ohhhh markus ….

 today I had a real mental breakthrough during sparring, quite fascinating and kinda hard to explain.

until now fighting was more like throwing around legs and hands, having the focus somewhere between you and the opponent, fighting for air, and with almost no strategy behind it. after the sparring last week I had a short talk with my trainer that I am making progress but I need to pay much more attention to my opponent, to open spots to hit on. that its basically a strategy game. can I detect his next movement and can I use it and vice versa.

and today I put much more thought into the whole thing and suddenly everything fell into place. I saw my opponent as a whole human being and suddenly I had an incredible amount of respect for the strategy and fighting style of him. sounds kinda weird but it changed the whole perception of the sport. the bowing before and after a fight suddenly made much more sense. and fighting was so much more fun. good stuff.

I give this day a happy rating of 5/5.

Just saw this commercial on one of our TV-screens, probably the most aggressive subliminal ad I’ve ever seen. Where is the electronic remix of this?

Here are some impressions from my last belt test from yesterday. Getting more fun every time

Bag Kicks  

Turning side break test

Jump roundhouse break test

well, there is this funny thing going on between Jimmy Kimmel and Matt Damon, he invites him over and over again, just to cancel in the last second. And one day Matt Damon freaked out. as you can see here:

but revenge is a cold dish. Matt played a pretty funny prank together with Sarah Silverman, Jimmy Kimmels girlfriend. lay back and enjoy!

(note: you can fast forward to 1:00 if you want to skip the talk at the start)

As we all know, You tube is quite amazing. I discovered by kinda accident this funny clip with Louis de Funès, my absolutely top favorite comedian of all time.  Dubbed by a fan with new music and looking amazingly well synched. And as a bonus some other legendary scenes as well. 

Enjoy! 

so there was the superbowl. and I thought, hey, lets watch some ads. until I figured that I actually have to watch the game to see the ads because they are so evenly distributed throughout the game.

which sucks.

therefore I watched some fabulous episodes of Ugly Betty instead, looking up the ads today at the Youtube channel. (or here) And of course there were the obvious sex sells ads, the funny Bud Light ads (on quite some high level, they will get silver or gold again at Cannes for sure) and two surprises.

the AMPed one really was quite funny and surprising (imagine the briefing and then look at the result), the FedEx spot had a really nice execution and that Budweiser one (kinda Rocky homage) really sucked (this is like the Jewbacca defense, which makes you think at the end, either this is brilliant or incredibly non inventive and stupid. I vote for the second one. to my surprise most people I spoke with think this was the best one. must be an american thing).

to my surprise there was just one ad that had a strong drive to web, GoDaddy, who did only show a sneak peak of the ad (of course a sexual context, oh well) and reveals the whole spot on the net.

bottom line: the ads show pretty well again that what you like is quite relative.