As stated before my dad used to teach Taekwondo in Korea. If you are not familiar with Taekwondo here is a brief explanation. It is probably one of the most useless martial arts out there. Trust me. I know what I am talking about in terms of Taekwondo. I am a 4th degree black belt in it so I think I have some knowledge of the sport. Well, my dad enrolled me into Taekwondo for a couple of reasons. 1) I was a fan of Bruce Lee. Bruce would fuck anyone up on film and I thought that was pretty badass. 2) I needed to learn how to protect myself because I started getting into a lot of scuffles in my neighborhood.
So at the age of 5 I started doing taekwondo. The first taekwondo school I was enrolled in was Choong-Hyo Taekwondo. The head master was this small dude with this mustache. He really wasn’t in the business of showing by example. In the 8 years that I studied under him, I recall about 5 instances where he actually did a kick or punch to show us how something was done. Granted that when he did kick a bag or something, it was pretty damn powerful. I hated that school because I really didn’t learn anything about self defense. They taught me useless forms that would never work unless you are Ralph Macchio in Karate Kid 3. (Terrible movie by the way) So, I was thinking about quitting but my father had a saying. “When a man pulls out a sword, you should always draw blood.” For all of you that don’t understand the meaning of this saying, it basically means that you need complete everything that you set out to do. Never give up.
Luckily at the time that I was about to give up, there was another teacher at this school that taught me other martial arts on the side. It really was exciting. He then asked my father if I can be his assistant instructor at the new school he is setting up. My dad agreed and from then on I learned real self defense. From aikido, judo, and jujitsu, I learned it all. I even started excelling at Taekwondo. I started winning most tournaments that I entered and even got to the nationals.
The funny thing about this is that my body is not ideal for taekwondo. I was skinny from the waste up. Waist down, I looked like a Mexican chick after giving birth to the 4th of her 8 children. On top of that, it have unusually short legs so there was a disadvantage with reach most of the time. But my philosophy for taekwondo was a little different from the norm. I always thought that my opponent may hit me more times but the times I am going to hit this guy, he is going to definitely feel it. I guess the notion that I am going to maim someone really put a lot of things into perspective. I was rarely nervous to go to tournaments.
There was this one tournament that comes to mind. It was in Camarillo California. We were sitting in the waiting room when the one Armenian guy kept talking all this shit that he was state champion. He actually told me that he was going to beat me. That really didn’t sit well with me and luck would have it that I would fight him in the prelims. We are getting set to fight and he lets out this primitive yell to try to psych me out. Unfortunately for him, I made up my mind that I would make sure I own his ass by the end of the match. I looked at him and smirked. When the referee signaled to start, I kicked him in his head with a spin hook kick as hard as I can. The Armenian dude’s helmet flew off of him and landing in the sparring ring next to us. Now my opponent is kind of mad. He fucked with his pride. He comes at me again and I cracked him on the head again. This time he crumbled to the ground and again his helmet flew. So he got up and now I could see he was a bit terrified. I told him he might want to tighten the helmet down because it’s going to fly off again if he doesn’t. So the referee signals to resume the match and I toy with him. I give a weak kick to his chest. He doesn’t really attack because he doesn’t want to get his ass kicked again. I pepper him with some more kicks and he just takes this humiliation. I guess his coach couldn’t stand this and yelled for him to attack me. So reluctantly he attacks and this time I kick his head as if this is the last kick I will ever throw in my life. The guys eyes roll back and they called the medics to wheel this kid out.
I win and I go back to where most of the guys in my division are and I just look at them. Two of those guys actually got up and quit the tournament. It really felt good to shut this fucker up. I feel like you can only talk big if you can back it up. Some examples of people that can talk shit are: Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Tiger Woods, Manny Pacquiao, William Wallace from Braveheart, Maximus from Gladiator, and Bruce Lee.
The moral of the story is you might never know who is in the room so shut the fuck up.
I am blessed with great parents. I have credit the small amount of good traits I have to them. They both work their asses off for my sister and me. The story about how my mom and dad met is not your average love at first sight romantic comedy.
My dad came to the US in 1978. He graduated college in Hanyang University in Korea with a degree in electrical engineering. However, he decided to come to the US to start a new life. He had a ton of odd jobs when he got to Los Angeles. He worked at a gas station. He worked at a fish market. All these jobs did not let him utilized what he learned in college. Well aside from changing light bulbs. So while he was working at the fish market, my mom’s mom, halmuni, saw my dad. According to her, she saw that he was unusually tall for a Korean of that generation. He seemed like a hard worker, and he didn’t have a ring on her finger. She invited him to her house because it looked like he didn’t have a good home cooked meal in a while. My dad thought fuck it why not and went. She seemed like a nice lady.
So when my dad went to my halmuni’s house, he was met with lots of good food. It was just him and her sitting at the dinner table. My halmuni liked the way my dad was eating food. She says he ate the way men should eat. Not too sloppy but not like a pussy either. So halmuni gets a picture of my mom and shows it to my dad and tells him that she would like my dad to marry her daughter. My dad saw the picture and thought why not. She is pretty cute. So my halmuni give my dad some cash to go to korea and find my mom. My dad agreed.
My dad gets to Korea and meets my mom. My mom was living with her siblings. Now my mom family is all tiny in stature. My mom is 4’8 on a good day. So my dad thought he stepped into Snow White’s house. What is up with all these short people, he thought. But he met my mom, regardless. Thought she was cool and after a couple of dates, he brought my mom to the US and got married.
They have completely different personalities and yet they have stuck together for all these years. They have grown to love each other and undoubtedly they love my sister and me. Every day that I live my life, I am reminded how lucky I am that my parents are always there for me. Sure, we still have a lot of differences and they are not fully approving of my career choice but it is understandable. Thanks mom and dad for supporting this scumbag.
I find it kind of funny how minorities are kicking white people’s asses in academics. Even in English! Sure we have accents and may not be the best writers in class but just look at the national spelling bee. Those Indian kids are kicking everyone’s ass. Here are a list of names of the champions of Scripps National Spelling Bee for the last 7 years:
2002 Pratyush Buddiga
2003 Sai R. Gunturi
2004 David Scott Pilarski Tidmarsh
2005 Anurag Kashyap
2006 Katharine Close
2007 Evan O’Dorney
2008 Sameer Mishra
So I guess this dude needs a girl.
Contrary to what people think, I used to be pretty smooth with chicks at an early age. I was a cute kid. Unfortunately, as I grew older and fatter, I started looking like Kim Jong Il. Here are some tales of the inner pimp in me.
East LA is a wonderful place. Whores, crack dealers, police, gangs, you name it we have it. At the age of 4, I was enrolled in a preschool called Murchinson preschool. I didn’t know a word of English but it was ok because none of the Mexican kids spoke English either. The teachers were nice. I had 2 teachers in preschool. One of the teachers, Mrs. B, was a sweet old white lady. She was great with the kids. I remembered her because she loved to give hugs and she smelled of old perfume and oatmeal cookies.
The other teacher was Ms. Lopez. She always dressed up like a tranny-stripper. She had lots of makeup on and loved to wear clothes that revealed lots of skin. Bitch had an adam’s apple too. She smelled like baby oil.
Murchinson is where I had my first “girl friend”. Can you believe that? At the age of 4! Her name was Virginia. She was the prettiest girl in class. She didn’t speak any English and neither did I but I recall that we always held hands and kissed. I guess it became too much for the teachers because I remember being scolded many times for kissing her. But my pimp days were not over.
The next year, I was enrolled in a private school in East LA. Private school in East LA meant that most of the teachers were nuns. Everything else is the same in terms of curriculum. So for Kindergarten, I had my second girlfriend. Her name was Jessica Murphy. She was ¼ Japanese, ¼ Irish, ½ Mexican. She was Tiger Woods without much athletic prowess. Anyways, during the first day there, she comes up to me and motions for me to go play with her on the swings. I didn’t really know what she was saying because I didn’t learn shit preschool. So I go play with her. I push this cute bitch around and when recess is over she grabs my hand. I guess our parents thought it was cute. However, my teacher was this mean bitch of a nun. Sister Magdalena! She hated that me and Jessica were so close and actually when she caught is kissing in the playground she took me to the principal’s office. They even called my parents. The funny thing about the whole incident is that my parents both came because they thought it was something serious. They didn’t speak any English so it was basically these two fucked up nuns trying to explain to my parents that I was kissing this girl. However, my parents didn’t understand what they were saying so the nuns were playing charades to show what happened. When my parents understood what happened, they were pissed. Not at the fact that I was kissing a girl but because they took time off of their work for some stupid reason. When I got home, they whooped my ass.
Its seriously hard out there for a pimp.
