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Ronda Rousey MMA Female Fatale

4/24/2015

Ronda Rousey is the biggest thing to hit Mixed Martial Arts since God whipped up the universe. There is nobody, nowhere, no how, no way – in any way - as chilling and thrilling as Ronda.

But might there be somebody? Soon?

For fans are swooning...and these four lines were read in, what, about 14 seconds?

14 Seconds - hey, that’s the time her fight against her number-one ranked opponent (now racked and stacked), Cat Zingano, took. Cat, figuratively, has been changed from an outie to an innie, thanks to Rousey’s signature submission move – the armbar.

Rousey is the best. She’s a beast. A brawling beast-destroyer, who takes but seconds to win her fights. MMA never had it so good. And she makes for a great interview too. Conan O’Brien’s jaw dropped faster than a Ronda opponent when she told him, for a woman, having sex before a fight would increase her testosterone, would help her fight!

Yikes. And guess what? Manny Pacquiao, along with Conan, is also a big Ronda Rooter. He figures Rousey could handle Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a MMA bout.

One can only dream about such an event – but here’s an all-too-real living nightmare for Rousey’s real foes. They’ll be going down fast, thanks to that powerful armbar move that breaks arms and shatters spirits. Even commentators have a hard time looking, and announcing, of the death hold Ronda applies. She’s the bantamweight UFC champion. So she weighs 135 pounds. Now that hasn’t stopped an idiotic 215 pounder, one Jesse Holley, ex Dallas Cowboy, from trash talking her down. He says he’d “squish her like a bug.” He also adds he’d need eight weeks of training.

Ain’t gonna happen. But she could probably flatten his ass in MMA or judo.

Judo? How does Judo fit into all of this? Well, a huge reason Rowdy (her nickname) Ronda is undefeated is due to her years, prior to MMA, gaining invaluable fighting and competitive Olympic medalist experience in judo. And her mom was a world champion judoka to boot.

At 11-0 in MMA against women, Jesse Holley, and a million other guys, want to know if she’d be willing to fight a man. Given that she’s out of her league fighting other females (let’s assume, that highly touted, hard-hitting Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino won’t lose the 10 pounds to move from featherweight to bantam weight) so where, truly, does Rousey go from here? Does she fight with one arm tied behind her back? Blindfolded? Drunk?

Or is Laila Ali the one? She’s got the name, the fame, a 24-0 record as a boxer – but she’s also 37, hasn’t thrown a punch since 2007, and has NO MMA experience. Perhaps she was just teasing, saying she “could handle” Rousey. She’d be lucky to handle and carry Rousey’s purse straps.

The world has taken notice of Ronda’s “carrying” abilities. She “carried the card” of UFC 184, with her 14 second awesome act, and she’s even attracted people from out of this world - Hollywood types. She was Luna, a nightclub bouncer, in the movie Expendables 3.

While it may seem odd for a woman to chose a profession dedicated to knocking another’s block off, at least it’s real. There’s no playing cutesy here, pretending to be something you are not. MMA fighters aren’t like those outwardly beautiful models who talk of their real beauty being inner beauty. With MMA it’s like porn. You know what you want and hopefully you get it. After all, if men have the sporting right to render each other unconscious, causing concussions and cauliflower ears to boot, why should not women bust out and break opponents up?

For a lady in a violent sport, she’s capable of uttering sensible thoughts, when not guttering in trash talking. She opines, in that husky voice of hers, that fighting a man is not a good idea, not because she’s afraid but because the image of a guy smacking a girl in a sanctioned, well-publicized match, is not something (my words) all the loser, mal-adjusted guys, worldwide, should see.

Ronda wasn’t leery, however, of stepping outside of her comfort zone when it came to modeling. She accepted Sports Illustrated’s pitch to be a swimsuit model. In her eyes, this was healthy. Instead of a stick waif, or weirdly stacked woman showing off her starvation brought, or store bought, wares, Ronda modelled a clean, vibrant body-beautiful look. As she concluded: “Strong and Healthy is the new sexy.”

Much credit goes to her protein-high foods of eggs, fish, and meat.

Ronda readily admits, proudly, that size and strength did not account for her 14 second demolition of Cat Zingano. OK, we’ll bite: what did account for her overwhelming victory? During the weigh-in ceremony she looked zoned out. Focused. Don’t know if she heard the yells or whistles. So concentration had to account for part of her prowess. She then predicted “the most fantastic win you’ve ever seen...” – so perhaps a sixth sense helped power her along too.

But you’re a lover, not a fighter, a peace monger, not a war maker. You abhor violence and loathe MMA. Why should you give a hoot about Ronda? What makes her special, so transcendent of her sport? A couple of things come to mind. First, she’s showing young girls that they can do anything they put their minds too, and second, she’s showing little boys that girls are not inferior – and are to be taken seriously.

And if we adults are still capable of learning, and of setting biases aside, and are willing to watch a Rousey bout, we’ll figure it out: we can all, if not break barriers in our chosen paths, at least approach or surpass previous personal bests, if we try hard - and condition ourselves - prudently, persistently, and properly - to the tasks at hand...

Armbar or no...

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Spree on Monaco Grand Prix 2015

4/16/2015

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Hey you coke and caviar heads - you rich, jaded SOBs -wanna get a real body and brain rush? Check out the Monaco Grand Prix 2015.

Let’s start with the sights. The race is run in Monte Carlo, around the consistently sunny, Port Hercules. It’s enveloped by the Ligurian Sea. The scenery is breathtaking – a killer for the racer if he looks up – because every ounce of concentration has to be on the toughest course ever, but if that racer did look up he’d be mesmerized. At the palms, at the white, grey, and beige apartments – some balconied, some terraced, some tiered (and all coveted by old money and the nouveau riche alike) - at the classically constructed Casino and the artfully built Hotel De Paris, at the spectators in their multicolored-lettered caps, at the bright bunting, and at the boats afloat - super yachts in a port-moat of such wealth…that an owner’s wrist watch can cost a swollen million Euros.

And that driver would conclude, if beauty were a beast, that the visuals here are a Tyrannosaurus Rex that would chew the scenery at the Indy 500, say.

Some of the boats - a respectable one will set you back 50 million - are bigger than walkups – that’s another thing that amazes about this elite “Jewel in the Crown” Formula One race. That, and the dappled water and dimpled chins, the beautiful bodies (both cars and citizenry) and the clean streets. The latter are scrubbed every morning.

Now, for the sounds.

They’re electric and eclectic. High-speed airguns whirring, engines idling, rumbling, revving, screaming, whistles tooting, loudspeakers ‘splaining – and, no, that’s not just the effects of too much champagne on one’s noggin, it’s the ceremony of cacophony’s effects, before the big race gets underway, on one’s ears.

The crashes at Monaco are eye openers (hardly startling, as the route features elevations, dips, a hairpin, a tunnel, and, yes, that harbor) - especially the ones before 1969, when guard rails were introduced. Cars careened into businesses, into stands, one, Alberto Ascari’s, somersaulted into the drink. Yet, hard as it is to believe, the racers don’t drive much faster than do teenagers left with the car when the folks are out of town - for Monaco’s course is so tight, so unforgiving, so tricky, and with no “straights” to boot, that Brazil’s racing great Nelson Piquet likened it to “riding a bicycle around your living room.” Top speeds come in at relatively sedate, nowhere near supersonic, 155mph!

And because this route is so rare , so unique, so special, so other-worldly (pit stop crews in their outfits resemble spacemen, for heaven’s sake) the length doesn’t have to meet the FIA standard of a 190 mile minimum race distance. There are rules, and then there are rules, you know?!

But this race will give you the gears, literally. This mind-bending drive – makes it a driver’s day – not a car’s day. Only the best dominate Monaco: Ayrton Senna, Graham Hill, Michael Schumacher. In each lap the drivers change gears about 54 times! (The gears are behind the steering wheel and are electrically operated.) In fact they change gears almost as often as do the glitter-and-gloss gallant guys and gorgeous girls, aboard the yachts, putting the make on each other. Pole position takes on a whole new meaning here...Speaking of pole position, only 26 of those have won in the 59 races...

So you want to be here. Go for the gold. From £2995.00 pp you can spend five nights in an elegant hotel – and watch the Thursday practice runs from a super yacht, sipping or guzzling all the champagne or booze you want. And if the cars and race scenery still leaves your eye-candy quotient a bit low – take in the heralded Amber Lounge Fashion Show. Or simply dream of watching the goings on from your four bedroom duplex apartment terrace with a “directed to the south view” (value: 60 million pounds.)

Apart from the thrill of speed, and the eminent danger that lurks with each turn, or overtake attempt, you gotta give it to these F1 drivers: they know how to cool down their engines, and rev up their libidos, for they get invited to the coolest parties, like, for example, this bash on tycoon, Vijay Mallya’s yacht.

It’s hard to imagine a sport like squash giving off such rites where royally rich rascals’ roger about and helicopters hover, before landing on these ships of swank. Who knew that at these parties, the men wear more scarves than do women, are prettier, and all wear deep pockets: about 2,000 millionaires and 50 billionaires live here.

Unfortunately, despite the glamour of Tax-haven Monaco/Monte Carlo, and its Grand Prix, an oil slick is forming on the track of Formula One racing health – and that slick is this: many, including mainstays like Team Ferrari, feel F1 is getting too rigid and boring and bureaucratic – and most important for the fans, OUT OF TOUCH. Ouch. Sam Smith of WIRED details what insiders suspected: Ferrari is more than a tad upset with F1, and their new “Concept” car proves it.

But Ferrari wouldn’t dream of missing this race where each car is simultaneously a bull and matador, where carnage and damage go hand in hand with strawberries and cream.

Befitting its singularity of style and shape, the Monaco Grand Prix has no podium. Instead, the winner walks to the Royal Box for the trophy. And while that winner will be thrilled to meet royalty, they’ll be touched more so to know that in winning Monaco, they’ll be the best racing driver (helped, a wee bit, by the car’s 150 sensors, thunder bolting information 1,000 times per second, to the team’s $50 million supercomputer) - on the planet.

Or until the 2016 Monaco Grand Prix revs up.

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British Bobbies Big on Blubber

4/10/2015

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If you're a fat British Bobby, you're a winner - in the losers’ sweepstakes. It seems hundreds of policemen and policewomen fail annual fitness tests. The higher ups are quick to add - those hundreds only come to about one percent of the forces, but they’re not so quick to add - criminals are out of shape too, so no harm done.

At any rate, a couple of forces had each member pass the test, 100%. Kudos to Northumbria and Humberside.

The Northumbria force is a territorial force. Its motto is: “Total Policing.”

Don’t like the sounds of that.

In fact, according to Vera Baird QC, the Police & Crime Commissioner, these are the priorities for the police officers: “...to prioritise Anti-Social Behaviour, Violence Against Women & Girls, Reducing Crime, Building Community Confidence and Putting Victims First...”

Basically the cops are to do everything.

No wonder they are in fit form. They also have to deal with counter-terrorism while they’re at it. It would seem, therefore, the police are being pushed and pulled into almost every condition of chore, cause, circumstance, and calamity.

Not surprisingly, there is a push-and-pull fitness test – done, at least, for the West Midlands police force – at the end of their other tests. 5.8 % of the West Midlands constabulary flunks. No word on the sentences they receive. In actual fact, offenders are given the chance to redo, once they’ve whipped themselves into a semblance of shape.

(Back in 2010 the London Police Force, AKA Scotland Yard, had over 50% of its men deemed overweight. Pay cuts were threatened for those that flunked fitness tests three times.)

As of May 2014, when the story of the latest fitness flops came out, data had not been available from the biggest force, the Metropolitan force. (Perhaps being the biggest doesn't mean that a big, fat due date applies...)

The fulcrum of the fitness ordeals is balanced on the “bleep test.” It’s also known as the God-d&8%4!!! test; the F...’in test; the I’m-quitting-while-I’m-behind test; and the beep test. It’s a 15 minute shuttle-run adventure, done under ever increasing, in frequency, beeps. If you’d like to try your hand, heart, legs, lungs at this Multi Stage Fitness Test – the College of Policing details what’s required. You have to pass this test, among others no doubt, to be considered police-worthy.

Police worthy,

in a dream world would have one’s force as agile as antelopes, as wise as Solomon, as brave as suffragettes, as committed as can be.

How does the bleep, or beep, test help in that? BBC News UK reports on expectations: “The current guidelines expect officers to reach a score of 5.4 on the bleep test (four shuttles each within approximately 6.9 seconds...)”

Now, here are the gradations. Level one, runs for just under a minute, and has the longest beep interval of seven seconds. Assuming you’re still alive, it’s at about one minute 42 seconds and level three begins. Level four two minutes 30 seconds. How long can this go on? Level 14 is at the ten minute 25 second mark – and the beeps come in, irritatingly, annoyingly fast – about every three seconds.

This should be enough to dissuade one from joining the police force(s).

A lot can be done in 15 minutes. One can drown if they’ve washed their hair under water all that time.

That will get them their 15 minutes of fame, for instance.

For substance, one can die trying this bastardly beep test. The video beep test I followed went to 17 levels and stopped at 13 minutes 44 seconds – maybe the video got tired. I’m whacked, and I only listened...

Of course many organizations not only listen, but do this test. The Royal Military College of Canada. The Scottish Police, the Australian Army, even the French Foreign Legion. It’s just as well our stellar Northumbria force passed not only the bleep test but the bleepin’ fitness test as a whole. Apart from the priorities quoted above, they’ve got to be ready for any nefarious activity. Like, and we are not kidding here, theft of police equipment.

Back to the beep test. Outside of annoying people you don’t like, who you then subject to same, what are some of its other pluses?

Well, it’s easy to understand, doesn't cost a lot, and is perniciously popular with tyrannical tryout task masters – so that standards and summations of practices, results, and research are readily available. It’s a good measure of anaerobic fitness and aerobic fitness (stamina) levels: bobbies need to meet the physical pressures from dealing with mooks, miscreants, and mop ups. Of course, having physical capacity is a walk in the park compared to the emotional and intellectual capacity needed - barraged as they are by not only the dictates of pompous politicians but by the undecipherable, unfathomable, orders mandated man-splayed by pain-in-the a – s senior brass.

Finally, in case we have hopes for healthy, hale, police forces in the UK going forward, let’s not hold our breath. Here’s what their web site says about the police fitness test: “…It is, in all honestly, considerably easier than it once was…”

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Kentucky Derby Hats Off

4/3/2015

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For the Kentucky Derby, we can talk of the horses, stallions and fillies, their pedigrees, siring fees, histories - even fleas - and talk of the trainers, owners, grooms, jockeys - the human teams - but when all is said and done, inquiring-desiring minds are of one – and we really, really, want to know: what’s with the gargantuan god-awful hats that ladies show - for fun, sun - or no sun?

For if you take the “Clara”, “Shana” “Elizabeth” and “Sprite”, the “Jennifer” “The Run for the Roses” and the grand dame “Patty” – all bold and bright - your bulging, disbelieving, barely conceiving eyeballs will know that this spectacle, this event, this race of races, this show - is unique in flaunting the garish and the gorgeous, the colorful and the atrocious – and let’s not even mention the bows in tow…

For those that want to showcase their hats (as opposed to merely using them to block the views of others they don’t know or don’t like) they can enter hats into the Kentucky Derby Museum yearly contest. The winners will have their hats on the rack – displayed - for others to gosh, guffaw, and gawk at.

Hat’s aside, if, happily, the race turns out to be a rat race or, sadly, one for the dogs, the atmosphere, as this writer can attest, feels electric, even if watching the whole show on TV. Of course being plied with mint juleps, the official drink of the Kentucky Derby, and being pricked with red rose thorns, the official flower of the Kentucky Derby, adds to the tingling. One can only wonder what the mood must be like at Churchill Downs which has hosted this horsey hootenanny - uninterrupted - since 1875.

And Travis Stone has just been hired as the new horse hooter, track announcer. He should be around for a while – he’s the eighth to hold this job since that 1875 inception!

For those thousands of folks that are hard of seeing, “The most exciting 2 minutes in sports” the mammoth “Big Picture” a High Definition LED standing 170 feet high by 171 feet across, will show their picks and pans. Their losses and wins, loans and windfalls, will be magnified.

Of course, in a field of 20, the average-sized field the past decade or so, there will be 19 horses that will blame and rag on the winner on having “horseshoes” for the reason that that nag won. Of course, luck doesn’t have much to do with it. In a track this size – you can’t fake speed, or a good start, or a great close, or fantastic strategy.

California Chrome won in 2014. Fantastically. The unheralded horse won the Preakness but came up short in the Belmont. Will the winner of the 2015 Derby have the legs to go all the way and seize the Triple Crown? No matter that we haven’t seen a Triple Crown winner since Affirmed did the deed in 1978, what is also so fantabulous about the Kentucky Derby is that it’s run on Saturday. That way, the winning horse can party hearty, and sow his wild oats, Saturday night and recover Sunday before returning to work Monday. (Why couldn't the Super Bowl follow this lead?)

Now about the losses and wins mentioned above. What are the best tactics and strategies to minimize the losses and maximize the wins when betting on the Derby? The website: Equinometry tells us to be aware that a lot of money bet on the Derby is “dead money” that is, money bet without any research or due diligence, money bet on a favorite color, number, horse name, and so on.

If one can wade through the plethora of information made available via interviews with trainers, owners, and jockeys; articles from the racing and general media; and previous race histories; a bettor who utilizes these facets will be a better handicapper than one who throws money down on a whim or whinny.

If you play your cards right, in betting and in life, perhaps you’ll watch the finish at the “Finish Line Turf Suites.” Considered the best seats going, bring your wallet if you want to hang out there all year – a suite will set you back somewhere, and these are 2011 prices, between $200,000 and $250,000. They have a wet bar. Good thing – having a dry bar wouldn’t do the trick.

Of course with the beauty of these animals, the grounds, the pageantry, and even some of the people, there is a beastly ugliness underlying much of what goes on - what with the torture of horses through the testing and steady administration of drugs.

The New York Times reported extensively on an undercover, no pun intended, sting operation conducted by PETA, that showed how one super successful trainer, Steve Asmussen, allegedly ran an operation where his horses were routinely given supplements, tranquillizers, and painkillers.

Needles go into joints. Or muscles. All for the hope that a jolt can eke out a good performance one last time before the horse croaks.

And croak they do. “The Times found that 24 horses a week died at American tracks, a rate greater than in countries where drug use was severely restricted.”

Asmussen, for his part, is being investigated for cruelty to animals by both federal and state government agencies in Kentucky and New York.

Let’s elevate the discussion and don our rose-colored glasses…So, who is favored to take the 2015 Kentucky Derby this 141st running? These horses figure in:

American Pharoah; Dortmund; Firing Line; Upstart; and Materiality.

We can talk of these horses, but we’re out of space and nearly out of time. Thank heavens the Kentucky Derby is but a month away. If the horses run in a style as cool as their names, it should be another terrific race.

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Ronda Rousey MMA Female Fatale

Spree on Monaco Grand Prix 2015

British Bobbies Big on Blubber

Kentucky Derby Hats Off

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