.

But now a best-selling book has reframed the debate about the wisdom of distance running. In “Born to Run” (Knopf), Christopher McDougall, an avid runner who had been vexed by injuries, explores the world of the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico, a tribe known for running extraordinary distances in nothing but thin-soled sandals.

Mr. McDougall makes the case that running isn’t inherently risky. Instead, he argues that the commercialization of urban marathons encourages overzealous training, while the promotion of high-tech shoes has led to poor running form and a rash of injuries.

“The sense of distance running being crazy is something new to late-20th-century America,” Mr. McDougall told me. “It’s only recently that running has become associated with pain and injury.”

The scientific evidence supports the notion that humans evolved to be runners. In a 2007 paper in the journal Sports Medicine, Daniel E. Lieberman, a Harvard evolutionary biologist, and Dennis M. Bramble, a biologist at the University of Utah, wrote that several characteristics unique to humans suggested endurance running played an important role in our evolution.

Most mammals can sprint faster than humans — having four legs gives them the advantage. But when it comes to long distances, humans can outrun almost any animal. Because we cool by sweating rather than panting, we can stay cool at speeds and distances that would overheat other animals. On a hot day, the two scientists wrote, a human could even outrun a horse in a 26.2-mile marathon.

Why would evolution favor the distance runner? The prevailing theory is that endurance running allowed primitive humans to incorporate meat into their diet. They may have watched the sky for scavenging birds and then run long distances to reach a fresh kill and steal the meat from whatever animal was there first.

Other research suggests that before the development of slingshots or bows, early hunters engaged in persistence hunting, chasing an animal for hours until it overheated, making it easy to kill at close range. A 2006 report in the journal Current Anthropology documents persistence hunting among modern hunter-gatherers, including the Bushmen in Africa.

“Ancient humans exploited the fact that humans are good runners in the heat,” Dr. Bramble said. “We have such a great cooling system” — many sweat glands, little body hair.

There is other evidence that evolution favored endurance running. A study in The Journal of Experimental Biology last February showed that the short toes of the human foot allowed for more efficient running, compared with longer-toed animals. Increasing toe length as little as 20 percent doubles the mechanical work of the foot. Even the fact that the big toe is straight, rather than to the side, suggests that our feet evolved for running.

“The big toe is lined up with the rest, not divergent, the way you see with apes and our closest nonrunning relatives,” Dr. Bramble said. “It’s the main push-off in running: the last thing to leave the ground is that big toe.”

Springlike ligaments and tendons in the feet and legs are crucial for running. (Our close relatives the chimpanzee and the ape don’t have them.) A narrow waist and a midsection that can turn allow us to swing our arms and prevent us from zigzagging on the trail. Humans also have a far more developed sense of balance, an advantage that keeps the head stable as we run. And most humans can store about 20 miles’ worth of glycogen in their muscles.

And the gluteus maximus, the largest muscle in the human body, is primarily engaged only during running. “Your butt is a running muscle; you barely use it when you walk,” Dr. Lieberman said. “There are so many features in our bodies from our heads to our toes that make us good at running.”

So if we’re born to run, why are runners so often injured? A combination of factors is likely to play a role, experts say. Exercise early in life can affect the development of tendons and muscles, but many people don’t start running until adulthood, so their bodies may not be as well developed for distance. Running on only artificial surfaces and in high-tech shoes can change the biomechanics of running, increasing the risks of injury.

What’s the solution? Slower, easier training over a long period would most likely help; so would brief walk breaks, which mimic the behavior of the persistence hunter. And running on a variety of surfaces and in simpler shoes with less cushioning can restore natural running form.

Mr. McDougall says that while researching his book, he corrected his form and stopped using thickly cushioned shoes. He has run without injury for three years.

Join the discussion at nytimes.com/well.

Jennifer Connelly took up Mixed Martial Arts?!

2009-09-26T17:18:00.000-07:00

Apparently she did according to this appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel show.

It's on Youtube as well. Here's the clip:

Audi R8 - 2008

2009-09-14T17:39:00.000-07:00

Audi's first midengine sports car debuts as a 2008 model. The R8 is an all-wheel-drive two-seat coupe with a mid-mounted 420-horsepower V8. Two transmissions are offered: a six-speed manual or Audi's R tronic, which is a sequential manual transmission. The R tronic can be set to automatic mode, or a faster-shifting sport mode which allows the driver to shift via a console joystick or steering wheel-mounted paddles. http://consumerguideauto.howstuffworks.com/first-look-2008-audi-r8.htm

Helicopter Girl aka Jackie Joyce

2009-09-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

Helicopter Girl is the stage name of Jackie Joyce, a musician from Perth, Scotland. Her first album was 2000's How to Steal the World, which was nominated for a Mercury Music Prize. Joyce then took an extended break from the business before writing and recording her second album, Voodoo Chic which featured the single "Angel City" and was released in 2004.

I nicked the above from a Wikipedia entry. "Angel City" was a big hit for her but I guess I was living under a rock. Enjoy.

I enjoy the retro vibe. The iconography used throughout the video references the style used on so many Jazz, Blues, R&B LPs. It became and hasbecome a cliche. The video obviously uses iconography from Blue Notes records. You can see Helicopter Girl with a flower in her hair which references Billie Holiday.

"The Gracies and the Birth of Vale Tudo" documentary

2009-08-14T02:13:00.000-07:00

Filmmaker Victor Cesar Bota was fascinated by a family that adapted a very primitive style of living to achieve a high lifestyle. In the United States, he discovered most people thought Mixed Martial Arts was brand new, when actually it had existed in Brazil for more than 70 years and during all of that time was almost completely dominated by a single family, the Gracies.

http://www.thegracies.com/main-english

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1179035/ has some info and a poster's review of the documentary. Should be great. Release date 2009.

Here's 3 clips of the documentary from Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/user/graciesthefilm

Citroën Brings GT From PlayStation to Pavement

2009-07-16T18:59:00.001-07:00

Citroën has confirmed that it will build an extremely low-volume production version of the GT originally created for the PlayStation 3 racing sim Gran Turismo 5.

Check it out on Youtube:

Fiver Fingers? Interesting footwear

2009-07-04T02:27:00.001-07:00

This caught my eye naturally and it looks kind of cool. It's footwear where your toes are separated individually by the shoe. courtesy of core77

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/five_fingers_shoe_3842.asp

There's more styles than the one shown above. Check out their website for more if you're interested. http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/

Hokusai T-shirts from Uniqlo

2009-07-04T01:41:00.000-07:00

Now who is Hokusai? He's famous for this iconic art work.

"The Great Wave off Kanagawa" print

In his time, Hokusai was Japan's leading expert on painting. Hokusai is best-known as author of the woodblock print series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji “(c. 1831)which includes the iconic and internationally recognised print, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa”, created during the 1820s. Hokusai Manga became the catalyst for ‘Japonism’ when it was introduced to the west and became a source of inspiration for leading European Impressionists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet.

Uniqlo, a japanese clothing retailer, has come up with t-shirts with his artwork.

One example is the tengu (forest goblin holding a samurai sword) on the front and a monkey on the back of the t shirt.

http://ut.uniqlo.com/hokusai is the Japanese language website which displays some of the t shirt prints. On the bottom of the web page, there's an icon which is actually a link to Unsodo.

http://www.hanga.co.jp/ Unsodo makes wood prints and they available for sales wood prints like Hokusai's "Great Wave."

http://www.uniqlo.co.uk/catalogue/men/ut-t-shirt/234294-black-katsushika-hokusai-t-shirt

It's too bad it's available in xs if you want to buy it online.

I found this picture which someone apparently bought of a print of a dragon. Here's his website:
http://textfiend.net/zerohero/?p=1015

He's in Singapore and apparently there's another guy in Singapore who's named Alvin and he has an intersting blog, Alvinology which has pictures he took of how the store looks like.

http://alvinology.wordpress.com/category/events/page/3/

Telsa Motors Sedan

2009-07-03T10:26:00.001-07:00

Tesla Motors has been troubled by cash and management issues, but they are the only American auto maker with an electric car as beautiful as this. Fisker was brought in to design the body and they was some controversy over Fisker coming out with his own electric car.

Base price at around $50,000? If I had money to burn, I wouldn't mind owning this beauty.

http://www.teslamotors.com/models/index.php

Google Voice

2009-06-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

Google just keeps rolling out services left and right. And it's all free at that. Is it a good thing? What is Google Voice? In a nutshell, it's a virtual telephone number that can be forwarded to your cell phone, business phone, second cell phone, etc. based on rules such as business calls go to your business phone while your family and friends have their calls sent to your personal cell phone or spammers blocked.

As usual Google has copied the Apple approach to explaining their products/services -- simple and straightforward with a video clip.

Here's an article:

Google Voice ramps up but no word yet on number portability
Google begins inviting users to try Google VoiceBy Google Subnet on Thu, 06/25/09 - 5:53pm.

Google is a sneeze away from launching its anticipated Google Voice service beyond the customers it inherited when it acquired GrandCentral in 2007. Invitations are being sent to users who requested them starting today, the Official Google Blog announced. But the one big question on everyone's mind is when will it offer number portability? No word yet on that.
Google Voice is a service that allows you to link all of your phones to a single number, even offering voicemail integrated with e-mail. Best of all, its free. (See video below.) Those lucky enough to be using Google voice already rave about it, although it still has one limitation -- you can only use it to send incoming calls from Google Voice to other numbers. You can't yet take your existing number and move it to Google Voice. So to use it today, you need change your phone number. Google recently snagged 1 million new phone numbers from its provider, Level 3 in anticipation of rolling out these invites today. So, the question is, with invites rolling, when with number portability kick in? The Google Voice feature page doesn't name portability as an option yet.

But, reports TechCrunch, Google is working on it and will be offering number portability when the service goes live in a bigger way later this year. However, the features page does an amazing, perhaps all, of the features you would expect for a paid VoiP service like tons of call management options. Plus it offers voice to text transcription for voicemail and voicemail screening -- a feature that was lost when answering machines of ages past were replaced by voicemail. (See video.)

Students of World BJJ champion Braulio Estima, The Carmody Brothers

2009-06-06T22:20:00.000-07:00

There's something really impressive about these two Irish brothers where their love of Jiu-Jitsu brings them to Brazil to learn from the source. It's definitely interesting seeing them drill techniques. There's something very earnest about their pursuit of what they love.

Donal and Paddy, the Carmody Bros are two Brazilian Jiu-jitsu pioneers in their town Tralee, located in Kerry, Ireland. Traveling around the World in search of good BJJ sources, these two Irish practitioners developed a system of documenting the technical knowledge they attain, meticulously logging information in their system of organization and printing it out into bound books. Training in Brazil for four months, the brothers were caught by InTheGuard's Dennis Asche for an interview where they shared their experiences and the way they develop their BJJ with this system of traveling and learning.

New Star Trek movie is great

2009-05-09T23:46:00.000-07:00

I saw the film and thought it was great. The pacing was the typical non-stop action editing style that's so indicative of films that has its predecessors in films like "Die Hard." The creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, was writing morality plays but set in the future.

It's a film that's typical of the film industry's reboot trend of various "franchises" and Star Trek got the reboot treatment and like Batman, J.J. Abrams has done an admirable job of reinterpreting Star Trek for the times. Unfortunately, in his interviews, he never acknowledges Star Trek films but only refers to the TV series. Revenge is the motivation for the film and it seems as if Abrams lifted that theme from "The Wrath of Khan," which I believe was the best Star Trek film. It referenced one of Star Trek's tv episodes and uses it as the basis for a movie and it's brilliant. You would expect that Captain Kirk's vanquishing of so many villians would come back and haunt him one day and it does. A fifty-ish Kirk finds out that he had a son who's now an adult. Again, "Khan" references one of Kirk's propensity for being a ladies' man. Well, what happens if he does gets someone knocked up and finds out years later, one of his old flames has his son? Except Kirk doesn't know.

Now, what about the movie? Oh, right. The screenwriters and Abrams don't do a prequel like Lucas did with his Star Wars series while faithfully trying to keep the timeline logic consistent. Abrams uses the prequel convention to investigate what was Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhuru, Scotty, and Sulu were like when they were younger? Abrams doesn't stick to strict timeline or Star Trek's fictional history. He doesn't just use the reboot concept of ignoring prior film precedessors to clean the slate. He actually postulates an alternate universe where Kirk doesn't follow his father into Star Fleet but using the stereotypical reluctant hero model, a young Kirk is aimless albeit highly intelligent and winds up accepting the challenge presented to him. He goes on a great adventure when he's called into action. Abrams and screenwriters take a convention used in the TV series of alternate time line/reality and uses it to ignore parts of Star Trek history to present a rather conventional hackneyed hero iconography that was used in "Die Hard," which Abrams I think referenced in a tv interview.

That's a shame. Why not have a Kirk who has an accomplished father in Star Fleet and has to perhaps feel he has to equal or surpass his father's accomplishments? That could of been the motivation for his rebelliousness and lack of interest in following his father's footsteps. How's this? His father dies faithfully carrying out his duty exactly like the way Abrams presents Kirk's dad's demise in his reboot. That motivates him to enter Star Fleet to perhaps to avenge his father's death or it allows him to understand how his father was killed.

There's so much to mine since Star Trek had some great episodes written by rather prominent writers. Star Trek also had not only interesting characters but how contrasting personalities can be great friends such as Captain Kirk and his faithful First Officer, Mr Spock. I found it interesting how the actors chose to channel or how close they were interested in impersonating the original characters. Kirk? Chris Pine doesn't try to imitate Shatner's quirks. Spock? McCoy? Scotty? The actors were rather faithful in trying to recreate a younger version of the original cast which is rather interesting and fun to watch.

Dave Itzkoff has an interesting analysis of the themes and comparisons of the times that the TV series was surrounded by (e.g. Kennedy & Dr. King's assassination, Vietnam War) and how Abrams version perhaps reflect our last decade with the great defining event of 9/11.

The Two Sides of ‘Star Trek’
By DAVE ITZKOFF
Published: May 9, 2009

Then there's the ship. The Enterprise.

Click on the picture to see it in all its glory. It's cool seeing it being built like a ship in a shipyard ready to set sail to explore The Final Frontier.

Black and White Statue of Batman by David Mazzucchelli

2009-05-09T23:18:00.000-07:00

Available Sept 2009 from DC Direct.

BASED ON THE ART OF DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI; SCULPTED BY JIM McPHERSON

Appearing in black and white, it's the Caped Crusader as he is seen in one of the most influential Batman stories of all time, BATMAN: YEAR ONE!

This pose, designed by David Mazzucchelli, was used in one of the original promotional images for the book, and the artist himself was consulted for the production of this statue.

The statue measures approximately 7.75" high x 4.5" wide x 2.75" deep, is painted in monochromatic tones, features a Bat-logo-shaped base and is packaged in a black and white box.

$ 80.00 US On Sale September 2, 2009

M-1 Challenge - Fedor vs Aoki (Exhibition Fight)

2009-05-04T19:21:00.000-07:00

Exhibition match between one of the most fearsome heavyweight MMA fighter, Fedor Emelianenko vs. Aoki Shinya, one of MMA's great lightweight.

Triangle from the Inverted Guard by Roleta

2009-04-29T19:21:00.000-07:00

video platform
video management
video solutions
free video player

Roberto Roleta Magalhaes - Creator of the Inverted guard, Gracie (Barra) Jiu Jitsu Black Belt.

Star Wars - Japanese gashapon from F-Toys

2009-04-25T00:06:00.000-07:00

F-Toys make some interesting collectibles. They're on to volume 2 of a set of Star Wars vehicles such as the AT-AT transport walker in The Empire Strikes Back film. It's pretty cool looking and the sculpting is really detailed and accurate.

http://www.f-toys.net/index.php?m=fproduct&t=detaile&product_id=24

From:
http://www.f-toys.net/

Want to get your own set? Google and you should see them being sold on Ebay.

Bionic Penguin from FESTO

2009-04-24T23:44:00.000-07:00

This is a really interesting robot created by engineers from FESTO, a German firm. The movement of an artificial robotic penguin is amazing. It uses a sonar system to prevent crashing into things and can swim in a group. There's also a flying blimp version. Pretty cool.

Helio Gracie passes away

2009-01-29T18:30:00.000-08:00

Jan 29th, 2009, Helio Gracie, one of the founders of Gracie or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu passed away.

I just think highly of what he had to say:

“I created a flag from the sport’s dignity. I oversee the name of my family with affection and nerves of blood."

Master Helio Gracie has passed away

The Master at his ranch, in Itaipava / Photo: Gustavo Aragao

Jiu-Jitsu loses its icon

It is with great sadness that GRACIEMAG.com announces the passing of Grandmaster Helio Gracie. At 95 years of age, the great icon and one of those most responsible for Jiu-Jitsu’s success in Brazil and the world died this morning, at Beneficencia Portuguesa Hospital, in Petropolis, mountain region of Rio de Janeiro.

“I created a flag from the sport’s dignity. I oversee the name of my family with affection and nerves of blood,” said the Professor, as his last worlds (sic).

The Master will be buried this Thursday afternoon, at 5 pm, at the Chapel of the Petropolis municipal cemetery.

Helio Gracie’s last public appearance occurred in December of last year, during a belt-promotion ceremony held by Gracie Humaita at the Guanabara Yacht Club.

In October, Helio Gracie celebrated his 95th birthday at the Gracie Humaita academy, in Rio de Janeiro. Click here to see how the party went.

In one of his most famous interviews, published in the special 100th issue of GRACIEMAG, the professor had declared: “I’ve already told my sons that when I die I want there to be a party. No drinking, no debauchery.”

All workers at Gracie Publishing, the company responsible for GRACIEMAG, NOCAUTE and GRACIEMAG.com are in mourning and express their condolences and sadness to the bereaved family, his wife Vera, sons Rorion, Relson, Rickson, Rolker, Royler, Royce, Rherica, Robin and Ricci.

We will be back with more information shortly.

http://www.graciemag.com/news/144/ARTICLE/13149/2009-01-29.html

Renzo Gracie talks about his fight with BJ Penn

2008-12-13T12:52:00.000-08:00

I found this interesting interview on Youtube where Renzo talks about the background to his fight with BJ Penn which he acknowledged his loss to BJ Penn. As usual, Renzo is rather humorous with his comments and observations. The end is hilarious when John Danaher, a black belt under Renzo, adds that it was a win for Jiu-Jitsu as BJ Penn was a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu prodigy. Renzo adds he won that day but it could of been him as well.

I got it from:
Renzo Gracie talks what went down with B.J. Penn
October 30, 2008 · Filed Under Off the Mat, Renzo Gracie, Video Interviews · Comment
Renzo Gracie and B.J Penn fought to a decision at K-1 World Grand Prix Hawaii. B.J. Penn first trained Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under Renzo’s brother Ralph Gracie in San Francisco.

When Penn left the Ralph’s school in 2005 B.J. called out Renzo’s cousin Rodrigo Gracie.

After taking the decision win, B.J. Penn was influenced by his father to fight Renzo Gracie. Renzo took exception to the fact that it was Penn’s father who made the call and not BJ himself.

Renzo also went on to say that he is not retired and could possibly make a come back at lightweight.

Renzo explains in a mmamania.com exclusive video:

Johnny Marr - The Story of the Guitar - Part Three

2008-12-11T20:48:00.000-08:00

Johnny Marr is interviewed from the BBC series "Story Of the Guitar."
David Gilmour of Pink Floyd fame and the Edge from U2 are interviewed.
But Johnny Marr has a great interview and demonstration of his style of playing.

He plays three of his Smiths songs and demonstrates his famous "How Soon Is Now?" riff with its massive tremelo effect.

Johnny Marr - falling in love with the guitar

2008-12-11T20:25:00.000-08:00

Marr brings out his black Rickenbacker guitar and plays "There Is a Light..."

Billy Bragg and Badly Drawn Boy performing "Walk Away Renee" live

2008-12-11T20:18:00.000-08:00

Awesome song originally done on acoustic guitar by Johnny Marr. Story goes that Marr was fiddling around with the old song "Walk Away Renee" and it was recorded. Billy Bragg then wrote "spoken words" and it's a great song. Enjoy.

Here's the lyrics:

She said it was just a figment of speech
And I said "You mean figureAnd she said "No, figment
Because she could never imagine it happening. But it did

When we first met I played the Shy boy
When she spoke to me for the first time my nose began to bleed
She guessed the rest

The next day we went on a bus ride to the ferry
And when nobody came to collect our fares
Well I knew then this was something special
I couldn't stop thinking about her
And every time I switched on the radio
There was somebody else singing a song about the two of us

It was just like being on a fast ride at the fun fair
The sort you want to get off because its scary
And then as soon as you're off you want get straight back on again
But all love is strange
And you have to learn to take the crunchy with the smooth I suppose

She began going out with Mr. Potato Head
It was when I saw her in he car park
With his coat around her shoulders that I realized
I went home and thought about the two of them together
Until the bathwater went cold around me
I thought about her eyes and the curve of her breasts
And about the point where their bodies met

I confronted her about it
I said, "I'm the most illegible bachelor in townAnd she said "Yeah that's why I
could never understand any of those silly letters you sent me
And then one day it happened
She cut her hair and I stopped loving her

2008-10-31T20:34:00.000-07:00

This is from The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/01/studs-terkel-dies-author-broadcaster

Studs Terkel, voice of America's uncelebrated, dies aged 96
• Pulitzer prize-winner told stories of the working class
• Death follows fall at his home two weeks ago

Ben Quinn The Guardian, Saturday November 1 2008 Article history

Studs Terkel, the Pulitzer prize-winning author, broadcaster and master chronicler of American life in the 20th century, died last night. He was 96.

Celebrated for his streetwise portrayals of the American working class, Terkel was best known for letting the common people he called "the uncelebrated" tell their stories in books like Working and The Good War.

To generations of radio listeners he was also the voice of The Studs Terkel Show, which ran for 43 years and was widely syndicated across the US.

The cause of death was not announced, but in recent years Terkel had been beset by various ailments and his health took a turn for the worse two weeks ago when he suffered a fall in his home. At his bedside was a copy of his latest book, PS: Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening, scheduled for release this month.

Born Louis Terkel, he was a native New Yorker who moved to Chicago as a child and came to personify his adopted town.

He won the Pulitzer prize in 1985 for his nonfiction work The Good War: an Oral History of World War II, one of a dozen best-selling books he wrote.

His first work was a little known book, Giants of Jazz, published in 1957, but he earned his fame with Division Street: America, compiled from interviews with Chicagoans from all walks of life. Using their own words, it told the stories, of businessmen, prostitutes and ordinary working people.

It was a theme that Terkel would explore again and again, in Hard Times, his 1970 Depression era memoir; in Working, his saga of ordinary lives in 1974; and in American Dreams: Lost and Found in 1980.

In 1986 he published Chicago, regarded by many as a distillation of much of what he had come to feel for a city that he was closely identified with. Capturing the voices of the city, he quoted ordinary men and women from social activists to police sergeants. His own voice was also present in the book's anecdotes and reminiscences about his family and growing up. Last year he marked his 95th birthday with the publication of The Studs Terkel Reader, My American Century.

"If I did one thing I'm proud of, it's to make people feel that together, they count," he said last year.

In an interview with the Guardian this January, Terkel demonstrated his appetite for provocation was undiminished, wondering aloud of Tony Blair: "Why was he such a house-boy for Bush?"

Writing in his last book, Touch and Go: a Memoir, he told how he had "after a fashion, been celebrated for having celebrated the lives of the uncelebrated among us."

"I took a vacation once - it involved a beach - and to tell you the truth, I had no idea what to do with myself. It was torture. Work is life. Without it, there is no life."

Born in 1912 to Russian Jewish parents, he got the nickname Studs as a young man from the character Studs Lonigan, the protagonist of James T Farrell's trilogy of novels about an Irish-American youth from Chicago's south side.

After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1932, where he studied philosophy and law, early work as a stage actor led to radio acting, disc jockey jobs and radio interview shows. From 1949 to 1952, he was the star of a national TV show, Studs' Place, a programme of improvised stories and songs set in a fictional bar owned by Studs. Some viewers thought it was a real place, and would search for it in Chicago.

In 1939, he married social worker Ida Goldberg, a marriage that lasted 60 years until her death in 1999.

Their son, Dan Terkel, said in a statement last night: "My dad led a long, full, eventful, sometimes tempestuous, but very satisfying life." Describing his father's death as "peaceful, no agony" he added: "This is what he wanted."

Speaking to a reporter last year, Terkel said "My epitaph? My epitaph will be 'Curiosity did not kill this cat.'"

In his own words
"We are the most powerful nation in the world, but we're not the only nation in the world. We are not the only people in the world. We are an important people, the wealthiest, the most powerful and, to a great extent, generous. But we are part of the world."

"We can't make any choices unless we connect the past with the present. The thing that horrifies me is the forgetfulness."

"I'm known around the block as a writer and broadcaster, but also as that old guy who talks to himself."

"We're born eventually to die, of course. But what happens between the time we're born and we die? We're born to live. One is a realist if one hopes."

The Last Good Day Of The Year

2008-08-07T18:42:00.000-07:00

I was watching Jools Holland and his excellent live music show "Later." There was this amazing french horn reminiscent of a classic slow R&B song's riff from Burt Bacharach. The singer's voice wasn't outstanding but like any interesting singer, his deep, resonant voice along with lazy lyrics made me do an Internet search. It was worth it.

The song was actually released in 2000.

You can listen to the song from their myspace site: http://www.myspace.com/cousteaunovascotia

The Last Good Day of the Year

Billy Bragg - The Bard of Bark

2008-07-03T20:23:00.001-07:00

Billy Bragg saw himself as a one-man "Clash." His strong British working-class accent coupled with his percussive electric guitar was all he ever needed to create masterpieces such as "A New England." Perhaps one of my favorite song is "Greetings to the New Brunette."

Here's the Youtube video of the music video.

Check it out:

The beautifully produced track was done by John Porter and the song was included in the album "Talking To The Taxman About Poetry," which has a number of great songs. A surprise collabrator with the credit of "Duane Tremolo" was John Marr of The Smiths.

Here's a live version of "Shirley":

Rickson Gracie in The Incredible Hulk Movie

2008-06-19T20:19:00.000-07:00

I was surprised to read online that Rickson would be in the movie. He plays a small part as a martial arts instructor in Brazil who trains Bruce Banner to control his anger.

You can watch the clip on YouTube.

GSP talks Alves and fitch - training in brazil

2008-06-11T18:27:00.000-07:00

George St. Pierre is in Brazil training in Jiu-Jitsu. He talks about his next opponent.

Kron Gracie's first Black Belt outing at the 2008 Mundials

2008-06-10T18:25:00.000-07:00

Kron Gracie is the younger son of the legendary Rickson Gracie. Here's a YouTube video of Kron being defeated by Sergio Moraes. Kron has long wavy hair and beard. You can see Rickson in the stands looking on. The music is odd but the match is pretty exciting.

Viva La Vida - Coldplay

2008-05-30T22:26:00.000-07:00

I caught this catchy song on the television and found out it was an ad for Coldplay's new album. The song was "Viva La Vida." One poster claimed it was an expression from a Mexican artist who lived in constant pain. It's supposed to mean "Long live life." Another poster claimed Brian Eno produced this album. This song does sound like his handiwork. The lush, ethereal production is definitely Eno.

Here's the awesome video:

The lyrics are excellent. Here it is. Now there's the typical interpretation of the song. Not just the meaning but what Chris Martin the singer actually sang. There's Christian references which is interesting. Apparently it's about a deposed king.

VIVA LA VIDA
I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sweep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own
I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing:
"Now the old king is dead! Long live the king!"
One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of sand, pillars of sand

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can not explain
Once you go there was never,
never an honest word
That was when I ruled the world
(Ohhh)

It was the wicked and wild wind
Blew down the doors to let me in.
Shattered windows and the sound of drums
People could not believe what I'd become
Revolutionaries Wait
For my head on a silver plate
Just a puppet on a lonely string
Oh who would ever want to be king?

I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can not explain
I know Saint Peter won't call my name
Never an honest word
And that was when I ruled the world
(Ohhhhh Ohhh Ohhh)

Hear Jerusalem bells are ringings
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field
For some reason I can not explain
I know Saint Peter will call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world
Oooooh Oooooh Oooooh"

Listen to the song for free courtesy of www.lastfm.com:

Soaring Over the Alps on Homemade Jet Wings

2008-05-16T23:31:00.000-07:00

Simply amazing.

Here's an amazing YouTube video of a pilot, Yves Rossy, by profession, who flies over the swiss alps using strapped-on wings with German jet engines.

Check him flying. It appears he jumps out of a plane then the jet engines kick in and off he goes.

The article is here from wired.com.

2008-04-30T19:57:00.000-07:00

I got this from dailymotion.com. This guy, Cameron, was one lucky fellow to roll with Ricardo De La Riva, one of the great Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu players. He's skinny and he developed a guard position which is now named after him, the "De La Riva Guard."

Duration: 05:41Recorded: 30 April 2008
A short clip of Cameron and professor De La Riva rolling before a seminar. Notice the beautiful guard pass at 3:46. Cameron has an excellent guard and De La Riva passed it like it didn't exist. My roll went the same way.

Cameron and De La Riva Rolling
Uploaded by jordostar4

Mitsuoka Motor's Orochi Zero - A Japanese Supercar?

2008-04-08T16:19:00.000-07:00

Take a look.

This beauty hails from a small Japanese car manufacturer.

Here's the scoop about the manufacturer from Businessweek's article on this quirky firm.

Japan April 7, 2008, 7:31AM EST
In Japan, a Car Apart from the Pack
Mitsuoka Motor isn't a household name even in Japan, but its wacky designs are unmistakable—now it's planning to take its quirky approach global

First unveiled as a concept car at the 2001 Tokyo Motor Show, the Orochi is Mitsuoka's first supercar.
by Hiroko Tashiro and Ian Rowley
Asia

View Slide Show

By conventional measures of success, Mitsuoka Motor isn't in the same league as Japan's biggest car companies. Despite celebrating its 40th birthday in February, it's not a household name in Japan—never mind overseas. It doesn't advertise, and with sales of just 750 cars a year, it relies on earnings from its dealership arm, which sells imported Lamborghinis, Chryslers, and Volkswagens (VLKAY), to fund vehicle development.

Yet when it comes to unusual, daring, and sometimes bizarre designs, Mitsuoka cars stand out from the blur of Toyotas (TM), Nissans (NSANY), and Hondas (HMC) on Japan's roads. Mitsuoka's lineup has everything from compact models resembling vintage British marques to the Orochi, a $100,000-plus "supercar." With its Le Seyde, Mitsuoka built perhaps the most garish car ever sold in Japan (BusinessWeek.com, 4/7/08). "Mitsuokas are unique and I wanted a car no one else had," says Hajime Naito, 60, a photographer whose car collection includes a pimped-out $150,000 Orochi and $29,000 Zero-1—a two-seater roadster inspired by the Caterham Seven, a lightweight British sports car.

Appealing to Young Buyers

Susumu Mitsuoka founded the company in the 1960s in Toyama, 250 miles west of Tokyo, as a car repair center. In 1982, it started making 50cc microcars, which are even smaller than Japan's 660cc minicar (BusinessWeek.com, 11/26/06). And a few years later Mitsuoka was designing its own full-size vehicles, using the chassis and engines from Toyota, Nissan, and Honda. In 1995, the Mitsuoka became the first new carmaker to be officially recognized by the Japanese government since Honda in 1963.

The Orochi, named after an eight-headed serpent, says a lot about Mitsuoka's quirky approach. Launched in 2006, it looks like a supercar but its 3.3-liter V6 engine generates just 233 hp—about half the horsepower of Nissan's GT-R supercar. The Orochi was born after Susumu Mitsuoka's wife challenged him to show something different as a concept car for the 2001 Tokyo Motor Show. Impressed by the designs, Mitsuoka executives put aside concerns over costs and decided to enter production in 2006. Today, if you want to buy an Orochi or its stripped-down $82,000 relative, Orochi Zero, prepare to wait six months for it to be delivered. "We want to provide cars which arouse young people's interest," says Akio Mitsuoka, who took over from his brother, company founder Susumu Mitsuoka, as president in 2004.

The $21,000 Viewt, a scaled-down version of a classic 1960s Jaguar Mk II, was a hit with young women after its launch in 1993. It uses the same engine and chassis found in a Nissan March subcompact, and it inspired copycat models from larger Japanese automakers. Daihatsu's Mira Gino, for example, was first introduced in 1999 and bears a resemblance to the original Mini.

Revving Up for Global Growth

But Mitsuoka hasn't forgotten its roots in 50cc microcars. In November, 2006, it began taking orders for the K-4, a new 50cc engine microcar with a limited production of just 220 vehicles. Weighing less than 400lbs, the $9,100 K-4 measures eight feet long and four feet wide and has a top speed of just under 30 mph. It sold out almost immediately, but Mitsuoka hasn't replaced it with a new model, citing concerns about low margins and tightening fuel emission rules for two-stroke 50cc engines. "Ultimately, I think the trend will be for small and safe cars. We'd like to release new small cars in the future," says Chairman Susumu Mitsuoka.

Mitsuoka does have one thing in common with Japan's giant automakers: It's revving up for global growth. With car sales sluggish, even the most successful automakers find Japan a tough sell (BusinessWeek.com, 3/17/08). At Mitsuoka, sales in 2007 were flat at about $300 million, including revenues from its import dealership business. Mitsuoka doesn't disclose its earnings, although it says it has made a profit every year except 2004, when rising development costs briefly pushed the company into the red.

Emerging Asian and oil-rich Middle Eastern countries could provide welcome sales growth. In 2007, Mitsuoka struck agreements to sell its cars in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates. This year it hopes to ink deals in South Korea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, adding 20 new markets by the end of 2009. President Akio Mitsuoka says that key to the company's success will be the Orochi, which could pave the way for sales of other models. "It's important we have our original car compete in the world market," he says.

Tashiro is a correspondent for BusinessWeek based in Tokyo. Rowley is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Tokyo bureau .

Paris of Troy, in Color

2007-10-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

When you think of Greco-Roman sculpture, white marble comes to mind. But what if the originals were garish in color? There's quite a bit of historical evidence that the Greeks created sculptures with colored eyes using inlays for example. An exhibit at Harvard University's Arthur M. Sackler Museum has an exhibition where their collection is compared with reconstructions informed by new research. Miles Unger has an article about the exhibit and some background info. Read below.

Which do you prefer?

monochromatic Trojan archer (490-480 B.C.), from the Temple
of Aphaia on the Greek island Aegina.

In vivid color.

October 14, 2007
Close Reading

That Classic White Sculpture Once Had a Paint Job

By MILES UNGER

THE 18th-century scholar Johann Winckelmann coined the memorable phrase “noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” to describe the qualities he admired in ancient Greek and Roman statues, which in his time were thought to have been created in gleaming white marble or unadorned bronze. So ingrained was this notion of austere, monochromatic ancient sculpture that it came as a shock when in the 19th century newly unearthed masterpieces showed traces of their original pigment.

The spare, unadorned forms associated with the word classical — and imitated by centuries of artists — were actually an accident of time that obscured their original, often garish coloring and gilded accessories.

One of the signal moments in this rediscovery was the excavation of the Temple of Aphaia on the Greek island Aegina in 1811. Obvious on the pediment sculptures, depicting mythical battle scenes, were traces of red paint used to mimic oozing blood, as well as peg holes that once held the warriors’ bristling arsenal. There’s nothing like a bit of gore to dispel any notion of “quiet grandeur,” or a quiver full of gold-tipped arrows to mock the idea of “noble simplicity.”

The archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann and a team of investigators have subjected numerous ancient statues to a thorough examination, using both chemical analysis and observation under raking and ultraviolet light. This has allowed them to recreate what the works must have looked like when they first emerged from the studio more than 2,000 years ago.

“Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity,” an exhibition at Harvard’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum, displays more than a dozen reconstructions of Greek and Roman sculptures based on their work. Even for those who knew that the ancients tinted their statues, the effect is startling. Placed alongside original works from the Sackler’s collection, these reconstructions seem bright and brassy, vulgar and almost childlike in their high-key color and frilly detail.

The figure of the Trojan archer (about 490-480 B.C.) depicted here came from the Temple of Aphaia and probably represents Paris, son of King Priam of Troy. His abduction of Helen precipitated the Trojan War, and it was Paris who killed Achilles, the greatest of the Greek warriors, by shooting an arrow into his unprotected heel. As an archer who slays his enemies from a distance rather than in hand-to-hand combat, Paris is viewed as something less than heroic.

Travis Charest - Comic Artist Extraordinaire

2007-10-06T22:37:00.001-07:00

Travis Charest worked on Wildcats issues. His artwork is awesome. He works real slow. So slow in fact, his work for DreamShifters isn't out and I forgot when he started it. A few years ago perhaps?

He has his own MSN website. Go on over and check out his artwork here and the Unofficial Travis Charest Art Gallery.

This wallpaper picture can be downloaded from the MSN website. It was I guess a large picture which each character wound up on individual issues.

Here's a really cool picture based on Metal Gear.

Tokyoamusement.com

2007-10-06T21:47:00.000-07:00

I found this interesting Japanese product website Tokyoamusement.com.

If you're a big fan of MMA fighters like Sakuraba, you can get Japanese fight and sports magazines like Numbers or Gong. I don't know why but the photography done by the Japanese is infinitely of a higher order than what you see in typical US publications. Number is a great sports magazine.

This issue is available.

I like this photograph of Sakuraba getting the rear-naked choke from a woman.

The photograph wound up being used for this PRIDE event poster. Unfortunately, it's out of stock. It would be cool to buy it and frame it then have it on your wall.

TOMY I-Sobot - tiny humanoid robot

2007-10-06T21:32:00.000-07:00

TOMY has a new tiny 6.5 inch tall robot. It's programmable and the videos online shows a pretty amazing robot. It's similar looking to its larger counterparts you'll see shown by companies like Honda, etc. But at 6.5 inch and retailing at $299, it's pretty cool. You can buy it pre-order at Amazon.com.

BJ Penn article in FIght Magazine

2007-10-06T21:08:00.001-07:00

I found this magazine in a bookstore magazine rack. It's a slick looking magazine with BJ Penn on the cover. It has a long article about his introduction to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and what's going with him. BJ Penn simply has so much natural potential as a grappler and MMA fighter. He is arguably pound-for-pound the best MMA fighter out there. For more info, shoot over to fightmagazine.com.

Electric Bike

2007-10-06T20:36:00.000-07:00

I was thumbing through a magazine and it had a small article about a plug-in electric motorcycle. It looks pretty cool. If the Prius with its pretty uninspired design can be a big seller then this cool-looking bike can definitely be a seller based on its design looks. There's also a cool Japanese electric motorcycle called SUMO. Check out the video on Youtube.com. The rider sits in a reclining position. It's reminiscent of the red motorcycle from a Japanese cult classic anime/manga AKIRA. The lead character rides a red motorcycle which SUMO seems rather similar in its basic design.

Brammo launches the Enertia, world's first production electric motorcycle

Brammo Launches the Enertia, World’s First Production Electric Motorcycle
Ashland, Oregon - July 10th -– Brammo Motorsports today announced the Enertia, the world’s first production, zero-emissions and battery powered plug-in electric motorcycle.

(http://www.enertiabike.com/ http://press.enertiabike.com/ )
With the goal of creating momentum for change in the way vehicles are conceived and created, Brammo has delivered this groundbreaking motorcycle.

The Enertia’s range of 45 miles significantly exceeds the daily commute for the average U.S. consumer of 29 miles. Battery charge time is 3 hours to full re-charge.

Borrowing from racing technology, the Enertia utilizes a carbon fiber chassis producing an ultra strong, light-weight vehicle platform of just 275 lbs. The chassis integrates six lithium-phosphate batteries from supplier Valence Technology that together produce the power to propel the Enertia to a top speed of over 50 mph.

Paul Seredynski, MSN autos said, “For those looking to make a lifestyle change, or for a cool "green" machine to get around town on, few options exist that can compete on so many levels."
“We believe consumers are eager to adopt vehicles that have a fraction of the carbon footprint of a today’s cars”, says Craig Bramscher, Chairman & CEO of Brammo Motorsports, “Our Enertia electric motorcycle empowers people to make this choice today.”

Brian Wismann, Brammo Director of Design said, “It is extremely satisfying to design a vehicle that people can both feel good about using and appreciate the way it looks.”

Brammo’s Enertia is the first of a line of plug-in electric commuter, commercial and recreational vehicles under development.

About Brammo
Brammo (http://www.brammo.com/) is a premier specialty vehicle manufacturer developing sustainable performance products for the next generation of transportation. Through integration of digital engineering and high impact design, Brammo transforms ideas into compelling products. Located in Ashland, Oregon the company was founded in 2002 and is a privately held.

Michael Golden - Comic Artist Great

2007-09-03T03:05:00.000-07:00

I just got a copy of "Modern Masters Volume 12: Michael Golden (Modern Masters). You can get your copy at amazon.com or from the Publisher TwoMorrows. The book is a bit disjointed in some ways but it's great as it has an extensive interview with Golden and black and white artwork as well as color artwork from different periods of his career.

Here's his wikipedia entry. Michael Golden like all great comic artist is inimitable. His style is instantly recognizable. His attention to detail is evident in his art work. While other comic artist might pay little attention to background details, Golden would appear to obsess over little details. There's something magical about looking at this type of comic art because there's so much detail with such fidelity that you spend time just focusing on and taking those details in. Your brain literally tries to absorb what Golden is portraying frame-by-frame. Unlike a movie, a scene that lasts a second or two might delight the eye with detail and fidelity, you can't pause it in a movie theater because it's not meant to be enjoyed in that way. With the two-dimensional format of comic books, time can stand still as you focus on one frame that catches your eye.

Even though his artwork is highly detailed, he still retains his ability to display expressive movements which is part and parcel of any great comic book artist. It's all about the ability to convey action. He draws characters in slightly unique poses that's not hackneyed. It's a bit hard to explain but if you compare his artwork to some generic comic book art, there's no comparison. Golden has an uncanny ability to meld realism with comic book stylism.

Leinil Francis Yu - comic book artist extraordinaire

2007-08-11T22:55:00.000-07:00

Leinil Francis Yu (born July 1977) is a Filipino comic book artist, who began working for the American market through Wildstorm Productions. This is from Wikipedia's entry on him.

Cover for the trade paper back Superman Birthright.
Written by Mark Waid and drawn by Leinil Francis Yu.

You can read the entry about him. What I want to show off is his art work. He has a website
on DeviantArt. It seems like there's alot of artists and especially comic book artists that have websites on DeviantArt. Check out his gallery of his art work. There's even his pencils prior to inking and colors filled in.

40th Anniversary Kaiyodo Exhibition Guide

2007-08-11T22:44:00.000-07:00

I collect Gashapon's that I find interesting. This Japanese book which you can buy at verycoolthings.com show the amazing artistry of sculpting small toys similar to kinder eggs

for those who remember. Gashapons are diverse in topic ranging from Japanese anime characters, animals, samurais, military vehicles, etc. What's interesting is that some of the gashapons come in tiny plastic egg capsules. You open them up and there's plastic pieces to be assembled. All of a sudden, you get this miniature sculpture with smooth fitting pieces and it's rather surprising that the attention to detail simply surpasses larger scale figures.

Fisker's Fine Art of Coach Building

2007-08-11T22:15:00.000-07:00

You might enjoy this old article from Businessweek magazine on Henrik Fisker.

Who is he? One amazing automobile stylist. There's a slide show sampling some of his
designs.

Tramonto's grill. Stunning.

The legendary auto designer has set up his own shop, which promises to bring new meaning to the word "exclusivity"

Matt Vella

Depending who you ask in the auto industry, Henrik Fisker is either a design legend or the luckiest man alive. Over the course of his career, Fisker has designed some of the most remarkable, if low-volume, vehicles of the last two decades, while his work at Aston Martin and BMW afforded the Danish-born designer a rabid and loyal following. Now, Fisker is striking out on his own with an entirely new project, hoping to prove his past successes weren't a mere matter of right time, right place. His new company, Fisker Coachbuilder, aims to revive the long-dormant art of coach building, a delicate process of mating one-of-a-kind designs with existing automotive platforms. So the Latigo is built on the BMW 650Ci, while the Tramonto is mated with the Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG. Click here to take a spin through Fisker's newest designs and see some of his greatest hits.

By using the architecture of the luxurious and speedy Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG in the Tramonto, Fisker avoids the sky-high development costs associated with designing an entirely new vehicle. Automakers commonly spend billions to develop even budget vehicles, let alone the most technologically advanced high-performance models.

"Although average consumers may never have heard his name, Fisker commands unparalleled respect among his peers in the auto industry. To them, he's the equivalent of starchitects Frank Gehry or Rem Koolhaas, moving the needle with each new design."

The Bicycling Paradox: Fit Doesn’t Have to Mean Thin

2007-07-21T20:04:00.000-07:00

The NY Times has an interesting article about the myth of rail-thin cyclists built like Lance Armstrong. An interesting point was how recovery was important to win competition as one gets older. It appears the cut-off point is 32 yrs of age for cyclist. Performance can still be maintained but the recuperative ability of the body decreases with age. There's also pictures of the cyclists and you can check out their body types.

Here's the article:

Fitness
The Bicycling Paradox: Fit Doesn’t Have to Mean Thin

By GINA KOLATA
Published: July 17, 2007
Andy Hampsten, the former pro cyclist, the only American ever to win the Tour of Italy, the first American ever to win the grueling Alpe d’Huez stage of the Tour de France, does his best to discourage casual riders from signing up for the cycling trips he leads in Tuscany.

Akiko Nishimura for The New York Times
NO TYPECASTING Unlike running, a sport usually dominated by young, rail-thin athletes, cycling is more forgiving of body type and age because of different aerodynamics. The best cyclists going up hills are those with the best weight-to-strength ratio, which generally means being thin and strong, but heavier cyclists go faster downhill.

“All of our trips are designed to satisfy experienced riders,” Mr. Hampsten writes on his Web site. To train, he suggests, “you should ride at least 100 miles a week for at least 6 to 10 weeks” on routes with “as many hills as you can find.”

So I had an image of what our fellow cyclists would look like when my husband, son and I arrived in Castagneto Carducci for a cycling vacation. They would look like Mr. Hampsten, who at age 45 remains boyishly thin and agile, bouncing with energy.

I was wrong. For the most part, our group consisted of ordinary-looking, mostly middle-age men and a few middle-age women.

These were serious cyclists. One of them was Bob Eastaugh, a 63-year-old justice on the Alaska Supreme Court who said he rode mostly to stay in shape for his true passion, downhill ski racing.
And our trip was challenging. The longest hill was 15 miles, the steepest had a 15 percent grade, the longest one-day ride was 90 miles, and the terrain was never, ever flat. It is hard to imagine that a group of middle-age adults could have handled an equivalently difficult 10 days of running. What, I wondered, made bicycling different?

It turns out that others, too, have been struck by the paradox of bicycling fitness.
“When I first got into cycling, I would see cyclists and say, ‘O.K., that’s not what I perceive a cyclist to be,’ ” said Michael Berry, an exercise physiologist at Wake Forest University. Dr. Berry had been a competitive runner, and he thought good cyclists would look like good runners — rail-thin and young.

But, Dr. Berry added, “I quickly learned that when I was riding with someone with a 36-inch waist, I could be looking at the back of their waist when they rode away from me.”
He came to realize, he said, that cycling is a lot more forgiving of body type and age than running. The best cyclists going up hills are those with the best weight-to-strength ratio, which generally means being thin and strong. But heavier cyclists go faster downhill. And being light does not help much on flat roads.

James Hagberg, a kinesiology professor at the University of Maryland, explains that the difference between running on a flat road and cycling on a flat road has to do with the movement of the athlete’s center of gravity.

“In running, when you see someone who is obviously overweight, they will be in trouble,” Dr. Hagberg said. “The more you weigh, the more the center of gravity moves and the more energy it costs. But in cycling, there are different aerodynamics — your center of gravity is not moving up and down.”

The difference between cycling and running is like the difference between moving forward on a pogo stick and rolling along on wheels. And that is why Robert Fitts, an exercise physiologist at Marquette University who was a competitive runner, once said good runners run so smoothly they can almost balance an apple on their heads.

Even Mr. Hampsten has been surprised by the cycling paradox. He recalls a woman from San Diego who went on one of his trips. “She was quite overweight,” he said, and even though she claimed to be an experienced cyclist, he worried that she would have trouble keeping up with the group. He was wrong.

“She rode so well,” Mr. Hampsten said. “Her cadence was very efficient. I was just amazed and delighted.”

As for the effects of aging, serious recreational cyclists do slow down, but they are not penalized as much as runners by the passing of years, Dr. Hagberg said. It’s because cycling, while grueling, is not as demanding as running.

“The best example of that, in a bizarre way, is the Tour de France,” Dr. Hagberg said. “What runner could go out six hours a day for three weeks and not be totally trashed after a day or two? That’s a microcosm of the aging issue.”

Still, even the best serious recreational cyclist is almost a different species from a professional rider. How much faster, our touring group asked Mr. Hampsten, would a professional rider go up that 15 percent grade during a race? About twice as fast as the fastest in our group, he replied.

And how about recovery after racing? Mr. Hampsten used to compete in 100 races a year, including the Tour de France, and he would recover by going for a long, relaxed ride. It sometimes took him three hours of cycling to warm up after a hard race. Then he’d continue for another two hours.

But recovery does become a limiting factor for professional cyclists, Mr. Hampsten said. It’s why most professional riders can no longer win long, multiday races after age 32.

“It’s almost eerie that at 32 years, you stop winning,” Mr. Hampsten said. “The endurance seems to stay, but recuperation doesn’t come around.”

When Mr. Hampsten retired, he was 34, “and I hadn’t won a race in two years.”
Now, he estimates, he is 80 percent as fit as he used to be.

But 80 percent for Andy Hampsten is still impressive. As soon as our cycling tour ended, he headed out on a fast ride that included a long hill to the town of Suvereto, taking a road with 187 switchback turns.

“It is my favorite road to ride,” he said.

DOGFIGHTS

2007-07-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

Dogfights on the History Channel is an awesome series that I really enjoy. It's a series that uses computer animated re-enactments of dogfights from World War II to the Jet Age covering conflicts of Korean, Vietnam, and other arenas where combat pilots used their experience, skills, and guts to kill their opponents. Interviews with the actual pilots makes the narrative and dogfights really insightful. Also, it shows that the pilot must understand the concepts of aerial combat and the technical specs of their fighter plane as well as their opponent's to insure survival.

Human Weapon

2007-07-20T20:20:00.000-07:00

The History Channel has an interesting series on various martial arts. Here's the list of the martial arts discplines per episode:

1. Muay Thai
2. Karate
3. Judo: Samurai Legacy
4. Savate Streetfighting
5. Pankration: The Original Martial Arts
6. Krav Maga
7. Marine Corps Martial Arts
8. MMA - America's Extreme Fighting
9. Sambo: Russia's Extreme Fighting
10. Bokator: Cambodian Blood Sport
11. Silat: Martial Art of Malaysia

The show is hosted by a MMA fighter Jason Chambers and Bill Duff, a former football player and wrestler. The first episode was pretty interesting. It covered Krabi Krabong, the battlefield and forerunner of Muay Thai. The two hosts explore the arts in question then spar with an expert in the art.

Here's the site.

Ralek Gracie vs. Shibata

2007-07-16T18:41:00.000-07:00

Ralek gracie, the son of Rorion Gracie, debuts in his first MMA fight.
He relies on Old School Gracie Jiu-Jitsu with that front stomping kick to
the opponent's knee. He needs to work on his standup but clinches nicely.
Is it a work? I don't know. But it's good to see how the youngest son of
Rorion has stepped into the ring before his older two brothers.

Shibata vs Ralek Gracie Hero's MW GP
Uploaded by bawzz

Here are some pictures of the fight:

Ralek uses the "Old School" forward stomping kick to the opponent's front knee to close the gap. This distracts the opponent to protect his knee while allowing a Jiu-Jitsu stylist to close the gap with the hopes the opponent is distracted instead of countering with a strike.

Ralek gets the mount position. Eventually, Ralek finishes his opponent with an armbar.

Taroshooton skull ring

2007-06-16T13:20:00.000-07:00

This skull ring is designed by TaroShooten. The ring has a sleek and slightly abstracted skull design which creates an elegant design, appeals to both the sensibilities of grace and deviance. The Japanese catalog show three versions. I've searched for a skull ring but all of them had this morbid or appearance that I didn't care for. Keith Richards wears a skull ring not to give a bad-a$$ image but to remind himself of human mortality. In his case, I suspect he shouldn't concern himself with this issue. The man is still alive even though he's rather incoherent at times but I caught him on television explaining how he came up with the music for "Satisfaction." He played blues guitar beautifully while delicately finger-picking the riff. He explained how it started as a blues riff and evolved into a rock n roll song. Go figure where inspiration comes from huh? As Keith Richard once said about his music, it's simply Chuck Berry over and over again. That's rather humble.

Mythology: The DC Comics Art Of Alex Ross

2007-06-16T11:48:00.000-07:00

Who's Alex Ross? He's one of the top comic book artists around. His photo-realistic style combined with a water-color rich palette has made him a very admired comic book illustrator. He's also re-tooled icons like Superman. If you caught the new Superman Returns movie, he did an illustration for the film. He has a web site: http://www.alexrossart.com/

If you want to have an amazing book of his oeuvre and even how he creates his amazing artwork, do yourself a favor and check out his book: Mythology: The DC Comics Art Of Alex Ross.

The older edition of the book has the cover below which is so cool. That's the Man of Steel with bullets richocheting off of him. So if you do purchase the book, try to get this cover. The new editions appear to have a different cover.

Flytech Dragonfly - Radio Controlled Dragonfly

2007-06-01T17:51:00.000-07:00

This is pretty cool. It's a radio-controlled ornithopter designed as a dragonfly. It flies by flapping its wings. Here's a picture of it. The reviews are great. Just Google the product and it gets great reviews.

Here's a Youtube video of it flying. It flies like some form of maladriot creature. It's pretty amazing. Here's a review of the Dragonfly and a micro radio-controlled helicopter. They all rely of light-weight molded foam for the body structure.

In the spring of 2007, WowWee Robotics, the well known manufacturer of the RoboSapien and RoboRaptor, will launch the next iteration of remote control indoor / outdoor flyers. The Flytech Dragonfly, the design of which WowWee licensed from student aeronautics designer Sean Frawley, is apparently the world's first remote control flapping wing flying machine. Rather impressively, the Flytech Dragonfly takes off and remains airborne purely on the basis of flapping its four wings, relying upon a tiny tail rotor purely for trim and steering.

Now check out the miniscule helicopter!

Read an interview with the Dragonfly's designer Shawn Frawley.

Rocket Boom - Wired Magazine

2007-05-22T20:17:00.000-07:00

This is the cover of this month's cover of WIRED magazine.
It just looks cool.

Al Gore's office

2007-05-22T20:06:00.001-07:00

I just thought this was a cool picture of Al Gore working in his office. He's a Chairman of Current.tv. It's a cool channel but it gets repetitive. It's a channel consisting of produced bits

that you can submit. There's alot of interesting episodes as well as very typical "60 minutes"

wannabe type of "exposes." But do check out the channel and website.

Oh, yeah, here's the picture from TIME magazine. That would be very me. TV running in the background, PC screens everywhere, and books scattered everywhere.

Batman: The Dark Knight's viral promo kicks your viral promo's ass (and takes names)

2007-05-22T19:54:00.000-07:00

This is really cool. I can't wait for the next installment for the Batman movie. Check out this interesting article..I mean blog, about the viral marketing effort for the movie.

Buzz in the blogosphere is that Warner Bros has really hit the ball out of the viral park (sounds gross doesn't it?) with their online promotion for the new Batman: The Dark Knight movie.
The Dark Knight will be released in 2008, so this movie is still in production. Keep that in mind as you check out this stellar viral effort that was compiled from a few outdoor ad buys, four static websites and a couple of stills. (This run down is brought to you by my friend Lisa with some insider info as well as Pronet Advertising, who has a great summary of the online component of the effort.)

1. Awhile ago a static site, featuring just the image at left appeared online.
2. Recently, unbranded posters featuring the image at right appeared in some major cities (LA is confirmed). Around the same time, the static Dark Knight site began to link through to the I Believe In Harvey Dent website, which featured an identical image.

3. Within 48 - 72 hours, all of the posters in major cities were defaced to resemble the image seen at the URL I Believe in Harvey Dent Too (at left). If you went to that URL the site would ask for your email address. After you submitted (reusabale database anyone?) you were sent an email with the coordinates for a pixel that you could remove from the site.

4. With users able to remove just one pixel each, a viral effort was underway to spread the word to get others to register and remove a pixel. In less than a day, thousands and thousands of unique visitors had visited the site to remove a pixel - ultimately revealing the face of the new Joker, Heath Ledger.

5. It doesn't stop there. If you visit I Believe In Harvey Dent Too now, you get a black error page with a message "Page not found." But, if you highlight the page with your mouse you see the message at left - an almost unending series of Ha ha ha's.
6. If you truncate those Ha ha's, the only letters left read "See You In December."
7. In case you're curious, www.seeyouindecember.com has already been bought by 42 Entertainment. What's more, Joker cards have started appearing at bookstores and other highly trafficked locales in various cities. Stay tuned for details friends, this thing ain't over.
GOD DAMN THAT'S COOL!!! I've never been a big fan of the Batman series myself, but this is the sort of thing that makes me want to go and see it. It's unreal that this entire viral component has been concocted out just a handful of assets and some basic Web 1.0 concepts. Just goes to show all those agencies and clients out there that you don't need a ton of money, or fancy microsites with flash components to make something go viral - just a die hard fan base and a really f'ing creative idea.

Check out the blog article here:

http://catchupblog.typepad.com/catch_up_blog/2007/05/buzz_in_the_blo.html

UFC Cover Story on Sports Illustrated

2007-05-22T19:14:00.000-07:00

You just have to wonder why every story about Mixed Martial Arts starts off with "Is it too brutal?" Just ask a Muay Thai kick boxer or Boxer if their sports is too brutal. If you ever see either event live, you won't ask this rhetorical question. But MMA has come a long way. I mean, 60 Minutes interviewing Pat Miletich and Renzo Gracie?! It's pretty funny when Renzo arm locks the reporter standing up. The guy didn't even see it coming. MMA is exactly like where boxing was when it had to earn its legitimacy. Oh, yeah, who's on the cover? Roger Huerta. I'm still waiting for the Randy Couture cover issue coming out this summer. That's PR for you.

Here's the article:

The New Main Event
The rising interest in mixed martial arts is tied to Ultimate Fighting, which changed its ways to gain acceptance. Now its success is changing the sports landscape
Posted: Tuesday May 22, 2007 9:10AM; Updated: Tuesday May 22, 2007 9:10AM

More than 15,000 watched Thales Leites take down

Pete Sell in one of the featured bouts at UFC 69: Shootout,

the highest-grossing event ever staged in Houston's Toyota Center

By L. Jon Wertheim
Saturday night was all right for fighting. But the pageantry for the 69th card in the Ultimate Fighting Championship's tough-and-rumble existence began much earlier that week. Long before the fighters unhinged the latch of the steel Octagon on April 7 and fought on a card titled UFC 69: Shootout, thousands of fans had converged on Houston, tribalists on a pilgrimage. The prefight weigh-ins drew massive crowds. The line for the fighters' autograph show wreathed the girth of the Toyota Center, the venue for UFC 69. The downtown bars and restaurants were overrun by fight fans.

Some were your typical badasses, lacking a full complement of teeth, wearing shirts adorned with messages the likes of fight me, i'm irish. But most were like Romeo Nava, 26, an aircraft mechanic from Edinburg, Texas. Nava and two buddies had gotten up at an ungodly hour the morning of the fights and made the five-hour drive through dust-choked towns to get to Houston early. They'd each paid $250 for the seats and considered neither the early wake-up nor the ticket price a sacrifice. In another era three amigos from the guts of Texas would have made such a road trip for an Aerosmith concert or an NFL game. But now ... "pretty much everyone I know is into UFC," says Nava. "You get an adrenaline rush even watching it."
The sport of mixed martial arts (MMA), of which Ultimate Fighting Championship is the most popular enterprise, has penetrated the defense of the mainstream and applied a choke hold to that golden 18-to-34 male demographic. The UFC's weekly reality show, The Ultimate Fighter, on Spike TV, often eclipses the television ratings of the NBA and baseball playoffs in that target audience. The names of UFC fighters are some of the most popular entries in Internet search engines come fight time. UFC events do bigger pay-per-view numbers than any pro wrestling event or boxing card this side of Mayweather-De La Hoya. (UFC's 2006 PPV revenues were almost $223 million, compared with $177 million for boxing on HBO and $200 million for WWE.)
All that marketing info was embodied in the UFC 69 prefight tableau. The fighters, managers and other plenipotentiaries stayed at the Hilton, lodging arrangements that were publicized on the UFC's message boards; and so it was that the lobby was thronged with dudes old enough to vote but too young to be president, armed with camera phones and Sharpies, hoping for a memento from the weekend. The St. Louis Cardinals were playing the Astros a few blocks away, but no one cared -- Pujols, schmujols -- at least so long as, say, Josh Koscheck was in the house. And Koscheck is only a borderline star. From the moment the crowd spotted Randy Couture, the current heavyweight champ, the membrane of admirers around him became so thick that it spilled into the hotel's Easter display. Thereafter he needed to use secret routes to get to his room, at one point cutting through a kitchen...

Here's the article in its entirety: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/more/05/22/ultimate0528/index.html

This guy scares you?

2007-05-22T18:17:00.000-07:00

Finally, Mixed Martial Arts is getting plenty of play from the press. Chuck Liddell is on the cover of ESPN magazine. It's on the newstand now.

Marla Rutherford for ESPN The Magazine
C'mon, you're not afraid of Chuck, are you?

By Allison GlockESPN The Magazine

Editor's note: This article appears in the May 21 issue of ESPN The Magazine.
Marla Rutherford for ESPN The Magazine

C'mon, you're not afraid of Chuck, are you?

Chuck Liddell is dancing. It is two hours before a World Extreme Cagefighting (WEC) bout at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas, and Liddell, playing the role of guest cornerman, is getting his groove on ringside.

"I love dancing," he says, his hips ticking back and forth with fluidity. "I'll dance anywhere, anytime. People think I'm wasted, but I'm not. I'm just enjoying myself."

Liddell is wearing expensive, loose-fitting jeans and a T-shirt with cherubs frolicking across the chest. His head is shaved save for a tight Lohawk. He has on flip-flops, which reveal his toenails. They are painted an implausible neon pink.

A WEC fighter walks by, slaps Liddell on the back, then notices the toes. "Look at that gayness," he says, cocking his head. Liddell just smiles and keeps grooving. He is a tolerant man. He can afford to be.

MORE UFC
For more Ultimate Fighting Championship coverage, please visit Sherdog.com.
For the past six years, Liddell has been known as a badass, the best fighter in the world bar none. He's the UFC's current light heavyweight champion. In his 10-year career, he has lost only three fights and has gone on to avenge two of them. The third, his 2003 loss to Quinton "Rampage" Jackson, is set for a rematch on May 26.

"The plan is to knock him out in the first round," Liddell says in a voice devoid of bravado. Unlike some fighters, he does not boast. He wears his professional record with a shrug. His talent is a gift from birth, or God.

"I've been fighting people since way back," he says with a smile. "At parties. In clubs. I always say I never started a fight. But looking back, I made it real hard for you to get out of one."
Even before he got paid to kick and punch, Liddell liked brawls. Not backing down was a means to an end. "Fighting was a competition for me," he says, "something I happened to be really good at."

Liddell is 37 years old. He is 6'2", 220 pounds. He has a round, boyish face, with piercing eyes and a sharply defined, Val Kilmer mouth. He's not small, but he doesn't block the sun like many athletes. His body is one of supreme use; every muscle serves a purpose. And generally that purpose is to put other men in a world of pain. "I'm not conflicted about it," he says. "I don't mean to hurt ya. I just want to prove I do it better."

What Liddell means is that he isn't psychotic. He describes himself as "mellow, laid-back." He doesn't derive pleasure from inflicting pain, and the fact that you enjoy watching him do it says a hell of a lot more about you than him. "Chuck looks like an ax murderer," says UFC president Dana White. "But he's the nicest guy in the world."

Even so, being an ultimate fighter has very little to do with being nice. It's about being an incomparable athlete. You must excel at boxing, martial arts and wrestling. You must possess depths of fortitude and a willingness to stand alone. And you must be accountable for yourself in a way that few sports require. Liddell knows this, having played virtually every other sport with the exception of tennis.

Chuck Liddell is the biggest draw the UFC's got.
In 1998, while he was working as a bartender and a kickboxing instructor, a friend of a friend asked him if he wanted to try a mixed martial arts (MMA) fight. Never one to shy away from a challenge, Liddell agreed. And he won. Not long after, the UFC came calling. Now Liddell has transcended the sport to become a cultural icon (witness his recent cameo on "Entourage"). He is The Guy for most guys, a real-life hero in a world of spoiled, whiny poseurs. Arnold, without the script.

AP photo/Marlene Karas
Chuck Liddell is the biggest draw the UFC's got.

"Chuck is a bona fide superstar," White says. "Even in other countries, everybody knows him. When I go to New York with him, he gets mobbed. People scream from their cars."
Liddell's signature, and most popular, move in the octagon is a wide, swinging punch that bends and curves, Plastic Man-style, ending with his fist on the side of an unsuspecting head. His reach is long; his power, jaw-shattering. The whole movement is balletic, grace honed to violence, quick and definitive, propelled by intention. The intention: not to win, but to defeat.
"His greatest strength is his uncanny ability to knock out from any angle," says John Hackleman, owner of fighter breeding ground The Pit, who's known Liddell for 16 years. "A lot of fighters are great until they get hit. Chuck doesn't quit. The harder you hit him, the harder he'll fight."

Or, as another fighter says as he passes the octagon and spots Liddell: "Looks who's here! Clan of the Cave Bear! Guns of f---ing Navarone!"

A short list of MMA fouls, as approved by the Nevada State Athletic Commission:
Butting with the head.Eye-gouging of any kind.Biting.Fishhooking.Groin attacks of any kind.Putting a finger into any orifice.Grabbing the trachea.Grabbing the clavicle.Spitting at an opponent.Timidity.

Charlene Liddell was vehemently antiviolence, even while her son was getting pummeled daily in school. "We lived in assisted housing in Santa Barbara," Chuck recalls. "There were two white kids in my class, and I was one of them."

Eventually, a teacher told Mrs. Liddell, a single parent, that her son was going to get hit every day unless he hit back. And so it was that little Chuck got a lesson in hand-to-hand combat from his maternal grandfather. At age 12, he began martial arts training "to stay busy." A natural athlete, he gravitated toward team sports in high school -- track, baseball, football, wrestling -- and excelled in them all, playing middle linebacker and starting all four years in wrestling at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. "I went as far as I could with football," he says with little regret. "Wrestling, too. But I'm better at fighting. I used to say it sucks that the one thing I'm really good at I can't make money on."

Then along came the UFC. The sport had a rocky start, beginning as it did in 1993 as a way to find the world's best fighter in informal competitions under the imprudent tagline "There are no rules!" Anyone with balls was welcome. Most guys padded their martial arts résumés and entered the cage only to wail like banshees. Boots were worn. Hair was yanked out by the fistful

Liddell had to learn to fight at an early age.
Footage of said fights made its way to Washington, inspiring no less a tough guy than John McCain to call it "human cockfighting." Bans followed, TV programming was nixed and the sport would have been forever relegated to backyards and basements were it not for a handful of investors who saw the wisdom of legitimacy.

One of them was White, a boxing promoter who became part of a group that purchased the UFC for $2 million in 2001. The no-holds-barred approach was abandoned, replaced with regulating bodies and Olympic-style rules. Thanks to aggressive marketing, UFC fights now average around 2.3 million viewers on Spike TV and sell out arenas worldwide. HBO is close to signing a broadcast deal, and "SportsCenter" airs postfight highlight clips. This year, more young men tuned into the league's UFC 70 event than the MTV Video Music Awards.

Marla Rutherford for ESPN The Magazine
Liddell had to learn to fight at an early age.

Still, many in the old guard of sports are resistant to mixed martial arts, citing what they feel is an inherent barbarism. Some sportscasters liken UFC matches to bar fights, while others refuse to acknowledge the league exists. This, one could argue, is more about elitism and old-school snobbery -- the same type of condescension once directed at NASCAR -- than a valid argument against the sport. Football, a pursuit known to eat its young, causes far more career-ending injuries than MMA. "I got hurt so much more in football and wrestling," Liddell says.
Some of MMA's biggest detractors are from the boxing world. Boxing, after all, stands to lose the most from MMA's rise. Floyd Mayweather Jr., boxing's biggest mouth, recently claimed, "Boxing is an art, UFC is a fad," and that if Liddell stepped into a boxing ring, "he'd get punished."

This, of course, pisses off Liddell. "Everybody messes with us," he says. "What makes boxing a sport but not us? We have to do more and know more than boxers. I'd drop a boxer so fast." He's probably right. Boxing is about five or so basic punches; MMA adds wrestling and martial arts. Unless a boxer landed an early knockout punch, he'd find himself pinned and looking for the nearest exit.

At the moment, Liddell is eating lunch at the Pink Taco, in the Hard Rock. His legs are folded under his chair, bobbing like sewing needles. On his wrist, a diamond-studded watch catches the light.

"One of my sponsors gave me this," he says, shaking his arm. "It's not something I would ever buy for myself. It was really nice of them, but … " He shrugs, then returns to his chips and iced tea.

Across the table, Hackleman shovels in some guacamole and reminisces about the old days, back when the two men would spar just for fun. "You're the same now as you were when you were sleeping on my couch," Hackleman says. "Before a fight, Chuck is always goofing around. That's why I named him the Iceman. He doesn't get nervous."
He doesn't pray, either. Not before a fight anyway.

"Why would I?"

Liddell is a confident man. He is a man who has been tested and has survived, and that knowledge fills him with a lightness of being unfamiliar to men who don't dare come up against anything, let alone themselves. All elite athletes possess this poise, this buoyancy -- but none more so than the fighter. It is one thing to excel, to be fast, to be flexible, to be strong, to endure. It is quite another to do all of that while being hit in the face.

"A lot of big guys make a reputation for themselves as hard," Liddell says. "Then I'll see them in the ring and they can't fight their way out of a paper bag. They're picking on guys they can beat. That's not being tough. That's being an a--hole."

As Liddell stands up to leave, the Pink Taco manager approaches, hand extended. "Lunch is on us, Chuck," he says, beaming. Liddell thanks him and attempts to move toward the door, but his two-second pause has allowed a crowd to form. Men in their 20s and 30s encircle him, most snapping away with their camera phones. "Would you sign my hat?" one asks, thrusting it at Liddell. The fighter obliges, staying mum when another fan quips, "Don't make me fight you for a picture." After every autograph, Liddell says, "Thank you."

Ten minutes later, he finally breaks free and walks purposefully toward the elevators. He misses the open door and is again surrounded. It will take him 20 minutes to get to his suite on the top floor, where upon arriving he will immediately rush to the balcony and take a long, deep breath of fresh air.

Tito Ortiz was no match for Liddell here.
"I like to people watch," he says, nodding toward the pool teeming with girls in bikinis and heels. Liddell turns around and walks to the couch, limping slightly. When the limp is mentioned, he rolls his eyes. "People have been asking about that," he says with irritation. "I don't have a limp."

AP Photo/Marlene Karas
Tito Ortiz was no match for Liddell here.

He shuffles along, visibly favoring one leg. He catches his reflection in the mirror.
"I think it's from my toe," he concedes, lifting his right foot out of his flip-flop to reveal a slice under his big toe deep enough to lose change in. "Could be that, I guess."
He can't recall how he got the cut, and he's not one for complaining, about anything, with one obvious exception: He doesn't much like unremitting grandstander Tito Ortiz, his former training partner turned rival.

In 2002, Liddell was primed to fight Ortiz for the UFC title, but Ortiz demurred, claiming schedule conflicts. That didn't sit well with fans or Liddell, and Ortiz was impelled to face him in April 2004. Liddell won with a second-round knockout, and he beat Ortiz again last December, despite a torn MCL and a popped tendon in his left hand.

"I'll admit," Liddell says, lowering his voice slightly, "he is one guy I enjoy hitting -- I enjoy it a lot."

A short list of people scarier than Chuck Liddell:
Mike Tyson.Michael Jackson.Ryan Seacrest.Ann Coulter.Dick Cheney.Oprah.
Backstage at the WEC fights, Liddell is coaching Erik Apple, a 29-year-old fighter with matinee idol looks. The two men circle each other on a warmup mat, with Liddell occasionally tapping Apple on the skull when he leaves himself vulnerable. Apple furrows his brow and nods at Liddell's every word. They wrestle a little, Liddell again showing Apple his weak spots, a mixed blessing so close to fight time. They finish with a hug.

The UFC is a handsy bunch. Hugging is big, as are shoulder squeezes and hair tousles. There is an easy intimacy among men who grapple for a living, a fluid physicality, as if every moment outside the ring is an opportunity to apologize for what happens inside it. When you've ripped a man's ear to the lobe, a postmatch embrace goes a long way.

With cameos on shows like "Entourage," Liddell's profile is only going to get bigger.
"Don't you hate waiting?" Apple asks Liddell, his bare feet tapping wildly.
"It's the worst," Liddell says with a smile.

AP Photo/Marlene Karas
With cameos on shows like "Entourage," Liddell's profile is only going to get bigger.

Well, maybe not the worst. Losing is the worst. "When you lose a fight, you damage your manhood," says Hackleman, a former boxer and fighter. "You can't blame the team. You failed. Period."

Given the chore that awaits them, the fighters backstage are oddly relaxed. A few psych themselves up, but most clown around, tease each other or offer support to the fighters on deck. They wrestle and stretch. Others watch the closed-circuit TV. There's something very natural about the whole scene, comforting even, like this is what men are meant to be doing -- grappling for dominance and laughing over beers when it's all done.

"Men want to fight," Hackleman says. "What we do is innate. The two basic biological responses are fight or flight. It's not play basketball or flight." While Hackleman sees fighting as an undistilled version of every sport, Liddell is more sanguine. "Fighting is what it is," he says. "I've never felt out of control. I'm the last guy to punch a wall. If I'm really upset, I may go for a jog or something."

There is, of course, some darkness. For Liddell it springs from his father, a man so ill-equipped to parent that he locked his toddler son in a room for hours at a time, leaving Chuck's 3-year-old sister to look after him, Liddell says. "She fed me onions once. I was crying because I was hungry. Dad didn't care. Then he left for good."

Liddell has two children: Trista, age 9, and Cade, age 8. Both live with their respective mothers but remain very close to their father, as do the women, neither of whom Liddell felt compelled to marry.

He takes his parenting seriously, but Liddell wants it known that his absentee father is not the reason he fights. It's not about compensation, emotional or otherwise. "A lot of guys get in street fights to prove something," Liddell says. "But I never did. I have nothing to prove, but I never give up. You give me enough time, I'll win."
He laughs.

Has he ever been in therapy?
"For what?"
He is quiet for a moment.
"I went to anger management once," he says. "At Cal Poly I kicked a stuck door, and it flew off the hinges. The counselor said, 'Come back when you have real problems.'"

Does he look like a chess player? There's more to this man than fighting.
A short list of largely unknown facts about Chuck Liddell:
He was in the chess club.He has never broken his nose.He was an A student in high school.He has a degree in accounting.He has a Chihuahua named Bean.He has seen "Fight Club."It was "fine."He has also seen "The Sound of Music."He loved it. So much so that he went to see the musical -- a couple of times.

Chuck Liddell is not afraid of dying. "I am afraid of not being able to fight," he says. He'd miss it, the physicality, the touchstone to truth, the constant and real measure of his own ability. If nothing else, fighting offers men a wellspring of knowledge. For better or worse, when you can take a punch, you know who you are.

Liddell knows precisely who he is. And because he knows, he can dance with abandon, paint his toenails pink ("because I can") and enjoy the occasional musical without shame. He's a man awash in serenity. Only the potential for injury unnerves him, if he allows himself to dwell on it, which he doesn't.

"I can't see myself in a wheelchair," he says, cringing. "People feeling sorry for you would get old real quick."

He envisions a different future, a shinier one. "I'm interested in Hollywood," he says. "I'm trying to do Punisher II. I may get to play the villain's crazy brother. I'll probably start acting classes."
He knows it sounds cliché, but he makes no apologies. "I'm 37," he says. "I hope to fight quite a few more years, but you never know." He pauses, takes a long, deep breath and smiles. "Then again, Randy Couture is still the heavyweight champion at 43," Liddell says happily.
"And I knocked him out twice."

Marla Rutherford for ESPN The Magazine
Does he look like a chess player? There's more to this man than fighting.

Here's the article http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=glock/070514

Ultimate Fighting Champions as fashion models

2006-12-18T19:27:00.000-08:00

January 07 issue of Maxim magazine
Check it out. George St. Pierre, Chuck Liddell, and company show off the threads.

Chuck Lidell slugs George St. Pierre

Size and Condom in India and oil injection

2006-12-12T19:50:00.000-08:00

This may be news to you but it's pretty funny coming from the BBC news:

Condoms 'too big' for Indian men

By Damian Grammaticus
BBC News, Delhi

There is a "lack of awareness" over condom sizes

A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.

The study found that more than half of the men measured had penises that were shorter than international standards for condoms.

It has led to a call for condoms of mixed sizes to be made more widely available in India.

The two-year study was carried out by the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Over 1,200 volunteers from the length and breadth of the country had their penises measured precisely, down to the last millimetre.

The scientists even checked their sample was representative of India as a whole in terms of class, religion and urban and rural dwellers.

It's not size, it's what you do with it that matters

Sunil Mehra

The conclusion of all this scientific endeavour is that about 60% of Indian men have penises which are between three and five centimetres shorter than international standards used in condom manufacture.

Doctor Chander Puri, a specialist in reproductive health at the Indian Council of Medical Research, told the BBC there was an obvious need in India for custom-made condoms, as most of those currently on sale are too large.

The issue is serious because about one in every five times a condom is used in India it either falls off or tears, an extremely high failure rate.

And the country already has the highest number of HIV infections of any nation.

'Not a problem'

Mr Puri said that since Indians would be embarrassed about going to a chemist to ask for smaller condoms there should be vending machines dispensing different sizes all around the country.

"Smaller condoms are on sale in India. But there is a lack of awareness that different sizes are available. There is anxiety talking about the issue. And normally one feels shy to go to a chemist's shop and ask for a smaller size condom."

But Indian men need not be concerned about measuring up internationally according to Sunil Mehra, the former editor of the Indian version of the men's magazine Maxim.

"It's not size, it's what you do with it that matters," he said.

"From our population, the evidence is Indians are doing pretty well.

"With apologies to the poet Alexander Pope, you could say, for inches and centimetres, let fools contend."

Trying desperately to measure up By Georgina Kenyon

Doctors in Asia are treating an increasing number of men with severe injuries who have tried to increase the size of their penises by injecting themselves with Vaseline and other oils.

Now doctors in the West say the trend for self-injection is catching on in the UK and the US.

The man had used a high-pressure pneumatic grease gun to inject his penis

Mr Manit Arya

All in the name of the perfect body.

Injuries consist of severe deformations caused by tissue damage and erectile dysfunction.

Gangrene can also develop if injection causes infection.

"The practice of embellishing the human body by injecting oils beneath the skin has been known for over a century," according to urologist, Institute of Urology and Nephrology (IUN) in London, Mr Manit Arya.

"Increasing the size of the girth of the penis is common in South East Asia as well as in Japan."

"For instance, in Japan, the Yakuza often plant spherical objects under the skin of the penis to increase its size," said Mr Manit.

Travel

Doctors believe that men in Britain may be becoming interested in the practice after travelling to Asia on holiday.

In all of these cases of penis enlargement by injection of oils, dangerous side effects develop

Mr Manit Arya

However, Mr Manit and his colleagues at the IUN were extremely surprised when a 31-year old British born man presented at their clinic for treatment recently for gross abnormality of the penis and ulceration as a result of injecting oils under his skin.

"This was the first case we had seen. It was a very interesting case.

"The man had used a high-pressure pneumatic grease gun to inject his penis.

"But the girth of the man's penis continued to grow and he was no longer able to achieve an erection.

"He needed urgent treatment for both problems."

The man was treated by careful removal of dead tissue under the skin of the penis by surgery.

Counselling

He was also offered psychological counselling.

He apparently injected himself with oil to give himself more confidence sexually.

Although plastic surgeons currently conduct gender operations where a man or woman has their genitals altered, no plastic surgeon will conduct a penis girth enlargement operation.

"Unlike breast implants where some women experience severe side effects, in all of these cases of penis enlargement by injection of oils, dangerous side effects develop," Mr Manit said.

"The skin of the penis either dies or else becomes severely ulcerated in all cases."

Gender operations are currently performed in the UK when a doctor believes a person's psychological health depends on a sex change operation.

Mr Manit was one of the researchers of a IUN team who recently published a paper on grease gun injury in the Journal of The Royal Society of Medicine.

60 Minutes news program does a story on MMA

2006-12-10T22:49:00.000-08:00

Mixed Martial Arts: A New Kind Of Fight

MMA Is Becoming One Of The Fastest Growing Sports In America

Dec. 10., 2006

Renzo Gracie vs. Pat Miletich

(CBS) Walk into any neighborhood and if they’re playing football on one corner, basketball on the next, baseball on the third and a fight breaks out on the fourth, everybody’s going to run and watch the fight. Hand-to-hand combat is strangely irresistible.

These days the national street corner is on TV, where millions are now being drawn to a new kind of fight called "mixed martial arts" or "MMA." Not long ago the sport was banned as too vicious for decent society. But mixed martial arts came back swinging. This fall, a fight was watched on TV by more young men than the Major League Baseball playoff game that same night.

Correspondent Scott Pelley reports how a contest, once reviled and banished, has become one of the fastest-growing sports in America.

Pat Miletich, one of the greatest coaches of the sport and Brazilian Renzo Gracie, who helped invent it, are among the pioneers of mixed martial arts in America.

"You cannot hide who you are once you step on the ring. If you're a coward, they will show it," says Gracie. "You can't hide. It doesn’t matter how much money you’re getting paid. On the moment that that bell rings … you forget about everything else. You think about survive, and you think about beating up the other guy."

The name Gracie is to mixed martial arts as Ford is to cars. In Brazil in the 1920’s, the Gracie family invented a new jiu-jitsu. They challenged all comers and nearly always won. They brought their challenge to the U.S. in the 1990’s in a contest of styles – boxers, kick boxers, wrestlers and jiu-jitsu masters – to find out who was the ultimate fighter.

"What do you say to people who watch an MMA fight and say it's barbaric?" Pelley asks.

"For them to understand my sport, I know it's gonna take a little bit, you know, for them to accept and understand," Gracie says.

"What's to understand? You're pounding a guy, choking a guy into submission," Pelley remarks.

"It goes far beyond that. The first impression is, hit him, knock him out, hurt him, but believe it, it goes far beyond that," Gracie explains. "There's so much technique involved, that I, to be honest, I think when I see a good fight, I think it makes a Russian ballet look like a uncoordinated body movements."

He admits that it can sometimes be a bloody ballet. "But the blood is the source of the whole thing. Believe – it's not blood that's coming out, it's a little bit of pride that you're putting out."

To prevent too much of that kind of pride spilling onto the mat, fights can end in a number of ways. There’s a knock out or a submission, a throat squeezing or bone straining hold that would do real harm if the loser didn’t tap his opponent to signal surrender. And if the tap never comes, the referee can always jump in.

"It used to be boxers were called – 'Okay, this guy's the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.' Now it's, 'No, you're the best pound-for-pound boxer in the world.' These guys are the best pound-for-pound fighters," Miletich tells Pelley.

Miletich blended all those combat styles into one.

"Look, most people are more familiar with boxing. So how do you compare MMA to what we're used to seeing?" Pelley asks.

"I would compare boxing to MMA as – you know jeez, checkers to chess. You know?" Miletich. "If you take the branches of a tree, all the techniques, if I do one submission hold on you, you have three different ways to escape. That's three more branches. And I have three more moves off of each one of those branches. And then it just keeps going from there. It's very complex."

This entire sport suffered a stone cold knockout just a few years ago. Back then, there were virtually no rules. Fighters could stomp, kick to the groin, there were no time limits, and no weight classes. Critics called it human cockfighting. It was barred in many states and banned on TV.

"In the late 90s, the reputation of the ultimate fighting championship was what?" Pelley asks.

"Uneducated gorillas that liked to go in there and basically kick the crap out of each other," says Dana White, a former amateur boxer who thought the fights might be just the thing to draw an audience that advertisers often want most – men, ages 18 to 34. That group has been disappearing from TV audiences. White convinced investors to buy a league, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC. He adopted rules for the safety of the fighters and got 21 states to sanction the fights.

Asked if TV channels eager to put this on, White says, "Not even close. I mean, you wouldn't believe. All these big TV geniuses. And, you know, all the guys from Fox and this place and that place. You know, all these guys that supposedly know everything."

"Too violent," Pelley remarks.

"They were scared of it," White argues. "What's more violent than the NFL? What's more violent than the NFL?"

"Oh, come on. The NFL, they're not throwing punches at each other, not usually," Pelley says.

"You've got 250 pound men in the best shape they could ever get into, and they're so fast they could run track and field with pads on running directly into each other head to head. Broken arms. Legs getting snapped in half. Broken necks. What do you consider violent?" White replies.

He didn’t sign any network TV deals like the NFL, but he did get a reality show on cable where fighters compete for a spot in the league. Now, White has seven TV shows reeling in that young, male demographic; his Internet site sometimes gets more hits than the NFL. And he's got a video game and his DVDs that outsell all other sports.

He and his partners bought the UFC for $2 million. Asked what it's worth now, White says, "I don't know. A lot more than two million."

"The smile on your face suggests maybe over 100 million, I'm guessing," Pelley asks.

"Could be. Could be. Could be a billion. I don't know," White says.

It seems plausible. The International Fight League just went public and it is valued at more than $150 million.

It turns out rules were the key: the money flowed when the blood stopped gushing.

These days, there are 31 fouls, and the fighters don’t come at each other bare-fisted anymore. They’re required to use special gloves with a little bit of padding over the knuckles. You can’t kick to the groin anymore, and you can’t stomp your opponent once he’s on the ground. The octagon itself is 30 feet across. There’s padding under the fighters' feet, and they put the fence around it so the fighters don’t go rolling out onto the floor.

Have all the rules and regulations made the fights less interesting for the fans? That didn't appear to be the case when 60 Minutes headed to a match in Anaheim, Calif.

There were some 14,000 fans in the stands and 700,000 at home, who paid $40 a pop to watch on TV. This event alone made $28 million. White does 14 of these a year.

Pelley wondered exactly where the fighters come from. Who wants to get in on this? One of the biggest stars is welterweight Matt Hughes.

The fights have made Hughes a millionaire. When he fights, he's in a testosterone-fueled world of money and sex, but 60 Minutes found him where he grew up, on the family farm in Illinois.

"When I leave this sport, I want to be the same person as when I started this sport," Hughes explains.

"It'll change ya if you let it," Pelley remarks.

"You're exactly right," Hughes agrees.

Like a lot of the fighters, Hughes has a college degree. He was an all-American wrestler who sees this as more like the Olympics than a street brawl.

"Yeah, but you know better than I do that that's not why those 17,000 people are in there," Pelley remarks.

"Well, that's true," Hughes says.

"They want to see somebody bleed," Pelley says.;

"They like excitement," Hughes says. "There's excitement all over. It doesn't have to be somebody getting hurt to get excitement in the octagon."

In fact, a recent medical study found that MMA fighters are less likely than boxers to suffer brain injuries.

(CBS)
"There's a lot more options. It's a wrestling match. It's a jiu-jitsu match. It is partially boxing. It's not my only option to stand toe-to-toe with you and beat you in the face," says Pat Miletich.

Miletich coaches in Bettendorf, Iowa. Fighters from all over come to his gym, where Miletich has turned out eight top champions, including Matt Hughes who showed Pelley some of the finer points when he tried to train with Team Miletich. They wrestle, they grapple, they maul. Then they work endurance relays with a man on their shoulder.

Miletich teaches power, top conditioning, while Renzo Gracie is about counter balance and cunning.

Renzo teaches the pretzel logic of Gracie style at a gym in Manhattan. Where 60 Minutes noticed there’s only one picture hanging. Gracie and a fighter named Kazushi Sakuraba. In their fight in Japan, sponsored by Pride Fighting Championships, Sakuraba broke Gracie’s arm with. Gracie never tapped out – he just let it break.

During the fight, Sakuraba twisted Gracie's arm completely inside out.

"To be honest, I really even enjoyed that moment. Because I had plenty conscience of what was going on. And I didn't give up. I saw the ligaments going. I heard one by one going away. And I embraced that as a punishment for the mistake that I had," Gracie says.

Asked why he didn't tap, Gracie says, "Because I really believe I could keep fighting even without the arm."

That’s the spirit he brought to bear in a match against Miletich. The two masters, both pushing 40, sized each other up. It was a clash of styles.

Miletich seemed in better shape, and was the heavy favorite. Gracie, the jiu-jitsu grappler, wanted to fight on the ground. Miletich defended against the takedown.

But there’s a saying in this sport: "There are so many ways to lose."

Gracie climbed the stronger Miletich like a tree and inch by inch improved his position until he had his arm around Miletich’s neck like a boa constrictor, tightening his grip, until the match was over. The move is called "flying guillotine."

Any sport with a move called a "flying guillotine" is never going to be for everyone. But the combat style the Fracies brought to America just a few years ago is quickly rising above boxing in popularity, at least among those who see beauty in the martial arts.

"People would see a lot of times fighting as a ugly thing, as a thing that denigrates the human being. In reality, you see fighting on everything," says Gracie.

"Everything's fighting?" Pelley asks.

"Everything's fighting. Doesn't matter what it is. You wake up in the morning, to get outta bed is a fight, believe it," Gracie says. "So, fighting is actually the best thing a man can have in his soul."

It was a pretty cool and objective report. If you want to check out the video footage. Check this link. It was pretty funny when Renzo armlocks Correspondent Scott Pelley standing up. There's even a Q&A for the Correspondent Scotty Pelley. Check out the video segment online. It's nice and clear and I like the interview with Renzo Gracie. Also, there's an interview with Matt Hughes.

Roger Gracie debuts in MMA

2006-12-08T23:50:00.000-08:00

Roger Gracie is one of the reigning sports Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighters. He's a big and lanky fellow. His fighting style is described as not fancy and very basic yet his ability to rise to top of the heap shows his "old school" approach has made him the new standard bearer for the Gracie family. Eventually, he wanted to fight MMA.

He got his chance. Read the article from GRACIE magazine.

Roger prepared and executed an armbar that ended the fight. “Renzo
insisted that I attack, but I hesitated, as I remembered getting slammed
the first time." Photos ©Bodog

I liked this part of the article about the Gracie clan. The Gracie clan is like an army. There are factions within the family but there's always stronger ties between certain family members. When one Gracie fights, he can rely on the clan's fighting experience. Renzo and Rilion Gracie were there:

I wasn't impressed by Roger's win from video on Youtube.com. I guess it seemed so easy for him to eventually get the submission without a scratch. We'll see how he does in future fights. That's something I can't wait.

Bond On Set Book

2006-12-07T18:20:00.000-08:00

Cover looks cool. This is a new photo book. I'm inclined to buy it. Check out the reviews at Amazon.com and some pictures. I always love films and behind the scenes stuff.

Book Description
Featuring the debut of a brand-new Bond and set in a number of spectacular European locations, Casino Royale is the latest addition to the most successful film series ever made. Working alongside cast and crew, premier showbiz photographer Greg Williams creates a unique visual record of the making of the movie.

Casino Royale - 007 Reboots

2006-11-17T21:40:00.000-08:00

Teaser poster

The teaser poster is great. Bond's face is somewhat hidden. Metaphor for a British agent who will become the smooth and cool James Bond.

Casino Royale is the latest addition to the James Bond film franchise. It's a reboot similar to Batman Returns. It takes the iconic British master spy and let's you in on James Bond's first real mission so to speak. The iconic music theme is there but placed in a different order. "M" is horrible as Bond's superior. She's hammy as heck. I wish "M" was played by a dry Alec Guiness.

Eva Green as Vesper Lynd, Daniel Craig as James Bond and Caterina Murino
as Solange in MGM/Columbia Pictures' Casino Royale.

Eva Green plays Bond's love interest.

Just had to say this.

Daniel Craig is the latest actor to play the iconic British spy. He's perfect to play a cocky, emotional British Agent. He's not a pretty boy like Pierce Brosnan and in a way a prototypical version of Sean Connery's Bond.

The plot has a nice twist to it and underneath an action flick lies a film with a romantic heart. James Bond is human but learns in the end that trusting no one and having a cold heart will keep him in the game rather failing his missions. A cliche but the take on a diamond-in-the-rough James Bond is great. He's got a chip on his shoulder and has something to prove. He's a "blunt instrument" as "M" describes Bond. But he shows his talent for spycraft, vicious beating, and killing when needed.

Like the current trend in alot of films, Bond isn't given a bimbo as a romantic interest but an equal in both looks and brains. When James Bond checks himself in the mirror with a tailored tuxedo, he's enjoying what he sees.

A buff Daniel Craig rises out of the water in blue trunks showing off his torso is interesting. So much for the feminist "male gaze." It's Craig's buffed body that's placed on more display than the Bond girls. It's almost a homage to Ursula Andress in her bikini except this time, there's the focus on the male body. It's not the Bond girl we're ogling but Bond? I guess the male fantasy now is being buff, cocky, and being able to give someone a beatdown while being sensitive with the ladies. Isn't it true that when couples break up, men have a harder time pyschologically while women are on to the next boyfriend. Even when Bond is being tortured, he's shown bronzed and nude. His nemesis points out the obvious. Bond keeps himself in rather good shape. This is a trend mirrored by American men's fixation with their appearance. Just look at the number of men's "health & fitness" magazines. It's rather telling this Bond film mirrors what's going on in western society. Now it's the men's turn to focus on how they look.

It's a throw-back to Stallone's films where he showcased his ripped body. Seeing a bulked-up Bond makes you think when he has to give someone an a$$-whuppin', he can. He's not skinny like Pierce Brosnan. The film shows him with his face cut-up from various altercations. The violence is visceral. This is not the James Bond where he dispatches his enemies with ease and nary a scratch. He'll put a bullet in your head and move on. Ironically, the action owes a bit to Tarantino's rip-off of Hong Kong action flicks pioneered by John Woo and his brethren.

Continuing on the male body fixation riff, it appeared the production took Craig's physique rather seriously:

For Your Pies Only
James Bond actor Daniel Craig was put on a strict diet after piling on the pounds during filming.
Daniel, 38, has been ordered in to the gym after gorging on hearty soups served with dumplings on the set of Casino Royale in Prague.

Bond producer Barbara Broccoli called in a personal trainer to get him back in top shape.
The Mirror quotes a source as saying: "The producers were worried when he appeared to have gone soft around the edges. They got a fitness expert to whip him into shape."

There's been criticism of Daniel Craig being the next Bond. He's blond and blue-eyed and doesn't have the looks to play Bond. But Craig makes it up by playing a cocky British spy with physicality and emotion. He makes mistakes and his duped by a number of individuals which shows he has alot to learn. This is what makes the green Agent interesting. You can see his frustration and shock when his enemy gets the better of him.

This is from the New York Times review:

Mr. Craig, who fits Fleming’s description of the character as appearing “ironical, brutal and cold” better than any actor since Mr. Connery. Mr. Craig’s Bond looks as if he has renewed his license to kill.

Symmetry = Beauty?

2006-11-16T18:19:00.000-08:00

Survival of the Beautiful?

Nancy Etcoff wrote a book with the title arguing that beauty is not a construct but has an evolutionary rationale. I find it rather interesting that SYMMETRY is "attractive" and represent biological health.

Here's an article from USA Weekend:

The beauty of symmetry

Can your looks be measured by a mathematical ratio? Studies show that "beautiful" people actually are just "more proportional" people.

By Elizabeth Snead

Everyone knows the adage "Don't judge a book by its cover." But we can't help it; we do just that, day in and day out, consciously and subconsciously. We rate others on the basis of their appearance and compare our own looks with the enhanced images of beautiful women and handsome men in movies and magazines and on TV and billboards.

Beauty not only sells -- it pays off. Beautiful babies get more attention from parents and teachers. Good-looking guys get more dates than average ones. Pretty women get out of traffic tickets and into exclusive clubs. The list of pluses for being one of the "beautiful people" goes on and on.

So what makes a person attractive? Don't bother looking in the mirror; just get out a measuring tape. Widespread studies, such as those conducted by Randy Thornhill (University of New Mexico) and Karl Grammer (University of Vienna), confirm that beauty is simply balance: The more symmetrical a face, the more appealing it appears. The concept applies to bodies, too. Physical symmetry is subconsciously perceived as a reflection of a person's youth, fertility, health and strength. And although bilateral (left-right) symmetry might not be a bona fide health certificate these days, it has been a marker of good health and genes throughout human evolution.

"Our sensitivity to beauty is hard-wired -- that is, governed by circuits in the brain shaped by natural selection," says Nancy Etcoff, author of "Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty". "We love to look at smooth skin, shiny hair, curved waists and symmetrical bodies because, over the course of evolution, people who noticed these signals and desired their possessors had more reproductive success. We're their descendants."

Symmetry also is sexy. In a study by biology professor Thornhill and University of New Mexico psychology professor Steven Gangestad, hundreds of college-age women and men were measured (including their ears, feet, ankles, hands and elbows). Questionnaires revealed that men who were more symmetrical started having sex three to four years earlier and had more sex partners than their asymmetrical counterparts.

Symmetrical people smell better, too. Thornhill and Gangestad found that women prefer the scent of symmetrical men, and vice versa. So much for Old Spice and Chanel No. 5.

If you weren't born symmetrical, don't despair. Plastic surgeons are skilled at creating and restoring symmetry through popular procedures such as face-lifts, nasal refinements, eyelid lifts, collagen injections, liposuction, and cheek and breast implants. Once reserved for the wealthy, plastic surgery now is fairly common for middle-class folks seeking to gain confidence and improve their career and romance prospects (see psych article).

Stephen Marquardt, a retired California plastic surgeon who researches attractiveness, has moved from beauty's medical side to its mathematical side. He notes that a certain ratio has been found to recur in beautiful things both natural (flowers, pine cones, seashells) and man-made (the Parthenon, Mozart's music, da Vinci's paintings). This "golden ratio" is 1:1.618, with the number rounded to 1.618 known as "phi."
Using phi as his guide, Marquardt designed a mask that applies the golden ratio to the face. For example, the ideal ratio between the width of the nose and the width of the mouth is -- you guessed it -- 1:1.618. The closer a face fits the mask, he finds, the more attractive the face is perceived to be. "Even average-looking people fit the mask, just not as closely as really attractive people," he says. "A lot of this is biology. It's necessary for us to recognize our species. Humans are visually oriented, and the mask screams, 'Human!' "

Now, this "golden ratio" which was "discovered" by the Greeks is fascinating.

Marquardt's Web site shows the mask on timeless beauties from Queen Nefertiti to Marilyn Monroe (it works on all ethnicities, with slight variations). There's also a mask for men -- a close fit on Pierce Brosnan, but not quite right on Tom Cruise. To see how well your face fits, go to beautyanalysis.com.

Here's a good starting point on this topic.

Not everyone seeking symmetry goes under the knife. Although makeup artists don't slap Marquardt's mask on their clients, they do emulate its template, making eyes appear larger, cheeks higher, noses narrower and lips fuller using the magic of light-reflective foundations, powders and lip glosses. (Sorry, guys: Women have a slight edge on achieving symmetry.) Anyone can create the illusion of a symmetrical face, says Hollywood makeup artist Jeanine Lobell, founder of Stila cosmetics. "Creating symmetry is all about using light, dark and reflection," says Lobell, whose clients include actresses Heather Graham, Liv Tyler, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kate Hudson and Mena Suvari.

When she began doing makeup for celebrity photo shoots eight years ago, Lobell created what she calls "essential points of light" on the face by mixing Vaseline with eye shadow and foundation. "Light can soften the face, give it dimension and make it look more moist," she says. "If you want to take 10 years off your age, try a foundation with shimmer or just put a light-reflective cream on your crow's-feet." (See box for more tips.)
Sure, when you look good, you feel better. But don't get carried away in search of symmetry. Nobody's perfect, and that's just fine, Lobell says. "When you look at a beautiful face, embrace the unique qualities, including the unevenness." Individuality -- now that's beautiful.

One thing interesting is that the truly or extremely beautiful have imperfections. Look at the attractive movie stars and super models yet they may have a not so petit nose or large lips according to one article.

Here's an interesting interview from the Washington Post:

David von Drehle Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 13, 2006; 11:00 AM
Beauty may not really rest in the eye of the beholder, after all.
David von Drehle , whose essay about America's obsession with physical appearance appeared in Washington Post Magazine 's "Looks Issue," will be online fielding questions and comments today.

Read the article:

Looking Good
David von Drehle is a staff writer for the Post's Style section.
____________________
David von Drehle: Good morning and thanks for dropping in on our conversation about beauty. My essay in the Sunday magazine tried to suggest some ways of thinking about the subject--and whether Americans today are more obsessed than ever. It was one of four pieces related in various ways to the topic, and if you haven't read the others I recommend giving them a look.
Now to your questions.
_______________________
Washington, D.C.: In your article you state that symmetry is the main component of beauty and indicates that the symmetrical person is more fertile than the unsymmetrical. Do you think that as people age and become less fertile that is one of the reasons that people are perceived to be less attractive? Are the middle aged boomers who are undergoing procedures that make them look decades younger actually doing false advertising -- trying to continue to look fertile even though they are not? What about breast implants -- are they false advertsing for fertility as well?
David von Drehle: I did write about the growing body of science that looks at physical attractiveness as something real and quantifiable--rather than as an arbitrary creation of one society or another. Is it all correct and complete? Time will tell.
But yes, cosmetic surgery, including (but not limited to) breast implants are very definitely an effort to resculpt nature and/or hold back time. It's not something that appeals to me, but for some people it is not unlike dressing nicely or, I don't know, brushing their teeth. They see it more as a matter of maintenance and presentation than as deception.
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Bowie, Md: I'm glad you brought the issue of age vs. beauty at the end of your article. It reminded me of a story I had read earlier this year about the increasing percentage of anorexia, not among teens but among women in their 40s and 50s. Can you comment please?
David von Drehle: I didn't see that article. Very sad if true. It seems to me that many Americans are going to extremes when it comes to the question of weight -- we have problems of obesity and self-starvation when what we ought to desire is moderation. So says Aristotle.
Which brings me to this interesting observation ...
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Laurel, Md: Reading news stories about the health side of beauty, I keep coming across two assertions that I have a hard time reconciling:
1. Age "X" is the "new 2/3 of X" (e.g. 60 is the 'new 40')
2. Americans are grossly overweight and unhealthy for it
How can these both be true?
I can only imagine that we've split into two dichotomous nations of people who engage in healthy habits and those who don't. Are we really a nation of people who choose to die at 70 and 90?
David von Drehle: People in my kids' generation are going to be facing a very interesting set of philosophical questions as they try to figure out how to live their longer, healthier lives in graceful stages. I'm afraid their parents, we Boomers, are making a hash of it, trying Peter Pan like to avoid forever the consequences of growing up.
To me, few people are more attractive than the folks aging gracefully.
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The Golden Ratio: I must admit I am a little confused. Does the ratio work the same for faces like Cameron Diaz and Ashley Judd? Cameron is a little more "offbeat" in her appearance while I see Judd as more of a "classic" beauty.
David von Drehle: I am pretty confused too, on account of not being much at math. But as Stephen Marquardt, one of the researchers I quote in my article, reminds me the core issue here is one of relationships--the distance from Point A to Point B on a face compared to the distance from Point B to Point C and so on. So faces can be quite different and still adhere to these relationships (as long as the distances remain proportional).
Dr. Marquardt also points out--and I should have put this in the piece--ALL human faces are built on these relationships, so that the gap between an average face and a stunner is quite small.
_______________________
Washington DC: Great article - I wish it was longer. In your focus on symmetry, you neglected to mention more obvious fact: We like people who look physically fit. That varies somewhat culturally, as your discussion of body fat touched on, but clearly serious soccer players tend to be much more attractive than the average person. (Note that soccer is probably more similar to the physical challenges that our ancestors faced when hunting than other sports.)
David von Drehle: You must be a soccer player. Happy hunting, my friend!
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Bethesda, Md: Although I agree that there are quantitative factors that can add up to a beautiful face (such as symmetrical features), I still believe that, in many respects beauty is subjective. The fact that you unabashedly and unequivocally characterized Roseanne Barr and Claire Danes as unattractive and attractive, respectively supports my opinion. Many individuals would disagree with your assessment of either celebrity . . . some people find a more full-figured woman, such as Roseanne, appealing. Meanwhile, others would posit that the primary reason Claire Dane is considered attractive is simply because she maintains the "checklist" features that we have determined are "beautiful" in our society -- namely pale skin and a thin body.
David von Drehle: Actually, I didn't say that. Dr. Marquardt said that. But you are onto something that is clearly relevant here. There is Beauty, which is a mysterious but powerful quality about which philosophers have been musing for thousands of years ... and there is something else called Desire. And Desire seems to be quite personal.
_______________________
Boston, Mass: There were a few mentions of how these mindsets affect males, but it seemed to be mostly sidelined (or only in the context of their reactions to females' looks). Can you say any more about the way this youth and beauty craze directly influences men?
David von Drehle: There is a growing body of science looking at something called the Adonis Syndrome or Adonis Effect ... that's the vibe anyway ... that examines body-image in young men. What thin is to young women, bulging muscles now are to young men. Some of the same worries about anorexia in girls now are reflected in concern about steroid abuse in boys.
_______________________
Austin, Tex:
Rarely does an article annoy me so thoroughly that I seek out an opportunity to tell the author so. Your beauty article was nothing more than a rehash of the science and psuedo-science of beauty that has entered the national dialogue many times in the past decade or so-- and usually in a much more engaging manner. (For example, The Discovery Channel did a series on just this subject about six or seven years ago back when its content was new, hosted by John Cleese and Elizabeth Hurley, which was cheeky and fun as well as informative) But my greatest grievance is that your article proved to be an apology for the damning affects of the fashion/beauty/advertising industry and indeed American consumerist culture in general. Your straight-faced description of a "democratized" and "tolerant" beauty standard can elicit nothing but astonished guffaws from the women and minority segments of your readership. Sure, you list Naomi Campbell and Halle Berry, but certainly you are not blind to the evident fact that these are black women with distinctly Caucasian features. To deny the inherent racism of the American beauty standard is to display either deplorable ignorance or calculated disingenuousness. Actually, I'm not sure any exploration of America's relationship with beauty can be written by a man, particularly a white one, unless he is fully committed to empathizing with the experience of those who exist outside his privilege, which clearly you are not. You, not being a woman, apparently are unable to relate to what it is like to have -the majority of your worth in society- defined by your appearance. Perhaps you would not be so dismissive of the beauty industry's deleterious effects if you were. Indeed, the best part of your article was when you touched upon the ephemeral nature of beauty and in particular America's disturbing obsession with youth. Perhaps you were only able to make such conclusions because you-while white, while a man, while otherwise probably somewhat conforming (although of course we all necessarily fall short) to the beauty standards of our society- are at least susceptible to the betrayal of your body and face in age. If only you were able to view the images posited on us by the beauty/fashion industry with an eye critical not only of where you personally fall short. I recommend a crash course in feminist theory and African American studies 101. Very disappointing for a subject so filled with important implications about our society and race, gender, capitalism.
David von Drehle: Sorry you didn't like it. Thanks for expressing your views.
_______________________
Washington, D.C.: Good morning, Mr. Drehle!
I was thrilled that this particular issue included the differences in the way black women see themselves. Thank you for going there. I recall a panel of black men on 20/20 a few years ago, who were asked to compare an overweight Oprah to the skinny one who lugged around several pounds of fat. They all unanimously preferred the overweight one. The reasons they gave were pretty illuminating. In addition to saying she "had it going on," they associated her size with words like "comfort," "happiness" and "love"--all traits they associated with their mothers or other women who were important in their lives. Over the last two years, I lost 20 pounds and am in my early 40's. Although my husband and many men think I am at my finest at this stage in my life, I couldn't help but note a tone of fear in my husband's voice that I might lose my round behind.
Do you find that men's perceptions of beauty are associated with what they are comfortable with?
David von Drehle: The article you mention, by Carla Broyles, was really terrific. If Kim checks in on us maybe she can link to it.
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Capitol Hill, Washington, DC: Mr. von Drehle: I really enjoyed your article. I was interested as I was male model in Europe in my early 20's and saw from the inside of an industry how the idea of beauty can be skewed so differently. For all of the beautiful young women I worked with and knew, I have never met an unhappier group in my life. The whims of editors really determined who would be working or not and they changed from one season to the next. I am now 40 and doing print work here in DC on the side, and I have to say confidence trumps youth and beauty any day! Thanks!
David von Drehle: Thanks for writing. I have had sisters and friends involved to minor degrees in the modeling business--just enough to know that it is not something I would want for my daughters. I'm sure there have been some women and men who have had good experiences, but I think the relentless attention to surfaces and the predatory approach to youth is generally demoralizing.
_______________________
Boston, Mass: A host of authors have probed beauty as a cultural construct, including Susan Faludi and Naomi Wolf, whom you mentioned. I was curious to find out what you would add to the conversation, so I read your piece. I must say I was disappointed. I was intrigued by the doctor who studies the science of beauty and wanted to learn more. Where has he published? Was it in a prestigous peer-reviewed journal? What do other scientists and doctors think of his methods and findings? You use his research as proof that humans are hard-wired to recognize beauty without convincing us of the science. That is dangerous, considering the implications of your story, particularly for women.
David von Drehle: Well, as you know, Marquardt was only one of the researchers I wrote about. I also discussed a very current study out of Harvard by Graznya Jasienska in the new Evolution and Human Behavior. But Dr. Marquardt's research has been presented a scholarly conferences and is widely cited in academic literature, as a quick Internet search will show.
But at any rate, I fail to see anything "dangerous" about it. Unless you are a person who somehow confuses surface appearances with inner worth.
_______________________
Northwest DC again: This obese and anorexic issue -- From what I've seen, the obesity problem is more a lower income problem. Anorxia and bulemia are problems of the upper income/extremely rich level of the populace. The Duchess of Windsor said 'You can never be too rich or too thin' but I'm wondering why is extreme thinness a problem? I'd give my eye teeth to lose a few pounds and get back the hipbones and ribs I had 25 years ago!
David von Drehle: Don't give your eye-teeth. Very few people, especially women who have borne children, are intended by nature to have the exact same shape they had as youths.
I do talk a bit in the piece about the use of physical appearance to signal class differences. When poor people worked outside, rich people powdered their faces ghastly white. When the poor moved inside to labor in dark factories and live in dank tenements, all of a suddent rich people were sporting suntans.
In this way, the Duchess of Windsor and the other "social X-rays" have used extreme thinness to signal that they have no worries about where their next meal is coming from. I point out that a person could only utter that quote who had never experienced a famine.
_______________________
Washington, DC: I haven't had a chance to read your magazine article, but I did see an article in today's Style section about a popular Colombian TV soap opera about a teenage girl who wants breast implants so she can be popular and successful.
It reminded me that, however crazy I think Americans are about plastic surgery, it's 100 times worse in Brazil, Colombia, and some other countrires.
David von Drehle: So I've heard!
_______________________
Washington DC: congrats for pulling the curtain and expozing the wizard of oz. the cosmetic industry pretends to market beauty when what they really market is the fear of aging and, oh by the way, if you hadn't noticed, fear is a tremendous motivator to get the earner or rich to part with cash. in a capitalist society, (and i wouldn't live in any other kind) is a reversal of this trend even possible?
David von Drehle: Is this trend reversable? I don't know. My gut tells me that it isn't good for society, in the long run, to have the older folks constantly horning in on the occupations of the young. Our job is to get the next generation started and then sit back and gripe about how much better things were in our day. And then die and leave them a house full of junk to argue over.
If the old folks keep struggling to be young--competing for their jobs and their mates and their tennis court reservations--who knows what might happen. Some day they might Rise Up.
_______________________
Laurel Springs, NC: Great essay, David: Q: What about the old and wealthy geezers who wind up with "measurably" beautiful wives? Or the Nerds with good career prospects, who also wind up with the measurably beautiful wives/women? I was no Adonis, but when I once had an executive suite with all the trimmings and 416 employees under my supervision I was amazed at how many, many women came on to me, several of whom knew me before my promotion and paid no attention to me.
David von Drehle: Yes, yes. 'Tis true. The research crowd often theorizes that women are wired to find the Good Provider more attractive than even the most symmetrical stud. But will that change as more and more women reach the corner offices themselves?
_______________________
Washington, DC: You said in your article that facial symmetry is one of the main components of beauty. Assuming that most people's facial bone structures don't change as they get older, why aren't more older people considered attractive? Is this another demonstration of our society's aversion to being old?
David von Drehle: My prediction is that in another few years the Boomers will suddenly decide that they are beautiful codgers, and then they will inflict their accustomed barrage of self-obsessed media images of beautiful old folks on us. That will be a relief in the sense that they will have come full circle, blessing every phase of life from childhood to old age.
_______________________
the way forward: I was wondering how you factor in 'inner peace' and
'wisdom' into the equation? You only have to look at
people like the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh to see
beauty that is not young, On that note, how do we
encourage a balance of seeking the beauty in the wisdom
of age?
David von Drehle: I can't do any better than that -- thanks.
_______________________
Washington, DC: I like the article -- but I'm a little confused. I think my main reaction was -- so what now?
Should we just accept that our obsessions with the Angelina Jolie's of the world is here to stay? Did you even have a point in that way or were you just presenting the ideas? Kind of like well here's this thing, interesting eh?
David von Drehle: Well, I try to have a point, sure, but don't always feel a need to pound it with a sledgehammer.
Yes, humans will likely always be moved powerfully by physical beauty. We have been through all of recorded history and we show no sign of changing.
But no, that ought not to be our only conception of value or even of the variety of beauty itself.
_______________________
Golden Ratios and Pregnancy: In women, does advanced pregnancy exhibit any signs of the Golden Ratio, or, as I suspect, does it obliterate existing Golden Ratios, in part signaling that there is no "womb for rent" to would-be inseminators?
Some women claim to feel more beautiful than ever while pregnant; at six months along I feel more like the only ratio to which I can currently relate is 3.1415927!!
David von Drehle: I haven't seen any data on pregnancy. I can report that my wife was gorgeous every day of her pregnancies, just like always!
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Curious: Interesting article. Question: How does one explain the varying reactions to attractiveness among same-gender interactions (ie. attractive subordinate female employee is treated badly by older female boss but may be promoted by older male boss). I find this to be true among females but have watched attractive males get promoted by male bosses. Any research on attrativeness and the alpha-female interactions? Thanks.
David von Drehle: Great question. I don't know the answer. Anyone?
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Bethesda, Md: You missed a good parenthetical when you brought up Naomi Wolf's book
"Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women."
The back cover of the hardback edition was graced with a FULL PAGE photo of Ms. Wolf's strikingly beautiful face.
David von Drehle: You know, this is very true. No one who read Naomi's book could miss the fact that Naomi was a looker. (IS a looker...)
I would have made that point if it hadn't already been made by a number of writers reviewing "The Beauty Myth." I have a strict limit to the number of recycled points in any article and I had already far exceeded it.
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Central Florida: This hypothesis of hard-wiring for the Golden Mean seems to be in conflict with another hard-wiring hypothesis, expressed by Nigel Spivey, that humans prefer exaggerated representations of the human body in response to peak shift stimuli. The only place that the two hypotheses seem to intersect is in the Late Greek nude, which is highly stylized to fit the Golden Mean. In other words, according to peak shift hypothesis, hard-wiring and cultural bias produce wildly different models of perfection rather than uniform ones.
David von Drehle: I'll take your word for it. I haven't read Nigel Spivey.
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New York, NY: It's very interesting that you wrote about the Nefertiti fragment. I was also stunned by it and remember it to this day. I find myself drawn to the Met at least once a year and I seek out those lips every time.

One thing I am finding as I age is that, although my inner and outer life become more rich and complex with every year and I strive to become wise, I am unsure whether these characteristics will reflected in my face and this worries me. We've always heard about the "face you deserve" and I guess this is the beauty myth I cling to. Somehow I thought that if I struggled to master the most difficult areas of human knowledge and to love those around me with a steadfast and loyal devotion and to lead an upright ethical life, I would be rewarded with a noble visage as I aged.

I don't see this happening yet. I see a growing look of fatigue and weariness and worry and I guess I wonder if I will get the face I deserve. (Or perhaps I am wondering if I am wrong about the face I deserve.)

So that's another beauty myth: The ideal of inner beauty: That someone's character would reflect in his or her face. My question is: Do you think there's any truth in that? Do our faces mirror our souls over time?

If so, do you have any recommendations to polish my character, to refine my soul in order to get the look I desire?

Women in my family age slowly and I'm told I look much younger than I am but I know it's only a matter of time before I start to look my age, as they say. This wouldn't bother me if I could attain the physical nobility and grace I've always assumed goes with leading a good life. My quest for knowledge and goodness and love hasn't paid off yet in my face and alas, perhaps it never will.

Sometimes, though, I look at my hands and their aging pleases me. If my face does not go the way I'm hoping, my hands might have to be the consolation prize.

David von Drehle: What a lovely contribution. I can't top that, so let's leave it there. Thanks for reading, for chatting, and for being your beautiful selves!

Innespace - dolphin-styled submersible

2006-11-16T17:34:00.000-08:00

Innespace build the Sea Breacher which resembles a dolphin. It's a smartly-designed submersible. I've seen in on TV and it's amazing to see it dive and behave like some sort of mechanical dolphin - breaching into the air while being able to dive in water. I wish I could have one.

Tesla - A real electric car

2006-11-16T17:22:00.000-08:00

Check out www.teslamotors.com.
Instead of boring "efficient" electric cars, the roadster is supposedly twice as efficient as the Prius. It will only set you back $100,000. I saw it on TV and it's based on an array of small lithium-ion batteries similar to the ones used in various consumer electronics.

The Ultimate Fighting machines

2006-11-16T17:07:00.000-08:00

Great article about the Fertitta brothers. They salvaged the Ultimate Fighting Championship when it was on its deathbed.

The ultimate fighting machines

Two brothers built Station Casinos into a Vegas power. Now they're hitting the jackpot with a sport once denounced as 'human cockfighting.'

By Joel Stein, Business 2.0 Magazine

November 8 2006: 9:10 AM EST

(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- This would be a particularly awesome time for the Fertitta brothers to finally disagree. That's because the dispute resolution clause in their ownership contract of the Ultimate Fighting Championship states that "in order to resolve a Deadlock among the LLC Members, Frank and Lorenzo shall engage in a Sport Jiu-Jitsu match under the rules as set forth herein."

Those would be three five-minute rounds refereed by UFC president Dana White and "decided by submission or points." Points, of course, being accrued by kicking the other guy in the face.

TOUGH GUYS: Frank (left) and Lorenzo Fertitta KO'd skeptics by turning Ultimate Fighting into mass entertainment.

Having a major business decision decided by an ultraviolent martial arts contest between brothers worth more than $700 million would be cool enough on a normal week, especially since Frank, 44, and Lorenzo, 37, not only are pretty evenly matched but claim not to have had an argument in their adult lives.

But for it to happen right now would particularly kick ass, since both brothers are wearing leg casts after having knee surgery performed on the same day, by the same doctor, in the same hospital, for the same injury - Frank's from soccer, Lorenzo's from sparring.

Right now a disagreement would legally necessitate a fight so disturbingly stomach-churning that UFC fans wouldn't even enjoy it. Or, more likely, would pay twice as much to see it.

Brotherly love, with pain
The Fertitta brothers have turned their dad's suburban Las Vegas casino into Station Casinos (Charts), the fifth-biggest gaming company in the country, a gambling and hotel empire that took in more than $1.1 billion in revenue last year and earned $309 million, more than 17 times what it made in 2002. Its stock has soared nearly eightfold over the past five years.

As a hobby, the Fertittas bought the most damaged, worthless brand in America that doesn't make cars - the Ultimate Fighting Championship - and turned it into one of the fastest-growing sports in the world, with higher ratings and more coveted ringside seats than boxing.

They spend an almost creepy amount of time together: working out every morning at the UFC offices, sitting at meetings drinking identical cans of Diet Dr. Pepper, hanging at weekend barbecues with each other's families, playing practical jokes on their employees, taking vacations on matching 200-foot Dutch yachts, and sparring with each other.

"Our sparring would get to the point where we couldn't swallow our food the next day from choking each other's esophagus," Frank explains. "So we learned to tap out earlier." They are the Extreme Kennedys.

Selling sin...softly

In a town known for outsize entrepreneurial characters - think Kirk Kerkorian and Steve Wynn or, better yet, Benny Binion and Bugsy Siegel - the Fertitta brothers are carving out their own legend by modernizing the selling of sin. They're number-crunching, service-oriented, traditional businessmen who sell gambling, violence, and sex as if they're no different from frappuccinos.

Because to them they aren't. After all, these guys grew up in Las Vegas with a dad who owned a casino. Going to the movies, playing slots, being served by bikini-clad cocktail waitresses while your kids play in the pool, watching two shirtless guys pound the crap out of each other in a metal cage - they're all the same thing.

By equating gambling and bowling (which already exist side-by-side at one of their hotels), the Fertittas have broken all kinds of casino-building rules. They have located their properties far from the fabled Strip, and catered as much to the residents of suburban Vegas as to tourists. They let natural light into their casinos, so you know what time it is. You can actually go to the lobby, check in, and get to your room without ever seeing the casino floor.

Meet 11 companies changing the world
"People will gamble when they want to gamble," Lorenzo says. "They don't want it shoved down their throats." The soft sell works: While the big Strip hotels make less than half their money from gambling (the average tourist plays only 3.3 hours in a four-day stay), 86 percent of Station's operating cash flow is from slot machines - the easiest revenue stream invented since the tithe.

That's a major reason that Station is expected to post an industry-leading profit margin of 40.6 percent for 2006; rival MGM Mirage, by comparison, is expected to come in at 32.3 percent (see "Winning Hand," above right).

A sport politicians love to hate
The other thing to understand about how the Fertittas have made their bones is their special relationship with risk. Of course, everybody who does business in Vegas has to have a high tolerance for risk. But the Fertittas took on so much debt to buy desert on Vegas's outskirts in the '90s that Wall Street cut the company's stock price in half over a few months in 1996.

They kept buying. Perhaps even crazier, they also decided to buy the Ultimate Fighting Championship - a widely ridiculed bloodfest that no less a player than Sen. John McCain once tried to have banned - pouring tens of millions of their personal cash into it.

Now the UFC is minting money: A single recent pay-per-view spectacle generated $30 million. "Frank and Lorenzo," White says, "have the biggest balls of anyone I've ever met in my life."

Which is a useful thing - now in particular. Because the risks may be increasing again for the Fertittas. They remain heavily exposed to Las Vegas real estate, a market that, after years of wild growth, is finally showing signs of a potential collapse. (See "The New Rules of Real Estate." )

Station's stock is under pressure. And though the UFC is on a roll, the sport is one ring death away from becoming a national pariah.

"You always have to consider risk," Lorenzo says. "But we continue to be positive about the strategy we have in place. We're believers."

High rollers upping the ante
Entrepreneurialism is in the Fertitta brothers' blood. Their father, Frank Fertitta Jr., came to Las Vegas from Galveston, Texas, during the 1960s recession. He worked his way up from bellman at the Tropicana to building his own 5,000-square-foot locals casino with 100 slot machines in 1976.

Life with Dad was a continuous education in business basics, from focusing on delivering value to regular customers to knowing when to make the bold move. "Sitting around the family dinner, we'd talk about business," says Frank Fertitta III. "He'd say, 'Are we going to do that expansion?' That's what it was like growing up."

With that training, the brothers decided to start their own company instead of just working for their dad. In 1987, after Lorenzo graduated from business school at NYU, they started a vending company that rented out pay phones. This being Las Vegas, it quickly morphed into a company that put poker machines in bars. After a while they figured it was easier just to buy bars to put the machines into.

As Vegas's population exploded in the 1980s, the Fertittas started buying up real estate for future casinos. They accumulated huge plots of land, many in barren desert with no roads, no electricity, and no people. They were places where the brothers figured people might someday build developments and, more important, where the state might legalize gambling. Looking for cash to buy even more land, they combined their business with their dad's casino and in 1993 took Station public, raising nearly $300 million.

In 1997, when the state delineated the areas in which gambling would be allowed, it turned out that the Fertittas had guessed well. But it also turned out they wanted a whole lot more, and they further extended themselves through, among other things, a complicated land deal that brought them 6.7 percent of the Palms casino.

"The size of our company couldn't really handle it, and we put all of our chips in," Lorenzo says. Adds Frank, "We were very long on raw dirt."

What happens in Vegas, stays...off the strip?
The maneuvers spooked Wall Street. By 1998, Station had a punishing debt-to-equity ratio of more than 3 to 1, and the company's stock took a beating.

But those early land gambles laid the groundwork for much of the company's success; Station now owns more than 950 acres in suburban Las Vegas and Reno and is building on a lot of it. The Fertittas just completed a $2 billion bank credit to ramp up more construction.

Tim Poster, a dotcom millionaire who used the money he made selling Travelscape.com to Expedia (Charts) to buy the Golden Nugget casino, went to high school with Lorenzo and served on the Station board of directors during the brothers' frantic landgrab.

"One of their secretaries was always on the phone calling a board meeting in a half-hour," he recalls. "And you think, 'Oh, God, what did they come up with next?'"

The Fertittas' two most recent projects make their 1990s dice-rolling look penny-ante. Enormous superluxury resorts designed to compete with the Bellagio and Mandalay Bay, the Green Valley Ranch and Red Rock together cost some $1.5 billion. They're a 20-minute drive from the Strip.

Basically, the brothers were asking people to spend $300 a night to come to Vegas to gamble, eat, and hang poolside - without actually going to Vegas. Stranger yet, they were asking beautiful people to go to clubs next to a casino filled with locals killing time before a movie. It was like inviting the hot girl in high school over to play Dungeons & Dragons.

Office decor: Doughnuts and goats

Green Valley Ranch, built with developer Greenspun Companies, which owned the land, was a huge success - to meet torrid demand, Station has expanded the resort from 200 rooms to 500 since it opened in December 2001. In April the Fertittas opened their 14th casino, the crystal-dripping Red Rock, which at $1 billion cost more per room than any hotel in Vegas history.

"Our customer has seen the volcano and the jousting match," Lorenzo says. "He doesn't want to see the tourist traps. He wants to know where he can get the best meal for the best value. When we go to New York, we don't want to eat in Times Square."

The Fertittas aren't exactly what you'd expect of a pair of risk-taking, jujitsu-fighting guys. While Frank's office at Red Rock does have a refrigerator filled with Muscle Milk, it looks much like a modern art museum. Just outside in the hallway is a huge glass-door cabinet full of prescription medication, one of the Damien Hirst pieces that Frank owns. Lorenzo's office has several boxing-themed Basquiats and Warhols.

Having an art collection is so antithetical to their tough-guy shtick that above Frank's conference table hang two enormous close-ups of doughnuts - a gag gift from Rob Wells, head of the firm's ad agency.

And, for tough guys, the brothers seem to have a lot of fun. Their in-house attorney, Rich Haskins, once spent a full day working in his office without complaint despite the fact that the Fertittas had filled the room with goats. When you work for businessmen this guy-oriented - they also privately own the Gordon Biersch brewery - you learn to live with practical jokes.

If it's big and bad, it's good
On the other hand, guys who can build a goat pen overnight obviously have a certain flair for getting things done.

The brothers are heavily involved in every part of their operations: scoping real estate, designing buildings, obsessing about ambience. Lorenzo recently walked into one of the Red Rock restaurants and asked for the background music to be turned up.

"The minute you stop micromanaging is the minute you're unsuccessful," he says. "When you're self-made, you see that the little things are what separate you from other people," Frank adds. "And if you don't care about them, people who work for you will say, 'Why should I care about the details if he doesn't?'"

Despite their micromanaging, they give the people they hire a lot of room to innovate. Rande Gerber was given so much control of Cherry, the nightclub at Red Rock, that the urinals are shaped like open, lipsticked mouths.

"At Cherry, I said I wanted the biggest, baddest sound system and lighting system of anywhere in the world," Gerber says. "They didn't ask me what it was going to cost; they just said, 'Great. We want the same thing.'"

They are, however, known for being highly demanding - you do not want to show up for a meeting with the Fertittas unprepared. It's not uncommon for employees at the UFC to be pushed so hard they quit.

"You can tell Frank that we're making millions in revenue here and millions there," White says, "and he'll say, 'What aren't we doing?'"

To make up for that kind of pressure, the Fertittas keep people around by doling out big rewards. When they hired White, they gave him 10 percent of the company. Gerber says that at the last UFC title fight, when Renato "Babalu" Sobral went down by a TKO in just 95 seconds to Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell, he saw the Fertittas run to the ambulance taking Sobral to the hospital to slip him a bonus check.

"You see him open the check, and all of a sudden he's got tears in his eyes," Gerber says. "All they said was, 'You're a champion, and we're going to see you again.' They take care of their people."

Resisting temptation
And their customers. Above all, the Fertittas believe that gambling and entertainment are a service industry.

"This business is all about convenience: ingress, egress, parking - the little things that people overlook," Frank says. They're able to generate repeat business by raking off only 4.5 percent on slots, significantly less than the major hotels on the Strip take.

Their success with locals has made Station a highly sought manager for Native American casinos and is allowing it to expand into suburban Reno. "We're all about trying to stay disciplined," Lorenzo says. "We've been tempted to go on the Strip."

The mistakes the Fertittas have made came when they strayed from their turf. When riverboat gambling was legalized on the Mississippi, the Fertittas built a casino outside St. Louis. It was a bust.

"The river floods," Frank says. "They're raising your taxes every time you turn around." They blew another $7 million on an offshore gambling website before giving up because of legal hurdles.

'Human cockfighting' on the Senate floor
But their biggest bet was on the UFC, a purchase made more out of passion than business sense. The Fertittas' father took his sons to boxing matches when they were kids. Lorenzo became such a huge fan that, at age 27, he became the youngest member of the state athletic commission. A few months into his dream job, Mike Tyson bit off part of Evander Holyfield's ear.

"I was one of the guys who had to tell Mike to pack up and go," Lorenzo says. That's when it became a little less of a dream job.

At a high school friend's wedding in 1995, Lorenzo ran into another classmate, White, a boxing manager who was handling some UFC fighters. The Fertittas became instant fans and practitioners of the sport.

Most upright walkers, however, were less impressed by the UFC. The no-rules gladiatorial gorefests were so violent they'd been banned in every state with an athletic commission. McCain railed against the sport on the Senate floor in 1996 - "human cockfighting," he called it. By 1998 the UFC had lost its pay-per-view distribution. In 2000, its owner contacted White and told him he was interested in selling the league. A few months later the Fertittas, using private funds, bought it and put White in charge.

"It was taking your passion in these things you love and then making them profitable ventures," Frank says.

But early on, it looked like the Fertittas would end up coldcocked. After establishing the UFC's first rules other than "no biting, no eye-gouging, no fishhooking, and no strikes to the windpipe," as well as rounds, refs, and weight classes, Lorenzo did manage to get the sport reinstated with his friends at the athletic commissions in Nevada and New Jersey.

But after getting back on pay-per-view, the UFC staged a disastrous fight night so disorganized that it got cut off before the top card ended. The Fertittas lost $1.5 million that night.

A throwaway show becomes a hit

By 2004 they were $34 million deep into the UFC and had little to show for it.

Having allowed the Discovery Channel to shoot the reality show American Casino at Green Valley, the brothers decided that a series where a bunch of UFC fighters live together and face weekly elimination in the ring was their Trojan horse for getting on television. Their pitch was turned down by every network. So they made Spike TV, the only channel specifically designed for overly testosteroned young men, an offer it couldn't refuse: The Fertittas agreed to produce the $10 million show themselves; Spike could just air it with no production costs.

The show the Fertittas put together, called Ultimate Fighter, debuted last year, became the anemic channel's first hit, and made White a TV star. Between live bouts, taped fights, wrap-up programs, and the fourth season of the reality show, Spike TV now beams an average of 15 hours of UFC programming each week. The live fight that ended Ultimate Fighter last season drew more viewers than any HBO boxing match this season and twice as many as a Nascar race televised at the same time.

This year the show outdrew preseason football with men ages 18 to 49. Front-row spectators at recent fights have included Donald Trump, Cindy Crawford, and Paris Hilton. A UFC videogame has been made. The Fertittas are about to launch a European UFC division and have a five-year plan that they hope will put them in Canada and Mexico.

Now the financial payoff is coming. The Matt Hughes vs. Royce Gracie fight in May generated an estimated $30 million in pay-per-view fees; a UFC tournament in August drew a live gate of $3.1 million.

Taking a few knocks
The Fertittas themselves remain among the biggest fans of the league's brand of combat - and at some level, UFC wannabes. They train like madmen, hitting the gym almost every day by 7 a.m., honing a Brazilian style of jujitsu introduced to them by White. Lorenzo sometimes spars with professional UFC fighters.

"I thought Lorenzo handled a couple of guys in the UFC," says Liddell, the UFC light heavyweight champion. Frank may be even tougher. On a trip where he kept throwing friends off his yacht, someone finally threw him over, and he cracked his head on the side of the boat. Blood gushed, but he refused to go to the hospital, Gerber recalls.

Eventually he relented. "An hour later he's back with stitches in his head and a martini in his hand," Gerber says. "It was so Frank."

In fact, White says Frank is the single most aggressive person he's ever met. And White is a guy who, in order to re-sign star fighter Tito Ortiz this summer after he left the UFC in anger, agreed to let the former champion go at him for three rounds.

A Cain and Abel destiny?
The Fertittas will need every ounce of that toughness if the real estate bubble, now leaking, bursts. Promotional costs and discounts at Red Rock have crimped early returns there, and the Fertittas recently raised the cost estimate on another planned development, Aliante Station, by about a third, to $600 million.

Station's long-term debt is expected to reach $3.2 billion by year's end - troubling by some Wall Street standards, if not the brothers'. Station's stock is off about 25 percent since April. The UFC, meanwhile, is facing a growing number of copycat rivals and ongoing regulatory risk.

Still, some analysts believe that the company can weather short-term hits. "Station has a lot of upward potential, given its growth pipeline," says Brian Gordon, a partner in Vegas-based consulting firm Applied Analysis. "We believe there's clearly upward potential for the company."

The Fertittas, of course, are up for any challenge that comes - and think their unique symbiosis developed over a lifetime of working together will serve them well, whatever unfolds.

Lorenzo, despite a love of earsplitting punk rock, is the mellower of the two. "In 20 years, I can count on my hand the number of times I've heard him raise his voice," Poster says. Frank is more of a gambler, Poster says, and Lorenzo's job in the partnership is to temper Frank's instincts.

"Frank might be pushing the train in a certain direction, but Lorenzo makes sure it stays on track," he adds. "One wouldn't work without the other."

Which seems scary, since brothers who work together are supposed to have some kind of massive falling-out eventually: the Kinks, Oasis, the Mondavis, Cain and Abel, apparently some of the people involved in the Civil War.

But these guys just don't seem able to act out of sync - they even injure their knees at the same time. "They always back each other up," White says. "Even if one of them is dead wrong and the other knows it."

Maybe what Cain and Abel didn't understand was that you can avoid a lot of trouble if you're evenly matched in Brazilian jujitsu.

Joel Stein is a writer in Los Angeles.

GSP

2006-11-13T19:34:00.000-08:00

Here's a cool article about George St. Pierre, a Canadian MMA fighter.

St. Pierre looks to topple Matt Hughes

NEIL DAVIDSON
Canadian Press
Montreal — At 25, handsome and polite, Georges St. Pierre could break your heart.
And your arm. And your leg.

St. Pierre is the Canadian poster boy of mixed martial arts, a hybrid sport that requires expertise in boxing, wrestling and jiu-jitsu. The Montreal welterweight is smart, sleek and athletic — and Saturday night he can become UFC world champion with a win over veteran Matt Hughes.
St. Pierre, 12-1 as an MMA fighter, says it's his time.

"No doubt, no doubt," St. Pierre said confidently after battering a sparring partner in the boxing ring at an east Montreal gym.

"I have never been so focused, so mentally and physically well-prepared."
A win and St. Pierre will join Carlos Newton of Newmarket, Ont., as the only Canadian ever to hold a UFC title.
Standing in his way is Hughes, a fighting farmer from Hillsboro, Ill., who has won 19 of his last 20 fights — including a 2004 victory over St. Pierre — while raising his record to 42-4. Hughes knows all about Canadians, having defeated Newton twice in title fights.

Hughes and St. Pierre are headlining UFC 65: Bad Intentions (available on pay-per-view) at Arco Arena in Sacramento, Calif. The two 170-pounders were slated to meet last month, but St. Pierre was sidelined with a pulled groin tendon.

The 33-year-old Hughes is a God-fearing, Stars-and-Stripes-loving, savvy competitor who at this stage of his career is actually looking for opponents to challenge him.

Hughes is very good at what he does and knows it.

He began as a wrestler but has since improved all aspects of his game. Today, he is a one-man wrecking crew who deals in pain and submission. While the odd crack has shown in his hitherto aura of invincibility, he always survives and seems to be getting better as he gets older.

"He's getting better, but I got better too," said St. Pierre. "And I think I have improved more since then than him. We will find out."

St. Pierre's training partners talk of his athleticism, all-round talents and what a class act he is.
Alex Dyas, a Canadian junior wrestling champion, has been grappling with St. Pierre for four years. He remembers when St. Pierre first came around, the wrestlers had their way with him.

"It didn't take Georges long, maybe a year, and he was holding his own against most people. And definitely taking it to me," said the 20-year-old Dyas, who was 10th at the world junior wrestling championship earlier this year.

"He's incredibly strong and flexible."

Nate Marquardt, a fellow UFC fighter brought in to spar with St. Pierre, says the Canadian is the real deal.
"St. Pierre is like a diamond in the rough. It's very area to find someone as good as him in every area."
While everyone praises St. Pierre's physical attributes, some have questioned the mental side of his game — which seems somewhat unfair considering he has only lost once. And that was to Hughes.

Hughes and St. Pierre first met in the ring two years ago at UFC 50: The War of 04, with a young St. Pierre declaring he was going to "shock the world." Hughes dismissed the challenger by saying he wasn't mentally strong enough to take him.

GSP lashes out at Matt Hughes. GSP in white trunks.

The Montrealer held his own in the first round, taking Hughes down and then stunning him with a spinning side kick. St. Pierre also managed to get back off the ground when Hughes, a superb wrestler, took him down.
But St. Pierre was taken down again late in the round and, from an exposed position, tried for a submission hold. Hughes reversed it, stepping over him and slapping on an armbar. The Canadian tapped out almost instantly, rather than have his arm bent any further in the wrong direction, with one second remaining in the first round.

The suspicion at the time was Hughes had got into St. Pierre's head. At the time, the Canadian considered Hughes "a monument in the sport" and post-fight footage made him look like a kid trying to get the champ's autograph.

"The first time I fought Matt Hughes, I gave him too much respect," acknowledged St. Pierre. "Now I see him as an opponent, not like the guy I was looking up to. So it's going to change everything."

St. Pierre and Hughes have each won four fights since then, with both notching a victory over former champion B.J. Penn.

Marquardt says the mental game will decide Saturday's fight.

"As long as he's there mentally, he's going to beat Matt Hughes. I think he's going to beat him in every area."
Predictably, those close to Hughes see a different result.

"I think he's really going to pick apart St. Pierre, get into his head and beat him up," said heavyweight champion Tim Sylvia, a friend who trains out of the same camp as Hughes.

The six-foot-eight Sylvia defends his title against Jeff (The Snowman) Monson in Saturday night's co-main event.

St. Pierre says when the cage door closes for his fights, emotion is not a problem. He says he is totally calm, mechanical.

"I have no emotions whatever. . . . because when you fight with emotions you make mistakes."
While St. Pierre respects Hughes, it's probably fair to say he doesn't think much of him outside the ring.
Hughes is a master at getting under someone's skin.

He sees it as teasing. St. Pierre sees it as arrogance.

"He was very rude, he said a lot of bad things about me," said the Quebecer, who has a fleur-de-lis tattooed on his right calf. "But I don't take it personal, I think he just tried to build up the show, build up the fight.

"When you talk too much, if you lose, you look stupid. He's just going to get embarrassed when I beat him."
Hughes and St. Pierre crossed paths in coaching roles on Season 4 of the UFC's Ultimate Fighter reality TV show. Hughes wasted few opportunities not to take shots at St. Pierre, telling him during a dinner out that he would teach him how to defend an armbar — the submission hold he applied on the Canadian to win their bout.

St. Pierre even opted not to go to the gym on days when Hughes was coaching. While he saw it as the high road, some saw it as the champion winning the latest round of mind games.

In an attempt to play up their rivalry ahead of Saturday's fight, the UFC has used a clip of St. Pierre grabbing the microphone in the ring and having a go at the champion after Hughes' recent win over Penn.
"I am very glad you won that fight Matt, but I was not impressed by your performance and I look forward to fighting you in the near future," St. Pierre said at the time.

Hughes and his camp were not impressed, and an angry Hughes pulled St. Pierre close in the ring to tell him so.

It turned out that St. Pierre, a spectator at the fight, had misheard Hughes' post-fight comments and though he was being disrespected. He went to the champion's dressing room 20 minutes later to apologize.
"It made me look bad," St. Pierre said in an interview. "I made a mistake, I apologized like a man."
Hughes has mouthed off in the past. In the leadup to their first fight, he said he wasn't about to lose to a Canadian. And St. Pierre says he has been critical of the French.

"He's been very arrogant with me, but to tell you the truth I do my talking in the Octagon with my fists. I don't do my talking with my mouth outside of it."

While he is the No. 1 contender in the UFC, St. Pierre is not making megabucks yet. He is due to earn US$40,000 for the Hughes fight, with another $40,000 if he wins. He is under contract for one more fight after that with the UFC.

St. Pierre indulged himself recently by purchasing a Nissan Xterra SUV. But he has also invested his winnings in sparring partners, bringing in the likes of Marquardt, Keith Jardine, Rashad Evans and Joey Villasenor ahead of the Hughes fight.

The Montrealer is down to earth, his boxing club of choice a seedy second-floor gym oozing with character and crammed with posters featuring the likes of Ali, Foreman and Leonard.

He wrestles at the YMHA, where a wet broom on the floor at the door serves to moisten athletes' shoes before they hit the mat. Always the gentleman, St. Pierre politely steps aside to make way for youngsters as they rush through the door.

Single, St. Pierre focuses full time on fighting — spending one week every month in New York training with jiu-jitsu master Renzo Gracie — although he's an avid movie buff and enjoys hockey. The Edmonton Oilers are his first love but he also cheers for his hometown Montreal Canadiens and counts Phoenix enforcer Georges Laraque among his friends.

After each bout, he allows himself a week off — usually on a sun-drenched island somewhere.
Here's betting he's popular wherever he goes. Fighting for a living has not spoiled St. Pierre's good looks.
"I try to keep my hand up," he says with a laugh.

Look closely, however, and his left ear is beginning to exhibit the tell-tale signs of a wrestler. It looks like someone has taken a pair of pliers to it.
More often, he's the one leaving a mark.
Just ask Martin Germain, a fledgling 140-pound pro boxer who bore the brunt of St. Pierre's blows in an sparring session last week. St. Pierre wasn't even going at 100 per cent.
"He still hits hard," Germain, sucking in air through a mouthguard, said through an interpreter at the Club de Boxe Champions.
"If he turns it on, it's gonna hurt."

GSP uses a flying knee kick to Parisyan in the UFC.

The Departed - American version of a Hong Kong Crime Thriller

2006-10-07T23:17:00.000-07:00

The Departed is a good solid movie. It's a remake of a Hong Kong police thriller of a cat-and-mouse game played between an undercover cop and a crook who infiltrates the police force by simply entering the police academy. Both are moles infiltrating the "other side." Eventually, both must resolve the state of affairs.

I watched The Departed and the audience's reaction was right on the money. They got Martin Scorsese's often apparently realistic violence combined with a touch of humor. I saw the original Hong Kong version prior and there are obvious differences. The American remake is more violent and superficial in pyschology than the Hong Kong version which has more pathos and tends towards melodramatics. The Hong Kong version however suffers from the cheesy action film shootouts. But the end's gunplay will shock the viewer with its unexpected resolution. Scorsese's familiarity with the criminal ethos has been his trademark and he uses it with efficient direction. Which is better? Definitely the Hong Kong version. It's a great deal more subtle, less superifical gratuitious sex, and certain plot elements differ. Supposedly, there was a bidding war for the film rights by Brad Pitt's production company.

The plot isn't unique and we've seen it in John Woo's Faceoff. However, the twists and turns in the plot definitely makes it thrilling. Tony Leung plays the undercover cop who slowly unravels pyschologically being a criminal and as the hunt for a mole in the criminal camp could lead to Leung's character, the tension is ratcheted up a notch. His doppleganger, played by Andy Lau, is in the same boat. He's a criminal who's seen as a Police detective while tipping off his crime boss benefactor which also puts him on the spot when the Police become frustrated at police raids being given the tip-off by someone on the police force.

Get the Hong Kong version on DVD and enjoy.

Play Guitar With... The Smiths

2006-10-07T22:33:00.000-07:00

One: Do you like The Smiths?
Two: Can you play guitar?
Three: Want to get Guitar Tablature of Johnny Marr's incomparable guitar stylings?

Then check out this UK music site, MusicRoom.com and do a search for "The Smiths."
Here's the guitar tab book "Play Guitar With... The Smiths."

There's also the tome tablature book for The Smiths compilation "Louder Than Bombs."
It's amazing if you're a Marr fan. Buy it at Amazon UK.

Ultimate Fighting's Next Battle

2006-10-06T23:45:00.000-07:00

Forbes Magazine had an interesting article about Mixed Martial Arts. It's a good article that's looking at how the various fighting organizations are faring and vying for marketshare.

UFC light heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell celebrates after disposing
of former champion Tito Ortiz in a 2004 match-up. The two, who are among
the sport's most popular fighters, are likely to meet again in the next six months.

MediaUltimate Fighting's Next Battle
R.M Schneiderman, 10.05.06, 3:00 PM ET

Last month, roughly 5,000 fans piled into the Memorial Coliseum in Portland, Ore., to watch martial artists Matt "The Law" Lindland and Jeremy "Gumby" Horn battle back and forth. And that they did. In the second round, Lindland snapped a left high kick to Horn's head, appearing to stun him. Horn tried to counter with a kick of his own, but Lindland, 36, followed with a left hook, sending his 31-year-old counterpart to the canvas.
The bout, hosted by the International Fight League, was over in less than five minutes. But the real battle is still raging: What will become the premier organization in mixed martial arts?

The sport, which traces its roots to the vale tudo or "anything goes" fights that became popular in Brazil in the 1920s, combines a wide variety of fighting styles, from boxing to jiu-jitsu. The sometimes bloody battles prohibit head butting, eye gouging, biting, hair pulling and other forms of attack generally considered dangerous or unfair.

In Pictures: Inside Mixed Martial Arts

Since its founding in 1993, a privately owned league called the Ultimate Fighting Championship has been the sport's preeminent brand. In 2001, Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, who also own Station Casinos in Las Vegas, bought the UFC for roughly $2 million from entertainment executive Robert Meyrowitz. Since then, they've led the transformation of the sport from a glorified tough-man contest into an increasingly mainstream, money-making sport. With mixed martial arts now legal in 33 states, some say the UFC could eventually rival World Wrestling Entertainment--a $400 million company (fiscal 2006 sales)--in size and scope.

In 2005, the UFC signed a contract with Viacom's Spike TV to produce a reality show called The Ultimate Fighter, the sport's first major cable TV deal. An average 2 million viewers have watched the various seasons of the show each week, and its success helped the UFC launch five other shows on Spike. Last spring, it bolstered its presence on the Internet, launching a video-on-demand service. Customers can now download individual fights for $1.99 apiece.

Television pay per view numbers are also skyrocketing. In July, 775,000 people watched former light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz defeat UFC hall of famer Ken Shamrock, according to California-based Kagan Research. The fight grossed an estimated $29 million dollars in pay per view revenues.

But no heavyweight champ goes unchallenged for long. Four competitors are now emerging to grapple for a piece of the American market: Pride Fighting Championships, the International Fight League, the World Fighting Alliance and Strikeforce Fighting Championship.

"There isn't room for everybody," says Gareb Shamus, the co-founder of the International Fight League and head of comic book giant Wizard Entertainment. "But there is room for the organizations that have the top talent." Pride Fighting Championships may be the UFC's strongest competitor. Owned by Tokyo-based Dream Stage Entertainment, which sells out 35,000 seat stadiums in Japan, Pride has arguably more talent than any of its American counterparts, including the UFC. In September, Fox Sports Net began airing bimonthly replays of Pride bouts. And in October, Pride will hold its first U.S. live show, in Las Vegas.

Fortunately for the UFC, Pride is rumored to be struggling financially. In June Fuji TV, the company that broadcasted Pride on television in Japan, canceled its contract due to alleged ties between Pride's parent company and the Japanese mafia.

Other challengers are winning small battles. California-based Strikeforce Fighting Championship broke the mixed martial arts attendance record in March when 18,265 people attended its first show in San Jose. In May, the World Fighting Alliance signed Rampage Jackson, one of the sport's most marketable athletes. And nearly 2 million people watched replays of the International Fight League's first two shows on Fox Sports Net in June. On Aug. 31, the company announced its plans to go public and an initial public offering date should be announced in the next few months.

At some level, of course, the emergence of these rivals is good news for the UFC. They're helping the sport grow, further legitimizing what only five years ago was considered an obscure niche sport. But over time, these startups could potentially drive up costs for talent and dilute the UFC brand.
Still, it's likely that the UFC will remain a dominant player in the sport. "The UFC is like Kleenex," says Josh Gross, the editor of Sherdog.com, the largest combat sports Web site in the country. To many fans, their brand is the sport.

Mixed Martial Arts Gone Mainstream

2006-10-01T17:51:00.000-07:00

Well, Newsweek did an article on the Ultimate Fighter show on Spike TV and the Mixed Martial Arts phenomenon. The writers somehow can't refrain from using terms like "bloody" etc but
have no problems writing about boxing without the adjectives of "bloody" and "savage." But they again, I guess bad publicity is better than no publicity. Mixed Martial Arts is becoming more popular because it takes all elements of various fighting arts. They also have some great athletes and without a marquee heavyweight in boxing like former Mike Tyson, there isn't a sport which pits man against man in the most primal contest.

MSNBC.com
Blood, Guts and Money
Don't look now, but mixed martial arts has gone mainstream.
By Julie Scelfo
Newsweek
Oct. 9, 2006 issue - When the first "ultimate fighters" kicked, punched and head-butted each other on national television 13 years ago, civilized observers responded with shock and disgust. The pay-per-view tournament matched kickboxers, judo artists and Brazilian jujitsu fighters, and saw so many broken bones and bloody injuries that John McCain dubbed it "human cockfighting" and called for its abolishment.

Now the brutal business known as Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has become one of the most successful and lucrative new sporting ventures in decades, routinely eclipsing the NBA, NHL and MLB in cable ratings among the coveted 18-34 set. According to industry sources, UFC's most successful pay-per-view event this year generated more than $30 million in revenue, a sum that beats WrestleMania's $23 million haul and HBO's typical $16 million from a night of boxing. A hit UFC reality show has transformed Spike TV into one of the top-five cable networks for young men. Sportswriters have begun covering it too, acknowledging the extreme athleticism of competitors. Bernard Fernandez in the Philadelphia Daily News wrote: "I no longer can look the other way."

The transformation of an underground fighting fad to a multimillion-dollar sports industry was due to the vision of Dana White, a former amateur boxer, who saw business potential where others saw savage brutality. In partnership with casino moguls Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, White acquired the UFC franchise in 2001 and set out to make mixed martial arts "the next NASCAR."

For a while, it looked as if his dream was down for the count. Fans loved the no-holds-barred combat—action that, unlike WWE wrestling, isn't staged. They loved the scrappy, mohawk-wearing warriors with nicknames like "Chainsaw." And they loved the idea of settling once and for all the ancient debate: who's the toughest—a boxer, wrestler or karate master? But the fights weren't regulated by state athletic commissions, which meant they were largely excluded from mainstream venues. Early participants fought locally, so there was no star power to attract a national audience. Also, the original owner had sold off film rights—which White needed for shows and DVDs—and the new owner didn't want to sell them back.

With input from the Nevada and New Jersey state athletic commissions, White adopted new rules and has so far persuaded 22 states to sanction mixed martial arts. He ponied up for the film rights (he won't say how much). Then he enlisted reality-TV producer Craig Piligian to develop "The Ultimate Fighter," a show in which 16 aspiring MMA athletes live and train together and fight for a six-figure UFC contract and a shot in "the octagon," where the bouts take place. One of cable TV's most testosterone-soaked shows, it's now in its fourth season. "These athletes represent the toughest of the tough," says Kevin Kay, Spike TV's general manager. "Our viewers want to be them." The show brought so many young men to Spike TV that the network has since added five more UFC programs to its lineup. Live fights are also popular: August's UFC 62 at Mandalay Bay in Vegas generated a $3.1 million live gate, more than any WWE event this year.

White, who does business in blue jeans and an acid-washed T shirt, has tapped into an appetite for controlled violence that boxing and wrestling don't satisfy. Riding through Times Square in a limo recently, he boasted about the Tito Ortiz-Ken Shamrock fight (free on Spike TV Oct. 10) and future pay-per-view events. "This thing is only getting bigger," he says. "We're going to be around for a long time." Kind of like bloodstains.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15079908/site/newsweek/page/2/

Hydrogen Fuel cell model car

2006-09-28T22:50:00.000-07:00

hydrogen-powered model car

Horizon has created a unique, patented miniature fuel cell car and hydrogen refueling station. For the first time, hydrogen is produced externally, which is then providing fuel into a storage tank on-board the H-racer. Once the car's hydrogen tank is full, the refueling station can be disconnected from the car, and the car can run on its own real hydrogen fuel cell system on board, with the simple flip of a switch. The car measures only 16cm X 7cm, making this the smallest fuel cell car in the world. When switched on it can run in a straight line for over 100 meters. Recently nominated for the Intel Environment award in Silicon Valley's Tech Museum, Horizon's miniature car is about to spread a positive message to a wide audience of children and adults around the world.

Pretty neat. It comes with a charging station. It looks pretty cool design-wise.

Jet Li's Fearless

2006-09-26T18:37:00.000-07:00

I went to see Jet Li's Fearless. It's his last Martial Arts film.

"I stepped into the martial arts movie market when I was only 16. I think I have proved my ability in this field and it won't make sense for me to continue for another five or 10 years. Huo Yuanjia is a conclusion to my life as a martial arts star." — Jet Li

It sums up his career and it doesn't let his fans down as he brilliantly puts on his wushu skills on display. It also represents his philosophy towards life and the martial arts. In the film, he plays an egocentric martial artist. It's only when he reaches the fateful conclusion of his mindset which results in the revenge killing of his family, that's when he realizes the error of his way and seeks to leave his home. He learns from an ethnic minority group of living to smell the roses and to live in harmony with nature. Eventually he returns to his home and apologizes to those he has harmed and uses his martial arts skills to enter a martial arts competition to see which nation has the best fighter which includes the Europeans and Japan. It plays upon the period in China's history where it was seen as the "sick man of asia." He selflessly defends his countrymen's pride.

He plays a historical martial arts figure. But it's all Jet Li. The subtext is similar to the one in "Hero," where Jet Li plays an assasin. Both film's subtext is about sacrifice and serving the greater good. Go watch it, you won't be disappointed by the photography, story, and action.

Kes - a film

2006-09-26T18:20:00.000-07:00

Kes is a British film from 1969 by director Ken Loach and producer Tony Garnett. and focuses how the aspirations of the main character, Billy Casper, are raised by his relationship to falconry while being subdued and dashed by family and school. The film is based on the novel, A Kestrel for a Knave authored by Barry Hines in 1968. It's an amazing film acted with such harsh authenticity and end will make you burst out in tears.

I stole the above from wikipedia.org, a great resource. I came across the film while it was running on television. It's a bleak film with a documentary style with local dialect dialogue which makes it difficult to understand but there's something unpretentious about the film. It's in keeping with a social tradition in Englsh filmmaking:

Here's the beginning of Mike Robins' review of the film:

Ranked seventh in the BFI 100's recent selection of the favourite British films of the 20th century, Kes remains Ken Loach's masterpiece (1). While the director has reached similar aesthetic heights in subsequent years (Days of Hope [1975] and Raining Stones [1993] immediately spring to mind), the film remains a template for Loach's abiding concerns: the struggle of the British working class to achieve life's basic needs, dramatised through the plight of an individual character; the significant impact of public institutions upon personal lives; sensitive performances with an ear for regional dialects; and an unobtrusive yet evocative visual style that illuminates character and place in a naturalistic fashion. Arriving as the '60s drew to a close, Kes heralds the end of “kitchen sink realism” and the true arrival of one of contemporary cinema's major artists.

Mini-Z radio-controlled cars

2006-09-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

Mini-Z are made by Kyosho, a hobby manufacturer. They are 1/24 scale radio-controlled cars with extremely detailed plastic body shells that can be removed. The chassis has proportional steering and even braking for forumula 1 models. They have proportional control so the steering is similar to a larger scale radio-controlled car. The detail is typical Japanese - obsessively detailed and amazingly well-designed. They even make formula-1 racing cars.
You can check out their line-up here. They have a wide selection of classic race cars ranging from Ferraris to new ones like the Fairlady.

Sub-Mico Radio Controlled Helicopters

2006-09-26T17:32:00.000-07:00

I found this site and it's pretty amazing that there's radio-controlled helicopters that can fit on the palm of your hand. The price isn't that bad either. Also, check out the video clips of these tiny R/C crafts in action.

BJ Penn "The Prodigy"

2006-09-23T00:43:00.000-07:00

"The Prodigy"

BJ Penn vs Matt Hughes - fight I

Who's BJ Penn? Perhaps the current pound-for-pound deadliest Mixed Martial Arts fighter. His stats are:

height: 5' 9"
weight: 170 lbs
age: 27

He'll fight Matt Hughes again in the Ultimate Fighting Championship this Saturday the 23rd. Matt Hughes defeated Royce Gracie by taking his back and forced the fight to be stopped.

He's a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt who fights out of Hilo, Hawaii. Once he fell into training jiu-jitsu, he was interviewed as saying he would get so fixated at jiu-jitsu, he would think about it constantly. Eventually, he would have a string of victories where he seemingly ran over his competition. Some of his current fights have been lackluster where he allowed his opponent's to force him against the Octagon's fence. It appeared as if his gifts were so great, he didn't try hard to finish his opponents with strikes or submissions. He lost to George St. Pierre recently yet broke his opponent's nose with an uppercut.

He's also gained weight. You can go on Youtube or google video and look up video clips of him in action. His grappling skills are sick. Randy Couture, a retired UFC champion with a background in wrestling had difficulty taking BJ down in training sessions. His striking abilities have allowed him to maul his opponents.

Tony Leung

2006-08-31T22:48:00.000-07:00

Tony Leung is definitely one of my favorite Hong Kong actors next to Chow Yun-Fat.
He's been in some of the best Hong Kong films and it's rather interesting that he's actually
rather reticent and mournful. Yet he's an actor.

Just wanted to let you know. Please proceed and read...

Source: Newsweek, February 24, 2003, Atlantic Edition

Author: Alexandra A. Seno

Tony Leung's emotional performances earn raves

Tony Leung Chiu-wai is stuck in traffic. It is the height of the evening rush hour, and the Hong Kong actor is trying to reach the offices of Wong Kar-wai, who is directing him in the mysterious "2046," a film with no script. Leung won't receive his marching orders until he arrives at Wong's office: if the director says they're filming, the actors and crew will head for the latest secret location, where they might work until dawn. If not, they'll all just hang out. That is Wong's way, and Leung is used to it; "2046" is their fifth movie together. "Kar-wai is very demanding, and we never have a real script," says Leung. "[But he] challenges me. He is always pushing me to go deeper, to become that person. I like it."

Moviegoers and critics like it, too. The expressive but unassuming actor is winning worldwide notice with strong, quietly emotional performances, like his turn as a tormented pimp in "Cyclo." With the last film he and Wong made together, the 2000 art-house hit "In the Mood for Love," Leung took the best-actor prize at Cannes for his measured portrayal of a Chinese newspaper editor who discovers his wife's infidelity. If Wong completes "2046" by the April deadline, it is expected to be a contender at Cannes this year--and to feature another memorable performance by Leung.

The 40-year-old actor works well with other directors, too. In Zhang Yimou's latest epic "Hero," which has been nominated for a best-foreign-film Oscar this year, Leung plays a determined Qin-dynasty assassin. And he humanized the role of a psychologically damaged undercover agent in Andrew Lau Wai-keung's cop thriller "Infernal Affairs," which was Hong Kong's top-grossing film in 2002. "In Chinese films today, Tony Leung Chiu-wai is very important," says Hong Kong scriptwriter Alan Lee Kam-lun. "If it is a difficult, dramatic character, producers first think of him."

The actor's gravitas sets him apart from all the pretty boys, action heroes and slapstick comedians who dominate contemporary Chinese cinema. Indeed, Tony Leung Chiu-wai--not to be confused with Tony Leung Ka-fai, who starred in "The Lover"--may be the most serious actor of his generation. He has fan clubs all over Asia, and a devoted following among the foreign-film crowd in the West. "Leung Chiu-wai is No. 1 among Chinese actors," says Leung Tak-man, a popular entertainment radio-show host. "Girls like his style. Guys feel they grew up with him. He's just a regular guy."

In person, Leung certainly comes off that way. His voice is tentative and his body language cautious. "I'm not a very confident person," he says. He was born to a middle-class family in Hong Kong, but his mother raised him and his younger sister alone after his father abandoned them. "I was embarrassed to come from a broken family," he says. In school, Leung tried not to talk too much in case anyone asked about his father. But it was this sense of self-consciousness--and the powerful desire to become someone else--that drew him to an acting career.

That career began on a TV drama more than 20 years ago. His first movie, "Mad Mad 83," was forgettable, but eventually his loyal TV following and his reputation for versatility helped him gain recognition on the silver screen. It was only after he started collaborating with Wong Kar-wai in 1990, however, that his stature began to grow beyond Asia.

As far as Leung is concerned, celebrity has plenty of drawbacks. A bachelor, he is constantly hounded by the voracious Hong Kong paparazzi; photos of Leung eating out regularly make the tabloids. "The local press makes me feel like a criminal," he says. "I am always followed." Does Leung have Hollywood aspirations, given the success of actors like Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh? Leung's English is much better than Chan's or Chow's. "We get so many offers," says his manager, Jacky Pang. "If we kept all the scripts sent for Tony to look at, it would fill more than one room." None has interested Leung--though he says he wouldn't mind collaborating with Pedro Almodovar or Martin Scorsese.

For now, he just wants to get to work. "I like acting because I like to live in a dream world," he says, as his van inches along. When a film wraps up, he says he grieves because it's like saying goodbye to a friend he might never see again. It took him a year and a half to get over his "In the Mood" character. No wonder he jumped at the chance to play a feng shui master in the comedy "My Lucky Star," which opened in Hong Kong last month. "Sometimes you just want to be happy," he says. And fortunately for moviegoers around the world, sometimes he doesn't.

Film: In The Mood For Love

Coheed & Cambria

2006-08-31T21:52:00.000-07:00

Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness...
A rather long album title for a band with the moniker of "Coheed & Cambria." It's rather hard to explain their music. Reminds me of RUSH in a way. My favorite song from this album is "The Suffering." It's odd with the Dungeon & Dragons lyrics tinged with romantic lyrics.

Is there a word or right to say
Even in this old fashioned way?
Go make your move, girl
I'm not coming home

Would things have changed if I could've stayed?
Would you have loved me either way?
Dressed to the blues.
Day to day with my collar up.

Decision sits so make it quick
A breath inhaled from an air so sick
I cursed the day I had learned
Of the web you spun...
You had your hold till bleeding

Hey, Hey!

If it was up to me
I would've figured you out
Way before the year clocked out
Oh, I hope you're waiting
Oh, I hope you're waiting

Listen well... will you marry me?(Not now, Boy)
Are you well in the Suffering?(You've been)
The most gracious of hosts
You may be invited, girl, but you're not coming in

Listen well... will you marry me?(Not now, Boy)
Are you well in the Suffering?(You've been)
The most gracious of hosts
I may be invited, girl, but I'm not coming in

Hey, Hey!

If it was up to me
I would've never walked out
So until the sun burns out
Oh, I hope you're waiting
We have lived as a child would care
With this vial to drink I dare(Oh where have you been, oh where have you been)
Only to cry all alone with your taste on tongue(Oh where have you been if it hurts to be forgiving? Bye)

Should we try this again with hope? (Bye, bye)
Or is it lost, give up the ghost
And should I die all alone as I knew I would...
Then burn in hell young sinner

Hey, Hey! (Ha ha)

If it was up to me
I would've figured you out
Way before the year clocked out
Oh, I hope you're waiting
Oh, I hope you're waiting
Listen well... will you marry me?(Not now, Boy)
Are you well in the Suffering?
(You've been)The most gracious of hosts
You may be invited, girl, but you're not coming in
Listen well... will you marry me?
(Not now, Boy)Are you well in the Suffering?
(You've been)The most gracious of hostsI may be invited, girl, but I'm not coming in
Hey, Hey!If it was up to me (you had your hold)
I would've figured you outWay before the year clocked out
Oh, I hope you're waiting

Hey, Hey!
If it was up to me (give up the ghost)
I would've never walked out
So until the sun burns out (Oh where have you been if it hurts to be forgiving?)
Oh, I hope you're waiting
Listen well will you marry me? (Not now, Boy)
Are you well in the Suffering?
(You've been)The most gracious of hosts
You may be invited, girl, but you're not coming in
Listen well will you marry me? (Not now, Boy)
Are you well in the Suffering?(You've been)
The most gracious of hosts
I may be invited, girl, but I'm not coming in
Listen well will you marry me?(Not now, Boy)
Are you well in the Suffering?(You've been)
The most gracious of hosts
You may be invited, girl, but you're not coming in
Listen well will you marry me? (Not now, Boy)
Are you well in the Suffering?(You've been)
The most gracious of hosts
I may be invited, girl, but I'm not coming in
And you're not coming in

Furuta Samurai figures

2005-06-25T00:12:00.000-07:00

Team Wakamatsu apparently sculpt the historical samurai figures for Furuta. Refer to my first blog on "Gashapon."

Giant Robot

2005-06-24T23:51:00.000-07:00

Giant Robot Magazine
is a great magazine originally created as a zine. DIY (Do It Yourself) magazine. It's irreverent, informative, and very fascinating in probing asian and asian-american culture which has become a big influence on the US. The subject matters are odd at times but sometimes you wonder who the heck created the asian hot sauce seen in so many asian american restaurants? Well, Giant Robot goes out and finds out who created the stuff. I have issue 1 and onward. I have missed some issues I didn't find that worthwhile purchasing. There's some hilarious Q&A columns with former American sumo wrestler Emmanuel Yarborough who got TKO'ed by a smaller fighter named Keith Hackney in the 3rd Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Papercraft

2005-06-24T23:25:00.000-07:00

This is pretty amazing. It's scale modelling but the material is paper. Check out this STAR WARS AT-ST walker. You can download the paper pattern in PDF format to create your own model at this link. This German site has an amazing gallery. Now if you like Japanese racing motorcycles, check out Yamaha's website.

BATMAN RETURNS

2005-06-24T21:04:00.000-07:00

The franchise created by the eccentric Tim Burton is back. This is a great Batman film informed by the ethos and style created by Frank Miller. The plot is intricate enough but still predictable for an action film. Christian Bale of former "American Pyscho" fame gives the pyschological depth required for Bruce Wayne turned crime fighter. Miller's revist of the Batman mythos in his "The Dark Knight Returns" graphic novel makes no bones about Bruce Wayne's borderline pyschosis. After all, what sort of man would spend his nights prowling the rooftops, disguised as a petty hood to gather info, and suffer bodily harm night after night to "bring justice to Gotham City?"

The screenplay is written by Nolan and Bob Kane (the creator of Batman). This is the formulative origins of how Bruce Wayne evolves into the prototypical Caped Crusader. A younger Commissioner Gordon as a low-rung cop comes off too meek and you wonder how he evolves into the tough Commissioner of latter years. How did he become political enough to become Commissioner?

The suit with its bulky helmet gives Christian Bale's narrow chin a wider chin. Go watch it. Watch the original Batman mythos presented as a full motion picture withouth the idiotic camp of Jerry Schumacher. The only gripe I have is that the lean, mean fighting machine of the comic books is shot in dark, quick cuts that barely register how Batman is so lethal. However, having him jumping on his opponents like a primal creature present him as a vicious brawler. Christian Bale's private brooding Bruce Wayne who can only confide in Alfred, the family butler, reveals his frustration of having to create an menacing icon to strike fear into hearts of criminals yet having to pretend to be a playboy living a decadent lifestyle comes straight out of Miller's version where Commissioner Gordon, with familiarity, over the years, pointing out how an older Bruce Wayne is still pretending to drink while fooling people by drinking ginger ale.

I won't ruin the plot. The movieogers that watched the movie with me enjoyed the movie and many were quite surprised at how dark and serious it took the Batman mythos. Let's hope the sequel is as good as this one.

Kill Bill 1 and 2

2004-09-04T22:55:00.000-07:00

I have to say I became a big Tarantino fan when I saw "Pulp Fiction" with a friend of mine who was a former film student in a former life of his. I'm not sure if he and I had any clue what the film was about, and I was clueless about Tarantino. It was years later that I actually bought the DVD for Reservoir Dogs. I wasn't impressed with Reservoir Dogs. It looks like a low-budget student film. The acting wasn't all that great. Harvey Keitel is stiff as usual. It wasn't that way when he played the pimp in "Taxi Driver." I don't know nor do I remember his performance in "Taxi Driver." Allegedly, Tarantino ripped off the plot for "Reservoir Dogs" from a Hong Kong action flick. I believe it was "Ring of Fire." The dialogue of "Pulp Fiction" blew me away. But if you have any history of films, you'll realize the witty repartee was existent in films featuring witty actors like Cary Grant and Hepburn in "Bringing up Baby." Two interesting devices used by Tarantino was the contrived but pseudo-naturalistic banter between Travolta's character and Jackson's and of course the non-linear plot.

Uma Thurman in Bruce Lee's track suit.

The first Kill Bill movie was rollicking great fun. It's just a straight-forward ode to chop-socky hong kong kung-fu flicks and japanese martial arts films. The plot was pretty much lifted from Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita, 1973, Japan). The movie is filled with references from various films. Uma Thurman is great in it of course. It's a typical tongue-in-cheek ode to a genre that Tarantino loves. Now what about the plot? There's not much of a plot. But the action and general story-telling by Tarantino is on par with "Pulp Fiction" in my estimation. Well maybe a decent second. I was not impressed by the swordplay since the fight choreographer is a famous hong kong fight choreographer.

The second installment was what I was waiting for and it's somewhat of a mixed bag. "The Bride" played by Thurman has to kill the rest of her assassin posse and no matter what they do, she gets the rest of them one by one until she meets up with Bill, her former love and boss. David Carradine, who plays Bill gets long-winded monologues and it's almost as if Tarantino is trying to get beyond his teenage or college geek mindset and tries to be adult-like. He doesn't succeed. The little touches such as a rare, funky-looking Italian race car owned by Bill just shows the sort of detail that Tarantino gets involved in. The music is the first film was alot stronger than the soundtrack music in the second film. I would recommend getting the 1st film's soundtrack on CD.

I hope they'll have the two volume film set on DVD with extra footages shown in the Japanese version and some of the footage where Uma's character is in China. There was a black guy dressed in Chinese garb fighting Carradine's character. Don't know what that footage was about and why it was cut out. Hopefully, the DVD will have alot of behind-the-scene footage. It's always nice to have the director's cut.

SpaceShipOne and White Knight

2004-09-04T21:57:00.000-07:00

Burt Rutan is considered a pioneer in modern aviation. He's a whiz and innovator of designing airplanes and now a spaceship using composite materials. He's going after the X-Prize (amount: 10 million dollars) which is a competition with prize money to promote and push private commercial space flight development. It would of helped if Lance Bass of boy band N'Sync coughed up money and backed Rutan's team instead of trying to spend roughly 20 million sterling pounds to have the Russians send him off to space. Just stick the ever vacant-smiling Lance, behind the pilot of SpaceshipOne, Michael W. Melvill, with an abestos suit and a propeller beanie, Lance will be good to go.

The project was backed by Paul Allen, one of the founders of Microsoft. The spaceship design consists of an a small rocket-powered spaceship, SpaceshipOne, tucked under the winged carrier airplane, White Knight, designed to carry the spaceship to a set altitude and let the spaceship rocket itself into suborbital flight which it completed its mission June 21, 2004. It was a bit disappointing that there was some media coverage but not great fanfare of the accomplishment. I guess Americans and everyone except aviation and space buffs are interested in a tiny project that allowed a civilian to go suborbital into the stratosphere.

The design is quite amazing, elegant, but with calculated daring which is a hallmark of Burt Rutan's approach. The little SpaceshipOne slows its descent back to earth by using its fin surface for drag purposes to prevent it from burning up due to atmospheric friction. Then it glides back down similar to NASA's now aging Space Shuttle design.

Here's an account of the flight. Burt Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, has some nice info on development of the various components, its testing, etc.

Superman Birthright Comic series

2004-09-01T20:01:00.000-07:00

Like most little boys, I loved comic books. Still do. When the art is great, it's pure pleasure. Great storytelling doesn't hurt. It's that combination that has entranced generations of American boys.

I loved Frank Miller's "Daredevil" run where Frank mixed Samuel Dashiell Hammett's "hard-boiled" style of fiction and Japanese samurai films like Kurosawa's samurai flicks. Hammett's Cynical characters in a cold world was the perfect take of Daredevil. He created a love interest and antagonist for Daredevil, Elektra, the female ninja-trained assasin. This allowed Miller to introduce Ninjas and the mythic Japanese samurai tradition into his storyline or story arc.

Miller would later earn Graphic Novel Godhood with his take on Batman: The Dark Knight. He casts Batman as the dark loner who sees his friend or colleague, Superman, as a naive stooge eventually used by a fascist US government. The Superheroes must be brought to heel and under control of the US government. An individualist like Batman doesn't take orders from anyone or government. So he's forced to go into hiding.

The graphic novel "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" shows an older Bruce Wayne who takes on his archnemesis, The Joker, for the final time and revists the Batman myth and mutates the myth in Miller's typical dark, Hammett informed style. Batman throws down the gauntlet to try to take out Superman and Batman forces a showdown with his old pal. So Superman, from high up and afar from sight, uses his laser vision to burn the question "Where?" on the grass lawn of Wayne's great estate. That's his response. Where's the rumble gonna take place. Batman has some tricks up his sleeves and one is an armoured batman suit to take on Superman. The elaborate plot and Miller's apocalyptic vision of a near American future and personal politics inform his vision of Batman as the lone swordsman of Feudal Japan a la Kurosawa melded with Hammett-derived Bogart detective characters. Sort of fitting for the World's Greatest Detective.

The cover below is my favorite version of this graphic novel. Truly a milestone in American comic book history. There's just a crude silhouette of Batman back-lit by a highly-detailed lightning bolt. The contrast in imagery is indelible. Now, Miller isn't a great artist in a traditional sense. His natural artistic skills aren't impressive compared to a Travis Charest. Charest did awesome work on The Wildcats. Well, I'm on a roll, so I won't segue into Charest's work yet. Miller's partner in crime was Klaus Jansen. Klaus had a harsh, thick inking style which matched Miller's harsh-looking style. Miller, like, alot of comic book artists would draw the artwork in pencil while an inker would go over the pencil in black ink. Someone else would perform the coloring chores.

Miller's film-noir driven dialogue - lean and cool was matched by Miller's great sense of stylish, compelling frames of comic art. It was like watching Hitchcock's film scenes. Miller brought a filmic sensibility to a frame-by-frame graphic artform which is nothing but a 2 dimensional form for film if you think about it.

Dramatic and bold, here's the cover for BATMAN The Dark Knight Returns. A bat-like apparition ready to strike.

Ninja pose - The Dark Knight Returns

Travis Charest, on the other hand, has a light sort of style. Beautiful and detailed, his artwork evokes the detailed and highly realistic tradition of the great American and European illustrators/comic book artists. Oddly enough, Travis went to France with his girlfriend and his girlfriend, I believe wrote an article about going off to France with her boyfriend, Travis. It's online somewhere. But here's an interview with the man himself. He's went off to France and is working on a graphic novel called Dreamshifters based on the Metabarons. It's still not out yet. It's about 2 years late. Travis takes his time and here's an article on how he creates his artwork. Hey, when Dreamshifters comes out, give me a ring ok? Thanks.

Now what was I originally going to post about? Oh, forgot. Superman Birthright. It's a 12 issue series. The story is great and so is the art. If you want a free look at the artwork and review of the series, well, look no further. Don't say no one did ya nothing for ya in your sorry life. Mark Waid wrote the story and Leinil Francis Yu did the artwork. It's definitely influenced by WB's TV series, Smallville, take on the Man of Steel.

Smallville is a teen-set drama with some action thrown in. The teenaged Clark Kent doesn't have all of his powers but slowly comes to harness his various powers as the series progresses. Superman is still just a high-school kid. The writers did a great job going back to Superman's origin as the basis of a TV series.