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This weekend saw me up in Indianapolis, Indiana for a 3-day seminar with some of the most impressive martial artists in the country, and possibly on the planet. It's not often that you get that many masters (and even a few grand-masters -- 4 that I'm sure of) in the same room, and all of them going, "Here, let me show you this," and not just back and forth between each other, but passing it along to the rest of us as well.
In a word, it was awesome. It's actually rather disappointing that with a very few exceptions, most people I might share something like that with (who weren't there for themselves) would have absolutely no clue what I was talking about, or why the things I was saying were worth being so excited and enthused about. Fortunately, those closest to me know enough to at least be able to understand most of what I'm babbling about ::G::, and even when they don't understand the words, I know they're still happy to see me in that state.
The hotel we were in had one ballroom set up as a comedy club, and the two comics they had were pretty good. If the first one knew why 95% of is audience was at the hotel, he gave no sign of it. Someone told the second comic that there were "a bunch of karate people" in the audience, and I think by the end of it he was wishing he'd never heard that. ::G:: Apparently, he thought it was just the little cluster right down in front of him, and the rest of us were just "regular" hotel guests. The group right in front of him was mostly from Cincinnatti and Atlanta, and both sets sometimes come to Nashville to train with us. He was asking them if they were any good, were any of them state or national champions, or anything like that. They just sort of blew off the question, which he interpreted as a "no," and started teasing them about which one of them was the Tri-County champion, etc. He then turned to me, a few tables down from his "main group," saw that I was wearing a Yin/Yang t-shirt, and asked if I was "one of those karate people, too." I admitted that I was, and he asked me if I was a black belt, and then what degree. Then he asked if I would protect him against the group he'd been teasing, and I laughed, turned in my chair toward the ones he'd been teasing, and said in a nicely carrying voice, "So... I'll see you back at the school next week, right?"
Poor comic... every time he tried to do any sort of direct audience interaction, it ended up as something like that for him. LOL
In a word, it was awesome. It's actually rather disappointing that with a very few exceptions, most people I might share something like that with (who weren't there for themselves) would have absolutely no clue what I was talking about, or why the things I was saying were worth being so excited and enthused about. Fortunately, those closest to me know enough to at least be able to understand most of what I'm babbling about ::G::, and even when they don't understand the words, I know they're still happy to see me in that state.
The hotel we were in had one ballroom set up as a comedy club, and the two comics they had were pretty good. If the first one knew why 95% of is audience was at the hotel, he gave no sign of it. Someone told the second comic that there were "a bunch of karate people" in the audience, and I think by the end of it he was wishing he'd never heard that. ::G:: Apparently, he thought it was just the little cluster right down in front of him, and the rest of us were just "regular" hotel guests. The group right in front of him was mostly from Cincinnatti and Atlanta, and both sets sometimes come to Nashville to train with us. He was asking them if they were any good, were any of them state or national champions, or anything like that. They just sort of blew off the question, which he interpreted as a "no," and started teasing them about which one of them was the Tri-County champion, etc. He then turned to me, a few tables down from his "main group," saw that I was wearing a Yin/Yang t-shirt, and asked if I was "one of those karate people, too." I admitted that I was, and he asked me if I was a black belt, and then what degree. Then he asked if I would protect him against the group he'd been teasing, and I laughed, turned in my chair toward the ones he'd been teasing, and said in a nicely carrying voice, "So... I'll see you back at the school next week, right?"
Poor comic... every time he tried to do any sort of direct audience interaction, it ended up as something like that for him. LOL