"I told you not to wear the same outfit as me!"You probably wouldn't know it by looking at me, but I am in fact a certified green belt in the Okinawan form of karate known as Isshin-ryu. This is true. And I know some of you are thinking, "Eric, I've physically seen you...like, person-to-person, right in front of me, and I gotta tell ya, buddy, you don't look like you know fuckall about karate." Well, guess what cock wrangler, I said I was a student of karate, I didn't say I was a goddamn Ryu from Street Fighter! So let me provide you with a little backstory. Growing up, I felt that my sole purpose in life was to avoid conflict at all cost. I did everything I possibly could to avoid getting into a physical altercation with someone. The only time I have ever thrown a punch at someone was when I socked my older brother Dale when I was in high school, and even after all my training, I found the curl-into-a-ball-and-pray-mom-and-dad-get-home-before-Dale-somehow-manages-to-castrate-me-with-a-kick-to-the-head method to me most effective. There are rumors floating around my family that when I was in first grade and on the wrestling team my dad told me I could not leave a Saturday wrestling meet until my match was over, so when my match came I proceeded to just lay down on my back and not put up a fight (a technique that has served my sisters well, also). And it is true that I was once straddling a fence watching a homecoming parade when a friend of mine threw a corncob at my head and knocked me off. I cried. When I was in the fourth grade I went to a friend's overnight birthday party, and while throwing a football around in his basement I got shoved into a wall. I cried. That same year another friend of mine asked me if he could punch me to see how I would take. I anticipated that he would be hitting my arm, but he instead hit me as hard as he could in the side of the head. I cried. So here we are in 1995, living in a shitty rental house in Treynor, IA, and I am eleven (11)-years-old. My hair is thick and wavy and I comb it back, giving me a slightly more retarded look than Corky from Life Goes On. My shirts of choice are Bugle Boy, and my Arizona jeans are size Husky. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I had had some trouble regarding our next door neighbors and certain aspects of their property, specifically me destroying their property and them not wanting me to destroy their property. It's all political. Anyway, spawned from my delinquency was a friendship between my father and our neighbor, Blackbeard, whose daughter (in order to protect the innocent I will refer to Blackbeard's daughter as Talia al Ghul) was in my class. One night, Blackbeard and my old man got to chatting over a glass of good Vinho do Porto-or it could have been a dozen cans of Milwaukee's Best Ice-and as it turns out Talia al Ghul takes karate lessons from Blackbeard's uncle in Carson, a town about ten miles east of Treynor. This piques my dad's interest, and the next day he informs both Dale and myself that we are going to start taking karate lessons as well. Now, a severe, primal fear of my dad disallowed me from protesting, but in my head I thought, "Is he goddamn serious?" I mean, picture this: I'm 11-years-old, its about eight o-clock at night, and I am watching TV with my brother and sisters. All of a sudden, Steve-O bursts into the room and states, "You boys are taking karate!" Then he walks out. It was fucking vexing...disturbing even! I thought my dad might have had a brain tumor. "You boys are taking karate! This chair has no meat on it! I can only smell the color blue!" I just thought that it was such a random thing to declare all of a sudden. But what was I going to say, "No?" After about ten instances of Steve-O slapping his wedding-ringed hand across the back of your head, you learn to just go with the flow. "OK, I'm in karate now." Up to this point I have been a failed wrestler, a failed soccer player, a failed t-baller, and a failed Christ-Eric-you-are-ten-fuckin-years-old-why-are-you-still-wetting-the-bed! I have no idea why my dad thought I would be any better at karate, an art that requires discipline, dedication, honor, heart and makes it very easy to tell if you have an erection under those little pants. Now, on top of being forced into these karate lessons, I have to start carpooling with Blackbeard and Talia, two people who hated me just weeks before for the alleged damage I did to their stuff. Also, it wasn't like Talia and I were friends. I only had 36 kids in my class, so yeah, we knew of each other, but we didn't hang out or anything. I think at this point in my father's life he could only produce an erection when fantasizing about ways to humiliate me. So there are Dale and I, riding in the back of Blackbeard's Buick, on our way to Carson as the sun retreats behind us. Now, let me be absolutely clear about one thing: Blackbeard's uncle was 100% legit, a Grade A badass muthafucka of Samuel L. Jackson proportions. This guy, whom I will affectionately refer to as Scorpion (Scorpion being the most badass of Mortal Kombat characters) taught Okinawans their own form of karate! In 2001 he was inducted into the Isshin Ryu Hall of Fame. He knew his shit. He operated a small dojo of roughly twelve (12) students. As far as I can recall Talia was the only girl, and the ages ran from anywhere from middle age guys to elementary students. I can remember my very first day, putting on my pristine white gi, tying the long white belt, bowing at the entrance to the dojo, bowing to a picture of Tatsuo Shimabuku (the founder of the art), and stepping onto the cold wooden floor. In my mind I had been transformed from the timid, overweight boy that I was, into the sleek and deadly Dragon Wolf! A ninja persona of my own creation. I imagined Scorpion's dojo to be a clandestine training ground set deep in the mountains of Japan; a mythical place where I honed my secret and mystical ninja abilities. This delusion served me well until the first time I stepped in front of a mirror dressed in my karate garb. My chubby red cheeks stood out like inkblots on my moon-like face. A tiny chin protruded below my lips, edging away from a face that lacked any form of discernible jawline. And my salient stomach curved out like a descending sun from a gi that I saw was much to small for me. The pants stopped well above my ankles, and they were so tight that my colored Hanes were visible underneath. The top half of my uniform was disheveled and the tight sleeves restricted much of the movements I would need to fight the forces of evil. The long white belt that signaled my beginnings as a novice looked like it had been tied around my waist by Theresa Uchytil. On the other hand, Dale looked like goddamn Kung Lao from Mortal Kombat II. His gi fit him perfectly, and just looking at him in his uniform would give one the impression that he could totally kick the ass of that doucher from Sidekicks (R.I.P.). Needless-to-say, I was pretty disappointed, but what choice did I have? Over the next year or so I attended karate class every Wednesday night from 7:00-8:00. Over time I began to develop and memorize many of the different katas I would need to learn to advance my training. I understood how to punch and kick properly, and the more classes that I attended the more my confidence began to grow. Despite my awkward appearance, the shadow of the Dragon Wolf began to slowly creep back to me. Now, even though I was learning my shit, I still was nowhere near as good or as passionate as some of the other kids in the group. I mean, there were a couple of kids in there that looked like they would go on to seriously fuck someone's shit up. They were the kids I tried not to practice with when we had to pair up. They would go balls to the wall for every exercise, where my training mostly consisted of trying to run out the clock. So I would usually go with younger kids in the class who showed the same half-ass consistency that I did. Sometimes I would go with Talia al Ghul, but that was only when I was hoping to practice some move that would let me brush up against her bewbs. My training took a massive hit when Dale was no longer required to go to karate lessons. Once he started junior high sports he convinced my father that his schedule was full enough as it is. I was upset at having to attend karate alone, but in the end I sucked it up. I was the fucking Dragon Wolf after all, and both dragons and wolves are solitary creatures. That's just science. One of the defining moments of my Isshin Ryu training came when the class had to complete an obstacle course of sorts. Around the dojo, Scorpion had set up different exercises that each student had to complete. So we all formed a line and began to move through the course, one after the other. For the most part it was pretty straight forward stuff: perform this move here, use this weapon here, do this kata here. But there was one stage...one fucking stage that was being overlooked by one of the oldest students, a hulking figure of a man that looked like a mustachioed psychopathic Dauber, the idiot from Coach. At his stage, which I am assuming was inspired by one of the nine circles of Dante's Inferno, he held out a long bow-staff about three feet off the ground, and instructed students to dive over the bow, immediately go into a somersault, and then pop up in one fluid motion. Bullshit. When I saw the other kids doing it I thought, "Surely, he isn't going to make a white belt do that." When it was my turn to jump over the bow, I simply walked up to it and began to step over it. But the crazed Dauber told me no, I had to dive over it. Dive over it? At this point in my life I didn't even know how to dive into a swimming pool! How the fuck am I supposed to perform such a sophisticated move? Christ, the only reason I'm here is so my old man has an excuse to leave the house for a few beers. After much hesitation and steeling my nerves, I took a deep breath and dove over the stick. Well...dove is a strong word, I guess. I actually ran up to the bow, bent over it, but my hands on the ground on the other side of the bow, used my momentum to pick my feet up off the ground, and jumped over, landing on my side and looking very much like a drunk person who had set himself on fire and wasn't a hundred percent sure how to put it out. Of course I fucked up my wrist on the maneuver, officially destroying any remaining enthusiasm I had left. The Dragon Wolf had been confronted with his first test of ability, and the Dragon Wolf said, "Fuck it, can we get onion rings after this?" Eventually though, I did test for and attain my orange belt, and a little bit after that I tested for and got my green belt, which, if you can believe, is only two belts away from black. But I was only eleven, and if I remember correctly one had to been either sixteen (16) or eighteen (18) before being able to achieve the rank of black belt. Five more years of this? I couldn't do it. But knowing my father, it sure as shit wasn't me who ended my karate days, it was my old man, who I'm sure just got tired of having to drive my ass to Carson every other week. After a while, my training just sort of puttered out and eventually stopped. Fortunately for my enemies, I have not yet had to call upon the mythical and deadly powers of the Dragon Wolf, but I always have them ready, waiting in reserve in the form of an old steak knife I keep under my bed. Dale eventually returned to Scorpion to continue his training once my brother was enlisted in the Marines. Unfortunately, Scorpion passed away a few years ago, but the spirit of his badassery lives on. Oh, and my days as the Dragon Wolf did have a kind of fortuitous side effect. One Friday night, while I was still enrolled in Isshin Ryu classes, I was attending a high school football game with some friends. As I was walking to the concession stand with a buddy, I saw Talia and her friends approaching; they were giggling. As they passed my friend and I, a few of them chanted, "Eric, Talia likes you! Talia likes you!" Talia of course was telling them to shut up. The fact that Talia al Ghul fell madly in love with me does not surprise me in the least, as any woman who spends a long enough time with me will eventually wonder what my penis looks like. Here's a hint: I nicknamed it the Caduceus.
The Moore You Know: I was walking through the supermarket the other day, and my errands just happen to take me down one of the most dreaded aisles in the store for any man: the disgusting feminine hygiene aisle. As I walked passed the tampons and assortment of creams, I found myself stopping in front of a large section of douches. What had caught my eye was the plethora of aromas that these products come in. One douche's scent was Tropical Rain, another's was Island Splash. I even saw one for Baby Powder and one for Extra Strength (I believe this was just a can of Raid). Anyway, it hit me, the Summer's Eve people are missing out on a huge section of consumers: men. I mean, a man should have a say in what his lady's vag is going to smell like if she expects him to go tongue spelunking, and I think men would be more apt to buy these products for their women, if only the scents were more appetizing to a man. No guy wants his woman's church door to smell like Hurricane Katrina or his newborn's ass. Summer's Eve should market more man-friendly douches, like Summer's Eve Taco Pizza Rolls, or Summer's Eve Brats and Sauerkraut. Instead of the going down on a girl that smells like an autumn night, wouldn't it be better to go down on a girl that smells like your mom's homemade fried chicken? Or how about, Summer's Eve Your Ex-Girlfriends Pussy. Steph has a degree in marketing...we're going to get started on this.
© Eric Moore - 2010
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