Monday, September 12, 2005

The Ultimate Fighter Bloging: Episode 1 - "Dana's Very Bad Day"

For those of you who may be living under a rock, the best show on television is The Ultimate Fighter (Spike TV, Monday nights after the fake wrestling show.)

Like other reality shows TUF has it's share of whiners, freaks, and drama queens. Unlike other reality shows, at the end of each episode of TUF, two of those whiners, freaks, and/or drama queens get into a cage (and yes, it is literally a cage) with nothing wearing nothing but a pair of 4 oz. fingerless MMA gloves, a groin protector, a mouth guard, and a pair of shorts and they go at it until time has run out, someone has tapped out, someone has blacked out, or someone has been knocked out.

When not beating the hell out of each other, the 18 contestants have to live together in the same house. There is nothing for them to do 24X7 but eat, sleep, train, and annoy fuck out of each other.

At stake is a three year UFC contract worth around $100k.

Episode one starts off introducing the fighters, the coaches, and The UFC Vice Principal Dana White.

We meet the 18 contestants as they are checking out the house they will live in and picking out bedrooms. One of the heavyweights sees that his welterweights roommate Luke has put his mattress on the floor.

"Dude." Says the heavyweight. "Do you always sleep on the floor?"

"No." Luke says, he doesn't sleep on the floor. Luke just likes to sleep with his head pointing north because he thinks it helps his chi.

Inside the heavyweights head the gears grind slowly until he realizes that he is stuck rooming with the "Weird Kid". Years of social conditioning take over and the heavyweight immediately starts trying to fuck with the "weird kid".

"Dude. How do you know that your beds really pointing north?" the heavyweight ask with a smirk.

"I brought a compass." Luke says calmly.

Score one for the "weird kid"...

Fans of season one will remember that the first show of the season features the very important "train until you puke" segment. This segment is important because it lets the coaches check the contestants' overall conditioning and "heart" and because it scores big with the all important demographic of "adults 18-49 who like to see people puke on TV".

Unfortunately things go south early in the "train till you puke" segment. The contestants are getting bruised and battered during the training and some of them have the gall to start complaining. The coaches are very disturbed by this and UFC Vice Principal Dana White is seriously worried that some of the contestants might actually be "pussies".

No sooner has Dana dropped the "P" bomb then the cameras find one of the heavyweights, Kerry, slumped in a corner.

"Oh oh. Oh my knee Oh Oh." Kerry whines.

Dana White is very worried that Kerry has stopped training to whine. Coach Hughes is disgusted that a fighter would stop training simply because he can't walk.

"Where did we find such fucking pussies?" Dana wails.

Coach Hughes consoles Dana and explaining the he has a special 12 step program to cure "pussieness". Steps one through 11 just happen to be "Train till you puke."

"Let me run him through the program Dana. I'll have him unpussiefied in no time!" coach Hughes promises. But cameras and meddlesome paramedics abound. Before coach Hughes can begin the depussiefication program Kerry is whisk away to the hospital where a bunch of pussy doctors fill his head with the crazy idea the he needs surgery.

Dana is not happy. Not has there been no puking during the puking segment, but now Dana's losing on of his contestants to a bad case of pussy-itis.

Things only get worse. Another heavyweight, Eli, jealous of all the attention Kerry is getting, heads into the Vice Principal's office and starts whining to an already furious Dana White about how the show is full of cameras and people who watch him all the time and he just can't take it and he's lost his special sippy-cup with the rainbows and unicorns on it and he really needs a hug...

"Eli, don't be a fucking pussy." Dana White says grinding his teeth but trying to sound supportive. "Your supposed to be a fighter. Just go back out there and train until you puke OK. You'll feel better I promise."

Eli sniffles and says he'll try. But clearly the Siren song of pussieness is strong and Eli seems helpless to resist the call. Instead of going back to training till he pukes, Eli goes off and whines to the other contestants.

The next morning Eli and Kerry both leave. In a touching scene Dana and coach Hughes throw empty beer bottles at the departing pussies. It was a very moving scene. Really.

So now we are halfway through the first show and there has been no puking! Worse, Dana has lost two fighters to pussieness. Determined to save the first show of the season from complete pussieness, Dana comes up with a plan. "Rich. Matt. Pick the biggest remaining pussy on the show and we'll have him fight for the right to not be a pussy any more." " Dana tells the two coaches.

Both coaches agree that welterweight Other Kerry is the biggest pussy still on the show.

"Other Kerry, you're a big pussy. Beat up a non-pussy for me and you can stay on my show." Dana tells Other Kerry.

Other Kerry chooses to fight Sam. Dana seems happy. His plan to save the episode from pussydome seems to be working.

But there's a problem. Other Kerry is walking around at 190 and welterweights fight at 170 so Other Kerry has 24 hours to cut 20 lbs. Unfortunately Other Kerry has never cut weight before and 20 lbs is a lot for a 190 pounder to drop.

Coach Franklin and mini-coach-Franklin (aka Jorge) set to work trying to wring 20 pounds of sweat out of Other Kerry. Unfortunately Other Kerry's rampant pussieness is making this difficult.

"Just stay in the sauna and sweat. You'll be fine." They tell him.

"Waaaaaa! It's hot. I'm thirsty. I want a drink of water! I feel woozy!" Other Kerry whines.

Coach Franklin tries to be supportive but Other Kerry's ever increasing levels of pussieness soon wears Franklin's good nature and patience to the bone.

While Other Kerry is slowly driving coach Franklin mad, we get to watch Dana White channel Bogart. Slumped in stool at an empty bar, Dana gulps gin and grumbles :
"Of all the MMA joints in all the towns in all the world, these pussies had to walk into mine!"
Dana even slaps his palm against his forehead just like Bogart did in Casablanca. It's great. You can really feel Dana's pain!

After 18 hours of nonstop whining and only 15 pounds of sweat, Other Kerry gives up.

"My eyes! Their all blurry and my tummy hurts!" he whines as coach Franklin make one last desperate attempt to haul hin back from the event horizen of pussieness.

In front all the contestants and coaches, Other Kerry gives a stirring speech about how he's proud of himself for getting this far and being such a winner and all. Halfway through his speech Dana's head explodes.

Once Other Kerry is gone Dana decides he must motivate his remaining contestants out of their pussieness.

"Kerry was a pussy! Eli was a pussy! Other Kerry was the biggest pussy ever! You guys have to suck it up and quit being such fucking pussies! Do you understand me? The Ultimate Fighter is about kicking ass and you can not kick ass if you are insist on being a big fat pussy! So stop being pussies right now goddamnit!" Dana shouts.

The contestants hang their heads in shame. Some tremble with fear but none of them wet themselves. Dana takes this as a good sign.

Now Dana need to finish his speech on a strong note so the contestants will know he's serious. As a vice principal, Dana knows there are only two ways to finish in a situation like this: he must either pick on the weird kid, Luke, or pick on the short kid, Joe.

But which of two should he choose ... Dana thinks for a minuet and then he remembers that when all the other fighters were bitching and moaning and falling over during the wall squats part of training, weird kid Luke was meditating. Quietly. The whole meditating thing is really weird as far as Dana's concerned, but Luke managed to keep his pie-hole shut and not bitch while holding a 5 minuet wall squat. That's better than anybody else did so today the weird kid gets a pass.

Dana goes for the short kid.

"And You!" Dana yells pointing at Joe. "You weigh 190 pounds and you're only 4 foot 9! You're a dwarf! You're a fat fucking dwarf and you need to start dropping weight now! Do you hear me you obese midget freak!"

"Oh shit! Vice Principal White is really bustin' that fat midgets balls!" all the other contestants think.

"Fuck! I better get my shit together! I don't want Mr. White thinkin' I'm some sort of fat midget freak too!" the contestants think as they nod their heads in agreement with Dana and the inch slowly away from a very confused Joe.

Both coaches nod their heads with approval and episode one comes to a close.

Friday, September 09, 2005

Wow ... just wow.

This story via the always amazing Laura Rozen is just incredible.

Post Katrina, the mayor of New Orleans and some of his staff are hold up in a conference room at the Hyatt Hotel, trying to coordinate local response to the disaster. But they are completely cut off from the rest of the world by the near total breakdown of communication infrastructure.

Their solution? Find a working Ethernet port in the hotel and turn staff member Scott Domke's laptop into a phone using the personal VoIP account he had set up with Vonage . That one laptop handled all the city officials communications with the outside world for the next 5 days!

To meet their own communications and organization needs as the mayors team directed local response to the disaster, several staff members accompanied by the New Orleans chief of police, borrowed a military hum-vee and looted a local Office Depot for phones, fax machines, routers, printers and a server to handle email.

The mayors team set up it's own infrastructure while living like dogs in the middle of what is no doubt the biggest natural disaster in our countries history!

But wait, according to the article there were only 5 cots and about a dozen people living in the conference room. So my comment about living like dogs is totally inaccurate.

Why?

Because my dog, like most, has her own fucking bed!

The mayor's team lived "way fucking worse that dogs" for over a week and still managed to hack together their own computer and communications infrastructure to support the local disaster relief efforts!

I would say something snarky hear about how it's too bad the mayor and his crew weren't in charge of FEMA, but it would be undignified. The mayor and his crew stayed in the middle of this disaster, sacrificing personal comfort and security, and risking life and limb in order to save what they could of their city and it's people. They took the implied promises that elected officials make to their constituents seriously and stayed to fight for their town to the bitter end.

And what did our federal government do?

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

The Great Barista Rescue

So Saturday I was sitting at the Starbucks near my wife's office reading about the Katrina crisis and drinking a cup of Breakfast Blend.

I'll pause here to give all you Starbucks haters time to compose an eloquent missive about how I'm a bad liberal and a cooperate tool because I like my coffee to actual be drinkable.

Ok. Times up. Back to my story.

I look up and notice the manager of the Starbucks talking to 4 collage age kids. Turns out the kids are Katrina refugees and Starbucks employees. Yes, that's right 'refugee baristas'. They got out of New Orleans with the close on their backs and not much else. Three of them had just reached Austin that morning. The other had gotten into town the night before.

Over the next hour and a half I watch a quite but important rescue operation in progress. The manager walks the 4 refugee baristas through some paper work and hands each of them an emergency assistance check from Starbucks. Another Starbucks employee shows up with a SUV full of donated clothing that the displaced baristas are lead outside to pick through. Then it's back inside to start the process of finding housing and transportation for the 4.

When clothing, shelter, and transportation are out of the way the manager sits down with the four again and gets each of them scheduled to work. It's an small but amazing thing to watch and the reaction of the three baristas who had just arrived that day make it clear that it's an important thing as well.

By any measure, these four kids were lucky: they were able to get out of New Orleans, they were able to make it to a great town like Austin, and they worked for a company who decided it was important to take care of them. But no way did they have it easy. I watched one of the Barista's faces go from shock to amazement to tears when she tore open an envelope the manager handed her and found a check from Starbucks inside.

Like I said earlier, the crying barista was one of the lucky ones. By that I mean she had probably lost everything and she had probably spent 4 days in something close to hell not knowing when it would end. But at the end of those four days there was someone waiting to help her find a bed and a room and hand her a check. But her tears confussed me for a little bit untill I realised her world had just gone from chaos back to a level of basically security that we all pretty much take for granted. For her opening an envelope and finding a check waiting inside was the moment when she realized she was safe again. It was no small thing.

When the refugees were all squared away, I went up to talk to the manager and see if there was any way my wife and I could help out. The manager was shocked but delighted. She told me that all the refugee baristas needed bedding and pillows and some toiletry items. My wife and I were delighted to be able to help out by picking that stuff up.

There weren't any signs up saying that Starbucks was running it's own rescue and relief effort and I haven't seen any since, but Starbucks deserves a lot of credit for taking care of it's employees like this. So the next time your out dropping off donations, doing some volunteer work, or whatever, don't forget to stop off at your local Starbucks, spring for a coffee and a muffin, throw some money in the tip jar, and ask how the refugee baristas are doing.

Just one afterthought: It was around noon when I witnessed all this. Three of the baristas had gotten into town that morning and Starbucks already had relief checks waiting for them, potential housing lined up, and an SUV full of donated clothing waiting. When we finally get rid of the incompetent boobs who are currently running FEMA, maybe we should hire some folks from Starbucks to take over. Just a thought.