Tuesday
02Mar2010

Hault

For a whole entire month, I've been off sparring.  Reasons will not be revealed...okay, I got injured.  It happens.  I usually take major injuries as a wake up call.  If you know me, I usually find meaning to everything.  Instead of evaluating every detail of the meaning, I kept it simple and realized that I need to number one, becareful (always important, right?) and number two, change self training routine.  I've realized that my training at home needs to change.  Just like weight training or exericising, the body will get used to the routine and nothing will progress.  Since my injury, I've been mapping out what I need to work on and switch up the training every week.  I also realized that I need to work on a few things and start incorporating into my training.  Better now then never. 
 
In a way, this injury brought me to a stopping hault.  It sucks being injured.  FEELING invunerable sucks even more.  Injuries reminds us that we are human, not machines.  For some odd reason, we believe we can do anything and when we believe that, we disregard our limitations.  Key word, my people, "LIMITATIONS".  Of course, we as a people want to strive to be the best and test our ability to the maximum but everyone is different.  Our time is spent on the things that we are involved in but never spent on our health.  Of course we should "live life to the fullest" but to what extent?  We want to be alive to live life to the fullest right? 


It's obvious, injury changes us.  Physically and mentally.  It gives us a certain reality about how much we have to be aware of what we are doing, especially, what type of people we are...human.  We can live day by day, mindless to what we are doing at the moment because we can manage it with no problem but one tiny slip up can cause a very big problem.  Unfortunately, the big problem is us getting injured and we pay the price for it.  We all cannot be Superman but EVEN Superman has his limitations. 

 

Thursday
18Feb2010

"Bruce Lee: Dragon Warrior" 

now i wish i had an iphone

Sunday
14Feb2010

Before You Regret

We all live with regrets.  It's a part of life.  What really hurts by living with regret is that we have to remember its moment for the rest of our lives.  We go day by day wondering if we could have done things differently but at in the end, you have to face the fact that it already happened and there is nothing you can do to go back and change everything. 

In the movie, "Lady In the Water", Paul Giamatti's character "Cleveland" is "the Healer" and must draw his energy to heal an angel that has been badly hurt.  When I watched this scene, I literally teared up and thought that this was a brilliant way of drawing energy by revealing his suppressed grief.  Cleveland expressed regret of not saving his family being murdered years ago.  It was a touching scene and it literally showed true emotion of love.  You see, long ago, I wrote an article about "love" being just a word.  Love is an emotional, a connection.  NO word can show how much you care for one person.  Hence the quote "Actions speak louder than words".  No matter how many times you write "I love you" in numerous love letters or in the modern technology of "texting", it will never come remotely close to the emotional connection between two people.  It can't.  So when you witness a scene like Cleveland's, you can FEEL the connection he had for the love of his family.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP6O8ypB6v4&feature#t=2m42s

Moments come and go.  We have to embrace the opportunity whenever we can.  We get so busy sometimes that we forget about what is important.  In a way, it's not our fault because we are human.  We are not perfect to any degree but that doesn't excuse the fact that we can make the time to let someone know how we feel.  It doesn't matter how you do it or even say it, as long as you did it.  We are worried too much of the outcome, allowing us to hesitate.  We imagine a great happy ending where rejection doesn't exist.  How can we already form a conclusion based on imagination?  By the time you realize it, you've already wasted precious moments to tell someone how you feel.  People say, "You have all the time in the world" but that doesn't mean you are allowed to use that time to hesitate.  We have only have one life AND so do your loved ones.  Don't take one day out of the year to express your love for someone.  If you love someone, then express it now and there.  No matter how big or how small the expression is, as long as you seized the moment of what needed AND what YOU wanted to be done. We can go through life remembering tragic regrets but do you really want to?  If your answer is "No", then what are you waiting for?


Happy Valentines Day to all.




Wednesday
10Feb2010

Rebirth of Dead Lyricism

Towards the end of the the 2000 decade, I saw Hip-Hop start to evolve.  Well, somewhat evolve.  Evolve into what you ask?  At the end of the 90s decade, the "lyrical" form declined and resorted to rhymes.  What the hell is the difference?  Well, rhymes are just words...rhyming together.  No punchlines, no creative meaning, no thought of any type of brilliant wordplay throughout commercial Hip-Hop (if you notice I said "commerical" Hip-Hop, NOT "underground" Hip-Hop).  Although, you have heavy hitters that are still on their lyrical "swag" (that word should be disposed of, maybe I shouldn't have used it) like Jay-Z, Nas, Eminem, all members of the Wu-Tang Clan and some good handful of "emcees" (that's the only ones I can think of at this moment so don't scold me).
 
I remember KRS-ONE stated that we are in the ICE AGE (all the "bling" bling" of diamonds and excessive use of money if you didn't catch that) and one of these days, the art form of lyricism will come back causing everything to grow that was once covered in ice.  I truly believe that lyricism is coming back.  Not as a big impact that I imagined but I've noticed big time rappers turning into creative emcees.  I'll be honest, there are a few emcees during the decade of 2000 that were witty with their lyrics but it was overshadowed by diamonds, crunk music, autotune, rims, cars...I can go on with this.  One rapper turned emcee that surprised me was Lil' Wayne.  Never did I think that this dude would sell over a million copies of his album "The Carter 3" and get featured in almost everyone's song by using interesting wordplay.  Actor turned emcee, Drake, has initially marked the world with his simple and lyrical grammar allowing him to be recognized as the emcee to make it big without putting out an album.  There are more emcees that I can mentioned but the super emcee group "Slaughterhouse" (Joe Budden, Crooked I, Joel Ortiz, Royce da 5'9") have been creating a buzz in the music industry by forcing their lyrical arsenal onto the world. 
 
Lyrics has always been a great part of Hip-Hop.  Let me rephrase that "Creative" lyrics has always been a part of Hip-Hop.  Don't get me wrong, I do like the occasional rappers rhyming about nothing but as always, there has to be a balance.  Ordinary rhymes have been tipping the scale for too long, causing Hip-Hop to fall on its butt while the media laughs.  Hip-Hop has been stagnant, feeding onto excessive material things.  It's proably one of the distractions causing these "rappers" to rhyme about nothing.  The art of lyricism will slowly but surely come back to the forefront.  Some say that Hip-Hop isn't music, it's just people saying words over a loud song with looping beats.  If they said that to me during the decade of 2000 (which they probably did), I would agree but it's a whole new decade.  We'll see what happens.

 

Monday
08Feb2010

"The Legend Is Born - Ip Man" Trailer