Kevin Marshall's America
Join us LIVE for Laughs on Lark on Wednesday, December 7th at 9:00pm!
I’ll be performing alongside Matt Kelly, Matt Mitchell, David Boyd, and a special improv performance by the folks at the Mop & Bucket Company. The evening, as always, is hosted by Jaye McBride.
$5 cover, you cheap fucks.
Come out and hear me talk about politics, dating, and what an overall shitshow I am.
Guaranteed laughs or your money back!*
* this is a lie.
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The only other time professional boxers and brothers Shawn and Shannon Miller fought on the same card, it was for the former’s (and younger of the two) professional debut. On December 16th they’ll share the bill for a second time, but with greater significance for both. And not just because it’s Shannon’s return after a self-imposed retirement.
Both will fight on December 16th at The Egg in Albany to raise money for KOLD, or Knock Out Liver Disease, an organization started by Shannon to assist others financially that suffer from liver disease. Both Shawn and Shannon will donate their entire purses to the foundation, as well as a percentage of all ticket and t-shirt sales.
The idea came to Shannon after he donated sixty percent of his liver to his Uncle Ray last year. It was the hope of doctors that the surgery would repair the damage done by his uncle’s liver cancer and restore him to health.
Staying true to his reputation inside the ring, Shannon recovered much sooner than expected. Unfortunately, months after the operation, doctors found that Ray’s cancer had spread. Even still, Shannon’s sacrifice did not go unnoticed by those around him, and it gave his Uncle a fighting chance and time he otherwise would not have had.
“Nothing is promised and ever 100%,” Shawn recently told me. “But we’re hopeful.”
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It’s Black Friday, the most (in)famous shopping day of the holiday season. BOOOOOO! But it’s also the last Friday of the month, which means it’s time for Troy Night Out, the city’s monthly celebration of its downtown businesses and eateries.
YAAAAYYYY!
The last Troy Night Out of 2011 will feature tons of sales and discounts at your favorite merchants, and the Market Block is no exception. Stop in to Market Block Books and check out the tree that I put up and dressed! Or stop by Anchor No. 5 and adore the window I helped decorate (tell Petra how much you love the poofs)! Also, Olivia Quillio will perform at 8:30pm at Design It Together!
Exclamation points!
And there’s plenty of other events, gallery openings, and performances. For the full listing, click here.
See you tonight!
Let’s talk about mine and Dan B’s little Black Friday Eve excursion.
I know, I know. For as cynical as we both are, we’re the last people that should be attempting a sojourn on the busiest shopping evening of the year. Dan, however, really wanted to go and get a TV that Walmart was heavily advertising over the past week. He’s one of those people, unlike myself, that actually watches things like television shows and films and cares about picture quality, yet he’s been sitting on the same twenty-inch piece of crap for the last fifteen years. Seriously, you have to see this thing. It looks like the monitor for a Tandy.
I agreed to go because I needed to return shorts. A few weeks ago I grabbed a couple workout shorts that I thought were both Medium, but one was actually an XL. Oh, and moral support and my friend and companionship and blah blah. Basically the whole trip amounted to going just so we can get a first-hand account of how much we hate this bullshit.
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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
One day I’ll write a memoir about my former obsession with professional wrestling, how I fell out of it, and the tragedies of the business and how they paralleled changes in my own personal life.
For now, I only glance at it from a safe distance. But just a few short years ago, I was still ordering DVDs online from guys like Chris Schoen over at IVP Productions to watch guys like Mark “Bison” Smith do their thing overseas, thousands of miles and oceans away from the turmoil in the States.
In addition to being one of the better “big men” working in the business (and probably better than anyone comparable to his size working stateside), he was from all accounts one of the good guys. Sadly, he passed away yesterday in Puerto Rico due to complications from a heart attack.
Zach Arnold at Fight Opinion, who extensively covered the Japanese wrestling scene before making the same transition I did to full MMA devotion, was a friend of Smith and has a great piece on him. I urge you all to check it out.
He was 38.
Let’s talk about Newt Gingrich, the alleged intellectual who has inconceivably risen towards to top of the field for the GOP nomination in 2012, despite being about twenty years past his expiration date for relevance and integrity.
Gingrich has been positioned as a “thinking man’s candidate” amidst a field consisting of bigots, caricatures, and charlatans that have run themselves off a cliff in pursuit of the highest office in the land. Even Herman Cain and Rick Perry, who had appeared to be taken seriously for a short stretch, have been plagued with concerns raised through media vetting that have been exponentially exacerbated by their inability to say something that doesn’t make any given situation worse for them.
And so now we find ourselves with, realistically, a two-man race: Romney, who faces very real challenges as a compromising official facing a Christian right that is aggressively apprehensive towards anyone of Mormon faith, and Newt Gingrich, the intellectual who is nothing of the sort.
Where do we even begin to address this farce?
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Normally I’d reserve this for the Mixed Marshall Arts blog, but this is too good not to share here.
NOTES:
1. Black Kitty is over confident in his jiu-jitsu. He keeps pulling guard and in doing so, he keeps giving away points and position.
2. Despite the lack of a colored belt, Orange Kitty is clearly the better grappler of the two.
3. Black Kitty almost ends it early with a nice heel hook attempt.
4. Orange Kitty definitely knows how to work the ring, which is one of the criteria judges use in scoring.
5. At the 0:40 mark, Black Kitty performs Undertaker’s old school rope walk.
The Pleasants, live in Troy 11/11/11
In case you missed it, I wrote up a review for the local music site Nippertown of a recent Time Travels/The Pleasants double bill at Design It Together’s studio in downtown Troy. An excerpt:
Relentlessly optimistic to the point of defiance, singer-songwriter Frank P. McGinnis – alias Time Travels – happily took his place before his small and intimate crowd. His vocals alternated between subtle reflection and late ’90s grandiosity, reminiscent in some ways of Dashboard Confessional but with a more polished voice and less of an axe to grind. His lyrics also focused more on storytelling, admitting in-between songs that he often found a distance between what he was going through at a specific time and what subjects he ended up inserting into his songs. In that sense, he became more Harry Chapin than Chris Cabrera, a welcome recourse to the stifling self-involvement that plagues so many guys and gals with guitars. This came through in songs like “Benny” and “Georgie,” two companion pieces about two brothers and their lives’ travails. There were, too, some more personal compositions, such as the song “You” and “The Eye,” the latter of which was dedicated to his father. Yet there seemed to be much more reflection than one would expect in someone so young, and the songs took a view of the subjects in the context of a larger scope rather than simply telegraphing a specific emotion or kneejerk reaction.
Semi-related: Emily Rippe for All Over Albany has a profile of former Jupiter Sunrise and The Orange frontman, Ben Karis-Nix (aka BenKN).
A line of students sits in protest, non-violent, and Lieutenant Pike sprays them repeatedly and in excess with what appears to be very potent pepper spray.
When you are an officer of the law in his position, you have a duty and an obligation to maintain peace and civility. His actions, regardless of what you may feel about the political motivations of the protest, act contrary to that goal and instead expose him as a bully.
“Shame on you,” indeed.
But what is more amazing is what happens when you keep watching – or simply go to the six minute mark and watch until the end.
“You can go.”
This is exactly what Ghandi, what King, and what so many others after those great men envisioned: that there would be times where non-violence and purity of heart and intention in large numbers could shine a light that would eliminate the darkness, illuminate the ills, and bring shame to those who would trade civility for convenience.
STALK ME
