DavidYoo's Xanga

Ground and Pound...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:24:46 GMT

The first time I saw an MMA fight I nearly threw up. There’s a brutality to mixed martial arts that most people can’t stomach, and I was no exception. The fighters wear these ridiculously tiny 6 oz. gloves that don’t soften the blow in the slightest—they might as well be wearing brass knuckles. They’re allowed to use their calcified elbows as weapons as well, and they’re even permitted to kick each other in the face as hard as they can. To witness a devastating high kick to the left temple makes even the most hardened viewer’s fight-or-flight adrenalin kick in, and at first this horrified me, since historically I’ve always firmly resided in the “flight” camp. After I saw my first MMA fight on TV the pacifist in me silently vowed I’d never watch it ever again.

But I kept getting drawn back, and at this point I’m a diehard fan. My friends who hate MMA ask me why I watch it, and my boilerplate answer is always: “It truly is a physical chess match, and the appeal for fans like myself is the intrigue of the matchups of styles. Can someone with a wrestling background defeat a standup striker? Can a Muay Thai boxer defeat a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt?”

This answer is always met with skepticism, and I can see why. While I earnestly believe it’s human chess (albeit one where the pieces bleed and lie concussed after a particularly brutal checkmate), whenever I have a friend watch it with me the fights usually end with an archaic burst of “ground and pound,” which is where basically the fighter sits on the other fighter’s chest and rains down unimpeded blows from above.

“That’s not chess, I used to do that to my little brother in kindergarten,” one friend noted.

And while I appreciate the combat itself, I have to admit all the other aspects of the sport, which is dominated by the UFC, irritate me to no end. It unabashedly caters to the Spike TV crowd, since the main demographic is 18-34 year old males, which means a large percentage of the viewership consists of former frat boy meatheads that revel in the “blood sport” as a way to satiate the excess testosterone coursing through their GNC-sculpted biceps.

What I despise the most is the entrance music for the fighters. For some reason the soundtrack to UFC fights is predominantly late-90s nu metal—that gratingly cheesy hybrid of heavy metal and rap that I’d thought was still popular only in Florida or something. I often sit there and daydream about what my entrance song would be if I was entering the octagon. I’d sarcastically play songs like Foreigner’s “Waiting For A Girl Like You,” or 70s lite rock fare like Climax Blues Band’s “I Love You,” or Gary Wright’s “Dreamweaver.” I daydream about the crowd singing along to REO Speedwagon’s “Keep On Lovin’ You” or Air Supply’s “All Out of Love,” but in reality this would likely cause a Bruno-like riot.

My wife can’t stand that I watch MMA, and the other night she finally found a way to get me to change the channel, by slyly suggesting that my choice of entrance music suggests a latent homosexuality that thereby explains MMA’s appeal to me. “Close your eyes and listen to the next fight,” she said.

He’s got side control, eager to make the full mount…he’s going for a rear naked choke…yes, yes, he just sinked his underhooks in and is now going to choke him out from behind…they’re both really sweaty, so it’ll be difficult for either man to get a good grip on each other’s bodies for a submission…he reversed him, now he’s got full mount, and is starting to deliver some ground and pound from the top position…it’s only a matter of time now…

I opened my eyes. The fighters looked exactly like the Kama Sutra-esque positions being breathlessly described by announcer Joe Rogan, not to mention the fact that both fighters were wearing baby blue spandex underoos that had advertisements for “CondomDepot.com” emblazoned across the rear.

“Touche,” I said, and halfheartedly started surfing the channels. I settled on Top Gun playing on TNT. “This was my favorite movie in middle school.”

“You’ve seen this a million times! Come on, let’s watch something else,” she pleaded, but I refused to change the channel.

She might be able to goad me into not watching MMA for a night, but Maverick will always be my wingman.

Reading List...

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:33:28 GMT

Today two friends are publishing their latest novels. First up is Matt de la Pena, whose third novel, WE WERE HERE! He's the author of BALL DON'T LIE and MEXICAN WHITEBOY, and back in the day was a D1 basketball player who went head to head with the likes of Steve Nash, etc. Below is his announcement:

----------------
Hey everybody,

I'm writing to let you all know my new novel, WE WERE HERE, is in stores today. This book is incredibly special to me, and I would be honored if you'd consider picking up a copy.

As a few of you know, it is my ritual to head to a local bookstore on my pub date, hide out in the romance section and spy on my new book until I witness someone buying it. Of course, for BALL DON'T LIE I was stuck in the Park Slope B&N for over six hours, until I finally threw in the towel and bought the damn book myself (I even paid with credit card, hoping the store clerk would connect the de la Pena on the card with the de la Pena on the book jacket -- sadly she didn't). This year I've decided to run up to the first person I see who is even BROWSING the book and give him/her a big hug, and maybe even a kiss (unless it's an incredibly overweight male). Then I'm going to purchase the book for this person and buy him/her a shot of Patron. Or two. So please don't pull the mace if you're suddenly blindsided by a 6'2" half-Mexican.

If you're currently injured and unable to leave the house you may also order the book online . . .

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/We-Were-Here-Matt-Pena/dp/0385736673/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255407864&sr=1-2

B&N: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/We-Were-Here/Matt-de-la-Pena/e/9780385736671/?itm=7

Indiebound: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780385736671

-- I also launched a brand new website this week: mattdelapena.com

-- And for those of you in NY, I'll be at the Park Slope B&N October 20th with Libba Bray and David Levithan. After the reading we're all heading out for drinks.

Thanks for reading all this. And again, it would mean the world to me if you picked up a copy of WE WERE HERE sometime this week!

Please let me know what you're up to!

Matt de la Pena

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Second up is Jonathan Lethem, whose latest novel is CHRONIC CITY. Here's his announcement:

Friends, pardon a mass e-mail. I promise it'll be a stand-alone, not the first in a series.

Today Chronic City is published. I think it's the best thing I've done, and I wanted to let you know.

"The novel functions much like Manhattan used to – a mad scramble of connections made and, more often, missed…make(s) a reader ache for a city long gone." – Esquire

"A sprawling book about pop culture and outer space…realistic and fantastic, serious and funny, warm and clear eyed. One of the new generation’s most ambitious writers, Lethem again offers a novel that deals with nothing less important than the difference between truth and lies. And some stories about good cheeseburgers." - The Daily Beast

"A stellar, multi-layered novel." – GQ

"Lethem has often sought to interweave the realistic and the fantastic; in Chronic City the result is nearly seamless." - New York Magazine

I'll be traveling a lot in the next six weeks and if you're curious to know about appearances or media moments, they'll be tracked here: http://www.facebook.com/JonathanLethem

Also useful: http://jonathanlethem.com/chroniccity.html

Thanks, and perhaps I'll see you out there somewhere.

Jonathan

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Writers Against Racism

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:12:20 GMT

I recently wrote a post for Amy Bodden Bowllan's blog at School Library Journal that offers a nationwide author/teacher collaboration/dialogue to deal with racism in schools. Here's the link:

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/620000062/post/440048644.html?nid=2693

Andromeda Klein...

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:01:08 GMT

Today is the pub day for Frank Portman's second novel, ANDROMEDA KLEIN. Frank, aka Dr. Frank, of The Mr. T Experience, debuted a few years ago with the ridiculously smart and funny KING DORK, which just about everyone seemed to read. On his blog he posts pictures of fans reading his books and I'd briefly considered doing the same here a few years ago but realized it would have made this blog seem like a portfolio for my mom as if she were trying to break into, I dno, book holding modeling? That last sentence probably makes no sense, if you haven't already checked out his blog: http://doktorfrank.com/

I haven't read what people seem to presume is his teen Jewish re-make of The Andromeda Strain. Actually, it's about a girl, coincidentally called Andromeda Klein, and--okay, I haven't read it yet, so rather than try to offer a made-up summary the way I used to at book club meetings, here's the flap copy description:

Andromeda Klein has a few problems.
Her hair is kind of horrible.
Her partner-in-occultism, Daisy, is dead.
Her secret, estranged, much older and forbidden boyfriend-in-theory, has gone AWOL.
And her mother has learned how to text.
In short, things couldn't get much worse. Until they do. Daisy seems to be attempting to make contact from beyond, books are starting to disappear from the library, and then, strangely and suddenly, Andromeda's tarot readings are beginning to predict events with bizarrely literal accuracy.
Omens are everywhere. Dreams; swords; fires; hidden cards; lost, broken, and dead cell phones . . . and what is Daisy trying to tell her?
In the ensuing struggle of neutral versus evil, it's Andromeda Klein against the world, modern society, demonic forces, and the "friends" of the library.
From Frank Portman, author of King Dork, comes another unique literary experience. Andromeda Klein is dark, funny, smart, and entirely unforgettable.

If it's half as good as KING DORK it's twice as good as other books that were four times worse than his debut. Meh, I haven't used Boolean algebra in years so those calculations might be off. Okay I'm not really in blog writing mode right now, just check out his second novel, okay? Okay, then...

http://www.frankportman.com

The Most Horrifying Pictures I've Ever Taken...

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:40:29 GMT

I've been sitting here debating for almost two weeks whether or not I should actually post these on the web. My dilemna was that I wasn't sure if this was maybe too scary to post to a blog that otherwise is about writing and doing not much of anything, and I didn't want to be responsible for horrific Wang Chungesque seizures when some hapless surfer happens upon this blog. But then I mentioned this to my wife and she asked to see the pics, and when I showed her (mind you-she's the type who, when you ask her what the scariest movie she's ever seen is, she earnestly answers, Ghostbusters) she took one look and immediately started laughing. "Are you being serious?" she asked me.

I am being serious. I'm being dead serious. But given that she wasn't even remotely frightened when she saw these pics, I'm going to go ahead and post them on the blog right now.

Just know that you've been officially warned....

The backstory: My buddy Joe and his wife and kid(s) moved into a colonial in Connecticut last year, and this summer decided to redo the basement. The house was built in the late 80s, and there had only been one previous owner--a childless couple that moved in on Day 1 and lived there, alone-mind you, for the next 20 years. And then my buddy moved in, and he hated the basement--the walls were covered with this heinous wood paneling and the carpet was a Pepto pink, etc, so anyway one weekend I drove down to help him work on the basement and when I arrived he looked visibly upset, and didn't want to go down there because, in pulling down the wood paneling, he'd found...something. I asked him to show me, and he refused, so I went down into the basement by myself and looked around and gasped. Remember--prior to my buddy moving in nobody with kids had ever lived in the house.

And this is what I saw:

Be afraid.

Be very afraid.

Fade To Blue, by Sean Beaudoin

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:05:04 GMT

Sean Beaudoin is a writer I met earlier this year when I attended the I.R.A. Conference in Minneapolis. I was already a fan of very funny first novel, Going Nowhere Faster, as well as a fan of the appendix to his first novel that listed pretty much all the same icons of the 80s that I revere (eg: Brian Bosworth in Stone Cold, etc.) and today his second novel for teens hits bookstores. I haven't read it yet, but Sean's a noir fanatic like myself, and this novel, Fade To Blue, sounds like a doozy, so be sure to check it out.

Here's a link to the book on Amazon, as well as a link to his web site:

http://www.amazon.com/reader/0316014176?%5Fencoding=UTF8&ref%5F=sib%5Fdp%5Fpt#reader-link
http://www.seanbeaudoin.com/

Here's a multiple choice question regarding something people seem to puzzle over whenever they meet this guy:

Question:

How do you pronounce his last name? Do you pronounce it:

a.) Bough-Din
b.) Boo-Doing
c.) Bwah-Dwah (French pronounciation)
d.) Boh-Dunn
e.) Nobody knows...

Answer: C

If you're not a hockey fan you likely didn't pick the right answer...Sean Beaudoin's a fantastic writer and I hope you check either of his two novels out. Oh, btw--I just finished a draft of my next novel this morning, finally, after four months of self-imprisonment, so next week I will finally have a bit of free time to post in this blog the two creepiest photos I've ever taken--I guarantee you will be stunned.

Have a great wknd,

Reading June 22, 2009

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:28:51 GMT

I'll be reading in the Solstice Summer Writing Conference Reading Series, held at Pine Manor College. The readings are open to the public. Here's the press release:

PINE MANOR COLLEGE ANNOUNCES ITS ANNUAL

SOLSTICE SUMMER WRITERS’ CONFERENCE READING SERIES

[Chestnut Hill, MA, May, 2009] Pine Manor College announces its annual Solstice Summer Writers’ Conference Reading Series, to be held June 22–26, 2009. All readings begin at 7:30 p.m. and are held in the Founder’s Room of Pine Manor College — unless *otherwise noted — located at 400 Heath Street in Chestnut Hill. The President’s Dining Room is in the Rosemary Ashby Campus Center. Copies of the authors’ books will be available for sale after all readings, and there is plenty of free parking!

*Monday, June 22 at 8:00 p.m.: David Yoo (author of Girls For Breakfast and Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before); Martha Rhodes (founding editor of Four Way Books, and author of three poetry collections, including At the Gate); & Pablo Medina (author of Points of Balance/Puntos de Apoyo, The Cigar Roller, and co-translator of García Lorca’s Poet in New York).

*Tuesday, June 23 at 3:30 p.m. in the President’s Dining Room:

Past Conference participants Ching-In Chen, Dave Zeltserman, Laura McCullough, &

Michael Sussman read from their recently published books.

Tuesday, June 23 at 7:30 p.m.: Solstice Programs Director Meg Kearney (author of An Unkindness of Ravens and The Secret of Me); Stephanie Elizondo Griest (author of Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines and Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana); & A. Manette Ansay (author of eight books, including Vinegar Hill — an Oprah Book Club Selection — and the forthcoming Good Things I Wish For You).

Wednesday, June 24 at 7:30 p.m.: Marie Myung Ok-Lee (author of five award-winning young-adult novels including Finding My Voice); Nickole Brown (author of the poetry collection Sister, and longtime marketing director of Sarabande Books); & Peter Selgin (author of Drowning Lessons, Life Goes to the Movies, and two books on the craft of fiction writing)

Thursday, June 25 at 7:00 p.m.: Tanya Whiton (published in literary journals including Northwest Review and Crazyhorse); Kevin Boyle (National Book Award winner for Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age) & Mark Turcotte (author of The Feathered Heart and Exploding Chippewas).

*Friday, June 26 at 4:00 p.m. in the President’s Dining Room:

2009 Solstice Conference Participant Reading.

Friday, June 26 at 7:30 p.m.: Lee Hope (winner of the Theodore Goodman Award for Fiction); A. Van Jordan (author of Rise, M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, and Quantum Lyrics); & Special Guest Andre Dubus III (author of four books, including the recent New York Times bestselling novel The Garden of Last Days, and House of Sand and Fog —an Oprah Book Club Selection adapted for an eponymous Academy Award-nominated motion picture).

Directions to Pine Manor College, complete bios of our authors, and more information about the

2009 Solstice Summer Writers’ Conference can be found at www.pmc.edu/solstice.
###

Two videos...

Thu, 28 May 2009 22:56:24 GMT

Here are two videos: one made me laugh, the other kinda weirded me out...

This one's very short, of a medic rushing onto the football pitch to help a downed player:

And this is the one that weirded me out, of this creature called a pygmy gerboa

that looks like a Pixar character...

Back from Minneapolis...

Tue, 19 May 2009 03:32:34 GMT

My trip to the IRA Conference was fun. The speech went well (I think), and I got to meet some great authors and teachers. I was on a panel with Laurie Halse Anderson, Alex Sanchez, John Green, and Sean Beaudoin (fyi, apparently his last name isn't pronounced Bo-Doo-Win). It was my first time visiting Minneapolis, and I was stunned at how big a city it actually is. I think my impression of Minneapolis has been distorted over the years from repeated viewings of Purple Rain (incidentally the hotel I stayed at was right next door to First Avenue, the club in the movie) and the random pics I receive now and then from my buddy Paul, who has been living in Minneapolis for the last few years. The pics Paul sends me of his life out there paints such a strange portrait of the city and I don't even know what I was expecting, just not the metropolis I ended up visiting. Here's an example--a photo he took with his iPhone at the cash register of a convenience store a few months ago...

IRA Presentation...

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:10:04 GMT

I'll be attending the International Reading Association's Minneapolis Convention next week. If you're in the area, I'll be doing a signing on Monday, May 4, 2009 from 1-2PM at:

The Minneapolis Convention Center
1301 2nd Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55403
Exhibit Halls B,C&D

Then at 3PM I'm going to be sitting on a panel with Sean Beaudoin, Alex Sanchez, John Green, and Laurie Halse Anderson, entitled: "Invisible Men: Making Guys a Priority in Young Adult Literature."

The presentation I'll be giving is called, “Weaving Together the Issues of Race, Gender, and Sexuality Humorously.” I've been working on my speech for about three hours at this point, and this is what I have so far:

"This afternoon I'd like to talk to you a little bit about weaving together the issues of race, gender, and sexuality humorously. Weaving is really important, especially when it comes to writing about issues of race, gender, and sexuality in a humorous fashion. And the key to writing humorously about issues of race, gender, and sexuality is that you totally have to weave it, because-"

Hopefully I can figure out a way to stretch out what I already have to twenty minutes. If you have any ideas, fire away...