For some strange reason the local news the other day decided that it was worth the time and electrons to report a story about the "supermodel" Kate Moss being photographed in a recording studio nasally vacuuming a few lines of cocaine. Well slap me up side the head and call me Nancy! I was surprised. To think that a "supermodel" would be an aficionado of Peruvian marching powder is about as surprising as discovering that male monkeys masturbate in the zoo.
This same week a report came out that another "supermodel" whose name I can remember was the victim of her step-father's greed. He stole and/or embezzled some 7 million dollars from her bank account. The surprising thing there was that she had 7 million dollars to embezzle. Is it not a strange thing that a woman, whose only job is to act as a clothes horse strutting up and down a runway or being photographed for a fashion rag would be paid enough that would allow her to have seven million bucks in the bank? Meanwhile, the engineers, mechanics and machinists who build the planes, roads and buildings in which she struts her stuff consider themselves lucky to make one hundred grand a year.
But that's modern life. What makes a "supermodel" anyway? In my lifetime there have been three models I consider "supermodels" -- Susie Parker, Cheryl Tieges and Cindy Crawford. Parker was the classiest, Crawford was the vanguard of the new school, and Tieges was the best. Tieges had, during her career, had the face, the smile and the figure to be a model who transcended high fashion and popular fashion in a way that no model before or since has managed to do. Tieges was the ideal girlfriend for any guy and the ideal girl friend for any girl. She made fashions approachable. Tyra Banks, Kate Moss and company don't. They look like spoiled brats.
On a second topic talking to a young woman at church last Sunday I found that she had undergone training in the use of the kubotan. A kubotan is a rod about 6 inches long and one half inch diameter made of aluminum, plastic or wood that is used for self defense. In a search of the net I came across several entries about the device:
Kubotans - inexpensive short self defense sticks. In reading over the various websites I found myself wondering how effective the various "martial arts" are in real life. Is a karate brown belt any more likely to prevail over a street fighter or bar fighter than a guy who's last fight was in the six grade of school? I asked my father, Count Nib, about his experience in the Marines during World War Two. He was taught basic judo in combat school. He said that the training was pretty useless for two reasons. The first was that they did not keep up their judo training. The second was because hand to hand combat demanded a meanness that was not taught in judo training. Those enrolled in karate, kung fu and tae kwan do schools are taught to spar. Punches and kicks are pulled. If a student goes through the school does he, by training, always pull his punches? And if a person has been taught a method of self-defense but does not repeatedly practice that method is the initial training useless in a real life situation? Has anyone actually seen a real fight between a karate, kung fu or tae kwan do man and a street fighter? I've seen a couple of "ultimate fighting" championships and that all seem to descend to grappling. In which case it would seem that the proper course of study would be Greco-Roman wrestling. And if the use of pressure points as a method of control. why do not the police spend more time training their officers in pressure point control than they do in billy club whacking? If nothing else, it seems a lot less tiring.
Finally. Why do yo-yos with wooden spindles sleep longer than yo-yos with solid steel spindles? I'm not talking about those nonsensical Yomega yo-yos or the Duncan ball bearing yo-yos. I'm talking about the "old skool" stuff. In other words, real yo-yos.
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