Hey everyone, hope all is well with you. I'm in Georgia with the family and heading to South Carolina tomorrow for a few days, so posting on the Blog will probably not be happening as much as normal. Anyway, lets get to business.
By the way, I'm loving the comments. Meggie came strong on my last post. Respect also to Jared and Param with their comments as well.
Music to Listen to: The Show by Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick
I wanted to keep the tradition of listing my favorite song on the car radio from the drive down here but the music selections were pretty weak. I had the scan going and had some Offspring, which isn't bad, but the second choice was going to be Lady GaGa. Not happening.
Instead I'm going to post that gem above. I was watching a special on BET about the best moments from the past BET Awards and one of them was a performance of The Show. Tremendous song.
Over the weekend, there were two and one-half moments which made me tear up. Since I share many aspects of my life here on the Blog, I'm going to tell them to you.
Half-tear moment #1) I spend Sunday afternoon at the palace of The Peoples' Champion and his spawn, who we will call Irish. I've been wanting to spend time with Irish for a long time and since he's six months old, this is a good time for me to establish my uncle skills. He needs to get to know me before we start our sparring mixed martial arts training sessions in two years. I was encouraged by Irish enjoying me shadow boxing with him and me allowing him to punch me in the face. He was smiling at these activities, very happy with that.
So I got to hold him, feed him some tasty sweet potatoes, the entire bonding experience. Irish took a nap and when he woke up, he started crying in his crib. I picked him up, made sure he was healthy and took him to the Champion.
While I was doing this, the Champion commented that I was doing well and told me that I would be a good father.
To be fair, I have younger nieces and nephews, so I've gone through the whole process of dealing with a toddler. However, its been a while and I had fun.
When I left to go back home, I was actually sad. I wanted to spend more time with Irish. Which leads me to...
Full Cry Moment #1: One of the underrated good reality TV shows out there is Family Jewels, the documentation of Gene Simmons' family. For those of you unfamiliar with Gene, just look up Kiss, listen to some songs and you're good. The show has Gene, his long-term girlfriend Shannon Tweed, who still looks tremendous after all of these years, and their two teenage-aged children, Nick and Sophie. The show is actually funny, especially Nick interacting with Gene.
So the show had its season premiere on Sunday and it was centered around Sophie's Sweet 16 birthday party. Gene thought back to all of the past birthdays that he missed of Sophie's becasue he was on the road with Kiss. However, Shannon would videotape each birthday party and send it to Gene. Furthermore, Sophie would make cards and letters for Gene over the years while she was growing up and he kept all of them. During the show, Gene pulled out a box with all of this old stuff and then the old videos were shown.
Furthermore, during the show, Sophie arranged for her and Gene to take a dance lesson for the daugher/father dance because she doesn't like dancing but she knows how special that is to Gene. When she took Gene to the studio and told him why, he was about to cry and hugged her.
At this stage, I'm darn near about to lose it.
Finally, the party takes place and Gene takes the mic to talk about Sophie. He talks about how proud he is of her, etc. He makes it halfway through and can't finish the speech because he's so emotional.
Now, at this point, your boy is shedding a tear.
I think that it had to do with seeing Irish earlier in the day and being in the mindset of a father.
Childen are so precious.
Full Cry Moment #2: The WEC event was also on Sunday. The WEC is a mixed martial arts organization and they had a televised event on Versus. BTW, Urijah Faber was game but Mike Brown is a beast. We'll never know what would have happened if Urijah doesn't break his hand.
Anyway, back to the tears. One of the first fights included Jens Pulver. I'm going to give you the CliffNotes version.
Jens is a featherweight/lightweight fighter who has been in the fight game for many, many years. He came from a troubled past to emerge as one of the best fighters in the world years ago. In the early days of MMA, it was all about the big guys, heavyweights, light heavyweights, even middleweights. If you were a little guy who should have been fighting in the 155 or even 170 weight classes, you were out of luck because the interest was weak. Jens is a 155 pounder and even he had to fight guys 40-50 pounds bigger than him to make money.
However, Jens would do well in these fights and always represent for the little guys.
Furthermore, he along with some others, helped usher in the lighter weight classes getting respect. You now see guys like Faber, Miguel Torres and even B.J. Penn get mainstream MMA attention when this wasn't the case five years ago. Jens had a lot to do with this.
So as MMA has become more popular recently, Jens has dropped his last few fights and not looked good in them. However, he has been open about overcoming struggles in his personal life and now being in a happier place. So while his career may be stalling, he is doing well outside of the cage.
On Sunday, he lost another fight, this one in the first round and afterwards during the interview he hinted at retirement in an emotional state. He has always been honest with the fans and he thanked them for all of the support over the years. He talked about his family and his growth as a man.
The crowd gave him a standing ovation and I did the same from my home.
Of course, a tear was shed.
I admired how Jens has given maximum effort and commitment to MMA. I then reflected back to myself and realized that I haven't done that in any aspect of my life. It served as a motivator for me.
Its a perfect transition to a major announcement that I will have in my Sunday Reflections that will affect not only this Blog, but my life in general.
Until then, have a good night. There won't be a post on Wednesday so I'll be back on Thursday.
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