“I have wrestled with an alligator. That’s right, I have wrestled with an alligator. I done tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail. Only last week I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick. I’m so mean I make medicine sick.”

-The Greatest, Muhammad Ali.

The Rocky movies. OK. Raging Bull. Brilliant. Million Dollar Baby. Fine. The Greatest. Good. BUT, why isn’t there more movies about the oldest of sports?

At the beginning of human existence there was only 3 ways in which man could compete. 3 ways in which the Hunter-Gatherer could better his fellow man. They were running, swimming and fighting. The lefty-led bashing of the noble sport of boxing has been futile. There is something inside of a lot of people which compels them to be interested in the battle between 2 men. I am one of these people.
Boxing requires not only strength but also skill, technique, speed, tactics, knowledge of your own strengths/weaknesses, hours of training and willpower. There are numerous boxing stories: the rise to world champion, the slippery slope of continuing after your peak, the need to fight on after your prime for money, competitive spirit, the need in a man to better his peer etc.
Boxing is filled with potential storylines. So why isn’t there more boxing movies? Especially ones based on real boxers.

p.s. Mayweather JR vs Pacquiao has to happen. The 2 best boxers in the world (pound-for-pound). For Mayweather JR to cry-off (just to maintain his zero loss record) would bring the boxing world to its knees. This could be the fight that reinvigorates boxing as a mainstream sport.

Paz

It’s lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself.  -Muhammad Ali

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses – behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights. -Muhammad Ali

The man who has no imagination has no wings. -Muhammad Ali

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.  -Muhammad Ali

I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was. -Muhammad Ali

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want. -Muhammad Ali

Creer que puedes conseguir lo que te propongas, estar convencida de que nada ni nadie te va a detener.  Despertar, darte de bruces con la realidad y descubrir que no lograste nada. Game over.

Once I wanted to be the greatest
No wind or waterfall could stop me
And then came the rush of the flood
The stars at night turned you to dust

Melt me down
To big black armour
Leave no trace
Of grace
Just in your honor
Lower me down
That corporate slob
Make a watch
For a space in town
For the lack of the drugs
My faith had been sleeping
Lower me down
In the end
Secure the grounds
For the later parade

Once I wanted to be the greatest
Two faced, sad little rock
When things I couldn’t explain
Any feelings
Lower me down
In the end
Secure the grounds
For the lack of the drugs
My faith had been sleeping
For the later parade

Once I wanted to be the greatest
No wind or water fall could stop me
And then came the rush of the flood
The stars at night turned you to dust

So, well now! You think you’ve got bragging rights, is that it? Well so does everyone else here.

Now’s your chance to show us what you’re made of. Take a gander at the categories to your left. That’s right, now!

You certainly are brazen enough to come down here. Show us what you got!

Oh… is that all?

Chess is a form of intellectual productiveness, which has a more or less superficial similarity to warfare. Intellectual productivity is one of the greatest joys, if not the greatest one of human existence. However, Chess was created by man and not by nature, and so we cannot be “born” with a special ability for playing Chess. The chessmaster must have a mind capable of scientific analysis, just as the mathematician. Scientific reasoning rests not merely on logical reflection. It also requires that inexplicable faculty which we call intuition, without which no inductive thinking is possible. Being able to force a move on the other player is key in getting to the end result of capturing the other player’s king.

The chessmaster may hail from any country and any stock as where individual genius will come from is totally unpredictable. The chessmaster usually begins young. Earlier many of the great players were unknown before they hit their thirties. Today, almost every prominent grandmaster scores some notable success in his twenties. In fact, one could safely assume that if a chess player does not reaches the national championship in his early twenties he will never become a world champion and probably will never even become a grandmaster. Although there is no general consensus on who is the greatest chess player, some of the greatest grandmasters of all-time include Garry Kasparov, Viswanathan Anand, Bobby Fischer, Vladimir Kramnik, Anatoly Karpov, Mikhail Botvinnik, and Emanuel Lasker.

Improvement in Chess comes partly from gaining a better perspective of what makes for a strong chess position. Unlike the majority of chess players who rely solely on experience, first-rate chess players are able to recognize general laws to which all their combinations are secondary. Imagination surely is one of the most important prerequisites of a chessmaster. He must be able to envisage positions in his mind before they actually transpire, and he must be able to conceive combinations he has never seen before. Finally, the chessmaster should realize that to avoid making mistakes is the beginning, as it is the end, of mastery in Chess. If the chess player makes no mistakes he can be certain of never losing a game, and very constantly win it.

The chessmasters are very special people that can “see” the game many steps ahead of the current move. Each move is cleverly planned as only one step towards victory. Chessmasters excel at this sixth sense of playing the game many moves ahead in their mind.

This song speaks to my inner despair.  But for some reason, it still makes me feel better. Maybe they should update the video to Wii bowling?

Another masterpiece by Shepard Fairey. This is such a beautiful depiction of the great Muhammad Ali.

Via World Famous Design Junkies.

New York Times interview, 2006.  From what I can gather she is still sober.

“Lived in Bars”, from The Greatest (2006)

Once I wanted to be the greatest
No wind or waterfall could STALL me
And then came the rush of the flood
The stars at night turned DEEP to dust

Melt me down
into big black armour
Leave no trace
Of grace
Just in your honor
Lower me down
TO CULPRIT SOUTH
Make ‘EM WASH A SPACE IN TOWN
FOR THE LEAD
AND THE DREGS OF MY BED
I’VE BEEN SLEEPING
Lower me down
PIN ME IN
Secure the grounds
For the later parade

Once I wanted to be the greatest
TWO FISTS OF SOLID ROCK
WITH BRAINS THAT COULD EXPLAIN
Any feeling
Lower me down
PIN ME IN
Secure the grounds
FOR THE LEAD
AND THE DREGS OF MY BED
I’VE BEEN SLEEPING
For the later parade

Once I wanted to be the greatest
No wind or water fall could STALL me
And then came the rush of the flood
The stars at night turned DEEP to dust

Der wohl beste Boxer aller Zeiten.

The Greatest, Muhammad Ali has Irish roots.

Something he shares with a number of other black folks (including myself), particularly from the mountainous coal mining region of the Eastern United States.

Boxing legend Muhammad Ali is on a sentimental journey to see his little-known Irish roots.

Tens of thousands are awaiting the three-time world heavyweight champion’s arrival Tuesday in the western Irish town of Ennis, the home of Ali’s great-grandfather Abe Grady. Fans have adorned shops and streets with posters of Ali and red, white and blue USA bunting.

They plan to watch live on TV screens as the Ennis council names Ali as its first “freeman,” a civic honor.

Grady settled in the United States in the 1860s and married a freed African-American slave. One of their grandchildren, Odessa Lee Grady Clay, was Ali’s mother.

Genealogists established Ali’s Irish links in 2002, but Ali – who is 67 and suffering from Parkinson’s disease – has never visited Ennis before.

Now, contrary to the popularized “Mandingo” image built up around black white relations prior to the end of slavery – not all relationships between blacks and whites were non-consensual. There were a fair number of voluntary relationships, which prior to being banned in the late 17th century by various state legislatures, and again in the late 1870’s with the institution of Jim Crow anti-miscegenation laws, were recognized in law.

These resulted in a fairly significant population of “free colored” in several Southern States.

Irish shared a social status through much of the 1800’s little above that of slaves. They commonly, when they could find work – worked alongside free black people in either menial jobs, or dangerous jobs like coal mining. Free black communities existed in the “frontier” regions, which from the 1700’s on, included the mountainous regions of Virginia/West Virginia (which were the same state at that time), Tennessee, and Kentucky – regions into which Irish migrated to work in the coal mines. That geographical proximity and shared social status led to the obvious – in my case an Irish great-grandmother.

Afro-Irish… Indeed.

MJ, the greatest!

I seem to like imaginary crushes more than real relationships. I’m not sure why that is, except that reality is a little more of a mixed bag than our rosey-hued imaginations will account for. That and I’m a Sagittarius – one of the notorious dreamers of the Zodiac!

My first huge crush this summer was on Rufus Wainwright. I know he’s gay, but let’s just say I like a challenge. In reality, it’s his songwriting and musical genius that keeps bringing me back for more. We’ll save that rhapsody for another post.

Then there was this dude from work, who turned out to be a jerk. It was a delightful flirtation for about fifteen minutes, and then a sucky descent into “when will he call?” for about two weeks. I could keep daydreaming about him just for kicks, but after awhile, even Sadge the Dreamer knows that it’s masochistic to continue thinking that something is there when it’s really not.

In other news, I joined Twitter a few months ago, mainly to follow Rachel Maddow and Ana Marie Cox, that sexy lesbian couple (just kidding, they aren’t really a couple, but wow). I didn’t really use it that often, until I started watching shows and getting on Twitter at the same time – pretty fun!

Then one day, I finally went wild for Twitter. While searching through a hashtagged topic, I saw Paul F. Tompkins on there, who has won the AST Top 20 Comedians Poll several times. I looked him up, checked out who he follows, then proceeded to follow the tweetstreams of various other comedians and personalities. One of these was Mr. Dave Hill, a bon vivant and man about town in New York. I first saw him on YouTube, when Rufus Wainwright (one of my other crushes) was on his show, the Dave Hill Explosion, along with Dick Cavett.

Cue the violins!

I like how Twitter allows you to see the world through someone else’s eyes in a way. Dave Hill was in downtown Manhattan the first day I followed him – he snapped pictures of places and sights along the way, and then he “tweeted” them with humorous captions. Even though I don’t know him, and most likely will never meet him, I got a sense of what it would be like to walk around with him as he commented on things. Plus I got a little window into what was going on that day in NYC (he showed the marquee of the Radio City Music Hall in one) that I wouldn’t have access to otherwise.

I’ve gotten more familiar with Dave’s style of humor from his tweets and by watching some of his many internet videos. He seems to have mastered the art of internet promotion, with many different venues for his work. He has appeared on HBO and Cinemax and also starred in the show, The King of Miami on the Mojo Network. He has a one-man show currently running at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theater in New York City called Dave Hill: Big in Japan. He is also an accomplished musician who sings and plays guitar in the band Valley Lodge, and has backed fellow musicians Lucy Wainwright Roche and Walter Schreifels. He has also worked extensively for the comedy website Super Deluxe.

His humor is somewhat in the absurdist and self-aggrandizing vein of Stephen Colbert, although a bit more self-deprecating and purposely sophomoric. He inflates his “Dave Hill” character into a larger-than-life persona who is “pretty f-ing sweet” at everything, and who likes to “rock the f out” a lot. He plays himself as an awkward fool in interviews quite often, while mugging at the camera to indicate what he “really thinks”. It’s kinda subtle, but once you catch on, it’s really pretty hilarious what he’s doing. I’m amazed at the number of people on YouTube who just don’t seem to get it – I don’t think they are taking the time to watch him closely. Or maybe they are the kind of people he is making fun of!

When he is on stage playing music though, you see the other side of his performance persona, which is a serious and practiced musician. He plays mostly “power pop” type hooky riff songs, but also seems to have a range of styles available, including metal riffs and standards. I am still finding out more about his musical endeavors, but I definitely like what I see so far. He has a mesmerizing stage presence which is accented by his snappy dress style and cool moves.

So add Dave Hill (along with Barack Obama, Rachel Maddow, Stephen Colbert, Zach Galifianakis, and Rufus Wainwright) as one of my new inspirations and someone to admire. He gives self-aggrandizing, sexy-yet-awkward dorks everywhere a voice. I mean that in the nicest way possible! I’m one too

So I’ve decided Twitter is a pretty fun thing. You can take in a stream-of-consciousness feed from several hundred (or more) people at once. Sometimes a bit overwhelming, but definitely exciting and thought-provoking. It’s cool to watch trending topics rise and fall like on a tide. I think they call it the hive mind now? I’m a bit behind on my hip lingo. Love you Dave!

Dave Hill Online

Valley Lodge on Myspace

Dick Cavett and Rufus Wainwright on the Dave Hill Explosion at UCB (part 2 of 10)

New York Post interview with Dave about the Dave Hill Explosion

Impose Magazine interview