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| First night in DC. I was enamored just by driving through the city. I learned this: DC is NO place for a huge z71. Things are so much more wide open in Texas. Travelign alone has been a new challenge, but I'm getting by. It's exciting so far. I'm sure tomorrow will be a little hassling becasue fo the check in process, but I'm eager to get around and get my feet wet. I can;t wait to get a feel for the city. I think I imagined a city full of stuffy types in 24 hour suits, but at least on appearances, thats not the case. I cant wait to dive in. Right now, I cant wait to dive into bed. So far, so good. A little adjusting, then I get to dive into the internship. | | |
| It's been a "hot minute", like Gino would say. It's 2:45 am and I start my drive for DC in a few hours. The school year went well. I never stop believing how lucky I am to be back, although I'm sure thats getting to be an old song to listen to. I should have stopped to write about my promotion story, its a good one. I'll have to "flash back" to that when I get a chance. This month has really felt like a rapid fire month. It's been one thing after another and now I'm about to go out into the world completely on my own for the first time. Sure I went to war, but I went with a Batallion of Marines. This time I'm going with a business wardrobe, a gas card and book on business etiquette. C'mon, is there really a professional setting where you can't say f*ck sh*t or ..... you get the idea. Its funny how the definition of "professionalism" changes from the Marine Corps to the outside world.
Other things of note: I graduate in a month. I'm no longer in the Active Reserve. It's INSANE how quickly six years went by. Make fun of me all you want, but all I could think of when I was getting my check out sheet signed at my last drill was, "What am I going to do with my hair?". I didnt realize how much the Marine Corps was a part of me. Things were finite, accomplioshment was identifiable and even tangilble. I knew what was expected of Sgt. Fernandez. Josh though, who the hell knows what that guy's supposed to do. It was bitter sweet. I'm ready to move on and really test myself in the open waters, its just a different game now.
Sorry for the abrupt ending, but I finially toned down my adrenaline rush and I think I can get a little rest now before my 20 hour drive. I'm sure with all the time I'll have in DC, I'll be able to touch up my blogging. PEACE. | | |
| I'm taking this Info class and the inner computer nerd is coming out in full force... All of a sudden I'm learning HTML in my spare time and my laptop is a part of my daily routine like my keys and wallet. Whatever, I'm still cool.
I'm in the middle of my fourth to last Marine Corps weekend and I'm still conflicted about it. I know that there is no way that I can handle Law School and the Reserves but I cannot begin to explain how much i am going to miss the Marine Corps. I think my favorite description of the Marine Corps is that "it's like a bad relationship where the sex is incredible... seventy five percent God awful joint deteriorating mind (screwing) torture and twenty five percent joint deteriorating mind (screwing) screwing.... We're warriors, not poets, give me a break. If you've ever been in that type of relationship, you feel me.
I was lucky to have served with incredible Marines. Having known them and having had the honor of leading them gives me a failsafe against losing faith in people all together. Its not going to be easy to finish this contract and move on...
So since my last entry, Dana got me a cat and Mom and Dad suprised me with a new truck. Love both. Feel like a friggin badass in the z71, feel like a little bit less of a badass with the cat. Both are great. How I go from reminiscing about my years in the Corps to talking about my cat.... dunno. But like my rhyme bustin ass kickin junior Marine Roy Ledoux (whose album is about to drop, seriously this guy's got skill like that) would say, "Aint nuthin but gravvy son". Kill that ish Roy, I hope you make it big. And yes, I will sell your album from the tailgate of my truck in the Alberston's parking lot to help you out.
OK, so becasue I need more input... here's the piece on boxing I wrote... let me know what you think....
Boxing: Down, Never Out
I’ve been a boxing fan for as long as I can remember. Nothing incited more conflict and passionate fanfare in my household than a good match on Friday night. Mike Tyson’s prolific knockouts astounded me and made me wonder if he was human or superhero (villain or good guy I’ll leave up to you) and boxers like Evander Holyfield, George Foreman and Julio Cesar Chavez made me believe that ring warriors were timeless. “Yeah I hated finding out that wrestling was fake and boxing was fixed”, a close friend offered me in a discussion on why he thought boxing’s popularity had declined in recent years. The sport was once a staple in American households and often a microcosm for greater events.
Jack Johnson, a Texan, was the first Black heavyweight champion in 1908, during oppressive times for minorities and well before the emergence of the Black athlete in professional sports . Joe Louis’s fights against the German Max Schmelling during the years leading up to WWII became not only symbols in the African American community, but universally American symbols of triumph in the era. Rocky Marciano and James Braddock (Russell Crow’s character in ‘Cinderella Man’) were another two in the pantheon of working class boxing heroes whose toughness and persistence through adversity inspired generations to look inside themselves to make it through bleak American periods.
Those that argue against the violence in boxing raise a valid point, pugilism as a sport is not for the faint of heart and certainly not for everyone. Violence and injury are inherent in the ring. Violence, as adversity however, is best dealt with head on. We all have the need to “put our opponents in front of us”. Boxing is pure, it’s the brutal truth. We all have opponents, figurative or literal, that we need to face; and the struggle that a fighter endures is seemingly a human universal. They train. We train. They seek to find what is solid, what they know they can count on when times are not serene. They seek the solid within themselves as we do every time we question ourselves. They examine and face their weaknesses only to transform them into strengths that are their own.
Exploitation of the sport by greedy promoters as well as the lack of talent in the popular Heavyweight division and general confusion about who the real champions are (pick a belt, any belt) have all hurt the sport. Most boxer’s lack of media skills make it hard for those who have never experienced the sport first hand to associate with the sport’s stars. Boxing’s vulgarity may keep it from being popularized by a public that seeks polished glamorous athletes, but that same vulgarity is what makes it so universal. Only in boxing can an athlete literally fight his way to the very top, past any adversity or lack.
Recently boxers have entered the promotion business for themselves. Oscar De la Hoya and Roy Jones Jr. have chartered their own promotion businesses and the sport has benefited as a result. Don King infamously exited the sport and Sylvester Stallone’s hit show “The Contender” re-introduced the sport to the general viewing public. Who better than Rocky? “Million Dollar Baby” and “Cinderella Man” both did well at the box office. When boxing offers, the public takes. The only step now is to legitimize the sport in the same way basketball, football and baseball are all considered legitimate, through a unified league or commission that eliminates, or at least reduces, the number of titles.
Boxing was down. It caught a few low blows by some shady promoters and a few stiff jabs as a result of allegations of less than professional conduct against some of its stars, but it is too resilient to stay down. It is too engrained in our fabric and it lives, straddling the dark and light of our human characters. We are too morbidly intrigued by its violence and too overwhelmingly inspired by its truths. I see boxing’s popularity on the rise, it is as timeless as our faith in ourselves.
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| Thanksgiving was a little rough. Some family issues deveolped seemingly overnight. I decided nothing goes straight to my gut like trouble in the family. I guess I always found stablility in the relationships I observed in my family and it stresses me out to not see everyone perfectly happy. I can deal with threats to my life so much more easily than I can with anything emotional.
I know everything will work out, or at least I'll make the most out of life with the right amount of effort... but either through my lack of observation or through the reality of the matter, things dont gradually decline in my family. Theres no sine curve of happiness and stability, theres just this crash and then all the colors seem to fade a little bit. I know thats really fatalistic, but I guess these are the first real problems I've faced that weren't only mine. I just have to give a good push and keep my head up through it all and I know I can shoulder everyone through it.
Only three more weeks in the semester and I get a little break! | | |
| HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! I'm in Houston, I got here last night. I stayed up until like 3am working on one of two huge papers that I have due in the next two weeks. I had my first LSAT class yesterday before I came down here and suprisingly, it helped me get rid of a lot of stress. I was nervous because the real application process was starting, but it's all manageable.
There this one kid in the Princeton Review class who was like, "yeah UT is my safe school and I'm applying to some other Law Schools up north". Thanks kid. Thank you class of 07 for that. So right then and there I decided to either a) get a higher LSAT score than him, or b) thrash him about the neck and shoulders thus relieving him of the pressure of acceptance from "some schools up north". Regardless, I felt good about the effort I gave. I get my results back monday.
I was excited about the prospect of going to Law School out of state and if, you know, a badass school admits me I'll go if it's the best opportunity, but the closer I get to the whole thing, the more I want to stay in Texas. There are just too many people that are important to me here. Concievably, I could end up in any of the major cities. SMU in Dallas, St Mary's in SA, UH or South Texas in Houston, UT in Austin or Baylor in Waco. I would have to sell me soul and lose my mind to allow myself to go to Tech Law School. Nuh uh.
Law School blah blah blah. Cause people want to read about that. One gripe left... this hapened to me the other day in the academic building. I was wearing khakis and a blazer and was standing at the vending machine to get a Coke(what kind you ask... a Dr, Pepper of course: we're in Texas, its all Coke damnit). So little Miss Pre-Frosh strolls up and taps on my arm. She looks up with those big, nervous, overly shadowed eyes and asks, " Excuse me SIR, do you know where admissions is?". SIR. Not like, "I'm not really sure if you're faculty or a senior, Sir" more like " So, do you have tenure? SIR?". Damnit. I'm a SIR. | | |
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