Me: “What’s your name, Maya?”
Maya: “Princess.”
Me: “Princess what?”
Maya: “Princess.”
Me: “Is your name Maya?”
Maya: “No. It’s Ariel.”
Me: “Ariel or Princess?”
Maya: (Practically rolling her eyes) “Princess Ariel.”
Me to Marti: “I think we’re going to regret this someday.”
Today we went to our very first “karate” tournament here in the U.S. I put “karate” in quotes because, well, it just simply isn’t karate — at least not any karate I ever learned living 20 km north of Okinawa, birthplace of the art. If I cringed the first time the instructor mentioned how karate came from China, oh, Internet, let me tell you…today the cringing was so overpowering, there was a kind of nerd-induced euphoria that finally settled over me about the 3rd 1980s redneck song playing over the loudspeaker (“Sweet Home Alabama,” “YMCA” and “We will Rock You” were but a few).
The day started with a few karate dances, and I would give a body part to have caught the first one on video. It was an honest-to-Gosh Napoleon Dynamite moment; a 16-year-old kid did a complete nunchuck dance, ending with a flying kick and a “Ki-ya!” I was sobbing that I missed getting it on camera. I couldn’t stop saying “Nunchuk skills…” for the rest of the day, until Marti threatened to smack me.
Here’s a little taste of some of those sweet dances, done by a man wearing, not his gi, but a t-shirt with the arms cut out. That t-shirt pretty much sums up the fashion of the day:
Then came my next favorite part: “karate” demos by the instructors. The first was a woman, who tried breaking 5 pieces of wood but only got 4 of them — not her fault, one slipped from the force and fell down without breaking. I was actually pretty impressed by that. Then, the next guy came up. Clearly not wanting to be shown up by a girl (I have to defend her, even though I hid my face behind Marti when she started chanting, “Girlz Rule, Boyz Drool” before hitting the wood), the guy decided to break a section of cinderblock. I’m not sure if he’d made it happen before and nerves got him, or if he thought the adrenalin would make it happen or what, exactly, but that cinderblock went home intact:
Just so y’all know, Ben is never allowed to read this post until he’s 20, because he would be so hurt. Let me tell you: Ben loved every minute of this. From the “karate” dances by middle-aged men with beer guts to the loud music, this was an event created by, and for, little boys. Everyone gets a trophy, just by showing up, and everyone gets an award for every competition (Ben was in four). The trophies are large and gaudy with an excess of shiny surfaces, flying eagles and dragon designs. In fact, dragon designs were definitely a theme at this tournament. Plus, if you get two small trophies — you can trade up for one big one! Trading up enough trophies gets you a “championship.” It’s awesome.
I will neglect to mention the (national) organization that runs these tournaments, but as Marti said, it was definitely “karate-themed kids’ entertainment,” or perhaps it would be better to say “martial-arts themed kids’ entertainment” although one guy did a dance with a floppy plastic pirate sword that I couldn’t quite place. Southeast Asian, perhaps? I loved his rendition of the history of martial arts in China, which, according to him, were not revived until “the 1980s, when the People’s Republic took over.” Um, I’m sorry? I think you meant the Civil War when Mao Zedong took over…in 1949? Or perhaps the revolution of the 1930s that turned China into a communist country? Hard to say. So much history to completely revise, so little time…
Some of you have heard me gripe about this particular “karate” Ben’s been practicing; I had him in a perfectly respectable Judo dojo that was as Japanese as it gets in the U.S., with mentors/teachers and classes of 3-4 kids who trained for the skill itself and not for the tournament, and what does Ben say? “It’s boring, and it’s hard,” he says to me. Oh, and that he didn’t want to do it anymore. So I put away his traditional undyed gi and bought him a black gi for this group.Â
Painfully excessive beaming.
Hard to fight with that level of beaming
Ben, of course, will be thrilled to keep going. This “karate” thing, it is just really hard for me to deal with: here I am, spending good money on something I think is, well, ridiculous. My hope is that he’ll learn the basics, or at least stay interested in karate, and we can get him into a real dojo later. I hope. Plus, I don’t want to *cough* do *cough* what my parents *cough* did, which was to ignore the stuff I liked to do in favor of what they liked. *sigh*
Who knew it would be this hard?
I just spent a fair bit of time discussing economics with my friend, LeeAnn, who lives overseas. Â She says that the discussion in Japan is whether or not the U.S. caused the worldwide recession, or whether it was just one of the biggest dominoes to fall and thus has generated the most attention. Â The U.S. media, of course, thinks that the worldwide economic collapse is because of U.S. markets, with typical america-centric flair; what I have to say to other countries is, if the U.S. wants to take the blame, you should ask for a bailout. Â Everybody’s doing it.
Anyway, Marti had this article from the Onion posted on his Gmail chat balloon, and I have to say…pretty darn funny.
$700 Billion Bailout Celebrated With Lavish $800 Billion Executive Party
Â
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GEORGE TOWN, CAYMAN ISLANDS—Amid the bleak backdrop of imminent economic collapse, worried observers got some good news last October when executives from the nation’s top 10 failing companies celebrated the historic $700 billion government bailout with an ultra- extravagant $800 billion party aimed at restoring confidence and bolstering their resolve.
“It’s never ideal for private corporations to rely on public funding, but we would not have been able to survive another week without letting loose and throwing this massive bash,” Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain said aboard his newly purchased $22 million yacht, the Excelsior. “We can only hope it’s not a case of too little too late.” (read the rest here)
A friend of mine recently sent me these pictures and, having seen just how much a real Christmas tree costs (our fake one died last year) I’m actually kind of tempted. Would red Dr. Pepper cans work as well? I guess I need some wire and a glue gun. 
Seriously, though, this year I think we’re going to fork over the $60-80 for a live tree as a Christmas gift to ourselves (because we can’t afford anything else after we buy the tree). Or I might just go eau natural and put the decorations on our trees outside…I guess the original idea was to decorate with hanging fruits and such for the birds, but that tradition isn’t as common anymore. It makes more sense.
Anyway, it’s going to be an interesting Christmas, but I am determined to enjoy it despite the financial stress of the times. Next year I’ll probably have a job, and libraries tend to stay open during the holidays, so this might just be my last Christmas to lay around and relish a vacation. So redneck Christmas, here I come! If I make a tree like this, I absolutely PROMISE to post pictures.
