true blog revival!

OK, so it's the end of August, and most days it's horrid and sweltering out. Actually, I think that's great. I love hot weather, but it is very lazy weather and makes it hard to actually do anything. I'm distressed that I've been trying for a week to make it to any Fringe Festival show at all and have been prevented by subway malfunctions, over-scheduling, or heat-induced fatigue. (I WILL succeed tomorrow night; there is no other option!) I STILL have to make it to the beach this summer. My academy has added several new class options in the morning, which is ideal for me, but I haven't managed to increase my training frequency yet despite a couple weeks of good intentions. (Again, this WILL happen this week; I'm determined.)

However, some very good things HAVE happened lately. Somewhat in order they are:

My vacation at the beginning of August. I swung south to Wildwood on the Jersey shore for a couple of days, where I had fun strolling the boardwalk, witnessed a fantastically impressive storm sweep in off the ocean, and was able to watch some live MMA at a Reality Fighting event there. Then I proceeded out to western PA for my yearly trip to Pennsic, a giant medieval festival. I spent a week camping and sword fighting (well, I personally use a polearm rather than a sword) in huge armored battles with a 1,000 people per side. I got a bit carried away buying belly dancing costumes even though I can't belly dance – although I did take a class while I was there. Unfortunately, it was a fairly advanced class focusing on the particular art of balancing things on your head while belly dancing. So now I know more about balancing than the basic dancing. Oh, well. Also went out to a few excellent parties around campfires. The best one was the Ladies’ Night Party, which featured ungodly amounts of wonderful food and drink and (mostly) attractive shirtless male servers being indecently harassed by the feasting ladies. And, yes, this too was done around a campfire. Great night ;) And great trip.

Next, I confirmed that I’ll be travelling up to Montreal again this year for the Fetish Weekend there. I’ll be doing sessions and shooting wrestling videos with Pamela and judoboy while I’m there, but enjoying the city and the fetish galas will be a big part of the trip. I’m having fun planning for the high fashion scene at MFW (designing Rococo Masquerade Domina wear!), and in anticipation (and as a result of actually not having the past few weekends at home) I’ve been getting out to New York parties again. Dropped in at Suite Abyss the other weekend, and I must say that club dancing is a good time. Planning on much more soon!

(Other upcoming travel notes – I won’t be going back to Atlanta in September after all, sadly. But I will be going to Indianapolis later that same month. Should be an interesting trip – I’ve got family out that way, and they’ll get to meet some of my wrestling colleagues. Worlds will collide.)

Also, there was lately the Grapple Den Two-Year Anniversary Party. We had a summer beach theme and an arena rock soundtrack. A lot of good matches – we’ve had great talent over the past few months. I continue to believe, though, that more people need to be brave and try oil wrestling at the beach theme parties. Sure it’s a little disgusting, but it’s great fun. Cloberella was game for it and, of course, Tony, who’s always game. Props to them.

Also a good news/bad news note – I had such an utter hell of a time putting together the party music on my dying laptop that it finally convinced me to get a new laptop. Alas for hellacious difficulties. Yay for the new laptop! I’m composing on it now.

Finally, there was the afore-mentioned video rematch with Kim on Sunday. That girl is so much fun to fight and really frikkin’ good. I’m thrilled with my takedown performance this time around, but I also nearly died in one choke… It was an even closer fight than our last December battle, and our highly critical video editor has been raving to me about it. A good sign! And best of all, it will be available very, very soon. [ETA: It is available NOW: VeVe vs. Kim REMATCH Video] This should be the start of a good run of video production – besides the Montreal matches, I’ve got a mixed competitive video and a second (and maybe third?) spandex match lined up. Good stuff heading into September; stay tuned!

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!

everything that's been going on...

Damn, so my last post was my June Grapple Den report, and here we are on the eve of the July party. Well, it's been a busy month. Just a few odds and ends about what's been going on --

My Fourth of July was nice and mellow, but NOT restful. I spent the day biking through both Brooklyn and Manhattan in glorious sunshine but too much wind. Summery and exhausting. A fine day. Then I finished off the weekend on the fifth with a late-night trip out to TES Fest in New Jersey. TES Fest is a yearly BDSM Convention; I visited to teach a Wrestling for Fetish Play demo and run a fight club party. The fight club was more or less one of the closing events of the weekend, and some people had already headed home, but the people who stayed were serious devotees. I wrestled (and demolished) one fellow who told me he'd been waiting through the whole event for that.

Just this past weekend I travelled down to North Carolina. It was a quick trip but good. One of my clients, a fine fellow who can take a HELL of a belly punching, gifted me with an awesome pair of weighted police enforcement gloves. Needless to say, we tried them out in a very fun session.

I also got to attend a UFC 100 party at a local martial arts school while I was visiting. They'd hung up a big projection screen, and I was able to grab a kickpad for a pillow and lounge on the mats while bunch of other fighters crowded around to watch and place bets on the matches. I was sorry to see Bisping lose to Henderson, but I had more stake in the St. Pierre and Lesnar fights, and those went just the way I hoped. Perhaps I should go into a big defense concerning why I DON'T hate Brock Lesnar, including why I thought his post-fight interview was NOT awful, but I'll try to be brief -- let's just say a session wrestler who prides herself on being a legitimate athlete can easily sympathize with a former WWE star who's also a legitimate athlete and an utterly impressive one at that. And any audience that boos a guy who just successfully defended his title is being inappropriate and has no business getting offended at an appropriately inappropriate response.

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!