catching up!

It's been forever since I posted a blog, and I blame two things for that --

1) My extremely busy and travel-filled summer

2) My laptop, which has gradually been dying a slow, painful death, making it really unpleasant to get online.

So let me just throw a few things out here to get a little bit caught up.

First, an exciting announcement for this weekend. I'm going to be taking on Kim in a video rematch this Sunday, and we're opening up the match to a live audience. Kim and I faced off back in December, and it was an excellent, very close, very technical, very intense and exhausting submission grappling match! Now we're both just that much better -- we were both blue belts last winter; Kim's actually been promoted to purple belt since then. I don't plan to let that make a difference, but it's going to be a hard fight!

So if you want to get a front row seat at the live event, follow this link for all the details: Live Taping Tickets

And if you want a preview of the action, or if you want to get caught up on the full drama of our first battle, you can check out these links:
YouTube Trailer
VeVe vs. Kim I in the Doom Maidens Video Store

Damn it, now I've run out of time for the rest of the updates I wanted to make, but I vow that they're soon to follow. Stay tuned for tales of my fantastic summer vacation, the latest Grapple Den Party, and my upcoming travels!

Fighting Gianna and Wrestling Party matches

April 20, 2009, 9:27 p.m. --

I was going to post this much earlier today, when I was stealing internet time at my day job. Then, just as it was ready to go up, there was bizarre accident at work involving a car falling on -- not hitting, actually falling on -- my building. I emailed the blog to myself for later posting, and joined the general evacuation. Now, here's the original entry of 3:33, slightly delayed:

OK, some excellent news. I've got a video match lined up for tomorrow with Gianna, who's currently visiting in NYC. She's just my size, and an experienced BJJ grappler, so this should be a fantastic, technical, close-fought match. A spiritual sequel to my fight with Kim, I'm hoping. My one fear is that we're not shooting in my usual studio this time, but in another that I know, and there's a small but real danger there of going through the wall!

Other things to mention -- I had a very nice submission grappling class this morning. Techniques worked: Hip throw and single-leg catch from underhook set-up and many unorthodox triangle tricks -- triangle set-up for straight armbar; sidemount to reverse triangle step-over; triangle as a single-leg defense, and finally a very unusual arm-trap to arm bar via a sacrificed triangle. Also the live rolling was great -- you don't get such perfect guillotine set-ups often...actually, ever. What was my partner thinking?

I'm trying to increase my technical drilling time, so I'll actually start remembering more than one of the six techniques I learn in a class at a time. Yesterday, one of my sparring partners and I came up with the brilliant idea of meeting to drill in the park. Today, we accordingly ordered some protective outdoor kneepads, and I'm going to appoint some of my old workout clothes as OK for grass stains. I'm looking forward to this -- now refer back to Part One of this entry, re: how much the weather needs to leave off sucking.

And finally, though this is very belated, a report of last week's Wrestling Party. It was a great one. Things started off very mellow with the early crowd settling in, the spectators claiming their seats, and a few warm-up matches alternating on the mats. And then, wham, a flood! A ton of wrestlers suddenly showed up, and the mats were packed the rest of the night. Later in the night, we started running multiple matches at a time to give everyone the fighting time they wanted. Some people wrestled so much they did their socializing during their bouts -- you could see someone holding guard and looking up to chat with folks on the ring-side sofas. It was great!

Highlights of the night for me personally included the return of my dear friend Mentee Fresh, back to grappling at last after recovery from knee surgery; a match with very skilled newcomer who said she used to train long ago (she hasn't forgotten much!); my classic rematch/continuing grudge match against Big Vince (who says he now wants to do a video match with me, which is great since he'll have to stop lying about winning once I have hard evidence of his defeat one film); and my not-so-classic team-up with Kim against Vince -- that was hilarious, and even more of a spectacle since the two of us look like twins. Also, my favorite match that I wasn't fighting was Miss Juliette's face-off with SnakeEyez -- he's 250 pounds of muscle; she's probably 130 physical pounds, but armed with 300 pounds of sass. Watching her move in on him was a sight!

The next party will be May 20. The theme is Jocks vs Nerds!

- VeVe