"Urban Legend" Research Blog, Part 2:

In my last post about my progress for my "Urban Legend" project, I delved into what it took to look like a hero, the protective gear a real-world hero would need to tame the streets of a mid-major American city.  Now we leave defense and go straight to the offense.  How do we beat the snot out of evildoers?  The way my masked hero deals out violent retribution says a lot about his personality, his state of mind.

I spoke at length with Renshi Desmond L. Diaz about the subject for two reasons -- one, he's my go-to martial arts expert (5th dan Goju-Ryu), and two, he's my nephew.  To fight crime on the streets of my unnamed city, he suggested Krav Maga.

Krav Maga is unique in that it's designed to be taught and learned quickly.  It's blunt strikes and counter-heavy nature was intended to make ordinary citizens into effective fighters for the conscripted war effort.  The Israelis train their soldiers in Krav Maga, and when you consider that 2 years military service is required of every citizen, you don't want to meet too many Israelis in dark alleys.



In the recent "Batman" movies, Krav Maga is the style Bruce Wayne uses to dole out brutal justice on the streets of Gotham.  These days, Krav Maga is more widely used, taught to military and law enforcement alike, which is perfect for my "could-be-anybody" vigilante.

I also asked my nephew what weapons my hero would need to carry and he broke it down in three words: blades, staves, and guns.  Personally, I don't want to have my hero carrying guns as it doesn't fit the personality I want for this guy, but as for blades, I like the karambit.

The karambit is a Filipino weapon that was originally used for raking roots and threshing plants.  In proper hands it is possibly the deadliest knife available.  The curved blade was inspired by the claws of big cats (tigers, panthers, lions and such).  It's lightweight, easy to conceal, and as shown by the video possesses a certain degree of up close and personal bad-assery.  Batman would be proud.

As staves go, I like escrima sticks.  A friend of mine trains with them and his giddy approval is contagious.  Again, they go with the easy to conceal, easy to carry, and in the proper hands, can be a gleeful tool of attitude adjustment.

So the personality I'm seeking to craft for my hero is one of an up-close killer of killers, one who deals with these people in a manner suggests that they have done something to him personally.  And who knows, maybe they have...

Changing of the Guard

I've been in deep thought since the recent death of my father.

One of the things I keep thinking about is how my childhood is really, officially over.  I know, I'm almost 35, my childhood should have been over almost two decades ago.  I'm not talking about being grown up, I'm talking about not having the previous generation available for guidance.

And such is the circle of life, I guess.  Every generation tries to teach the next through guidance and absence, through lessons and examples both good and bad.  They try to teach how to be.  How to be a provider, or how not to be one.  How to be responsible for a life, or how not to be.  How to gain or lose respect.  And while they're around and able, they're a valuable resource to have in your back pocket.  They are a valuable sounding board, they are your biggest cheerleaders, they believe in you without reason, or at the barest minimum give you a continuing example of what you either want or don't want.  Once they're gone or infirm, or to a lesser extent relocated, the time for theory is over.  The responsibility is not of the teacher anymore to teach us, but of the student to apply what we have learned and to infer what the proper course of action.  Training is over.  The keys to the world are bequeathed to us.

My father was a flawed man, as we all are, but at his core he was a good man.  While he was never as much a presence in my life as either one of us would have liked, I do feel the absence.  I have learned all the lessons I can from him in regards to how to be a man, and how to balance pride and humility, joy and pain, success and failure.  My brothers and I can only hope to apply the lessons learned from this man's life to our children when the time comes.

And in doing so, prepare the world for its next keyholders.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

So, I spent much of the summer radio silent on this blog, poking my head out only once or twice to call for men to better to the women in our lives and so on.  It's not like I stopped writing, or stopped caring, I just got busy.  This has been a very interesting summer on a lot of levels, and while I usually don't talk too much about personal life details all that often, I'll get nice and personal right about now.

My summer began with the grand adventure of dating.  Those of you who know me best know how much I hate the dance of getting to know someone, and pretending to be the sexy version of myself so that I can have the privilege of buying dinner and paying for a movie so that maybe, sometime down the road, we can possibly have sex at some point (Yes, that IS sarcasm, but it's bleak out there).  I was reminded that things tend to work out better when I don't try to be the sexy version of me, or the smart version of me, or whatever version I think someone will like.  I tried being myself, a move I haven't done in a few years.  The result? I get to hang out with an amazing girl on a regular basis.  We're sappy and cute and disgusting -- in public, no less -- and it's kind of cool.  Don't get me wrong, if I were to watch a couple like that from a distance I would probably projectile vomit all over the place (I'm a hypocrite.  I'm also probably bigger than you.) but it IS nice to be so comfortable with someone you don't really worry about what the rest of the world thinks about it.

Midway through the summer, my brother and his wife announced that they are expecting a baby (everyone after me... awwwww).  And then then world got like, hormonally crazy.  People I knew are dropping babies like crazy.  I haven't seen an epidemic like this since my days in the Diamond District! (Seriously, don't drink the water.)  In a few days, a wonderful couple I met through my brother are expecting their own bundle of joy, and after the story I heard about the kid's sonogram pose, I acquired the nickname rights and hereby dub the soon-to-arrive person "L'il Baby Cool Breeze."  I also expect to not hear from those parents until the kid is 6 with that nickname.

Of course, no story worth living is completely happy, and toward the end of the summer I said goodbye to my father.  Without airing business, I will say that while we weren't as close as I would have liked to be (and I take a portion of the responsibility for that), I loved him, respected him, and will miss him dearly.  I hope he was proud of his children, because we all turned out pretty damn good.

The positive to that story is in several parts; number one, it reunited my family under one roof for the first time in a while.  Six boys, two girls, with spouses and children and baby bumps all over the place.  It was chaos.  I was in heaven.  Secondly, my brother took my dad's SUV in order to have a vehicle to drive their kid around in (sidebar: newborns live the life.  They get valet service, chauffeur service, room service, free rent, AND they get adored for it.  It's their world, we're just living in it.).  He's living in Louisville, Kentucky now, one of those places that no one ever thought any of us would move to on purpose, and he's happy there.  Go figure.  Anyway, getting the car there meant one thing: Road Trip!  I logged my first ever road trip, getting to see Pittsburgh and pass through some very pretty country on the East Coast.  Definitely one of my better memories.  Lastly, my father's death made it necessary to do something I was looking at doing anyway.  Last minute flights are expensive, so in order to do the flight back to New York, I had to take a loan.  But since I was going to take a loan out to publish anyway, I did that.  My next novel, The Favorite, should be out by the end of the year!

This summer has been a big one for me.  I can't think of one that's had this many stories in it worth telling, and summer don't end until the Yankees are done playing, so who knows what more can happen?  If the Yankees make the playoffs though, I'm going to be hard to deal with.

Better.

I'd like to begin this with a little story.

I don't have any children of my own (and there are those that would argue that being a very good thing).  My oldest niece, however, I'm very protective of.  I have been since the day she was brought home from the hospital.  She's kind of like the hybrid of the child I don't want right now and the little sister I never had.  So, in the hybrid role of what I perceived to be one of the (many) major male role models in her life, I issued the half-joking decree that any unfortunate lad that tried to date her would have to get past me.  You know, as screening, to make sure their intentions were pure.  And if they weren't... well, somebody gonna get-a hurt real bad.  "I'm trying to protect you from guys like me," I said.  "And I'm one of the good ones."

I told her this because I distrusted the intentions of anyone she would meet, largely because I'm a guy, and even at my best my intentions with dates are always slightly dishonorable. (Even my current girlfriend, who will no doubt at some point read this, and with whom I was on my best behavior, my ulterior motives could be construed as slightly dishonorable).  Some guys are hardwired to be douchebags, and even the best of us can have somewhat asshole tendencies.

I joke all the time that I would likely be the father polishing the shotgun, or challenging my daughter's unsuspecting date to Russian Roulette, or some other violent, crazy act that would dissuade said unlucky boy from trying anything stupid, lest he suffer my Biblical-type wrath.  I was only half joking.

Until, that is, I read this article, where the author, a father, tells his daughter to go, experience, make the mistakes, get laid, and oh yeah, trust guys, because he's a good man and raised his daughter right.  The quote in particular that got me was this one:

It doesn’t lessen you to give someone else pleasure. It doesn’t degrade you to have some of your own. And anyone who implies otherwise is a man who probably thinks very poorly of women underneath the surface.

I don't think poorly of women; quite the contrary, I think women, in all their mystery and splendor and varying states of sanity are generally amazing creatures, capable of being incredibly strong and vulnerable in ways men simply cannot (I'm referring, of course, to the child bearing thing.  Ouch.).  So I thought about it, and realized something.  Men make statements like mine all the time.  We remember the kind of boys we were and cringe at the thought of our daughters, our sisters, our nieces bringing someone like us home.  But the fault isn't entirely the potential suitors, who want to get laid, or the teenaged girls, whose minds are a swirl of hormones and approval ratings.  It's on us.  The male role models.  The ones who these young girls are looking at and looking up to from the moment they get home from the hospital.  The fathers, the brothers, the uncles, we are their first taste of love from a man, and everyone who follows is eerily similar to that.

So we need to be better.

We need to be the example of what to bring home for dinner.  You don't want your daughter to bring home a thug?  Don't be a thug.  You want your daughter to bring home a smarter dude?  Read to her when she's a kid.  Want your daughter to seek someone loving and attentive?  Spend time with her before she's sent off to school.  Make her feel safe if you want her to seek someone protective.

Now for those men out there who have sons, this pertains to you as well.  You don't want your boy to be like you.  You always want him to be a better man, to do what you do well as a man (provide, protect, team member or what have you) and you want him to do it better.  So I implore you, please teach your sons too.

Don't let him be the kid that my future daughter makes me have to shoot.

The Debate Worth Having

Earlier this week, George Zimmerman was acquitted for murdering Trayvon Martin in Florida.  In the time between then and now I've run the gamut of emotional responses, starting with anger and outrage, and coming to a point of depression and disappointment.  I realized that I could not be a reporter in this case, as the very personal nature of it would color my writing.  So a week's gone by and now I'm in a clearer head space.  While it may not be as newsworthy as it was a week ago, it's time to weigh in on this subject.

The question, however, is which take is the right way to go?

I could rant on (and on and on) about the fact every argument in the American judicial system is based on precedent, and the fact that Mr. Zimmerman decided to profile an unarmed Black kid, initiate a confrontation, pick a fight, lose the fight and shoot the kid makes that sequence of events okay legally.  When this happens again (and make no mistake, as Americans we are nothing if not repetitive of our mistakes), defense can now point to this as legal precedent.  There has been somewhat paranoid talk of it being open season on young Black males, but with this legal precedent the argument seems a bit less irrational.  This is concerning to me because, well, I'm told I'm huge and there seems to be an overabundance of dark alleyways in this country.

But that's not the tack I'm taking.

I can comment on how unevenly the "Stand Your Ground" law has been applied in Florida as a Black woman fending off her abusive husband and didn't hurt or kill anyone in the act has been sentenced to 20 years in prison while Mr. Zimmerman goes free.  The best case scenario in any personal defense legislation is that the conflict is defused with minimal injury and no loss of life, and yet Marissa Thompson is going to spend the next 20 years in prison.  George Zimmerman will not see another day behind bars.

But I'm not going there either.

In the week since the Trayvon Martin verdict, protests and rallies have sparked bot pro and anti George Zimmerman.  The thing I'm going to say is that George Zimmerman is not a cause.  Neither is Trayvon Martin.  They are people.  One a terribly misguided individual who felt empowered by a stupid law, another a terribly unfortunate young man who died for what amounted to a questionable wardrobe choice in a strange neighborhood.  They are not causes.  They are not to be supported or decried.  They are the obvious representation of a very broken system in which we categorize and classify based solely on preconceived notions on what a criminal looks like.  The real debate worth having is about the concept of a fair and impartial jury, especially when jury for a big case has been inundated with media information by the time they are called that they have opinions already formed.  The debate worth having is  in how we grant the 15 minutes of fame on someone who has to remain anonymous for talking about why she made a decision on the value of one man's life over another.

But like you, I'm tired.  This whole thing has been exhausting.  And all I want to do is turn the page, change the channel and get some rest.

Better Things To Do.

We've all been there before, when we're faced with that daunting difficult, sometimes unpleasant task that has to be done.  It's staring you in the face and waiting to be tackled.  The sheer enormity of the thing is enough to keep you busy for an entire weekend, or leave you sore for a couple of days.

And then you just remembered that load of laundry that needed to be done, because there's no way you can do this without your favorite green boxers.

So you do six loads of laundry, your green boxers are among the last to be cleaned and dried.  You take a shower so that you can be clean when you change into your boxers and when you're done your bathroom routine, your task is still there, waiting for you, demanding its due.

Oh crud, is that the time?  I gotta get to the Post Office before it closes!

You hop in your car, take the freeway the one exit to the Post Office, wait in line for twenty minutes to get to the counter and ask for a book of stamps.  Because, you know, the stamp dispenser won't take your debit card.  You get your stamps, drive back the way you came, park your car and get ready to do your task.  You roll up your sleeves and as you're about to jump in, you realize that you forgot to stop at Walmart to get Peanut Butter M &M's.  It's essential; not having Peanut Butter M & M's damns this task to failure, and the notion that you were about to get started without them is sheer lunacy in and of itself.

So you get in your car, drive to Walmart and grab a bag of Peanut Butter M &M's, and while you're at it, some tortilla chips and salsa.  You stop at the electronics section and stare mindlessly at the Hi-def TV's that are infinitely better than the brand new one you got last Friday.  You drag yourself away from the continually running loop of Finding Nemo and head toward the register, picking up a box of Raisin Bran on the way.

You pull into your driveway, get inside and put your stuff away, leaving out the delectable sweets you went out specifically to purchase.  As you nosh on the smooth peanut butter and chocolate candy and prepare to finally begin that arduous task, your cell phone rings.  It's your buddy, dying to recount the details of the date he went on with that buxom, triple-jointed hot-dog vendor girl he met while drunk three Saturdays ago.  You listen intently, absorbing every sordid detail and making the appropriate insensitive commentary about his new object of affection, and congratulating him on meeting the future mother of his children.

You hang up and no sooner do you head toward the vicinity of this daunting task, your phone rings again.  It's your girlfriend, offering an evening of... well you don't know what because you're in the car again before she has a chance to finish.  And as you drive to your uncertain fate, you debate whether or not you tell this story to the people this task would have mattered to.

Or.

Do you say "I'm sorry I haven't written in my blog lately. I've been busy.   I promise, I'll make time to write in it more. "

'Tis the Season

I'm a die-hard fan.

I love baseball, football and basketball, and more than I love the sports I love my
hometown teams -- the Yankees, the Knicks, the Giants, and the Jets.  Hell, the Nets
even snuck in this year with the novelty of being from Brooklyn.  But as the NBA season
winds to a close and my New York Knicks yet again robbed unjustly of a chance to hoist
a championship banner to the rafters at Madison Square Garden, I turn my attention to
my equally beloved Yankees.  The Knicks did better this year than they have in almost
15, so I've only been peripherally paying attention to baseball.  I heard the Yanks
were dealing with some injuries, and there was this while A-Rod steroid thing
happening, but it was April and May.  I mean baseball in April and May might as well be
Spring Training.  Nothing interesting happens in baseball in April and May, right?

Holy crap.

The Yankees started out the season missing Mark Teixiera, Curtis Granderson, Derek
Jeter and Alex Rodriguez?  What the... that's the two through six hitters in our
lineup!  Kevin Youkilis got hurt?  Wait... you mean the Red Sox guy?!  When did we get
the Red Sox guy?  Who the hell is Reid Brignac?  Why is Jayson Nix playing?  And didn't
Vernon Wells retire?  You step away from the game for one minute and all hell breaks
loose!

More bizarre?  With everything I just said, the Yankees are only a game and a half out
in the East.

It's going to be one hell of a summer.