The Dynamic Duo

Hello mortals,

At long last I have returned to fill your minds and lives with meaning and substance. How you survived during my hiatus I’ll never really know, but I’m thinking maybe road kill and NPR? Poor substitutes for my provisions of sustenance and wit, but I suppose you get by however you can in times like those. Sadly not a lot has happened in my life in the year or so since I last posted, now how pathetic is that? Wow… I really depressed myself there. Maybe I should just end this post now and go and join the foreign legion or something? I should? Oh you’d like that wouldn’t you?! Always trying to get rid of old John, but it’s not going to happen that easily old chum. I’ll be here for quite sometime now and you’ll just have to deal with that. Oh, one point of interest, in the off-chance that I haven’t told someone who is going to be reading this site of my recent athletic endeavor which fell short of it’s intended goal. I entered an amateur boxing bout this weekend, at an Event called Fight Night, which took place in a barn out in Meridian, Idaho. Now they did have a ring up in the middle, but there were hay bales and stuff set up to sit on, not a real professional event. Also it wasn’t really boxing so much as it was a tough-man type competition, if you have ever seen those. Basically what it is is three one-minute rounds, and in this version of it you could win either by KO, TKO, or crowd decision. The good news is that mine was the quickest fight of the night… the bad new is that I lost. Now let me lay out my excuses as I am fond of doing. First of all this was the first time I had fought someone for real, and I’ll be honest with you, I was kind of nervous and it didn’t put me at ease too much that I had to sign up for this bout in the upper part of a barn, and that the EMT who was making sure we were fit to fight couldn’t find my heartbeat, so just assumed I was good to go. Second, I weighed in at 206 (which of course is still a little heavier than I should be, but not too bad), and when they asked me I told them that I would fight someone within 20 pounds of my weight, meaning 186-226 as you are doubtlessly aware. The math doesn’t seem too hard to me, but they must not have had an MIT graduate double-checking their work for them because they assumed it would be cool if I fought a guy 40 pounds heavier than me. I wasn’t really too involved in that decision because I didn’t find out about it until they announced us at the start of the fight. So instead of fighting someone around my size I ended up with this Magilla-Gorilla/Butterbean hybrid. Oh also I should mention that I had to buy a mouth guard from the jerks who run the place (not to mention $8 and a can of food to get in the door) and had to shape it as best I could with a rather dull knife that my brother had. So it wasn’t the best fit a guy could hope for, but I made do… In any event, as for the actual fight itself I don’t remember it very distinctly, it was over in less than a minute, but in that time I was knocked down, got back up and knocked Butterbean down, and then got knocked down again myself whereupon I decided that I had had enough and quit. In hindsight the end of the round had to be pretty close so if I had realized that I would have stayed in it, but you know, cay sara sara, however you spell that. So my first pugilistic endeavor didn’t turn out quite to my liking but I may be willing to foray into the ring again, armed with the advice of both my younger brother “hit him more, and move your feet, also don’t get knocked down so much” and whatever our friendly viewers can lend me. Also in two to three weeks I will be able to review a tape of the fight which the “charitable” organizers of this event were willing to part with for the measly sum of $10, so all in all I paid $20 and a can of soup for the privilege of letting people watch me get beat down. I’ll check with Adam Smith but it’s entirely possible that this wasn’t the wisest decision of economic recourse on my behalf. Until next time my friends, sayonara!

-John “The Southpaw Kid” McDonald