A Walk Down Memory Lane

    A buddy's request for a copy of a certain photo had me searching through years of old albums yesterday. I hadn't looked at some of them for a very long time, and I was actually quite amused by much of what I found. 



    Yous Truly, age nineteen. I probably weighed all of 140 soaking wet, and I had the shittiest, cockiest attitude imaginable. Note that I've got all that eighties shit going on: spiked wristbands, Iron Maiden T-shirt (I caught them at the Omni, on the Somewhere in Time tour), two-hand tapping, and a smug, "Suck my feckin' Oyrish dick!" facial expression. Hell, it's a photo of me, and even I want to slap the shit out of the little punk... My band had just recorded a demo, and I really thought we were the shee-yawt. Then, (wouldn't you know it?) our rhythm guitarist/vocalist moved to Switzerland....



    This was '98 or '99. One of the guys bet me I wouldn't sit on the sidewalk in front of the store, holding this sign. As you can see, he lost the bet. 




    Yours Truly, with the cutlass I picked up at DragonCon '97. 



    Miyagi say: "This  motherfucker got big ego!"  This one was shot shortly after I took my blue belt, during the summer of '95. I was pretty damned proud of myself, as it was a no-bullshit, fairly traditional school. A year later, I had my brown, which was basically unheard-of at that place. What you can't see because of the "teddy bear paws" sparring gear is the knuckle I fractured while breaking boards during the test. (When we broke, we didn't use shims or spacers. If you broke three boards, you literally broke three boards, one stacked directly atop another. I should have used a shuto (knifehand) or teisho (palm-strike), but noooooo... I just had to be "Mr. Big, Brass Balls" and perform the break with a fucking reverse punch... )



    Yer boy, posing with "Live Action Anime Girl" Apollo Smile. (DragonCon '98). 



    My collection of sharp, pointy objects, ca. '99. I've since added to it: the machairai, another katana, another two-hander, and a few other lethal odds and ends. The darn dao is kinda cheesy -- unsharpened, spring steel with an entire geological stratum of chrome plating on it, but it's super light, and -- well, it just looks cool when flourished.