communication breakdown

Sporting News

Well, this weekend was the last of the month, meaning it was time for another trip to Wisconsin for some training with Mr. McDaniel, a 5th degree black belt. We trained for about 3 hours on Sunday and it was quite a workout. After countless executions of patterns and a fair number of flying kicks, I was sucking wind like I hadn't in a long time, and came near passing out at one point. All of which I consider a good thing, because I need to be pushing myself to my limits. Mr. McD had some very valuable input to help me with my testing requirements, and said he thought 2 of my 3 patterns were sufficiently ready for testing. Since I had essentially been learning these on my own (without guidance from a high rank), it was very important to get that kind of validation, and to know I was on the right track.

The original plan was for me to test to III Degree in November along with a large group from Wisconsin, but then my back decided to screw me over and I lost a lot of training time. It looks like the new date is January 29, and rather than testing in Wisconsin, it will actually be held at our school here in Minnesota. That is great, not only for its convenience, but because all of the students that I train with will have a chance to see a black belt test, which is not something that happens everyday. It's 5 months away, but I still need to train very hard from now until then to be at the level I want to be at when testing rolls around...

OK, so the Olympics are over. I'm glad I watched some of it, just because I hadn't in years. Honestly, I think the part I enjoyed the most was the men's singles final for table tennis. Those guys were insane. However, what really struck me towards the end of the games was the sudden onset of anti-Americanism. I know exactly when it started - it was right after that male Russian gymnast did a sweet routine on the high bar and got (unfairly) judged with a low score. The fans booed lustily (and justifiably) for awhile. Next up was American Paul Hamm, and they didn't really stop booing when he got up there. He had to delay his routine until the booing stopped. Hamm did a good routine, but not as good as the other guy - and got scored higher. You could argue that the crowd's booing of Hamm was really just carryover from the Russian, but that wouldn't explain how Hamm got booed on the medal stand, long after the actual routines were done. It was all very strange, and it's almost like when the high bar thing happened, the fans simultaneously thought: "oh, now I remember! I'm supposed to hate the Americans! Let's blame this on them! boooooooo!"

That one event seemed to blow the lid off, and all of the sudden it was the "Let's Hate On America" Games. The next day the female Russian gymnast Khorkina says in an interview that the only reason she lost the all-around gold was because she wasn't American, and there was a conspiracy to award an American the top prize. Then the men's 200m race was delayed for like 5 minutes while the fans booed, particularly at the three Americans favored to sweep the event. Why were the booing, you ask? Anyone's guess. Add on to all of this the intense hatred of the Dream Team, and it really started to piss me off.

However, the whole Olympic fiasco just made me realize why the world hates us. It has nothing to do with our policies, our President, or our culture. It is because we are the Los Angeles Lakers of the world (or, for the baseball fans, the Yankees). Basically, we're the best at everything we do - while that makes your home fans happy, eventually everyone else will turn against you and pull for the underdogs just to see something different. It is cold, hard jealousy - and anyone who denies it is lying to themselves. It also makes us an easy target for blame, even for things that have nothing to do with us - for example, the whole "American conspiracy" thing from that dumb gymnast. It's easy: facing a difficult problem? feeling like a failure? Just blame the Americans, and everyone will agree with you!

Finally, this kind of snuck up on me, but the US Open started today. Many people (OK, only Americans) say it's the best Grand Slam of the year. What I like best are the night matches under the lights - it's an amazing environment in tennis, only rivaled by Centre Court at Wimbledon. There should be some excellent tennis, with Federer, Roddick and Agassi all in top form. For those not very interested in tennis, there's always Maria Sharapova to look at...