June Wrestling Party

So the Wrestling Party last night was a blast! We had so many wrestlers, and so many new wrestlers, it was incredible. Scarlet Menace and I were there representing the session wrestlers (Scarlet was treated to the experience of taking on the Incredible Bulk -- something of an initiation ritual for session ladies); we had a slew of regulars, a few new martial artist fellows, two tiny new ladies who were brand new to wrestling but very brave, and one bubbly, ferocious, and CRAZY girl who reminds me of myself before I had any training.

There was a main mat and a warm-up mat, and both were full continually with a queue for main mat time. Oh yes, and these fighters were not only numerous but insatiable. Just kept coming back for more, until we had to toss people out at closing time. Fantastic night.

My personal favorite bit of the night was my "revenge match" against a fellow I'd fought at the last party. He'd put up a hell of fight until I finally managed to pull off a win, and this time he called me out demanding vengeance. The ref gave him the option of a 5-minute, most points or submissions wins match or a sudden death, first submission wins match. He opted for sudden death.

Well, having only one chance to win was extremely motivating. I locked a guillotine on him in about five seconds, and it was VERY tight. He barely managed to pull out, and he admitted afterwards that in any other situation with less pride on the line, he would have tapped. But he managed to get free and take my back. He made the mistake of crossing his feet between my legs though, so even as he thought he had the advantage and was setting up a choke, I was able to trap his feet and score the victory with an ankle compression lock. And it was all the better because he'd chosen the sudden death option. Needless to say, we have a rematch scheduled for the July party!

I also had a great time rollin with a new girl who gave herself the fighting name Road Kill. She was new to wrestling and very light, so we were able to have a fun, easygoing match with a lot sweeps, somersaulting, and tumbling. Road Kill was very excited to start training in grappling, so we're expecting to see her at training in the park on Sunday.

Looking forward to July now...

photo shoot plus odds and ends

I was extremely pleased with the photo shoot I had last night. I was working with photographer Lou Benjamin, and I put together two excellent variations on a punk Apocalypse outfit. One involved an ironically contrasting dainty white blouse, and the other made use of my giant black buckled and bespiked "stompy" boots. Both used stockings, garter belt, G-string, and my ridiculously badass posture collar made of bullets.

A third and final costume had something of a showgirl look -- turquoise vinyl top, mesh panties, and rhinestones.

I've gotten to see the raw images at this point, and my favorites are definitely the stompy boot shots, though there are some winners throughout. Lou did very nice work with the lighting, so the two blouse-less series turned out as beautiful muscle shoots. Lovely shadow and accentuation. I can't wait to get images up in my photo gallery.

I do begin to wonder, though, if it's somehow mandatory for photographers to own cats they forget to mention to the models in advance. Resulting in a practically ritual exchange before shoots --

"Oh, I'm sorry, you're not allergic to cats, are you?"
"No, no, that's fine."
"Oh good. Well, this is [cat's name], and sometimes she likes to get into the shots."
"Of course, she's the star after all."

And only after this formality is complete can we proceed further.

A few other things I've been meaning to mention, i.e. stories from my return trip to Atlanta over the past weekend.

Had a great time Friday night despite horrible weather related mishaps. My traveling companions and I were supposed to meet up with some local wrestling friends of ours at 1763, a BDSM club that was large enough and kind enough to give us permission to lay down mats during one of their parties. We fought our way out there through torrential rain to discover that not many other people had gone to the same trouble. And that the lady bringing the mats was feeling ill and didn't want to take herself out into the weather.

We ended up rerouting to a nice publ with the couple of other brave souls who showed up. We planned more grappling on future trips (and also potential white water rafting -- ???) Lovely low-key night.

I then spent the rest of the weekend WATCHING a lot of grappling. Saturday night I enjoyed the UFC at a splurge-worthy, posh sports bar. I wasn't pleased with the outcomes of the fights necessarily (I was definitely rooting for Marcus Davis over Dan Hardy, and Cheick Kongo is one of my favorite fighters, and he made a complete ass of himself against Cain Velasquez), but I fully approved of my crab cake burger.

On Sunday I saw the kids' division at the NAGA tournament. This was well worth watching. Some of the kids are amazingly impressive, and some are just freakin' adorable. I don't like kids normally, but fighting children are able to (temporarily) change my mind. I saw a 3-year-old girl, who actually trains in judo, hip throw a 5-year-old boy. And then go around for the rest of the day with her medal hanging down to her knees, grinning beatifically. I wish I'd started training so young -- I like to think I'd have conquered the world single-handedly by now.

travel -- details!

I really thought I would get this report out yesterday, but it simply was not to be. Summer is obviously wake-up time for everyone, myself included -- I have been SO much busier lately with email, session and video requests, and more travel planning, not to mention belated spring cleaning of my website. Thanks to everyone who's making this a lovely full season for me -- you're keeping me jumping!

Anyway, the trip. Since it was a quick session trip, I did spend a lot of time in and out (mostly in) hotels with not too much chance for sight-seeing. But a few things that I did see were the Chicago subways and the Milwaukee bars. These things may sound unexciting, but I am always comparing everything to "how it is in New York," so they were fascinating to me. The Chicago trains have working intercoms, and the above-ground tracks are very scenic and pleasant. But there are no Unlimited Ride Passes -- that makes no sense. And you can still smoke in Milwaukee bars. In fact, they sell cigarettes in the bars. I'd forgotten such things were ever (and still, obviously) done.

As for fun highlights, also in Milwaukee I got a chance to meet up with the Madtown Beatdown crew, a bunch of grapplers who've lately been bringing rough combat and martial arts paly to the Madison BDSM scene. I'd been corresponding with these folks online for a while -- it was awesome to meet them in person and hear about what they've been doing to build a recreational fighters' community out in their area.

And of course we celebrated the meet-up with a party -- matted out my hotel room for a late-night open mat. The featured event was a thong bikini anything-goes catfight match between myself and Zen, one of their fighters. We allowed submissions, slapping, hair-pulling, spanking, smothering, and even licking, and despite all that it was still a very fun, friendly, and sometimes hilarious match. Also, with Zen standing at just 5 feet, I got to fight someone smaller than I am! We did film the match, but the bikinis proved so flimsy that the final product turned out too scandalous to release. Great still photos came out of it though:



I have an entire new gallery dedicated to this fight up at my website, here: Fight with Zen Gallery

And the rest of the party was very good too!

On the way back home, I stopped in Cleveland. Cleveland was an old stomping ground of mine when I was in college; I pleased I got to revisit a favorite restaurant there -- a New Orleans Blues venue where they give you crayons to draw on the table clothes and provide you Mardi Gras beads. (New Orleans Blues in Chaicago? -- I know, I know.)

Here I also got to shoot another fun video that, I believe, WILL be released. I was working for the second time with Utopia Entertainment and much enjoyed demolishing the producer, Kip, in a scissors domination match. Again on the comparing everywhere to New York topic -- NYC would never spare space for such a filming studio as that, or if it did would charge for its use in bricks of gold.

So now I'm back home -- got back to the gym on Tuesday and back finally back to training last night. Whether I got too much rest over this trip or not enough, that was an unGODly gruelling class. Welcome back me!

I'm really going to have to get a good and disciplined groove going with my training immediately, since I'm going to have so many disruptions from MORE travel throughout the summer.

Should hopefully be posting my calendar for that (travel, not training) later today. Or tomorrow, if things go the way they did yesterday with this bog post.

travel recap!

I am newly back from my week-long session tour to Pittsburgh, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Philadelphia! Just arrived home last night after a lot of wrestling and a lot of driving.

I'll have a fuller report out soon, but for now let just say that was a lot of travel to fit into a short time. I would have liked to have more time every single place I stopped. But you take what you can get, and you plan return trips!

And on the subject of return trips -- I had SO many people contact me on very short notice about sessions during my stop in Philly. I wish I could have met with everyone, but the quick-time schueduling was messy, and I ended up missing a ton of people. So for everyone I didn't get to see in Philadelphia yesterday, I am planning a return trip very soon. June 19 & 20, I think -- just need to double check and confirm that.

Overall, this was a very successful and inspiring trip. I'm revved up to do more traveling, and this summer is going to be a very busy one! Atlanta, Providence, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania trips are all coming up... Stay tuned!