The Occasional Blog of Jonah Weiland

The target on the left was with the .22, my first ever experience shooting, the target on the left is from when Jeremy and I had our little shoot off. Thanks Jacob for taking the picture of the targets. Click the images to enlarge.

So, my education in Tae Kwon Do/Hapkido has now been well documented. While they’re defensive arts, they’re also clearly very agressive and violent. And I’m loving every minute of the physical and mental exertion. But my exploration of agressiveness is not over yet.

Saturday night my friend Tracy picked up her new .357. She waited her 10 days, picked up the suckah and really wanted to go shoot it. I’ve never shot a gun in my life and was more than happy to tag along. We met with Jeremy and April out at the Firing Line in Burbank.

I was surprised to find that I was quite overwhelmed and nervous walking into the Firing Line. I’ve never seen that many guns in one place in my entire life! It was a a shock. I forced myself to move on without any difficulty, but the feelings lingered for a bit.

Met up with Jeremy and April. Jeremy was already hard at work blowing away targets featuring abstract art or little bunny rabbits. I watched the three of them shoot for a bit before I gave it a try. I remember clearly the moment when I walked onto the range. No one was shooting at that very second, but about two minutes later someone fired off a shot and I jumped so high. Scared the crap out of me. I had on my ear phones, but still, I was surprised by how loud it was.

Jeremy brought along a .22 and had me start with that. That was pretty easy. He told me how to load the clip, how to hold it and how to pull the trigger. I took it in my hands and fired my first shot. That wasn’t so bad, let’s go for another. And another. I made 10 shots and all grouped pretty well. That was fun.

I took a break for a while, then gave Tracy’s .357 a try. Ohhh, more kick, interesting. My grouping was pretty good on that one as well. Jeremy started to think I was lying about my never having shot a gun before. Then I tried Jeremy’s .38 which had a laser sight. That thing was actually a lot of fun.

Then came out the big mutha, the .44 Magnum with the words “Raging Bull” etched into the side. This sucker was huge. My first reaction was, no way in hell am I shooting that thing. The gun weighed a ton. When Tracy picked it up in one hand it actually trembled. I lifted it with both hands and you could just feel the strength of that thing. Very intimidating. Jeremy wanted me to give it a try first, but I asked him to go first so I could watch. When his first shot went off I was floored by the kick it had and the amount of flame it shot out. Wow.

He made his six shots, then I took a stab at it. Man did that sucker have kick! Didn’t hurt, but it did push you back quite a bit. My first shot was actually very close to the center of the target. The rest moved around a bit, but I did pretty well overall. Jeremy and I had a little shoot off and he clearly won, grouping every shot with the .44 right in the center.

I’ll have to try this again sometime. I didn’t love it, but I certainly didn’t hate it either. I’d like to try some other guns and see what the deal is. I never had those cliched feelings of “I hold a man’s life in my hands” when I held the guns, but I did feel an overwhelming need to be as careful as humanly possible while holding the guns. Clearly that’s a feeling you want someone to have when holding a gun, but the feelings were palpable.

I’ll post pictures of my targets later.

Well, there’s a bit of good and bad political news today.

Good news is that Representatives of the United States actually represented their consituents today by voting down recent FCC rulings on media ownership. Not in a long time has the public been so politically engaged, demanding their representatives do something about a very bad decision. Bravo.

On the other hand, a VERY dirty California Republican trick has succeeded. The effort to recall California Governor Gray Davis has succeeded and sometime within the next two to three months a special election will be held.

Now, I’m very much liberal politically and Gray Davis is a Democrat, but I fucking hate the idiot. He’s lack of guidance during his term has proven disastrous for California. Certainly, since the Bush Administration took office the Davis camp has received little support from Washington, but he’s shown no ability in overcoming this roadblock. A good politician would have gone much more on the offensive, but he didn’t. I did NOT vote for him, instead I posted a protest vote by writing in former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a Republican. I LOATHE Gray Davis.

BUT, he did win. The Republicans fucked up bad by running that nit-wit Bill Simon. Sure, they tried running Riordan, but Davis ran a very effective (and full of shit) smear campaign against Riordan in the primary, which left the Elephantmen with Simon. It’s pretty amazing that Simon proved to be even more inept than Davis, yet Davis barely squeaked out a victory. Note, he won, fair and square. There was no recount. No debate as to the validity of the votes cast. He won.

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa deviously took advantage of the state’s growing dissatisfaction with Davis by running a recall drive. The means by which he obtained signatures are questionable, but he got enough under California recall laws. Issa is new to the public service game and has much grander plans for himself beyond being in the House and is in fact going to run against Davis in the upcoming recall election. The problem is this, if every time a political group saw their opponent’s popularity fall and we held a recall election, we’d have mass chaos on our hands. For example, note President Bush’s sliding approval ratings. So, when it goes below 50% (and I believe it will), should we hold a Presidential recall election? First, I don’t know if that’s feasible and second, fuck no. The man won (some would debate that, but the decision was made and I’m very able to move on) and 2004 is the country’s next chance to choose their leader.

Currently it’s not known whether the recall election and the replacement election will be held at the same time. What I know is I will watch this closely and may reluctantly vote in Davis’ favor just because this is really dirty politics. I LOATH Davis. My friends know of my intense dis-satisfaction with the man. His recent plan to raise DMV registration fees three-times is the most idiotic move ever. But I can’t support Issa in his scheme to steal, steal, the Governorship of California.

Fuck you Darrell Issa.

Every year I make my annual trek down to San Diego for Comic-Con International. I bring with me loads of computer stuff (the hotel room always looks like a mini-Norad) and we cover the whole shebang for CBR. I had an absolutely fabulous time this year. One of my best ever.

One of the problems with working this convention is that I find myself totally disconnected during the show. I don’t check out my daily stops for news. I don’t read the paper. I don’t get to listen to KCRW to get the news. Nothing. I generally try to stay very on top of current world news, but not when I’m working a convention. As a result, I feel very disconnected from the world for a week or so following the convention as I catch-up. For instance, I’m not sure what exactly happened with that tragedy at the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market. Liberia freaked out when I was gone. Not sure what’s going on in Iraq or if the North Korean government continues to act like shit bags (I’m going to guess an affirmative to that one). But, to show you where my priorities are, I DID manage to stop by ESPN’s NBA page each day briefly to see how badly the Clippers were screwing things up. They didn’t do too badly it turns out.

I’m back. I took a TKD class tonight and that felt good. It’s time to get back to it.

So, what’s going on in the world?

Talked with a number of friends who live on the East Coast that were affected by the power outage. I asked each one they did without any power. Easily the top answers were clean or had sex.

You know, my apartment’s getting a little dirty and well, you can never have enough sex. DAMMIT! Why can’t we have a power outage in Los Angeles?

Tonight I heard a piece of James Brown music I’ve never heard before. The song? “It’s A New Day,” originally recorded in 1969. A transcription of the lyrics (as best as can be made out) are here. This is going to be one of those songs I listen to over and over again for the next week or two.

This, ladies and gentlefucks, is music.

Last Saturday I found myself walking around North Hollywood, checking out some funky clothing shops in my hood. I didn’t find what I was looking at in one, so I continued walking up the street to the next one when I passed by the Jun Chong Tae Kwon Do dojang. In the window was hung a sign that said “50% off July 4th and 5th only.” My interest was piqued and I entered.

I talked with the lady inside, Ada Chong. She’s Master Chong’s wife and a black belt in Tae Kwon Do herself. I asked her about it, about what they teach, how it’s done, what you learn, etc. … sure, I knew the answers to some of the questions, but I was really interested in hearing more. I told her how about a year ago I began a semi-frequent regiment of working out and that in the past year I’ve lost 15 pounds, moving from 238 on down to 223, but that I’ve been stagnating lately. We talked about how I didn’t like the idea of a gym (I own a full weight bench at home, I wouldn’t use the treadmill or any of that shit at a gym and in LA most gyms are meat markets), yet I really wanted to find some sort of exercise that didn’t feel like exercise. She told me about what you learn taking martial arts and how it applies to life. We talked about streching and flexibility, something I’ve been working on for the last year (bad knees and lack of flexibility most of my life makes you cranky when you hit 30). There was much talking going on. We discussed the pricing (half off was a nice break) and then I told her I was interested, but I wanted to think it over for a bit.

So, I went outside and thought about it. Did I want to do this? As a kid I was always interested in martial arts, but I was too afraid to go for it. Didn’t want to get my ass kicked! I don’t have that fear now, but seeing as how it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, maybe I should. There’s reason #1.

The stretching and exercise aspects were two important keys for me. No one really likes exercise (if you do, you’re a little fucked in the cranial). This didn’t sound like exercise to me. And the stretching sounded like it would do me a lot of good, especially in my legs. One year ago I couldn’t sit cross legged. It took me about a month to get to that stage and I’m almost at the interlocking leg yoga style thing. I still can’t sit on my legs (feet under the butt) for very long, but I’m working on that. Then there’s the whole weight loss thing. Okay, reason #2.

Then came the thing that really convinced me. In the past year I don’t feel like I’ve really learned anything new. Sure, I read the news, I read books, I educate myself constantly, but I haven’t learned a new skill. Tae Kwon Do is not just exercise, but it’s a discipline. The idea that I’d be learning something so completely foreign to me was appealing. Reason #3 had me convinced.

So, I’m taking Tae Kwon Do. Yeah, me! I’ve now taken two classes and it’s been amazing. It’s been equally the hardest and one of the most satisfying work outs I’ve ever had. My first class on Monday was with Master Ada Chong in a mixed-adults class. I got really tired twice and took a very short break, but Ada didn’t let me sit for long. I was pretty overwhelmed, so much to learn and so much etiquette to pick up on. But I did it. When I left, I felt, well, excuse the fact that I’m about to repeat myself, but I felt amazing. Like every part of my body was screaming, “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON OUT THERE?” Then Tuesday, oh the pain. Every part of my body, except my arms and chest, hurt. Guess I’ve been giving my arms and chest enough of a work out, but not the rest. By Wednesday I was okay, but the blister on my toe from the first workout was still rather nasty, so I decided to wait another day.

Thursday was with a new teacher, whose name I didn’t get. This workout was even tougher and no breaks for Jonah this time (except for the two 1 minute water breaks). It was a hard work out. My uniform was soaked by the end of class. After the class one of the ladies came over to me and offered me some words of encouragement, saying I had done better than I probably thought (she was right, I did feel like I looked like a fool) and that the first month is very difficult (she’d been doing it for four months now and already has a yellow belt). I appreciated that.

I’m going to keep at it for a while, at least until I get a different belt. I want to at least say I got that far. Who knows, this could become my new thing. I know I like it so far.

You know that neato-bitchen effect in those “Matrix” movies where the camera moves around the characters as they fight, giving you different angles and what not? You know what I’m talking about, that effect that’s become terribly overplayed! Yeah, you got it! Well, the Japanese love anything that’s “cool” and took it one step further by doing it LIVE! Check out this video. It appears to be from some variety act/game show type thing where contestants come on the show and win based on audience reaction. These guys CLEARLY won. This does NOT suck ass.