Take it like a man...

Posted 11:19 AM by sean
The last time I was punched in the face was early 1999 in Los Angeles. I was going in to an AM/PM to buy cigarettes and the guy coming out was trying to steal cigarettes and the smaller employees had the door blocked. I distracted the whole group when I got to the outside of the door and the thief slammed into the door to get out. I tried to jump in his way and he punched me in the jaw. Without thinking, I swung and hit him as hard as I could over his left eye, tearing his eyebrow and ripping up my hand. He ran away, but dropped his shopping bag, which, I shit you not, was fully of syringes.

My hand hurt, and in return for my bravery, the AM/PM gave me a pack of cigarettes for free. Which is also what the guy stole. It's a rich ironic world.

My point is this; it doesn't hurt that much getting punched in the face. My jaw hurt a little bit, but my hand was banged up for about two weeks. If I hadn't hit the guy, we would all be much better off.

I got in a fair number of fights in junior high and high school. I was angry all the time, just pissed off and fearless all the time. Maybe I was angry because I was pretending to be fearless. Maybe I wasn't all that angry, it seems, in retrospect, that Michelle and I had a lot of fun. But man, any person over the age of about 17 sent me into a rage. Most guys my age did the same thing.

I can tell you what I learned from those fights. Guys who want to hit you in the face are trying to insult you, they aren't trying to put you in pain. First of all, the punch is going towards your eyes, you can see it coming and you can brace yourself or, if you're fast, move out of the way. Second of all, your face is pretty tough, it's fatty, it's used to the abuse of wind and exposure and, y'know, shaving, the nerves aren't nearly as sensitive. Third, your skull is designed as a defensive machine. the reason I hurt my hand so bad on that guy's head is because I hit him in the eyebrow, right where his skull is designed to defray the most damage. In movies, they use that part of the head as an offensive weapon, it's so tough.

If you want to hurt someone, me for example, then hit them in the ribs or the lower back when they don't expect it. The nose is bad, sure. But there is something about getting punched really hard in the kidneys that makes you wish you were dead.

Our bodies still retain the monkey design, our ribs all slope downward and our organs are designed to hang from the spine and ribcage. Everything is aimed downward. When you punch up into someone, you are going against the grain, it hurts so much more.

So, all you husbands preparing for Superbowl Sunday, remember; if you hit your wives in the face, it's mostly just humiliating them. If you turn them around and hold them around the shoulders or neck and punch with an upward thrust into their lower back or ribs, you could actually make them pass out from the pain. If you're gonna do it, you may as well do it right.

Why?

Posted 12:04 PM by sean
People update their blogs exactly as often as they want to, or more. I always get the sense, when reading people's blogs, that they either have something to say that day or they don't, and they're writing because they felt they had to.

Bud's page and Ian's page are always exciting, but every once in a while I can tell they are writing because they know they should. I'm sure mine has seemed like that at times.

My problem is, when I don't have something to say that I am pretty passionate about, there really isn't any point. I don't know if it's too much "method" training as an actor, but it's really hard for me to write about stuff I don't care about.

So, here are some excuses.

My acting class: I can't really write about because there are enough slightly famous, really savvy people in it who wouldn't appreciate what I have to say. This is one of those instances where there is so much grey area, so much ambivalence, that to write about it publicly would be a mistake. To be clear, I love my class and I love the teacher and some of the other actors, but that is one tenth of the story, and the rest just isn't for a public blog.

The Wedding: Truthfully, I have spent the last few months desperately trying to find a way to deserve to marry this woman who is willing, and I find that stuff self-referential and navel gazing tripe. I haven't spent enough time trying to get the damn event organized because of my paralyzing fears of inadequacy that will set in the day after it all happens.

Job Search: What can I tell you? I have always been under the impression that a) I fail because I am lazy and b) all a person has to do is try their hardest and things will work out for them. I have overcome my laziness, what my sister Tessa reminds me is simply fear, and I am trying, daily, to change my fiscal situation, and I have been trying not just since October, or since May, but since last New Year's when I decided that I wanted to marry Jordana, and it just isn't working out for me right now.

Politics: You really want to read what I have to say about politics? Even my close friends get tired of hearing me talk about stuff that I actually understand, why the hell would I talk about politics? Here's all you could possible want to know about me; I believe Bush is a dim-witted decent man who has a job he doesn't understand the first thing about. He is a mean-as-hell trust fund kid who's belief in his own greatness, created by his parents, makes him unable to understand what he's doing, to the great advantage of the brilliant and bad men who surround him. I want someone else running the country.

Art: I have been spending more and more time writing music the last few days, and reading scripts for both the show I'm in and the class I'm taking, so this part is pretty nice. Jordana made me a deal that if I wrote music, she would work on finishing her novel, which she is about 4/7s done with.

So, really, don't get mad at me for not writing. I don't have a whole lot I feel I can say on this page right now.